Losing My Edge

As I said in my last post, I'm an inveterate absorber of all things pop-culture.

This gets me into trouble sometimes.

I hope you're all familair with the song Losing My Edge, by LCD Soundsystem, but just in case you aren't, watch this...


I empathise a lot with this song. I've always had a knack of getting into things before the general populus are aware of it. I've always been moderately cutting edge with my tastes, and my general taste seems to be in step with the general zeitgeist. I'm not right on the cutting edge, the stuff I get into has usually been picked up on by the people who are really, really into that scene, but I'm generally ahead of the curve.
I got into the Chemical Brothers a few months before Exit Planet Dust came out, Nirvana a few months before Nevermind, NiN just before Pretty Hate Machine, bought Radiohead's Drill EP long before Creep was a hit. I'm not quite as on the ball nowadays, certainly with music anyway, but that just fits with the song even more. I feel me and James Murphy (the man behind LCD Soundsystem) have a general ethos in common.

Of course the big difference between me and Murphy is that, although Losing My Edge is obviously largely biographical, as well as gently taking the piss out of this type of person, Murphy has also produced 2 of the finest albums of the last decade, and founded a record label that features lots of very good bands.

I haven't. I've been a DJ, on and off, for 15 years, and I've written a lot of comic reviews. I've worked in comic shops for most of that time, and I've done my best to sell people really good books.

I thought about making music, and I've thought about writing comics, but when it comes down to it, I'm not talented enough. On top of this, I've heard so much music, and read so many comics, that I'm paralysed by the probability that whatever I think of, someone else has done it first, and better.

So, in the meantime, all I can do is introduce people to all of the cool things I've read and heard. I didn't get into DJ-ing for the money, women and drugs (although all have been there at various points), I got into it because I love that feeling when you hear an amazing new song, and wanted to play all of these unknown tunes to other people and show them how great this stuff was.
I always enjoyed the early part of the evening, when you're playing all the new stuff, to the later bits when you're filling the floor, although it was a particular thrill to drop a new tune late on and fill the dancefloor despite no-one knowing the tune. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.
I never made a particularly big deal about my persona as a DJ, but it was important to me that I was the one who'd played this stuff out first.
We'll come back to that.

It's slightly different in comics. I like all sorts of comics, superhero, crime, manga, whatever, but the alternative stuff has been really important to me ever since the mid-nineties when I worked at Gosh! comics, a lovely little London store that specialised in that stuff.

The audience for comics is not huge, and the indie comics audience is a very small percentage of that, so it's very easy to be at the cutting edge when it comes to them. You just need to keep your eyes open, look through the monthly Previews catalogue ( a 3-400 page monthly catalogue of upcoming comics, published by Diamond, the main comics distributor), and nowadays, read a few key blogs.
I don't like everything published (there's a company called Picturebox who are very critically accliamed, and I just don't get their stuff at all, finding most of it ugly and unreadable), but the quality threshold is pretty high overall, so if you find someone who's into this stuff, there's a lot to recommend.
I was one of the earliest supporters of Chris Ware, Jhonen Vasquez, Jason, Paul Pope and many more, as well as more recent creators like Josh Cotter, Tom Neely & Ed Piskor, and creators who have been around for years but are only just breaking through now, like Jordan Crane and Graham Annable.

Again, I like being the one who knows this stuff, and can help people. I guess it's a form of self-gratification in a way.

This has, as I said at the beginning of the post, gotten me into trouble.

I have, in most of the places I worked, been the most knowledgable person when it comes to comics. Therefore I could usually answer any questions that customers or other staff members might have. Unfortunately, this pathological need to be the one with the answer meant that I'd frequently butt in on other peoples conversations, answering questions that other people actually did know, and generally not being the most tactfull person in the world. It also meant I'd sometimes patronise or even unintentinally belittle my colleagues for not being as knowledgable as myself. This caused huge problems at Gosh!, where they actually did know what they were talking about most of the time, and has caused problems ever since, although I've managed to reign in most of my less savoury habits over the past few years, save for a dreadful lapse earlier this year.

I've now left comics retail for the foreseeable future, swapping that for the world of comics distribution. I'm determined not to be the know-it-all asshole I've been in some of my other jobs, but I hope that I can still use my knowledge to good ends, making it easier for retailers to get the lesser-known books on their shelves.
Only without alienating any of the extremely nice new colleagues I'm working with.
Hopefully.