RIP steven wells

Was saddened to read today that former NME writer Steven "Swells" Wells passed away after a battle with cancer. He's written about it brilliantly here (first bout) and here (the return) for Philidelphia Weekly. There's no self-pity, no pseudo-spiritualism, just the brutal reality of being a Brit receiving cancer treatment in the American healthcare system.

Everyone thinks that "their era" of the NME was the best. I started reading it a couple of weeks into secondary school, in August 1994, and until my mum sold her house I still had every issue I'd bought in my school years. While the 1994-2000 era was probably not golden by any stretch of the imagination, I feel that writers like Wells and Johnny Cigarettes at least gave the paper some level of personality, unlike the dull "youth lifestyle mag" it seems to want to be now (even if Mark Beaumant is still trying his hardest). I may not have agreed with everything Wells wrote, in fact it was often my favourite bands that he was destroying in print, but there was at least passion and humour in what he was doing...once you got past the CAPS LOCK and swearing. He may have tried too hard at times, but was never dull.

It's a bit weird paying tribute to someone that you never met, but it's a shame he's gone.

Here's one for the road...I like the record, but it still made me laugh!