In Praise Of... Alexis Petridis

I don't care about you, but I think Alexis Petridis is the most consistently entertaining music writer on the "proper" papers.
He also allows us to continue today's Scissor Sister's theme with a cute interview with Jake and Ana in The Guardian's Film And Music section, where Jake suggests that their new album, Night Music, is an imagining of what gay club music would be like in the late 80s if Aids had never happened.
It would probably have sounded like Italo Disco - which is how late 80s Hi Nrg was rebranded to hipsters a decade or two after it happened.
A few pages on Petridis reviews the four new anthologies in the Disco Discharge anthology series. They get five stars each, natch.
Every reviewer always raves about these compilations. Even if - or maybe it's because - they wouldn't know a great Disco record if it bit them on the bum.
It's the inversion of the little musical hegemony Petridis starts off his review by mentioning; when mainstream America collectively concluded that "Disco Sucks".
These days olde school Disco's cool, and few music journalists dare to differ. Isn't it funny how things turn out?
Petridis always writes well about the influence of yer actual gay culture, and with more knowledge, insight and empathy than many gay journalists.
Though when he writes about the 12" version of Boys Town Gang's Cruisin The Sreets - "in which police officers punish a couple of cottagers by forcing them at gunpoint to take part in an orgy with a passing prostitute..." - he tries to show how down he is with The Gays, but ends up falling flat on his face.
His confusing of "cottaging" with "cruising" is as big a clanger as writing that the movie Top Gun starred Tom Cottage.