Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Obituary
Man About The House was before my time, but I remember Robin Snest. Part of my childhood, he seemed to be a comfortable 70s male archetype, along with Robin Askwith, Tony Blackburn, Terry Scott, Leonard Rossiter etc.
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Venue:
Bannau Brycheiniog
Date: 16/08/2026
Last Monday I was on my way back to Germany after a week in the Brecon Beacons/Bannau Brycheiniog with old friends from my university days who kindly invited me, back in February, to join them for their annual trip to the Green Man Festival. My first time, they were veterans with a plan. A 12 person tent, with 5 of us in it, we were spoiled for the week with cooked meals, cocktails and other stimulants. It more than lived up to 6 months of anticipation. Much smaller than Glastonbury, it was a 10 minute walk from the camp to the main (Mountain) stage, and from there, 5 minutes at most to all the other stages. This meant, with the well- laid out festival programme, it was possible to organise a whole day of music, moving from the big ticket Mountain stage to the new band Rising stage, the quirky Walled Garden stage, the Babbling Tongues comedy tent, the world/dance Chai Wallah tent, the 2nd stage Far Out tent and the Round The Twist late night dance/DJ tent. If anything got a bit samey, or I’d heard enough, I could move quickly to something » Continue Reading.
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Venue:
Kunstrasen, Bonn
Date: 14/08/2026
Kunstrasen is a hollowed-out piece of grassland like a shallow basin, just between the 40 floor headquarters of DHL and the river Rhine, like OMD partly between industrial communication and the eternal flow of melodic pop. Currently under the same drought conditions as the rest of Europe, the Rhine still manages to stream on, as indeed do Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys 48 years after they founded OMD.
There have been concerts at Kunstrasen since 2012 when Lou Reed and Patti Smith both played. In the intervening years, there have always been a mix of German and international acts playing
The audience:
Yes, mainly around my age. Friendly and engaged with the music.
It made me think..
What a life-affirming enduring contribution to modern culture they have made over the last 50 years.
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This is provocation, from somebody. But OK if there are 3 good Joy Division songs, which ones are they?
If I had to pick just three, they would be –
Atmosphere (I love a party with an atmosphere) Presaged the glory of New Order’s best dance music, but with Ian’s words, not Barney’s
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Love Will Bring Us Back Together) A cliche, but when it’s done well (Susanna and the Magical Orchestra), it’s devastating
Shadowplay Matches good lyrics, Ian in full voice and music vigorous and vibrant
I think there are many other serviceable and portentous Joy Division songs, but if forced to choose, these are the ones I would go for now.
Tell me (and @freddy-steady) yours, if you like – plus reasons.
Bugger, I’ve just heard Transmission. That’ll be my joker.
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Maybe you’re a lark, maybe you’re an owl, a morning person or a night shifter. But do you have a morning ritual, a habit that gets you from the horizontal to the vertical to full motion?
I read the attached article and started practising the habits. It hasn’t stopped me from yawning mid-morning, but it has been an enjoyable, benign way to wake myself. I haven’t gone a full week on it yet, but the practices have started to become comfortably habitual.
What’s your way?
https://thevitalcore.substack.com/p/10-minute-morning-routine-that-rewires
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Is there another nation that has produced as many rain songs per head of population?
Garbage – Happy When It Rains; Jesus and Mary Chain – Happy When It Rains, 9 Million Rainy Days; Travis – Why Does It Always Rain On Me?; The Eurythmics – Here Comes The Rain Again; The Beta Band – Dry The Rain; The KLF – Make It Rain; Fairground Attraction – Moon On The Rain; Jackie Leven – Another Man’s Rain; John Martyn – Acid Rain, Hole In The Rain, Patterns In The Rain.
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I am sure there are a few Six Music listeners on this site – the Venn diagram overlap must be quite large, and the subset of those tuning in to Radcliffe and Maconie may not be much smaller. They have a feature called the Chain, whereby a song is suggested by a listener and then other listeners are invited to send in a subsequent song that in some way links to the previous one. And so on, And on, and Ariston. It’s still going this year when I accidentally tuned in.
Having successfully completed the Return/Back AW Swap, which you graciously took part in after I suggested it, how about a new game?*
the AW Chain
Rules To avoid a complete jamming up of the thread with endless YT clips, my rules would be these: 1. Listen to the first song** 2. Think of a great follow-up (Back On The Chain Gang would be my choice) 3. Send it as PM to the AWer who chose the last song 4. That lucky AWer gets to choose which one to post on the thread as a new main comment. 5. The baton gets passed. 6. Subcomments to the » Continue Reading.
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Venue:
Harmonie, Bonn
Date: 19/03/2026
You may be familiar with vintage YouTube videos of bands playing on German TV with the logo “Rockpalast”. Kind of like their equivalent of The Old Grey Whistle Test with rock, metal and jazz acts from the mid 70s onwards. Well apparently WDR, the host channel based in Cologne, hosts a twice yearly music festival in Bonn.
Thursday night saw two bands play the Bonn Harmonie, which can’t have a capacity of more than a few hundred. I didn’t know either band before the start of the week, but Godspeed You Black Emperor! had sold out a venue in Cologne on Friday, so I was looking for something alternative.
The headliners, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys*, normal rock instruments plus viola, are described variously as art pop | tender noise | post punk | minimal wave. Lucy made for an intense lead singer, coming onto the stage in a white dress, looking somewhat like Polly Harvey, to ambient guitar and viola drones and tones, prowling around voicelessly, looking out into the crowd like a general surveying her troops before grasping the microphone and, to the rising beat of the drum and » Continue Reading.
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An Irish colleague posted the link below on our team chat this morning, after giving us the top 10 as YT links sequentially.
What do you reckon – are these 100 (as voted by the listeners to Today FM) the Greatest Irish Songs? I have no idea. But I suspect you do.
https://www.todayfm.com/best-bits/today-fms-100-greatest-irish-songs-100-51-revealed-2239126
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The Green Party policy is to legalise all drugs. Starmer said it was ‘disgusting’. Polanski said it’s a public health matter. Is it irresponsible populism or a credible approach to the problems that prohibition brings? As the Greens rise in popularity, will this be a badge of honour or a millstone for them?
I raise it a a topic because it’s often mentioned in recent AW comments about the Greens, without addressing these questions.
https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/cannabis-labour-green-drug-policy-b2924913.html
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In my post on seeing Yasmine Hamdan, I talk about the audience, as it is one of the standard questions for the ‘Nights Out’ posts that we have on here. I was able to go into some detail, because I set out to chat to those around me. Getting to know a little about their life stories, why they came to the concert, made the whole evening a friendlier event than if I’d turned up, nursed a couple of beers, watched the band, then left, like a Smiths lyric. I’ve done that too many times in the past, and it’s so dispiriting. This time, though I didn’t spend all the evening chatting, I had broken the social distance barrier, and there was no bristling at strangers. We had made a connection. I’ll probably never see those people again, and at the end I left on my own, but I enjoyed the familiarisation.
This post is prompted by a Guardian article (attached), which explores the idea of talking to people in public. It revisits some of the many ideas in an excellent book by Joe Keohane (The Power of Strangers), which was one of the catalysts for me to be » Continue Reading.
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Venue:
Club Volta, Cologne
Date: 21/02/2026
Yasmine Hamdan is a Lebanese singer who first cashmere to attention in her early 20s as part of an Arabic electronica duo, Soapkills. Later she had a cameo in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 film Only Lovers Left Alive.i first heard her when I was doing a scrape of a much Arabic music as I could find in 2023.
I was in two minds about going. I haven’t been to a live gig with a crowd in more than a decade (kids, you see). It was in the burbs of Cologne and a good 15 minute walk from the nearest train station. Did I really like the album I’d heard tracks from? (I Remember I Forget)
My daughters persuaded me to go, and was i pleased they did! The support act, The Shift, a German Australian art pop act, were whacky and tremendous fun, with enough beats to get me wigging out with a couple of women next to me.
Yasmine herself, when she came on, exuded enormous confidence and assurance, and was cheered loudly by an expectant crowd. She did not disappoint. With a band of drummer/percussionist (manhandling his toms with » Continue Reading.
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Doing a bit of archive dipping, I noted the history of the CD swaps, which I can post in the first comment below.
Did anyone know there seem to have been 8 of them, going back to May 2017? So only 8-9 years ago, nothing in Afterword years.
Any appetitie for doing another, the last being in 2023?
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Bagging Area is a music blog targetting in on my kind of era – indie dance, with a strong remix dose of Andrew Weatherall et al. For NYE, Mr. Bagging Area offered this hour long mix of ambience.
Maybe you’ll enjoy its easy vibes as much as I do.
As Spring slowly wakes its head from the pillow of Winter, what other pleasant drowsiness is there out there?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z5nht0DfQ5e3aCfyK80xdmD8wNnWT92q/view
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OK, I’ll admit to mid-week sub-NME headline Shakespearean wordplay for the sake of it.
But sometimes such foolish serendipity gives rise to interesting thoughts. Given the madness and social media overplay of much national-level politics, wouldn’t the mayor of Manchester have more gravitas staying put? Like Khan in London, Mamdani in New York, even Newsom in California – isn’t there often more sense, more pragmatism and more value in regional and urban politics, than in the grandstanding on the national and international stages?
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This is the view from my desk this morning. I invite you to share via the magic of Flickr, a scene you encounter today or this week or later, that illustrates the wonder of your surroundings. There is beauty everywhere!
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Prompted by a tag from KFD in Fatima’s rather impressive rollcall of personal best albums of 2025 to a new album last year from Yasmin Hamdan, I realized there might be other non-English language acts who released interesting and impressive albums in 2025.
I did a quick search for best Arabic albums of 2025 and Arab News had a rather fine collection of 8 different albums which I am listening to now.
Particularly wonderful is a compilation Al Anhar Wal Oyoon – seven womxn artists from across the Arab world. Blending traditional Arabic songwriting with experimental soundscapes, it’s a great listen.
Also really good is ‘Sametou Sawtan’ by SANAM ‘a poignant, unsettled collision of noise rock, free jazz, and Arabic folk that fizzes with tension’.
I’ll probably try to add some more Arabic and Latin discoveries in the comments below. I’d also welcome posting of any of your discoveries from beyond the Anglosphere from 2025
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I’m spending the week with my aged ma, before the Christmas spree, and apart from working remotely via MSTeams, etc, I’m also helping her declutter more than a century of possessions from earlier generations of our family. They were all avid readers, and there are still collections of books from those who were visiting the equivalent of Waterstones in the early years of the 20th century.
The easiest thing to do with the collection of ‘slightly foxed’ Trollopes, Austens, encyclopedias, other novels, religious tracts and fact-based books from before yesteryear would be to dump them in a skip. I don’t suppose the charity shops of mid Essex would care for them.
A valuer came round and was only interested in pristine first editions and unique curios, so we know they aren’t worth much. But a quick image search on Google suggests there may be an interest in these repositories of previous generations’ cultural mores.
Any suggestions on how to get these tomes to suitable homes? Or is it into the bin for ’em?
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It’s a quiet start to December, and I wondered if anyone wanted to fill an idle moment with some creative thinking?
Describe a band or artist AND the place they come from. You can make it a game by leaving the name of said act out of your comment.
I came up with these in the Joy Division oven gloves thread:
○ The Mancunian miserablists ○ The Cantabrigian concept album creators ○ The bringers of badinage from Birkenhead
I’m sure you can do better!
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WIlliam. It’s a flexible name. Will, Willy, Bill, Billy, Billlie. Even Guillaume, Wilhelm, Weilym, Guillermo. Does any other name have as many forms? And such variety in nominative determinism?
In its full form, it’s a serious name, the name of kings, of presidents and prime ministers (McKinley, Pitt), of philosophers (Ockham), earnest and important writers and actors (Shakey, Wordsworth, Blake, Faulkner, Boyd, Burroughs, Yeats, Baldwin, Dafoe, Hurt, Macy, Shatner).
Shortened, it’s a name of action – Kemp, Smith, Sergeant, Ferrell – I’m too busy for the full name
Sweetened, it’s a bit silly – Bragg, Goat, the Kid, Childish, Connolly, Corgan, Fury, Joel
Feminised, it stands its own – Holiday, Jean King, Jo Spears, Piper, Ray Martin, Whitelaw
But it’s as plain and simple, rough, tough ‘Bill’ that it really stands up to scrutiny. A rugged, honest, dependable name – a sign of unshowy quality, someone who has put in the effort and performed. Look at this list and marvel at the strength of characters presented: Bailey, Berry, Bixby, Browder, Bruford, Bryson, Clinton, Evans, Frisell, Haley, Hicks, Laswell, Maher, McKibben, Murray, Nighy, Oddie, Pullman, Shankly, Ward, Watterson, Withers, Wyman.
Who deserves top Billing? Which Bill to pay the highest compliment?
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Seven tips for success in generating views and comments: 1. Post on a Friday or Saturday (even among the many AW retirees, the weekend is when the browsers come out)…
2. Put a currently popular name or topic in the post title (to grab extra views from the easily distracted goldfish among us)…
3. Choose a theme that everyone has an opinion on or experience of…
4. Invite YT clips around a familiar word, theme or genre…
5. Mention present or past AW regulars, preferably in the title…
6. Mention a band/artist who’s been on the front cover of Mojo/Uncut many times…
7. Put ‘Wordle’ in the title…
8. Specifically ask for examples/additions to the points made in the OP…
9. Make a deliberate error in the OP to encourage corrections and clarifications…
Any more?
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It’s been quite a week of violin music for me. In short, I want to hear more – please post clips.
On Saturday I took my older daughter to the last concert of the annual Beethoven Festival in Bonn to hear Ludwig’s 7th symphony. The 2nd movement was as sonorous and rhythmic as peak Joy Division, elevated by 4 double basses perched vertiginously at the back, overlooking all the other players, and providing a steady rhythmic backing to the polyphonic melodies spilling out from the other strings and woodwind. But it was the 4th movement which was a wow. If you don’t know it, it’s the audible equivalent of the Return of the King – pretty much a rolling sequence of climactic endings, one after the other, building and building through multi-orgasmic bliss until the whole orchestra explodes. The different violin sections threw the main melody back and forth between them, faster and faster, like Neil and the Horse, or Quicksilver, or Television – fantastic!
Tomorrow evening, our family is golng to hear (and watch) the Philharmonie der Soloisten, a quartet/quintet/sextet of orchestral soloists playing the 4 Seasons and other Baroque favourites. So familiiar, so cheesy – right? Middle » Continue Reading.
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Fawlty Towers is 50 years old. I know because it said so in the Guardian today. An institution, widely credited as the greatest sitcom of all time, and probably loved by many. I remember pissing myself at the swivelling rat in the biscuit box at the end of the Rat episode. Maybe you were like me and had the audio cassettes which were played on repeat in long journeys like anti smoking devices, until the dialogue was hammered into your cortex, to remain there forever?
“Is this a piece of your brain?”
The fragments of script come back at me from the most unlikely of prompts.
It is a source of almost unending richness, clearly honed and honed until perfection. Even the names – Basil=Sabil, Sybil=Bysil – a tight contortion of false anagram and Notlob palindrome. Manuel, the manual labourer. Polly, the polyglot, capable of all Major, the constant minor character Miss Gatsby, heiress to the F Scott Fitzgerald legacy of faded gilded age splendor Miss Tibbs, the grey furry tabby
I could go on. I probably will. It’s an achievement of monumental wonder, crystalizing the post-imperial English angst, the damaged psyche, that still touches at the heart of » Continue Reading.
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I just noticed the new strapline – No idea how long it’s been there, but – nicely judged.
“It plays off the familiar phrase “artificial intelligence,” but subverts expectations. That contrast naturally grabs attention” chat GPT
“That’s a brilliantly provocative slogan, Sal. “Artificial Incoherence” flips the usual narrative on its head—most AI branding leans hard into ideas of precision, intelligence, and clarity. This, though, feels like a rebellious wink at the chaos, ambiguity, and unpredictability that can come with machine-generated content”. MS Co-Pilot
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Bill Laswell is someone who has been on the edge of my musical consciousness ever since the 1980s when he produced and played bass on albums by Laurie Anderson, PIL, The Golden Palominos and one of my favourite albums – Swans: The Burning World. Some more adventurous of my friends had albums by Material, Painkiller, and some of his ambient dub albums in the 90s and gradually I became aware of the wide scope of his musical collaborations and explorations. It seemed there was barely a country or genre where he hasn’t been involved in drawing together different musicians and forms. Here are just some of the more familiar ones:
Afrika Bambaataa, Bob Marley, Brian Eno, Carlos Santana, David Byrne, Dub Syndicate, Gil Scott-Heron, Ginger Baker, Herbie Hancock, Jah Wobble, John Zorn, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Manu Dibango, Mick Jagger, Miles Davis, Motorhead, New York Gong, Nona Hendryx, Paul Bowles, Peter Gabriel, Pharoah Sanders, The Ramones, Robert Miles, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sly and Robbie, Sting, Talvin Singh, The Last Poets, Tom Verlaine, Tony Williams, Whitney Houston, William S. Burroughs, Yoko Ono, Zakir Hussain
His inventive and uninhibited spirit seems not just to draw out the best of others, but also to » Continue Reading.
