The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

Go to first new comment...

Macca interview – Public Service Announcement

by 2 Comments

This is an enjoyable interview with Paul McCartney on Richard Osman’s and Marina Hyde’s ‘The Rest is Entertainment’ podcast. Macca is on good form, and Osman is clearly starstruck, but if you can stomach the contractual endorsement of Lloyd’s Bank halfway through, it’s short enough not to overstay its welcome. McCartney looks frail but sprightly, and although his singing voice is clearly not what it was, I’ve read nothing but good vibes about his new album.

Go to first new comment...

Tamikrest – Assikel

by 2 Comments

What does it sound like?:

I’m not an expert on World Music by any means, being a fairly recent convert from the time of the Buena Vista Social Club album and film, and the compelling series of albums released on the World Circuit label in the 90s and 00s. Desert Blues is a genre that crept up on me slowly with its subtle woozy and loping guitar workouts and seductive vocal stylings. Tinariwen were, and remain, I guess the best known exponents of the Saharan / Malian / Tuareg traditional music heavily mixed with a Western rock’n’roll sensibility. It’s a heady and irresistible brew. Artists like the superlative Bombino, Terakaft, Tinariwen and any number of compilation albums feature heavily on my list of most played World Music records.

And then there is Tamikrest. The band’s first album Adagh was released in 2010 on the Glitterhouse label and produced by Chris Eckman, ex-Walkabouts frontman after they met his then band Dirtmusic at a festival near Timbuktu.(Dirtmusic’s albums are well worth a listen). 7 albums later and Tamikrest remain with the label, now renamed Glitterbeat, and for me the new one, Assikel, is their best yet. It’s a totally compelling » Continue Reading.

Go to first new comment...

Good long music articles

by 6 Comments

This is a fantastic piece by Will Sheff about a Dr Hook live DVD. It’s an astonishing piece of writing, full of love and humour and showing how one man’s treasure can be found in the most ephemeral fluff (a couple of band members show up in the comments and essentially say that they had forgotten all about this show).

Until I came here to post this, I had no idea that Dennis Locorriere had died this week. Perhaps that’s what prompted it to surface, perhaps it’s just a cosmic coincidence. I did toy with adding it to the RIP thread, but I was hoping to use it to provoke some links and reminiscences of some other great music writing that’s buried away somewhere on the internet. Any offers?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160106053231/http://www.willsheff.com/we-never-have-to-be-alone-dr-hook-and-the-medicine-show-live-1974/

Go to first new comment...

Here come the Belgians …

by 7 Comments

What links Michael Nyman and Richard Jobson, Gavin Bryars and Josef K? I first came upon the Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule in Hungry Beat, an excellent book about Scottish post-punk. A lot of Scots oddballs ended up on the label. Spotify has quite a comprehensive playlist of its roster, and what a playlist it is. Would interest anyone who’s into arch crooners, sophistipop sirens, ambient classical dabblers and, well, Richard Jobson. So, was anyone in the Massive a fan? It would seem unlikely given that one of the bossa pop girls on the label has a grand total of 34 monthly plays on Spotify. But I don’t know, it might have been quite celebrated in the 80s; Ian Curtis’s girlfriend Anik Honoré was a co-founder. So much good music: a truly admirable and largely forgotten aesthetic and sensibility.

Go to first new comment...

ATM Mystery Flexidisc

by 6 Comments

I am currently sorting through boxes of 7″ singles with a view to culling the items no longer wanted. I came across this flexidisc which I acquired about 40 years or so ago. I never knew who the artist was at the time, and Shazam has been of no use in identifying the singer, so I’m hoping the accumulated knowledge on here can help. Video is in first comment.

Go to first new comment...

ATM – wills, beneficiaries, executors etc.

by 3 Comments

Apologies in advance if this sounds like a bad soap opera, but legal minds amongst The Massive (or at least some who might have gone round the same loops) might point us in the right direction…

My wife’s mother died in a nursing home earlier this year, and had suffered for a few years with dementia. My wife has two siblings, both older, but for many & various reasons she has been out of touch with them for a number of years, and relations are hostile to the extent that my wife sadly felt she couldn’t even attend her mother’s funeral for fear of a confrontation…

My wife had been expecting to hear about her mother’s will (her father died over 30 years ago) but when she didn’t, she paid for a search, and has been told the last registered will goes back to 2003, but she can’t get an actual copy of the will without the approval of the executors, who are (you guessed it) her siblings, both of whom have refused (though intermediaries) to oblige to date, and my wife, not necessarily unreasonably, suspects they might try and somehow cheat her out of any bequest.

My queries are » Continue Reading.

Go to first new comment...

A surprising thing I learnt this weekend

by 31 Comments

I visited my son this weekend and due to age and stupidity I couldn’t remember if I’d locked the car.The mirrors looked as if they folded in but I wanted to check. I pressed the key fob to no avail as I was too far away. My son said to put the key fob to my head and press the button. As we enjoy trying to make each other look stupid I decided I’d not fall for it. “No it’s genuine and it works” said son.

I tried it and lo and behold it worked. I checked it out later and there is some scientific reason it works, something to do with salts and electricity in the brain.

I just wanted to share this with you all.

Any other things you thought was total rowlocks and turned out to be true?

Go to first new comment...

Paul Simon dealing with his hearing issues

by 7 Comments

I posted this interview with the rather excellent Anthony Mason on the Emmylou thread as someone mentioned Simon’s frailty. This is before he started playing live and discusses managing the issue, setting up speakers, what he can now play etc.

Certainly talks a lot slower.

His tour of UK getting very mixed reviews. Read of one guy walking out in Liverpool.

YouTube in comments.

Go to first new comment...

Blood, Rust, and Steel

by 1 Comment

Author:Stuart MacBride

Following hot on the heels of the recent short form novel ‘And The Corpse Wore Tartan’, we have here a full length story featuring DI Roberta Steel and her trusty sidekick ‘Tufty’ Quirrel. With retirement just a few short weeks away, all she wants to do is quietly see out the final days of a thirty year career policing Aberdeen’s seedy underbelly before riding off into the sunset. However, it seems the North East of Scotland doesn’t want her to go gently into the good night. A body is discovered in a wheelie bin, there’s a violent protest to deal with and the unwelcome presence of a populist far right politician looms large, all made more challenging by a large proportion of her colleagues being off sick. It seems these final few weeks may be the death of her! This is another darkly comic tale from MacBride, which simultaneously manages to incorporate a captivating police procedural while making some pertinent points about today’s broken society. There’s even a cameo appearance from Logan MacRae along the way, so what’s not to like? All in all, another really enjoyable page turner from one of the masters of this genre!

Length » Continue Reading.

Go to first new comment...

ATM – Blu-Ray

by 28 Comments

I’ve been sorely tempted by the Kraftwerk “Radioactivity “ Blu-Ray (BR) since reading @Tiggerlion’s review – but it has also left me with some questions…

If you play BR discs, what do you play them on? Dedicated BR players? Universal disc players?

If you have a universal disc player, do you still use a dedicated CD player?

And do you have full Dolby Atmos set-ups? Or 5.1 or 7.1 surround? Or plain vanilla stereo? Or a Hafler Trio?

All of which leads me to ask: are BR discs worth the outlay, if (on the face of it, at least) one can’t exploit their full potential?

Go to first new comment...

Maiden!!

by 5 Comments

Planet Rock listeners voted for their best 20 songs last week…..list in comments. Paschendaele is a bit of an odd choice and personally can’t stand Bring Your Daughter ….give me The Clairvoyant or The Evil That Men Do any day of the week. Very skewed to their 80s material which overlooks a lot of good stuff after that.

Go to first new comment...

Going going

by 105 Comments

Are we the last generation to…. Read a physical newspaper Post a letter Watch linear TV rather than streaming on demand Fill a car with petrol or diesel Buy a cd

Any thoughts or any other candidates for the scrap heap…

Go to first new comment...

Eurovision 2026

by 78 Comments

It may mean nothing to you, but this year’s context is underway in Vienna.

5 songs down so far, 20 to go. Israel’s song passed without incident and also without leaving any impression at all, so I don’t see it as a contender. I’m always wrong with my predictions though, which is part of the fun.

Go to first new comment...

A Lifelong Vinyl Obsession

by 20 Comments

My big flexi disc collecting feature in the Scottish Courier paper/magazine has been put back until 30th May (curse you Alan Cummings article!) but you can see it on the newspaper’s website right now if you like. I do look a bit worried in one pic but I’m not, I’m just an old record collecting obsessive.

Carnoustie collector Shane on lifelong vinyl obsession including rare Slade Christmas invite

Go to first new comment...

Any love for the Brothers Comatose?

by 14 Comments

I’ve become keen on small bluegrass/not quite bluegrass bands – couple of guitars, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, bass, invariably a gorgeous Eartrumpet mike. Stumbled on these guys doing an absolutely beautiful cover of Harvest Moon – so simple, so musical, and very cool. They are all about covers, but they seem to smash them all out of the park every time.

The two brothers are the core of the group, and there seems to be a shifting group of people who pop in and out. A. J. Lee has a band called Blue Summit – they do a hilarious shitkicking cover of I’m a Believer.

Go to first new comment...

Mono / Gerbera

by 9 Comments

This post will probably fall on deaf ears (especially after all the recent hearing related threads), but I continue on my mission to sing the praises of the Japanese group “Mono”…

With all the crap in the world right now, what you need is this gloriously uplifting track “Gerbera” – the second track released from their forthcoming album “Snowdrop”

Video in (probably the only) comment on this thread 😉

Go to first new comment...

RIP: Alan Rothwell

by 4 Comments

He was an original member of the Coronation Street cast, playing Ken Barlow’s brother. He turned up in Brookside, where his character NIcholas Black married Heather Huntington (Amanda Burton) before shockingly revealing he was a middle class heroin addict. But, I most fondly remember him from presenting Picture Box, whose theme seems to have inspired the entire career of Boards of Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw52rnh23IQ

Go to first new comment...

Kraftwerk – Radio-Activity 50th Anniversary Picture Disc Vinyl or Blu-Ray

by 18 Comments

What does it sound like?:

Autobahn was Kraftwerk’s break through album, a top ten hit in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany but Radio-Activity was their proof of concept for a complete LP. It’s their first entirely electronic album and it brought together the Fab Four that would see them through their biggest successes. Klaus Röder, and his guitar and violin, was ditched and replaced by Karl Bartos on electronic percussion. Wolfgang Flür abandoned analogue percussion altogether for electronic. The original founders, Ralph Hütter and Florian Schneider, tackled the vocals and synthesisers and composed all of the tracks. Their friend and fellow conceptualist, Emil Schult, contributed lyrics and artwork. The most significant change was Hütter’s deployment of the Orchestron, an instrument he bought in America when they toured Autobahn. The Vako Orchestron is a keyboard that produces its sound through electronic amplification of sounds pre-recorded as an optical track on a disc. It was meant to be an alternative to the mellotron. There were only eight discs for the Orchestron: Violin, Hammond B3, Flute, Cello, Vocal Choir, Saxophone, Pipe organ, and French horn. Vocal Choir is all over Radio-Activity. It was lo-fidelity as scratches on the disc were audible on pressing the keys, » Continue Reading.