Working for the NHS (and other healthcare systems) before, during and after Covid, has always been a challenge. Potted career history…graduated in engineering and worked through the financially successful […]

Agreed @dai. I never recovered my love for REM after hearing Monster. I would like New Adventures In HiFi more if it hasn’t followed Monster as it’s an album closer to the Document/Green mix of electric […]

Thanks @Kaisfatdad. I wish I could take any credit for it but it was all the hard work of whoever Memorial Device is (https://bsky.app/profile/memorialdevice.bsky.social) and of imposs1916, who put the whole […]

https://music.amazon.co.uk/user-playlists/5d1933e61ae849bfa6a6d6b390ce5a8fengb?ref=dm_sh_vQo8RvwotMCBZHiEKiKvsNOxD

This Is Memorial Device twitter/Bluesky account out out their 60 Greatest Disco Tracks which has almost all of the big hitters* and some unexpected pleasures. * Although Baccara’s Yes Sir, I Can Boogie is […]

Oddly…I was also a graduate of UMIST back, back in the early 90s. I was back in Manchester about a year ago for a wedding and convinced my wife that a trip to Rusholme for a curry was just the thing. […]

There was an interesting podcast on this very issue from a couple of years back. Not CDs, films, etc but videogames. Specifically the collecting of videogames and how best to manage the collection come the […]

This one I know. The Petrol in the song title is in relation to That Petrol Emotion. Something Happens thought this sounded much like That Petrol Emotion of that era…around the time of the Chemicrazy album. […]

I’ve always loved ballet. I was a pretentious child/teenager and still have pretensions as an adult and nothing was more pretentious as a child than going off into ‘the good room’ to watch a ballet on Chris […]

Agreed @salwarpe. It is a massively inconsistent album. Personal opinion and all but you could lose three or four tracks from the middle of the album and it wouldn’t lose anything of significance. P […]

Ian Brown famously screamed “YOU’VE PEAKED TOO SOON!” To the crowd at Spike Island? Or as a forecasting of his own career? I’m not sure if it’s known everywhere as doing a Bobby Gillespie but The Stone […]

The best way to enjoy the Rocky Horror Show is to almost ignore everything associated with it and just enjoy the original Roxy cast recording. All the original cast, the best versions of the songs and none of […]

A perfect example of why The Stone Roses could be so infuriating. One half of the song is lumpen and dull but then, post-pause, it becomes a thrilling series of ever-increasing highs. See also the sublime […]

Was just about to post Waiting Room. The mark by which all other pauses in rock should be measured against. Others? Sabotage – Beastie Boys Stop – Jane’s Addiction Love Shack – The B-52s, the impact of […]

Agreed @Freddy Steady and @exilepj. There certainly was a subversiveness with the likes of Sylvia Patterson and Tom Hibbert interviewing but this was also a magazine that (very occasionally) featured The Fall, […]

Completely forgot about Smash Hits in spite of having an almost complete collection of the magazine from 1982-1986.

As a child, the Beano, the Dandy and then Tiger (Billy’s Boots, Hotshot Hamish, Death Wish, etc) Warlock…yep, the short-lived Fighting Fantasy magazine Nothing for ages then Q and Select Kept buying those […]

It’s an incredibly evocative piece of music to match the moment. A Sunday morning, a comedown, a hangover, the sound off rain on the window and the detritus of the previous night still scattered around the […]

Hot Doggie by Colourbox As a teenage horror fan, to have my kind of movies in a cracking song to lead off a 4AD compilation was a joy. Came for Throwing Muses and left with this. In there is 2000 Maniacs, […]

Can’t really look past soundtracks from the 80s without mentioning Streets of Fire. It even, preposterously, billed itself as a Rock’n’Roll fable. The actual soundtrack album has two of the best Jim Steinman […]