She may be an Australian thing? A ‘Karen’ is a reductive and two-dimensional stereotype which takes as its basis an entitled middle-class woman who, at the nearest provocation, asks to ‘speak to the manager’. […]

I too am au fait with ‘lit’, ‘on point’ and ‘fleek’ – though I’ve only heard fleek in the context of one’s eyebrow sculpting.
Also, I note ‘rude’, but rather than meaning merely impolite, it means deliberately […]

The whole thing has turned into a bit of a clanger. We look forward to the Open, but my 12 year old daughter’s take is that the players are experiencing “what happens when you don’t read the Ts and Cs” and that […]

Nice.

Started a new band which, in the interests of perversity, we’ve named Picasso’s Ear. Whilst our students were in lockdown, I tapped a fellow simpatico teacher to see if he wanted to strum an occasional acoustic […]

Good selections re Bragg and Human League, both of which in my collection also. Tomorrow is a great song, though replaced on the vinyl reissue with an inferior US mix. The album still stands as his finest, […]

Welcome to Wherever You Are has, this far out, proven to be their most cohesive and lasting for me. Should have been granted much more weight. Full Moon Dirty Hearts also seemed to get lost as their star waned. […]

Should have seen what I was *going* to call it…

I’d pretty much accepted the, er, accepted wisdom that Inks (as my Italian aunties called them when they first came out) only really got good from (most probably) The Swing and (most definitely) Kick, but Shabooh […]

I was skeptical when I first heard about it – Sorry, Paul, but The Beatles is a story, and Abbey Road can only offer narrative redemption if Let it Be remains “the shittiest load of badly recorded shit with a […]

Q magazine’s Chill CD was very good and worked as a standalone album. Groove Armada, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Solid Air: pointed me in a few new directions did that one. The next month was ‘Drive’ that also […]

With respect, so far you’ve all spelled ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ incorrectly.
(Those misspelt films are of course worthy inclusions)

I’ve always understood the ‘tinny’ production of the first as a deliberate stylistic choice, just as much a part of its meaning as the songs themselves. I think it’s sounds sinewy and debauched and wastrelly. I […]

I really like them. superdeluxeedition is my second go-to site after here. But I’m pretty choosy in what I’ll pick up. Demos don’t interest me particularly; I’d be happy to stream those. But outtakes and b-sides […]

Horses for courses and all that, but them’s fightin’ words. One of the most joyful sounds to my ear, that guitar.

They were riding a wave of goodwill here in Sydney after playing a bushfire relief concert last summer. When travelling to Brisbane after, one of the papers (or a TV show?) tried to beat up an altercation between […]

Similar to @mikethep, we’re very fortunate in Sydney. Low numbers of new infections at present and most people cautiously going about their lives. Melbourne is in a far worse position so there’s a sense in Sydney […]

ROBERT SMITH SPEAKS ENTIRELY IN CAPS LOCK ON THE CURE’S SOCIAL MEDIA. WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING ROBERT?
As a teacher of teenagers, we’ve been talking about how their use of social media language has apparently […]

McGuiness and U2 seemed to me a similar pedigree to that of Epstein and the Fabs. For the most part, honour and respect on both sides. Midnight Oil used to credit manager Gary Morris as a band member on their […]