I’m interested in this from the Grant perspective, as James Grant releases so little of his own music. He’s more usually a songwriter/guitarist for hire.

Crikey, Whale, there’s a band I’ve not heard in decades. I have Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe on 12″. I don’t think it was a hit, but it was cheap in a bargain bin.

Well, according to SetlistFM, the Food gig was 1991, not 1989. The Family Cat (I don’t remember them at all), DPW, Blur, Jesus Jones. I don’t know if there was a tour, I only saw the one gig.

Yes.

I think I know who is winning this one.

Thinking about the timelines (the Food Christmas gig was December 1989), the shit Blur performance must have been on the Rollercoaster tour in 1992. I remember they were awful, but I barely remember MBV, Dinosaur […]

That Sunday Driver album at £6.25 is a bargain. I’ve sponsored their new one, launch gig in early March.

That’s kind of my point – they didn’t write many ‘songs’, they constructed ‘tracks’. It’s also why the Definitive Edition box sets are so lacking in content – the only demo material is, by and large, instrumental […]

Or Love Vigilantes.

Well, quite. If the council have to cut funding, I’d rather they cut bankrolling the CFF and kept the Big Weekend on Parker’s Piece, which really was a family-friendly open-door (and open-air) event. […]

Really, there are far too many, but what springs to mind is those bes-value singles, the ones which I played both sides of repeatedly because of great B-sides. This is probably a different thread. All three […]

Part of the trouble with CFF is historical. When the council switched from selling tickets at the Corn Exchange box office in town (10,000 people in a queue for most of Sunday) to selling tickets online (about 20 […]

I dunno about a tour, but they definitely did a Food Christmas all-dayer gig at Brixton Academy. DPW, Blur (who were post-US tour, pre-Modern Life Is Rubbish, and totally shit), Crazyhead, headlined by Jesus […]

Not only CFF, but also Strawberry Fair (Cambridge’s own little one-day free Glastonbury). Even though entirely volunteer-run, the cost of insurance has more than doubled since Covid. And my favourite, the 3-day […]

To clarify, while the picture disc is £43, the half-speed master is “only” £33. I have all of the half-speed masters, they all sound fab, and I’ve not paid more than twenty quid for any of them. My advice: wait.

Is there a label that hasn’t given Zodiac Mindwarp a home at some time or other?

Early August, 1983. My cousin Simon (15) and I (13) took the train to Stevenage, played snooker in the Leisure Centre by the station, and wondered into town. Woollies were flogging off tapes without inlay […]

In the mid-90s we spent a weekend redecorating our friends’ new house outside Frankfurt. On Sunday evening we were stopped at the Frankfurt airport X-ray. “Your bag contains paintbrushes?” “Yes.” “Can I open […]

When I was inter-railling in 1992, I found myself stuck in Vienna for a few days, as it was pissing down and I didn’t want to pack up a wet tent. I found a cinema near the museums and watched the Twin Peaks movie […]

I saw the Banana Splits as a kid. I can’t quite remember where, but it was outside at a county fair or somesuch. I’d never been to the US at the time, so they might have been imposters, or one of those “The […]