Having left the UK 20+ years ago I haven’t witnessed his rebirth as a charming TV presenter so for me he’ll always be known for his glorious genre-founding ‘Portillo moment’. Also having lived in Spain for over 20 […]

Thanks for that. If only we could all have Grace Maxwell in our lives!

In case it’s passed people by Edwyn ‘dropped’ his new album yesterday, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation. I’m 6 listens in and I like it a lot. Another fine (final?) addition to a wonderful career. Certainly better […]

I appeared in a play there 35 years ago (eeek!) when I was 17 so I imagine there’s basically nothing in common any more. It was a school play and deeply pretentious and the cast usually outnumbered the audience […]

Just watched the Substance this evening. I enjoyed it a lot despite (or because of) its sillines. Up there with those early Peter Jackson films in the gory body-horror stakes. But I’ve no idea why it couldn’t have […]

Teenage Fanclub, a band so good that even their ex-drummer’s band was pretty good (and very Fanclubesque).

What a wonderful thread! Discovering the various of musics of Africa has been one of my greatest pleasures of recent years. And from this I can see I’m only scratching the surface. Which is very exciting to know.

Even with the intermission the Brutalist is at least an hour too long. We found the second half endless. If it had ended an hour before we’d have liked it a lot, as it is we were both pretty irritated when we left […]

Pristine- Julian Cope. What an album Peggy Suicide is.

I did a silly thing and went back into Twitter for the first time in a good long while and foolishly clicked on ‘For you’. It was already flooded with mad conspiracy theories and wild accusations that, thanks to […]

As is this which I was meaning to post to the 80s soundtrack thread last week but never got round to. My absolute favourite moment of hers.

I was absolutely blown away when I read her autobiography 30 years ago. I was in my early 20s and she seemed ancient and from another age – but she wasn’t even 50 when she wrote it! But she’d already lived enough […]

A film I only saw recently as I discovered the work of the great Aki Kaurismaki, the wonderful and very odd Leningrad Cowboys go America. Sadly the even odder I Hired a Contract Killer doesn’t qualify for this […]

Couple of films made a big impression on me when I was 15 or 16 or so, River’s Edge and Trouble in Mind. Along with Blue Velvet they were the first films I saw outside of stuff that was in the top 10. Saw both […]

Must have some Fannies. Not britpop as such but certainly adjacent. The concept What you do to me Star Sign Radio Sparky’s Dream Neil Jung Ain’t that enough I don’t want control of you And so on…

Excellent stuff, plenty of which I’ve not heard before or not heard for years. When I first discovered pop music in the mid 80s most of this kind of thing simply wasn’t straight pop enough for me, then a couple of […]

Yup, after a while I gave investigating anything further and just ripped the tracks I liked to itunes safe in the knowledge that I’d be unlikely to be missing much. Some very good tracks but no good albums that I remember.

Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet had a huge effect on me in my late teens. However must admit I’ve seen very few of his films and not watched one for years because never has a film irritated me as much as Mullholand […]