Thank you. Those are all mostly new to me. The Black Sorrows were on there but slipped off for some reason. Got to admit I struggle with Counting Crows, although they redeemed themselves by being one of the few […]

Some great early Nick Mason-style springy drumming, too.

Yep, I think you’re right. I wish I could find it. It got me a job interview at NME because the editor saw I’d done it and was a bit of a fan.

I want to say Toby Manning (?) and one other. They were very genial and knowledgable. It was for a new music glossy that was launching out of Bristol but sadly I can’t remember the name of the mag or its editor. […]

Thank you. I’m ready fed up that I can’t lay my hands on a better Fannies interview I did around the time of Grand Prix. I had the pleasure of going for a few pints with them one night. I literally bumped into the […]

No worries, although the Suede one will for ever give me the collywobbles. Even my best friends have never known what went down that afternoon. Dramatic, though!

Sorry, that wasn’t aimed at you. I’ve seen a lot of NO fans post it, and can’t help feeling they feel validated that he’s reinforcing their political values while, at the same time, overlooking how selfishly he […]

I will never understand the blind loyalty to musicians when they make a sympathetic political statement. Are we forgetting that Bernard, Steve and Gillian arranged a special band meeting abroad, where only a […]

I like it, and neo-R&B huffing and puffing is a pretty good description of Van’s work. On a similar tack, I never know why Hard Nose the Highway gets such short shrift. Again, the cover art doesn’t help. But Sno […]

Which is a cover version

Aw, thanks both of you. It’s an egotistical thing to do but it’s not for much longer and I have to get this stuff out there to prove to my kids it ever happened. The writing’s a lot better by this stage (the […]

I’d kind of forgotten Salad but their stuff really stands up. My favourite Britpop now is all the wonky stuff:,Stereolab’s singles from that era, Pulp and Salad.

Southampton Birmingham

What I will say is that Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham at the Borderline was my favourite gig ever. Rapt silence throughout the songs, uproarious applause after: it was like being in church: a point that me and Bobby […]

Hang on. His last decent song was in 1981? The White City album was a good four years after that, and IIRC, the last Who album had some decent tunes on it, too. Mind you, travelling with Daltrey would make anyone grumpy

I’ve always thought the following was an outlier in the Waterboys’ work. It sounds nothing like the album it’s on, nothing like much the Waterboys subsequent records, that is until very recently, when Mike has […]