Like them or not, Oasis are undeniably emblematic of mid-90s Britain (or at least England) … I especially remember summer 1996, when my workplace tasked me with being the minder/tour guide for a party of half a d […]

Liz Fraser, good call! Especially bearing in mind she’s a serial collaborator, who must have a whole Rolodex full of names who’d happily write & produce material for her…

After a fashion I’d suggest Adele… she’s been releasing records since 2007, so just 4 albums (around 50 songs) in 18 years (lest we forget, over twice as long as the HJHM were extant), and at just 37 she’s already […]

I remember Enya being interviewed in Q (the glory years) and she basically said she hated writing & recording and found it utterly tortuous, but every few years someone from Warners would turn up at her door with […]

Coincidentally enough, I was mulling over starting a thread on artists effectively “missing in action”, i.e. no records or shows for X years, and Roddy Frame (along with Andy Partridge and Paddy McAloon, not […]

I was at that Wondermints Borderline gig too, support from Baby Lemonade, one of those great, great nights where I knew I was with “my tribe”… … also saw BW do “Pet Sounds” at the RFH the January afterwards, […]

Have an “Up” (see what I did there?) for the IRS compilation comment – it’s a perfectly sequenced record that just sounds like a great album rather than a stitched-together comp…

Around The Sun has been on “heavy rotation” chez Mickey lately, and it’s a completely fine album – not a classic, not a desert island disc, but totally listenable and enjoyable. (I’m actually happy to defend […]

Yes, we love Poker Face, and we’re also big Columbo fans, since you ask… it’s early days, but we’re not entirely convinced PF season 2 is matching season 1 so far, it feels like they’re working backwards […]

In the words of John Oliver, cryptocurrency is “everything you don’t know about finance, multiplied by everything you don’t know about computers…” A good friend was very early into cryptocurrency, had a room in […]

I was born in 1963, and was obsessed with Gerry Anderson’s shows as a child, especially Thunderbirds, and I think they still stand up today, not least because of the vibrant colour cinematography (for the latter s […]

It’s a decent movie which commits to its nonsense premise (no spoilers), but its main legacy is as the prototype for “UFO”, as many of the actors, models, props and sets turn up in it, as do some of Barry Gray’ […]

In Mark E. Smith’s autobiog “Renegade”, he has lots of (unironic) positive things to say about Pete Waterman, and conversely little about John Peel, go figure…

I wouldn’t class them as “industrial funk”, but for the record, Front 242 at the London Astoria in 1989 remains one of my all-time favourite gigs, absolutely rammed, an utter sweatbox, fantastic…

The Rhino Doo-Wop box set is pretty much definitive if you can find a copy… PS thanks to all for the confirmation that it was “Doo-wop” all along!

I did read that the term “Doo Wop” itself was a 70s invention coined by record label marketeers to sell re-releases; can anyone here confirm or deny?

… and also that those kids born between 1940-55 were grown up and wanted to relive their youths, if not as musicians then as fans… there may even have still been the last vestiges of the notion that Rock & Rol […]

The early/mid 70s Rock & Roll revival was pretty pervasive – movies like “That’ll Be The Day” and “American Graffiti” were big hits and had mega-selling soundtrack albums, Sha-Na-Na were big for a while in the US […]

I digitised the Melody Maker “Fiddling While Romo Burns” cassette recently and have been playing it fairly regularly, though I’m hardly shocked that none of the associated bands ever got anywhere…

Billy Bragg’s book about Skiffle, subtitled “How Skiffle Changed The World” is genuinely terrific, and makes a good case for its superficially outrageous claim…