Thought provoking post, Colin!

Writers can be interesting cases, I think. Yeats, for example, seemed to become more magnificent the older he got (possibly because he was worried about getting older), whereas […]

This is my ‘guilty pleasure’ of PF albums: side one is preposterous, but I do enjoy the Geesin input.

“Freak like Me” by the Sugababes when it does the mash-up of “Are Friends Electric?” over the slow fade out. Pop was great around the early 2000s.

I am again late to a thread, but this one is a good’un.

I was born 1970, so the 80s was my pop decade and I am willing to defend some of it. 1987-90 was especially good, but that might be the “music fan at 17” […]

French TV was also good for live performances in the late 60s as now found online: here is Fairport Convention with Judie Dyble, and Martin Lambert on drums, doing the Emitt Rhodes song.

Great question: Here is an an off-the-top-of-my-head answer, all UK-based, pop-centric, and in arbitrary order:

1: Stereolab, Three Dee Melodie
2: Portishead, Glory Box
3: Tricky, Ponderosa
4: Massive Attack, […]

Sad news. The Voice of America, Red Mecca, and the Rough Trade singles really stand up, I think: ‘Live at the YMCA’ is ( along with Totale Turns) my favourite lo-fi live album of that period.

AMM are not usually considered rock or psychedelic because of their associations with both “highbrow” music and jazz/improv, and it is too noisy to be ambient, but the first album (with Cornelius Cardew) is […]

Used to have that album and enjoyed it, but with the caveat that these were hardly the “worst” or even particularly camp, but just oddball pop or novelty songs ( and a couple of stinkers). You can hear the sam […]

I have said this before, but it would nice to have the Husker Du albums around again, ( preferably remixed) but they still seem lost in some legal limbo.

I think of the ongoing debacle of Lal & Mike Waterson’s 1972 album “Bright Phoebus” that disappeared for decades until finally re-released to some publicity in 2017, only to be soon withdrawn from sale again when […]

They may have been overhyped, but it’s a good album for coming up and getting the party started: “Soma” or “Barely legal” sound good on headphones coming out of the door. I associate them, along with Fennesz’s […]

I agree with what Napaj says in his/her great posts.

I live in Sendai in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake/ Tsunami region, where there was always scepticism about diverting investment (yet again) to Tokyo for the […]

More of a bass lick than a solo, but Steven Hanley is good:

Not the worst disappointment in life, but Happy Mondays, “Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches”: made them chart contenders, and may have seemed like progression to some, but the music wasn’t as clever or strange as […]

Originally on Apple Records

Does Andrew Marvell , onetime MP as well as poet extraordinaire, get a statue?

Not sure if John Cale doing Chopin is what you want, but it’s good.

Respect! That’s an amazing (short) record.

No! Nor am I the racist or the Dutch guy who shouts ‘Play more music!”