Pasolini, “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom”: intellectually brave anti-fascist film and all that, but disgusting and upsetting. “Sansho the Baliff” by Kenji Mizoguchi: Beautiful, Japanese classic about a mother […]

Never speak ill of the dead, I say, and he does leave a grieving family, but as the right-wing media apparently never apologise for or cancel one of their own, their eulogies at times like these can be irksome.

“Captain Sensible is a Wanker” daubed on Bath Street Wall, wasn’t there? Poor bloke.

I now rather wish my comp (being a former grammar) had kept up Classics O level for us oiks, but they emphasised modern languages instead. My loss. Anyway, mention of Homer in music reminds me of the Greek […]

I don’t think these pop proms ever really work: I would prefer a “straight” baroque/classical/modern season as it what the musicians do best. Not sure that I missed that much by the sound of it, but a shame no one […]

Tammy Wynette and the KLF.

Frankie Miller?

I have a sweet spot for “Lost in France” as it was a pop song I must have heard on my parents’ radio when I was 5 and it stuck in the brain.

I just posted on this and noticed your thread, so moved here to reply. I am too young for Watney’s Red Barrel—in fact, my student years were during a peak Real Ale period—but last time I was back in the UK, man […]

“Are You Glad to be in America?” is indeed an ace album and killer track.

I would have included the nervous “Sweaters” (from Big Science): a break-up song like PIL’s “The Flowers of Romance,” with a bagpipe (played by jazzer Rufus Harley; there was a section of the NYC loft scene […]

Nice review, thanks. Sorry to be obtuse but the vinyl copy is NOT a version of the original, “scuzzy” 1976 mix? I found the smooth 2009 CD mix less satisfying than the crackly old vinyl, so may have to sadly pass on this.

Not so bothered by the list, but Keith Levene on “Public Image” is not playing a guitar solo as such, but doing much more than rhythm, supplying the texture and tension of the entire song.

Banger of a song.

In my own neck of the woods (provincial Japan), the RSD shelf at Tower Records was a bit slight (do we need so many George Harrison albums?), but I did get Ryuchi Sakamoto and the Dancieries’ “The End of Asia” […]

I discovered The Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun in the 1970s remix and still prefer it to the original. There was a “raw mix” version of the MC5’s “Back in the USA” album that was promoted as better, until […]

Ahh, that list is so tame. here you go: Fatima Mansions, “Blues for Ceauşescu.” Virgin Prunes, “Twenty Tens”

Dando Shaft were actually a band from Coventry whose first album, “An Evening With…”, (1970) is worth investigating. They seemed to have stayed in the folk scene for years after, but I am not familiar with that work.

Great album!

Well, Electric Music for the Mind and Body (which I first heard in the mid-80s after seeing the Monterey Pop doc, where their Section 43 sequence is the trippiest moment in the film) still sounds great to me: a […]