Back to writing about the best gigs of the year for the first time in three years. Some statistics for my gig-going in 2022. I went to 36 shows (each festival is counted by number of days – so Infest is three days, so counts for three shows), and saw 106 live sets. I saw […]
That what started out as a hastily-scheduled event to celebrate the life of Jamie Duffy has turned into a large, multi-day, multi-city festival over the past decade is something of wonder: but what is also great is how it has fostered a wider family of sorts, one of multiple groups that come together from all […]
Twenty-five years ago yesterday (20-July 1995), I made it to my first proper gig. I headed over to Roundhay Park in the north-eastern edges of Leeds, along with tens of thousands of others, to the first night of the Heineken Festival that year, ostensibly to see Pop Will Eat Itself, but that evening I also […]
Two years after I started to think about a /Tuesday Ten on the senses, and I finally come to the end of what has been a pretty difficult subject to write about. Lots of metaphor and double-meaning has had to be dug through to find the right songs to feature over six posts, and I […]
We’re continuing our journey through the a-z of industrial with a first look at the letter N. Needless to say this was recorded during the ongoing lockdown…
Following on from last week, there’s been lots of warnings of late. Warnings to social distance, warnings to stay at home, warnings about what to do if you’re infected. We’re also – well, were, before the rain came today – hearing announcements in Finsbury Park telling people not to sunbathe or lounge around in the […]
The advent of the COVID-19 effective lockdown has left many of us in a quandary. How do you keep fit when you should be avoiding leaving the house as much as possible? The Government has advice on this, of course, and when we take a walk locally each day, we are seeing an awful lot […]
Some statistics for my gig-going in 2019. I went to 53 shows (each festival is counted by number of days – so Infest is three days, so counts for three shows), and saw 150 live sets. I saw 140 unique bands, eight of them more than once, at 37 venues, and my wife saw 46 […]
You can file this week under “how have I not covered this subject before?”. Honestly, I rather thought I might have touched upon this subject before, but aside from one about mine and my dad’s relationship through music, I really never have.
Somehow, despite the feeling I was just getting started, I’m already home, (mostly) unpacked and finishing this write-up of another great edition of Infest. It has long since become far more than just a music festival that I attend because I want to see a few bands – it’s an extended family.
In less than three weeks time, we’ll be on the train north to Bradford, for our annual pilgrimage to the city for the industrial festival that, since I began attending, I’ve never missed. I’ve lost count of how many friends I’ve made, how many new favourite bands I’ve heard, how many great memories (and the […]
This week, as the Tuesday Ten series reaches a repeating number in the form of 333, I will now attempt this week’s post without repetition, deviation, or hesitation. Actually, maybe not. I’ll leave that to Just A Minute.
In a time where far-right sentiment is ever more in the news again – see this disturbing story from Liverpool this week, the sentencing of a fourteen-year-old boy for a racist knife attack on a teacher in Bradford, demonising of immigrants, apparent revisionism over Golden Dawn in Greece, or upvoting of Nazi propaganda on the […]
I actually started this 80s rundown a couple of years back, but life and other things have rather got in the way. So, a little bit of spare time has allowed me to get this finished. Without further ado, then, let’s get on with it.
Following last week’s awesome fun of submissions from many of my readers and friends, I thought I probably ought to suggest my own to this. So this is a postscript, of sorts, offering five albums that I celebrate as being my idea of perfect albums. I’ve been careful to ensure that I haven’t repeated any […]
I seem to have been delving into my musical past, and in particular the nineties, an awful lot so far in 2011. I’m not exactly sure why: perhaps it’s just been discovering a handful of nights in London that cover parts of that past that I’m still fond of – so Nuis@nce and Louder Than […]
Ok, on to this month’s tracks you should hear. Or, the second of today’s doses – and the first monthly round-up of this decade.
The third instalment of this lengthy rundown.
Going to see a band from your past, that you never got to see the first time around, is always perhaps something of a risk.
