I toyed with the idea of a post celebrating Europe last summer around the referendum vote, but frankly, I was too damned down about the whole thing to even consider it. Debate has raged, of course, in the press, in person, on social media, just about everywhere, and there is certainly no doubt that the […]
About eighteen years ago, while I was still reading Geography at King’s College London, the subject of my dissertation proposal came up.
Part four of my monthly rundown this year of tracks from 1996 that broadly, I still love now.
Last week actually marked a significant milestone in my music fandom – 20-July was exactly twenty years since I first attended a live, professionally promoted gig. That first show, by the way, was the (free) Heineken Festival in Roundhay Park, Leeds – I went to two days of it. The Thursday night I saw Back […]
A new section where I look back at albums in my past. They may be great albums, they may be albums that haven't stood the test of time. But these are albums I bought and loved at one point, and maybe haven't listened to much in the meantime. More importantly, this is a way of […]
In a time where inequality is rising faster than in a long while, austerity is all the rage (despite the warnings that this is only making things worse), and the various results of the Euro crisis, to mention but a few things, I’d perhaps expect a rise in political comment from music or even comedy, […]
So…I’ve looked at the best gigs, live venues, and gigs at the London Astoria, bands at Infest, bands I’ve *not* seen live…but I’ve never had a look at live albums, somehow, as my girlfriend pointed out last week.
For my first Tuesday Ten proper in about two months, I’m looking at guest appearances. I thought I had covered this before, but somehow it appears that I haven’t. Anyway – guest appearances are either used a little cynically (to get the guest artist more exposure, or even to get the other artist more “credibility” […]
So after a couple of weeks of work, here are my top twenty albums of the 90s. There is again a Spotify playlist accompaniment to it, which is this time missing four entries, which with it being the top twenty is a little frustrating…
Last but one – those just outside the top twenty.
Over halfway, and we’re into the Top 100.
Further to last week, it’s time to move on to the next stage of my rundown of the last decade.
Ideas for future Tuesday Tens are coming thick and fast at the moment, and indeed I have the core of two more already completed too, and this week’s was a late change of plan, mainly after I realised just how many songs could be included. So the other two I have planned will be held […]
The 90s were a heyday for industrial metal – let’s be honest, few bands have been able to continue a high quality output of this style into this decade, and fewer more recent bands still have been able to keep the flame alive (with notable exceptions being the likes of Interlock and Cyanotic). To confirm […]
Comedians have always influenced music in various ways, but no-one seems to have been sampled, remixed or simply been such an inspiration to various musicians like Bill Hicks – well, with the exception of Lenny Bruce, perhaps.
Like what appeared to be all of the UK metal community, I headed up to Leeds yesterday for the long-awaited Damnation Festival, the biggest incarnation yet of the one-day metal festival that has had something of a nomadic existence over the past few years. The queue to get into the venue was huge at 1630 […]
A friends’ posting of this link over the weekend provided me inspiration for the subject of this week’s Tuesday Ten.
As promised last week, here is the second part of my favourite albums of the 90s. Same rules as before, this time the list takes a more metallic edge, perhaps. These ten are in chronological order, just about, by the way.
The first Tuesday of a new month, so time for a look at my ten tracks of the month for October. The usual mix of new stuff that has caught my ear, along with a few older things that I've been listening to again. Anything that you think I should be hearing otherwise would be […]
So, Pitchshifter. To say I’m familiar with the band’s output and their live performances would be understating it a little: I’ve been following them since first discovering Triad years ago on a John Peel show (probably sometime around ’94/’95), and then saw them live 13 times between ’96 and ’02 (I never saw the “last” […]
