I Want To Know What Love Is – Eighties Revisionism

2 Jan 2001 On Skykicking last week, Tim touched, popwise, on the continuing cultural battle over what the eighties were or are or mean or meant. The story of mainstream rock and politics in the 1990s was among other things the story of a similar battle, that time over the sixties. On the one hand you had the […]

The Jubilee Stuff

1 Jun 2002 1 The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re […]

SINEAD O’CONNOR – “Nothing Compares 2 U”

29 Oct 2010 #641, 3rd February 1990 Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version of “Chiquitita”, warm and homely where ABBA’s is […]

SIX LEGS GOOD EIGHT LEGS BAD: Why giant spider movies aren’t scary

1 Sep 2002 Spiders: creepy, crawly little critters which seem up to no good – hanging in the corner of your room, leaving webs around just to make a mess – definitely with their own agenda. Not the most obvious creature to base a film on. Yet Hollywood returns to the theme of spiders every ten years or […]

The Sound Barrier Podcast: 1: The Lost World / The Lost City Of Z

3 Apr 2017 So for a while myself and Pamela Hutchinson, of Silent London fame have been talking about doing a more regular podcast. And while we love talking about silent films, we also like new films too. And so The Sound Barrier was born over a Campari Spritz or four, we take a new release and we […]

The Music And Football Player Exchange, Notting Hill

23 Aug 2005 One of the happy upshots of the Bosman Ruling which we have been living with for almost ten years, is the effect it has on players prices near the end of their contract. Take Clinton Morrison (Birmingham wish someone would) the Republic of Ireland striker. Bought for a club record of £4.25 million three years […]

Call For Submissions: THE LONG EGG

18 Aug 2006 The man who invented the Gala Pie is a hero of mine. Not just because he took one of natures nicest foodstuff (namely the pork pie) and made it even better. He made it better by the addition of the hard boiled egg. But not just any old hard boiled egg. No, not only did […]

YOU SAD BASTARD! – Carter Reconsidered

1 Sep 2002 I don’t think much of the idea of ‘guilty pleasures’ but there’s guilt and there’s guilt, isn’t there? There’s guilt for something you might be doing wrong – breaking some invisible law of taste, maybe – and that guilt you can and should kick aside. But then there’s guilt for the things you have done, […]