MADONNA - "Music" 26 Apr 2015 “Her whole career’s been like, oh, they’re the trendy person of the moment, I’ll work with them to make me younger. They’re using you.” - Aphex Twin on Madonna, 2001.…
OASIS - "D'You Know What I Mean?" 14 Mar 2014 “Call me naive but I felt something – I’m not quite sure what it was, but I felt it all the same.” – Noel Gallagher on New Labour. When Tony…
Squees! Hammer Goin' Her (Temp) 22 Jul 2014 Avengers NOW! and Marvel in the 2010s Marvel Comics’ announcement that its new Thor is going to be a woman has attracted plenty of froth and comment – especially since…
3 and 9 could show you any fantasy 8 Sep 2019 [This post originally went up at my PATREON: subscribers get to read posts and hear podcasts early — and help offset costs and time and help me do more of…
Good Comics I Read In 2017 3 Jan 2018 I'm not doing a comics poll this year - the slack is being admirably taken up with Pete's new TV poll - but I still read a LOT of comics…
Going Back To My Routes: Sinnoh 31 Mar 2017 This is part of a series of critical essays on the Pokémon games. This one is about Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the fourth "main series" games, and inevitably contains LOTS…
Going Back To My Routes: Hoenn 21 Nov 2014 This is part of a series of critical essays on the Pokémon games. This one is about Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, the third "main games" in the series, and unavoidably…
About the Author
writer and editor bit by bit fashioning a history of the UK music press HERE https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r/posts
13 May 2008
#394, 4th September 1976 In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking for clues to what happened, and becomes close to the scientist’s […]
26 Jan 2004
“Black Man Ray” is Ray Charles, who China Crisis apparently believe in. Now Ray Charles’ blackness is not a secret, so why did China Crisis see fit to remind us of it on their incomprehensibly awful single? My theories: i) They were talking about the photographer Man Ray, and asserting that he was black. Which […]
27 Sep 2001
What is “Panic” about? Dismissed and attacked since its release as small-minded, or snobbish, or even borderline racist, The Smiths’ anti-disco broadside continues to intrigue. On this thread, The Pinefox calls it a “yoking of two ideas” – a revolutionary fantasia and an attack on dance music – and claims that it’s the second of […]
21 Nov 2013
So here we are. The 32 qualifiers for the football World Cup have been decided, which means it’s time, once again, to get ready for the POP WORLD CUP. The point of this post is very simple. If you want to be a manager in the Pop World Cup, put your name in the comments […]
9 Jul 2010
So we get a winner, down on Brewer Street in Soho, the Glasshouse Stores was voted the number one pub of the noughties by those of us who voted. A nice pub sure, but so much better than the others? To find out why it scored so highly I thought I would canvas a number […]
28 Jun 2013
We are now firmly into the BRITPOP YEARS on Popular, oh yes, so it’s time to consider its musical legacy in the only language we truly understand, viz. a ticky-box poll. We have selected 32 bands who someone, somewhere, might possibly have once described as Britpop. Tick all the ones you like and by science […]
9 Jul 2002
Andrew WK: I Get Wet: Pitchfork Review: Remarkable write-up of the Andrew WK album from Ryan Schrieber, Pitchforkmedia’s editor-in-chief. Remarkable because it gets Andrew WK’s music so descriptively right – “Nothing could penetrate a sound that dense. I was overcome. I tried to remember the last time anyone dared to push rock so poppily over […]
14 Apr 2007
Plenty of words have been written about the seminal Sex Pistols’ seminal gig at the seminal Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976. There has even been a whole book about it! Everyone knows that the gig was really very important indeed and that everyone who attended became a very extremely important person. HOWEVER does everyone know exactly […]
