PRODIGY – “Breathe” 22 Jan 2014 The Prodigy’s success was built on two things: Liam Howlett’s remarkable feel for how to carve a collection of exciting sounds into a track, and the group’s increasing attraction to…
BACK MARK SINKER’S BOOK!! 27 Jul 2016 UPDATE: the book is funded, so thanks everyone that helped. It is due for delivery in a little over a year. I will keep people up to speed on developments…
“ITES, REEL” 19 Sep 2018 Being a melancholy appreciation on his passing of this nation’s pioneering reggae writer: the great PENNY REEL “Sing great song, down inna Babylon, show them your culture, down inna Babylon”…
THE PRODIGY – “Firestarter” 17 Sep 2013 Twenty years after 1976, punk rock lived on – in the critical imagination, at least. It was part benchmark, part decoder ring: the moment and movement later upheavals had to…
HIDDEN LANDSCAPES: THE PODCAST 8 May 2018 Eight episodes are now up: Hazel Southwell and Mark Sinker talking through the story of the UK music press from two very different angles (bcz I am old and she…
THE OUTHERE BROTHERS – “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” 2 Jun 2013 The Great British Public has a long and warm relationship with smut – stuff that is somehow about sex without making anyone actually want to do it. A part of…
Time Travel Savers 18 Apr 2013 The Guardian, aware that we are living in a country down to its last thruppence ha'penny, is thinking about the finances of the poor gig going kid. Look, they have…
About the Author
writer and editor bit by bit fashioning a history of the UK music press HERE https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r/posts
1 Jan 2003
This article was the author’s working notes for his since published book “Adorno: A guide for the perplexed”, available from Waterstones, reputable booksellers, and Amazon Introduction, by Alex Thomson In many ways Adorno exemplifies the image problem faced by critical theory today. Adorno is not a sexy figure. He comes over in his writing as […]
23 Mar 2014
#773, 13th September 1997 “Whenever we played that live there would be rows of grown men crying. It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big rock concert.” – Richard […]
19 Jan 2002
Everlasting Pop and Dexys Midnight Runners There is pop, and there is popular, and then there’s popular. And there’s also “timeless”. Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” – let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album – they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they […]
15 Aug 2017
Spooky happenings over on Silent London this week, where the Sound Barrier Podcast dabbles in the supernatural, otherworldly and ectoplasmic. Or rather, a pair of meditative films which use death, and the afterlife, to dwell on the nature of existence. But if that feels a little dry, don’t worry there are madmen axing down doors, […]
11 Oct 2006
The discerning televisual fan will be aware of the vacuum currently residing in the schedules between the 7.30pm end of Hollyoaks First Look and the 9pm commencement of Ghost Whisperer. There are only so many times one can flick between Puff Daddy jiggling next to the Lead Pussycat on TMF and the startlingly abhorrent animated […]
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 […]
25 Jun 2018
No, you’ve not missed any matches. We’re putting this year’s games up as we get the entries in, and so it’s a big thankyou to the prompt Group E gaffers of Serbia, Brazil, Switzerland and Morocco. It’s a group of veteran pop managers in the dugout this match, but only two can progress beyond the […]
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 […]
