Once upon a time New Left Review was in the vanguard of UK film culture, and once in a while it’s still capable of engaging. This piece on cultural tensions in Taiwan includes an interview with Hou Hsiao-Hsien which helps illuminate the backgro[…]

Swallows and Amazons Talking Books
The people who own the rights to make audio versions of the Arthur Ransome books can’t be bothered, despite the lucrative enough trade that exists selling to car-driving tourists in the Lake District. All the […]

To continue my theme of songs on a theme, two particular tunes have been haunting me this week. The first is by the dearly departed ironist Mr Johnny Cash and is called ‘Strawberry Cake’. The second is by a similarly dearly departed heart[…]

Salad for Men
Home yesterday evening, bored of reading about subterranean London excursions and playing Snake 2, I decided to have some supper. It was hot and sticky despite soft rain finally clearing the atmosphere, and lukewarm food like Italian-s[…]

“Mac Nerdery etc” at daringfireball.net
John Gruber – my sort of nerd. Some substantial essays often extolling more sober lines of thought as an antidote to popular badly-thought-through-isms. A prime example being the recent &#8220[…]

Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version.
The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom […]

The Silence of Flooded Houses
I discovered this little introduction to a book of Beatles lyrics, by Richard Brautigan.[…]

Against The Corporate We
My mouth tells me that Innocent Smoothies are very nice. My brain suggests they are a great deal better for me than that next can of coke. So why am I so suspicious of them? This provides a clue:
“We promise a lot of th[…]

Sexy History
I’m reading Rubicon by Tom Holland, a pacy account of the corruption and collapse of the Roman republic in the first century BC. It’s a period I’m interested in because my own Roman studies started with Augustus, with t[…]

Practical Criticism
I wonder sometimes if music criticism shouldn’t be more practical. I suppose I’m thinking of the music criticism you pay for in magazines. The ‘music press’, with a handful of sterling exceptions (you know […]