A very informative page about avant-disco (and the normal kind) producer Arthur Russell, whose World Of Echo album is probably the longest-standing title on my internalised Wants List.[…]

For the few readers to whom I haven’t crowed about this already, I now have a proper domain name, and everything will be moving there as soon as I’ve made the older articles more readable.[…]

Yes? Good. I never thought I’d see the day when online bastion of modernist indie sensitivity Tangents went pop on us, but what do I find there but a whacking great article on Stock Aitken and Waterman. It makes its points well enough but it&#8[…]

This is not a music review since the Bloodhound Gang’s single is atrocious knocked-off gimmick-core which you’d have to be as mad as a million bees to buy. What this is is a deploration of bands who quote their lyrics on stickers on the s[…]

While we’re on the subject, Stephin Merritt reviews tom waits for Chickfactor, this link c/o the excellent stephinsongs web page, stephinsongs being the only mailing list I belong to. In the Tom Waits review you will learn who SM’s favour[…]

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS – “I’ve Got New York” (Live MP3)
Of all the curious things about Stephin Merritt, one of the most curious is the way he keeps back songs which, if they were to reach a wider audience, would run an excellent[…]

Also in Salon, Greil Marcus gives a kicking to Patti Smith: “as if the real purpose of history were to confirm the hipster’s superiority to it.” He can still nail them, sometimes.[…]

Another issue of brainwashed.com’s weekly ezine THE BRAIN, which makes as ever for bracing reading. I’ll confess I’ve been well lazy about visiting brainwashed but since they’ve kindly linked to the legendary Tanya Headon&#821[…]

Men II Boyz: predictable Salon take on boy bands – nothing much to disagree with but no real insights either (particularly as it almost entirely sidesteps the music). Interesting that the relatively bland “I Want It That Way” has be[…]

Josh can intellectualise about it and quote fancy Russian words all he likes but he has still made a list: Top five almost-best-end-of-album songs. This actually brings up something I was going to say about Fred’s Pixies review last week, which[…]