THE ENGLISH TAPE, SIDE 1 TRACK 11
THE SMITHS – ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (from the album The Queen Is Dead)
Maybe it’s even their finest hour: a six-minute state-of-the-nation address which bounces from Royal-baiting wit to just pla[…]

GUNS ‘N’ ROSES – Paradise City(from the album Appetite For Destruction)
Well, first of all, this hip-hop thing. Josh was asking about why we can’t look for a middle ground of conscious lyrics with fantastic production. The pro[…]

Online music sites make chart entry: and still looting the Guardian’s website, a not-actually-that-interesting story about how online sales are to be included in the Top 40, which I blog because I’m anal about the charts.[…]

Outraged Israel disowns daring Eurovision entry: and also from the Guardian, the latest top Eurovision news.[…]

Were the Sex Pistols to blame for Thatcher?: necessarily quick piece, it being the Guardian, on the Pistols, which makes two very good points. One – implied rather than made – the Pistols were a glam band and judged as such are excellent.[…]

LTJ Bukem: Journey Inwards: Pitchfork Review – I agree with pretty much everything that’s being said here. It’s hardly an original criticism but hey, nor’s the style. That said I’m slightly surprised to see it in Pitchfo[…]

Why Hip-Hop Sucks in 2000: The Demise of the Underground “where is my place in hip-hop as an upper middle class, well-educated, white male?” – to prove he has a place in hip-hop, the writer uses lots of cool slang. Meanwhile his foc[…]

THE BLUE MEN – “I Hear A New World”
GEOFF GODDARD – “Sky Men”
GLENDA COLLINS – “It’s Hard To Believe It” (all in RealAudio from here)
As I may have written somewhere else on Freaky Trigger, […]

MODEST MOUSE – “Dramamine” (from the album This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About)
Damn it, I like Modest Mouse now. Quite a while back, whenever it was I bought this oh a whim, I thought the elliptical, meande[…]

THE ENGLISH TAPE, SIDE 1 TRACK 10
PET SHOP BOYS – ‘Shopping’ (from the album Actually)
Actually is the keynote album for late-80s England: this kind of brittle, cynically commercial chartpop was, it turned out, the only way oppositi[…]