SONGS ABOUT BUS DRIVERS
“The wheels on the bus go round and round” Trad.
So it says in the British Book Of Folk Songs which suggests that a song about a machine driven by an internal combustion engine pre-dates the existence of copyright […]

Watch This! (2002): Pete’s Top 40 films of 2002 – and there’s also the third part in my own 2002 retrospective up here!.[…]

Somewhat against my better judgement, this year I bowed to reader requests and ran an ILX Readers Poll. It turned out to be good fun, though I don’t agree with very many of the results. Here they are, anyway:
Records of the Year
Tracks Of The Y[…]

IT’S THE FREAKY TRIGGER CHRISTMAS JOKE!
Thanks to e-mail problems this could not appear before Christmas but at least we got it in before 12th Night eh? Based on a punchline by Pete Baran.
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It’s Christmas time, and U2 have lined up a ser[…]

30 Seconds Over Dayton
Brainiac’s ‘NOTH1NG 3V3R CHAN935’ would have been Walter Benjamin’s wet dream. It never really sings about the bricks, dirt and whatever else you can’t find outside suburbia… but it sounds ev[…]

I got a mail the other day decrying my musical stance. Nothing I don’t get day in day out, but this person – as well as casting a degree of disbelief that I could truly hate his wonderous music told me to Chill Out. Chill Out? What has ha[…]

101. THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – ‘My Elastic Eye’: ‘It sounds exactly like an elastic eye!’ said Fred S. I scoffed, but you know what? – it does! Though maybe more a clockwork one – but the wobbly fuzz-bass still sounds like[…]

‘Is you is or is you ain’t my baby….top of the pops top of the pops’
So sang my dearly departed Grandad within earshot on more than one occasion during my childhood. Sadly his follow-up ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ fail[…]

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 exemplif[…]