I learnt to swim at Shrewsbury baths when it was still an old Victorian pool, all red brick and high windows and cool shadow. In maybe 1970, they knocked that down and built a modern glass palace, a lot bigger, with seats for spectators and a champio[…]

Duck – tremendous as crispy pancakes, a bit dull as a massive chunk of meat. Just a warning.[…]

I’m not sure if I have ever eaten anything but chips in a Sam Smith’s pub. They all seem to do food; various menus – usually laminated paper – dot their pubs unnoticed until the bar staff come round and whip them away at nine.[…]

TSURUBAMI – GEKKYUKEKKAICHI
REBEL POWERS – NOT ONE STAR WILL STAND THE NIGHT
Kawabata Makoto is a one-man Neptunes, a Timbaland of rock, in his own sphere. There’s a style, a sound, an approach that is his but not solely his, someth[…]

COMMENTARY CONUNDRA
Black Caesar
Commentator: Larry Cohen (director/screenwriter)
Perfect. Or near perfect at least. Cohen is half raconteur, half hoary storyteller, all relaxed energy — there’s something truly entertaining about someb[…]

Further proof of my indie deprogramming – I downloaded the Postal Service’s puddly version of Phil’s monster ballad and the wind-machine original and Phil’s version sounded so much better than the Postal’s blips-and-rain[…]

Sometimes David Bowie’s love of technology is the funniest thing in the world. There is nothing new about seeing live events in a cinema. They used to do this with boxing in the seventies. If you can’t be arsed to travel and want to recre[…]

OK, I know that my continuing attempts to map prog rock onto old-skool pre-thatch socialism have truth in them somewhere, bcz the idea maddens the right idiots – but yes, I also know it doesn’t quite fly yet really. It was nice thinking […]

Boycott RIAA – quite interesting as a news point, not sure what the money you give them for mugs, mousemats etc. will actually be used for (not some file-sharing legal defense fund, probably). The central problem though is that a boycott of the[…]

There’s only one teaching-related show worth the bother of turning the telly on right now, and it’s certainly not Teachers (sorry Alan). It’s Rule The School, which not even Children’s BBC seem to be making much of a noise abo[…]