Getting it wrong — indirectly inspired by the comments below on the latest from Simon. I now wonder how much somebody getting something wrong intrigues me as a result, by which I can mean creating music and/or (more importantly for this discus[…]

Links
A-Z of Europop: very useful.
Looking Askance From ’63: well-written and diverse MP3 blog.
Lots could be said about Simon R’s latest post – clearly we’re meant to hold our leftist hands up in horror and defeat at the ment[…]

a celebration of the critical strengths of not bothering actually even to listen (or indeed read): obviously i can see why this saves time – it is EXTREMELY handy to have a little codebook which tells you in advance where good music must come f[…]

THE SQUARE TABLE 7/ Lou Reed – “Satellite Of Love ’04”
POP FACTOR: 460 CONTROVERSY SCORE: 255
Lou Reed must surely have one of the most horrible voices in rock: a weak, blank, tissue-thin method-acting smug smirk. I’m f[…]

The Indycars on Channel 5 are, in one way, ideal viewing at about half-one in the morning. The commentators are unfailingly dull , and the action (My brother: “So basically all they do is keep turning left?”) gets squished into forty minu[…]

Do they take us for fools?: few forms of media are worse than the Radio Ad* but the new Toyota one takes some kind of cake (possibly Battenburg). Vaguely geezerish regional bloke talking about the joys of youth – “going on dates”, y[…]

Picoletta: food blog! Only just got going. What amazes me is the VAST list of food blogs on its sidebar – we have been lagging in our linkage, there’s a veritable gobblesphere out there…[…]

Downhill Racer was on BBC2 last week late, and a drunk me stayed up to watch it not remembering how it ended. IDIOT PETE. This is a sports film. For all of its slightly unusual sports subject, it is as formulaic as they come. Bobby Redford is the blo[…]

Whatever happened to show jumping? These days it is barely seen on television, probably just as part of three day eventing in the Olympics (and trust me, there is plenty of time over the next few weeks to talk about horse walking sideways). When I wa[…]

In praise of fresh corn — I realized last night that corn (or maize if you will) on the cob is truly a divine food. Basically I’m lucky enough to have a couple of friends who raise a number of plants on a small plot of communal garden, a[…]