Tube Trouble
It’s curious the way people react when the underground has problems. Last night flash floods created mayhem and several stations closed. Bank station was also closed but this was due to ‘a fire’. These things amuse me. […]

No.1
The Grove Tavern, Walthamstow
I like the Grove for three reasons: 1) It has proper locals, 2) Sunday night is ‘song night’ and 3) I used to live opposite.
The Grove is a small square boozer on the corner of a late Victorian terrace. […]

“You will worship dEUS”
Although I’m not the die-hard dEUS fans I used to be, I still keep track of all things gODly. So, after his film and his collaboration with CJ Bolland, Tom Barman has decided to produce a new dEUS single,&#82[…]

This album grabbed me from the beginning: I have an article in progress on soul music in which I refer to “the peerlessly composed intro to Al Green’s ‘Love And Happiness’”, and that intro is sampled for the first track.
It&#8[…]

No way to run a comic: Al told me about this site at the weekend, it may have been linked here before but I don’t remember it. It’s an exhaustive (35 long pages) examination of the Spider-Man “Clone Saga” – the storyline[…]

Caribbean cover versions with the wrong words
Among the many pleasures in reggae cover versions is that they don’t take a great deal of trouble to get the lyrics correct. This was spurred by listening to yet another Trojan Box Set, this the Reg[…]

As mentioned almost a year ago, probably my favourite artist is Ed Ruscha. But, until last weeked, I had never seen any in the flesh. I had survived pretty much on They Called Her Styrene by Phaidon and a few web covers. One of the appeals to me of t[…]

VANISHING LONDON…
1: Mole Jazz
(Part one in an occasional series, done partially under protest because one of the best things in London is the constant renewal – good and bad.)
Mole Jazz used to be right at teh bottom of the Gray’s […]

HOORAY FOR ACID RAIN. Okay so the pH3 drizzle might not be so good for your car paintwork over time (though not a bad as the throwaway culture we live in eh readers), but it might be saving us from global warming. I love this kind of science. It is a[…]

If you look at that map Steve mentions, there’s lots of new activity, all welcome no doubt, but very little bid spending, crossrail aside. The Hackney-Chelsea line has bitten the dust, even though preservation powers were taken on the route ali[…]