So Jackanory is to return. Excellent commissioning work from Alison Sharman, new Children’s BBC controller, ignoring advice and putting something on BECAUSE SHE LIKED IT WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD. We should hope for revivals of Andy Pandy and the Wo[…]

As I was trying to explain to my mother-in-law: “If you saw Airplane, and you had never seen a disaster movie, and in fact you had no idea that there was such a thing as a disaster movie, it would seem a very strange film.” And so Kung Fu[…]

Feelings were mixed in this camp about Live 8. Cynicism rules, and irritation with Bob Geldof was running high. On the other hand it was a big cultural event and we should watch it, even if it was sniping from afar. And luckily, Alan came to the resc[…]

hmph my final para is very nearly as tricksily coded as the code it aims to decode, so to further murkify i shall just add this… A. cf marcello’s post abt Pink Floyd below; and B. where i think Dissensian Disdain for the Pro-Pop Massive ([…]

Here you can download a Tuvan throat singing duo covering Love Can Tear Us Apart, and its amazing, hard, low, moaning–and as sad as anything, at first its a novelty, but throat singing always seems to be better at tragic then comic, and the bar[…]

A short ambivalent history of the non event
i own a little green second-hand book, dated 1982, called “the politics of the pop festival” (michael clarke, junction books), which opens with the newport jazz festival of 1954, and passes, via[…]

If you could get past the insane suggestion that the Modern Review was the first publication in the history of the world to ‘take popular culture seriously’, the BBC4 doc ‘When Toby Met Julie’ did provide, possibly unwittingly[…]

lord blob’s mission accomplished, says ilm[…]

Cool piece by Rod Smith in the Seattle Weekly this week on sub-bass frequencies and the military. This subject always makes me think of Throbbing Gristle–most notably the time that TG tried to force a band of transients off their property in Ha[…]

typically frustrating article from the Guardian about marketing films to schools by providing them with teaching aids. It occasionally skirts around doing some analysis but rather than trying to answer any of its interviewees points it just resorts t[…]