The artwork for Closer was delivered to Factory Records two months before Ian Curtis’s suicide. Hyperreal Gothic statuary, tombstone typography: you can call this the “Premonition of Genius”, if you find any use for such ideas. Or y[…]

It was the best documentary series but it ruined factual TV: each ep of World at War ended with a cliff-hanger from Sir Larry – “Retribution would come… from THE SEA” – and then the picture faded to b&w benday dots […]

Let’s Do Lunch!: Vintage Frank Kogan, on Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, Times Square and Slade[…]

Haha few things bettah than having yr sincere prejudices confirmed by unmoored gossip. Spent an evening with two relatives who work in the TV documentary industry. Relative X had just seen the Nick Broomfield doc on Tupac: verdict = ‘total meh&[…]

‘… As the Tiger is in space’
I’ve hated the Astoria for as long as I can remember, with its godawful sound, terrible sightlines and general joyless hostility to the paying audience. The building is riddled with black-painted tunn[…]

‘We can live in the
empty spaces of this life/my baby says ‘Far away/the STARS ARE COMING ALL UNDONE/oh but that’s far away, and we’re young!/If the Devil comes, we’ll just shoot him with a gun’[…]

Stuck in the media with you: ‘I loved the music you used in your intro,’ says the interviewee, plainly delighted he can riff off of a handy PopCult ref to make his point: ‘Reservoir Dogs, very appropriate. Except for this story it&#[…]

‘I use Reality TV…’: I feel sorry for the Hives, actually, caught up into a rhetorical-historical argument they didn’t begin and probably would flourish better out far away from, having small-time fun somewhere off media radar[…]

On Fame and Misfortune: Blowing It, Channel 4, Sat Feb 16 2002, the tale was retold of Naomi Campbell going naked to ban fur, then stalking down a cat-walk in nothing but. Cue outraged PETA spokesgirl: “How you be crying at the anal electrocuti[…]

HE SAID TRUST ME I’LL MAKE YOU A STAR SO I BIT MY TONGUE UNTIL HE’D FINISHED…
Nick McMeier: ‘Kind of a compliment, that a famous person was interested in me’
Jon Ronson: ‘You say famous. But he was JUST JONATHAN KI[…]