I spent much of Saturday with my brilliant friend Sharon, and one of the subjects we covered at length was different ways of looking at art forms. One of the interesting areas, for me, was an idea of regarding the physical skills of many screen perfo[…]

What is the rockistest idea ever? Well, we have to acknowledge that MTV’s Unplugged notion set a good mark, but I think the Don’t Look Back series of gigs in London, which started with the Stooges at the Hammersmith Apollo last night, set[…]

Self-publicising in its most blatant form, but I hope some people might be interested. I’ve just released what there is so far of my new website about Japanese arts. It arose from conversation with several people, mostly Freaky Trigger writers,[…]

I’m a big fan of Taschen, and own quite a lot of their art books. Most of them are excellent. I saw a fat Taschen book on Japanese comics, entitled Manga, at a reduced price, so thought it would be good. It runs to nearly 600 pages, and there&#[…]

This is utterly fucking awful. I really loved a pair of Bester’s old SF novels, kind of pulp with modernist ideas (we’re talking Joycean SF in the ’50s), and real intensity – at least, that’s how I remember them, but I w[…]

Dressing up your pets is art! No, really, it’s not just a sad and tragic thing people who talk about themselves as if they are the parent of the pet do, not at all. I know this because my good friend Rachael is organising a second art event con[…]

Regular readers here will know that no one loves soul music more than I do, so I was looking forward to this new BBC documentary series. It has lots of great footage, much of it new to me, and interviews (mostly a bit obvious 90-second bites, but it&[…]

The first blurb on the back of the jacket is by Michael Chabon, and that’s very apt, because this is a perfect companion piece to his Kavalier & Klay on just about every level. The comics period he covered was known as the Golden Age, and […]

At this time of the year, my interest in what’s now termed the Championship increases a lot – the playoff final, in particular, is one of my favourite fixtures of the year. But there’s a depressing aspect too. You see the one match […]

If you want to know how I feel about the Hi house band, backing for Al Green and other soul greats in the ’70s, I revere them at length in this article. I was disappointed at the absence of Howard Grimes, the nest best thing to Al Jackson on dr[…]