Much has been made of my flinty personality. Tanya, people say couched in the armour of booze you seem to be a pretty tough cookie. After setting them straight vis a vis the provenance of cookies and the far more preferable biscuit, I admit to their […]

THE FATIMA MANSIONS
So what was shocking about the Fatima Mansions? Was it the fact that the Irish music scene had never seen such vitriolic satirical bilious lyrics before. Was it the perfect meshing of Cubase beats and thrash guitar with pointed ly[…]

HERBIE HANCOCK – Zippit
Imagine if you will that you are a jazz musician (horrible thought I know). You’ve played with the – ahem – greats such as Miles Davies, Canonball Adderly and Quickdraw McGraw. You have even survived th[…]

Like some sort of curmudgeonly pop star who only plays his new album that no-one knows in his new concerts, I don’t really do requests. Except, it struck me, that if I ever ended up being like a curmudgeonly pop star I would slash my wrists. So[…]

I HATE MUSICALS
1: The Sound Of Music
Three and a half hours long! There are pregnant women in labour who don?t suffer for that long. Now I am no fascist but I bet I am not the only person egging on Rolf and his Nazi chums when they hunt down the Aus[…]

“Black Man Ray” is Ray Charles, who China Crisis apparently believe in. Now Ray Charles’ blackness is not a secret, so why did China Crisis see fit to remind us of it on their incomprehensibly awful single? My theories:
i) They were[…]

IF I WAS A WANKER
Haha, Midge Ure sounds a bit like Manure, do you see etc etc etc.
I often had a feeling that Midge, short for Intellectual Midget, got away with an awful lot because the only insult anyone ever laid at his door was that his name sou[…]

In particular, Tony Hadley crooning in is fat faced way:
“Listening to Marvin, Allllll night long.
This is the sound, of my soul.”
Well assuming we can even call True a soul song, if there is one thing it does not sound like it is the mas[…]

According to Michael Jackson (and he would know) “If your thinking about my baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white”. Well this certainly seems to be the case if the baby is called Jack. Black vs White in the battle of […]

Picture if you will the dying throes of Britpop (the dying bit is unfortunately a metaphor here). The kids, slowly turning off their Oases and Blurs with the feeling the had been robbed, which they had. What did indie music have to throw up? The only[…]