Neumu’s saving grace Philip Sherburne weighs in on the fanatics/dilettantes debate which I seem to have inadvertently started, concluding an interesting column with a stirring rallying cry – “Here’s to outsiders getting it all[…]

Girl group records and Roy Lichtenstein pictures make a too-familiar cultural couple. The four-colour hand dabbing handkerchief to eye; the switchback between sass and heartbreak – what do they have in common, really? Sentiment, I suppose, but […]

I’ve been going out with her for eleven years and I’m still little better at picking out clothes she’ll like. ‘Do you see anything here you think I should try on?’ ‘What about that?’ ‘You’re jokin[…]

Personal Info-Break: A lifestyle revolution (and phone bills) mean I’m going to be avoiding using the Interweb from home as much as possible. But if you fancy talking to me on AIM I will be online during ‘working’ hours more often, […]

Tom’s Top Twelve
Since we seem to be ‘back’, as it were.
KARDINAL OFFISHAL – “Belly Dancer”
SCOOTER – “Weekend!”
AVRIL LAVIGNE – “I’m With You”
HALL AND OATES – &#822[…]

Short, witty, and sharply cut, this is my idea of a good ‘political’ song, which I’m told we need more of right now. Like an editorial cartoon, it makes its point, jogs the memory, and raises a grim smile, and it’s over in two[…]

I seem to have spent three years of this weblog trying to think of different ways to describe ever drier beats and ever sharper synth lines: R’n’B — even British R’n’B, who’d have thought it! – just keeps get[…]

The admirable: Madonna’s thinking big, and she’s working through a sound not playing magpie. It’s a pretty individual sound, too: Madonna’s time-smoothed voice, funkless rhythm’n’blips from Mirwais, and soothing sh[…]

To call the new Scooter single ‘new’ is to make language blush, so let’s say instead that “Weekend!” is the most recent Scooter single. Or let’s say that it’s the most recent draft of the Scooter single, anot[…]

Tom’s Top Twelve!
Lizard power! Slight change of format as instead of just a list I’ll make a stab at mentioning when and why these tracks struck me this week. New stuff first – Mad Anju‘s “Cellular Minutes” is sur[…]