Brent Sirota tackles Can: “Eventually, the reviewer must concede that Live Music is simply a critical black hole, swallowing every turn-of-phrase lightlessly; it will evade all my descriptions, comparisons and evaluations. Nobody’s thou[…]

How Songs Are Picked For Now Compilations: no surprises here, I suspect. As the article suggests, Napster is moving the global music market from an album-based one to a song-based one, and compilation records are the first sign of that. Good thing to[…]

Like.com is a site which asks a load of stars – mostly pop, hip-hop and nu-metal stars – what their favourite books, music, etc. is. Some curious stuff in the rankings (The Bible and The Holy Bible are separate – presumably some ent[…]

Q is for….”Queen Bitch” by David Bowie, his awfully precious tribute/come-on to Lou Reed, complete with wet-lettuce glam chords and “bibbity-bobbity hat”. It’s a feeble reminder of Bowie as he was before Brobdignag[…]

P is for…”Paris 1919″ by John Cale. A dense, cryptic (you might say nonsensical) song which hit me like a truck when I heard it. As somebody who likes to play cards so close to his chest their backs could be tattoos, I have a liking[…]

Hooray for The War Against Silence!: only in Glenn McDonald’s remarkable column would you encounter this poser: “a friend contributed the following semi-rhetorical question, intended to enliven social gatherings: Are your romantic problem[…]

O is for….”O Superman” by Laurie Anderson. Mike once took me through what this record was ‘about’ (to my shame I cannot remember….hostages?), though he didn’t mention why on earth so many people bought it. I […]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging to bring you this, which just landed in my inbox. Hmm.

Radiohead
Untied EP
[Capitol]
Rating: Infinity
I considered committing suicide after hearing this album. I realized that no earthly experience coul[…]

America’s Greatest 20th Century Music: 15-minute radio programmes exploring the genesis and importance of the “100 most important recordings of the century”. Yeah, yeah, but this looks like detailed, varied stuff, and they’re […]

N is for….”Neville Thumbcatch” by Peter Wyngarde, from his misogyny-chic ‘classic’ When Sex Rears Its Inquisitive Head. I don’t have that LP, just this song I dl’ed from Brian: listening to it I’m in tw[…]