From the time I got into role-playing games, the selling point was well-established: the games allowed players to create stories in which they were the heroes. But what kind of stories? The RPG set-up requires a group of characters (4-6, on average) […]

This really is the last NYLPM post.
If you’ve enjoyed NYLPM, you might also enjoy:
– the NYLPM archives, which will be staying up.
– the rest of Freaky Trigger, which will sail on unaffected, though with fewer overall hits most like[…]

This is the last NYLPM post*.
After five and a half years, 3,500 posts and something like forty contributors I’m pulling the plug on this blog. Once upon a time it was the best music blog in the world, more recently it was just something nice t[…]

Oddly enough I’m feeling happier about music, and writing about music, than I have for a couple of years. 2006 is going to be a treat: I want to get there quickly, not look back.
So I got a machine to look back for me. I was a late iPod adopter[…]

There are lots of warning signs in pop: many of them can be easily paraphrased as “You Are Now Leaving Pop”. Getting in orchestras, concept albums, sacking the entire band*. But certainly when you find out that your favourite band has mad[…]

Frank Kogan’s Real Punks Don’t Wear Black is a devastatingly good book. The first evening I read it I found that it shook me up a lot – I recognised the ideals and ideas Frank was chasing, even if I couldn’t have articulated t[…]

Christmas Ain’t Christmas, New Year Ain’t New Year, Without The One You Love – heartbreak Christmas soul, upped here because of snarl-ups on the Poptimists Advent Calendar.[…]

I have purposely avoided a) downloads b) reviews of this record, so my apologies to anyone whose observations I have unconsciously bitten. Here we go, with my as-it-happens write-up of the new Girls Aloud album.
Intro: Gone in a flash, sets the tone […]

Jay-Z – “The Takeover”
Joe M says:
The Jay-Z attack on Nas in ‘Takeover’ is a masterpiece because he acknowledges that Illmatic was a great album, and even that another unspecified Nas album was insert equivocal hand-wav[…]

It’s been dark at 4 in the afternoon here, and I have been doing mostly admin work at home lately. I just came back from the hospital, I’ve been feeling sad,cold, ambiguous, lonely…Intensely lonely.
I don’t think its possible[…]