If people needed a reminder that the music video was first envisioned as a promotional vehicle for a recording act, the MTV Video Music Awards was more than happy to provide such evidence. Macy Gray presented an award with her dress serving as a bill[…]

Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus”
How handy it all is, manufactured melancholy. Most useful, especially when the intentions are heartfelt, it’s easier to market. Of course, that need not be the intention of the creator of said melancholy,[…]

Cities of the mind: a rather poetic evocation of something many of us have experienced. It’s a peculiarly suburban, peculiarly faux-bohemian teenage phenomenon. Can there be a word more distasteful to the disaffected teenager than suburb? Ev[…]

WORDS AND MUSIC
A HISTORY OF POP IN THE SHAPE OF A CITY
BLOOMSBURY, £12.99, ISBN: 0747557780
If an ideal pop journal were to give me 1,864 words to take a tour of Paul Morley’s new ‘history of pop in the shape of a city’, there mig[…]

CLARENCE CARTER – “Making Love (At The Dark End Of The Street)”
HEFNER – “I Stole A Bride”
Something missing from pop, maybe: a sense of sin. Sins we have in multitudes, of course – red-capped anger, ice-wris[…]

0: I Will Regret This
I discovered today I have a thousand songs on my hard drive. They last sixty-six hours, thirty minutes, and thirty seven seconds, and take up a bit over three gig.
This page is a documentary of my listening to them, no repeats, […]

No, not Nirvana. I could talk about it, but you know, no. In the cold light of history “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a dividing line for better or for worse, though NWA’s chart-topping feat with Efil4Ziggan or Dr. Dre’s smash […]

“And you read your Emily Dickinson/and I my Robert Frost”
— “The Dangling Conversation”, Simon and Garfunkel
The LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came out in 1968: my father bought it for my mother that Christmas, an[…]

Tool’s Lateralus and Willful Withdrawal in a New Summer of Love
It is, of course, a brilliant time to be alive. Sure, there’s another idiotic president raising international tensions in hamhanded ways, but this one lacks ol’ Ron&#82[…]

Concerts in the American Sun
Late last night I went to the rock show. Or so was what I was hoping the other day, but I ended up being unable to float along, and thus alas had to miss the Frogs, a severe pity but not life threatening. However, that w[…]