“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[…]

Peaches, The Bowery Ballroom NYC, 26 July 2001
Making fun of Peaches is beside the point because she gets it over with immediately, like taking off her clothes. Like her costume, your titters are mostly gone by the first song. The show Peaches put on[…]

A Quick Mention of Club Sussed III at which I’ll be DJing TONIGHT (Thursday) under my ninja guise DJ Cockfarmer. I will be for the first time playing the CLIMACTIC SET of the night so do not miss it (Club Latino, The Plain, St Clements, Oxford,[…]

Dancing About Architecture goes eighties with an album-a-year trawl through what (sez they) made the Eighties less “synthy, spiky and safe”. In other words, ten albums which try to wrench back the 80s from their rightful nostalgiapop weir[…]

P. DIDDY, BLACK ROB, & MARK CURRY – “Bad Boy For Life”
Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” has always confounded me. Jimmy Page plays a riff straight from the Neil Young Perfectly Inept Solo school. Well, the riff it[…]

I Hear the Call: ace piece on the Backstreets’ “The Call” which manages to make the song (not one of my favourites) sound fascinating and underestimate it both at once. Darnelle’s point – that the delusional narrator of […]

THE BETA BAND – Hot Shots II
It’s a fantastic summer day, a Saturday to boot, somewhere between warm and hot on the heat scale. Me, I find myself in the midst of suburban splendor, laying on a deck chair beside the pool. Mom, Dad: Love ya[…]

KELIS, “YOUNG, FRESH AND NEW”
MARY J. BLIGE, “FAMILY AFFAIR”
“i’ve gotta be young, fresh and new,” kelis sings in her upcoming single, knowing full well that, along with producers du jour the neptunes, she is[…]