POP FACTOR: 762 CONTROVERSY RATING: 205
An apology: work has been very, very busy lately. Something had to give, and that something was the Square Table. Hopefully it is now, in the immortal words of Barlow,G. “back for good”.
Touch-don[…]

The aesthetics of hand-crafted CDRs — not that musicians actually sit around and carve in data on them, that would be a bit much. But increasingly my actual music purchases are steering away from ‘official’ CDs as such — perso[…]

Pedant’s Corner: why is it always raw energy? What’s wrong with the cooked kind?[…]

I have 34 of these box sets now, so I thought I’d offer some guidance to anyone thinking they look tempting (especially at the £7 prices on offer at HMV and Fopp, for instance) but unsure where to dip their toe in. Pretty much all of the […]

The worst things you can hear on UK radio
by A.N.Office Worker.
5. Banter betwixt Colin and Edith on 1FM: Whenever one of Colin and Edith gets the week off the standard of their show skyrockets – together they form a nightmarish gestalt chemist[…]

Three Beatles Songs
Or perhaps that should be, ‘three Beatlesploitation songs’. When the Beatles wave broke on America, how could the existing pop – girl and boy groups with their bouncy, witty, politely nuanced love songs – d[…]

Dissensus: sincere best wishes and good luck to Matt, Mark and co. with this project (a new message board).[…]

This is another record I like.

It’s called “De Reklamation” by German band Wir Sind Helden. The basic idea seems to be a fairly loving recreation of the sound of early 80s cusp-of-pomposity new wave (or Neue Deutsche Welle if we&#8[…]

Nice little Voice piece (if a bit soft on the ahem “nonexistence-of-influence” issue)
Like Elvis (and also those pesky Beatles), zimmie = a frankenstein human-jukebox monster made up of a million stolen bodyparts, where bodyparts = record[…]

The Limits Of Soul
Discussion in the comments box here about “Eleanor Rigby” and the possibility of somebody covering it well. LondonLee posits the line “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” as a sticking poin[…]