EVERY WORD IS TRUE – “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina”

Tom — 1 Oct 2002

IntroductionIt was about 2 in the morning and I was trying to get a handle on Alexander the Great. I had a final exam coming up and I’d missed half the syllabus – and something else was missing; a way into the man’s head. Alexander […]

Rage vs X-Factor: Winners and Losers

Tom — 21 Dec 2009

Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust s[…]

Girl Talk

Tom — 28 Jul 2009

Here’s something I did for fun yesterday: a graph showing the % of UK #1 hits with female lead vocals, year by year. (Shared male/female leads counted half)*.

(Click on it if you want it a bit clearer).
The red bars are the percentage of femal[…]

Why, Claudius? – Old King Log

Bec — 16 Jun 2024

Skip to the end: Old Clavdivs is now Current Clavdivs. He lies motionless, watched over by a haughty woman and her heavily rouged and lipsticked son – his fourth wife, Agrippinilla and his stepson, the Nero. Upon confirming that he is dead, nei[…]

Call For Submissions: THE LONG EGG

Pete Baran — 18 Aug 2006

The man who invented the Gala Pie is a hero of mine. Not just because he took one of natures nicest foodstuff (namely the pork pie) and made it even better. He made it better by the addition of the hard boiled egg. But not just any old hard boiled eg[…]

Enormous Legends

Tom — 8 Feb 2001

Charlemagne Palestine – Four Manifestations on Six Elements 

1.Charlemagne Palestine approaches a piano like a climber approaches a mountain. He does not play the instrument so much as he lets it test him: he starts each performance lik[…]

Why, Claudius? – A Touch of Murder

Bec — 9 Mar 2024

The opening credits for I, Claudius (or Clavdivs, if you will and you probably should, so let’s) have long since passed into National Treasure status. No doubt the most aggressive bugle you’ll ever hear outside military boot camps that bookends e[…]

Selling In The Name Of

Tom — 15 Dec 2009

One of the things that’s fascinating about the UK Top 40 is that a device designed to be a pure expression of popularity also works as a reflection of so many other things. People buy songs: if enough people buy a song it gets into the charts, […]

Do You Feel Real, And If So I’d Like To Know…

Tom — 30 Jan 2000

I. 

The cod-philosophical question at the centre of pop fandom is this: is pop a genre or a state? Not all records designed to be ‘great pop’ – in the sense of being good for the feet, the heart and the bank balance – […]

Omargeddon #38: Killing Tingled Lifting Retreats

Bec — 11 Sep 2023

Every review I write is a quivering pile of jelly, andwith every ill-informed take, I sling another batch on an ooze mountainwhich is certain to eventually collapse, trapping me in its slimy prison,deafening in a crashing cacophony of colour.I can&#8[…]

Gnome Man’s Land

Tom — 11 Jan 2016

I wrote a thing for here about David Bowie and how I felt about him and what he meant to me, but then Pitchfork kindly decided they wanted to run it, so it’s below. (Original title: He Could Be Dead, He Could Be Not, He Could Be You). And to an[…]

Omargeddon #46: Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo

Bec — 15 Oct 2024

Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo shares many similarities with A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack Volume I in that both are atmospheric, mostly instrumental filmic albums. However, unlike the latter, Se Dice isn’t technically a soundtrack; the liner notes a[…]