The Pokemon Phenomenon 
This piece was going to be an unabashed paean to Pokemania, explaining what a cracking game it was and how the mass tweener hysteria which greets every fresh Pokegame, cardset, pillow-case, or doily was a good thing inasm[…]

Piano Magic – Artists’ Rifles
Piano Magic perversely insist on releasing their records as Summer approaches: last year’s masterpiece of filigree loneliness, Low Birth Weight, came out at the height of that boisterous season, and it […]

I was probably one of the last kids to grow up with parents who reckoned, unequivocally, that pop music was trash. Being liberal types they never stopped me listening to it, but there was a clear and unbreakable aesthetic line between pop music and &[…]

Image © Mark from off of B3TA.com

April 2000, Piccadilly

The sun comes out over London and the Summer starts: everywhere you look you see people in love, snogging on the tubes and holding hands on the escalators so you can’t get past them[…]

My first encounter with the exotic was on the Magic Mill at Thorpe Park, a South-East England theme park which from appearances had originally been based around a cramped zoo or city-farm set-up. At some point in the late 70s it had seemingly panicke[…]

I’d previously stated that I like three things about “Born To Make You Happy”: its beat-based balladry, Britney’s unusually expressive vocals and that key change. I still like these things, but it’s becoming increasingly[…]

English suburbs and small towns have a hard time of it in pop: their main contribution is as places to leave, bleak regions which the likes of Siouxsie or Brett Anderson must break free of in order to fulfil their pop destiny. English pop shows its A[…]

Anyway, I was lying on a blue sleeping bag at my friend’s big house, whispering, trying to rub the ache out of my eyes and stay awake, get more words out. There were three of us, playing Truth Or Dare. When you’re fifteen years old, inten[…]

Black Box Recorder – Live
The irony was laid on pretty heavy from the start: the band came on stage to Elton’s Goodbye English Rose. They were wearing complementary stage outfits – Sarah in a red satin shift, showing off her new BBR[…]

Kelis – Kaleidoscope
Well, first of all, you should buy it because it’s got the first classic single of the 21st Century on it. “Caught Out There” is perfect – you can get off on the ebullient gimmickry of the hook, you […]