May 2013
1 post
Why I worry about the new Spare Rib
The women’s issue of Frendz, done by the Angry Brigade people, started the meetings of the women in the underground that then produced Spare Rib, so you could actually say that the Angry Brigade were responsible for Spare Rib.
Rosie Boycott, in Days in the Life edited by Jonathan Green
Charlotte Raven’s picked up Boycott’s baton, and instead of passing it to a new...
March 2013
1 post
Pay the writer? Sure. But start with the readers
So, the debate about paid journalism over at The Atlantic. Will you look at the size of that article? Nothing the media likes more than talking about itself. And people really love to read long bits of text in smallish fonts on their computers don’t they?
And no sub headings. Just a couple of pull quotes. What’s a pull quote? Oh, it’s a hangover from the days of print...
January 2013
1 post
Why are we still discussing the future of the CD?
A lot of discussion online today about HMV’s struggles. Inevitably, much of it focuses on the implications for the CD as a viable format. Some are saying -
Wait, sorry. What? The implications for the CD? We’re still having this conversation? There is no future for the CD. Nor the DVD, though that format’s demise may be more protracted.
A victory for the streaming model?...
December 2012
3 posts
The tech conference speech formula
I was at a tech conference in London this morning. It was quite similar to a lot of other tech conferences I’ve attended. I started to think about the tech conference speech formula, which has become ever more predictable in its pseudo-intellectual dot-joining.
“I’m going to talk about [insert new ‘ism’]”.
“I’m going to start with a story about...
Best Music Videos 2012
I have just written a report for Stylus on the most innovative music videos of 2012. Here’s a small selection of some of the promos featured.
Unhappy Hour
I watch The Hour because I want it to be good. More precisely, I want it to be as good as it is in my head, as I find my mind wandering from the actual Hour, which is dramatically flaccid.
Last night’s episode was much better in my head. It was suffused with the unspoken rage and violence of men who had never - and would never - come to terms with their actions in the Second World War. In...
November 2012
7 posts
Top Ten Albums of the Year
The Album I Really Like That’s Also Actually Really Good (i.e. Basically The Best Album of the Year)
Tame Impala - Lonerism
The Album I Really Like That’s Not Really Objectively Amazing But I Don’t Care
Melody’s Echo Chamber - Melody’s Echo Chamber
The Album Made By An Old Guy That’s Better Than Everything Made By The Kids
Bill Fay - Life Is People
...
The worst lack all conviction
Bury was a man of discretion and decorum, typical of a generation of men unprepared to yield their feelings to analysis, and quite unwilling to litter the world with themselves. Individuals so confident in their masculinity that they could speak of love between men without shame, collect butterflies and flowers in the dawn, paint watercolours in late morning, discuss poetry in the early...
God is a good story
A common response from atheists, in the face of this sort of nonsense, is to go for the “what year is this??” angle - Dan Hodges in the Telegraph today offers a great example. They think it’s a good approach, this idea that religion will wither in the face of scientific advancement, that believers just need to open their eyes to the facts.
Of course that’s not going to...
Brian Jones: he put the pop in the Stones
Watching the latest Rolling Stones doc at the weekend, I was intrigued to see how much or how little they made of Brian Jones’s contribution. The footage they dug up of him doing variations on his justly legendary nanker face was, it must be said, impressive. But he was more than a funny footnote. Jones was a conundrum: the nasty aggressor who added great sweetness to the band’s sound,...
Uncool? Then why bother
What do people want from music journalism? The - undeniably resourceful, well-meaning and ambitious - folk behind Uncool aren’t sure that they want anything. If they were, they’d be pitching to a publishing house rather than trying to raise funds on Kickstarter. If there was a need for Uncool to exist, it would exist.
Uncool is what the founders of Uncool want from journalism. And it...
Silly boys
My mother recently related how she caught a repeat of Fawlty Towers and was saddened to find that it wasn’t the comedy masterpiece we all remembered it to be. “It was just… silly.” Silly - it’s got a lot to answer for.
Silly is what we, the British, are. It is written into our DNA. The whole world is aware that, in the silly stakes, we dominate. Top of the silly...
Masterchef: cooking, conviction
“It is hard work. I didn’t get these wrinkles and bags under my eyes from sunbathing.” The no-nonsense wisdom of Michel Roux Jnr, the twinklingly tough, or toughly twinkly, centre of the Masterchef universe.
I thought, you wouldn’t get Damien Hirst saying that. Or Nicky Haslam. Or Kanye West. Or anyone else who pretends to be reaching for the diamond perfection of high...
April 2012
1 post
November 2011
2 posts
Clapton’s solo from While My Guitar Gently...
June 2011
1 post
Transforming recipe websites
I live alone and work from home. I eat a cooked meal twice a day. I’m not someone with a natural culinary imagination, so I often rely on recipes sites. I usually spend an hour trawling through BBC food sites, or the online destinations of celebrity chefs. It gets boring, which is a shame, as I like to cook and I love food.
How has the web not solved this problem yet? The sites that allow...
May 2011
1 post
Amis/Jacobson
I read two novels during my recent Sicilian sojourn, Amis’s The Pregnant Widow (diverting enough as a Sharpe-ish comic novel, woefully facile as ‘literature’) and Jacobson’s The Finkler Question (the work of a master craftsman, though perhaps the craft overwhelmed the feeling).
Read back to back, I was struck by the similarities. Not just in the tone of voice - though it...
February 2011
2 posts
New blog: The Pop Story
I have started a new, more official blog called The Pop Story, where I will be writing more in-depth pieces about music and pop culture. Check it out now for my defence of Mumford & Sons, why Beady Eye are close to the Beatles, and a post-structuralist analysis of Brother, along with lots of other stuff.
I will still be posting random stuff here from time to time, but The Pop Story is where...
Writing a book on Twitter
On 21st February I’ll have been on Twitter for 4 years. I’ve written almost 10,000 tweets, about 100,000 words, which in turn is about the size of a 400 page book. I’ve never written so many words in my life. Which got me thinking: can I use Twitter to write that novel of mine?
I’m aware that people have written “Twitter books”, but I’m not talking about...
January 2011
4 posts
Using a loop @rob_fitzpatrick found, I did a bit...
Class doesn't matter, privilege might
Pop writer Dorian Lynskey has expanded on thoughts about pop and class, catalysed by a debate on Twitter amongst a coterie of music journalists, over at his blog - well worth reading.
I love this debate because it makes people awkward, angry and very often wrong. But for me, I don’t think this is about class. It’s about privilege, which is something else entirely.
The beacon used by...
Beyond MySpace
It’s a real shame to hear that so many people who used to work for MySpace have now been “restructured”. But it’s not surprising. MySpace remained the Fisher Price social network while the rest of the web moved to Meccano.
This is nowhere more true than in music, the original lifeblood of MySpace. If you’re an artist, having a MySpace account now is second (well,...
Since You’ve Gone
I made a shit house...
December 2010
2 posts
Best of 2010, and the year in playlists
2010 in playlists, including December’s “Best of the year” mix.
January - Strings in the snow
February - The course of true love
March - Dirty fucken rock’n’roll
April - Best Beatles album that never was
May - Nothing but the best
June - London summer
July - Best of 2010 so far
August - Sun-baked
September - September of their years
October -...
10 Best Albums of 2010
1. Beach House - Teen Dream
The rock critic music snob in me wants to put Newsom at No. 1, as she’s breaking boundaries while this is just a collection of amazing tunes. But my Last.fm stats speak for themselves - I’ve played nothing else as much this year. It’s a staggering record.
2. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
This era’s Blonde On Blonde, in terms of its...
November 2010
1 post
Trackchatting: thoughts on the new Streets
I remember hearing Kate Nash for the first time. The voice grated and the tunes seemed affectedly guileless and it was all - let’s face it - hugely annoying, but I did think: Ok I get it, this is like blogging in pop form. I found the concept exciting, even while the execution left a lot to be desired. I got the same sense of a new form being thrashed out when I heard George Pringle a year...
October 2010
2 posts
Name-droppy vignette
I was once sent by the NME to interview Daft Punk. I love them still, but back then their music was an obsession. I’d played Discovery over and over again, every day, since it had been released the previous month. This passion, plus the fact that it was my first major interview for the paper, meant I was less a bag of nerves and more a rucksack of panic.
I take the Eurostar to Paris with...
The Beatles: A Warning From History
The Beatles are my generation’s World War Two. We will, seemingly, never forget. Nor, indeed, will we ever escape. Endlessly turned over on TV, and in magazines and books, the history of the Fab Four is now, undoubtedly, as woven into the fabric of British cultural and social discourse as our victory against the Nazis.
There are fallen heroes (Lennon, who would’ve been 70 yesterday);...
September 2010
1 post
The great lost British indie r'n'b revolution of...
The standard narrative of pop tells us how, after the initial US rock’n’roll explosion of the ’50s, Brit musicians who’d grown up on Elvis and Chuck Berry sold the sound back to the Yanks in the ’60s, transmogrified. Those who dug deeper - the Beatles, the Who, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison - even reached back to the sound of the blues and r’n’b and, in...
August 2010
1 post
The year so far, in playlists
A round-up of my year so far, in playlists.
January - Strings in the snow
February - The course of true love
March - Dirty fucken rock’n’roll
April - Best Beatles album that never was
May - Nothing but the best
June - London summer
July - Best of 2010 so far
August - Sun-baked
July 2010
6 posts
Gimix
The Anti-Gravity Theory of the Music Industry; Or:...
NOTE: Another old post rescued from my previous blog. I currently work with a company called AWAL, who I think resolve some of the issues I’m talking about here. This was also written before Topspin appeared, who are also making interesting moves in this area.
Here’s an analogy.
Think of the traditional record industry as a planet. Over time it’s grown bigger and bigger, and pulled all...
8 albums every budding songwriter should hear
NOTE: this is an old post from a blog of mine that was hacked and destroyed a couple of years back (hence the reference to Ashlee Simpson). Found this draft and though I’d repost it. It’s a bit, um, hostile, but I stand by the choices.
Two motivations for this post:
1. Hearing Ashlee Simpson’s new single Outta My Head today. It’s quite possibly the worst song ever made. It was written...
July playlist: best of 2010 so far
It’s been a fairly remarkable few months for music so far, and perhaps 2010 is shaping up to be a vintage year. It would make sense, as artists and labels face up to an online audience unwilling to invest in music that isn’t going to sustain interest beyond a couple of streams. Seems like everyone’s trying harder at the moment. Here’s my pick of the top tracks from the...
The Disappearing Man
I’m saying goodbye to my old music and moving on to a new project. Here’s a round-up of recent things - some more polished than others - that sit together effectively enough as an ‘album’. Free to download if you’re that way inclined.
The Disappearing Man by fakesensations
Wanted: female vocalist
I’m looking for a female vocalist (London-based) for a new music project I’m working on. In the first instance I need some vocals laid down on around 6 demo tracks, and after that there will be the potential for some live work. There is a budget for the sessions so you will not be asked to work for free.
I’m after a specific kind of English voice - reference points would be Jane...
June 2010
1 post
Heaven is other people
I’m always affected by the notion, after a death, of those who remain seizing the day and making the most of life, in response to senseless loss. It’s a cliche in the cold light of the morning, but its basic profundity moves me. The problem is, of course, that you don’t seize the day. After all, what do you actually do? I could close this laptop now and “pursue my dreams”, but I’d have no job by...
March 2010
2 posts
Alex Chilton
He’s gone at 59, this is a fucking tragedy. His melodies were breathtaking sparkling melancholy nostalgic things. They will echo through the ages.
I first came under the influence of Big Star without even realising it in the early ’90s. The first ‘proper’ record I ever bought was Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Bandwagonesque’, which is basically a Big Star tribute...
March Playlist
Dirty fuckin rocknroll: http://bit.ly/95FF1B
February 2010
2 posts
It's the space, stupid
You can make music now more easily than ever before, thanks to amazing software like Logic and Ableton Live. This is great, and I am an evangelist for DIY recording - I do it myself, after all. But let’s not kid ourselves. Having an amazing laptop and thousands of pounds worth of top quality plugins means nothing if you don’t know how to position a mic in a room to get the best sound...
‘Something Like You’ from The Magical...
December 2009
3 posts
Dion - Close To It All
Top 10 tracks of 2009
Here’s what I listened to the most this year, according to my Last.fm scrobbles:
1. Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone
2. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
3. Justin Heathcliff – Hand in Hand
4. Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg – Chanson de Slogan
5. Duncan Browne – On the Bombsite
6. Serge Gainsbourg – Ballade De Melody Nelson
7. Justin Heathcliff – You Know What I Mean
8. Bob Dylan...
A particularly holler-rific rendition of Like A...
November 2009
3 posts
Nostalgia Playlists
In 2003 I ran a club-hangout-get-together type thing, poorly-named Super Soul Sunday, in the Sun & Splendour pub off Portobello Road once a month. Today I discovered a couple of my DJ set-lists. I usually DJed in the afternoon (we kicked off at 3pm - the whole thing was basically a Sunday Best rip-off, in case you hadn’t already gathered), so my playlists tended towards the chilled,...
November Playlist
This month’s playlist, without me intending it to, turned out to be heavy with heartbreak tunes. I promise to make next month’s a bit cheerier.
November Playlist (Spotify link)
50 Best Albums of the '00s
Everyone’s at it, so I thought I’d pitch in. I make no claims for this list beyond the fact that it represents the albums I actually enjoyed the most this decade. No hipster posturing for me, oh no.
So, resisting the urge to put my album at number one, and in very particular order, here we go…
1. Daft Punk - Discovery
I played this every day for a year when it came out. This...
October 2009
4 posts
My ideal beat maker
Note: if this already exists please let me know!
The limitations of all drum machines/sequencers is that they rely on individual samples, or loops, or sliced loops. This means you spend forever auditioning samples before you can even start making a beat. Ableton make it easier than most by allowing you to import audio to midi (as does Logic 10 I believe), but still, you need to have the right...
Nick Garrie - Little Bird. From today’s lost...