I Used To Skate Once 6 live @ The Zoo, 24.06.10
With the best part of 90 minutes to kill before Hope Sandoval is due to start her set at The Tivoli, I Used To Skate Once 6 down the road at The Zoo means that I have something to do whilst I wait. Although previous years’ events have always been in my diary, this is […]
Song of the day – 109: The Freshies/Frank Sidebottom
Sad news this morning. Chris Sievey, the musical and comedic genius from Hale, Greater Manchester – a man best known for his big-headed, squeakily-voiced, paper-mâché creation Frank Sidebottom – passed away, aged 54. I was a fan of both Frank and his tiny, aggressively challenging sidekick Little Frank: their footballing exploits based around the club […]
Song of the day – 101: Rizzo
The shortest entrant in the Song of The Day lists yet, courtesy of the Grrl Band Geek blog. (Incidentally, mate: grrl should have three ‘r’s. I thought this out years ago: two indicates it’s just a slightly crap, alternate spelling of ‘girl’. Three indicates venom, power, PASSION.) Who or what were RIZZO!? Damn, how could […]
Song of the day – 99: The Royal We
Now, if you don’t know why I’m featuring this short-lived Glasgow-based group here, you haven’t been paying attention. So go back and read the entries on the following: Neverever Veronica Falls …while, of course, enjoying their deliriously ravaged femme pop. And then realise that The Royal We spawned both bands. Here, I’ll reprint my review […]
Song of the day – 94: Neverever
Ah, but I love Facebook sometimes. An old Brighton friend tipped me off to a brace of awesome new femme-pop sounds, this group first. Damn, she knows me well: how can I resist such outrageously harmonised and resonant pop? Everything about this is so, so crush-worthy. Bangs damn it but there’s so much of this […]
Song of the day – 73: Broken Spells
Another group who’ve contacted me because of the Lust-Cats post. Shit, I ain’t complaining. There’s always room on top for one more nasty, stripped-bare garage band versed in the lessons of the blues wailers and a love for reverb. Two or three decades back, you’d know that these Provo dudes’ main source would be Monks […]
Hole 2.0 – Nobody’s Daughter (the live-to-air review)
Hey. Glad you could make it. Thought we might want to establish a few rules before I get down to the actual reviewing. This is a trial run for the format. So – duh – it might not work, as a format. The idea is that this live-to-air review takes it cue from the live […]
Song of the day – 62: Gino Washington
ometimes, a song can just do that to you. Grab you by the throat, shake you up and down, mess your head up good and proper with the constant throb of its bass-line and accentuated beat, and set you back down, upside down. This is such a song. There were two Gino/Geno Washington Northern Soul […]
Song of the day – 51: Patti Smith
To celebrate the fact that someone from Patti Smith’s record company pretending to be Patti Smith herself befriended me on Facebook the other day, here’s this… A song. And a review, taken from Plan B #8. Patti Smith The Dome, Brighton How cool is this intoxication? She struts on stage dressed like a goddamn old-fashioned […]
Song of the day – 45: The Slits
Well, duh. I finally purchased the reissue of The Slits’ first album Cut – with a little hesitation, truth be told, as I already own various versions of it several times – and Powers alive, if the eight-track demos on the bonus CD don’t sound even better than the original. (As Jack Endino wryly remarks on […]
