At the beginning of this year I set myself a task: I’d listen to an album I owned, from start to finish, in one or at most two sessions, every day. Not only that, but the day’s album would be (as far as I could manage it) the first music I played that day, and […]
I’ll never forget Judy Garland. Few singers have ever presented such a complex, even contradictory image. I never knew whether she was going to be a hard-bitten hound dog or a friendly, approachable teddy-bear. One minute she’d look at you with the suspicious mind of a jailhouse rocker in blue suede shoes; the next, she […]
Emmanuel Shadrack, this is your life!This is your life, Mr. Shadrack.Your life, Mr. Shadrack!Your LIFE, Shaddy-addy-addy-adrack! Your LIFE! – Billy Liar (film script) Leon brought together two long-established but rather subterranean strands in David Bowie’s work: characters and voices. Story songs were part of Bowie’s repertoire from the very start; his 1967 “cabaret” album was […]
Exegi monumentum aere perennius [I have created a monument more lasting than bronze] – Horace, c. 13 BCE The heart’s filthy lesson falls upon deaf ears – David Bowie, c. 1994 CE [Author’s note: the factual details in this post are derived almost exclusively from Chris O’Leary’s indispensable Rebel Rebel and his Website Pushing Ahead […]
There is (unless I’ve changed the design of the blog by the time you read this) a widget about halfway down the righthand column giving some of the more interesting search terms that people have used to find this blog. I don’t update it very often, partly because I don’t get many interesting searches and […]
Those New Year music lists, in brief. TWENTY ALBUMS OF 2008 The What? Yeah, Right. Oh, That… I Remember That Coming Out… No, They’re Making These Up. Ah, Now I Was Actually Thinking Of Getting This One. They Were On Later, Weren’t They? Didn’t Think Much Of Them. Bloody Hell, Are They Still Going? Ah, […]
Anothere meme (I’ll get back to proper blogging soon, honest) – via. Books this time, and a tie-in of sorts with the BBC’s Big Read (although I can’t find a BBC page with this list on). Viral boilerplate follows: The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 […]
Another music meme: “Pick an album for every year of your life”. I guess anyone born much before the mid-50s is going to have trouble with the early years, says Jim. You don’t know the half of it. I was born in 1960, and I’ve really struggled with anything before 1966. I like Rubber Soul […]
Tagged by Rob: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people […]
Armin offers one of those self-advertising questionnaire things – ‘me-mes’, I think they’re called – on the subject of music: 1. A track from your early childhood 2. A track that you associate with your first love 3. A track that reminds you of a holiday trip 4. A track that you like but wouldn’t […]
Workers’ Playtime 