Music

A Good Reason to Write About Music

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

I’ve never got along with music critics.

I read about music a lot. I’m sure most music critics are wonderful people in real life. I’m sure they’re polite to retail workers, and that they’re patient and conscientious drivers, and that they’re silent and respectful of their fellow passengers when using public transport.

But in my experience, in their writing many music critics come across as miserable hand-wringers at best, or smug, self-righteous and self-serving sadists at worst. And no matter where they sit on this tedious spectrum, most music critics seem driven not by a desperate, obsessive love of music, but by an inexplicable desire to drain all the joy from the most vital, universal, and transcendent of artforms.

And yet, I often write about music. I’d do it more often if I had the time. How do I sleep at night?

Continue reading →

2024 – Bring Your Spirit Down!

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I’ve chosen to give up despair. It’s still terrible out there, and it seems to get worse every year. But despair is a total waste of time and energy. Take care of yourself. Be there for the people who need you, and commit to making your own world better. What more could anyone ask of you?

Anyway, this is my annual roundup of my favourite albums of the year. As usual, I’m focusing on the stuff that’s new to me, or that I don’t feel will get featured in many other year-end roundups. And the roundups I’ve seen so far – gracious! Far too many seem resigned to wallow.

I’m raising my glass, though, to offerings from certain perennial favourites: Bat For Lashes, The Cure, Elbow, Mercury Rev, The Smile (twice!), Goat, Kamasi Washington, John Cale, Jon Anderson, David Gilmour and, above absolutely everyone and everything else, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. We don’t deserve him.

Also, I suggest you listen to Civil Service. They know what they’re doing.

Continue reading →

Reading Before The Fall

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

What Happened to The Reading and Leeds Festivals?

Every year, as the August Bank Holiday weekend approaches, the Shiiine On Festival shares an old Reading & Leeds lineup to their Instagram.

Something like this:

You can imagine the comments. Some just offer a single word. “Classic,” or similar. Some share fond memories. This is often something along the lines of, “I can’t remember much but I’m told I had a good time”. They were drunk, you see.

But others say something along the lines of “what happened?”

And you get similar comments whenever Reading and Leeds post lineup updates to their own social media profiles. “What happened?”

What happened, indeed?

Continue reading →

Neck Deep at ATP

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) was a series of festivals held between 1999 and 2016.

These festivals were remarkable for a number of reasons. First, their lineups were almost entirely hand-picked by a guest curator, who was usually a musician. Second, many of the festivals took place in the most refined environments possible – Butlin’s holiday camps! Yes, this means that for one glorious evening it was possible to see Patti Smith play on a stage usually used for knobbly knees contests.

Continue reading →

The 5 Types of Music Videos They Play in My Gym

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

What’s the best music for a workout?

For me, it’s either:

  • Heavy like a headbutt from a Viking.
  • So mechanical and repetitive that it’s inhuman and unholy.
  • Upbeat, up tempo, and familiar, to distract from the pain and tedium of cardiovascular exercise.

The music they play in my gym is none of these things. I could write multiple paragraphs about how much I hate it, but I’m not quite at my “yelling at cloud” stage of life yet. Suffice to say: You know your playlist is in bad shape when G**rg* *zr** is a highlight.

But whatever. I can blank that out and listen to my own stuff. What I can’t ignore, though, are the videos that accompany these songs. There are TVs everywhere. Even if you don’t actively watch them, there they are. You’re going to notice them.

And notice them I have. And I’ve noticed that the various music videos they play in my gym fit into one of five categories.

Let’s explore these categories, together. I’ll list them in order of preference, from those I can tolerate (and even, sometimes, admire!) to those which, as music videos, are about as engaging as CCTV footage of the Winnersh branch of Allied Carpets on a drizzly Saturday afternoon in 1992.

I shall not be embedding any videos, soz. This is because I have no idea who’s responsible for most of the inanities that make it to the gym playlist. I could seek them out, but such behaviour could get me blackballed from the Drones Club.

Continue reading →

DVD Review – Snow Patrol Live at Somerset House

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

Before things got quite so bad as they are now, bands used to put DVDs out.

Mostly these would feature a recording of a live performance. But sometimes they were collections of music videos, or even specially-made “behind the music” documentaries. The best music DVDs contained a combination of the above.

Each DVD is a time capsule of an era that was very similar to our own, but also profoundly different. This is the era just before the mass adoption of smartphones, and before social media made everyone and everything significantly worse.

Continue reading →

Gothic Radiohead

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

Radiohead play dark music. We’re agreed on that.

But one thing for which I don’t think Radiohead get enough credit is just how sinister their music can be.

In the best way possible, their music can be thrillingly creepy, fabulously unnerving, and chillingly atmospheric like a midnight tour of a haunted waxwork museum with Peter Cushing as your guide.

But Peter Cushing died 27 years ago!!!

So this is my tribute to Gothic Radiohead. Let’s not waste any time in discussing just what I mean by “gothic”. But in terms of sound, feel, or subject matter, these are the Radiohead songs that wouldn’t sound out of place on your Halloween playlist alongside The Cramps, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, and the others.

Continue reading →

Essential Rules for Making a Mix CD

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

Once you meet me, it’s only a matter of time before I try and make you a mix CD.

I still make mix CDs.

These days I only ever make mix CDs for other people. I used to make them for myself. I got my first MP3 player long after everyone else had got one, and I used it long after everyone else had moved on to streaming on smartphones. But before that, I made myself a lot of CDs.

It was my travelling music. I’d travel everywhere with a portable CD player (is that what we called them? Or was it a personal CD player?) and a wallet full of my own mixes.

I had a CD for every conceivable journey and every conceivable mood. I also had a reserve of CDs that I’d turn to when I couldn’t decide what else to listen to.

I followed certain rules when making these CDs – unconsciously at first, but they soon became very important indeed. And I realise that I still follow these rules when I’m making CDs for other people.

I also follow these rules when I’m putting playlists together. To some extent.

Let’s talk about the rules for making a good mix CD, together.

Continue reading →

An Ultraprog Christmas!

/ ninetyeightytwo / Leave a comment

Warmth, magic, excess, music, light: Christmas is the proggiest time of year.

A lot of prog bands have Christmas songs. For a while, I wondered if there was something about Christmas that appealed particularly to proggy types. Then I realised that there are also multiple Christmas folk songs, punk songs, rap songs, jazz songs, and yep, new age songs. Christmas isn’t just a wonderful time of year for the proggy. It’s a wonderful time of year for everyone.

Nonetheless, there’s something especially beautiful about a Christmas prog song. But then, I would think that.

One thing I find endearing is that Christmas tends to bring out the proggy side of non-prog artists. The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York is operatic in its structure. Cliff’s masterful Saviour’s Day is a sweeping Goliath of a song, complete with stirring pan pipe solo. Clearly, there’s something in the air at this time of year.

Let’s explore some of the best Christmas prog songs, together.

Continue reading →