Category: Music
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Morrissey, Ancienne Belgique
I’m a huge Smiths fan. A British music journalist once said: “I feel sorry for any new band, because no matter how good they are, they’ll never be The Smiths”, and I think he was right. Unfortunately but the time I discovered The Smiths they had split. (During their heyday they were the sole preserve of the ‘cool kids’ at my school – of which I certainly wasn’t one…) Morrissey is the next best thing (Johnny Marr wasting his talent in Electronic – although his contribution to The The’s Mind Bomb was a highlight), and although he went through a weak… Read more
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Pukkelpoptastic!
Last weekend I went to the PukkelPop music festival here in Belgium. In part this was because a good buddy of mine (Peter) was going and insisted I’d have a great time, and in part because I wanted to convince myself – having recently passed the 40 mark – that I am not too old to go to festivals (or even gigs in general, despite the wife’s insistence that I’m past it and will just be an object of ridicule to the rest of the much younger audience who probably think I’m only there to chaperone my kids). That said, I did… Read more
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And now it has a name: Post-Rock
A few years back I heard a rash of tracks on 3WK.com that were unlike anything I’d come across before. These included Montherfucker = Redeemer (Part 2) by Godspeed! You Black Emperor, My Father My King by Mogwai, Auberge Le Mouton Noir by Do Make Say Think, and Com (?) by Mono.  These tracks were long (some clocking in at 20+ minutes), all-instrumental, and generally intense and kind of epic-sounding. I remember thinking that I couldn’t believe people were actually making the kind of music that I wanted to listen to.  I didn’t think it existed. I didn’t know what… Read more
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Top Of The Pops, Bottom Of The Ratings
The BBC have announced that Top Of The Pops is to be axed. For the non-Brits, Top Of the Pops is (or at least was) the flagship ‘music’ programme produced by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). It has been airing weekly since 1964, and was for many of those years the only ‘youth-oriented’ programme produced by the BBC. That the programme is being cancelled is a crime. Top Of The Pops (TOTP) is one of the staples of the BBC output – along with the Queen’s Speech at Christmas and the Nine O’Clock News – and as such should be… Read more
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65 Minutes of Magic
Last Sunday I realised another one of my ambitions and went to see Mogwai in concert. They were playing as part of the Domino festival in Brussels, at the Ancienne Belgique (a great venue!). Although I only cared about seeing Mogwai, I figured that while I’d forked out EUR22.00 I may as well catch some of the other bands on the bill. I got there in time to catch Wolf Eyes, whom I’d never heard, but had read some good press on. Sadly, they turned out to be just unlistenable noise – the kind of shouty faux-deep vocals you get… Read more