I used to scribble a weekly column, After Dark, for the 'Maker back in the late '70s, edited Int'l Times Plug & Socket music section before that, and launched the shortlived New Music News in 1981. Have scrawled for Rolling Stone, Slash and N. Y. Rocker over the years and currently can't get a foot in any music mag's door due to advanced old age. It's a bugger, ain't it?!
Sometimes it’s impossible not to write in clichés, and this is one of them: There have been too many deaths in my life recently and as my own years advance, that is of course inevitable. But with every discovery that … Continue reading
I went to see the Swinging Blues Jeans, Marty Wilde and the Alan Price Set last week. There, that’s attracted your attention, and probably your derision, but for the moment, consider this. In early June I mentioned, with barely contained … Continue reading
Not that I want you to roll up in your Winnebagos and your forty-quid Cath Kidston wellies you understand, for to quote the League, this is a local festival for local people. Continue reading
A few months ago, my friend and near neighbour, Geoff Haslam, casually mentioned that he was about to produce some tracks for Loyd Grossman. Yep, that’s the pasta saucemeister, Through the Keyhole Loyd Grossman and he of the tortured diction … Continue reading
In response to an earlier blog, a generous comment from Johnny Black resurrected the ghost of a magazine I thought I’d laid to rest some 29 years ago. This then prompted some rummaging around in dusty cardboard boxes for now … Continue reading
Like any grumbling old hippie dissatisfied with the status quo (but not, of course, Status Quo) I’ve often been tempted to blog off our great spiritual leader, Broon of the Glens. However just as his recent self-serving eulogy to the egregious … Continue reading
Some Back Pagers may’ve noticed the, erm, spirited exchange between self and J. Black of this parish subsequent to my Blog, ‘Paper Tiggers’. And if so, this the text of a letter I recently wrote to the Meedja Grauniad referred to … Continue reading
In recent weeks there’s been much hand-wringing amongst the media punditry about the escalating decline of newspaper sales. As an ex-local newspaper editor myself and because it parallels a brooding downturn in magazine fortunes (which concern me even more), I … Continue reading
