Play For Today: special summer bonanza edition Part One

  It’s been ages since I’ve posted a playlist, so I thought I’d change the format slightly. Background: I write about music a lot for various publications, but as a music journalist I also receive hundreds of promo type emails every week and, when something…

The Dead Cannot Contradict: R.I.P. M.E.S. 1957 – 2018

There have been a lot of obituaries for the great Mark E. Smith in the last week. This will not be one of the better ones, but it is my one. In my experience, the bands you love in your teens are, although they have…

MEAM, Myself & I: Part One: the formative years

  Where does your taste in music come from? Why do you like some things but not others? It’s mysterious, but to try and find out, I thought I’d look at the issue from the (my) beginning. So what is the first music you remember…

Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside) – “shoegaze” 1988 – 1993

First a note: this is not an exhaustive exploration of the (for want of a better term) shoegaze genre. It’s extremely subjective, being based on my own memories and tastes c.1990-2 and therefore has some glaring omissions (unaccountably I never really heard much of the…