Talking Point – Are Music Writers Egotistical Pricks?

January 1997, and the bombshell dropped that my next piece of coursework would count towards my A-Level in the much-maligned-but-pretty-entertaining Media Studies. As I’d only managed to stay in the class because I’d “somehow winged the exam” just before Christmas, as the teacher put it (I was something of a professional absentee in the lower […]
I can’t contain it, the excitement is reaching fever-pitch: I am going to a music festival on a Mediterranean beach in July. On an unrelated and much less exciting note, I am also going to find out which one of 32 plinky little indie tunes I dislike the least. But to make it interesting, and […]

Fast-Forward – The World Cup Goes Indie – Final Knock-out Stages

Fast Forward – The World Cup Goes Indie [Round of 16]

The knock-out stages are ready to begin. The rules are simple – I think most of these tunes are the musical equivalent of those horrible world cup flavoured crisps, so I don’t want to listen to them any more than I have to. It’s a simple contest – two songs play, the best one goes […]
Fast Forward: An Indie Music Companion To World Cup 2010 [The Group Stages] Yes folks – now is the time – the time to be excited about the World Cup. Now is the time for hope, before the inevitability of England bowing out (on penalties) in the Quarter Finals, and Brazil narrowly overcoming Spain and […]

Fast Forward: The World Cup Goes Indie

INTERVIEW: HUNGRY PIGEON’S ALEX MCCANN

It’s the last Bank Holiday weekend of May and the Northern Quarter is buzzing with music around every corner. One wrist band guarantees you an invite to the party, so what are you gonna do expect dive in head first? Alex McCann is one of the four wise promoters we have to thank for this three-day […]
Punk rocker or hippy folk singer – Sandi Thom already had a split personality when she launched herself into the public consciousness back in 2006. And it looks to have taken the young Scottish troubadour the intervening four years to find her true voice . . . and the blues. Sandi’s third album, Merchants and […]

INTERVIEW: SANDI THOM

Ricky Martin – A Reaction

As news agencies worldwide eagerly churn out the ‘news’ that Ricky Martin has come out and said that he’s ‘proud to be gay’, I ask myself a few questions. Firstly: ‘is anyone shocked?’ I doubt it. Although it wasn’t exactly an open secret, Barbara Walters quizzed Martin heavily about it in an interview in 2000, […]
“Built to take on America” – The Jim Jones Revue   From their weird name to their attention-grabbing sounds, The Jim Jones Revue have been creating a buzz on the gigging circuit since they formed back in 2007.   With textured heavy guitars shot through with honky tonk piano and 50s rock ‘n’ roll, the […]

INTERVIEW: THE JIM JONES REVUE

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Music Performance

I’m pretty new to the reviewing game but I’ve been watching gigs for 15 years, and playing them for 10. Along the way I’ve seen shows good, great, mind-numbingly bad and all shades of in-between. However, there are some things that REALLY get my goat as a gig-goer, so I’ve complied them into a list […]
Imagine the scenario – you are barely out of your teens and you find yourself in an indie band that is tipped for greatness. Within a year of playing your first gig you are invited onto the line-up at the Leeds and Reading Festival and a few months later make your bow at the BBC […]

INTERVIEW: OWEN STRATHERN OF GENERAL FIASCO