Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Frank Sidebottom, ladies and gentlemen, has passed away with his creator Chris Sievey. I say this only because the world will surely be a poorer place without a cheery chappy in a giant papier-mache head urging us all to singalong to his cockeyed nasal mancunian casio anthems, all of which ended exactly the [...]
I’ve got a ton of music posts lined up, a bit of Blondie, Janis Joplin even some Daniel Johnston to finish off our outsider art trilogy, but none of it current. It started to bug me that my listening pleasure was all past its sell by date and that my music posts here were mainly retrospectives. So, [...]
Ok, cheesy title, but then I did turn 40 last month and am allowed a little cheese, just as I’m allowed a mini-midlife crisis crush on this half Welsh, half Greek pop diva who looks like CZJ (even though she does say so herself) and sounds like Robbie Williams channeling Kate Bush. The lyrics can be self-referential to the point of [...]
Taken from a compilation of sixties Japanese guitar groups entitled Japan Wild Favorites! (Wildworld Vol. 2) ‘I’m A Mops’ by The Mops is a fine piece of rock n’ roll. It features a freak-out guitar solo, about three different time changes, and some odd spoken word stuff over the solo that I can’t make out. [...]
Alex Chilton died. He was 59 and, though I don’t own a single Big Star album and only know a handful of his songs, his passing makes me sad. It’s mainly down to the brilliance of one song, Thirteen, written with Chris Bell. I’ve yet to hear a better encapsulation of first love mixed up [...]
“I’d move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.” Russell Crowe As Roomy announced in his “Where Am I?” post earlier, I’m off, leaving the country, splitting the [...]
The last time I wrote about Corinne Bailey Rae was five years ago, and it was from a position of rank loathing. Not for Rae herself, she seemed quite pleasant and an accomplished musician, but for her typeface. Here’s what I wrote at the time: “…don’t you just hate it too? Surely you must. The [...]
I’ve been letting this part of Roomyverse slip of late, sorry. I’m getting ready to move and all my spare time is being taken up with packing and preparation. I have so much to organise that sharing the odd audio nugget or two has dropped down my to-do list. So, if you could bear with [...]
For a while my brain was like 80′s Berlin – rent asunder by two opposing ideologies. The baton-wielding right hemisphere rejoiced at Rage Against The Machine’s festive chart victory, while the decadent left hemisphere felt only sadness for Joe and a pityless ennui toward the whole pointless exercise. My mind vacillated between the two camps like a bi-curious [...]
OK, a short, but sweet post before Christmas engulfs me… I don’t know a lot about The Cardigans, but here’s what I do know: 1. They’re from Stockholm in Sweden. 2. Their first album was called Emmerdale, after Emmerdale Farm. 3. Like fellow Swedes Abba, they’ve got a way with internationally catchy pop tunes. 4. [...]
