In Appreciation Of… Pop Music

Corey Taylor, the front man of Slipknot, recently was quoted criticising pop music. He commented: “it’s so auto-tuned and it’s so beat corrected and it’s so canned and processed and lifeless. You might as well be listening to a fucking piece of wood at that point.” I couldn’t disagree more. Wikipedia says: The terms “popular music” and “pop […]

In Appreciation Of… Steve Roggenbuck

With permission, I’ve started reading a “cover” of a Steve Roggenbuck piece called My Ebay Buyers Rating is Through the Roof – I’ve done this a couple of times now, and I’ve noticed that my first mention of Roggenbuck usually gets some positive response in the room from at least a handful of people. So […]

In Appreciation of… Fugazi’s “Instrument Soundtrack”

Last March I finally bought Fugazi’s Instrument, the soundtrack to the film documenting the band throughout the late eighties to the nineties, made by Jem Cohen. The album features many demos for tracks released elsewhere, and is mostly comprised of instrumentals, with only a couple of tracks having any vocal content, and yet for me his […]

In Appreciation of… Blackbird Raum & Liverpool

Blackbird Raum are an acoustic anarcho-punk band from Santa Cruz, California. Liverpool is a portside city in the North West of England. Both are dead good. Towards the end of May I was travelling around with Ash and Dan, and we had a pretty fun sounding show booked in Liverpool with Blackbird Raum. We were […]

In Appreciation Of: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

It’s somewhere between 2001 and 2002, and my brother Dom and I are sitting cross-legged on the floor in the living room of my parent’s house, eyes fixed on a 12” box TV resting on a coffee table that sits crammed against the wall by the door that goes through to the kitchen. “Shit,” Dom exclaims […]

In Appreciation Of… The Replacements (Live @ Roundhouse – 2/6/15)

The Replacements are the greatest band that (n)ever was. Chaotic, self destructive, trashy, beautiful, heartbroken and completely brilliant. The only thing that stopped them from being the biggest band in the world was their own compulsions. This is the band who, when playing hardcore shows in their home state of Minneapolis would refuse to play […]