Of course, if they didn’t exist, you’d have to invent them. I love that horrid uneasein everything they do. I love the volume of their live shows and their terrifyingfilm shows. Heaven only knows what’s going on up there, not even sure if Ishould like it, but it’s fucking different, my head is banging and… Continue reading THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THING: The Butthole Surfers – Love And Terror Cult/The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave.

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?: some people on here who know me well will also know my elder brother kevin. it kills me here to say that he passed away on sunday. i still don’t know what to say, what to feel. an overwhelming sense of devastation seems to have taken over everything. he was… Continue reading O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?

Long long ago, and very far away, this was the sound when I opened my eyes. Every time. It was wonderful. In the very early nineties, Martin Dempsey and I would play uptempo soul in the Cosmos on Duke Street every Monday night. To give you an idea of the musical climate of the time,… Continue reading THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THINGS: Wynder K.Frog – Green Door.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just a helpless child. Sometimes I feel like a king.” The birds in the trees sing a different song, the last vestiges of summer are squeezed out of the garden and the sun sets on another grey day in the neighbourhood. In the background are the plaintive chimes of an… Continue reading THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THINGS: The Buffalo Springfield – Flying On The Ground Is Wrong.

The fourth situationist spectacle as pop music, for me is the very, very best. The fifth situationist spectacle and the final nail in the coffin of a rosy future, “Never Mind The Bollocks”, was just around the corner and the creativity and genius in one of the highest points of 20th Century art and culture… Continue reading TH SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THINGS: Sex Pistols – Holidays In The Sun.

I was having some tea with our Buddy, we started talking about the global commotion of 1968 and the sparks that flew and created the mass uncertainty of the following decade. He noted that the soundtrack to all that action was a great leap forward from the pixies and bells of psychedelia of only a… Continue reading 1974: The Three Day Week. Turbulence For All The Family.

Some pop music transcends the boundaries of its own world and soars. Some pop music is on a higher emotional and spiritual plane, somewhere between where you are right now and paradise. Every generation throws them up, and in the golden age of American popular music, when AM radio was king/queen, that type of record… Continue reading THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THINGS: The Crystals – There’s No Other Like My Baby.

Before punk spewed forth its unique brand of nihilism and turned my teenage years upside down, I inhabited another world. An important musical world made up of pop hits and youth club bangers that had already upset my apple-cart, but in a much gentler way. This was my first education, the beginning of a journey… Continue reading IN SPEKE BEFORE PUNK: a collection of teenage devotions.

Tony Crean looms large in my life. In the last thirty odd years he’s been there at pretty much every twist and turn. When things were utterly incredible, he was the first there to pat me on the back and congratulate me. By the same chalk, when things were unbelievably bad, he was the first… Continue reading AN EXPLOSION IN SPACE: Happy Mondays. CBGB. New York City. August 1989.