Recent content by Peak

paul gilroy Not got a copy of the Black Atlantic to hand, but from memory Gilroy uses music to great effect as a way of writing historically - he illustrates the Black Atlantic idea itself via the Impressions' 'Proud of you', linking it to Rebel MCs version of the tune as 'Proud of Mandela' -...

I don't understand this idea of choosing whether or not to tell other people what you're feeling. I only find out what I'm feeling in conversation with someone. Or; if my range of feelings at any given moment is A-Z, thinking about them gets me to B if I'm lucky, writing to D. Talking might...

Buzzcocks - brevity, sounds-like-the-music, sounds vaguely sexual, definitely is something sexual if you get it, but also UK northern ('cock' = inoffensive equivalent of 'mate'.) Layered enough to let them be cuddly Top-of-the-Pops punks, despite being really quite rude (for 1978).

not read adorno recently enough, but what is the distinction yr making between the moral and the political here? is the 'standardisation / utopia' argument not a moral critique of capitalism, i.e. a precondition for politics (mass culture dimimishes human experience, thats why we need to get...

I think it can be productive, liberating even, to recognise selfhood as multiple, conflicting, composed of or through all the influences sherief talks about. it certainly felt like a liberation of sorts to me to accept the tensions (wanting/not-wanting and so on) rather than trying to figure...

Have you ever heard of a wish sandwich? A wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you, hee hee hee, wish you had some meat... Bow bow bow... Ummm... the other day I had a ricochet biscuit. A ricochet biscuit is the kind of a biscuit that's supposed to...

steady. you start suggesting that lancashire (formby) and yorkshire have the same accent and the chips really will start flying.

I played keyboards on a couple of tracks recorded by a singer who used to be in an 80s Manchester guitar band that nearly went on tour with Swing Out Sister, but didnt. The tracks were put out as a single by a German record label. It may have sold in double figures (I don't know, my royalties...

spot on post owen. also, the mushy, muddy sound of Highway 61 (esp like a rolling stone), too many instruments, not much separation or hierarchy, the sense of everyone including dylan battling to get their own ideas heard, is great. Even by blonde on blonde though, there wasnt that same...

I think there's all sorts of imbalances at work. I'm struck by my sense on this thread of an implied community within a community - 'we' are the bloggers, many or most of whom 'we' know/have met elsewhere, in real or virtual life, so that we know what they look like OR can make knowing/jokey...

peel dunno about unwillingness to discriminate - there was a period in the 80s when Peel was clearly at odds with his core audience and didnt bother much to hide his impatience/irritation (e.g. when his show increasingly embraced the sonic inventiveness in dance/hip hop but the festive 50 was...

Mull of Kintyre loathsome when it was number 1 for 6 months but, versioned as 'Valley Floyd Road' by 200-odd Charlton Athletic supporters at away games (rarely more), its oddly moving. Its the difference between colonial appropriation and exile. McCartney was singing about a bit of Scotland...

Is this a bit of a rockist v. (off-kilter) popist choice, at least in terms of the 70s solo albums. For all the artiness eno has that singalonga-brian lightness of touch which is always listenable but never jaw-dropping. Cale's stuff has more sense of weight/challenge/Importance which is...

dominic, your last 2 posts crystalise the argument for me, or the two arguments. taking drugs is no worse than eating chicken or beef, all consumption is 'immoral' to the extent that its caught up in the machinations of Kapital, yes agreed. So why are there this many posts about the morality...

seems to me the reason why this debate has any legs at all - why we are talking drugs rather than coca-cola, petrol, clothes - is the hangover of that 60s idea that drug use is positively moral . revolution in the head, a moral rejection of an immoral world, that sort of thing. Nonseq...