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Alongside the book, I am creating a broader, more detailed history of the UK music press, including blog-posts about and topics arising, and an occasional podcast featuring Hazel Southwell and me (where she gets to quiz me on about things I hadn't thought to explain). Help us cover costs and contribute to the emerging conversation!


ESSAY 1:
On Morrissey and bigotry in the 80s: why it wasn't spotted sooner
ESSAY 2:
RIP Tom Wolfe: his legacy for UK music-writers and what he got wrong
ESSAY 3:
John Lennon's Revolutions 50 Years On: how his contradictory
positions and acts shaped the music press in years to come
ESSAY 4:
The eight-and-a-half pillars of true punk (and how some are false)
ESSAY 5:
What the despairing undergrounder Mick Farren wrote in 1976,
and what happened then
ESSAY 6:
So what actual is a review?: Nick Tosches tests the acceptable limits
(by going beyond them)
ESSAY 7:
RIP Roy Carr (1945-2018)
ESSAY 8:
How to write about jazz (and how not to)
ESSAY 9:
RIP Penny Reel (1948-2018)
ESSAY 10:
One out all out: a tale of strike action in the pop press
ESSAY 11:
The Miners and the NME: X. Moore on a key political battle
ESSAY 12:
You shall go to the ball!: how the gang gathers you up and includes you
ESSAY 13:
Clean: a review of Michele Kirsch's memoir
ESSAY 14:
Silver Screen: notes on NME’s very strong early 80s film and TV section, and the role it played in the magazine’s ethos
ESSAY 15:
intimations of things unseen, unsaid: how the New Journalism defined itself against the New Yorker’s self-assumed refinement
ESSAY 16:
how not to write about extreme metal, probably: an indicative review and discussion (in this case of Exodromos, by WORMED)
ESSAY 17:
polls are bad and you should feel bad: a polemic against the fact and the effects of the energy misspent on EOY lists

Home

PODCAST 1:
The Pilot, explaining the background to the project and my reasons for starting it
PODCAST 2:
The NME: some topical thoughts on the demise of the print format of the last UK music weekly
PODCAST 3:
Punk Rock as it felt at the time on the page
PODCAST 4:
undergrounds and overgrounds and how you move between them
PODCAST 5:
What’s pop and what’s not — and how writing deals with each
PODCAST 6:
How the great crypto-utopian change in UK rockwrite came about
(and where exactly it came from: ans = Oz magazine)
PODCAST 7:
How money affects everything, a freelancers’ eye view
PODCAST 8:
Take drugs kids! — or how the 60s teenypop papers taught us to be responsible