American Music Club and Metallica: a spurious comparison

There are certain joys you can only get from music if a) you’re a pathetic fanboy on a truly tragic scale and b) the band you’re a fan of indulges their obsessives with wave after wave of rarities/outtakes CDs.
In this particular instance, I have to thank American Music Club for repeatedly putting out CDs of [...]

Calexico, September 2008

CALEXICO – Carling Academy Oxford
Some music is so tied down to a particular location that you just couldn’t imagine it being made anywhere else. Right down to the neat geographical portmanteau that makes up their name, Calexico’s output reflects their Arizona homeland stunningly. Even their much-vaunted eclecticism has its roots in their locality: they flit [...]

1-2-3-4

Hey, here’s something exciting. I’m in a movie! The guitarist from our band, Giles, hasn’t played with us for the best part of a year because he’s been writing, directing, producing and now promoting his first full-length film. Earlier in the year, we went down to a dingy north London gig venue to appear in [...]

Funny Games U.S. and the horror of remakes

I don’t like remakes. In fact, if there’s one thing in cinema I dislike more than remakes, it’s remakes of my
favourite movies. Take The Ring, a particularly fine example of ruining a masterpiece in the process of diluting it for a more mainstream audience. It throws in all sorts of inexplicable and pointless devices (isn’t [...]

SHATNERWATCH: The Shatner Project

A Shatnerwatch has been long overdue, for a blog that takes its name from one of Shatner’s finest hours, but he’s now launched his own YouTube channel. What subject could be weighty, fascinating and downright important enough to dedicate a channel to? William Shatner, of course.And of course, it can’t be any old shitmuncher’s YouTube [...]