Song of the day - 102: Dexys Midnight Runners

The following is reprinted from my favourite US newspaper, The Stranger.

How to start a music magazine

Sneaky preview of an article that's about to go up on Drowned In Sound as part of the Music Journalism R.I.P? week.

Bill Wells vs Judy Garland

In constant rotation on the borrowed CD-player at True Manors are Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Blind Blake and Teenage: The Creation Of Youth 1911-1946.

Everett True vs the world

I promised yesterday that I would post the other part of my correspondence with Spanish music magazine Go-Mag.

Blind Blake vs Coldplay

I've been wondering about different directions this blog could take.

The temptation to post archive material (particularly from Plan B and Careless Talk Costs Lives) is overwhelming. I'd need permission from the designers, editors, original photographers and illustrators, but I don't envisage that to be a problem as this site is non-profit and it's good profile for material that would otherwise be lost.

I'd also like to reprint some of my original The Stranger columns because I'm proud of them, and my Village Voice blogs because those fuckers owe me (a lot of) money and haven't responded to any emails for a few months now. All of this will be easy to do, I'd imagine, once James from my music blogs class teaches me how to embed files.

The downside is that I think it might stop me from posting about new music here, and that's the primary purpose of this blog. (I'm using the word 'new' to refer to music new to me, not 'new' per se.) For example, Blind Blake, whose sweet earthy Bahamian music doesn't disappoint whatsoever, makes me realise how special M. Ward is and how major an influence Harry Belafonte was on my five-year-old self. In the world of Fifties and Sixties world of Blind Blake and the Royal Victoria Hotel in funky Nassau, politics = dance = colonialism = culture = entertainment = human life with all its frailties and humour attached, set to the gentlest of calypso rhythms. My favourite moment 'The Cigar Song' kicks ass harder than 10,000 Korn A-sides and also immediately engages Isaac in a singalong whenever he hears the opening chords strike up.

Maybe I should try and drive the numbers up on this blog, talk about the same dumb-ass mainstream 300 bands that everyone else talks about - Radiohead (yawn), Coldplay (triple yawn), U2 (yawning so hard it feels like the entire world is going to collapse into my mouth and I'm going to choke on the fumes). You know something? What shocks me the most is their fans' lack of imagination and the most rudimentary of research skills.

I mean, why would you listen to this when you could listen to this?

Pah.