Those old pre-internet days where you had just three or four good albums coming out in the same week and you could afford to experiment and occasionally make mistakes. I miss those days.

Just figured out it would cost the best part of three hundred quid to buy all the interesting-looking albums that have come out today. This is overload. The human brain isn't built to handle all this information. Sorry but can we please stop releasing records for a while?

New Sloan album klaxon! open.spotify.com/album/3VHuUz...

Meanwhile this evening I'll be publishing a blog post about..the hits of December 1976. "Why aren't you writing about anything NEW; isn't that the function of a music writer?" Not mine because I don't treat art as a set of market stalls where you have to sell things all the time to impatient babies.

Is anybody in 2041 going to gaze back wistfully and recall: "oh, 2011, that was Example's year"? It's slightly like saying 1988 was Sinitta's year.

"2011 was Example's year; he scooped a Number 1 single with Changed The Way You Kiss Me and a Number 1 album thanks to Playing in the Shadows." Almost qualifies as sub-writing, that, but does anyone remember this, let alone lionise it?

It's all memory aids here, isn't it? Top Five Doctro Whom baddies who made a TOTP album prior to June 1994 with the five best killer opening tracks and your favourite sweeties and kids' TV shows ranked. Verging on care home status.

Blocked by someone for muting them. Overly sensitive, perhaps, but I understand the annoyance, as well as the suffocating Sunday school classroom-like faux-righteous environment of this place. Arguably better in the old place where you could (I emphasise the past tense) do it in secret.

Consider this thread a sub-tweet caused by that question about greatest bands who never made an album, because it made me think of bands who only issued one single. Such as "Watching the hydroplanes" by Tunnel Vision youtu.be/FnVGGHa2qCY?...

Someone needs to get old episodes of Soul Train on a streaming channel

It's going to be Stammer's poll tax, isn't it?

Oh, and (c) newspapers, cast your nets wider and review interesting new books, not just ones written by your mates or ones that you think your readers will like.

Too bad if you can't buy books because you're wasting your money on fripperies like rent, heating and food. Two alternative suggestions: (a) punters, visit and use your local library; (b) publishers, publish better books.

"You used to be a f*cking political magazine."

"Proposed" is not the same thing as "made law."

That Guardian Best Duets in Pop could only have been put together by people who loathe and detest pop.

ID cards will purely be used to further target anyone in Britain who isn't white. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

"considering" as opposed to "implementing." This happens all the time in British politics and it's almost always forgotten about and discarded later when it's not A Good Story any more.

Good thread and it incidentally explains why you're never going to get Then Play Long on video.

I had a read of the discussion about Pism on ILM. Ultimately exhausting but some very good points raised, not least by "Etherwave" and @dubdobdee.bsky.social. Very nearly tempted me to go back on there but there's always a but (see playpen punch-up in Kamala Harris ILE thread aka business as usual).

I wrote about both Different Class and This Is Hardcore on Then Play Long. To judge from the comments some of you are making, I might as well not have bothered.

Muting another well-meaning soul theorising themselves into not getting out of their armchair and doing anything. The sun's out now.

Only the Muppets can save the Bond franchise now.

"Serious hard rock whallop (sic)." It's a bit like watching a Japanese comedian when you don't speak Japanese, this place most of the time.

Muting another well-meaning doomscroller. How's your morning going?

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s... danny wasn’t just wildly talented with one of the most recognisable double bass tones ever produced; he had a wonderfully disarming sense of humor, a dominant voice that loved sharing a good story of which he had countless. no airs, all round good fella. missed.

Loads of Danny Thompson tracks I could link to but I’ve picked this cos it shows both how he kept everything together yet you never doubt for one moment it’s him on the double bass. youtu.be/CXa_YZUA1_A?...

As others are also saying on here, this is such a banger I can’t stop listening to it. I hope my neighbours are enjoying it as much as I am. youtu.be/rK5TyISxZ_M

As I said, I'll read the Slate piece properly when I get a chance to do so. Strikes me that everybody wants something out of music writing yet at the same time they don't want it. Perhaps they should let us know when they've made their minds up.

They certainly penalise music writers who exhibit originality and brilliance. Not "a safe pair of hands." Bit of a "loose cannon." Non-compliant. The greatest punishment of all, which is not to mention them ever, pretend they don't exist. Of course I'm projecting.

I speed read that Slate piece on p*pt*m*sm. My feeling is that I have better and more important things to worry about at my time of life than quarter-century-old non-arguments but just to say if people had taken note of anything I'd written in the last 24 years we'd all in a much better place now.

*looks at Booker shortlist, goes back to sleep*

Kimmel threaded the needle really well, making all of his points while sealing off a lot of paths his opponents could travel down to attack him again. (They'll still try it, obviously.) And love the Jack Paar reference at the start.

Folk rock's 'Sister Ray.' (And Danny Thompson holds it together.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU0M...

LRT. Last retweet. The habit lingers even though the website has gone. Last reskeet sounds like one of those throwaway things the Killers put out as a single at Christmas.

LRT: well at least they remembered to capitalise "Right."

What are advertisers really saying when they casually bash south London?

Thanks for linking my piece; I'll give this a read over the weekend when I'll have sufficient time and energy.

RIP Danny Thompson Master of the bass, his work with John Martyn, Richard Thompson, Pentangle, Nick Drake & Kate Bush, to name only a few, was exemplary. He’ll be greatly missed. youtube.com/watch?v=_bi8...

RIP Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson, gonna watch every live version of "Light Flight" on Youtube now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tyV...

RIP Danny Thompson. Watch the full recording of Pentangle at the Two Brewers here youtu.be/ESycWNOJ22o

#NowPlaying #MusicSky RIP Danny Thompson youtu.be/PCCWqYfZVi0?...

RIP Danny Thompson open.spotify.com/track/1N9asY...

"50 Years Of Living In Battersea And Pretending It's Chelsea" morelike.

Music critic: elegiac melancholy grief ageing autumnal mortality calm Me: VON DUTCH CULT CLASSIC BUT IT'S STILL POP IT'S SO OBVIOUS I'M THE NUMBER ONE I'M JUST LIVIN THAT LIFE

Music critic: This is one of the albums of the year, and *insert artist's name here*'s strongest album in years. Me: yeah right *listens to album on streaming* wrong no

He nails it. Touching, funny, directs people to pay attention to the attacks on the press even more so than attacks on comedians. It's all the same thing, really: www.youtube.com/@jimmykimmel...

I don't think I'm following the "wrong" people. It's just that most of the people I follow, including my wife, don't turn up on my TL because somebody or something at Bluesky imagines I'd enjoy reading B-list doomscrolling instead.

I mean, they could just call that account A RECORD, couldn't they, because that's all they are, SOME RECORDS. Memory aids for the elderly. Couldn't they?