You want a f*cking time capsule? I'll give you a f*cking time capsule! In the future, all 20th century cultural history will look like this, i.e. beautiful degraded VHS... If D Boon were still alive he'd probably be PUSA by now.

Hey you, Horror-Face.

"The Fall used to be exciting, stimulating and the best night out that dole money could buy." A bad review for Good Friday, plus bonus Felt ("A degree of latent insanity") - from Sounds, 18th December 1982. Photographer: Tin Tin. #FallFriday

More like a handjob than a hand-jive.

Best thing I've seen on Youtube in ages... and surely the only time Kevin lip-synced to one of his songs for a TV pop show?

I know a place where we can hide from the human race outside the count down's started & your bags are packed we leave this planet tonight, my dear let's ride (yeah) (Cringey '80s promo vid incoming...)

Weep to water the trees.

Shake me awake, Primos!

If you & your band are brave/daft enough to want to cover The Fall perhaps the only rational way to approach it is to rebuild your choice of song from the ground up? Hence this warped back-to-front transmutation of a Bend Sinister classic with what sounds like somebody's mum on vocals? #FallFriday

There's a lengthy article about D. Boon and the Minutemen in today's New York Times - and no paywall either, as far as I can tell...

"I'm skipping the pages of a book that takes ages for the foreword to end." One of the best second sides ever:

DB began recording this Bruce track at the end of the Young Americans sessions. Imagine, just imagine, if he'd dumped his woeful Fabs cover & replaced it with this - & perhaps not discarded "Who Can I Be Now?" (his follow-up to "Changes" if there ever was one) too - what an album that would've been.

Eye-popping footage of the 4-piece Talking Heads at their live peak, filmed in summer 1979 for the South Bank Show and re-edited by the prodigiously talented Nacho Video. "I changed my hairstyle so many times now I don't know what I look like..."

Watch one man and his sports jacket terrify an entire studio audience - from Germany's Szene TV show (again).

The Smiths, mid 1980s - foxed Polaroid by an unknown photographer #FallFriday

Wire fans, prepare to have your minds blown... This hitherto forgotten '78 lip-synch for German TV has just popped up on Youtube and it's fantastic.

I've just finished reading Beverley Martyn's harrowing memoir (Sweet Harmony) & wonder if I'll ever be able to listen to her ex husband's music ever again. Time will tell. Copies of her book are quite scarce (and pricey) nowadays but I managed to get hold of it c/o my local library, so ask yours.

It's Monday... slither down the greasy pipe.

My chin's on the carpet this eve so I may as well throw on some Lighthearted Lenny & snuggle up to the gloom, eh? I prefer these rough & ready live versions to their original Songs From A Room counterparts - I dunno what that says about me, mind... Also: I've run out of red wine. Double drat.

Turning 30 this year. The record I mean, not me (it's already far too late for that).

"Lonnie Donegan meets The Magic Band" it says here and you can't say fairer than that.

For your Saturday morning delectation: Barry's salmon pink strides screeching "1968!"

Stupendous new upgrade from Booji Boy's archives! Gawk at Mark's zits in hi-res Devo-Vision™ (etc).

Back in summer 1981, Glasgow's Postcard Records besieged a doting London with two packed-out nights at The Venue on Victoria Street - as reviewed here by Record Mirror in their 15th August issue. The label released its final record, Aztec Camera's "Mattress Of Wire", the same month (sob).

Fall vid review: "Anyone keen on the pappy perfection of The Chart Show will be appalled by the amateurism here" - from Select magazine, January 1991 #FallFriday

Howard by Anton - from The Face #3, July 1980.

A self-released wonder from 1980 - "it's a good life on the dole" (how times have changed...)

Things look grim in the markets right now, but at least the U.S. economy wasn’t already being propped up by a massive speculative AI bubble that is highly sensitive to rising energy costs.

Sunday, so far:

"I'm an observer. I go everywhere and I sit at the back. I'm the guy at the back of the classroom. Always have been." - from Select magazine, June 1991 (photographer: Chris Clunn) #FallFriday

22, hearing this for the first time, enraptured. Listening again now &, yes, I want to be back there, just for a few hours, but I know I can't & there's a yearning inside. A phantom universe in 4 minutes. Terry's guitar break. That outro. Eyes wet, every time. I feel just like yesterday's boy.

42 years since the Sovs bombed the Town Hall. Freds innit.

#DavidsMonthOfMusic Day 5: a song by a band/artist whose name starts with E. The Ex - They Shall Not Pass (Ron Johnson Records, 1986).

HOWDY.

When you're listening late at night you may think the band are not quite right but they are they just play it that like. (I'd like to live in there forever.)

Preparation for flight.

Song of the day: mono 45 mix with Danny Whitten's vocal pushed to the fore, Neil's fuzz guitar coda removed, & a couple of other minor touches that'll leap out at anybody familiar with original version. It's not better, just different... Thanks for the timely reminder @ineeddirection.bsky.social

Covent Garden, April 1982 - photographer: Tom Sheehan #FallFriday

I hear ya. To be fair, if you’re not in continuous existential crisis in today’s world, you’re not really paying attention. Am very jealous of the level of sweet oblivion that some seem to enjoy. I will continue to seek succour from gigs though 😁

Heard this for the first time last weekend and bought a copy on Tuesday. Life-affirming, slightly baffling Psicodelia Brasileira with Os Mutantes as its backing band. On CD it's paired with his Cérebro Eletrônico LP which is even better. I've virtually no idea what he's singing about, but so what?

Pulling teeth sums things up at the moment. A litany of minor disasters. Shop-soiled. Cursed.

Éliane Radigue, January 1932 - February 2026. Now playing:

So I bought Kilimanjaro 200 years ago - in the zebra sleeve because I was an almost-but-not-quite-cool Smash Hits kid - but don't remember ever seeing this promo before. JC dancing with himself in an infinity mirror. Don't say we didn't warn you, lads!

This morning's chazzer booty, £2.00. Louisville Math-Rock of a Slint bent - I was a nut for this stuff back in the '90s but it's funny how things that once preoccupied us quietly fall by the wayside as we plough onwards, deeper into music... 30 years & still sounding great, if indelibly of its time.

Attention Groovers! Past his best maybe, but Gene V still looks and sounds terrific in this slightly daft 1962 clip from Richard Lester's It's Trad, Dad! - however, the tantalisingly brief glimpses of the hip British beatniks are just as great... www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhT...

Thinking is the best way to travel...

Time travel is possible c/o Youtube. (Re)watching the haunting opening & closing title sequences for The Tomorrow People, I was transported back half a century in an instant. Dudley Simpson's eerie theme & the creepy image of the opening fist (representing the mind?) still rattle my nerves.

Valentines? What Valentines? 🖤

Ein schöner junger Prinz Verirrte sich im Wald.

Historic Moments In Punk Rock #78. "Don't think that because Billy and Tony are in a punk group they only want to meet punk girls, 'cos they don't!"