History is made at night

One of the things I like about 'blogging' (like earlier fanzine production) is the possibility of direct communication with unmediat...

In the mid-1990s there seemed to be a cottage industry at Warwick University churning out techno-theory and Deleuzian drum & bass thoug...

On the radio at the weekend I heard something I thought I would never hear - a song with my name in it. 'Oh! Neil' (1960) by Carole ...

'There's something in this valley... it's owls and flowers, and it's dangerous' (Alan Garner, The Owl Service) 'ther...

I enjoyed the Lovebox fesival in East London's Victoria Park on Sunday, food, fair rides, sunshine and all, but most of all some excelle...

Having recently come across the online journal Music and Politics (discovered via Normblog ), I am working my way though some of its intere...

It happened like this – on Valentine’s Day this year my gf gave me a ukulele for a present. I took it to work that day and in a few idle mo...

There are songs that stay with you, that come back to you time after time, long after you've developed a sophisticated critique of the ...

Bob from Brockley has alerted to me Primal Scream's cover version of Hawkwind's Urban Guerrilla, to which they have added the lyric...

At Tate Modern today I watched Meshes of the Afternoon, a 1943 film by Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid. Deren (1971-1961) was to say the le...

"there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, ...

This track by Welsh band Los Campesinos came out last year. There's an indie pop element to their songs, but also something harder - th...

I enjoyed reading Gig - the Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist by the poet Simon Armitage . A man whose 'definition of a good gig...

The credit crunch clearly hasn't hit the world of super-rich art collecting - last week Danseuse (above), a 1915 painting by the Futuri...

The Way We Wore by Robert Elms recalls the soul/funk sessions at Crackers in London in the mid 70s. This was by all accounts a very influen...

I have posted here before on the French writer Colette (1873-1954). Her novel The Vagabond, first published in 1911, is a fictionalised acc...

Another summer solstice passes with me in London thinking I must try and get down to Stonehenge next year. At least 30,000 people made it t...

The Joseph Rous Paget - Fredericks Dance Collection at the University of California consists of 'approximately 2,000 original drawing...

Tracy K recalls nights out dancing from Tamworth to Tokyo, via London and Aberystwyth . The tale of dancing in Tokyo with Belle and Sebasti...

Riot Grrrl was probably the ultimate zine-driven scene. While punk, for instance, threw up fanzines written by people who wanted to documen...