Vietnam was ubiquitous in popular culture in the 1980s. This is the first in a series of essays about how Hollywood tried to deal with America’s failure to address its hubristic approach to everything it does.
An Adolescence In Corduroy: Jingly Jangly Indie Wank In The 1980s, Part 2 – The House of Love.
Things happened a lot faster in the 1980s. Sort of. In terms of musical scenes and tribes, the tide went in and out rapidly in some ways, and barely at all in others. Seismic shifts didn’t really happen, but the undercurrents of what was deemed fashionable by the weekly music press inevitably moved more rapidly…
Hey Nonny, It’s Raining. Good Morning Rain, Early Morning Rain and Leaving On A Jet Plane. Tolerable Folk Music, part 6.
Good Morning Rain’s a melancholy song, and when I say melancholy, I mean when things are a bit shit, but you still quite enjoy it.
Nostalgia For Cold, Rainy, Dark Days in England in The 1970s, Part 2: Beach Baby – The First Class.
Where do you start with Beach Baby by The First Class? There’s a lot going on in there. When I hear Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, I gather the studio kitchen’s a sink down. When I hear Beach Baby, it sounds like they’ve made a studio out kitchen sinks, specifically to record a song that is, equally, if not more, no stranger to the plumbing aisle in B&Q.
An Adolescence In Corduroy: Jingly Jangly Indie Wank In The 1980s, Part 1 – The Primitives.
Up to about fourteen, I didn’t realise that there was a modern alternative to pop music that got in the charts. That’s not all that surprising really, because I also hadn’t realised that you could go into a record shop and buy whatever records you wanted either. Then I saw The Smiths on Top of…
Nostalgia For Cold, Rainy, Dark Days in England in The 1970s, Part 1: Brotherhood of Man – Angelo.
As usual, it takes me a long time to work out what cleverer people understand instantly. What that means is that I’ve realised that I’m quite a nostalgic person and, ironically, always have been. Maybe that’s the real point – because I’m a bit on the slow side, I’m always trying to work out what…
Hey Nonny, Odds & Sods: Tolerable Folk Music, Part 5
As regular readers of this blog/website/whatever it is will have worked out by now, I have an awkward relationship with Folk Music in the same sort of way that I have awkward sorts of relationships with most things. Everything, probably. Like I said last time, I think I’m probably a bit brain damaged. I’m not…
Hey Nonny, In The Jingle Pentangle Morning I’ll Come Nonnying You. Tolerable Folk Music, part 4: The Pentangle.
Preamble Folk music of the mid 1960s to the early 1970s sounds best in autumn and winter, except Donovan, who’s made for spring and summer. The nights have drawn in; it’s raining and it’s cold, which means that I’ve started listening to The Pentangle again. Which, around our house, means that Mrs Middlerabbit has no…
(Get) Back To School. Or, How The Beatles (Didn’t) Split Up In 1969.
“… it wasn’t a happy time. It said(on the back of the sleeve) it was a ‘new-phase Beatles album’ and there was nothing further from the truth. That was the last Beatles album and everybody knew it.” Paul McCartney, November 1971 I thought it would be good to go out, the shitty version, because it…
Not The World’s Strongest Man. Or, How I Mistook Billy Liar For An Instruction Manual. Updated.
Nb: if you’re here because you’re under the impression that you can read about Scott Walker’s song, The World’s Strongest Man, you’re not going to get that here. However, there is a page devoted to that and other songs of his here. “I had a really bad dream. It lasted 20 years, 7 months and…
MiddleRabbiting 