Another Bleat In The Face of The Big Whatever

Howdy, pop late-late-adolescents!

Found out yesterday that Observer Music Monthly #76 is the last of them.

This has evoked mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was a rather silly magazine, stretched between ageing NME types at one end, globe-sniffing multi-cultural fashionistas at the other and tossers who just want to read yer Rock'n'Roll Messiah types wandering about the middle. You know, the Springsteens, the Dylans, the myth of the seismically redemptive hero that probably stepped back into the background of our minds a couple of decades ago.

But the hairier, more sentimental hand, he tells a different story. However thick-headed its editorial direction might've been at times, at least OMM was a collection of pages stapled together with words and pictures about music on them. There seems to be less and less of that about - Plan B, gone; Bearded, gone. The greying of my once-again-bushy beard has meant I pick up a great many copies of MOJO at the newsagent than I would've been comfortable with ten years ago, and Artrocker seems to be hanging on at the moment; but it's not enough.

To the blogs, my friends! Well, not quite. There'll be no bundle of Hype Machines tied together with string behind the chest of drawers in a few years' time. I suppose that's the point. But I think I need the comfort of printed paper. I'm a sentimental auld cunt, and ageing Java just won't cut it with me.

And I bet they keep that bastard "Woman" monthly intact, despite it's irritating irrelevance (see Dr Lw's thoughts on that from October). And don't even get me started on the Food one!

Your pal, Coc x

The Insidious Junkbox

Howdy, all!

A suggestion from Ollie Nightjar, the cricketing Behemoth of the Flat Above, has led to me posting my latest podcast here on the ol' Cocaphrenic blogspot.

I've been toiling out these hour-long podcasts on an irregular basis since August 2008, although it's difficult to work out why. It's a naughty and piratical business, although I have paid for all the tracks themselves, and there's somewhere in my mind the dim idea that I'd like to pretend to do this for a living. I believe that I've a pleasant, hesitant burble; but I'm in no way as eclectic as I'd like to be, always falling back on the same boys with guitars and circuit-boards that haunt my imagination.

It's a kind of mixtape though, really. The kind of thing I used to do for friends, back in the days when music had a petro-chemical physical host, CDs, audio-cassettes, wax cylinders. Now that those soundwaves are made of tiny fragments of pixellated thought, a podcast seems the most sensible option. And I guess it spreads furtherer too. The illusory physical thrill has gone, but such is our digital margarine life. We mutter on with our hands in our pockets...

Insidious Junkbox #16: Suck Scene is fresh from the mouths of babes and monsters this morning, and contains these treats...

Associates - Party Fears Two
The xx - Islands
Method Man - Release Yo' Delf (Prodigy Mix)
John Cooper Clarke - The Day My Pad Went Mad
The Phantom Band - Throwing Bones
Teengirl Fantasy - New Image Every Day
Bear In Heaven - Lovesick Teenagers
Parliament - Little Old Country Boy
De La Soul - Brainwashed Follower
Japandroids - Sovereignty
Meat Puppets - Lake of Fire
Deee-Lite - What Is Love?
Fashawn - Samsonite Man
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Spellbound

It's all about the Janus face, people, a bit of old stuff and a bit of new, nailed to the mast of the flag of convenience. Insidious Junkbox rules!

Your pal, Coc x