Thanks for all your comments on the REM blog I posted yesterday. I thought it might be useful if I tried to answer a few of your questions – as best as I can, anyway.
OK, then, I must admit I’ve been sceptical about this one, so disillusioned by “Around The Sun” (three good, if woefully overproduced, songs notwithstanding) that I didn’t even bother to check out any bootlegs of those “live rehearsal” gigs from Dublin last year. . . More fool me, it transpires.
By some immeasurably strong act of will, I’ve refrained from banging on about the Boredoms round these parts for the best part of three months – ever since, in fact, they played the best show I saw in 2007.
Great title, for a start, though I have little idea what it means. I just put “Mountain Battles” on for the third, maybe fourth time, and I’m beginning to get the hang of it. For a start, it sounds like something of a departure.
A fair number of reissues in this one, that I've compiled over the past day or so. But there's also a couple of auspicious new releases just in, that I'll be writing more about in the next few days.
In spite of the current enthusiasm for Krautrock round these parts, I must admit to being a bit sceptical about the new album from Hans-Joachim Roedelius: one half of Cluster, one third of the recently reformed Harmonia, and now collaborating with an American called Tim Story on a highly pretty CD called “Inlandish”.
Publishing imperatives being what they are, most of us have virtually forgotten about all the hair-wringing and number-crunching that went into compiling those Best Of 2007 lists. But before we completely write off the last 12 months, here's one last poll that's pretty interesting.