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You Belong In Rock'n'Roll
So why, at an all time career height of popularity, did David Bowie see fit to form his much-derided band Tin Machine? Well, if you believe the average prat writing a boxout list at the foot of an...
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Higher Than The Sun - Screamadelica, Foxbase Alpha, Bandwagonesque, Loveless,...
Higher Than The Sun is a book by me about four albums released late in 1991 - Screamadelica by Primal Scream, Foxbase Alpha by Saint Etienne, Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub and Loveless by My Bloody...
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Higher Than The Sun: My Top Ten Creation/Heavenly Rarities
Originally written for the excellent music blog Sweeping The Nation, here's a list of my favourite rarities, obscurities and downright oddities from the Heavenly Recordings and Creation Records vaults....
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Higher Than The Sun: Saint Etienne Presents Songs For A London Winter
Originally written for the splendid Feeling Listless blog as part of their look back at 2014, here's a review of Saint Etienne's archaically-festive compilation Songs For A London Winter...This has...
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Higher Than The Sun: Talk About The Love Of Loveless
Originally written for the sadly defunct daily trivia site TATP, this quick guide to Loveless by My Bloody Valentine was in many ways the original starting point of the idea that eventually became...
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Higher Than The Sun: Come Together
An extract from Higher Than The Sun looking at Screamadelica's problematic second single...Yet while he was making overtures to Teenage Fanclub, Alan McGee once again had his hands full with Primal...
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Higher Than The Sun: Nothing Can Stop Us/7 Ways To Love
An extract from Higher Than The Sun looking at how Saint Etienne scored a hit single without anyone realising...Perhaps surprisingly, there was less anticipation surrounding Saint Etienne’s projected...
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Higher Than The Sun: The King
An extract from Higher Than The Sun looking at the album Teenage Fanclub made by accident...It must have been some relief, then, when Creation received a telephone call from Teenage Fanclub in late...
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Higher Than The Sun: Glider
An extract from Higher Than The Sun taking a look at the most startling piece of 'music' recorded by My Bloody Valentine...As the year and the decade drew to a close – by which time Elephant Studios’...
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Higher Than The Sun: 3 a.m. Eternal
An extract from Higher Than The Sun looking at The KLF's infamous appearance at the Brit Awards in 1992...Perhaps sensing all of this, on 12th February 1992, The KLF brought the curtain down on the...
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is this music? - Thoughts From The Point Where Music Ends, And Dancing About...
If you've been enjoying Higher Than The Sun, you may also be interested in a collection of highlights from one of my previous music fanzines is this music?, including features on The Monkees, The BBC...
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We're All Gonna Rock To The Rules That I Make
Not so long ago, a certain prestigious gallery put on a huge exhibition entitled Glam! The Performance Of Style. Taking the satin and tat of Glam Rock as its stylistic cue - albeit leaning very much...
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Hits 5 Revisited: Side One
If anything ever deserved to be called 'seductive advertising', it was those glossy tracklisting-heavy double-page spreads that used to appear in Smash Hits at certain times of year to promote the...
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Hits 5 Revisited: Side Two
On the first side of Hits 5, we encountered a bunch of quirky, sophisticated and sometimes angular mainstream pop and rock songs that didn't always quite come off, but between them amply demonstrated...
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Hits 5 Revisited: Side Three
And now - you have been warned - we arrive at that most dreaded side of eighties chart hit compilation double albums... the 'Ballads' Side. Can the pan-Kamen leylines running through 1986 make Side...
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Hits 5 Revisited: Side Four
We're now onto the fourth and final side of Hits 5, and if ever we were going to break through the fabric and unleash a cosmic refracted blast of pure undiluted 1986, culminating an unending fountain...
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Fun At One - The Story Of Comedy At BBC Radio 1
Fun At One is a book by me about comedy on BBC Radio 1.Launched in 1967, the BBC’s pop music station often provided an outlet for comics who struggled to get exposure elsewhere, from humorous disc...
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Fun At One - Everett In Trouble...
An extract from Fun At One looking at when Kenny Everett went just a bit too far...As it turned out, though, Everett was soon left with no option other than to try and find other work. The BBC had long...
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Fun At One - Breath From The Pit
An extract from Fun At One looking at Viv Stanshall and Keith Moon's somewhat off-kilter detective serial parody...The centrepiece of Viv Stanshall’s Radio Flashes was Breath From The Pit, a running...
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Fun At One - Lenny Vs. Savile
An extract from Fun At One, looking at an incident that might just have taken on a different resonance in recent years...For the new run of The Lenny Henry Sunday Hoot, the shows were shortened to two...
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