Feels a Bit Stuffy: Blindfold Test #12

This may hold the distinction of being the most “mid” batch of blind items yet, as the kids might say. Well, I’m not sure they’d say “batch,” but you get the idea — No grades above 7.5. or below 5, and seven ranked at either 5 or 5.5. Still, I’ll try my best not to…

The Unbearable Whiteness of Trousers

Just learned this week in The New Yorker, of all places, that Ira Robbins is self-publishing a best-of anthology of Trouser Press, the new wave-identified music magazine he founded a half-century ago as a teenage Brooklyn Polytechnic electrical engineering student. It’s due out in March, and sounds like something I’d want to put on my…

Pogues Review, 1985

“They’ll take you from this place you’re in and stick you in a box. Then they’ll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground, but you’ll stick your head back out and shout we’ll have another round.” –“The Sick Bed of Cuchalainn,” 1985 Probably a good idea to avoid driving through any Irish…

3 Country Albums, 1981

Plenty to disagree with here, assuming you can even make sense of it — Hey, I was just 20 at the time and I doubt I’d listened to country music before I was 19, so cut me a break OK? There’s one line in the second paragraph — the one about Beatles and Springsteen LPs…

150 Best Albums of 1982

Go ahead, call me a Teutonophile — You wouldn’t be the first, and I’ll readily admit to a fondness for jagerschnitzel, currywurst, spaetzle, oompah accordions, lederhosen, drndls and dachshunds, not to mention a nostalgia for all the imbißes, rathskellars, gasthäuser, bierhallen, bahnhöfe and (most obviously for our purposes) plattenläden I once whiled away my time…

150 Best Albums of 1980

Less than three weeks ago, Rolling Stone‘s website ran an 80 Greatest Albums of 1980 listicle, making the case that the first year of the 20th Century’s penultimate decade was “arguably, the greatest year for great albums ever.” Personally, “great” albums make me nervous — they’re just, y’know, intimidating or something. But when it comes…