314: Procrastination is a smooth high.
Hullo
Deus
Club
Party
1977-1999
Links
Bye
EDIT: If you’re clicking through from the newsletter, you may have realised all the links after a certain point were bust. They’re all fixed here.
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Happy New Year and a happy new thing to go along to it.
I've decided to go back to Blogging, with Comrade Jim Rossignol and myself launching TTRPG blog Old Men Running The World. Here's our introduction letter to explain what the site is. In fact, let's just put it here...
Over the years we have each amassed a bunch of RPG writing which has no decent home online, and should have one. We’ve become aware that we both basically talk RPG stuff each and every day, and we think doing some of that talking in public may be worthwhile. We’re also aware that we both have Hypergraphic Tendencies, and a safe platformn for that overwhelming impulse also seems like a good idea. We have things we’d like to say, and so a place to say it seems reasonable. This is that place.
(When editing DIE RPG, and cutting another huge and sprawling essay that really was extraneous, Grant Howitt liked to say: “Kieron – you have a blog.” Well, no, he didn’t have a blog, not a real one. But now he does. So you can and should blame Grant.)
We’ve got a huge backlog of stuff to post, but we didn’t want to overwhelm the site at launch, so picked a handful of articles to give a taste of our flavours and obsessions. But this will grow and change. We probably will write something about a game other than Trophy Gold eventually, for example. Jim has a whole lot of interviews he’s done with interesting figures in RPG. Kieron really does have a bunch of old DIE RPG stuff to do, too. And there are some new thoughts we want to pull together into an essay shape for publishing here.
Some of our stuff for this place will probably appear via our respective newsletters first. Or it might not. But it is the relative ephemerality of the newsletter that has, in part, inspired this place. So it will appear here eventually, and make this place a home and an archive.
In short, we’re here, we’re thinking in public, because we think thinking in public is both fun and occasionally useful.
We launched the site with five articles from our backlog, but we'll be releasing more shortly. It's nice to have a place like this, especially with Jim. I like writing. You may have noticed.
Its RSS is here. I've decided that 2025 is the year everyone jumps aboard RSS again, so be cool, daddio.
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We Called Them Giants is Comix Experience's comic of the month, so Brian Hibbs had Stephanie and I on to talk everything. It's obviously got a lot of We Called Them Giants in (including a bit where Stephanie shows her roughs, which is really great stuff for process fans), but we hit a whole load of things here – industry stuff over OGNs, OGNs as an art form, structuring, collaboration and what we're doing next.
Oh – and here's Forbes' on DIE RPG too!. And We Called Them Giants as AIPT's graphic novel of the year.
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The Power Fantasy's first trade is coming. It'll start appearing in shops by the end of the month and in the rest a couple of weeks after. Caspar and I are doing a launch event at GOSH in london on February 12th, from 7pm to 9pm.
Come and say hello and celebrate all things The Power Fantasy.
As it's been a few weeks, I've kind of lost track of Power Fantasy end of year news. Here's CBR's Top 100 comics, with us at number 3. Here's us in SKTCHD's.. We turned up pretty high in the meta-lists which compile mentions across multiple publications. “Most acclaimed indie ongoing of the year” seems like the sort of sentence we can say with a straight face, or at least with a straight typeface. Caspar and I would be looking at our feet, like the shameful englishmen we are.
Oh - Caspar’s also teased a couple of panels from issue 6 on his instagram, so here’s one.
Well, Isabella seems excited. At least that’s not ominous, for once.
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I've done tracks of the years for as long as I can remember – often very, very late, but always. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it this year. I'll go through my notes, but my listening has been weird and i'm not sure the list will be that useful. I liked all the big bangers. I played all the big bangers in the quarterly club night my chums and I run, even. See – that's a weird thing: for the first year I've not felt the need to do a list, it's been the year that I've played music most regularly in public.
The other side is the shape of what I've been listening to. Firstly, it's the parent thing. Any time I'm not expressly being distracted by something, and my brain gets a chance to return to its basal state, all I am thinking is “CONSIDER THE COCONUT” from terminal Moana over-exposure. But it's not even just that – the work I've been doing is historical. Forget the fact The Power Fantasy's playlist is from 1945-1999 – most of my TPF writing hasn't been to it. It's been listening to vinyl from the period, bought from the local record shop, ideally from the bargain bin. It's been a year where I've been listening to Count Bassie Plays The Beatles more than any new album. Perhaps there's a list in that too.
But there is one other thing I did in the back half of the year which may be interesting. Basically, as part of the project to work out the best 1000 singles), I took part in 1977-1999 bit, and took it seriously. Well... relatively seriously. I did some thinking, and took it more seriously than the previous 1956-1976 one (which I came to late and winged). That meant compling a list of your favourite 50 singles from the period, and posting one a day, and then everyone's results were compiled into a master list.
This was both fun, thought provoking (it's digging over a bunch of personal stuff, obv) and also vaguely useful for The Power Fantasy. Most my listening research was pre-1975 stuff for that, and this covered the gap nicely. It got me thinking a lot, which is always the point.
I obviously regretted my list the instant I made it, which is also always the point. It definitely has some regency bias, in terms of whatever my present obsessions are.
Anyway, my whole list in playlist is here and if you're interested in how the final 250 turned out, you can find a playlist of the 250 here and gawp at what made it and what didn't. And here's my Top 50, with what I wrote about each. You can probably tell the days when I was rushing to catch up or was busy.
It’s also much longer than I had realised. Procrastination is a smooth high.
#UncoolTwo50
Bouffant Headbutt - Shampoo (1993)
To quote what the great music critic Huggles4Everyone said 11 years ago in Bouffant Headbutt's youtube comment thread: "Shampoo were always at their best when they were terrifyingly psychotic."
So, it was my birthday yesterday, so I had the day off, working on a draft of an indie RPG and doing my Uncool list. Which is very me - my birthday treat was working on something else. An old friend messages me quoting the lyrics to Delicious, and I'm so deep in the pop music hole my brain ignites. "Now, Simon, I'm working on my list of top 50 singles of 77-99, and Delicious isn't in there but MAYBE BOUFFANT HEADBUTT IS?!!?"
Which changed my lens on the project, with a certain awful clarity. I saw the futility in the endeavour, and the joy inherent in that. Like many people doing this, the 77-99 was my absolutely my formative years. My first memories of pop music are in 1980. It includes the period when I was embedded enough to be able tell you months for single releases and all that. It's the peak Phonogram period, basically.
(There's an irony that all the Phonogram stories are about coming down from that, but that's another story - specifically, Phonogram stories. I digress.)
And there's the other irony - that I know the period better than any other period, I know my list is going to gravitate hard to the basic bitch I am. There will be a lot of fucking obvious, as I'm not going to lie and claim I'm not into Mount Everest.
However, listening to Bouffant Headbutt, I realised the other truth - I absolutely would rather listen to this than (say) Ghost Town.
("Too much fighting on the dancefloor" vs "I am not fighting on the dancefloor - instead, we will fight outside.")
And I love Ghost Town! I dug further, and realised I'd rather listen to Bouffant Headbutt than any individual single by (say) Nirvana or the Wu-Tang, two of my favourite bands of the 1990s.
So they're out, and Bouffant Headbutt is in.
Which is why it's Number 50 for the list. My guiding principle is "anything else has to at least make me as glad to have ears as Bouffant Headbutt. This is my Bouffant Headbutt scale. Your pop single must rate 1.0 or higher on the Bouffant Headbutt scale, or you're out, you're fucking dead."
Oh yeah - why do I like it? It's plain feral, a rabies sugar-rush , vinyl sharpened into a shiv, an inversion of another song that won't be in here - it's Happy, Violently. Frankly, Carrie makes Steven King's Carrie look like she's not even trying. ❤️ you, Shampoo, ❤️ you.
Still D.R.E. - Dr Dre feat. Snoop Dogg (1999)
I empathise with this one hard. I too still have love for the Streets, though as their first single was in 2001, that love is presently irrelevant. Last time we did this, I talked about the number of days I started with a phonomantic listen to Say A Little Prayer. I've started as many with this - though a different kind of magic, for a different kind of mood. I don't drive a car, but if I did, this is here. I certainly shower with posture.
The production is relentless in the best way, and hanging off it is just all these moments I adore. Honestly, the bit where Dre explains all the scientific precision of a twitter quote dunk, why a hater's position on him having "fell off" is clearly ludicrous is my everything. So, yes, as a working creative (and one that is all too sensitive) this is a suit of armor and I wear it often.
More - The Sisters of Mercy (extended version) (1990)
Hmm. It seems that "Music that sounds great in the shower" is the theme of my early choices. The Sisters were one of my iconic bands of the period, and this one of the most iconic songs. Also, Steinman. Also...
Okay, I was in Vancouver, with the guy who inspired Kid With Knife, driving in his open top army-surplus land rover, on a sunny afternoon, blaring this loudly as we headed off out the city. Another friend was with us - who is one of nature's pure indie kids. A quiet epithany person.
He's beaming. The Sisters aren't a band he'd ever listened to, but that THIS is a thing one can do in one's life clearly had remixed his brain a little.
I found myself wishing I could have travelled back in time and given him the Sisters as a teen, when they could have made a difference. Because the Sisters, at their best, were a gift to smart kids who were vulnerable to falling down the hole called the Smiths - this monochrome smart cartoon world where you don't hide that you've read a few books but also rock out. That the rage can not be a bomb, but also fuel, and take you places. Because Eldritch clearly had many flaws, but in the best records, made being smart actually look not a curse, but a whole lot of fun.
I think if you get that early, it frees you and powers you and makes you want more, and gives you more. And this is the song which just says it.
None more more.
Somewhere In My Heart - Aztec Camera (1988)
"Summer in the city where the air is still/a baby being born to the overkill"
If you were a ghost following me around, this is the line you'd catch me singing to myself most often. Worryingly often
Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick - Ian Dury & The Blockheads (1978)
This vs Push It was my final choice to bring me down to 50, which says something the scale of this endeavour. How? How?!
So: a big groove seasoned with industrial levels of WTF.
(How did I make the call? I was just chewing it over as I was getting Iris down and got down to which would just give me the biggest thrill if I heard it randomly. There may also be some element of that I've dropped Push It a bunch when DJing and never lands as hard as I feel it should.)
French Disko- Stereolab (1993)
I never quite loved Stereolab as much as I wanted to love Stereolab. Except this. I loved this beyond all cool, measured Marxist reason.
Groove Is In The Heart - Dee-Lite (1990)
If you'd asked me on the year of release, I'd have said "I will literally kill myself if this reaches number one", rockist scum that I was.
For many years since? Top 10, easy. But this year, only here.
Gloria - Laura Brannigan (1982)
are those voices in your head, calling ggggggglllloorrrRRRRRIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!. GLORIA!!!! DON'T YOU THINK YOU'RE FALLING? IF EVERYBODY WANTS YOU?!!? WHY ISN'T!!! ANYONE!!! CALLING!!!! and so on.
Girl/Boy Song - Aphex Twin (1996)
One surprise when doing this list - there's much less dance in it than I was expecting... but this found its way in, which I often dance to, because I am a centipede. I remember at the time there was some chat saying it was a drum and bass piss-take, which never felt right to me - it's playful, sure, but it's also beautiful and weird and just delighted at what it's doing.
Waiting For The Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg (1988)
Part of me has a lot of time for that bright socialist eighties pop - the sadness of a burst of belief that just burst. But it's probably telling that this is the one which reaches the list.
Race for the Prize - The Flaming Lips (1999)
I always remember being in hospital in the early 00s, when I was not in a great state. Over a week in, I finally got some music. I try listening to this. It's too much. I had to turn it off. That's the story which most resonates with this BIG RESONATION music, but there's another, which makes me laugh, and is arguably more important in my life.
I was at the Reading Festival. I was covering it for the NME. It was 1999. I was doing it because I entered a competition, tapping out 150 words and forgetting about it, until I got a call. I'd spent the weekend basically working it. I sense I did a lot more than anyone was expecting, as that's basically the only gear I have.
So Sunday night comes, and the online editor says he wants a word. He takes me to one side and basically says how impressed he was, and that while I'm in the south west, there's work down there, and I should contact some relevant desks.
I didn't walk away, but flew.
Because I wanted to be a music writer, and had wanted it for a long time, and something I'd worked towards for some years, and I'd just been told by someone that in this race for the prize... you get it. Really, I can't think of a night I was happier.
I headed across site to the Lips. Which was the case of the perfect band to fit that particular perfect moment, in their psych-indie carnival in full effect, filling the tent and filling my head.
I felt like I was part of the sun. I went back to my tent, and slept.
In the morning, I woke up and stared at the ceiling. I remembered the night, with its huge cathartic joy.
A realisation hit me. I said it aloud.
"But I don't want to work for the NME."
I never made any serious attempt to make a career of music writing ever again.
Final Day - The Young Marble Giants (1980)
It sounds like it was recorded in the ruins as a nuclear-age folk song. It's on a tape, which you've found, and everyone on it is long dead, as is everyone other than you, at least for now.
The logical collision between choir-kids after school in a practise room and the radiophonics workshop, plus the logical collision between a neutron and uranium 235 creating not energy but an audible silence.
Also: so short that if you hear the four-minute warning, you can play it twice.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle (1987)
I have a soft spot for Belinda Carlisle. The soft spot is me. This is a machine which when activated basically fills the room with ice-cream. Who hates Ice-cream? Not me. I'd drown in ice-cream.
Atmosphere - Joy Division (1980)
Just been walking in the rain, wearing black. And so.
Atomic - Blondie (1980)
Pictures and 1000 words? Let's give you 12,000 words of pictures.
This story was 16 pages, and we use 1/8th of the time we have available to do this. Imagine if Trainspotting used 15 minutes of its run-time for its Atomic scene. That's what we did it.
I really like Atomic, and made Jamie spend several days drawing this to prove it.
Faster - Manic Street Preachers (1994)
As someone who was at least Intensely-intense adjacent, the Holy Bible was my favourite album for at least the first half of my 20s, and this my favourite track. If I had tattoos, I'd be covered in this script.
Child Psychology - Black Box Recorder (1998)
I was a Luke Haines fan, writing him as a virgil in a britpop hell, but I've circled back to Black Box Recorder's introduction, as, even now, what it does remains invigoratingly audacious in its cruelty
California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys (1979)
Punk rock can be many things, which includes fucking horrible.
Modern Love - David Bowie (1983)
If I had to sum up Phonogram I'd say it's a book about not believing in modern love, but believing in Modern Love.
There's significantly grander musical achievements by Bowie in the period, but I come back to this, again and again. It will almost certainly be played when I DJ. It was the second to last song to be referenced in Phonogram. It's a lot. Also: "I know when to go out/when to stay in/get things done" is a useful oracular message whenever I hear it. Yes. I'll try to remember that, Bowie.
The Winner Takes It All - Abba (1980)
When pulling together the list, I was in a "are these iconic sacred cows actually something I want to listen to?" space, and put this on and thought maybe it wasn't, but then I was just in tears. So yes.
Hot Topic - Le Tigre (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eQ_TlhoXM-M
They may have fucked up by having more than 50 picks on their list, but they certainly don't fail the Neil Kulkarni clause.
(Er... that's one of the challenges rule. You must have at least one third of your picks be bands/artists who are not all white dudes.)
Gentlemen - Afghan Whigs (1993)
About a decade back, I saw them live. Many men my age, arms around heir partners, singing along. I wanted to grab random partners and say "You know he's singing about cheating on you and MUCH worse, right? Right?"
One of my favourite albums of the 1990s, and this is where the softness of the opening is kicked out the window with Dulli's precise, awful NOW, the guitars are unleashed and it does world-class glower.
The whole album is basically like a warning on a cigarette packet, with the cigarettes being men.
Renegade Master (Fatboy Slim Old Skool Mix) - Wildchild (1997)
Still have this one ear-marked for a DIE sequel themetune. It even namechecks a D4.
Clearly anyone involved in this project has moved past concepts of guilty pleasures. However, this is in exactly the sort of spot in an much unloved aesthetic that I say it and expect hard side-eye. I know and love every beat of over-engineered, toytown pneumatic performance.
Sabotage - The Beastie Boys (1994)
Let's complete our Boy Stuff sequence with this, which really does go off. Also, my 3 year old daughter started shouting the last word in every line of her books at me, so this is a Beastie household now.
I realised this actually takes the place of all the other rap metal that may have got on the list. That it was something that was more a side-line than anything else for them makes it more impressive. Sometimes you really do just need a dilettante. This is one which I don't actually always drop when I'm DJing, but when I do, it always goes off big.
Party Fears Two - The Associates (1982)
Epic Flouncing In Your Bedroom music, anxiety so intense that it's humping the furniture.
Celebrity Skin - Hole (1998)
Never has "I really want to sell lots of records now" sounded as inspired, as horrified and as delighted with itself. Circa this, Love really was the best rock star I've ever seen in my life, and it's all here.
Only Love Can Break your Heart - Saint Etienne (1990)
Quintessential Singles Band starting as they meant to go on, by singling quintessentially. Just a sad, blissed universe summoned in the magic circle of a 7".
Also - I just realised with Santa Valentine and Etienne Lux, I've just broke up Saint Etienne's name in half to name two of the Power Fantasy characters.🤦♀️
Lazy Line Painter Jane - Belle & Sebastian (1997)
The interesting thing is that it's a sub-average B&S single until Monica arrives, and then it's something else, and the rest of the song is Stuart weaving around a distinctly un-B&S presence.
For example: the middle-eight where the vocals double, and we build towards one of B&S's biggest moments of "Wondering how you got your name/and what you're going to do about it" and then it just takes off, a church organ removing your organs. Also, casual, sad bisexuality. They're playing my song, baby.
Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N' Roses (1987)
It's only when writing this did I realise that it took me 10 years to go from a Guns N' Roses fans to a Belle & Sebastian one. Oh, the descent of man.
The first band I loved in a way which changed I dressed, the entry to my compulsory Midlands Kid Metal Phase. The first band I wrote a piece of criticism on - for an English class, which a friend of mine quoted back at my 30 years on, so it must have had something to it. It was about Welcome to the Jungle. Was it "A scum's eye point of view of a city of scum"? Something like that. Welcome To The Jungle is the entry to the sordid world of pop for me, my MTV Stones, and this is the one where you can imagine them as the perfect bar band on the strip and/or strip bar band.
Paradise City was the one which ensured they could entertain a stadium. Sweet Child of Mine was the one which ensured they could fill a stadium. But this is Guns N'Roses at their most thrilling, and even atmospheric. I started Phonogram with Kohl being passed a stick of eyeliner by Britannia at 19, but there's another version of Phonogram which started him at 12, passed a C60 of Appetite for Destruction from a very different Goddess and Kohl being dragged to hell, and liking it.
In short: whatever I became, I started becoming it here.
Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) - Buzzcocks (1978)
Buzzcocks were an obsession for me, and sometimes one cannot deny the fucking obvious. A spurt of pure pop even bigger than Orgasm Addict's impure popping spurt.
Bring the Noise - Public Enemy (1988)
Nearly 40 years old, and still sounds like a specifically inspiring racket, entirely defiantly sonically of its moment and still sounds like a tank load of WTF.
When Love Breaks Down - Prefab Sprout (1984)
An example of temporality and pop. Were I a few years older in 1985, I'd have been all over Steve McQueen, but it took until 2020 and terrible life stuff and Covid and... here it was.
Cloudbusting - Kate Bush (1985)
Despite one of the most direct story inspirations, the most mysterious of Bush's big hits. The momentum just takes you there, in its own good time, and it bursts, and then it rains, or at least you find your face is wet, again. Also, dead dad stuff, innit?
Plan B - Dexys Midnight Runners (1981)
A lesser band's commercial suicide great song being released in a not-great single cut would be in trouble for my doomed romance inclusion. But Dexys are no lesser band, and can commercial suicide at will.
"Hey, Kevin, what are you gonna do?"
"I was thinking I'd shit the bed in a genius way"
"Again?"
"JIMMY!"
Honestly, I listen to this, and feel Lloyd from Phonogram coming on hard. I was never particularly good at maintaining being a serious young man, but I had my moments, and when I did, this was here for me.
Also, I was in a local pub recently, who had a pun-based menu, which included Dexys Midnight Hummus.
Insomnia - Faithless (1995)
Obviously, parenthood has made this one even more relevant.
Bills Bills Bills - Destiny's Child (1999)
There's less of the hypertech R&B in this list than I'd have thought, but there is this. The verse which is just an extended argument over celllphone use is one of my faves in this whole period
Also, as someone who is very much a formalist, the First Destiny's Child Album Cover to Second Destiny's Child Cover is one of my favourite 2 panel comic transitions.
Common People - Pulp (1995)
Earlier in this list, we chewed over mixing pop and politics, asking what the use is. Now, we resolve the equation by adding the essential binding ingredient: sex.
And that this is the day I'm fully back in Bath, and my first coming to Bath was fundamentally my Peak Britpop period seems nice timing. It will never mean as much to me now as it meant then, and even now it means everything. I did it in Karaoke in NYCC the other week, and my urge to scream it as it heads towards its denouement overwhelmed me, again, always.
Doin' the Do - Betty Boo (1990)
I remain really impressed.
Could have been higher, but I made a recent disastrous US karaoke take on this, due to karaoke programming which had clearly been made by someone who'd never heard the record, like everyone in the whole continent. Where Are You Baby?'s wistful sci-fi nonsense was the one which I loved most in the period, but the level of Pugnaciousness in Doin' The Do is the one I find most useful now.
Always On My Mind - Pet Shop Boys (1987)
The last song in Phonogram, in a story about loading it with a charge to never forget it and what it means to me, so, etc. Music is magic and magic is real.
Follow The Leader - Eric B. & Rakim (1988)
One of the most perfect machine generated pieces of music in... ah, I'm trying to do a bit, and failing as my copy of THIS IS UNCOOL is in a box
The title of this exercise comes from Garry Mulholland's excellent 2002 This is Uncool - his selection of 500 songs in the period. Sorry for the amazon link, but it's seemingly hard to get now. When I read it, I though it the single book about pop I wish I could send back in time to my 13 year old self. It was as a single volume catch up of where I should start digging, and an example of how ones life can be in conversation with pop. This is the attitude I think best to approach it all.
(Now it strikes me that it would allow me to know what was going to be hot shit before it happened, allowed a Biff Tannen-esque pop-critic cheat mode. But that's not I was thinking when I thought it. That's really not the point.)
Point being - even as someone who was in the late 20s at that point, there was a lot of stuff which I came to as Mulholland batted for it in the volume. When compiling this list, I was struck by the number of things I'd included I came to through him - which was a bit embarrassing, but also good.
Because the point of list games like this - or lists full stop - isn't to fossilize a canon, but to share what one loves, in hope that others love it too. Relevantly, I followed the leader to Follow The Leader, which has become part of my go-to psychic armoury ever since.
(My opening bit was me trying to write Mulholland's entry on Follow The Leader from memory, and failing, btw.)
This is the highest track which I came to through the book, but I do think 9 of the 10 that follows were in it. It's a wonderful book, and if you haven't read it, and have enjoyed seeing all folks posting about pop like this, I really recommend getting a copy.
Lost In Music - Sister Sledge (1979)
Were I the sort to self-mythologise, I'd say that my Mum went to see Sister Sledge when she was eight and a half month pregnant with me, so I likely heard this live, in utero. Sadly, anyone capable of basic math would know it's a lie. It was in their pre-Chic era in 1975, so none of the hits would have hit me in the womb. Anyway - one of the two working titles for Phonogram was Lost In Music, and in many ways was it was both its theme tune and its theme.
Total Eclipse Of The Heart - Bonnie Tyler (1983)
Seth Bingo turned to me and said "All roads lead to Total Eclipse of the Heart." He was talking about how he structures the last half hour of a karaoke session, but the lesson applies more widely.
Last Train to Trancentral (Live from the Lost Continent)- The KLF (1991)
Whenever we do our club night, one of the clean generational gaps is when we drop this, and everyone over 35 goes wild and both the people under 35 look very confused I'm trying to find something smart to say here, but I'm basically reduced to howling: MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! MU MU! MU MU!
Minor factlet: I wrote a demo Phonogram issue for McKelvie, to show him what I wanted to do - it was basically Beth's plot from Rue Britannia, but done in an issue. The first song which Kohl deliberately uses to create a magical effect is this. It's that kind of song.
We will never see their like again, and that so much of the KLF about how easy it was to be their like, that's profoundly depressing.
The Ace of Spades - Motorhead (1980)
A thrilling piece of New Games Journalism from Lemmy and the boys.
(I wish I had the brain to include this in my and Keith's list of Top 10 pieces of NGJ when I wrote it for the Guardian back in the day, as it would have annoyed people even more.)
Hyperballad - Bjork (1995)
I remember an old Everett True review of a Bjork Festival Gig, just before Post, glancing at the crowd, seeing so many people mouthing along and having a moment when he realised... wait. She's actually speaking to people.
And I was "Well, YES, ET."
That there was so much else going on with Bjork one can get why you'd make the mistake, but the angles she approaches songs are something else, and never more so than here, which stands at the edge of that cliff and decides to fly.
Oh Bondage! Up Yours! - X-Ray Spex (1977)
If there was a building full of every punk single and it was on fire, and I could only save one, I'd have a lot of questions about how this unlikely series of events came about.
But this is the one.
When I was in the judgmental mid-20s-arsehole period most critics seem to go through (and some never come out of), this was certainly one of the records that if someone didn't GET, I'd move them from one column to another in my head, and just assume they liked women to be seen and not heard. I still think it's one of the most freeing and free sounds ever recorded, and makes me think No More may be possible.
Skillex EP - Kenickie (1996)
Obv.
Come Out 2nite is the lead, and I loved with an infatuation which burned white hot which I included in the very first issue of Phonogram. Kenickie just reminded me of my friends at their best, and put it down.
The off-handed WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO BE SAD, of course, was protesting too much....
...because Come Out 2nite was an infatuation, and it only turned to love and website making devotion when a few weeks later when I flipped the vinyl and found How I Was Made waiting for me. Of course, they're Catholic. And they have found a theremin.
Now this is where it gets a bit foggy, and I've studied the rules and can't quite work out whether this is good or not. Because the vinyl was released in 1995 with 2 tracks, and then in 1996 on CD with another two. Scared of Spiders is fine, but it's just a B-side. But then there's Acetone.
Acetone, for some years, was my choice for song to play at my funeral, because I was both sad and cruel and wanted to spit my dying wish. My tumblr is still called "Another way to breathe", lifted from this.
Also, a Marie song.
Because that highlights one of the many thing I loved about Kenickie - this dichotomy of mood (Bedrooms/nightclubs) and Lauren and Marie tended to lean one way (Lauren way too sensitive, Marie would murder you) it was never that simple, because none of us are that simple. We all contain Maries and Laurens, even Marie and Lauren. As the full EP, starting with Lauren's best take on Marie's terrain and ending with Marie's best take on Lauren's makes it just a wonderful thing.
I loved this band, beyond all reason.
👏👏 👏👏 👏👏 👏👏 🥁🥁🥁🥁 WE DRESS CHEAP, etc.
Unfinished Sympathy - Massive Attack (1991)
Days after the Brexit vote, I went to see them in Hyde Park. I found myself thinking: whatever I love about this country, is in Massive Attack. Given the chance, I will always vote for it. Overplayed, one may say, but I'd disagree - I've played it as much as one can, and it's still not there, not over. Clue's in the title, guys. Unfinished, and I doubt I'll ever be finished with it, and it with me.
The Mercy Seat – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1988)
Looks god in the eye and says "Come at me, bro."
Which isn't quite true, of course (I've always been surprised the number of fans of the record have never noticed the twist in its final line) but certainly manages to act like it. Pop music, at its best, sets your mind on fire. A song about having someone's mind set on fire does exactly that. I think also the song that's most ended up on my comic playlists - I do tend to see a big chunk of what I do as taking my characters on a long walk to their Mercy Seat. It's a useful magnetic north: can you be this good?
Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads (1981)
Thanks to everyone who's shared. It's been amazing to watch and be part of. Once in a lifetime. Or twice, as it's the second run of this, which does blow the joke, but same as it ever was, etc.
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Clayton has just started a newsletter! Go subscribe to the powerhouse letterer. He promises cat photos, and delivers. It's also where I've discovered there's a comic coming out called “Xavier's Secret” and if it's not about Charles' Lingerie line, I will be very disappointed.
RRD released the live recording of the Heart Game of Dragonmeet, which is about Incywincy moonmass and involved me sitting on Grant's lap. I haven't dared listen to it yet, but you certainly can.
Ultimate RPG podcast had me on to talk design, and has a section where we brainstorm a game where everyone plays as a two-year old. For obvious reasons.
Over at Shelf Dust, Steve Morris is looking at the first appearances of the iconic villains, starting with The Joker. He's surprised to see exactly how much of the grimdark Joker is actually there in his first appearances.. In fact, while we're talking Shelf Dust, Steve also finished his epic walk through every single issue of Journey Into Mystery, with the concluding 645 – the first Stephanie/me collaboration and the one where we just broke everyone.
I went for a walk with an old friend over the weekend, and we were talking a bunch of stuff. He linked this piece on the design war between the M-16 and the AK-47 in Vietnam which is really well done. I don't remember why he linked me.
This article on parasociality, through the prisim of OnlyFans, is one of the best things on the subject I've read, though linking to an article on parasociality in my newsletter seems ironic even for me.
This is from last year, but Game's Workshop's numbers have everyone going “Bigger than Greggs?!??” so this big break down of GW's journey to become the titan they are is really interesting.
This on Gisèle Pelicot’s power, and Dominique Pelicot’s shame is really strong.
I was writing and thinking about the manics, and found myself reading Taylor Parkes piece on the Holy Bible at 30. It was my favourite album for too long, and Parkes delinerates why, for better or worse.
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Well, the cut and pasting and editing the list took longer than I thought. I really do go on. I was planning on writing a few thoughts on Worldbuilding inspired by re-reading the first books of Earthsea over the holidays. I'll try and do next time – it's something I want to get down, and I think I have time to do that.
I do have a bit of space. Caspar doesn't need the next Power Fantasy until the end of the Month. Stephanie doesn't need her script until next month. The games work is slowly finishing. This means I've got space - forget Old Men Running The World (Don't forget OMRTW. Bookmark and RSS OMRTW). I've actually started thinking of social events later in the year I'd like to try and arrange. A once monthly One Ring Game? Maybe I can make that work? I haven't been able to find the time to even think about arranging that for about a year.
I do have a few other work things in January I want to sort out – I've some fun marketing things I want to try and make work before the TPF trade drops, if I can pull off. I also started writing a prose short over the holidays, which I want to wrap up and see what I make of it. It may end up being a novelette, which is what you call a short story you can't be bothered to edit. Also, get How Do Aliens Do “It?” laid out and released. Maybe I will even get around to doing the Script Club idea for this newsletter, as now it’s costing me a grand a year to actually maintain this list.
So, yes, I'm using free time by filling it, which is what I do.
Holidays were great. I hope yours were as well.
I believe it's my job to write something optimistic about 2025 here, but my keyboard has stopped working, sorry.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
2.1.2025