STUFF that has been floating my boat this week:
Although it’s new to the Expletive Undeleted blogroll Kill Your Pet Puppy has been online for just over a year. It’s a blog by the same people – Tony D, Al, Penguin – who put together the legendary punk rock fanzine in the late Seventies/early Eighties. They’re adding old fanzine reprints, downloads of vintage punk vinyl and obscure demo and live cassette tapes and the like, all the time.
One of my favourite bits of KYPP is Josef Porter’s ongoing serialised autobiography, Genesis to Revolutions, with tales of squats, trains, chillums and his time in bands like Zounds and the Mob. Pathetically, I was hoping for a mention when he gets to Blyth Power – I think I might have done the historic first interview with the band – but I’ve probably scuppered my chances of that now.
Another thing I really like about KYPP is the fact that people really respond to it and, in common with all the best blogs, each entry is accompanied by lively and informed comments from readers – which are often every bit as interesting and illuminating as the original post. We seem to have arrived back in fanzineland without even realising it. Highly recommended.
LP Cover Lover specialises in sharing cover art from the time when albums had two sides and came in flat cardboard packaging 12 inches square.
I’m gagging to hear the music on the records themselves but there are no downloads, which is a pity. Even so, LP Cover Lover is one of my favourite things in the whole wide world of web at the moment.
Insights from the Engine Room is a new blog written by former Manchester radio DJ, record plugger and man about town Tony ‘the Greek’ Michaelides, relocated to sunny Florida. The blog finds Tony musing on his years in the old-school music business most amusingly, although I do wish he would name names in the more scurrilous entries. Dish the dirt Tony, you know you want to.
Ali Catterall has written a fascinating piece for the Channel 4 film website called The Story Of Babylon By The People Who Made It, with quotes and insights from the cast and crew of the seminal British reggae flick (which is just about to be released on DVD). Ali tells me that just three journalists turned up for the recent Babylon interview junket at the NFT recently, so this could be as good as it gets.
And have you seen that TV programme where celebrities force themselves through holes in moving walls? I like that too.
3 responses so far ↓
AL Puppy // 9 October, 2008 at 7:10 pm |
Thanks for the kind words. When did you interview Josef?
smith3000 // 9 October, 2008 at 8:13 pm |
It’s a pleasure Al, I enjoy the stuff on the site a lot.
When did I interview Blyth Power? Good question. I’d imagine it would be 1985 or 1986 – I’ll dig out the relevant zine when I get home from work later …
smith3000 // 9 October, 2008 at 11:44 pm |
Hey AL, I dug that zine out, Airstrip*3 it was.
I did interview them in 1985, and by the look of the pictures and the fact that Dallas is in on the interview, it was done at a gig in Darlington. I was bouncing between North Lincolnshire and County Durham a lot that year (oh the glamour) so I can’t remember/work out when it was .. I do recall they gave me a lift back down south.
Neil, Sarah and Andy were in the band, as well as Curtis and Josef. Sean from Wot, as he was known then, was also lurking around.
It still reads okay so I might well stick it on here at some point.