Features
"19, you're only 19 for God's sake"
Young people – they're everywhere, aren't they? Cluttering up street corners and talking about their iPod Nanos, making you feel old when they dance in your favourite club, prancing around in their Top Shop tops when they should be asleep. Some of them are so young they even go to school, for goodness sake. Some claim not to remember the first Live Aid. A worrying proportion of them have the audacity to be born in the nineties....
About... Downloadable Music
So, singles don't entirely exist any more, all because the internet. My golly gosh, I remember the first time I downloaded an MP3. Gather round, children, and I'll tell you a tale. It was way back in the year 1996, back when you were but a twinkle in your mother's eye. The internet, at this time, was only fledging, and was still powered by Star Trek fans on treadmills and held together by sticky backed plastic and old rubber bands. Still, when she soared, she made the sky seem finite in comparison, such were the possibilities...
Being in a Music Video
The first time I was in a music video, it was for unfairly maligned Britpop troubadours The Bluetones. I had to wake up far earlier than I was used to, and travel to a suspicious industrial estate on the edge of Camden, where I sat in a canteen with fellow Bluetones obsessives, munched on bacon sandwiches (paid for by the 'Slight Return' millions) and nervously attempted to engage the girl opposite me in conversation. We were all dressed in stupid 60s/70s get up, as we'd been told to by The Bluetones, and no-one argues with The Bluetones. When The Bluetones speak, people listen, if they know what's good for them...
It's Not How It Looks
Welcome to the story of our journey from nothing but a great name to NME covers, adoring fans, and inevitable collapse amid rumours about Mars Bars and ketamine. Or, as James's brief put it, "Just write about our spectacularly rubbish and half-hearted attempts at arena-stardom."...
The Small Venue Guide
You, the collected indie peoples of London, already know about the sticky floor of the Astoria, of the calf muscle-punishing slanted floor of the Brixton Academy, and of the impossibility of buying a beer that isn't Carling-wee at the Hammersmith Apollo. We've all been to these venues, we've all queued for their manky toilets, and the idea of writing a guide to them is as foolish as it is pointless...
