When I was looking for Simon Reynolds's website, I came across this, which made me laugh: "But already this year we're hearing great pop singles again - The Telescopes' "To Kill A Slow Girl Walking" EP could quite easily make it onto Radio l, Birdland are there, so are And Why Not?" It's from Steve Sutherland in 1990. He certainly doesn't know his P!O!P! from his P!A!P!, does he? I also found this, in an account of 'The Rise And Fall Of British Alternative Music' at http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/ukalt.html "1986-1988 are fairly bleak years for UK alternative music - hordes of fine individual records, no overall direction. Simon Reynolds' superb book Blissed Out does a better job than I ever could summarising and criticising the various trends in music at the high watermark of Thatcherism. His preferred brand of rock was epic in sound and scope without being epic in terms of ego - the 'oceanic rock' of the excellent My Bloody Valentine and AR Kane. Some attempt was being made to come to terms with hip-hop, though nothing terribly exciting came of it. Velvets and Smiths fetishism continued to thrive, as did small-scale indie music of the Sarah variety, often derided as twee and unambitious when all it wanted to do was touch people's hearts like punk had, but with less aggression and on a one-to-one basis instead of as part of a mass movement." I'm a bit young to be into this whole 80's MM writers cult. I was mainly an NME boy anyway - Melody Maker seemed to be into goth quite a lot. I'm not tempted by Simon Reynolds's vision of epic rock, I have to say. Sounds a bit stinky. My Bloody Valentine were good and everything, but I couldn't look my kids in the eye and say "The trouble with music today is that it's not sufficiently epic in sound and scope". Anyway, good to see someone reminding us that 'twee' is a pejorative term. I have discovered that the Sinister village has the slogan 'A Twee Community'. Hmm. Doesn't have the same ring as 'Glasgow's Miles Better', or 'Hertfordshire: A Progressive County'. What was that one that Catford had? Nick xx +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+