Please go over to Spoilt Victorian Child for some Joy Division goodness. A great Galaxie 500 cover of Ceremony amongst others.

i don't think a smoker can stop smoking. of course he can stop in this life. but he will start again in the next one (i had this idea when reading in tom liwa's last newsletter that he didn't smoke for the last 13 months).

p.s. so i was right thinking that he had stopped smoking at the concert last year.

The Throwing Muses The Real Ramona didn't age well. It was so much better in memory. Now it is too energetic in a bad way. Too unfocussed. Kristin Hersh's voice is so much inferior to Tanya Donnelly's. One of those records I didn't buy because a friend did. I taped it from him. Sometimes it is not a good idea to try to stir up memories. Or didn't I age well?

The Pale Saints In Ribbons on the other hand is maybe even better than it used to be in 1992. The dreamy variant of shoegazing. The singer can't sing (too thin a voice) but that was a necessary ingredient of shoegazing (see Ride, see Catherine Wheel and even My Bloody Valentine). As if the thick texture of the music wouldn't allow for a masculine voice. Only girls' voices fit. Belinda Butcher, the girl from Lush, Rachel Goswell from Slowdive, Liz Fraser who was the grand-mother of shoegazing. This was the music which seduced me into the realm of indierock. Very hard to resist for a man like me.

p.s. i have to find out who is the girl singing occasionally on in ribbons.