Excavate! – The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall

An anthology of conversations and essays, memories and commentary from the heyday of British pop music writing. In it’s heyday, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the UK music press was the forging ground for a new critical culture, where readers could encounter anything from comics and cult films to new musical forms and radical […]

Bob Stanley is a music writer and a founder member of Saint Etienne the three piece who emerged with the classic album Foxbase Alpha in 1991, and went on to become one of the best loved British groups of their generation. Here, he writes about the influences and impulses behind his own songwriting. Includes photographs by […]

The sound of ‘Wichita Lineman’ was the sound of ecstatic solitude, but then its hero was the quintessential loner. What a great metaphor he was: a man who needed a woman more than he actually wanted her. Written in 1968 by Jimmy Webb, ‘Wichita Lineman’ is the first philosophical country song: a heartbreaking torch ballad […]

Modern pop began in 1952 when the first British chart was published and the first 7″ singles were released. It ended (perhaps) in 1995 when Robson and Jerome reached the top of the charts with the…..