Up until this year’s Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe’s entire musical career has consisted of Afro-Futurist concept albums, based around her alter-ego Cindi Mayweather. But with Dirty Computer, Monáe’s created a much more personal album, expressing her political and sexual concerns; she.…
Congratulations to 1001 Albums Geoff, who won the music quiz for a second straight week, scoring 42/90 in joining the bands name. This week’s quiz requires you to guess the song title from some lyrics – all these songs have…
With all the success The Flaming Lips enjoyed with their layered, emotional Pet Sounds-inspired albums like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, it’s easy to forget that they started back in the 1990s, as a raw, psychedelic guitar band. This song,…
Congratulations to 1001 Albums Geoff, who scored full marks in last week’s tough singer geography quiz. This week you need to put together 9 letter band names. Normally I don’t find time a problem, but this week I really…
Between 1996 and 2011, Mark Prindle wrote thousands of album reviews for his website, www.markprindle.com. His reviews were often focused just as much on humour as they were on music, as his stream of consciousness style was over the top…
Although jazz bassist Charles Mingus was best known for his musical accomplishments, he was a renaissance man with interests in surprising areas, namely the Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program. Mingus writes that it took him three or four weeks to…
Congratulations to Tony, who scored 40/40 in last week’s quiz. This week’s quiz, my score won’t be difficult to beat – I amassed a pathetic 1/32 in this minefield quiz. The idea is to click singers in the pattern Canada, United…
‘Heads Roll Off’ has one of my favourite openings – a Church-like organ fills the room, before a chugging guitar and thick Scottish accent delivers a memorable opening line; “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name….to anybody that doesn’t have…
Congratulations to Rich, Tony, and 2loud2old, who all scored 25/28 in last week’s 7 to 1 female artist quiz. We’ve been dabbling in pop recently, so this quiz is more classic rock oriented. Name the album, given the albums before…
Piero Scarrufi has run an internet site since the 1980s, covering not only music, but travel, film, politics, and pretty much everything else. He’s a fascinating character, and he’s created an alternative canon of challenging albums from outside the mainstream…
