General elections are held every three years in New Zealand and they’re due soon. Our electoral system is known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP for short). Everyone gets two votes – one for a party and one for an electorate…
Lloyd Chudley Alexander was stationed in Wales during the Second World War. He was inspired by the country’s scenery and castles, as well as the Welsh mythology of the Mabinogion. He took names and ideas from Welsh mythology, mixing them…
Published in 1931–32, with 12 volumes, 7 million words, 9,000 pages and 50,000 articles, the second edition of Everyman’s Encyclopedia was edited by Athelstan Ridgway. We recently inherited our family’s set. I’ve been bemused by their section on jazz, and…
In April 2021, some posts on this music website, like 10 Worst Songs of the 1980s and 10 Best Hit Songs of the 1980s, went vaguely viral. My traffic doubled in a month, and I considered monetising this site as…
It’s local election season here in New Zealand. In my home city of Lower Hutt, we have the now standard blend of people running for mayor. Some pleasant community-minded citizens, interspersed with a few conspiracy theorists – a bush-faced gentleman…
If I were in charge, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would have capped membership years ago. There’d be a small and select field of fifty entrants, limiting it to household names like Elvis Presley, James Brown, and The…
My grandmother was a dedicated L.M. Montgomery fan. She had an entire display cabinet filled with Montgomery’s work and made the pilgrimage from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Canada to visit Prince Edward Island. The appreciation of the Anne books has…
Great music isn’t always synonymous with great lyrics – early Beach Boys records dressed up Mike Love’s mundane teen dramas with genius harmonies and sophisticated chord changes. Yes adorned Jon Anderson’s cosmic nonsense with their amazing instrumental chops. Perhaps the…
I recently participated in a song draft facilitated by Hans of SliceTheLife. Along with 12 other music bloggers, I selected 10 songs. I set myself some restrictions for my draft – after all, this site is already full of lists…
The Gaulish warrior Asterix has been a French institution since he first appeared in 1961’s Asterix the Gaul. He’s accompanied by his inseparable friend Obelix and aided by the druid Getafix’s magic potion that gives superhuman strength. His cunning defends…
When I was a teenager in the 1990s, the 1980s were often reviled as the decade that taste forgot. But I think this list is far less heinous than the 10 Worst Songs of the 1970s – the corporate vibes…
Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé, published the first Tintin adventure in the Catholic magazine Le Vingtième Siècle in 1929. The final, unfinished Tintin book, Tintin and Alph-Art, appeared in 1986, three years after Hergé’s death. During that…
I recently participated in an album draft, run by Hans from Like everyone else I picked 10 albums, but I used mine to also tell a story about music fandom. Here are ten albums that broadened my horizons about…
As a young music fan, I was heavily reliant on Greatest Hits for my collection. I earned $3 for mowing the lawn and new albums cost $20, so compilations were a sure-fire way of getting bang for my buck. Compilations…
General elections are held every three years in New Zealand, and they’re due soon. Our electoral system is known as MMP – Mixed Member Proportional. Everyone gets two votes – one for a party and one for an electorate MP…
I’ve been using Last.fm to track my music plays for more than a decade. This week I hit the landmark of 200,00 tracks played. Last.fm doesn’t track all the music I listen to – I currently only have it scrobbling…
Music’s ultimately about the recorded product, but being handsome certainly doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to launch a career in entertainment. While a woman’s attractiveness might keep her from being taken seriously, a man’s handsomeness is nothing but an asset.…
Hi everyone! Occasionally my blog receives requests asking me to review albums from emerging artists. The rhythm of my blog isn’t really set up for this at the moment, so I’m wondering if any fellow bloggers would like to be…
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at when bands peak – I’ve always enjoyed band’s later albums where they are more confident and more diverse. My graphs based on my ratings bore this out – this graph was based on…
It’s easy to find lists of great debut albums, but personally I often prefer a band’s later records, where they stretch their wings, becoming more diverse and more comfortable in the studio. Bands’ debut albums are often the most pure,…
There’s a stereotype in popular music of youth and charisma, but not everyone fits the mould. Here are five very talented individuals whose personal style choices are more suited to the public library than to the pop charts. Lisa Loeb…
A game I like to play on my cycle commute from work is figuring out the best band of each ten year era. For instance, The Beatles and Bob Dylan are contenders for 1960-1970, while 1985-1995 has a few contestants,…
Ten worst pop stinkers ever I wrote this in response to a list published in a major New Zealand weekly magazine (The NZ Listener). It was published, despite its unusual format, in February 2002: Even though the enjoyment of a…
