ReynoldsRetro

Note how the copyeditor assumed that the 2 in "2 Bad Mice" was me having started and abandoned a numbering system but having forgotten to remove the 2 in front of the second entry - gah!

JOHN'S CHILDREN A Midsummer Night's Scene (Bam Caruso) Melody Maker, 1987 by Simon Reynolds typos alert: -- "echory" should be "echoey" -- "proto-cutie change" should be "proto-cutie chant"

Would you believe, I have actually written about ZZ Top?

The Face is no more - again.

The Caretaker Everywhere at the End of Time 2019 History Always Favours The Winners (part of Resident Advisor's 2000-2025 Best Albums) Memories are ghosts inside your mind; samples are ghosts extracted from records and trapped in forever loops.

A tribute to Robert Wyatt, written and recorded for remote participation in a 2025 birthday celebration for the Great Man, organized by Sukhdev Sandhu at NYU Another great Englishman Mark E.

(a talk I gave at Harvard in 2012 at a conference on Art + Rock) “When 'art' walks through the door, it's got 15 suitcases full of very smelly washing (ideas of 'geniuses', 'creativity', 'individualism', and the rest of it)...which as far as we're concern…

In honour of the new RHCP doc, which is focused on Hillel Slovak, their tragically-died-young guitarist, and in further honour of Flea's jazz album, here are some writhings about the band.

THE RESIDENTS RETRO-ACTIVE Melody Maker, 1989?

from the 2017 Pitchfork greatest-IDM-list (that ruffled a few feathers, that did, it was like negative catnip for nerds!

One intriguing counterfactual in rock history is what would have happened if drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist John McKay had not quit Siouxsie and the Banshees at the start of a major tour - after an altercation at an LP signing session in an Aberdeen r…

Big shout to Matthew Ingram the Mighty Woebot whose tape of the early Black Dog EPs introduced me to their most magickal musik phase.

Sleeve notes for In A Moment...

director's cut of piece in the The Guardian, roughly a year ago - with the follow-up blog pieces below I started blogging in 2002.

Danny Thompson worked with a host of people, including a stint in Pentangle, but for many of us he is inseparable from the name John Martyn - and revered as the co-author of "Go Down Easy", "I'd Rather Be The Devil", "Solid Air", "Couldn't Love You More",…

Oneohtrix Point Never Village Voice, July 6, 2010 by Simon Reynolds Daniel Lopatin, the young man behind the spacey and spacious mindscapes of Oneohtrix Point Never, operates out of a cramped bedroom in Bushwick.

Pete Shelley tribute Pitchfork, December 8 2028 by Simon Reynolds The first and only time I saw Buzzcocks play live was in 2012, at the Incubate festival in Holland.

A Split Second / A Taste of Sugar / Erotic Dissidents Sin, London Melody Maker, January 21 1989 by Simon Reynolds

Melody Maker, November 18, 1989 April 15th 1989 - a swipe in a Melody Maker singles page BLACK SABBATH The Complete 70's Replica CD Collection 1970-78 (Sanctuary Records) Uncut, 2001 by Simon Reynolds The mystery of the riff--so crucial to rock, so oddly…

When I wrote this snide review of the dirty old man's memoir I'd clean forgotten that if nothing else he had made the best Stone-involved record of the last - well now it would 3 and a half decades - but in 1990 just a decade.

Belated RIP... there's been a lot going on...

LCD Soundsystem, live, a week ago, Bowery Ballroom… … was more exciting than I’d thought.

Melody Maker, June 18 1986 David Thomas at the first Carrot Festival, Warsaw, Poland - Melody Maker April 18 1987 Pere Ubu at the second Carrot festival in Budapest, Hungary Melody Maker, April 2 1988 Melody Maker, June 24 1989 Finally, in 2002, I got to…

The Feelies / Died Pretty ULU, London Melody Maker, November 29 1986 The Feelies The Good Earth Melody Maker, September 27 1986 And the answer is.... no.

Well, if the last few weeks in LA have not been traumatizing enough - and then we've had the hideousness of the inauguration and unfolding horror of the first few days of Trump: The Return... on top of all that, there's also been a flurry of sad-making de…