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February 20, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
Oysterhead in the Grand Pecking Order: A 20th Anniversary No One Will Celebrate?
Later this year The Grand Pecking Order the sole album by the short-lived group Oysterhead will turn 20. Will anyone be celebrating its birthday? I thought I’d get in early… It was a different world, 2001. Music existed online, sure. You could buy CDs from websites. You might get a 10-second preview of some of […]Archive
December 28, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Books That Blew My Mind # 2: “Run With The Hunted” by Charles Bukowski
Run With The Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader by Charles Bukowski I couldn’t really write about Charles Bukowski for my Authors I Admire series because there’s not a lot to admire – beyond the fact that as a writer, not as a human being, he did the time behind the typewriter. But I can rave […]Archive
December 28, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
The Best Albums I Reviewed in 2020
For all the talk of it being a shit year and one to forget there was a lot of great music. There was (probably) a lot of shit music too. I tried my best to avoid as much of that as I could but would always call it out if it crossed my path. Black […]Archive
December 20, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Off The Tracks Christmas Hours 2020: Happy Holidays!
Hiya! I don’t ‘blog’ as often as I used to. I mean it’s all blogging at the end of the day. Reviews, poems, columns, essays – they all live here on this site. And they’re all part of a massive blog. And that’s fine. But daily missives are really a part of Facebook now more […]Archive
December 17, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Books That Blew My Mind: New Series
I love books. I’ve published two (and two e-books as well). I might publish more. And reading has been part of my life since I can remember. I read poetry and graphic novels, non-fiction – including bios and essays and memoir – and of course novels. There are no rules for me with reading – […]Archive
December 15, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 00
Prince, 1999 [Single] (1982) “Two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time” – This is it. The Vinyl Countdown is over; finished. It started back at # 2000 in March of 2011 and it ends now, December 2020. Two thousand two zero, column over, out of time. Or out of numbers. This is […]Archive
November 18, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Remembering The Time I Asked Rowland S. Howard If He Had Any Plans To Tour And He Said He Doubted It Since He Was Dying – A Month Later He Wasn’t Even Close To Wrong
In another lifetime (his!) I spoke to Rowland S. Howard. I didn’t know it at the time – neither did he, though he had far more of an idea than I did – he’d be dead in less than two months. He was dying when he made his last album, the brilliant Pop Crimes. I’ve […]Archive
September 28, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
The Sitting Room Sessions: Margot Pierard & Wil Sargisson
This guy in Hawke’s Bay started this thing a while back called The Sitting Room Sessions – follow the page on Facebook. Check it out. House concerts, basically. Small gigs. Acoustic, primarily. A sitting audience. Waiting to be entertained, open to hearing anything, sure of quality due to the curation by their host. He’s trusted. […]Archive
September 13, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
I Did A Talk About Blogging Now Here’s A Blog About That Talk
This year I was invited to be part of the Manawatu Writers Festival. It’s been a tough year for many things and literary festivals are certainly among the events that have taken a hammering; how hard it must be to organise them anyway. And then the ones that have gone ahead (or are now in […]Archive
September 11, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
The Story Behind The Cover of My New Book
Next month I will release my first book of poems. It’s called The Death of Music Journalism – it’s available to pre-order from now and yesterday I shared the cover image on my Facebook page. I mentioned that it was by my good friend the artist Matthew Couper. But what I didn’t get to say […]Archive
September 10, 2020 by Simon Sweetman