Thursday, January 10, 2013




Tomorrow it will be exactly ten years since Matthew Ingram launched the first of several blogs,  That Was A Naughty Bit of Crap.

This week Matt has published an e-book collection of his best bloggage: The Big Book of Woe. It contains classic posts from TWANBOC, Woebot, woebotnik, Cybore, plus reviews and features for FACT, The Wire, Loops, and various other bits and bobs like sleeve notes Blogging and writing you can't find online because Matt, the canny bugger, took it all down.

The Big Book of Woe is lavishly illustrated and runs to 829 pages.

I wrote the preface.

The Big Book of Woe is a fantastic document of an era of internet discourse that it is hard not to view in "golden age" terms. A great pleasure to sift through and reread for Matt's insights into music, for his good humour and supremely characterful voice, The Big Book of Woe was also a poignant experience for me. A flashback to the early blog scene's sense of community: amiable, sometimes fractious, always spirited and exuberant. 

You can buy The Big Book of Woe here.