I had great fun chatting with the Rock's Backpages crew - Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Jasper Murison-Bowie - for this week's RBP Podcast.  We talked about the UK music press and my time on Melody Maker, about Bob Stanley and Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha, about Heaven 17's Penthouse and Pavement and a whole bunch of other things including the late Lee Perry and the late Charlie Watts.  

This week at Rock's Backpages, there's also a spotlight on some of my archival pieces, including a review of the 1987 Monsters of Rock Castle Donington festival, an appreciation of Joy Division based around the film Control, and "Worth Their Wait", a tribute to the print music press of yesteryear,  There's also a 1991 piece of mine on Saint Etienne as part of their St Et spotlight, linked to their new album I've Been Trying To Tell You. 

They also have a piece on mine of roots and dub reggae as part of their Lee Perry tribute. 

Writing in Reading ( x 2)

Next week I arrive in Reading for the conference Writing the Noise: the Politics and History of Subcultural Music, organised by the Subcultures Network at the University of Reading.

On Thursday 6th September, I'm delivering the opening keynote, a talk titled "Writing About Music: Then, Now and Tomorrow", followed by Q+A. That's at 11 am, in the Henley Business School Room  G11.

On Friday 7th September, I join fellow Melody Maker vets David Stubbs and Cathi Unsworth for the closing session of the conference: a panel discussion about the UK weekly music press and rock journalism moderated by Matt Worley (the man behind the whole conference). That's at  5: 15 pm in the Henley Business School Room G11.

In between there are tons of other interesting talks and discussions about subcultures, music genres, sonic formations, and the politics of fandom and tribal identity - everything from the Bristol Sound to John Maus via Italian punk, skiffle, female skinheads and the Meatwhistle.

More information about Writing the Noise here.

Bizarrely - having never been to Reading in my life before, not even for the Reading Festival - I return to the city a little over a fortnight later for another conference at the University, this one organised by Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

EuroNoize: Art Bands, DiY Music and Cultural Identity takes place on  Friday 21st September.  My talk is at 4.30 p.m. and is titled "DIY - then, now, tomorrow." Location for the conference is Madjieski Lecture Theatre, Room RGL04, Agriculture Building, University of Reading.

Loads of other interesting talks and speakers that day including glam scholar Philip Auslander, critic Sarah Lowndes and Chris Bohn of The Wire / NME renown. And that chap Matt Worley pops up again talking about the Marquis de Sade with a paper titled "Whip In My Valise" !

More information about EuroNoize and full schedule here. Tickets available here.

accuse me of excessive loyalty to my old collegial cohort, but i gotta say that the ex-Melody Maker writers have been ON FIRE the last couple of weeks...

you've probably seen this sulphuric diatribe by Neil Kulkarni on music writing today

but check out also this slightly older piece of similar theme and tone

then there was David Stubbs with the most entertaining piece I've read in many a month...  taking on  the Herculean, or to be more precise, Augean, task of  reviewing for The Quietus the "A" shelf of John Peel's record collection (as now conserved for the ages in online virtual form, and howzabout that for archive-fever/retromania?). Or as Stubbs puts it,  "venturing into the giant, holy sphincter of retention that is the Peel archive". The results made me nostalgic for the weekly music paper institution of the Single's Page: invariably a grim all-night ordeal for the writer, but a wholly necessary procedure of cultural hygiene, a ritual cull that converted the lead of redundant musical production (born of misguided ambition, or the after-dregs of a DIY ethos long past its salience point) into the gold of reader-amusement.

a tough act to follow, Stubbs, but Everett True has a good stab with the letter C. (But what happened to B, eh?)

also at Quietus, there's Taylor Parkes interviewing Kevin Shields. And there's that man Neil K again, with the preface to the second series of A New Nineties, looking at the US underground rock that paralleled the UK p*** r*** he wrote about last time. Looking forward to this series unfolding even though hardly of any of these bands (Bitch Magnet? C'mon, be serious now Neil!) meant shit to me.

(Kulkarni's other Quietus multi-part epic "Eastern Spring" is set to become a Zer0 book I see)