Is the Guardian's music coverage getting good?

it was only the official seven-inch that appeared a year later.

Haha shit you're right, I had a feeling as soon as I submitted that I was myself going to be wrong in some way, it's the pedant's curse.

Always tricky to pinpoint the first truly indie release. I get the argument for making it "So It Goes" - but as I recall, Stiff weren't absolutely totally unquestionably 100% independent, although memory fails as to in what respect. So I've always benchmarked Spiral Scratch instead: a fully homegrown operation, giving a platform to a new band (rather than a former member of a signed band). Or then again, you could start with The Count Bishops' Speedball EP on Chiswick, at the back end of 75...

Stiff's first bunch of singles were distributed by United Artists.

Then they 'joined' Island records, sort of.

Desperate Bicycles? Or is that way too late?

Ah, I had Island in the back of my mind. Yeah, Desperate Bicycles were, ooh, about three or four months after Spiral Scratch - and SS did the whole "breakdown of production costs on the sleeve" thing, which kinda marked it out ideologically.

I think the Speedball e.p. is also what I would say.

Then again, there's always been 'independant' records, I'd even consider "Immediate" to be in the running...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/series/a-history-of-dance-music?page=3 dance music bit is pretty good.
thought the 90s section of the Indie one was baffling.

apart from cringey uk bits

It's mostly UK though.

Actually, seems like recent UK dance music (dubstep and onwards) gets an undue amount of prominence, it's a bit 'history as rewritten by the (current) victors'. Including Rusko and Blackout Crew is very odd when all that the entirety of Europe gets is a nod towards Daft Punk and Villalobos.

it's not possible to condense things into these sort of lists, and it's just a newspaper covering music in the deficient way that newspapers do, is what i have to repeat to myself if i bother to start getting annoyed.

I really like the layout and the idea and the articles

but it's just never going to be close to finished is it?

if it was a standalone website with a staff like amg or something it could probably be amazing but its weird to tack it on to the guardian

actually a standalone website for the dance section entirely consisting of youtubes of seminal tracks would keep me occupied for months

It's something to sell papers: seven supplements in seven days. The problem is that these things can never be marketed as what they are: "Seven supplements containing some things we think are interesting and will entertain you for the duration of your commute" because that's not a strong enough sell, so a stronger form of words is employed. With the result that they are then criticised for not being definitive, when they never could be within their constraints. It's true of all supplements published by all publications on all subjects, really.

That Petridis article linked at the top is such a treasure trove.

As the spell of the 60s wore off, everyone realised they had made a terrible mistake. They didn't actually want to live in communes and share mung beans with their neighbours. Instead they headed back to the safety of their bedsits with only Joni Mitchell or James Taylor for company.

Eek. Or to bring it up closer to the present day:

Britpop died the night England were knocked out of Euro '96

! Or:

I have absolutely no idea what the next Chemical Brothers album is going to sound like.

In 2001?? I did!

xpost completely otm. even the process of trying to be definitive irritates me, or (and this is awful in guardian music stuff) the comments section reserved for "what we forgot" where the first 30 are like "seems you have criminally forgotten hercules and love affair" or "i believe you've omitted booka shade, not exactly comprehensive is it???"

A while ago, every "punk" retrospective seemed to start with the NY scene, added the london scene, and then for some reason ended with James Chance / jazz.

As if someone was desperately trying to make a case for the Wag club being the natural successor to the Pistols and the 100 club..

Are we including an implicit "in the UK" when we're talking about the 1st indie release here?

Throbbing Gristle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_Records

Seems to me there's been an increase in the Guardian's metal coverage in recent months, mainly in response to the complaints of one or two serial posters on the comments board. Today there's a "classic interview with Van Halen", whoop-de-do. The problem for these commenters is that they are always whingeing that the paper's music coverage targets its core demongraphic, without saying why that's a bad thing or a surprise (you wouldn't expect to see Bonnie Prince Billy reviewed in Terrorizer). The end-of-year readers' poll was remarkably similar to the critics' poll, suggesting that the paper is getting its coverage about right.

or its readers are sheep ;0 baaaa

Think it's also because there are quite a few interesting things happening with metal at the moment and the guy they have writing some of the stuff (Dom Lawson, i think) is good. Not sure they'd see Bonny Prince Billy as being the default kind of music they're good at covering.

Do they review metal albums now? or just 'crossover' ones like Mastodon?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/04/adele-success-major-label

xp Mostly crossover stuff that has a bit of traction in the alternative press - Liturgy, Wolves In The Throne Room, Ghost, etc but there are bits and pieces that cater to a wider variety of fans.

idk, i think it's great that a national newspaper has a blog whose last few pieces have been about D'angelo, Adele, David Lee Roth, Taiwanese Chart music, Goldfrapp and Maurizio Pollini.

ahh stuff I like then. Maybe I should read it every day rather than when someone links me to it.

It's funny, I love reading reviews in print mags but I never really read online reviews. I don't even read pitchfork or anything like that.

http://www.brilldream.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/for-record-debunking-myth-of-vinyl.html

Imagine, if you will, a world where the media gets itself all excited about a beer revival. The BBC makes programmes about beer, full of hazily recreated shots of a heavily side-burned young man entering a 70's pub and wistfully buying a pint in a handled glass. The great and the good trip of themselves to comment about how great buying beer is. "You never forget buying your first pint" says one. "There's that silence, then a clink of glass" chimes another "then you get your first sip. It's like magic". The press flies the flag for beer. 'The Beer Revival' screams the Mail headline. "An online poll of 1,700 beer buyers found that 86 per cent of them said it was their favourite ale format. A third of today’s beer fans are aged under 35. 'Beer is back' says another. "The first half of 2013 saw sales of beer increase by over 33%, based on the previous year’s numbers.' Great, you may think to yourself, I like beer. But hang on a minute, I've been buying beer since my late teens and have never stopped, how can it be back if it never went away?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/nov/27/vinyls-making-a-comeback-dont-believe-the-hype

The other night, outside one of those preposterous city-centre places that is both a grocer and a restaurant, I noticed a remarkable deal on offer in the boxes of produce stacked up outside. A bunch of half a dozen or so carrots, green stalks attached at the top, soil clinging to the orange roots, was on sale for a bargain £2.50. You can stick your £1 for a bag bursting with the things from Morrison’s or Iceland, because those are the carrots I want, oh yes. And given that the stupidly priced bunch of carrots with green tops and soil is cropping up in farmers’ markets and chi-chi grocers all across Britain, then I’m calling it now. Never mind that the vast majority of people are still buying their carrots from supermarkets at a much cheaper price, and that there’s no sign of that ever changing, because I’m willing to say there’s a stupidly priced bunch of carrots comeback!

if you're trying to infer that the second article has plagiarised the first then I don't think you have even a glimmer of a case and if not idk what your point is

no inference at all. just thought it was funny.

I wrote the Guardian vinyl blog. Had no idea about the other piece.

did not know but honestly nothing was inferred just that it seems to be a common argument used with slight variations. No offence intended.

None taken. Just pointing it out.

Also making a comeback:
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/abacus.jpg