Books last. Okay, some books last. Some books are hailed upon publication and instantly attain 'classic' status; the reputation of others grows only slowly; still others appear and just as quickly vanish. Reputations, too. In the 'Horror Rewind' series I've looked at a selection of horror fiction from the 70s and 80s to examine how … Continue reading Horror rewind #7 – ‘Skeleton Crew’ magazine, July 1990
For my eleventh birthday, in 1985, my parents bought me a home computer. What I wanted was an Amstrad CPC464 (because it was black and green and had a built-in cassette deck for loading games). What I got was a Commodore 64. Within minutes of booting it up, all thoughts of the Amstrad were forgotten. … Continue reading Oliver Frey 1948-2022
Or, me on about memory again, and not really football. First, a bit of football history context. In the late 70s and early 80s, the so-called "New Firm" of Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly upset the traditional domination of the Scottish game by the Glasgow "Old Firm" of Rangers and Celtic. The reasons for this … Continue reading The boy in the crowd
Bob Fischer's The Haunted Generation - both his blog and monthly article for Fortean Times - is required reading for anyone interested in the whole arena of hauntology & creepily "wrong" nostalgia. One of his current strands is "Felt Trips", unearthing artworks created by kids in the 70s and 80s. Some of these are homages … Continue reading The Haunted Generation – “Felt Trips”
Let me start this extremely digressive review with a long digression. My 18th birthday was in May 1992. Eighteen is a rite-of-passage birthday, though of course different teenagers arrive at it with differing levels of maturity. I've previously written about the way we have different "selves" - co-existing within us are personas that can differ … Continue reading Review – “Amorphous Albion” by Ben Graham (2018)
Regular readers will know that I like both professional and recreational cycling. Many professional races (such as the Tour de France) hold events called sportives which allow recreational cyclists the chance to ride the same route as the pros. One of the longest-established of these is the sportive attached to my favourite bike race, the … Continue reading Landscape, politics and sport: the Ronde van Vlaanderen
The rapid spread of sampling in pop music in the late 80s made the idea of a cover version passé. A cover, after all, was generally a form of tribute to pop's rich history. Sampling as an artform ripped snatches of that history from its original context, juxtaposed it next to other slices, and created … Continue reading Slip Inside This House – cover versions in the age of sampling
I wrote this a month or so ago, before we all entered the current COVID-19 nightmare. I can't help but worry about the lingering effect this will have on today's kids, long after the immediate emergency is over. Anyway, I wrote this in response to a Twitter CfP from @horrifyingbook who are looking to compile … Continue reading Children’s TV – The Stuff of Nightmares
One of the boys in this photo is now dead. Today would have been his 45th birthday. Why do I remember something like that? I didn't know him particularly well. As it happens, his family moved away when we were in 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th?) year of High School, so I never saw him … Continue reading “All those moments…”
"At last, the night has a hero" - Cabal strapline. I've written elsewhere about the anticipation my friends and I felt in the months before the release of Clive Barker's second feature film Nightbreed in the autumn of 1990. Not that we got to see it: an unimpressive box-office in America meant it only got … Continue reading At last…Clive Barker’s ‘Nightbreed’ (1990/2014)
Into the Gyre 