I miss Shoegaze

Some Slowdive ('Souvlaki Space Station' from the epic album Souvlaki), and my favourite Mojave 3 track, 'Mercy', though the full electric version has more power. Shoegaze is now highly fashionable as an influence over some electronic bands, but they just don't have the shame that's so integral to the genre.

Never mind Michael bloody Jackson

Swells is dead! Steven Wells, the wonderful, angry, witty, committed music writer from the days when NME did more than print bands' press releases. He died of the seemingly inevitable cancer: his final column (for the Philadelphia Weekly) treats cancer pretty much the same way as he treated all the bands I liked - with total contempt.

How I loved buying NME on Wednesday morning to see what fresh torture he'd inflicted on the English language to express his true feelings towards Slowdive, the Field Mice or anyone else who wasn't absolutely bloody furious every single day. Charlie Brooker learned everything he knows from Swells, though he as yet hasn't managed to write an anarcho-Trotskyist novel entitled Tits Out Teenage Terror Totty.