Very different thing in the download era.

43, but your point stands.

I don’t think many Brits really understand the impact of this broadcast. The number of great American musicians who date their decision to follow their chosen career to this one TV show is staggering. If you have some time, have a flick through these quotes.

Here in the UK years ago we had an “entertainer” called Rod Hull who had a large puppet emu (called, imaginatively, Emu) that would attack people.  This was often very irritating for fellow guests in chat shows, for example.  On one occasion a visibly irritated Billy Connolly told Hull that he would break “his neck,…

Actually I’ve just seen what she has said since O’Connor died, and she still doesn’t get it. She now just expresses sympathy for O’Connor’s mental health rather than acknowledging she actually had a point and was trying to help.

The low point for me was her mocking Sinead O’Connor’s mental health issues after O’Connor offered her some clearly well-meaning advice. Hopefully she’s grown up a lot since then.

To be fair, Gillis defines a Republican in his special as “somebody who’s a prick about everything”.

I’ve been getting his shorts on YT as well, and I kind of agree. He gives off a redneck vibe but then his world view seems subtly liberal.  I think I do need to see a bit more of his stuff.

Strangely, I think Seinfeld wasn’t all that, but I enjoyed the finale.

At least I got to see a movie of it!

I also wouldn’t describe America as “British troubadours”.

I loved the fact that when Metallica won Best Metal Performance in 1992, they thanked Jethro Tull for not having put out an album that year.

Everybody in the picture looks like they’ve finally found a vehicle for their Mad Men fantasies.

I was living in New York and had tickets to American Utopia when covid arrived, and I had to return to the UK. I know me not seeing a show was hardly the saddest story of that year, but damn.

I love The Undertones. And one of the big things I love about them is that they looked at the horrific situation emerging in their home town of Derry (and across Northern Ireland) and said, effectively, that just because there’s all this violence and mayhem, it doesn’t mean that all the usual concerns of adolescence…

Everybody knows rock attained perfection in 1974.  It’s a scientific fact.

I’ve always liked this BDTH.

I know the main debate is generally around 8 and 9, and how they screwed them both up in very different ways. But I was already concerned by the way 7 was not really a continuation of the story, but more an attempt to reset by remaking 4, which seemed a bit pointless given how beloved 4 is to people of a certain age.…

I think you’ve ticked off there all of the interesting facts about that track that I have gleaned over the years.  For a while it seemed that anytime anybody ever mentioned the song, I learned something new.

Best thing they ever did was Geno when they had a horn section instead of fiddles and donkey jackets instead of dungarees.