Tag Archives: art

If you're wondering about the name change…

Astute, observant or just plain obsessed readers may well have noticed that after many years of calling this Alex’s Blog I’ve finally decided to change name to nutty’s nuggets. I’d love to claim that this change was precipitated by weeks of research or even some discussion. But no, instead it’s me ignoring what made this happen:

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Above is a chart of my views by week, as you can see 2007 was barely scraping along fed in part thanks to my total lack of blogging at times. Then I made my annual blog about music of the year a month early. As of today that post has had 1,078 views on the site here, more than 10 times the next most popular post which is merely a couple of linked Gondry youtube clips. Now I think some of what caused that success was calling the blog Alex’s Blog which made it float up to the top of largeheartedboy‘s roundup which fed me nearly 1,000 of those 1,078 views! However, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m going to get linked elsewhere I should have a snappier name hence nutty’s nuggets, which at least is as endearingly rubbish as my site design.

On an interesting side note, I was also linked from and had my data scraped for Hype Machine’s 2007 roundup, which includes their rather nice visual version of my top 10 albums of 2007, which they explain a bit in their own blog.

Anyone who’s been following the blog since then, don’t panic!, musical content here will ramp up as I get off my arse to go to gigs and as the new albums by Devotchka, Misty’s Big Adventure and Madness turn up…

The day Stylus dies

is tomorrow, ‘sniff.

As a fan of the site, I think it’s only right that I point you at a number of their articles to encourage you to fall in love with the site just before they stop putting up new content.

Why White Town – Your Woman was a one-off moment of pop genius

The audacity, not to mention ludicrous improbability, of “Your Woman” is astounding in retrospect

The non-stop nastiness of “Gotta Get Thru This”: Dom Passantino’s Survey of the New Millenium’s UK #1 Singles – Article – Stylus Magazine:

060410-2000-01.jpg
Madonna- American Pie
[03/05/2000; 1 week]

It takes a bad, bad song to make a man feel sorry for Don McLean, but this is that song. Don’s version, for all its faults, was at least a cryptic crossword that gave dullards something to decode before their next CAMRA meeting. This, on the other hand, is more like The Sun’s coffee break crossword, with the official first appearance of “SHOCKING LESBIAN OVERTONES” in a #1 song (more will follow) of the millennium. Whatever last vestiges of “not-horrid” this song has are wiped out by the backing vocals, deep in the mix, sounding eerily like Terence Trent D’Arby speaking at you through a medium. In the chronology of Madge #1’s, this comes between “Frozen” and “Music.” It’s a trough between those two moderate peaks.
[1/10]


(which runs all the way from the start of 2000 right up to Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy and reminds you of the terror)

A very nasty dig at Jarvis Cocker, which I don’t agree with but still love, if only for comparing him to the singer from Baby D.

Where record collections go when their owners go where they cannot.

And the ultimate and scary triumph of the fanboy.

Also, naturally, they mainly reviewed albums so it seems only right to link to their right-headed review of Caribou’s Andorra, which unlike most annoying reviews managed to pay attention to the last two tracks, Irene and Niobe which I think are easily the most important and interesting on the album.

‘sniff, at least there’s still Popmatters.

A five song <embed>

last.fm now does a kinda funky playlist feature on their beta site. I’d been moaning that the mixtape art was a tad dead in the age of mp3 the other day so it’s nice to have something that brings it back a bit.

On the downside, I can only add complete tracks that happen to be on the site, but I found five I rather like – so it’s hardly that tricky. Still, it’s 1000x better than myspace and you can download any of the first three tracks if you like them. Win supreme.

My tracklisting:
  1. El Perro del Mar – God Knows(You Gotta Give To Get)
  2. Jason Forrest – Stepping Off
  3. GOLDEN SHOWER – Video Computer System
  4. Jason Forrest – War Photographer
  5. Aztec Camera – Oblivious