LATEST ADDITIONS

When people ask me if I miss it, I'm quick to make a face. My left eye might scrunch up tight, while the right shoots out like a feathered arrow, raising its brow like an exclamation mark. My nose and lips tighten, become wrinkled. Everything about this face expresses some sort of pain, maybe even disgust. Like I've been slapped, like I've just downed a mouthful of sour milk. Do I miss it? Are you out of your mind? What is there to miss: Late nights?; Heavy gear?; Bad crowds?; No crowd?

<i><b>The Good, The Bad & The Queen</i></b><br>
EMI/Parlophone

Any explanation that includes YouTube clips of the Marx Brothers <I>and</I> Maria Callas is jake by me.

The end times must be nigh: Sony, the company that wouldn't even admit MP3 existed, now makes an iPod docking station.

She was queen of the jungle.

Ada Calhoun writes about the summer she swanned around New York under the influence of Neil Gaiman's <I>Sandman</I>.

Regular readers of this here blog may wonder why I've linked so many times to maps of the London Underground. I've always loved the clean design of Harry Beck's 1933 map because it looks so much like a circuit diagram and conveys complex three-dimensional information so clearly in 2D.

Leon Bambrick's guitar tutorial eliminates all the boring parts. You don't even learn to tune until lesson five&mdash;and then it goes like this:
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"Buy a tuner and ask your girlfriend to learn how to use it. If you can't afford either of these then ask either a roadie or the band playing after you to tune the guitar for you."

Sean O'Hagan makes some mix tapes and laments the lost art of the sleeve note.

CD sales are sliding, and the download market is still up for grabs. If you ran a major record label, what would be your next move?