Nine Feet Underground

Up at the crack of dawn...steady! Not chuffed to be up so early, but quite chuffed to find I've lost weight again, not much admittedly, but a further step in the right direction, despite an increase in the chocolate and alcohol content of my diet.  Obviously I need to drink more and eat more chocolate! Shopping (x2). Took ages, queued for something like 35 minutes, worst Saturday so far. Why was it busier? No idea.  Got there same time as usual, if not earlier. The woman behind me in the queue, who had a strong Northern Irish accent (which matters why? It doesn't, just added colour), said it was the first time she'd come shopping on a  Saturday, and it was going to be her last! Return home. Carers still here, even though I was about 30 minutes later than normal.  They are both well, though they tell me that Bear's catheter has been bypassing and so I'll need to flush it later/during the lunchtime call. Unpack shopping and go through the whole rigmarole of wha...

I'm reading this book, 'Good Night and Good Riddance', about the influence John Peel and his radio shows had on music and cultural life for over 35 years.  It's a great book that I'd thoroughly recommend and, despite the book's subtitle, it's no hagiography, and casts a critical eye at times, even though, on balance (and I'm up to 1979), it pretty much confirms what fans, including myself, thought of him and his maverick musical taste. This post, however, is not a book review - that'll appear on goodreads after I finish it - it's about a question that gets raised in the book when the story reaches the mid-1970s.   [Oh, and in case the title of this post misled anyone, this is not going to be about the Midlands grebo band, affectionately referred to as PWEI aka Pop Will Eat Itself: this is not the article you are looking for.] My question - and it's not posed as a question in the book - concerns the state of rock music around ...