Billy Corgan is not an easy man to like, but from time to time in his career he's made some pretty good records. I should make it clear from the start that I'm hardly a Smashing Pumpkins obsessive: I liked the psych-grunge of "Gish" a lot, and I was distinctly impressed by the translation of ambition into a new kind of stadium rock on "Siamese Dream".
We're partying like it's 1994 here at Uncut this afternoon, because the new Beastie Boys album has arrived. It's called "The Mix-Up", and we're just grooving amiably to track seven, "Off The Grid".
“I can’t for the life of me understand how 50-year-old rock critics can pretend to like Babyshambles,” thunders Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in the current issue of Uncut.
I am, I must confess, a bit unclear about what exactly is meant by the very hip term blog house. I've a hunch that it refers to dance music whose success is driven by online theorists rather than exposure in clubs. But to be honest, I've a bit of a dilettante attitude to the dance scene these days: much as I try to keep up to speed with as much music as I can, I think I'm missing a lot of this stuff.
Forgive the constant references to domestic business at Uncut these past few days, but it's been hard to review much music when we've been in the throes of moving office. We're now firmly established in our luxurious new building just behind the Tate Modern, and have spent the morning trying to understand the new phones and get used to the decor: roughly MODE magazine, redesigned by IKEA, but a damn sight nicer than our old place.
It's a very risky manoeuvre to pull off successfully -- that is, graduating from TV to the movies, from the relatively parochial world of the Channel 4 sitcom to the bright and shiny universe of multiplexes, ancilliary revenue streams and premiers at Leicester Square.
