Going For A Song: ‘Murder Most Foul’
Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul
Earlier this year in March Bob Dylan released ‘Murder Most Foul’. Nick Cave wrote about the song in The Red Hand Files Issue #91 in April. Now in November I’m finally able to do what I couldn’t find time to do back then, and that is direct your attention to both.
Going For A Song: ‘Punks in the Beerlight’
First Port of the Season

Opened it last Saturday night. And though I don’t see how it could possibly be necessary, a reminder of how I define the season.
- Drinking: Port (obviously)
- Reading: Breaking Bread with The Dead, Alan Jacobs
- Music: Silver Jews. “But before I go I gotta ask you dear about that tan line on your ring finger”. ‘Random Rules’. David Berman (RIP).
Going For A Song: ‘1995’
Going For A Song: ‘The Things I Say’
Going For A Song: ‘We Only Come Out At Night’
Smashing Pumpkins – We Only Come Out At Night
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
Going For A Song: ‘Pretty World’
Sam Baker – Pretty World
I saw Sam Baker in January by chance. It was AmericanaFest UK. My friend and I wanted a drink and Sam happened to be next on in the bar we wandered into. I didn’t buy any of his music that night, but over the next few months I bought his entire back catalogue. His music became the music of my summer.
Highly refined type of mistake
People who think technology is going to lead to a mistake free world are very wide of the mark. What are you going to get is a different argument about a more highly refined type of mistake. And it’s going to come down to scrutiny of inches and millimeters of a television screen, rather than a judgment made out in the middle.
Ed Smith
Ed Smith was talking in 2018 about the cricket review system, but as Liverpool’s disallowed goal in the Merseyside derby yesterday proves again (it being just the most recent example), what he said is turning out to be more than true for VAR in football.
Going For A Song: ‘Once in a Lifetime’
Talking Heads – Once in a lifetime
It’s so familiar, so beloved, so immediately and everlastingly catchy, that it’s easy to no longer notice just how weird it is. As is often the way, while seeking to do their most self-consciously experimental work, the band fashioned their finest moment of pure pop. Has any magnificent pop song been quite so eccentric; has anything quite so eccentric become so magnificent a pop song?
And the Heat Goes On: Talking Heads’ Remain in Light At 40