December 2025

  • Money’s too tight to mention: class, cash and the art of the deal

    Money’s too tight to mention: class, cash and the art of the deal

    This is one of the essays I wrote to accompany Stewart Cunningham’s pictures in our wee book Big Rhythm: 1980s pop snapshots from Scotland. Too late to get a copy I think now before Christmas, though I have one or two with me on the south side of Glasgow and I think Stewart has a…

  • The bands who will not die

    , , , ,

    On the 18th of April 1975, I was part of the reverent mass of mostly males in the Apollo, Glasgow. Steve Howe played The Clap. Jon Anderson sang in that twee angelic monotone. I really didn’t understand the complications of the near-songless music, possessing none of Yes’s albums. But the band were huge, somehow I’d…

  • (Caught up) in this Big Rhythm…

    Signed copies available now for £9.99 plus postage ONLY from https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheBeatcroftShop Big Rhythm was going to be called Caught Up In This Big Rhythm, but as that’s a line from a Blue Nile song, Tinsel Town In the Rain, legal discretion was the better part of copyright valour. Now, as you’ll realise, there’s no connection…