Author: Kirkland Ciccone
-
The Brenda Walsh Hatefest ’93
Television is the great pacifier, a true switch on/switch off experience. But what if there’s a character in your favourite fictional escape you absolutely cannot stand? These days, whole communities have sprung up online, massive groups dedicated to the phenomenon of ‘hate-watching’. The internet has allowed us to connect over our shared hatred of fictional […]
-
Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet
Moving through crowded Edinburgh with a friend, we talked as fast as we walked, trying to make it to Patisserie Valerie for dinner. I hadn’t seen Roy in a while and we were discussing our favourite things which were writing, music, and Doctor Who. At some point, we got our subjects tangled up. “Matthew Sweet’s […]
-
Wogan, 1985. The Grace Jones Moment.
One image has stuck to my brain from childhood, one of many, but this one stayed a little stronger and lasted a little longer. For years I remembered a figure wrapped in bandages in front of a microphone. The lights moved, the music started, and they – whoever they were – slowly began to unpeel […]
-
Cut by The Slits
Everything I learned about London came from an album called Cut by a band named The Slits. I bought it at Avalanche Records in Glesga, while at college, one eye on my work, the other on a city that always pulled at me. London needs no explanation. For me, London birthed punk. The real punk. […]
-
A secret history of Cumbernauld Town Centre
Cumbernauld Town Centre eats pigeons alive. They find their way into the guts of the building, flying into windows and walls, slamming so hard they drop to the floor. Residents of Cumbernauld sympathise, because we often feel like we’re hitting walls too. It wasn’t always this way. Town planners trying to find space for the […]
-
The Blair Witch Project ruined my childhood
We were all far less sophisticated back in the nineties, which made manipulation far easier, yet it was a different kind of coercive dishonesty to the sort peddled on Facebook via shared posts, the sort taken for actual news. People are differently stupid now. These days, we know when something is being marketed at us […]
-
Garbage by Garbage
Nineteen Ninety-Six was a year where I was slowly starting to form myself through music and art. Before that, music was something I listened to for enjoyment, something in the charts I bought because it was popular and catchy. The bands I’d inherited from my dad (The Smiths, The Cure, The Slits, Siouxsie And The […]
-
Apathetic Fabulosity! *My years as an Electroclash fan*
While everyone else in the world infatuated themselves with The Strokes and their retro rock revivalism, I threw my lot in with Electroclash, which immediately appealed to me on the most basic of levels. The aesthetic was both shiny and tacky, reveling in it’s meretricious presentation. Electroclash was a brilliant mixture of super serious and […]
-
Aurora Gory Alice by Letters To Cleo
Letters To Cleo are brilliant and this is my favourite album they did. Let’s take a quick look at how I found them – and how long I had to pause the tape to see their name in the credits!
-
Oh Marina Girl by Graham Lironi
I look back at Oh Marina Girl, the Glesga cult novel that I felt never got the attention it deserved…
Kirkland Ciccone 