• The bit that you skip #103: The Charlatans – Up at the lake

    Is there a friendship after a relationship ends? It’s a pickle and I don’t believe there’s a catch all answer. It’s a case per case situation and even when it seems a friendship could be an option, it might be a fragile one. I’m fifty fifty on the topic. Some have become great friends, others,…

  • The bit that you skip #102: Broken Social Scene – Almost Crimes

    Picture this. It’s a saturday in 2008. You’re unemployed but have some money from odd jobs. You managed to score a ticket for one of the hottest gigs in town. You have no idea of 5 out of the 6 bands that night, and you go with a couple of friends you will no longer…

  • The bit that you skip #101: Laura Branigan – Self Control

    As a kid of the 80s, I had the stupidest crush and her name was Laura Branigan. Even if the video for Self Control freaked the fuck out of me, I found her eyes enthralling, and her crystal vocals soothed my fidgety nature. Years later I would find out that William Friedkin, as in, William…

  • The bit that you skip #100: Alice in Chains – Rooster

    Wow, a hundred days of writing! It’s been a while since I’ve managed to write every day, but it was a new year’s proposal and I plan to stick to it. I had another song ready, but I decided to leave it for post two hundred. Besides, it seems that destiny chose Alice in Chains.…

  • The bit that you skip #99: Nelly Furtado – Explode

    I might as well start with this: I’m not a fan. I tried, but I don’t find myself liking Nelly Furtado’s albums at all. However, there’s always the one track that I really like. In some cases, more than one! The Missy Elliot remix of Get your freak on is not one of them. It…

  • The bit that you skip #98: Letting up despite great faults – postcard

    Supposedly, trends repeat each other every 20 years or so. That value changes, though. I remember the wave of rockabilly acts in the 80s. The 90s had on its first half the 60s and 70s resonating heavily in alternative and grunge, then went for a big band revival that I enjoyed quite a bit, since…

  • The bit that you skip #97: Icehouse – Electric Blue

    All that time before I used MTV latino as a music discovery tool, my only source could be either the radio or whatever my family was listening to. Maybe a song from a movie or tv show, but that was seldom the case. The one radio station I used to listen to while doing homework…

  • The bit that you skip #96: The Icicle Works – Whisper to a scream (birds fly)

    There’s an oft-quoted phrase by John Nathan Turner, former producer of Dr Who, used to disqualify fan opinions. “The Memory Cheats”. It can be a little off-putting once you are the target of it, but strip away its attachment to Who Fandom, and you get a short but sweet rebuttal to misremembered facts. It was…

  • The bit that you skip #95: Silversun Pickups – Rusted Wheel

    I’m a sucker for introspection, and although people tell me I’m too hard on myself, I think the opposite. As the great Ice Cube would say “check yourself before you wreck yourself”, and there’s too many bad decisions I’ve taken that could’ve been avoided by some carefully thinking. Or any thinking at all. Getting stuck…

  • The bit that you skip #94: Veruca Salt – Shutterbug

    In the summer of ’97, I had an emergency surgery. It was my first time staying at a hospital and it was terrifying. It was a family condition regarding my gall bladder, as both my aunt and my grandad had theirs removed. On my father’s side, his youngest brother also had an emergency removal. So…