The ABC in its infinite wisdom has started broadcasting its first run of the BBC’s Seven Ages Of Rock in the Silly Season, with episode one “The Birth Of Rock” shown last week and unfortunately not available on iView. However I was fortunate enough to catch it when broadcast.

Focussing on the explosion of Blues-based Rock from 1963-1970, “The Birth Of Rock” was a rocknerd’s delight, featuring rare performance footage, new and archive interviews with Keith Richards, Roger Daltrey, Ginger Baker etc. and insights from British rock writers including Charles Shaar Murray. I look forward to watching the rest of the series.

Royal Mail has issued a stamp set that commemorates ten classic rock album covers ranging from The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed to Coldplay’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

The stamps were launched on the 7th of January by Jimmy Page, and Led Zeppelin’s “IV” is included in the ten chosen from thousands by Royal Mail for the imagery of their covers rather than the music on the albums themselves.

We’ve all poked fun at him over the years, but one of Rock’n'Roll’s veterans with a big heart, Ronnie James Dio is battling the early stages of stomach cancer in The Mayo Clinic.

If you feel so inclined you can send Ronnie a get well card or email to help him throw the horns at the big C.

“What kind of music do you like?”

Fuck. Who can answer a question like that? I HAVE FUCKING THOUSANDS OF ALBUMS, MOTHERFUCKER. IF YOU CAN FIND THE COMMONALITY OTHER THAN “THEY’RE IN THE SAME HOUSE,” YOU’VE JUST PRODUCED A NEW GRAND UNIFIED FUCKING THEORY OF MUSIC AND THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER CAN JUST FUCKING GIVE UP AND GO HOME LIKE THE N00B IT IS.

(And pissed off at myself that I haven’t come up with a glib small-talk answer to that question that I wouldn’t choke on saying out loud.)

What makes you RAAAGE so hard you want to throw the record player out the window?

From The Guardian: 1970s rock stars with their parents. “Life photographer John Olson’s extraordinary pictures of the biggest rock stars of the 1970s at home with their folks.” We all want Frank Zappa’s living room.

Ron Asheton has died aged 60, apparently of “natural causes” with no suspicious circumstances. LOOK, PUNK ROCKERS, THIS JUST ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH. JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE OLD AND STUFF DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH “NO SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.” p.s.: Damn.

Almost fifty years ago, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash with some guys called Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. His family exhumed him last year to move his remains to a more visible location with a life-sized statue.

So his family are selling his coffin. A 16-gauge steel casket. On eBay.

Now, that’s industrial.

“Most remarkably, his thick brown hair was still perfectly coiffed in his familiar, 1950s flat-top.” Phew!

Any Church album recorded after 1990 is complete shite — tedious stoner hippy noodling with no songs at all and far too much pot. After Gold Afternoon Fix, I was thrilled to get Priest = Aura in the post, then I played it and couldn’t remember a note. Went “wha … ?” and played it again. All 70 minutes. One quick smoke at Spot’s too many.

So here’s a nice thing: the demos for Gold Afternoon Fix. Found on a cassette thrown in the studio bin. Remember when the Church wrote singles?

(A Box Of Birds from 1999 is also good. Because it’s all covers. They still play songs really well, they’ve just given up writing them.)

(The relentless negativity of “music industry terminally stupid, BitTorrent at 11″ wears me down too. I’ll try to talk about actual music more often.)

(Or the other way around!)

Keith Cameron wrote earlier this year in the Grauniad of all places about the re-release after twenty years of “My Pal” a much loved Australian indie single by God whose members went on to work with Spencer P. Jones and Bored and form Hoss and Powder Monkeys.

I know that the original single got a fair bit of air play on campus radio in the USA, but didn’t know it was known in the UK, unless John Peel played it!

[Update] I’ve just been advised that John Peel played “My Pal” on his show in 1988 and it was taped by a friend that still remembers it, thanks Marge!

In a response to Rolling Stone’s review of the reissue of U2’s early album Boy, Bono likens The Edge to Van Gogh and recording the album to the protagonist’s growing up in The Tin Drum.

Thanks to Joel Silbersher for the heads up.

Back in my day, Bruce Springsteen was a ridiculously mainstream live rocker made pop star with “Born In The USA” and its ilk. I’d just like you to imagine that guy, flannel shirt, doing Suicide live, vocals and foot-pumped harmonium like Nico used to favour. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine it. WHAT.

No, really - late on the evening of Wednesday April 10th. You can read the original text on the NSW Parliament site, or from their Hansard search page.

It’s probably a symptom of demographic creep. After all, we’re already getting goth politicians coming through.

Regardless, Rocknerd offers a drink to the Hon. Amanda Fazio. And her little dog too!

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The power ballad is one of the finer sprouts of the hard rock’n'roll tree. When the adolescent males have slammed, stagedived and pogoed their little hearts out to your fast ones, going up to four (or even five) chords (on acoustic, of course) with that big, slow “thump … tha-THUMP … thump … tha-THUMP” drum line will cement your cred as a truly great writer of truly moving songs and not just another spandex-clad, fretwanking attention-seeker searching the front row for male adulation and female lust dumb enough to lead to a night with you.

As a musical form, this heavy metal/cabaret pop crossover’s spread into the ‘alternative’ field has enabled a host of single-riff bands to say that, yes, they are real and deep songwriters of the kind that will live off their publishing for the terms of their natural lives, since it’s now a well-known fact that selling a million records through a major will probably leave you deeper in debt than selling a hundred thousand, let alone what you got selling four tapes a night at the Empress.

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