Clue One. The three bands covered: The Paragons/The Nerves/Randy and the Rainbows.
Clue Two. My experiences of seeing them live: in 1982, when I was still at school, my mum—who I get my thing for music from—got us tickets to see this band, only for them to spilt up on the tour before playing the gig. They were my top band at the time; I was totally gutted.
In 1991, I was going to spend a weekend at the Hells Angels’ Kent Custom Bike Show. It turned out that on the same Saturday night, the lead singer of the band was appearing as a solo artist at Wembley, London, on a bill that included the likes of INXS, Jesus Jones and the Hothouse Flowers. Continue reading
A short story about a real place. With thanks to 
With thanks to 
Inspired by bumping into an old friend, the below could be considered a sequel to 
Poetry without comment beyond thanks to 
A poem written in November 2020, prompted by what exactly I can’t remember; there is truth to a degree in the words, and while this matters not to the reader, a need to expand on the actual facts took hold, from which followed a jaunt across the tobacco industry, teachers always being a-holes, a picture of my favourite gate, cheap snacks, Big Foot, how I used to live in the Lord of the Rings, laughing at my mum (sorry, mum), a real size but pretend Canadian Parliament, the world’s first dinosaur statues, and London’s most popular gorilla.
Whirring into life like a comet lowrider being fired up, Usurper of the Universe is an ever expanding cloud of trippy space dust gritty with derision. Who, or perhaps what, is SÖNUS is a question the answer to can change with every listen; the six track album as much space rock opera—a beer and bong infused version of Queen’s Flash Gordon score with SÖNUS playing both band and Ming—as a frustration-driven social commentary not only on the world we currently live in but always have.
N. P. Ryan 