This is always the worst time of the year for me and today's dismal wet weather doesn't help matters.
At the moment the diary for this year is empty, although it's pretty certain that I'll be doing a couple of walks for the Sohemians in the summer on the subject of Decadent London and Hogarth's London. Details available in the coming weeks.
You can still purchase copies of Mansion of Gloom, The Unsettling Legacy of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher from The Big Cartel, Treadwell's, Watkins, Midian Books, Atlantis, Hare & Hawthorn or at a bargain price on eBay.
As far as my recommendations for 2025 go - I looked through Sight & Sound's list of the 50 best films of the year and realised that I hadn't seen a single one. Nothing to be proud of, but I did watch a lot of films, just not any contemporary ones; mostly, it has to be said, Italian gialli and horror and Anthony Mann westerns. The films I most enjoyed watching last year were: Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Small Back Room, The Cat o' Nine Tales, Forbidden Photos of a Woman Above Suspicion, and Death Walks on High Heels. Memorable for the wrong reasons was Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye, a giallo purportedly set in a Scottish castle starring Jane Birkin with, believe it or not, Serge Gainsbourg as a Scottish police detective.
Books to recommend (some of which were actually published in 2025) are: Andrea Wulf Magnificent Rebels, Vincenzo Latronico Perfection, David Skal Hollywood Gothic, Gustav Meyrinck The Golem (a very strange book), Olga Tokarczuk Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Lili Anolik Didion and Babitz (although I have to agree with this review) and some trashy entertainment Julia Philips You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again (a 70s and 80s Hollywood expose that deals the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll dirt although, given that the author prides herself on editing scripts, it could have lost a couple of hundred pages - apparently the original manuscript was over 1000 pages before the lawyers got to it).
Favourite concert probably Todd Rundgren at the London Palladium. Honourable mentions for Pierre Bastien and Louis Laurain at The Piper and Throwing Muses at the White Rock.
In recent months I've been invigorated by American 'jangle rock' and Power Pop from the likes of the DBs, Game Theory and most of all Let's Active whose Cypress and Big Plans for Everybody are wonders of catchy hooks and great guitar music. A good sampler of Power Pop is Looking for the Magic, American Power Pop in the Seventies (Grapefruit). Other interesting records this year: Joe Henderson Multiple, Alessandro Alessandroni La Terrificante Notte del Demonio (Cinedelic).
Not much news on the publishing front - no new book in the pipeline, I might consider publishing other people's work (non-fiction) but in very small editions.
What may be an interesting gig at Hastings Jazz Club in February Edrix Puzzle.
