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Pete Paphides

@petepaphides

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I write about music and the people who make it. I'm the co-founder of a record label, Needle Mythology. I also host a weekly show for Soho Radio.
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There are bands whose release dates you mark in the diary; whose new album you’ll go out of your way to ensure you’re listening to on the day it hits the shops. For 20 years, Fujiya & Miyagi have been one of those bands for me. I’m still getting to know New Shiny Object but, even by their standards, this feels special. David Best is, by stealth, turning into one of our greatest lyricists. A case in point is 158, a in which the loss of a loved one triggers a subtly devastating memorial to simpler times over an East London backdrop. Look, I’m a sucker for this stuff – Saint Etienne’s Over The Border, Robbie Williams’ The 1980s, Pet Shop Boys’ Being Boring – but be that is may, when the the ghostly bleeps intensify and the beat really starts to slam, in time for him to sing “This is for anyone who’s ever lost someone”, well… I think of Björn Ulvaeus’s gnomic response when, in 2002, I asked him what happened when he showed Agnetha the words to The Winner Takes It All. He looked at me without a flicker of emotion and said, “There were tears.” Right now, I’m listening to No Green Light, a premium slice of Neu!romancing electropop that, with every layer of synth and guitar added, reminds you that the best gratification is always the delayed sort. So many highlights already: Lowest Common Denominator is, to borrow a title from Kevin Ayers, a song for insane times. I think it’s a song about a situation in which we all find ourselves. I think it’s a song about a situation in which we all find ourselves: goaded by malign forces into angry engagement that will achieve nothing other than boost the business model of some of the worst human beings on the planet. Yes, the future is rubbish in many ways. Take, for instance, the way streaming has consigned millions of talented musicians to penury. But one good thing about the future is that those same musicians can allow their genius to speak for itself. Rather than just guess whether you might like a record on the basis of a review, you can listen to New Shiny Object here. Or you can even go to Resident in Brighton where David works and he might sign it for you. https://fujiyamiyagi.bandcamp.com/album/new-shiny-object-2 by @petepaphides
"Later, as the wheels started to come off, he bought his first Sony Walkman and every Beatles album on tape. It wasn’t enough to keep him sane, but his nervous breakdown couldn’t have wished for a better soundtrack. It’s hard to imagine how lonely, how traumatic it must have been for him as he realised that he was no longer welcome in his own band, but it turns out that – as well as being a top-notch songwriter – Nick is a first-class memoirist. There’s a moment – effectively the point of no return – in which he recounts walking into the room where his band are playing a song. Marc Fox sees him and walks over, while the rest of Haircut 100, stay on stage, resolutely avoiding all eye contact. Nick wants to be friends. Nick still wants to be in Haircut 100. He tells Fox that the song sounds great. If he sends him a tape, he’ll get to work on a melody and lyrics. Fox replies that this won’t be necessary – and, frozen with the shock and awkwardness of it all, Nick still doesn’t quite get that he’s no longer in Haircut 100." For the rest of this piece about Nick Heyward's sensational new autobiography Fantastic Days, you can head here: https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/its-hard-to-how-173424920?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link by @petepaphides
🔥🍫 How did you know I needed you so badly, you sexy thing! 🔥🍫 ‘The Complete Studio Recordings 1970-1986’ is a new 119-track, 9CD box set celebrating the career of Hot Chocolate. It includes all eight of their studio albums released in this period, as well non-album tracks, B-Sides, extended mixes and an entire disc dedicated to their early singles. Includes new sleeve notes by author, journalist and DJ, Pete Paphides. #hotchocolate Available to pre-order now with 🔗 in bio by @petepaphides
This Thursday, 24th September @audiogold , Cathi Unsworth will be talking with Ace @acerecordsltd Podcast host Pete Paphides @petepaphides about her critically acclaimed new Ace compilation: Dressed In Black - Goth Divas From the Dark Side 1941-2025. Doors open at 7PM with the podcast kicking off at 8PM. Space strictly limited so please RSVP to social@acerecords.com or DM us here to get your name on the FREE guest list. Drinks and snacks and music. Cathi Unsworth in conversation with Pete Paphides Audio Gold 308-310 Park Rd, Muswell Hill, London N8 8LA 24th September 2026 Doors 7PM Recordings 8PM - 10PM. #goth #souxieandthebanshees #acerecords #vinyl #podcast by @petepaphides
For around a year or so, R.E.M. and 10,000 Maniacs seemed to be moving in sync: writing about the same stuff; working with the same producer and even recording their albums back-to-back in the same North London studio. Both records are firm fixtures in my all-time top 10 favourite albums. One is, of course, Fables Of The Reconstruction. Here's something I wrote about the other one and the synchronous events that yielded both records. https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/for-12-months-r-169401552?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link #REM #collegerock #longread #alternativemusic #records #albums #10000Maniacs #musicwriting by @petepaphides
Coming Soon “Bob’s book brings alive one of the greatest ever rock ‘n’ roll bands” Sir Cliff Richard “This is the last great untold story of the beat boom era - and Bob Stanley is the perfect person to tell it” @petepaphides ‘The Shadows: The Definitive Story’ by @rocking_bob 24-09-26 🔗s in Bio #cliff #theshadows @saintetienneofficial @saintetiennediscoinfo by @petepaphides
A few years back, this one was on the wall at Alan’s record shop in East Finchley and I clocked it straight away. I’d never seen the Jeneive’s label before – and this, in its die-cut sleeve with a sort of target motif, stood out from several feet away. Alan handed it over to me and it turned out that I’d never heard of the artist either. Babbette Christian didn’t make any more records after this solitary ten-inch single. And, ten minutes later, after I listening to Questions, it seemed like a colossal injustice that, for whatever reason, this one had fallen through the cracks. If you think of Janet Kay’s Silly Games; Carroll Thompson’s I’m So Sorry and Louisa Mark’s Caught You In A Lie as the holy trinity of female lovers rock, then I can’t imagine that you could hear Babbette’s self-written contribution and not feel it deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside those records. I’ve no idea what a holy trinity turns into when it expands by one. But if there isn’t a word for it, we’d better make one up. And now it’s out on Roots Mythology. Available this weekend from Sounds Of The Universe, Lionvibes and other reputable stockists. Limited pressing of 300. #reggae #vinyl #loversrock by @petepaphides
Yes, she was ambitious but never at the price of her own humanity. When Porter Wagoner faced bankruptcy, Dolly bought 200 of his songs and proceeded to give them straight back to him. And elsewhere, the more that bad comedians and gatekeepers sought to miniaturise her, the bigger she made herself. In her Tennesse hometown, Dolly had remembered a woman known to locals as “the tramp”. Her hair was bleached; her lipstick and nails a matching red; and her heels had plastic goldfish floating in them. Whatever the grown-ups thought of her, Dolly had alighted on the look to which she dreamed of aspiring. As Belette Fente put it in a Facebook post yesterday, “Before she was anything at all, that child was already handing dignity to a woman her whole town had thrown away.” But asked in 2019 by podcaster Jad Abumrad if she was a feminist, Dolly said, “No, I do not. I think of myself as a woman in business.” Dolly’s radicalism went further and deeper for never speaking its name, but was nonetheless increasingly detectable in her ambition and the actions it funded across the ensuing decades. Interviewed by Mary Harron for The Guardian in 1983, she divulged her dream of “setting up an amusement park called Dollywood.” In the same interview, she said: “If you become a star you make a pact with the world that you belong to them” – to which Harron surmised the “her solution has been to create an image that is an expression of her dreams and a shield.” Not only did Dolly understand the power of her brand, she understood the influence that came with it. Her Dollywood theme park had been in existence for two years when, on the back of it, she launched the Dollywood Foundation with the intention of providing educational opportunities in Dolly’s home country of Sevier. What has followed in its wake is well documented: the Imagination Library, set up with the aim of providing children with a free book every month throughout the first five years of their life. The scheme has since spidered out into Canada, Australia, Ireland and the UK – which three million books going out to American children alone. Read the fulll article here: https://share.google/Sf7T4jsRvcPegFBUJ by @petepaphides
When anyone asks me how I did at uni (which, let’s face it, is hardly ever), I always tell them I did really well. In my final year, I became the most in-demand DJ at Saint David’s University Collage in Lampeter – a promotion made possible by the fact that Andy Lewis – co-founder of Camden’s legendary Blow Up club nights – had graduated the previous year. I’d play anything that made you want to move, but within that wide remit, there were six or seven signature tunes that became mainstays of my set. These were records that might have cleared the floor the first time I played them, but over time, people would be more likely to complain if I did a set *without* playing them. And right at the top of that list was The William Orbit Remix of Les Negresses Vertes’ Zobi La Mouche. I’m listening to it now. The bass drum has kicked in, fixing itself hard to that demonic accordion hook while the band’s frontman Helno sings about a fly called Zobi. None of it makes any more sense now than it did when I first heard it in 1988. But the genius of what William Orbit did is clear in my memory of the scenes that played out before me from the elevated position the DJ booth – in particular the way, Orbit holds back the intensification of the beat for the final verse at just over four minutes, adding a thwacking great snare onto the bass drum – a perfect reminder that the best gratification is the delayed sort. What with that and Fascinating Rhythm by his group Bassomatic, I had a lot for which to thank William Orbit at the time. From thereon in, I always looked out for any remix that had his name on it... To keep reading, head here: https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/we-gave-him-no-i-166096307?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link by @petepaphides
John Douglas RIP, 1963-2026 Everyone who met John, without exception, loved him: https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/robert-burns-got-165765470?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Pic: Stephanie Gibson by @petepaphides
Forty-five years is a heartbreakingly long time to not do the thing at which you so clearly excel. And it seems that when David Grant decided he couldn’t postpone it any longer, it was because of his children, now grown up and seated four rows from the stage at the Union Chapel, with their mum Carrie Grant. When he’s not being their dad, they’ve most probably seen him as a voice coach and a ubiquitous talking head on Channel 5 clip shows. And fine as he is at all those things, it’s a little bit like being Gary Lineker’s kids and mainly thinking that he was put on this earth to sell crisps. The inactivity of Linx – the duo he formed in the late 70s with bassist Peter “Sketch” Martin, has seen them repeatedly left out when people talk about the vanguard of Brit-funk bands that emerged at that time. This was some of the first music made by the progeny of the Windrush generation – a cultural assimilation that prompted the sentiments of Linx’s very first single Rise And Shine, an exhalation of unquenchable optimism, albeit one which acknowledged the struggle of their parents’ generation that had helped propel them to this moment. Those parents might have once grooved to mento and ska, but many of their kids gravitated towards American soul and sought to emulate it as soon as they knew how. For David Grant, it was Stevie Wonder. When he wrote Linx’s biggest hit Intuition, he was almost too embarrassed to show it to anyone, such was his worry that someone might dismiss it as a Stevie Wonder rip-off. ....To read the rest of this review of David Grant and Linx's life-affirming show at the Union Chapel, you can head here: https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/even-greatest-in-165529094?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link by @petepaphides
It’s a fact that Railcard wouldn’t exist without @petepaphides guiding the hand of fate - here’s a lovely piece he wrote about us, and how it happened…. https://www.patreon.com/NeedleMythology/posts/why-disco-by-be-161741224 by @petepaphides

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