Respect to PJ Harvey winning the Mercury Music Prize for the second time.

7digital have PJ Harvey's back catalogue for £3 a shot until the end of this week. Bargain!

cheers
J.

I know this content is provided by a rival publication, but I'm sure members of the Massive would be interested in reviewing and commenting on Time Out's "100 songs that changed history" ... including a competition for Premium Spotify accounts and a free minimix!
cheers
J.

Hi
Not sure if this has been noted elsewhere, but 7digital currently have several Bobster albums for £3 on download, and others at not much more.
cheers
J.

The Word has missed a great opportunity for a truly iconic cover to mark the 100th edition. Instead of something arresting and interesting, it has gone for a photoshop mish-mash of publicity shots for a combination of over-familiar and unknown artists with no unifying theme or visual hook. What's more, Keith Ritchards' mug featured strongly in a similar rogues gallery cover only 5 editions ago (though the illustratative style of that one was a redeeming feature). I think Word 100 has a truly dreadful cover... particularly galling when we can see all the back issues laid out for comparison within, AND a 'Mock-Ups and Cock-Ups' feature too. Well, I know which category this belongs to: it looks like it was a last-minute cut and paste job by the office intern. Very sad that the team couldn't have done better for a defining moment in the magazine's history. Such a shame, because I hope and expect that the content within will be the same high quality as ever.

Agree / Disagree? Or any comments from the Word production team?

Apologies if these have already been blogged...

40 sad portraits of closed record stores (mostly USA)

but here are 40 pictures of operational independent record stores (again USA based)

Can record shops avoid extinction? <<--- a BBC news article

Delighted to see my last blog posting transposed to the "Inbox" in Word 99, I put the magazine in front of my three and half year old daughter for her opinion of this editions' artwork. First I had to explain that Elton John would not necessarily appear therein...
Generally her verdict is that the adverts outshine any other pictures. Her biggest shout was reserved for the two frothing tankards in the 'High Voltage' advert on p.47: "look, it's beer daddy!" is however perhaps a rather sad reflection of what she understands as one of my abiding interests.
Cheers!

According to my three and a half year old daughter, The Word would be greatly improved by removing all of the "dull" pictures. Her favourite from issue 97? The fantastic illustration of Elton John amongst his record collection (key elements - colour, a crown, a smile). All photos of beardies or anything in black and white - begone! Actually I'm tempted to agree with her.

Anyone else got a youngster's view on pepping things up?

cheers
J.

I don't have any additional witty pairings to the Friends Reunited feature on p.52 of the May 2009 issue BUT I did notice a bit of an anatomical difficulty with the mock-up of Noel and Jay-Z... I realised that Noel would require a right arm the length and flexibility of "Mr Tickle"'s, in order to put his hand on Jay-Z's left shoulder. I know he wants to be matey and all but that's just twisted (literally). An amusing feature nonetheless: keep up the good work!