My KKBox Articles

Over the past year or so, I have been posting articles and reviews that I've written for the online music service KKBox here, partly because they were not viewable by the general public, only by subscribers to the service. But it seems that is no longer the case, as I recently discovered that the KKBox Malaysia website has a webpage for my articles. They seem to all be there, though I haven't look at them to see how they may have been changed by the editor. I can say that most of the titles for the early articles weren't mine, as with the exception of the first couple of articles, I didn't bother to think of interesting titles, and not surprisingly the editor seems to have make up for this deficiency. But the original editor left around the end of last year, and the current one apparently has just been using the rather straightforward titles I put on the documents, as a quick look through the articles should indicate. One of these days I'll get around to reading the articles on the site myself to see if anything other than titles were changed, though in any case what I've republished here has been what I sent them, prior to any editorial changes.

One downside to the articles now being publicly available is that I have less reason to post them here. This is a downside because one reason I've been doing so frequently of late is because I haven't had time to write much new content specifically for this blog, though there are plenty of things I would like to write about. In other words, by republishing my year-old KKBox articles, I could ensure that I had at least one new post a month without actually having to take the time to write anything. To be honest, I may still end up find a way to use my work for KKBox to fill space here. I may still decide to post some of the articles here, particularly ones that I am relatively pleased with myself (in some cases I may also want to provide links to more of the songs or artists referenced in the articles, as for many articles they seem to have edited down the playlists I originally provided), or I may simply post a brief introduction and a link to the article on the KKBox site. One reason is that I've still got a number of projects to work on, including my Taiwanese aboriginal and popular music history research. I've also recently been asked to edit a lengthy English translation for a box set on a type of Taiwanese Hakka traditional music, and to translate some additional material for it, which will take up much of my free time for the next month or so. But I will try to at least sometimes make more interesting use of this space with some music related content that isn't already available elsewhere. One possibility is more posts written as a sort of ricochet off articles I've done for KKBox: a previous example is my list of my top 15 Rolling Stones songs, which was inspired largely by my article on the Stones' 50th anniversary (see below). Of course I also hope to add some more album reviews and artist retrospectives that are independent of the ones I've done for KKBox. I'll probably also post the one or two imaginary 1970s Beatles albums that I haven't posted here yet, and maybe a few of the compilation albums I've put together over the years.

In any case, here is an overview of the articles I did for KKBox that I haven't yet posted here:

My article on the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones.

My career retrospective on Paul McCartney and review of his album New (for a different look at McCartney, there's also my old post on him, and those on John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr)

My articles on the recently deceased luminaries Lou Reed and Pete Seeger (I have previously published brief looks at both Reed and Seeger here as well).

My article on Roger Taylor of Queen and his new release, which due to length was split into part 1 and part 2 (for comparison see my post here about him and those on his bandmates Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon).

My article on Peter Gabriel and his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was also split into part 1 and part 2 (once again, I have previously published a separate post on him and others on his former bandmates in Genesis, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips).

My article on Nirvana and their induction into the Hall of Fame along with Gabriel.

My article on the recently reissued classic album by Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

My article on the ABBA Gold reissue was also basically a career retrospective.

There are also reviews of albums by Elbow, Tori Amos, the Manic Street Preachers, the Civil Wars, Aviici, and Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones's cover of an Everly Brothers oldies albums. There's good music on each of these albums, though if I buy any of them it's most likely to be the Elbow one and perhaps the Tori Amos and Manic Street Preachers one (though I'd probably be more inclined to look for a Manic Street Preachers compilation with the best of their earlier songs -- I've already got a Tori Amos compilation).

The other articles on the KKBox site have already been posted here, though for those who've missed them some highlights are the articles on Paul Simon and Randy Newman (my earlier overview of him is here), and my reviews of Jamie Cullum's Momentum and the soundtrack for the documentary West of Memphis.