ON THE WEB

Quite a lot of Kevin's writing can be found on the Internet. This page gives some information on where these words can be found. Simply click on the appropriate picture to be taken to the site concerned.

Your Heart Out

The blog Your Heart Out forms the hub for much of this web-based activity. It serves as the home of a magazine Kevin ran for five years, with 50 issues available as free downloadable pdfs. The contents of these editions of YHO take in a wide-range of musical styles from the past 60-odd years, covering many parts of the globe. The site also has links to a series of mixtapes lovingly put together which help to illuminate the contents of specific issues.

Tony Herrington writing in The Wire called YHO "one of the web's most consistently dazzling music blogs". He added: "The posts rewrite the history of music as a dynamic pile-up of pragmatic initiatives, chance encounters and fortuitous coincidences".

Or as Simon Reynolds put it: "An endless obsessive remapping of music’s past, unlikely through-lines cutting across the archival space of global pop, or in Pearce’s words, 'making unexpected connections... zooming off in a new direction to explore whatever turns up.'"

Between 1997 and 2007 Kevin contributed regularly to Alistair Fitchett's Tangents project which was a pioneering presence on the web. Many of these articles can be found in the Tangents archive here. In latter years Kevin wrote under the name John Carney (it's a long story), and put together a series of year-long writing projects which were published in weekly instalments on the Tangents site. A little bit of information about these is included below:

Fifty Thousand Reasons

A series of articles about those that made magic. As the blurb said at the time: "These pen portraits build up into a gallery of special people. These people have made unique contributions to popular culture. Some of the stories will be fairly familiar, and some may seem slightly strange. There are some glaring omissions, and some odd inclusions. A thread of narrative runs through, and it’s all as subjective as hell."

Shivers Inside

A series of short stories inspired by an odd assortment of songs, records, tapes, and DVDs which forms a pretty unique way of paying tribute to special inspirations. The highest compliment Kevin received from those who read the strange and lovely tales was from one of the artists who said: "I don't remember that, but I hope it did happen".

The Outside of Everything

This is another set of short stories, each instalment accompanied by a beautiful pen and ink illustration by Alistair Fitchett. The stories capture "the adventures of four flâneurs stranded in suburbia. Lopsidedly learned chancers, distracted dreamers, intent on avoiding the world of real work, though sometimes stirred into action. Righteous revenge, malicious mischief, artful antagonism, perverse playfulness. That sort of thing." These tales form a secret history of the 1980s.