Stuart Coop

Lovely to be back with you both.

How are you doing?

I'm a great believer you just start doing it.

It helps if you like music.

Well, that's how I started.

I still type after all these years.

I've typed and had millions and millions of words published.

I still type with one finger.

Oh, that's good to hear.

And I have no formally recognised qualification for doing this.

I just happen to really like music and like expressing my thoughts.

Yeah, look, I think that's one of the things I lament about music journalism these days.

You know, there's not enough nasty.

And, you know, I was lucky enough to... Bring back the Biff, you reckon?

Oh, Biff is good because, I mean, every review these days seems to be four stars out of five.

I'm wondering if there's any record that's not made that's not quite great but pretty good.

And, you know, I came out of an era, the late 70s, early 80s, when I was doing a real lot of music reviewing, and if something was truly, truly wretched, it was absolutely fine to say that.

And I think you need to do that.

I mean, you don't want to, you know, criticise everything, but it provides a frame of reference for what is really good.

And if you're just reading one review after another saying that these records are really lovely and picking all the positive things, people make bad records and, you know, not great records.