Tom Cox
Tom Cox was born in Nottingham in 1975, and then again, in the same place, in 1988, after watching the US Masters golf championship on television. For the following five years, he proceeded to crap up his exam results by spending every waking hour thinking about his backswing, eventually reaching a handicap of two and getting suspended from his home club for hitting a ball very gently into someone's trolley.
In 1992, after golf had stopped interfering with his education, music took over, as Tom began to write his
own underground fanzine, Words I Might Have Ate, in the process gaining the respect of an assortment of Radio One Disc Jockeys, music press editors and indie rock sociopaths. As a result of this, he was briefly employed by the New Musical Express, until 1997, when he finally got tired of ending every review with the phrase "Which was nice!".
From 1997 until 2000, Tom wrote about pop music for The Guardian, becoming the paper's Rock Critic in 1999. Since then, his writing has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Times, Esquire, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Uncut, Mojo, The Mail On Sunday, Word, Jack and Golf International, and on Radio Four's Front Row.
In 2002, Bantam Press published Nice Jumper, a memoir of his time as a teenage golf rebel. In early 2003 the book was shortlisted for the National Sporting Club/Ladbrokes' Best Newcomer award.
It was followed in August 2003 by Educating Peter (also published by Bantam). Tom's attempt to understand the modern teenage psyche by way of a road trip with a melancholy fourteen year-old Slipknot fan.
Tom's next book, Lost Tribes Of Pop, will be published by Piatkus in October. He lives in Norfolk with his wife and four duplicitous cats.
List of articles in the library by artist
Richard Ashcroft: Alone With Everybody (Hut) **
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, June 2000
KINDRED TO THE hippie but more English, less articulate, less political, more self-serving and better at fighting, the dippie is a breed of musician that ...
Syd Barrett: Disappearances Can Be Deceptive
Report by Tom Cox, Observer, The, April 2001
THERE ARE PROBABLY better places in the world to go to become invisible than Cambridge, but perhaps not if you are an ex-rock star with ...
Chris Bell, Big Star: Chris Bell: I Am The Cosmos
Retrospective by Tom Cox, Uncut, August 2000
BASED ON the bittersweet songcraft of Big Star's "lost" classic debut, No 1 Record, Chris Bell is often referred to as the McCartney to Alex ...
Cheap Trick: Cheap Trick At Budokan: The Complete Concert
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, August 1998
NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED, full version of the candy-coated metal superheroes' finest hour ...
Cheap Trick: Light of the Trick
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, August 1997
The return of the pioneering power-pop band. ...
Julian Cope: Royal Festival Hall, London ****
Live Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, April 2000
IT HAS BEEN a long time since Julian Cope could be described merely as a singing psychedelic mystic eco-warrior. ...
Darkness, The: The Darkness: Band of 2003
Report and Interview by Tom Cox, Observer Music Monthly, December 2003
"IT'S GOING TO BE a bit like having sex in front of your parents – you know, that moment when you're a teenager and you've ...
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, January 1998
How do you feel about this so-called line of classic quintessentially English songwriters starting with you, continuing with Paul Weller and ending with Damon Albarn? ...
Interview by Tom Cox, Daily Telegraph, February 2001
IMAGINE IF YOU made the best record of your career, in collaboration with one of your heroes, and it was released only abroad, leaving such ...
Elastica: Six Track EP (Deceptive) *
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, August 1999
FOR ALL THE TREMORS, speculation and mystique you might generate by disappearing off the face of the earth after a classic debut album, there's always ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, April 1998
Four-CD set from Oklahoma experimentalists, requiring four stereos for playback ...
Aretha Franklin: Jerry Wexler: Aretha And Me
Interview by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, August 1999
JERRY WEXLER, co-founder of Atlantic Records and in-house producer, was picking himself up off the floor of Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama when he received ...
Go-Betweens, The: The Go-Betweens: The Fleadh, Finsbury Park, London
Live Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, August 1997
SOME BANDS just seem to outgrow their natural life through sheer influence. Something profound dictates that as their reputation accumulates people remember them as a ...
Gomez: Grim North Meets Crazy South
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 1998
THE INITIAL sensation sits somewhere between inspecting the tonsils of a vast, mythical reptile from The Land That Time Forgot and stepping around the mouth ...
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Sugarhill Gang, The: Good Boys Of Rap
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, April 1999
Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five And Melle Mel: 'Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel' (Sequel)The Sugarhill Gang: Rapper's Delights (Sequel)Various Artists: Sugarhill Club Classics ...
Hives, The: The Hives: The Junction, Cambridge
Live Review by Tom Cox, Observer, The, February 2002
The Hives put on a fine imitation of garage rock. And the garage is where it would be best appreciated ...
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, November 1999
THE MOST DEFINITIVE summation of The Isley Brothers' career so far begins not with a song but a real, live shriek. ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 2000
MAMMOTH BOX set from Green Pajamas frontman, covering "lost years". ...
Kinks, The, Ray Davies: Kinks: The Singles Collection/Waterloo Sunset — The Songs Of Ray Davies
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, December 1997
It's a shame about Ray: Classic chartbreakers and their creator's solo furrow ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, October 1998
Divine stratospheric trip from sentimental gadgeteers ...
Neal Casal: Out-duding the early James Taylor
Profile and Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, July 1998
NEALCASAL grins craftily — he's been careful to bring his electric guitar to Uncut's photo session and not his acoustic. "No Nick Drake shots today. ...
Nirvana, Kurt Cobain: Kurt's Gone. So What?
Comment by Tom Cox, Guardian Unlimited, April 1999
ROCK KILLS. The list of victims is too long and depressing to print here. We still raise an eyebrow when another tortured Narcissus bites the ...
Oasis: Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (Big Brother) **
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, February 2000
FOR HAS-BEENS APPARENT, Oasis still possess remarkable powers of intimidation, but in the build-up to Standing on the Shoulder of Giants they've cunningly switched tactics. ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, July 2000
THEY'RE FRENCH, they're pals with Air – and they sound like Steely Dan. ...
Roger McGuinn: Born To Rock And Roll
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, January 1998
The former Byrd's mid-Seventies solo years ...
Smashing Pumpkins: Machina/Machines of God (Hut) *
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, February 2000
FOR THE DIZZY hippy posing as disaffected slacker, Smashing Pumpkins were the perfect band to help you dream your way through the grunge era. ...
Live Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, July 1997
GAZ COOMBES inadvertently summed the whole thing up himself earlier this year. Speaking of his newly-shedded hair, the Supergrass singer professed his absolute astonishment at ...
Pete Townshend, Who, The: Pete Townshend: Peter Rabbits
Interview by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, December 1999
I'M LAUGHING, BUT Pete Townshend is frightening me. "Yes!!!!!" he shouts, and bangs hard on the table in his Richmond studio, for the second time ...
Live Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 1997
THE END of the millennium is nigh! Most men will perish and the rest will get extremely stressed out and have to take lots of ...
Tom Waits: Mule Variations (Epitaph)
Review by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, April 1999
I'D HATE TO be the neighbourhood psycho on Tom Waits's street. You'd never quite feel safe, terrorised by those all-seeing, scarecrow eyes, observing your every ...
Wilco: Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
Live Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 1997
"WE SAW all those teenage girls outside and we assumed they were here for us. Hey, man, what gives?" ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Rustic Grunge
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, May 1998
LOG CABINS. Big coats. A stroppy Tindersticks undercut with ghostly suspense. Damp, misty woodland. Autumn. These are the things Flying Low, the second album by ...
Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 1997
AS OFT-used tags go, "The New Velvet Underground" is so wide-ranging, it's almost become a genre in itself. Got a penchant for dark clobber and ...
Zombies, The: Zombies: Baroque'N'Roll Music
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, November 1997
Zombie Heaven claims to include 99.5 per cent of everything you ever recorded. There must be a few unheard demos that slipped through the net. ...
List of genre pieces
Digital Magic Makes A Musician Of Me
Comment by Tom Cox, Daily Telegraph, May 2004
I THINK IT'S SAFE to say I'm never going to learn to play a musical instrument properly now. The realisation first came to me about ...
Comment by Tom Cox, Observer, The, May 2001
IN AN ERA WHEN pop carries scant mystery and every 'best ever' list imaginable seems to have been compiled, the term 'lost classic' has so ...
Comment by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, September 1999
HERE'S A JOKE. Last night, I met an alien outside a pub in north London. We got chatting about hobbies and stuff, and he ended ...
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