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The Sense Of Doubt Music history & culture: posters & words
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Hi, I’m Alejandro De Luna, the creator behind The Sense of Doubt, where I design wall art inspired by music, pop culture, and cultural heritage. I’m endlessly curious, whether I’m exploring obscure cultural histories or obsessing over the legacy of bands and artists like The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, Nico, Lou Reed, The Fall, Joy Division, Iggy Pop, The Replacements, Prince, New Order, Dylan, Johnny Cash, Elvis, The Cramps, Phil Spector, Beach Boys, and Roy Orbison to name a few. That same passion fuels my work: I love taking stories, moods, and fragments of culture and turning them into prints that grab your attention, spark conversations, and reveal something new every time you see them, just like a favorite song or film. So far, over 10,000 music and pop culture lovers in more than 20 countries have picked up my prints, along with custom commissions. Each piece is made in small batches, hand-signed, and crafted entirely by me in my home studio. Have questions, or just want to chat out about music? Feel free to reach out anytime.

IST IST. Moby Dick, Madrid. 12.10.26.Their first ever show in Spain, and Madrid turned up in black.Twenty songs, no nost...
13/10/2026

IST IST. Moby Dick, Madrid. 12.10.26.

Their first ever show in Spain, and Madrid turned up in black.

Twenty songs, no nostalgia act. Cold music, played loud, with something deeply moving buried in all that ice.

Swipe for photos, setlist and some thoughts.

Full review on the Archive, link in bio.

Thanks to Andy and the band.

Viva Manchester!

Photos: Anne Bender
IST IST
Moby Dick Club
Primavera Tours
International Talent Booking

13/10/2026

Lou Reed, live at the Olympia, Paris, 25 May 1974. Peroxide hair, black mesh shirt, shades on, guitar handed off to Danny Weis. Lou doesn’t play a note. He just prowls through ‘Vicious’ like he owns the room. Because he does.

This is amphetamine Lou. The king. Every punk and outsider who ever sneered on a stage, on both sides of the Atlantic, learned it from the Velvets and from this.

Danny Weis (guitar), Michael Fonfara (keys), Prakash John (bass), Pentti Glan (drums).

Filmed and produced for French TV by Freddy Hausser. Footage: ScottishTeeVee on YouTube.

11/10/2026

"It's dead. It's a disease. It's a plague... They play rock and roll at airports. That's about as advanced as it can possibly get."

John Lydon on why he despised rock 'n' roll, on NBC's Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, 1980, with Keith Levene beside him. Not even the S*x Pistols are spared. They were meant to be "the absolute end of rock and roll", he says, and the public got it wrong.

When Snyder asks about the band's history, Lydon waves it away: "It's history." Sixteen years later came the Filthy Lucre reunion. Today the S*x Pistols tour with Frank Carter on vocals, and Lydon calls it "karaoke". Hard to disagree.

What remains true is that John Lydon fronted two of the most influential bands in music history. Public Image Ltd sit comfortably under "post-punk", but in reality they're uncategorisable, built on a bedrock of dub and reggae, with noise, disco and a pull towards krautrock, to name just a few. Metal Box remains immense.

Lydon being Lydon.

10/10/2026

Morrissey's first solo gig. Wolverhampton Civic Hall, 22 December 1988.

Free entry, but only if you turned up in a Smiths or Morrissey T-shirt. Thousands queued in the cold and many never got in. On stage with him: Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon. The Smiths without Johnny Marr, one last time.

Chaos, sweat, stage invader after stage invader, and 'Death at One's Elbow': two minutes of rockabilly in the Black Country, a Smiths song nobody had ever heard live.

He never played with them again.
Were you there?

Barry Adamson. The full interview is live now at the link in bio.A few questions with Barry Adamson: bassist and backbon...
09/10/2026

Barry Adamson. The full interview is live now at the link in bio.

A few questions with Barry Adamson: bassist and backbone of the Magazine sound, original member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Iggy Pop's bassist on the 1987 tour, Lynch collaborator on Lost Highway, and a solo artist and film composer whose latest score is for SCALA!!!, out on MUTE.

His legacy is there for anyone to dive into: one of the most interesting discographies British music has produced since the dawn of post-punk, touching on many other genres, from soul and jazz to film scores and electronica.

He talks about learning bass almost overnight, the Black American music running under post-punk, four very different personalities in the early Bad Seeds, what Lynch taught him about scoring, and why a huge machine of a band was never going to fit.

Plus his three bands, three bass players and three film scores he never tires of.

Swipe for a few lines, then read the rest at thesenseofdoubt.com.

My sincere thanks to Barry for doing this interview.


09/10/2026

"What The Fall does today the rest of the world does tomorrow. Very like Salford."
Mark E. Smith

For Mark E. Smith the pub was never a place to escape. It was the office, the rehearsal room, the recruitment agency, the newsroom and the courtroom. He read people there, listened to them, stole their phrases and turned them into songs. Half of The Fall's lyrics sound like something overheard at the bar at ten to eleven and scribbled on a b**r mat soaked in bitter.

The pub was where working class Britain did its thinking out loud and Mark E. Smith, a proud Salfordian, knew that better than anyone, and he never pretended to be above it.

Now they close one by one, and nobody seems to notice until they're all gone.

'Middle Class Revolt'!

Source: Mark E. Smith in a pub in Salford, filmed for What's New in 1992.

08/10/2026

Berlin, 30 October 1980. Magazine at the Metropol, filmed for WDR Rockpalast, playing 'Permafrost', the closing track of Secondhand Daylight and still one of the coldest, most unsettling songs Howard Devoto ever wrote. A dark anthem by Manchester's most cerebral and sinister post-punk band.

By this time, John McGeoch had just left for Siouxsie and the Banshees, and ex-Ultravox guitarist Robin Simon stepped in for the tour, leaving again once it ended. Devoto on vocals, Dave Formula on keys, John Doyle on drums and, on bass, Barry Adamson, the backbone of Magazine's sound. Just listen to that bass.

Less is more.

Barry went on to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a solo career and film scoring.

My interview with Barry goes live on the Archive tomorrow. Follow so you don't miss it.

Eternal glory to Magazine.

07/10/2026

Before the horror comes home, there's just a walk.

Ellen Burstyn on an ordinary Georgetown street, shot on location in autumn 1972 for William Friedkin's adaptation of The Exorcist (1973), while Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' makes everything feel slightly wrong.

The film turned Virgin's very first release into a US hit, via a single edit Oldfield never authorised. Not a bad deal for a record several labels turned down.

The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin, Warner Bros.

'Tubular Bells', Mike Oldfield (Virgin Records, 1973)

05/10/2026

The Birthday Party, one of the most unhinged bands in music history, live at the Haçienda, Manchester, 22 July 1982.

'Big Jesus Trash Can'. Nick Cave at his most feral, Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard's guitar like broken glass, Tracy Pew barely back from an Australian jail, and Phill Calvert in one of his last gigs before being pushed out. They closed the night with The Stooges' 'Fun House'. Of course they did.

The Haçienda filmed nearly every gig in its early days, and this one survived thanks to Ikon, Factory Records' own video label.

Before the Bad Seeds, there was this.

Nick Cave: vocals
Rowland S. Howard: guitar
Mick Harvey: guitar
Tracy Pew: bass
Phill Calvert: drums

Did you ever make it to the Haçienda? Did you ever see The Birthday Party?

Source: footage from the Ikon video Pleasure Heads Must Burn, via the Cromosomas Memoria YouTube channel.







13 April 2016, O2 Forum Kentish Town. Roky Erickson, 68 years old, in London with The Hounds of Baskerville, performing ...
04/10/2026

13 April 2016, O2 Forum Kentish Town. Roky Erickson, 68 years old, in London with The Hounds of Baskerville, performing the music of the 13th Floor Elevators. He already seemed distant, fragile, somewhere else that evening, but I was there to pay my respects. Roky sadly died on 31 May 2019.

He played Elevators songs, from 'Fire Engine' to 'You're Gonna Miss Me', with his son Jegar on electric jug, and came back for 'Two Headed Dog', an Aliens-era song, as the encore.

If you know the story of Roky (the arrest, Rusk State Hospital, the electroshock, the paranoia, the madness, the lost decades), it was no surprise. It was sad to see this burning star, a pioneer and towering influence on psychedelia, garage, punk rock and beyond, like this, but that's rock 'n' roll. That was Roky Erickson, the broken genius of Austin.

And still, I am glad I had the chance to be in the same room and listen to this legend, even in this condition.

Thank you, Roky.

"Goodbye sweet dreams
Goodbye sweet dreams
Goodbye sweet dreams
Goodbye sweet dreams."

Were you there?

Blurry photos are my own, as are the printed ticket and some of my Roky records on slides 3 and 4. Setlist via setlist.fm.

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