1970s
Kieron Tyler
“It looked like Dresden after the bombing.” Blondie’s Chris Stein may be a member of one of pop’s most-loved bands, but he also has a way with words. Describing 1970's New York City in this way is offensive to the memory of the 25,000 who died in the World War II air raids on Dresden. More pertinently for New York-dweller Stein, his comment also chimes badly with the destruction of the twin towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Centre in 2001.Blondie’s New York and the Making of Parallel Lines unquestioningly celebrated the band’s massive-selling, breakthrough third album but some care could have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fantastic is the only word for The Changes. Fantastic as in fantasy, and fantastic because it's a television drama that's brilliantly conceived and impeccably executed – and also because it tackles issues of social cohesion and fragmentation head-on without using a sledgehammer. Broadcast by the BBC in 1975, The Changes was a ten-part series adapting Peter Dickinson's trilogy of novels The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children.The series tells how a sudden, inexplicable change transforms British society. Made with serious intent, it was for children and broadcast in a tea- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Front Line – Sounds of RealityA month after The Sex Pistols sighed their last in San Francisco in January 1978, their label boss Richard Branson flew ex-frontman John Lydon and his entourage to Jamaica. Sid Vicious would hurtle towards oblivion while fellow former Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones headed to Brazil to trash their legacy by larking with on-the-lam criminal Ronald Biggs. Lydon’s mission was to scout talent for Branson’s new reggae imprint, the Virgin subsidiary Front Line.Front Line was launched in March 1978. Over its less-than two-year lifespan, it Read more ...
Andy Plaice
We all love a good guitar riff and so a whole hour devoted to this one simple pleasure sounds like a surefire hit. BBC Four is the go-to channel for the rock‘n’roll documentary and this latest offering boasted a dazzling line-up including Brian May, Tony Iommi and Johnny Marr. The message was clear: if the riff was good enough for Beethoven, then pop and rock could learn a thing or two as well. From "Johnny B Goode" to "Smoke on the Water", crossing "Apache" to "Back In Black", the short repeated phrase we call the riff is the DNA of rock‘n’roll, we were told; the “skeleton of the song Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: CSNY 1974Considering that their 1974 tour was the world’s first series of dates limited to outdoor stadia since the Beatles in 1966, it’s appropriate the long-gestating collection chronicling Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s mammoth jaunt is an all-encompassing three-CD box set which also includes a DVD and a hefty, copiously illustrated booklet with a definitive in-depth essay on the tour.Although previously bootlegged and not hard to find, the dates did not – curiously, since it was a landmark tour designed to rake in cash – spawn a live album Read more ...
joe.muggs
Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti are a living lesson in the rejuvenating power of remaining experimental in art. Their music holds its own alongside the young guns of electronica, who indeed frequently idolise them, and in person they frequently seem as excited about possibilities and open to new ideas as artists just starting out.The set they played at Sónar festival in Barcelona last weekend was based on the Chris & Cosey songs they wrote throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but deliberately done in the more abstracted electronic style they took on as Carter Tutti from 2000 onwards – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Too Slow to DiscoToo Slow to Disco is about the five years from 1975 onwards when men and woman alike sported billowing white shirts, had wind-swept, pouffed-up hair and sang frozen-nosed, freeze-dried songs in sensitive voices about love, love and more love. Fleetwood Mac defined the mellow, cotton-wool-shrouded sound of a California-dominated wave of singers and songwriters who weren’t going to break a sweat about anything despite being strung out on coke. The by-word was mellow.This fascinating compilation makes the case that the cocaine cowboys and lush ladies Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Holland-Dozier-Holland - The Complete 45s Collection, Invictus, Hot Wax, Music MerchantAs Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland wrote and produced for The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and every other top-flight Motown act between 1962 and 1968. Their credit was behind “Baby Love”, “Nowhere to Run”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, “Where Did Our Love Go” and many other classics. But that wasn’t enough for the trio. At Motown, they increasingly felt, as the book with this package puts it, “overworked and under-appreciated”. Splitting from Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Perhaps capitalizing on the much-lauded success of the current television series of the same name starring Hayden Panettiere, Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975) is now out on DVD. Both film and TV show merge music and drama in the same way and both detail the social and political issues constantly swirling around country music’s hometown. But that’s where the similarities end.Those currently gripped by Nashville fever will be intrigued by the style, stars, songwriting process and provincial nature of the inhabitants of music city in the Seventies – before the notion of celebrity imploded in on Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Frankly, the idea of a female superhero flying solo at the front of a modern movie is becoming a bit of a joke. Despite there being a Wonder Woman film in the pipeline, that this relies on the success of "Batman vs. Superman" (both of whom have had their fair share of reboots) is disheartening. But going into an X-Men film there’s always the hope of both sexes having gripping storylines - a trend we’ve also seen play out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - so step forward Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. In a film that’s all about righting past wrongs you can't do much better than casting Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Sure as carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect, the 2010s are following a standard 20-year nostalgia cycle by embracing the 1990s as their "retro twin" decade. The quiet rumblings of the last few years – student Nineties parties and the reappearance of the crop top – have this year flowered into a full-on revival that has hairdressers fingering their razors (remember the Rachel cut?), thirty-somethings wearing double denim again, and Rambert coming to Sadler’s Wells with revivals from 1990-1 alongside a Merce Cunningham classic from the Nineties’ own retro twin decade, the 1970s.Four Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Philadelphia International Records – The CollectionThe O’Jays’ “Love Train”, The Jacksons’ “Show You the Way to Go” and McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” share an undeniable power. All make the body move and have a potency which could be devotional. Each is also about going forward and could slot into a church service. Despite being products of a musical production line, these were more than simple pop records.All three were issued by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records and are heard on Philadelphia International Records Read more ...