1970s
graeme.thomson
Ian Hunter’s new album, When I’m President, is an almost obscenely vibrant piece of work for a man who – despite that impossibly golden mop of hair – is now 73 years old. But then Hunter has always been a rock'n'roll survivor. Born in Shropshire in 1939, he was a 30-something industry veteran by the time his band Mott The Hoople, four albums into a career that had failed to scale even the nursery slopes of fame and fortune, scored their breakthrough hit in 1972 with David Bowie’s glam anthem “All the Young Dudes”.After enjoying three years of superstardom with Mott, whose run of irrepressible Read more ...
theartsdesk
Lee Hazlewood: A House Safe for TigersGraham RicksonLee Hazlewood’s voice can still invoke awe. It's gravelly, sonorous, rasping, but incredibly affecting – even when he’s scraping around in the depths it always sounds musical. A reissue of a hard-to-find 1975 LP, A House Safe for Tigers was originally the soundtrack to a Swedish TV movie directed by Hazlewood’s friend Torbjörn Axelman. Hazlewood had moved to Sweden in 1970, partly to ensure that his son wouldn’t be drafted to Vietnam. He continued to record and release new material, most of which slipped under the radar.A House Safe Read more ...
theartsdesk
Green Day: The Studio Albums 1990-2009Thomas H GreenPrior to a trilogy of new albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!, all to be released by the end of the year, a box set arrives containing the eight albums that brought Californian trio Green Day to this point. At the dawn on the Nineties, parallel to grunge’s hairy existential rock, there was another American punk explosion more directly imitative of Seventies originals such as The Clash and The Ramones. Alongside groups such as Rancid and The Offspring, Green Day led the charge and their first two albums, on the independent Lookout! label, lay out Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the collaboration between Jane Arden and Jack Bond was truly two-way, their films were wholly driven by a female perspective. They also evolved from Arden’s explorations into the nature of self and how external forces affect that. Yet instead of being a form of therapy, the Arden-Bond films are magical journeys blurring the boundary between the real and unreal.Separation (1967) has some mod-ish trappings: music by Procul Harum, visuals from light-show artist Mark Boyle and clothing from Ossie Clark. The character Jane (Arden herself) drifts through a world where she interacts with a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Kinks: The Kinks at the BBCKieron Tyler“Meet a group that recently came from nowhere to the top of the hit parade. A rhythm and blues outfit with long, shoulder-length hair and the strange name of The Kinks.” With that, Brian Matthew introduced The Kinks to BBC listeners on 19 September 1964. Two months later, Matthew declares the band “members of the shaggy set”. On being asked why they grow their hair so long, Ray Davies says that “girls go for it”. His brother Dave offers that girls are going kinky.Almost 50 years on, these off-the-cuff remarks are amongst the wealth of fabulous Read more ...
howard.male
What function does a critic even serve at an event like this? Some of the best Colombian musicians across several generations are playing some of the best music Colombia has ever produced to an audience that largely consists of blissfully happy Colombians on Colombian Independence Day. But before the party got into its stride there’s a non-Colombian support band to consider. And consider them we must, because Ghanaian Afro-funk band Konkoma were as coolly polished and insidiously funky as the headline act.Like Ondatrópica they take much of their inspiration from the dance music of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After his über-memorable performance at Her Majesty’s jubilee concert, the next step on Sir Elton John’s journey through 2012 is just as arresting, but less likely to be dusted off at such conventional occasions. In fact, it’s hard to see how he could even perform his new album outside a club setting. Good Morning to the Night could have been a colossal misfire. It’s not. It’s spiffy.The story of its genesis doesn’t need repeating in detail. Sir Elton heard and liked Australian electro-dance duo Pnau, scooped them up for his management portfolio and offered access to the masters of his early Read more ...
theartsdesk
Jimmy Page: Lucifer Rising and Other SoundtracksKieron TylerWith Led Zeppelin established as world-beaters in 1971, Jimmy Page was probably entitled to take some time off. Instead, in the wake of the release of their fourth album, they criss-crossed the world in 1972. When at home, Page somehow found time to work on the soundtrack for the Kenneth Anger film Lucifer Rising. It’s been bootlegged and the first official appearance of this mysterious chapter in Page’s musical life plugs a gap. Page himself has released it on his own label and contributes brief liner notes.Strictly speaking, this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It was the right venue. Frankie Valli is New Jersey royalty. He might not have been crowned, but appearing in The Sopranos is as good as any coronation. As he leaned into the audience, shaking hands, he spread his magic. Even Jimmy Page had come along for this rare London show by one of pop’s greatest, most distinctive voices.The real shock was that live, Valli sounds exactly like Frankie Valli. Exactly. To hear for real the sharp falsetto was a thrill. Opening with a forceful “Grease” couldn't disguise the fact that, despite the billing, it was instantly obvious this was not Frankie Valli Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Make it Your Sound, Make it Your Scene – Vanguard Records & the 1960s Musical RevolutionKieron TylerSeymour and Maynard Solomon’s Vanguard Records hasn’t been given the same amount of recognition as Jac Holzman’s Elektra, despite both labels being equally important and having trodden – at least up to the late Sixties – very similar paths. This neat four-CD box set should ensure that Vanguard gets more recognition.Like Elektra, Vanguard cast its net into New York. Also like Elektra, its earliest releases didn’t suggest a coherent strategy. Viennese waltzs, Elizabethan Read more ...
howard.male
Given that Ziggy Stardust was a figment of David Bowie’s imagination it seems fitting that, for all intents and purposes, Bowie himself now appears to be a figment of our imagination. What’s he up to these days? Is he still living in New York with his beautiful Earthling wife and daughter? Or did he finally manage to accumulate enough wealth from his record sales to finance a return to his own home planet? These questions and many more are not even touched upon in this hour-long documentary.However, fanciful whimsy aside, with no Thin White Duke available for comment, the programme-makers Read more ...
sheila.johnston
You might not think that a drama about German parliamentary politics in the 1970s would be of great urgency today. But when Democracy, Michael Frayn's play about Willy Brandt and the Günter Guillaume spy scandal, first opened in 2003, Brits swiftly discerned links with another charismatic politician, the first left-wing leader in decades, while across the Atlantic the womanising German Chancellor looked very much like Bill Clinton. Today a new spin appears and Democracy is described as "exploring the Machiavellian nature of coalition government."Brandt ended his first speech after being Read more ...