wed 23/07/2025

1960s

Album: Paul Weller - Find El Dorado

Paul Weller occupies a strange place in the cultural sphere. Especially since he was adopted as an elder statesman of Britpop in the mid 1990s, he’s been particularly beloved of a core audience whose tastes are extremely conservative. So much so, in...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Taylor - Pendulum, Trio

Wheels of Fire was Cream’s third album. Issued in the US in June 1968 and in the UK two months later, it was a double LP. One record was of live recordings, the other of studio material. Of the nine tracks on the latter, three were co-written by the...

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Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-praise, or sly, back-handed compliment?"Jukebox musical" connotes the sort of "exploitation film" Elvis churned out....

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Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)

Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit...

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Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunity to give new stage life to a Who classic

The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s rock musical about teenage angst in 1960s Britain. What follows isn’t so easy to recognise.Quadrophenia started...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most...

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Abstract Erotic, Courtauld Gallery review - sculpture that is sensuous, funny and subversive

The Courtauld Gallery’s Abstract Erotic is a delight for two reasons – because an institution that has often seemed locked in the past is now embracing change and also because the sculptures on show are clever, suggestive and subversively funny.For...

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Music Reissues Weekly: The Sonics - High Time

“Theirs is truly rock in extremis, a précis of the youthful impetuosity and cathartic chaos at the heart of real rock ’n roll.”This extract from the essay in the booklet coming with the handsome box set High Time bluntly lays it out: The Sonics, as...

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Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain review - revelations of a weird and wonderful world

Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun having nothing in common other than being born a year apart and being oddballs – in very different ways....

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Blu-ray: Darling

A look at Darling on its 60th anniversary offers a sobering reality check on the "Swinging Sixties", a reminder of the fallacy of the decade’s gaiety and supposed liberation, especially for women. This attractive 4K restoration...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Gather In The Mushrooms

“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley says it is “as evocative as its title. The song has a deeply wooded sound, like a cross between...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Johnnie Taylor - Who's Making Love The Stax Singles 1966-1970

Johnnie Taylor’s big break came with the ever-fabulous September 1968 single “Who's Making Love.” His ninth 45 for the Stax label, it went Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100. Up to this point, the Arkansas-born singer had been on the R&B charts...

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