wed 21/05/2025

1960s

The Rolling Stones, BST Hyde Park review - let it rock!

A few spots of rain greeted the arrival of the Rolling Stones on BST Hyde Park’s stage on Saturday night, and after “Street Fighting Man”, as Mick Jagger dedicated the show to the much-loved and lamented drummer Charlie Watts, a rainbow appeared...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Whatever You Want - Bob Crewe's 60s Soul Sounds

In 1965, Bob Crewe was living alongside Central Park in New York’s Dakota building. At various times, the block’s other residents included Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. For work, Crewe’s 6th-floor offices on West 60th Street...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Ban the Bomb - Music of the Aldermaston Anti-Nuclear Marches

“The case is quite simple. We think that the policy which is being pursued by the western powers is one which is almost bound to end in the extermination of the human race. Some of us think that might be rather a pity.”This extract from a 1958...

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Blu-ray: The Soft Skin

The 400 Blows (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962) established François Truffaut as an outstanding and original director. His next film, The Soft Skin (La peau douce) from 1964, was not in the same league.Although it displays many of his story-telling...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Barney Wilen - Zodiac

In 1966, the combo fronted by French sax player Barney Wilen issued an album of musical interpretations of each sign of the zodiac. In the US in 1969, Mort Garson released 12 albums, each dedicated to a single sign. Two years earlier Garson was...

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Music Reissues Weekly: In A Rocking Mood - Beverley’s Rock Steady 1966-1968

Beverley’s was an ice-cream shop and restaurant on Orange Street in Kingston, Jamaica. Records were on sale too. In 1961, an aspiring singer-songwriter named James Chambers turned up there with a song he’d written called “Dearest Beverley.” If it...

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Music Reissues Weekly: John Barry - The More Things Change

By 1970, John Barry had composed music for Born Free, The Lion in Winter, Midnight Cowboy, You Only Live Twice and about 38 other films. His work with cinema began in 1960 and averaged around five films a year. In 1965, eight films were released...

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Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy production

After two years of Covid-affected performances – even though there was a full season last year – Glyndebourne's annual festival is finally back in full glory. Following the big blaze of Saturday's The Wreckers, Sunday welcomed back Michael Grandage'...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Dusty Springfield - Dusty Sings Soul

First on were The Supremes with “Baby Love.” Next, The Miracles performed “You Really Got a Hold on me.” After this, Stevie Wonder’s “I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues,” The Temptations’ “The Way You do the Things You do”...

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Music Reissues Weekly: My World Fell Down - The John Carter Story

Fat Man’s Music Festival. The Haystack. Red Line Explosion. Stormy Petrel. Butterwick. Sweet Chariot. Names which don't immediately spring to mind.The factor linking them is also common to 1967’s “Let’s go to San Francisco” hit-makers The Flower Pot...

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Anyone Can Whistle, Southwark Playhouse review - full-on bonkers

Musicals don't get madder than Anyone Can Whistle, the 1964 Broadway flop from onetime West Side Story and Gypsy collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents which makes history of sorts at Southwark Playhouse as the first Sondheim show to be...

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Music Reissues Weekly: All Turned On! Motown Instrumentals 1960-1972

Motown and its related labels have been heavily collected and meticulously scrutinised since the early Sixties. There ought to be nothing left to say. Yet here this is, a smart, 24-track collection of Motown instros which includes five previously...

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