1960s
Music Reissues Weekly: Barney Wilen - ZodiacSunday, 12 June 2022In 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... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: In A Rocking Mood - Beverley’s Rock Steady 1966-1968Sunday, 05 June 2022Beverley’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... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: John Barry - The More Things ChangeSunday, 29 May 2022By 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... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy productionTuesday, 24 May 2022After 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'... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Dusty Springfield - Dusty Sings SoulSunday, 01 May 2022First 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”... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: My World Fell Down - The John Carter StorySunday, 10 April 2022Fat 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... Read more... |
Anyone Can Whistle, Southwark Playhouse review - full-on bonkersFriday, 08 April 2022Musicals 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... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: All Turned On! Motown Instrumentals 1960-1972Sunday, 27 March 2022Motown 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... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Devil's TrapTuesday, 15 March 2022Released in 1962, František Vláčil’s The Devil’s Trap (Ďáblova past) is the first in a loose trilogy of historical epics, the second instalment of which (Marketa Lazarová) is often cited as among the greatest of all Czech films.Shorter and sparer... Read more... |
Great Freedom review - love behind bars in GermanySaturday, 12 March 2022A story of forbidden love, Great Freedom takes place almost entirely in a prison. The film's background is encapsulated in the word “175er/ hundertfünfundsiebziger”, still to be found in German dictionaries and collective memories as a... Read more... |
The Ipcress File, ITV review – adaptation of Len Deighton thriller fires on all cylindersMonday, 07 March 2022Sidney J Furie’s 1965 film The Ipcress File is a much-loved benchmark of its period. Stylish, sinister, witty and depicting a determinedly un-swinging London, it was conceived as the flipside to the absurdly glamorous James Bond movies and pulled it... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Blossom Toes - We Are Ever So CleanSunday, 06 March 2022In July 1967, a British band called The Ingoes changed their name. Up to this point they’d traded in R&B, blues and soul, and tackled some rock ’n roll covers too. Ingoes referenced the 1958 Chuck Berry song “Ingo”. As they’d just recorded their... Read more... |