1960s
Hanslip, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - lyricism and challengeMonday, 06 December 2021
Manchester’s oldest chamber orchestra has been gathering a new audience at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music since that auditorium opened, and Sunday afternoon’s programme provided an excellent example of where the Northern Chamber... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Once Upon A Time In The West Midlands - The Bostin’ Sounds of Brumrock 1966-1974Sunday, 05 December 2021
The picture seen above doesn’t have quite the same resonance as Art Kane’s 1958 shot A Great Day in Harlem which brought 57 American jazz musicians in front of his lens, but it is nonetheless significant. Here, in 1971, is an evocative, unique... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 67: Squid, The Beatles, Beach Riot, Black Sabbath, Quantic, Heiko Maile and moreWednesday, 01 December 2021
The first of two December round-ups from theartsdesk on Vinyl runs the gamut from folk-tronic oddness to Seventies heavy rock to avant-jazz to The Beatles, as well as much else. All musical life is here... except the crap stuff. So dive in!VINYL OF... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Box Of Pin-Ups - The British Sounds of 1965, Think I'm Going Weird - Original Artefacts From The British Psychedelic Scene 1966-68Sunday, 28 November 2021
Signs of irrevocable change materialised in December 1965. On Wednesday the 8th, a new band named The 13th Floor Elevators debuted live at The Jade Room in Austin, Texas. Band members prepared for the experience by taking LSD in the run-up to the... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Blow My Mind! The Doré-Era-Mira Punk & Psych LegacySunday, 07 November 2021
Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets. In this case... Read more... |
Quant review - Sadie Frost's debut documentary skirts the genius of Mary QuantWednesday, 27 October 2021
As a teenager in 1967, I asked for a Mary Quant make-up box for Christmas and my parents reluctantly complied. It was so thrilling to hold that plastic white box with the black daisy in the middle and the big mirror in the lid and to be able, at... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The DamnedSunday, 24 October 2021
One German writer found a neat yet teasing way to sum up the difference between Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), the first film in the Italian director’s “German trilogy”, and the two films that followed it.The Damned, known in Italian as La... Read more... |
Blu-ray: La Dolce VitaTuesday, 19 October 2021
One of those films weighed down by a considerable reputation, La Dolce Vita (1960) is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. From the very first sequence in which a figure of Christ sails across Rome’s skies, suspended from a helicopter, a... Read more... |
Ridley Road, BBC One review - Jewish community fights Nazi nightmare in 1960s LondonMonday, 18 October 2021
Neo-Nazis held a Trafalgar Square rally under the banner "Free Britain from Jewish Control" in the year of my birth; I had no idea until I watched Ridley Road. Most of us know about the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, but, until now, next to nothing... Read more... |
Album: Jarvis Cocker – Chansons d’Ennui Tip-TopSaturday, 16 October 2021
Wes Anderson and Jarvis Cocker do 1960s French pop – this frothy confection couldn’t be any more “art school” if it were smoking a gauloise in a black polo-neck. Truly, what a match made on the Eurostar! For one so thoroughly Sheffield born-and-bred... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Psychedelic Soul - Produced By Norman WhitfieldSunday, 10 October 2021
While there’s undoubtedly some of “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone” in Rare Earth’s “Come With me”, another correspondence also immediately springs to mind – the Melody Nelson-era Serge Gainsbourg. And maybe, due to the female moaning, the “Je T’Aime”-... Read more... |
Yoko Ono, Mend Piece, Whitechapel Gallery review – funny and sad in equal measureThursday, 07 October 2021
Its more than 50 years since Yoko Ono first presented Mend Piece at the Indica Gallery, London in the exhibition through which she met John Lennon. The piece is currently being revisited at the Whitechapel Gallery and, in the intervening years, its... Read more... |
