1960s
Kieron Tyler
In 1969, a stream of creative new albums pointed to how what had grown from pop music could be reframed. Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline embraced country music. The Band’s eponymous second album drew on and was integral to defining Americana. The first album by Crosby, Stills & Nash shied away from the increasingly harsh template embraced by rock.In contrast, and bridging the Atlantic, little was more harsh than the debut albums by The Stooges and Led Zeppelin. The year's boundary pushers were seemingly endless: Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad, Can’s Monster Movie, Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Can we ever really know the passion that brought our parents together? By the time we are old enough to hear the story of how they first met, that lovers’ narrative has frayed in the telling and faded in the daily light of domestic familiarity. But what if we could be transported back in time to when that romance was at its peak? Cold War is Pawel Pawlikowski’s first film since winning the Oscar for Ida in 2015. It’s a long-nurtured drama inspired by his parents’ own volatile relationship which saw them leaving Poland, leaving each other, marrying other people only to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Paul Simon is currently traversing the globe on his Farewell Tour. His new album clearly accompanies that. It’s a thoughtful look backwards wherein Simon has plucked numbers from his catalogue he feels deserve another go-round, recording them with guest artists, often from the world of jazz (notably Wynton Marsalis). It is, by its nature, somewhat self-indulgent, for there are none of his most famous songs here. These are numbers he wants to bring out of the shadows; that he reckons are worth further attention. On occasion, he’s absolutely right.The album opens with "One Man’s Ceiling is Read more ...
Owen Richards
The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man. This is not another biography on America’s first son, but a study on the persona, the myth and the brand that was created around him.Everyone has their own idea of who he was: the hip-swivelling rebel, the military hero, the irresistible leading man, the grotesque Vegas attraction. He was, in every complex and contradictory way, the living embodiment of the United States Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Fifty years after the 1968 Soviet invasion that so brutally interrupted it, the Czech New Wave really is a gift that keeps on giving. It still astounds that such a sheer variety of cinema was created in so short a time – really just six or seven years, not even a decade – by such a range of talent. It’s a rich vein of film history, one that has been revealed in recent years in exemplary releases from distributor Second Run; if it left you with any concern, it was when this remarkable source might begin to dry up.Not for a long time, if their latest is anything to go by, though it’s no less Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Once heard, Wimple Winch’s “Save my Soul” is never forgotten. The A-side of a flop single originally issued in June 1966, it is one of the most tightly coiled British records from the Sixties and has sudden explosions of tension suggesting the band are ready to punch anyone within reach. Late the previous year, The Who’s “My Generation” had taken pop music to new, hitherto unexplored, levels of aggression. “Save my Soul” went much further. It is a landmark.Nevertheless, before 1984 the Liverpool group's single was barely known. It had been included – in lo-fi – on the 1983 bootleg compilation Read more ...
Katherine Waters
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and they wear make-up, jewellery, low-cut tops – we understand they’re sexy, confident, cool. Several are African, North African, Caribbean. When the teacher laughs, which is often, it bears vestiges of the provincial attitude of “a young girl who acknowledges her lack of importance,” though it’s unclear whether the students notice for she Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although Gary McFarland’s 1965 album The In Sound had the Samba and Bossa Nova influences which were colouring the sound of American jazzers from around 1962, it was on the button for the year it was released. This despite sporting a pop art sleeve evoking those of the swing-based easy listening albums from Enoch Light and Terry Snyder issued by the Command label in 1959.The In Sound’s sensitivity to a then-current zeitgeist is confirmed by its fast-on-the-uptake version of “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”, which The Rolling Stones released as a US single on 6 June 1965 – the album was Read more ...
David Benedict
What’s that? Joan Crawford had no sense of humour? Well, take a look at It's A Great Feeling. It’s a pretty bizarre (and pretty bad) 1949 musical with Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan playing themselves running round the Warner Brothers lot attempting to make a picture. For reasons too daft to explain, they want to turn waitress Judy Adams (Doris Day) into their leading lady and all three wind up at a swanky gown shop. Doris disappears to try on a red gingham number, when who should pop up in a fur stole knitting what looks suspiciously like a baby bootee? Real-life Joan.Appalled by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It might have begun with The Beatles espousal of Bob Dylan in 1964. There was also The Animals whose first two singles, issued the same year, repurposed tracks from Bob Dylan’s 1962 debut album. Before The Byrds hit big with their version of his “Mr. Tambourine Man” in summer 1965, Britain’s pop groups were already hip to Dylan and incorporating elements of his approach into their sound.Some acolytes like Donovan, who emerged in early 1965, even attempted to clone the Dylan look. Other were more subtle. The Searchers’ late 1964 single “What Have They Done to the Rain?” was an adaptation of a Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The image of a raging, narcissistic tyrant, convinced that he can crush even death into oblivion, has all too many resonances these days. So this visually spectacular National Theatre resurrection of Ionesco’s 1962 play, adapted and directed by Patrick Marber, promises to pack a punch beyond its absurdist proposition of a selfish child-man trying to dodge his mortality.The fact that the punch never quite seems to land is something of a mystery, since the evening features a crack cast, several brilliant one-liners, and a sensational set. Anthony Ward’s design is dominated by a large coat of Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“We have come here tonight,” announces Mavis Staples, “to bring you some joy, happiness, inspiration - and positive vibrations!” It’s a declaration that the irrepressible Mavis, celebrating her 79th birthday today, routinely makes at her concerts - and she never fails to deliver.Tonight is the second of two sold-out nights at Islington’s beautiful Union Chapel, a much-loved venue that’s perfect for Mavis’ brand of joyous, reverent and powerful music and one she clearly adores. She’s played here a few times, including a special show on her 75th birthday in 2014. “It’s my birthday,” she Read more ...