1960s
Reissue CDs Weekly: The PrisonersSunday, 28 February 2016
When the Sixties-inspired The Prisoners released their second album Thewisermiserdemelza in 1983, the decade they looked to for their musical and sartorial style was closer to the album itself than it is to today. Now, the half-century remove from... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Paris SistersSunday, 14 February 2016
The Paris Sisters were a look and a sound. Slightly different but still peas in a pod, Albeth, Priscilla and Sherrell Paris united to make often moodily minor-key music always suggestive of angels stamping their feet. Otherwordly. Yet hard-edged.... Read more... |
Generation Painting 1955-65, Heong Gallery, CambridgeTuesday, 09 February 2016
The individual colleges of the University of Cambridge can call, when needed, on an astonishing international network of alumni for expert advice, consultation and financial support. Such is the backing for an exquisite new public gallery on the... Read more... |
Saul Leiter, Photographers' GalleryMonday, 25 January 2016
One of the great joys of being a critic is discovering someone remarkable you’ve never heard of before. By the time he died in 2013 aged 90, the American photographer Saul Leiter had gained a degree of recognition, but it had been slow in coming and... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Harpers BizarreSunday, 24 January 2016
While Harpers Bizarre’s US Top 20 version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)” will always be their single turned to by American oldies radio, its follow-up “Come to the Sunshine” defines their sound and musical... Read more... |
Tony Allen and Jimi Tenor, Café OTOSaturday, 23 January 2016
Questions of what is authentic and what is retro get more complicated the more the information economy matures. Music from decades past that only tens or hundreds of people heard at the time it was made becomes readily available, gets sampled by new... Read more... |
When Bowie Came to BeckenhamSaturday, 16 January 2016
This extract from Mary Finnigan’s book Psychedelic Suburbia describes events leading up to the creation of the Beckenham Arts Lab, during the early period after David moved into her flat in Foxgrove Road, Beckenham in April 1969. The book was... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Wilde FlowersSunday, 10 January 2016
Though Soft Machine were the first band to suggest Canterbury could be musically noteworthy, the appearance of Caravan’s debut album in late 1968, Kevin Ayers' post-Soft Machine solo outing two years later, and the subsequent arrivals of Gong,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Jon Savage's 1966Sunday, 03 January 2016
January 1966 is a half a century back but some of the music released 50 years ago this month remains fresh, vital and timeless. With its biting invective and energy, Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl out of Your Window” will never lose its visceral... Read more... |
DVD: The Czechoslovak New Wave - A Collection, Vol. 2Monday, 28 December 2015
Distributor Second Run’s second collection of the Czech New Wave (strictly speaking, Czechoslovak, although the three films included here are from the Czech side of the movement) reminds us what an astonishing five years or so preceded the Prague... Read more... |
Best of 2015: Reissue CDsSunday, 27 December 2015
Revealing a new story which completely rewrites an existing one is not easy in the world of reissues. With so much already known, and with pop and rock history constantly being revisited, it’s always surprising when a fresh tale is told. And it’s... Read more... |
Hangmen, Wyndham's TheatreTuesday, 08 December 2015
Just what constitutes reasonable behaviour in an enlightened society? Not long ago, the death penalty fell under that umbrella in Britain, and state-sanctioned killing as punishment for the crime of, well, killing is just the kind of twisted irony... Read more... |
