1960s
Reissue CDs Weekly: Blue Öyster Cult, Celluloid Records, Jimi Hendrix, Fela KutiSunday, 03 March 2013
Blue Öyster Cult: The Columbia Albums CollectionBlue Öyster Cult were about more than the music. They seemingly arrived fully formed with a ready-made mythos and mystery. Their first two albums had no pictures of the band and weird, Escher-esque art... Read more... |
CD: Petula Clark – Lost in YouSunday, 24 February 2013
“Cut Copy me”, the opening track of Petula Clark’s first British studio album in six years, is beautiful. It could have been created by Saint Etienne at their most melancholy. Her voice almost a whisper, it’s the sound of shadows and uncertainty... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Family, Latin Noir, Arve Henriksen, WidowmakerSunday, 17 February 2013
Family: Once Upon a TimeFamily were always difficult to place. This lavish box set doesn’t make getting a handle on them any easier. They were as idiosyncratic as Jethro Tull and, in Roger Chapman, had a vocalist as offbeat as Joe Cocker. Not that... Read more... |
Vegas, Sky AtlanticFriday, 15 February 2013
Not a bad idea for a series, even if it is a tiny bit Boardwalk Empire Goes to Nevada. In short: whoosh back to the early Sixties and poke about in the wild and lawless underbelly of Las Vegas, a city awash with debauchery and corruption and under... Read more... |
Rhinocéros, Barbican TheatreFriday, 15 February 2013
I laughed quite a bit going round the exhibition to which the Barbican’s latest theatre events are tied, The Bride and the Bachelors. Pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 “Readymade” Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy? is funny in itself: a metal birdcage... Read more... |
Dear World, Charing Cross TheatreThursday, 14 February 2013
It's odd that Jerry Herman merits only a passing mention in Stephen Sondheim's two-volume autobiographical take on Broadway words and music, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. In a couple of subjects Herman chose no less daringly than the... Read more... |
La Valse/ Monotones/ Marguerite & Armand, Royal BalletWednesday, 13 February 2013
Genius does not mean having no influences. Monotones, one of the very greatest of Frederick Ashton's ballets, is heavily influenced by other works: by George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations and Apollo, by Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère. And it in... Read more... |
DVD: Ginger & RosaTuesday, 12 February 2013
Sally Potter has forged an admirable career as an independent British filmmaker. She has avoided formulas, made daring visual experiments, and been committed to a highly personal art cinema. Among her movies, there have been two dazzling... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Conny Plank, Pied Piper, Jean-Luc Ponty, Cliff RichardSunday, 10 February 2013
Various Artists: Who’s That Man – A Tribute to Conny PlankThe list of acts Konrad Plank worked with is a Hollywood Walk of Fame of Krautrock. As an engineer or producer he was behind seminal albums by Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia, La Düsseldorf and... Read more... |
HitchcockThursday, 07 February 2013
A pedestrian talent hitches a ride on genius in Hitchcock, director Sacha Gervasi's often cringemakingly banal look at the filmmaker in the run-up to the mother of all horror movies, Psycho. One can only imagine what the Great Man himself would... Read more... |
Montgomery Clift: The Right ProfileMonday, 04 February 2013
Both on screen and off, Montgomery Clift was sensitive, hesitant, introspective, self-destructive and often tortured. A personality that expressed itself on film as if afraid of what the camera would reveal. There were at least three faces of Clift... Read more... |
Feast, Young VicSaturday, 02 February 2013
Feast aims high. Very, very high. Steered by experienced and much-lauded director Rufus Norris, five playwrights and one choreographer seek to make a fusion of physical theatre, dance, onstage music, straight drama, abstract poetic dialogue,... Read more... |
