1980s
Reissue CDs Weekly: Blur, Blancmange, The Smashing Pumpkins, Strange PassionSunday, 22 July 2012
Blur: 21Bruce DessauThe recent closure of Word magazine has been seen by some as linked to the demise of "Fifty Quid Man". Who can afford such a wallet-frightening splurge these days on the kind of music the monthly's writers wrote so eloquently... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Jimmy Page, Keith Jarrett, Elton John, Swing Out SisterSunday, 15 July 2012
Jimmy Page: Lucifer Rising and Other SoundtracksKieron TylerWith Led Zeppelin established as world-beaters in 1971, Jimmy Page was probably entitled to take some time off. Instead, in the wake of the release of their fourth album, they criss-crossed... Read more... |
Marc Almond, Shepherd's Bush EmpireTuesday, 10 July 2012
The first time I interviewed Marc Almond back in the late 1980s he had a pet snake with him, just one of the many things that sets him apart from today's stars. These days the only reptiles one sees around chart-toppers are the publicists. Almond... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sound System, Songs for the Lyons Cornerhouse, All Kinds of Highs, BananaramaSunday, 08 July 2012
Various Artists: Sound System - The Story of Jamaican MusicThomas H Green This is lovely, a box-set celebration of Jamaican music, marking 50 years of the country’s independence. In a brooks-no-argument fashion, it reminds the forgetful that the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Searchers, This Ain't Chicago, The Spinners, Bronski Beat/CommunardsSunday, 01 July 2012
The Searchers: Hearts in Their EyesKieron TylerAlthough second to The Beatles as Liverpool’s most consistent Sixties chart presence, The Searchers have never previously been given the box set treatment. Like the Fabs, they were innovative and... Read more... |
Rock of AgesThursday, 14 June 2012
There's nothing wrong with the film adaptation of the stage show Rock of Ages that more raunch and noise - oops, I meant noize - might not put right, assuming that an amiably dopy immersion in Eighties rock pop is your thing. One of those star-a-... Read more... |
Interview: 10 Questions for Neneh CherryWednesday, 06 June 2012
Neneh Cherry has never been conventional. The singer and rapper's latest album is a collaboration with The Thing, a Swedish free jazz trio who have previously tackled songs by PJ Harvey and The White Stripes. If anything, the presence of Cherry has... Read more... |
CD: Dexys - One Day I'm Going To SoarSunday, 03 June 2012
Bob Dylan talked, after his 1966 motorcycle crash, about having to learn to do consciously what he once did instinctively. That quote kept popping into my head as I listened to One Day I’m Going to Soar, the fourth Dexys album and their first for 27... Read more... |
CD: Ultravox - BrilliantThursday, 31 May 2012
A few years ago the ultimate in post-modern bollocks appeared – Guilty Pleasures, a club night built around the notion that tepid crap from yesteryear is brilliant. So let’s go dig Toto, Go West, Andrew Gold, Dr Hook, any old toe jam. Of course,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Gary NumanSaturday, 19 May 2012
Gary Numan (born Gary Webb, 1958) was born in Hammersmith and raised in the western outskirts of London, the son of a bus driver. By the latter half of the Seventies he was fronting punk band Tubeway Army but his fortunes changed dramatically when... Read more... |
CD: Paul Buchanan - Mid AirThursday, 17 May 2012
In the eight years since the fourth – and very possibly last - Blue Nile album, High, Paul Buchanan has seen his band disintegrate and a close friend die. Little wonder, then, that his solo debut is a reflective record. The most cinematic of bands,... Read more... |
Dexys, Shepherds Bush EmpireWednesday, 09 May 2012
Kevin Rowland always did march to the beat of his own drum. Whether it was purloining his album’s master tapes from his record company or refusing to consort with the music press, he constantly straddled a wobbly fence between control freak and... Read more... |
