1980s
Blu-ray: Mystery TrainTuesday, 23 May 2023
Wandering the wrecked streets of Memphis in search of blues and rock history, two teenage Japanese tourists debate who and what’s better: Elvis Presley vs. Carl Perkins, the sleek ultramodernity of their hometown Yokohoma vs. the “vintage” charms of... Read more... |
Album: The Damned - DarkadelicThursday, 27 April 2023
The Damned could have been bigger contenders. As anyone who’s seen Wes Orshoski’s feature film biog, Don’t You Wish We Were Dead, will know, their career has been blighted by chaos, line-up changes, catastrophic business decisions and just plain bad... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2023Thursday, 20 April 2023
Record Store Day is nearly here. At theartsdesk on Vinyl we have a selection of goodies which are appearing exclusively in record shops. See anything you fancy?THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S VINYL OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2023Suicide A Way of Life Rareties... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Pharoah Sanders Quartet - Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1980Sunday, 16 April 2023
Promises attracted a lot of attention upon its 2020 release. The album brought together UK electronica artist Floating Points, The London Symphony Orchestra and storied US jazz individualist Pharoah Sanders, who died in September 2022. It became his... Read more... |
Album: The Selecter - Human AlgebraSaturday, 15 April 2023
To music-lovers of the era, The Selecter are known as part of the 2-Tone ska explosion which blew up as the 1970s turned into the 1980s. The Selecter were right in the middle of that, their eponymous song on the B-side of The Specials’ debut single... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: McNeal and Niles - Thrust, Wilbur Niles and Thrust - Thrust TooSunday, 02 April 2023
An original pressing of 1979’s Thrust fetches at least £1000. Its 1980 follow-up Thrust Too can be a relative bargain at around £400. The prices are partly explained by J Dilla having sampled Thrust Too’s “Survival of the Funkiest” and Thrust’s “... Read more... |
Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy, Sky Documentaries review - a macabre slice of motor racing mythologySaturday, 01 April 2023
Netflix’s hit show Drive to Survive has proved that F1 can grab ratings, but Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy (Sky Documentaries) is a more esoteric offering.It’s a story from the annals of early-Eighties Formula One, in which filmmakers... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Kamikaze HeartsTuesday, 28 March 2023
Last month’s Storyville: Sex on Screen (available on BBC iPlayer) was a slick, speedy (and repetitive) canter through the history of the sexual exploitation of women in Hollywood. It had star names like Jane Fonda, many references to the #... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Barracudas - Drop Out with the BarracudasSunday, 26 March 2023
From around July 1977, Jeremy Gluck began contributing to the UK music weekly Sounds. Amongst his pieces were features on The Lurkers, The Rezillos, 999 and his home country Canada’s punk band The Viletones. He’d also written about Generation X for... Read more... |
Under the Black Rock, Arcola Theatre review - political thriller turns soapySaturday, 11 March 2023
“Darkly comic thrillers” (as they like to say) set in Ireland tracking how families, or quasi-families, fall apart under pressure are very much in vogue just now. Whether The Banshees of Inisherin will garner the Oscars haul it hardly deserves... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To ComeSunday, 05 March 2023
Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To Come continues a series which began in 2015 with 1966 - The Year The Decade Exploded, a compilation springing off from Savage’s book of the same name. A follow-up looked at 1965, but after that the... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Stranger In Town - A Del Shannon CompendiumSunday, 26 February 2023
After Del Shannon took his own life in February 1990 at age 55, some obituaries were careful to point out that he stood apart from other pop stars who were big in pre-Beatles America. “The most tragic thing would be for Del Shannon to be lumped with... Read more... |
