O.k here’s the deal – I’m asked to get seven songs together that rocked my year (why seven? Maybe the editor is on a Madonna Kabalistic tip – who knows?). My clause – these are songs that I’ve played obsessively throughout the year, but they’re not necessarily released this year. Now, with that out of […]
It could hardly be more rock n’roll – the frontman dies, and the group disbands with one member going off on a crazed visionary tangent. St. John, beloved disciple – the only one, according to the gospel, to stay awake in Gethsemane while Jesus swept blood – according to tradition ended his days on the […]
There used to exist the perfect bar. It was on a sidestreet off Amsterdam’s main square, simply sitting there, waiting to be stumbled on. For years I used to go back there, sure each time that it wouldn’t dissapoint, until that dreadful winter evening when I turned up after an evening flight from Dublin, only […]
Instead of shedding tears over just how much Mike Skinner has forfeited his concrete jungle panache in a series of increasingly trend adhering, substance lacking albums since (and including it has to be said) A Grand Don’t Come for Free, let’s remember for one beautiful instance the Brummie smartmouth had perfection precariously wobbling in his […]
There’s an embarassing moment that happens to nearly all students of a foreign language, when they over-eagerly grasp to a similar sounding word to that of their own native tongue, only to find out that it’s a ‘false friend’ with a completely different meaning. Approaching Kate Rusby’s fragile and beautiful No Names, from the album […]
Caught between the devil (Britney Spears) and Gordon Sumner, the idea that an artist can reflect their politics in music has become a largely discredited notion. When putting their minds towards defeating Thatcherism artists like Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, and the Communards produced arguably some of their worst material – they may have won your […]
Paraphrase the famous ‘I may not like what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say it’ into ‘I think your sexual politics are more than a little dodgy, you look unpleasant (and decidedly unwashed), but you’re the first Irish band in history to whose music you can imagine […]
What really grabs attention in this belated companion piece to The Jam’s penultimate single The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow), is just how little they have in common. In late 1982 as The Jam’s closing chapter saw them feted as real deal pop stars for the only time, an acrid sarcastic dirge was license for […]
It’s one of those ironies, that I was given a collection of Miriam Makeba’s music just last week – that is to say, a week before the South African artist died, suffering a heart-attack after having sung at a solidarity concert for Italian author Roberto Saviano (who is living under escort, after the Neopolitan mafia […]
Forget the fashionista’s need to wear their t-shirts and proclaim themselves fans, forget that you can now buy nearly as much tat bearing the famous lightning bolt insignia as you’d find adorned with Elvis’s mug, forget all that and remember when AC/DC became as the anti-dote to rock’s ascent up its own backside. In the […]
