New music
Nick Hasted
Captain Beefheart, who with his Magic Band made John Peel’s favourite album, 1969’s extraordinary Trout Mask Replica, died of complications from multiple sclerosis last week, aged 69. In tribute, below is a feature from 2003, much of it unpublished till now, in which members of several incarnations of The Magic Band reminisce about their tyrannical, brilliant leader, and the jaw-dropping story of Trout Mask Replica’s creation. At the time I spoke to them, the Captain was living in the desert, a reclusive but successful painter known as Don Van Vliet who had been a minor star in the Read more ...
graeme.thomson
At one point in Joe Dunlop’s Boy's Own adventure-style dramatisation of the events leading up to Live Aid, concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith asked Bob Geldof: “Why are you doing it, that’s the question?” I’ve interviewed Geldof on a number of occasions and there’s no doubting either the sincerity or enduring nature of his commitment to Band Aid. I’m not sure, however, that I or anyone else, and certainly not this film, has ever quite got to the bottom of Goldsmith's question. Why Geldof? Why Ethiopia? And why couldn't he let go?By 1985 Geldof was a washed-up pop star looking not only for Read more ...
theartsdesk
Yesterday was yesterday. Today there's the rest of the week. What are the options? You could go to the shops and exchange all your presents, or you could pursue something more in the cultural line. To which end, theartsdesk is delighted to propose some suggestions. Our writers strongly recommend that you do one or more of the following while opportunity knocks. ENGLAND LondonVisit a Georgian medicine cabinet. London is full of treasures which fail to register on the public radar. One such gem is The Symons Collection at the Royal College of Physicians in Regent's Park. The display Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Over the last 25 years I've done a lot of DJing, or at least playing records in public that, occasionally, people have been refreshed enough to dance to. I've done sets in all manner of scenarios, from nightclubs to house parties, to gallery events, to a Finnish festival in front of thousands, to a Balham comedy club. The last used to pay me £300 a night to play the same cheese and predictability week after week, but one evening when I put on "Fools Gold" by The Stone Roses and my heart sank with boredom, I knew it was time to get out, £300 or no £300.So what is an "unexpected party Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Compared to the way I feel now", said Ray Davies 50 minutes in, “having a nervous breakdown was a jaunt.” His voice was even, matter of fact. He didn’t look distressed, merely appeared to be stating what he thinks is obvious. Julian Temple’s documentary about The Kinks’s leader and songwriter was packed with such moments – revealing and so open that it was impossible not to be affected by Davies’s low-key passion. This assured portrait was more than the story of a pop star. With Davies as a unique guide, Temple captured an alternative portrait of how the Sixties unfolded.The broadcast of Ray Read more ...
sue.steward
"The way I keep in touch with the world… is very gingerly… because the world touches too hard." That honest and hugely poignant statement by the musician, composer, songwriter, painter and full-on eccentric Captain Beefheart comes from a documentary film by Anton Corbijn titled Don van Vliet: Some Yo Yo Stuff (1994). His staccato delivery is a clue to the terrible toll of sharing his life for decades with multiple sclerosis, but it also feels like a comment on those who just didn’t "get" his music, his performances and his shimmeringly surreal conversations. It carries extra meaning now that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When theartsdesk asked Simply Red’s PR company for some pictures of the band to accompany this review, the images sent were of Mick Hucknall – alone. Which is probably all you need to know about who Simply Red are. Last night’s audience at this, Simply Red’s final ever live show, needed no reminding that it was all about Hucknall, however he’s billed. For them, his arrival on stage after the band had set the groove drew more applause than the music.What’s been billed as Simply Red Farewell, The Final Tour began in April in Brazil. Since then, it has wound intermittently through Britain, the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Breton capital Rennes is an attractive city. Move north from the train station, pass through a covered market with tripe and saucisse sellers, cross a canal and there's a series of Italianate squares and arcades. Further along is the quaint Place St Anne and a warren of medieval streets lined with half-timbered buildings. It’s an inspiring cityscape. But for three days every December, the city is crammed with revellers and dogs on string who couldn't give a fig about the medieval cathedral. They're here for the Trans Musicales de Rennes, the annual musical jamboree. Just short of 100 acts Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's a season of retrospection for Bruce Springsteen. New light has been thrown on his pivotal 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town with the release of The Promise, a double CD of out-takes and unreleased songs, alongside an expanded box set of CDs and DVDs telling the Darkness story in sound and vision. A version of Thom Zimny's documentary about the making of the album, included in the boxed release, was shown in Imagine on BBC One. It's part of a sporadic programme of reassessment of key works from Springsteen's career, which has included a 30th-anniversary edition of Born to Run and Read more ...
howard.male
A startling one in 10 British adults apparently went to a music festival this year. Given that I’m a music journalist and I didn’t, maybe I’m some kind of astronomically unlikely anomaly. I’d like to think so. But those familiar aerial shots of Glastonbury – not just a few fields but a sizeable expanse of Britain’s patchwork-quilt landscape, completely overrun by an infestation of teeming humanity - is enough to make me feel smugly sane to have decided, as usual, to just remain cosily at home watching whatever the BBC had decreed were the best bits.But that doesn’t mean that a potted (and pot Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Miss Frankie Rose is the veteran of scads of über-trendy bands. In desperately hip, always stewing Brooklyn, she's a one-woman music scene. Inspired by the mid/late-Eighties UK indie sound, The Cramps, Phil Spector and Sixties girl groups, she's landed in north London with her new band Frankie Rose and the Outs. Their debut album is a wonderful fuzz-pop confection, but could it work live?She first cropped up early in 2007 as the drummer/bassist for The Vivian Girls, a female trio inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, The Shop Assistants, The Primitives and The Read more ...
theartsdesk
With the lightning speed of online delivery, there is still masses of time to select the best and most enjoyable presents for Christmas, thanks to the taste and wisdom of theartsdesk's pack of writers. With battered guitars, Belgian cartoons, Pacino's Shylock on Broadway, Australian festivals, Ballets Russes scarves, boomboxes, special edition CDs, advance booking on next year's hot shows, a subscription to The New Yorker and commissioning a portrait by a top artist among the cornucopia of suggested desirables, there really is something for everyone and for every purse. Kieron Tyler Read more ...