1960s
Matt Wolf
Musicals don't get madder than Anyone Can Whistle, the 1964 Broadway flop from onetime West Side Story and Gypsy collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents which makes history of sorts at Southwark Playhouse as the first Sondheim show to be revived since his death last year, age 91. What this trailblazing talent never short of an opinion might make of Georgie Rankcom's production is anyone's guess, though I suspect he would admire a sizeably non-binary set of artists gathered on a show about otherness and non-conformity.I for one began proceedings with a grin on my face, prompted Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Motown and its related labels have been heavily collected and meticulously scrutinised since the early Sixties. There ought to be nothing left to say. Yet here this is, a smart, 24-track collection of Motown instros which includes five previously unreleased tracks.It’d be reasonable to assume that there was nothing more to give, that every tape vault everywhere had already been scoured. The download-only tracks which appeared last decade under the banner “Motown Unreleased” ought to have been it. Nonetheless, an unreleased quintet from 1961, 1963 and 1964 have surfaced. OK, three are by Read more ...
graham.rickson
Released in 1962, František Vláčil’s The Devil’s Trap (Ďáblova past) is the first in a loose trilogy of historical epics, the second instalment of which (Marketa Lazarová) is often cited as among the greatest of all Czech films.Shorter and sparer than its successor, The Devil’s Trap is no less enthralling, Vláčil’s visual style and unusual use of sound fully evident. Based on a novel by Alfréd Technik and set in rural Bohemia during the 17th century, the film follows Probus the priest (Miroslav Machácek, pictured below), charged by Cestmír Randa’s Regent with investigating Spálený ( Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
A story of forbidden love, Great Freedom takes place almost entirely in a prison. The film's background is encapsulated in the word “175er/ hundertfünfundsiebziger”, still to be found in German dictionaries and collective memories as a pejorative word for a gay man.It's a reference to Clause 175 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalised homosexuality. The law was originally introduced in 1871, broadened by the Nazis in 1935, substantially re-drawn in 1969, but only finally and fully repealed in 1994. There is also topicality here: claims for reparations – which are generally Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Sidney J Furie’s 1965 film The Ipcress File is a much-loved benchmark of its period. Stylish, sinister, witty and depicting a determinedly un-swinging London, it was conceived as the flipside to the absurdly glamorous James Bond movies and pulled it off with panache. It also had Michael Caine playing the lead role of Harry Palmer, and a superb John Barry soundtrack famously featuring that mysterious instrument, the cimbalom.Turning the same story into a TV series nearly 60 years later was not a job for the faint-hearted, but, remarkably, screenwriter John Hodge and director James Watkins have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In July 1967, a British band called The Ingoes changed their name. Up to this point they’d traded in R&B, blues and soul, and tackled some rock ’n roll covers too. Ingoes referenced the 1958 Chuck Berry song “Ingo”. As they’d just recorded their debut album, a rebranding was needed. It was psychedelic so their management came up with Blossom Toes.When it was issued in November 1967, that album – We Are Ever So Clean – wasn’t a strong seller but, in time, its magnificence was recognised. Original copies now fetch around £250. It’s reissued as an expanded three-CD edition, supplementing the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1957, popular music was given a jolt when the first electronic pop record was recorded. “Song of the Second Moon” was created and composed by the Dutch musician Dick Raaijmakers who was working at NatLab, the research laboratory of the electronics company Philips.“Song of the Second Moon” was based around a rhythmic pulse, and incorporated tape manipulation and multiple Ondes Martenots. It predicted the bubbling sound which became associated with Jean-Jacques Perry and presaged the machine beat Giorgio Moroder incorporated into his Donna Summer productions. It is also echoed by the 1962 Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For America’s oldies radio stations Sammi Smith will forever be about “Help me Make it Through the Night”. In 1970, she was the first singer to pick up on the Kris Kristofferson song. Her version took it into the US Top Ten.Although “Help me Make it Through the Night” was an important calling card for Kristofferson with mainstream America, Smith never again figured strongly on the mainstream charts though she remained and had been a regular on the country listings since 1968. As is made clear by a new collection aimed at more that the country audience, she was a singular artist.Last summer, " Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Electric Prunes could feel happy at the end of January 1968. Since landing in London in late November 1967, they’d hung out with Jimi Hendrix and had a photo session with Rolling Stones-favoured photographer Gered Mankowitz. They also met The Beatles at Abbey Road as Magical Mystery Tour was being mixed.How hot they were live during this brush with Europe is attested to by a French TV appearance, viewable via the internet, and from the recording of a Swedish radio concert included on Disc Six of Then Came The Dawn Complete Recordings 1966-1969 (the show was first legally released in 1997 Read more ...
Sarah Kent
America in Crisis revisits an exhibition staged in 1969 soon after Richard Nixon was elected President. Pictures taken by 18 Magnum photographers including Elliott Erwitt and Mary Ellen Mark cast a critical eye over American society and capture many of the key events that preceded Nixon’s election.The addition of photographs taken in 2020 and 2021 bring the exhibition up to date and invite comparison between the Trump and Nixon eras. The juxtaposition is pretty devastating, since it reveals the degree to which many of the problems revealed by the first exhibition have got worse over the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Free Love opens in 1967 and remains within that heady era throughout; no flashbacks, no spanning of generations as in Hadley's wonderful novels The Past or Late in the Day. Phyllis, aged 40, is a suburban housewife, C of E, deeply apolitical and a contented mother of two.She likes L’Air du Temps perfume (one of Hadley’s Sixties tropes: Jill, a character in The Past, also uses it), loves the panelled oak doors in her hallway, and has a special bond with her nine-year-old son, Hugh.Hadley’s eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights Read more ...
Music Reissues Weekly: Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds - Stormy Monday And The Eagles Fly On Friday
Kieron Tyler
TV-watching pop fans in many of the British regions were served a treat on 16 September 1966. A whole episode of Ready Steady Go! was dedicated to Otis Redding, who had arrived in the UK a week earlier on his 25th birthday.As would be expected Redding ripped through his performance segments, bringing his power to “My Girl,” “(I Can’t Get no) Satisfaction” and “Respect.” Room was made for local acolytes. Redding introduced Eric Burdon – in his first TV appearance after leaving The Animals – taking on “Hold on! I’m Comin’.” Burdon later introduced Chris Farlowe’s version of James Brown’s “It’s Read more ...