1960s
Daniel Baksi
Three films, each restored to glorious 4K, make up Second Run’s Hungarian Masters set. Billed as “essential works by three of Hungarian cinema’s most renowned filmmakers”, each film earns that praise in its own way.Zoltán Fábri’s Merry-Go-Round is the first, released amid the final months of Mátyás Rákosi’s de-facto leadership, a period defined by intense industrialisation, militarisation and collectivization. Fábri and his contemporaries witnessed a severe decline in living standards, purges, and the deportation of more than half a million Hungarians to the Soviet Union, where Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The title might provoke a quick double-take. Wasn’t A Very British Scandal that series about Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott, starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw?Duh, of course not! That was A Very English Scandal (though both of them are produced by Blueprint Pictures). But was it really a great idea to tag this plushly-produced, starrily-cast, historically-based three-parter as though it’s just the latest product to trundle off a televisual production line? We look forward to the box set where it’s bundled in with A Very English Education, A Very British Brothel, A Very British Hotel Chain Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The archive release which had the greatest impact, and still does, was Linda Smith’s Till Another Time 1988-1996. After it turned up, the reaction to a first play was instant. How could this have escaped attention? The compilation opened the door on a brilliant artist, one previously known to a particular audience.Till Another Time raises the point that it’s impossible to keep on top of everything, to know about everything. Even though she issued new releases until relatively recently, Smith had slipped through a personal knowledge crack. Thankfully, that’s now rectified.That’s one aspect of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I do like this record. Despite their tremendously loser name, this group from America is pretty good. They have a sound of their own added to by Byrd-like guitar playing and Everly Brothers voices. In a funny way, it’s rather sexy.”Although Penny Valentine’s verdict on The Beau Brummels’s “Don’t Talk to Strangers” edges towards damning the single with faint praise, it was positive and homed in on an important aspect of the San Francisco band – their Everly Brothers’s resonance. Readers of her Disc Weekly reviews column that mid-November in 1965 will have been well-aware of America’s decisive Read more ...
Harry Freedman
On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature rather than Cohen. Not being a Nobel prize adjudicator I couldn’t answer the question but I did agree that although Leonard Cohen is best known as a singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen was first and foremost a poet extraordinaire. One of the things that makes listening to him so compelling is that his songs are poems set to music.A hallmark of Leonard Cohen’s musical poetry is its deep spirituality. But unlike most spiritual poetry drawn it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At the beginning of November 1964, a form of changing of the guard was evident in the UK’s singles chart. The Dave Clark Five sat at number 25 with “Anyway You Want it,” the highest placing for their follow-up to “Thinking of You Baby.” Although they were four places lower at 29, The Pretty Things would have been happy as “Don’t Bring me Down,” their second single, was rising up the charts. One band represented a primal interpretation of the recently popular R&B sound, the other an uncomplicated take on Beat Boom tropes.The DC5 wouldn’t have been bothered by their relatively poor UK chart Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester’s oldest chamber orchestra has been gathering a new audience at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music since that auditorium opened, and Sunday afternoon’s programme provided an excellent example of where the Northern Chamber Orchestra’s virtues lie.With Chloë Hanslip, the orchestra’s artist in association, appearing as both soloist and director, it also happened to have been selected by the BBC for recording for a radio focus on Manchester music-making, to come in January. (When you listen to that you may just detect some querulous cries and bumps arising from the presence Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The picture seen above doesn’t have quite the same resonance as Art Kane’s 1958 shot A Great Day in Harlem which brought 57 American jazz musicians in front of his lens, but it is nonetheless significant. Here, in 1971, is an evocative, unique record of a moment in West Midlands music history. The shot was taken at the opening of Heavy Head Records, a Sparkhill record shop run by Move/Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan. The shop was formerly a toy store run by his mother.In the front, from left to right, are Rick Price, Ozzy Osbourne, Raymond Froggatt, Jeff Lynne, Bev Bevan, Tony Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The first of two December round-ups from theartsdesk on Vinyl runs the gamut from folk-tronic oddness to Seventies heavy rock to avant-jazz to The Beatles, as well as much else. All musical life is here... except the crap stuff. So dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHSimo Cell Yes.DJ (TEMƎT)The latest from French producer Simo Cell is a bass-boomin’ post-trap six tracker that doesn’t play it straight at all. These are the kinds of tunes that should be heard on a giant sound system so that the earth itself rumbles. The enormous head-annihilating spacious tech-dub of “Farts”, a highlight, sits easily Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Signs of irrevocable change materialised in December 1965. On Wednesday the 8th, a new band named The 13th Floor Elevators debuted live at The Jade Room in Austin, Texas. Band members prepared for the experience by taking LSD in the run-up to the booking. Within a couple of weeks, they had a business card describing them as playing “psychedelic rock.”Three days later, on the 11th, another new band was seen by a paying audience for the first time. The Velvet Underground played in a support slot at Summit High School in New Jersey. Two numbers in their set were titled “Heroin” and “Venus in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets. In this case, it’s not known who recorded “To Make a Lie”, a dark, menacing cut where a disembodied voice intones about the threat of a giant willow tree (“it’s coming!”), evil, pain and walking into eternity over a doomy organ, spiralling guitar and draggy drums. As it ends – a female scream. Bad trip vibes.“To Make a Lie” was found in the archives associated Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
As a teenager in 1967, I asked for a Mary Quant make-up box for Christmas and my parents reluctantly complied. It was so thrilling to hold that plastic white box with the black daisy in the middle and the big mirror in the lid and to be able, at last, to experiment endlessly with the eye-shadows, the pearly face-lighter, the Starkers foundation (“Forget about colouring, go for shaping” said the instructions, excitingly).I already had her white zip-front PVC mac with a black collar and cuffs, bought from Fenwick or Selfridges, slightly too long but easy to chop off at the hem, and, like Read more ...