1960s
Liz Thomson
It’s 15 years since Judy Collins last stepped out at the Cambridge Folk Festival. She was a mere 68 then and, in the time since, little has changed except her hair, the famous rock-star mane lopped so that she now resembles the cover of those classic early Sixties’ albums.By the time she recorded Wildflowers in 1967, Collins had already become the woman whom Stephen Stills would immortalise in song (“Chestnut-brown canary/ Ruby-throated sparrow/ Sing a song, don’t be long/Thrill me to the marrow”). Stills would play on her 1968 album, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, the title song of which put Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Restraint wasn’t the watchword. Around March 1965, Heinz was in Joe Meek’s North London recording studio taping “Big Fat Spider,” which became the B-side of his April single version of “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright.” A run-through which didn’t end up on the record found guitarist Richie Blackmore tossing off blistering lead runs so frenzied, so spikey, so wayward they might – had the track been issued – have caused radio producers to check whether the single had a pressing fault.It’s the same with previously unheard versions of Heinz’s “Movin’ In” and “I’m Not A Bad Guy,” the next tracks Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revived Thirties adventure serials’ simple thrills, a George Lucas notion adrenalised by Spielberg. Its hero Indy Jones wasn’t built for depth or pathos, and the struggle to find reasons for his return notoriously sank Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and left this final chapter in production purgatory till Harrison Ford was 79.Ford wanted this sequel, disagreeing with Spielberg on its premise, and driving it to completion when the director gave up. Indy’s humanity wholly resides in his lopsided, ironic grins at peril, rugged but Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he played cricket in order to make the rest of his life seem more interesting. There is something in that observation that would appeal to both principals in this play for sure.Two men bicker on the boundary as they wait their turn to bat. In at five and six, one is keeping score (and "working the telegraph", as cricket’s arcane argot has it), while Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Had Blossom Dearie overtly embraced pop, her vocal style could be characterised as along the lines of Priscilla Paris, Jane Birkin or Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell – intimate, a little breathy, oxygenated. However, jazz was her bag and June Christy, Peggy Lee and Norway’s Karin Krog are the closest reference points.After listening to the live material collected on the six-CD box set Discover Who I Am: The Fontana Years London 1966-70 another, incongruous, marker comes to mind. When she speaks between songs – and sometimes while singing – her inflection is similar to that of the New York Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The words “Mersey” and “beat” were first publicly paired-up in July 1961 when a newspaper titled Mersey Beat went on sale in Liverpool. The debut issue – dated July 6-20 1961 – was distributed to newsagents. Its editor, art student Bill Harry, personally delivered copies to 28 other shops. It was also on sale at local clubs and jive halls. The NEMS store’s Brian Epstein took 25 copies of the first issue. The print run was 5000 copies.Buyers saw a mast head saying “What’s On In Merseyside”. The front cover had a picture of Gene Vincent taken when he was in Liverpool alongside trails for Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ latest combines his apparently effortless immediacy at acoustic guitar songwriting with an orchestrated opulence that sometimes pushes the sound towards the realms of musical theatre. Lyrically, he’s in fine form too, but what will likely define many listeners’ response to the album is how they feel about his repeated and passionate belief in God, which permeates everything.This review is not the place to unpack Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ complex 50+ year journey from spiritual Sixties/Seventies troubadour to hardcore Islamic devotee to relaxed-Muslim-who’s-rediscovered-his-inner- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” was the UK’s first explicitly psychedelic record. Although there were delays with it hitting shops, it was recorded in December 1965. A large part of its impact came through the instrumentation and arrangement. Jazz players were on board, playing in a folky way without abandoning their core musical sensibilities. The ground-breaking arranger responsible was John Cameron.In 1976, Heatwave issued the instant dance-floor filler “Boogie Nights” as a single. It was a world-wide chart smash in 1977. Producer Barry Blue brought in arranger John Cameron to work on the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Who created the term “electronic superhighway”? First described a system of linked communication that would become the internet? Envisioned a multichannel TV system where viewers chose for themselves what to tune into? Watch Amanda Kim’s excellent documentary Moon Is the Oldest TV and you find that the correct answer to all those questions is Nam June Paik.A diminutive impish South Korean, Paik was born into an eminent wealthy Seoul family, on a par with the Samsungs, and by 17 knew he had to get out. He had become a Marxist, then a communist. His intellectual interests would take him to Read more ...
Mert Dilek
For a masterclass in expansive adaptation, one could do worse than turn to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, based on American author Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story of the same title. Proulx’s restrained but searing tale of the queer romance between two ranch hands in 1960s Wyoming generated in Lee's 2005 film a tragedy of deep interiority and complex emotion.Eighteen years on, this source material faces a kindred, if altogether new, challenge in Ashley Robinson’s stage adaptation at West End’s @sohoplace, which comes with serious star wattage through its central cast of Mike Faist Read more ...
joe.muggs
Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic statements but queering his pitch with bizarrely, unnecessarily reactionary statements or actions. Really, a very weird man.But thankfully, he’s never gone all the way into cantankerousness. He’s not a Morrissey, so high on his own farts that the perversity becomes his entire persona, and every action and word is layered with provocation and second Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
When young Morse went speeding off in his Jag at the end of the Endeavour finale earlier this year, the road was left open for another, zootier Jag to zoom in, the racing green E-type belonging to DCI Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. Channel 5 launched the latest incarnation of P D James’s brooding detective-poet in 2021, basing season one on three books (Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, A Taste for Death) in two one-hour episodes each. Now a further three books have been adapted: Death of an Expert Witness, A Certain Justice, and The Murder Room. Behind the adaptations is Read more ...