1970s
Blu-ray: WandaThursday, 20 April 2023
In Sight & Sound’s recent Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) placed joint 48th with Ordet (1955), just ahead of The 400 Blows (1959) and The Piano (1992). Loden’s existential indie drama about an uneducated working-... Read more... |
Album: The Selecter - Human AlgebraSaturday, 15 April 2023
To music-lovers of the era, The Selecter are known as part of the 2-Tone ska explosion which blew up as the 1970s turned into the 1980s. The Selecter were right in the middle of that, their eponymous song on the B-side of The Specials’ debut single... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: McNeal and Niles - Thrust, Wilbur Niles and Thrust - Thrust TooSunday, 02 April 2023
An original pressing of 1979’s Thrust fetches at least £1000. Its 1980 follow-up Thrust Too can be a relative bargain at around £400. The prices are partly explained by J Dilla having sampled Thrust Too’s “Survival of the Funkiest” and Thrust’s “... Read more... |
Album: The Zombies - Different GameThursday, 30 March 2023
There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Barracudas - Drop Out with the BarracudasSunday, 26 March 2023
From around July 1977, Jeremy Gluck began contributing to the UK music weekly Sounds. Amongst his pieces were features on The Lurkers, The Rezillos, 999 and his home country Canada’s punk band The Viletones. He’d also written about Generation X for... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Duffy Power - Innovations, Live at the BBCSunday, 19 March 2023
Sometime in early October 1963 John Lennon and Paul McCartney encountered The Rolling Stones and offered them one of their songs; one which became the London blues aficionado’s second single. “I Wanna be Your Man” was duly recorded on 7 October 1963... Read more... |
Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finestWednesday, 15 March 2023
Endeavour first landed way back in 2012, and suddenly here we are, bidding it a final farewell after the end of its ninth series. Not everybody learned to love Shaun Evans as the pre-John Thaw Inspector Morse, but some of us may even have come to... Read more... |
Bernstein's Mass, RNCM, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a happening, a demo, an achievementTuesday, 14 March 2023
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass has something of the nature of what might have been called a “happening” at the time he wrote it. It was 1971, and it was created for and premiered at the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington.It’s set for very large... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Heavy Metal Kids - The Albums 1974-76Sunday, 12 March 2023
The booklet coming with The Albums 1974-76 notes Johnny Rotten saw Heavy Metal Kids live and that the Sex Pistol “ripped off” their frontman Gary Holton. It's an assertion in keeping with a default option where the HMKs are referred to as a... Read more... |
Daisy Jones & The 6, Amazon Prime review - hit rock'n'roll novel doesn't make great TVMonday, 06 March 2023
Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac. Their journey from their fashion-defying... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Stranger In Town - A Del Shannon CompendiumSunday, 26 February 2023
After Del Shannon took his own life in February 1990 at age 55, some obituaries were careful to point out that he stood apart from other pop stars who were big in pre-Beatles America. “The most tragic thing would be for Del Shannon to be lumped with... Read more... |
Standing at the Sky's Edge, National Theatre review - razor-sharp musical with second-act woesTuesday, 21 February 2023
Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill... Read more... |
