1980s
Small Axe: Red, White and Blue, BBC One review - sobering real-life story of police officer Leroy LoganMonday, 30 November 2020
The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties. Despite encountering racism... Read more... |
Album: Miley Cyrus - Plastic HeartsFriday, 27 November 2020
Miley Cyrus has always been, broadly, A Good Thing. A Top Pop Star. A sassy, funny, puritan-scaring, omnisexual chaos monkey at the heart of pop culture, doing pretty much whatever she fancies when she fancies. Not that this has always meant she’s... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Do You Have The Force - Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of ElectronicaSunday, 22 November 2020
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early... Read more... |
Album: Paloma Faith - Infinite ThingsWednesday, 11 November 2020
For her fifth studio album, Paloma Faith decided to boldly ctrl-alt-delete the first version, and re-do it in lockdown.The new-new one is a little bath bomb of an album – it fizzes with funky pop, 80s sheen and emotional nuance than speaks of her... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Mick Talbot of The Style CouncilSaturday, 07 November 2020
Following the break-up of The Jam in 1982, Mick Talbot (b 1958) was chosen by Paul Weller as his sparring partner in a new band, The Style Council. Talbot, a keyboard player from south London, had flourished amid the late-Seventies Mod revival,... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 60: Acid Pauli, Mercury Rev, Cabbage, Kraftwerk, Oasis, Working Men's Club and moreThursday, 29 October 2020
Due to COVID-related nonsense too tedious to relate, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl was delayed. But here it is, over 7500 words on new music on plastic, covering a greater breadth of genres and styles than most major festivals. From reissues of... Read more... |
One Man and His Shoes review - beautifully crafted, fast-paced documentarySaturday, 24 October 2020
“Black people, since the beginning of time, have always made things cool. Jazz, rock ’n’ roll… pick anything from a cultural standpoint and we have always been the arbitrators of cool,” says sports journalist Jamele Hill. “And it was really no... Read more... |
Summer of 85 review - a tender, tragic coming-of-ageFriday, 23 October 2020
Intriguingly, Summer of 85 could have been François Ozon’s very first film. Back in the mid-Eighties the French director was much taken by Dance on My Grave, the YA novel by Aidan Chambers on which it’s based, its youth-romance, coming-of-age story... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Crass - The Crassical CollectionSunday, 11 October 2020
The cultural imprint Crass were leaving was apparent while they were active. As well as their own music, their label Crass Records released records by Flux Of Pink Indians, the pre-Sugarcubes outfit Kukl and The Damned’s Captain Sensible – Crass... Read more... |
Album: Groove Armada - Edge of the HorizonMonday, 28 September 2020
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Helen Shapiro - Face The Music The Complete Singles 1967-1984Sunday, 27 September 2020
What happens when the hits dry up? And what happens a little further down the line, as the years of being on the charts recede into the past? For Helen Shapiro, the questions are answered by the intriguing Face The Music: The Complete Singles 1967–... Read more... |
The Shrine & Bed Among the Lentils, Bridge Theatre review - loneliness shared, with wit and melancholySaturday, 12 September 2020
Monologues and duets rule the stage right now. We can only dream of the day when theatre steps up to the classical music scene’s boldness and manages to have more performers gathered together, albeit suitably distanced (not so easy when the drama... Read more... |
