blues
CD: Aurelio Martinez - Laru BeyaSunday, 06 February 2011
This is one of the most eagerly awaited albums of the year, at least in world music circles. And for impeccable reasons. It is brilliantly produced and joyously sung; it swings with a rare soulfulness and conveys a sense of the Garifuna community.... Read more... |
Joan As Police Woman, BarbicanSunday, 06 February 2011
Joan Wasser, who operates under the name of Joan As Police Woman, has probably seen all sorts in her time, having played with Antony Hegarty and Rufus Wainwright and dated the late Jeff Buckley. But even she was thrown by an inappropriate comment... Read more... |
The Godmother of Rock'n'Roll, BBC FourFriday, 14 January 2011
Question: which American star had their third wedding in the Griffith Stadium, Washington in front of more than 25,000 paying fans and recorded the whole thing for release as an album? If you’re wondering how you could have missed hearing about such... Read more... |
The Magic Band on The Real Captain BeefheartTuesday, 28 December 2010
Captain Beefheart, who with his Magic Band made John Peel’s favourite album, 1969’s extraordinary Trout Mask Replica, died of complications from multiple sclerosis last week, aged 69. In tribute, below is a feature from 2003, much of it unpublished... Read more... |
The Jim Jones Revue, The Komedia, BrightonThursday, 07 October 2010
The great music writer Nick Tosches put me onto James Luther Dickinson. In Where Dead Voices Gather, his self-indulgent but fascinating book about the obscure early-20th-century minstrel performer Emmett Miller, Tosches kept touching on Dickinson, a... Read more... |
Willis, The Electroacoustic Club, ClerkenwellTuesday, 28 September 2010
“Thank you for waiting. I know some of you have been waiting a long time – about seven years – but it takes me a while to get things done.” Thus did singer/songwriter Hayley Willis greet the audience at her return to active service. Two Willis... Read more... |
Robert Plant, Band of Joy, ForumFriday, 03 September 2010
It’s funny how things turn out. Of the four former members of Led Zeppelin, John Bonham is dead, John Paul Jones is an odd and unpredictable figure, popping up only occasionally with an album or a collaboration, while Jimmy Page is, according to... Read more... |
C W Stoneking, The Windmill, BrixtonSaturday, 28 August 2010
“One afternoon back in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I met four scientists in a bar, they were on their way to West Africa to study a parasitic worm that attacks the eyeballs of human beings and turns them into blind men.” And so begin the sleeve notes... Read more... |
Kris Kristofferson, Festival Theatre, EdinburghWednesday, 04 August 2010
“This song is for my kids – and all their Mommas.” Even at 74, Kris Kristofferson exudes the quietly satisfied air of experience of a man who has spent at least half his life drinking, shagging, smoking and strumming to his heart’s content, and now... Read more... |
Laura Moody, The Forge, CamdenWednesday, 14 July 2010
Laura Moody says she was given a cello as a child to curb hyperactivity, but listening to her last night you might well have wondered if she’d had Tourettes too. The singer-cellist’s sound included clicks, shrieks, howls, and a lot of things that... Read more... |
Exile on Main StreetMonday, 17 May 2010
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street is such a quintessential rock epic that it ought to be added to the list of things they throw in for free on Desert Island Discs. Defying the old adage that all double albums would be vastly improved by being... Read more... |
Fool’s Gold and Benin City, Camden Bar FlyTuesday, 27 April 2010
Fool’s Gold’s debut album brims over with the enthusiasm of a band who have discovered - primarily through African music - that there’s another way to play the electric guitar other than to just form workman-like bar-chords, stamp down hard on the... Read more... |
