pop music
New Music CDs Round-Up 8Sunday, 02 May 2010
This month's most intriguing and fabulous CDs are headed up by the strange and beautiful electronica of Scuba and a magnum opus from Natalie Merchant. Highlights include music from the offspring of the famous from Jakob Dylan and Harper Simon,... Read more... |
Katy Brand, touringFriday, 30 April 2010
The first time I saw Katy Brand was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005, where she was performing Celebrities Are Gods in a tiny, windowless basement late at night. Hers was the last show in the room, which by now was a fetid sweatbox, and only a few... Read more... |
Later... with Jools Holland: in the studioWednesday, 14 April 2010
Welcome to the grown-up rock mothership. I've seen bands play in TV studios plenty of times over the years, but walking into the Later... With Jools Holland recording at BBC Television Centre for the first time, as I did last night, is something... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Musician Ben Drew, aka Plan BMonday, 12 April 2010
Ben Drew, who records as Plan B, is busy on the promotional rounds. He has spent the day at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios being interviewed by Fearne Cotton and others for TV and radio, and performed his new single "She Said" as well as an ebullient... Read more... |
Birthdays on the Tube: 3-9 AprilSunday, 04 April 2010
This week’s birthdays of musicians include a couple of disturbed geniuses, Billie Holiday and Joe Meek, underrated rock’n‘roller Carl Perkins, country legend Merle Haggard, as well as Doris Day, Pharrell Williams and bluesman Muddy Waters, whose... Read more... |
Rufus Wainwright: Pop Star and Opera StarMonday, 29 March 2010
To be born into the extraordinary Wainwright dynasty is to be born onstage, and Rufus has seized his birthright in a giant bear-hug. Mere weeks after the death of his mother, Kate McGarrigle, from cancer in January, the lanky, somewhat Heathcliff-... Read more... |
Alcoholic Faith Mission, Camden Bar FlySunday, 28 March 2010
Standing in the black-walled gloom of the Bar Fly in Camden, I suddenly realise that I’m one of only a couple of dozen people completely transfixed by the band on the stage. Perhaps this is because, to most of the audience, they are just the third... Read more... |
Birthdays on the Tube: 14-20 MarchMonday, 15 March 2010
This week's birthdays include the impeccably funky Sly Stone and Wilson Pickett, manic Chopin played by the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, lush orientalism from Rimsky-Korsakov, classic jazz from Bix Beiderbecke, and annoying pop from Clare... Read more... |
Birthdays on the Tube: 28 February-6 MarchSunday, 28 February 2010
Our ongoing series celebrating musicians’ birthdays. This week’s include Lou Reed, in action in a stupendous version of "Venus in Furs" with the Velvet Underground, Chopin played by the wonderful Martha Argerich, archive footage of Miriam Makeba,... Read more... |
Photographic Gallery: Gavin Bond, Idea Generation GalleryTuesday, 16 February 2010
Over the past couple of years, maverick photographer Gavin Bond has built up a contacts book that would be the envy of Rankin or Annie Leibovitz. He’s been shooting everyone who is anyone: subjects range from godfathers of rock such as Bono and AC/... Read more... |
Popstar to Operastar, ITV1Saturday, 16 January 2010
Naturally it would be impossible to reach an objective verdict on what is the worst programme ever shown on television, but it is at least safe to say that Popstar To Operastar is determined not to get left behind in the race to the bottom. This... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Opera Singer Rolando VillazónSaturday, 09 January 2010
In the next few weeks the wider public will be introduced to the charms of Rolando Villazón (b. 1972). Anointed as a star of opera houses around the world in the last decade, the Mexican tenor is about to participate in ITV1's Popstar to Opera Star... Read more... |
