punk
Save The 100 Club!Friday, 19 November 2010![]() Musical luminaries including Mick Jagger, Paul Weller, Ray Davies and Liam Gallagher are lending their support to a campaign to save The 100 Club, the historic music venue in London’s Oxford Street. Soaring business rates of £4000 a month and an... Read more... |
Bellowhead, Bristol Old VicFriday, 12 November 2010![]() Bellowhead are 21st-century genre-busters: punk music-hall madness born out of British folk, seasoned with a zeitgeist-friendly dose of multicultural spice. Sounds gimmicky? Well, not at all, as Bellowhead’s greatest quality, apart from being an... Read more... |
Hot Chip/ LCD Soundsystem, Alexandra PalaceWednesday, 10 November 2010![]() Unlikely cool. It’s what unites LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip. They’re the geeks and outsiders who made it to being hip on the dancefloor. These improbable, subversive electro-pop heroes have united this autumn for what for fans has been a dream... Read more... |
Wilko Johnson, O2 Academy IslingtonFriday, 05 November 2010![]() Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an amphetamine-fuelled chicken on rollers? No, it’s the one-time guitarist for Dr Feelgood (during the only period that matters) still doing the moves that made him the main reason to see the band in the mid-1970s... Read more... |
Carl Barât, ScalaWednesday, 27 October 2010![]() It is not easy to kickstart a fresh musical career after you've been in a painfully fashionable – and intermittently brilliant – band. It is even harder when this is your second bash at starting out again. And harder still when a couple of months... Read more... |
Manu Chao, Coronet TheatreSunday, 24 October 2010![]() “It’s not often you get a global superstar down at the Elephant and Castle,” marvelled a local who spent the evening dancing like a dervish to the infectious music of Manu Chao, who had breezed into London for a rare show last night off the back of... Read more... |
RIP Ari UpThursday, 21 October 2010![]() Ari Up, frontwoman of The Slits from the age of 14, died yesterday aged 48 after a long illness, it was announced by her stepfather, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols. The brilliant and confrontational female-fronted Slits were one of the finest... Read more... |
Jonathan Richman, Amersham ArmsFriday, 08 October 2010![]() In 1985 I travelled to Madrid to interview Jonathan Richman. Two questions into our perfectly amicable chat, proceedings assumed pear-shaped proportions. The eccentric musician behind the proto-punk hit "Roadrunner" announced that he did not want to... 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... |
Grinderman, CoronetSaturday, 02 October 2010![]() A few years ago a friend told me that Brighton resident Nick Cave had been spotted singing "The Wheels on the Bus" at a local nursery. This might have been an apocryphal incident, but it still highlights a predicament of the older rock star. How do... Read more... |
Edwyn Collins, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 24 September 2010![]() Just before Edwyn Collins came on, the throbbing bassline of Chic's "Good Times" rumbled out across the packed South Bank auditorium. As a statement of intent it was pretty clear. Having suffered two debilitating brain haemorrhages followed by a... Read more... |
Archaos: Circus From Hell, BargehouseFriday, 10 September 2010![]() Archaos were the mad, bad and dangerous troupe who revolutionised circus back in the Eighties and early Nineties – their antics with juggling chainsaws, raunchy Galllic attitude and mayhem with motorbikes is celebrated with a pop-up exhibition at... Read more... |
