mon 25/08/2025

1960s

Reissue CDs Weekly: Scott Walker

 Scott Walker: The Collection 1967-1970Few pop records possess a beauty taking them into the otherworldly, inexplicable realm where it’s impossible to understand the magic which coalesced in their creation. The Four Tops’ “Seven Rooms of Gloom...

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The Leopard: 50 years on from Cannes

It took Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, melancholy last scion of a never very reproductive family, a lifetime to get round to writing one of the 20th century’s greatest novels. Publication of The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), based on...

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Beware of Mr Baker

For those familiar with Ginger Baker’s virtuosic musicianship, but not with his life, the biggest revelation of the warts-and-all documentary Beware of Mr Baker may be that next to drumming, playing polo was the great time-keeper’s obsession. One...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Eurovision 2013, Françoise Hardy, James Last, Nico Gomez

Various Artists: We Are One - Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013From the British perspective, one thing stands out at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. And it’s not our entry, the turgid power balladry of Bonnie Tyler’s sure-to-stumble “Believe...

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Billy Liar at 50

John Schlesinger’s 1963 film of Keith Waterhouse’s novel is 50 years old. It’s just been reissued in a pristine print by Studio Canal, and looks stunning in its new incarnation. What began as a claustrophobic three-act play was brilliantly opened...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Killing Joke, Motown, Bob Marley, The Winkies

Killing Joke: The Singles Collection 1979-2012Killing Joke were one of the most singular British bands to emerge in wake of punk. Their metal-edged, tribal stomp didn’t fit in with anything else going on at the time. Collecting 33 tracks from their...

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Playhouse Presents: Snodgrass, Sky Arts 1

What if John Lennon had left The Beatles in 1962? What if they had continued without him? And what if he had still become the acid-tongued, ready-with-a-quip character the real world became familiar with? Snodgrass took those what-ifs and ran with...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nathan Abshire, Nick Drake, Donovan

 Art Ensemble of Chicago: A Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks/Reese and the Smooth OnesA New Orleans brass band plays a death march. What sounds like a saucepan is tapped steadily. The music suddenly dives into swing. A bicycle horn...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Sandie Shaw, Country Joe & the Fish, David Bowie, Morrissey

 Sandie Shaw: Sandie/Me/Love Me Please Love MeThe former Sandra Goodrich probably would have emerged in the Sixties as an embodiment of the era. She could have been a model, actress or a TV presenter. But it was music that found her, and it...

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Theorem

Terence Stamp has drolly recalled being over the moon when the Catholic church attacked Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, in which he starred, on its release in 1968. “It was a very obscure movie – it was going to be seen by four drag queens and...

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DVD: The Servant/Accident

These two 1960s movies have more than just their director, Joseph Losey, and their writer, Harold Pinter, in common. They also both star Dirk Bogarde, escaping his matinee idol mould to startling effect, and feature soundtrack composer John...

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Point Blank

It begins with two gunshots. Lee Marvin is a guy who just wants his $93,000. "I want my money" is the mission statement for Point Blank, a film that is as timelessly entertaining as it is influential. But putting it that way doesn’t grab the...

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