rock
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... |
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, The GarageTuesday, 02 November 2010
Bounding on stage in a purple version of the man dress pioneered by Mick Jagger at The Stones’s 1969 Hyde Park concert, Ariel Pink looks like a mistranslated version of what a late-Sixties rock star should be. His long hair is dyed blonde. The roots... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer James DillonSunday, 31 October 2010
Glaswegian James Dillon (b 1950) is one Britain's most critically acclaimed living composers. Early detours as a drunken and drug-taking wastrel gave way to what he calls "musical terrorism". By which he means his blistering career as one of the... Read more... |
New Music CDs Round-Up 14Saturday, 30 October 2010
This month's epic collection has a somewhat retro feel, with CDs by Ray Davies, Neil Young, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan. The CD of the Month is all-conquering Tennessee rock band Kings of Leon. The Box Set of the Month comes from the vaults of... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Portraits of Keith Richards 1963-71Thursday, 28 October 2010
The lens loved Mick. Those child-bearing lips, to use Joan Rivers’s ripe phrase, always came up a treat in photographs. Did it ever love Keith quite so much? Ever since he started creosoting himself in eyeliner and crumbling like an oxidising mummy... Read more... |
Nearly Ninety, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Barbican TheatreTuesday, 26 October 2010
I’ll retain lifelong, life-changing memories of the joyous mysteries of Merce Cunningham’s dances, so it’s unimportant for me that Nearly Ninety, his final creation before his death last year, won’t be one of them. Naturally his company brought it... 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... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musicians Robert Plant and Jimmy PageSaturday, 16 October 2010
Since December 2007, the question has been: will they or won’t they? For Led Zeppelin fans everywhere, the one-off “reunion” concert at London’s O2 arena has stoked one rocketing demand: that the three survivors, guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert... Read more... |
Guns N' Roses, O2 ArenaFriday, 15 October 2010
"The Legend of Axl Rose" sounds like the title for a long and fanciful western movie, about a bandit who defies the law and even time itself. In person, wayward vocalist Rose does indeed resemble some kind of picaresque outlaw who rules his own... Read more... |
DVD Release: Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling StonesTuesday, 12 October 2010
This is the antidote to Martin Scorsese’s 2008 documentary Shine a Light, which, for all its technical excellence, depicted the increasingly senior rock band sounding pretty crap. Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones was shot at four concerts... 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... |
