RICKIE LEE JONES at the Royal Festival Hall 26/11/2011 A Wholly Undisinterested Review Health warning: if you are prone to cringe, foam or rage at reviews that put emotion first and last, and make no attempt whatsoever at objective appraisal, … Continue reading
Whether it’s Wendy/Walter Carlos dishing up electronic Beethoven, Keith Emerson microwaving Mussorgsky, Mark E Smith ransacking Lost In Music for its inner punk, Roxy Music depriving In The Midnight Hour of any vestige of soul or The Band and The Who vying for the roughest, rockiest version of Marvin Gaye’s Baby Don’t You Do It, the history of popular music has been littered with cover versions good, bad and plug ugly. Here are some of the most inspired… Continue reading
Manzarek was at his most distinctive and creative when allowed to stretch out – Light My Fire, The End, When The Music’s Over, Riders On The Storm – but this underrated nugget finds that organ tripping light and fantastic. Short, sweet and shamefully irresistible Continue reading
“I’m thinking of a change of direction.” Those are the words record companies dread most. Yet sometimes, just sometimes, those who dare win and the forces of lightness and maverickness prevail Continue reading
The racy bass, the dancing guitar, the darting flute, the shimmering strings, that misty Irish glade of a voice, at once knowing and yearning. Oh yes, and the Most Poetic First Verse Ev-ah: If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream… Continue reading
“So, you’ve finally got into ’em, eh? Took yer bleedin’ time, you Johnny Come Extremely Latelys. Think this one’s good? Hah! You haven’t lived, mate. You should hear the earlier, funnier ones. Infinitely better.” Pretzel logic? As in twisted, right? Continue reading
Martin Scorsese tips his titfer to acts that forged their legends in the Sixties – Van Morrison, The Stones, Smokey – and cranks up the volume; Cameron Crowe flies the Seventies flag, rummaging through his tattered review copies and turning the dial down to five. Continue reading
THOSE OPENING BARS: the shop window with a difference, the musical equivalent of the intro to a newspaper story. As a rule, they hint, at the very least, at what is to come. Occasionally – the gentle piano overture to … Continue reading
My favourite album by one of my most cherished musicians, rendered live from Hollywood, 40 years after its extraordinary birth? I’d rather spend the money on secondhand socks. Continue reading
