Author archive: Martin Colyer

Otis Black Talking about the Otis Redding documentary last week, Hugh told us: “I was in the art class at Dunfermline High when I heard that Otis had died. My fellow Mods and I gathered together at lunchtime to discuss the sad news and it was agreed that we would all wear black ties the next day. So I borrowed (or nicked) my dad’s funeral tie and duly turned up at school – to find that I was the only one who had remembered or, to be more accurate, bothered – Mods could be a fickle bunch, with a bit more style than substance.” Four-Hour Flight Of The Eagle Possibly too long, not enough peyote, or grumpiness with CS&N, too much “how we got back together after sacking everyone…” But an awesome level of ability and professionalism, some great singing and guitar slinging, the right amount of indebtedness to Jackson, JD Souther and – most especially – Linda Ronstadt,  and a fair sampling of the treasurable Joe Walsh, a true one-off Continue reading →

Daft. Not Punk. Continue reading →

Wayne Miller died last week Wayne Miller was one of the less famous names at the legendary photo agency Magnum. Continue reading →

RIP George Jones: A memory of the Wembley Country Festival, 1981 Simon and I loved the Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis, and were prepared to endure any amount of maudlin production-line Nashville filler to see him. Continue reading →

Bowie Walk Having helped the V&A with a photo of Dobell’s, they’re kind enough to send me this Jonathan Barnbrook-designed pamphlet, David Bowie Is Walking In Soho. The tour starts here Continue reading →

Tony, Tony, Tony Following on from the despair of a couple of weeks ago at depressing rock reads, this rebalanced everything: Eamonn Forde’s brilliant compression of Tony Blackburn’s hysterical and self-regarding autobiography, Poptastic. Here are two examples, the first about Gary Glitter Continue reading →

A Rainy Night In Bourges: Le Printemps De Bourges, Loire, France The annual festival brings a platter of bands to almost every bar in town. Trying to decide where to go and who to see brings the following descriptions from the programme: Superhero Big Beat Surf/Pop Art Punk/Reggae Occitan/Black Death/House Celt Rock Experimental, and my favourite: Rock Noise Folk Blues. This poster in a nearby town would have had me putting money down for tickets, but it was in the past… Best music we saw was a cracking band called Minou, consisting of Pierre Simon & Sabine Quinet, plus a bald percussionist on electric pads. Continue reading →

One Thing I’ll Miss Later This Week: The “Muscle Shoals” Film I’m really looking forward to this documentary, but am not around to see it at the Sundance Festival in London this week. I wrote a reminiscence of the time that our band, Hot!House went there to record (find it here). Incidentally, the Rock’s Back Pages logo is the legendary Jimmy Johnson’s guitar pick (he lent us his car as well…) I liked this review on imdb titled, The only puzzling thing about “Muscle Shoals” is how this story went so long without being told. Continue reading →

Words Fail, pt. 73 From the Evening Standard: The soundtrack to David and Samantha Cameron’s marriage is an album of Depression-era US folk music, the PM’s wife has disclosed. Time (The Revelator) is a 2001 collection of austere narratives by Nashville singer Gillian Welch. Continue reading →

George Elliot, Bill Colyer, Brian Harvey, Doug Dobell, Ken Lindsay, George Webb, John Jacks and a bottle of Emva Cream Sherry at the opening of Dobells in Brighton in 1957. Bill had just finished building it all with Peter Martin. The Dobell’s exhibition at my old alma mater, Chelsea School of Art (now relocated in the shadow of Tate Britain and renamed university of the arts london chelsea) was a Proustian rush – who knew that the Museum Of London had collected parts of the original shop when the Tower Street branch finally closed in 1992 Continue reading →

Willy Moon, I Wanna Be Your Man Short. Stylish. Funky Continue reading →

‘January 26, 1962: Passed Dylan on the street, he said to me that he “didn’t know why so many things are happening to me.” I said that he did.’ Michael Gray writes a very nice piece on Izzy Young on the occasion of his 85th birthday. A couple of years ago in Stockholm we sat with Izzy outside his office, the Folklore Centrum, having tea with Sarah Blasko (Izzy is a magnet for any musician of a certain bent who happens to be in town) Continue reading →

Poliça If Rooney Mara was the lead singer of a band, it would be Minnesota’s Poliça. With her alt-Dusty Springfield arm gestures Channy Leaneagh seems – in the words of Daughter – to be the flamboyant conductor of this little … Continue reading →

Southland The fever dream that was Beasts of The Southern Wild led me back to Kate Campbell’s “When Panthers Roamed In Arkansas” – first heard on a CD accompanying the wonderful Oxford American magazine’s Music Issue, maybe ten years ago. The small girl at the centre of the film sees giant aurochs – ancestors of domestic cattle – astride the landscape, a result of the ecological disaster that’s befalling them. Continue reading →

Alabama Shakes, Always Alright Best moment in the very ho-hum Silver Linings Playbook (a film fatally scuppered by having Robert de Niro play the father, so the whole thing just reminds you of Meet The Whatevers, but with a less … Continue reading →

Bruno Mars, Jonathan Ross Show, ITV I started this blog because I watched Bruno Mars at the Brits a year ago, and loved the performance of his bass player so much that I wanted to write about it. It was these non-headline moments that I found interesting, and no one seemed to be writing about them Continue reading →

Psychic City by Yacht I can’t even remember what this song was used for this week, tracking an advert, or a programme segment, or something. All I knew was that it hit all those Blondie/Ze Records/Waitresses buttons Continue reading →

What I’ve Learned, Thom Yorke, US Esquire “My grandfather would come to our house in the countryside, borrow one of our bikes, and disappear. He’d come back after dark and we had no idea where he’d been. If he ran into anybody, he’d just ask them where the good nightclub was. Continue reading →

Down Terrace An in-your-face saga of the spiralling disintegration of a Brighton criminal clan, the music track for Ben Wheatley’s first film (from 2009) is a fascinating mix of transatlantic rural music. The none-more-English folk music of The Copper Family sits happily next to Robert Johnson’s Little Queen of Spades. Continue reading →

From The Blog Of Photographer Heather Harris “The first four words of vocabulary we learned in Synthesizer 101 class at UCLA (circa 1972, so we’re talking monophonic ARP 2600s) were the descriptions of all musical sound notes: attack, sustain, decay, release. How fitting to the lifeworks of creative types.” Wow. Attack. Continue reading →

What In Music’s Name Is This?: Marcel’s Miller/Moptops Mayhem A small package arrived in the post. Square, the size of a CD. It was a ESD* and was covered in writing. Continue reading →

Daughter Reviews Les Mis Running time: 2.5 hours Spoken word count: 17 Number of times Hugh J cries: 6 Most used facial expression: anguish mixed with constipation Most enhanced facial feature: lines around the mouth Number of times stolen bread is mentioned: 12 Laugh-out-loud moments: Sasha B-C and Helena B-C as pick-pocketing inn keepers Time it takes Cosette and Marius to fall head over heels in love: 4 seconds Most moving songs: Anne H—I Dreamed a Dream and Samantha Barks—On My Own Supporting Show Stealers: Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche and Samantha Barks as Eponine Reasons That Awards Are Stupid Chose between these acts for Best International Male at the Brits: a) Bruce Springsteen b) Frank Ocean c) Goyte d) Jack White e) Michael Bublé Amazing Facts From Patrick Humphries’ Biography Of Lonnie Donegan, King Of Skiffle “The first record Art Garfunkel remembers buying for himself was Lonnie’s Rock Island Line; and in Fairfax, California, that same Lonnie song was the very first tune that a shy 17-year-old Harvey Phillip Spector learned to play on the guitar. In New Orleans, the young Dr John—Malcolm “Mac” Rebennack was another who remembers being inspired by the Donegan hit. And way, way down in Texas, Jerry Allison and his buddy, Buddy Holly, were so captivated by Donegan’s Rock Island Line that they began incorporating it into shows they played around Lubbock.” “Can You Dance To It?” Listening to a CD lovingly compiled by my friend Tim, of African singles [African Serenades 44: Kenyan Singles] and finding this quote from him on the back: “I taught near Eldoret for two years in the early 1980s, fell in love with the music and then found that my Zigzag-reading, album-sleeve-obsessive completist’s mindset was completely turned upside down because, of course, none of the friends I made cared about who was responsible for that amazing guitar solo or impassioned vocal on individual songs Continue reading →

Marianne Faithfull interview, The Guardian The Guardian: There’s a fantastic YouTube clip of you in 1973, wearing a nun’s outfit, singing with David Bowie at the Marquee club. Continue reading →