Category: Music

1960s

Happy Birthday British rock and R&B, born 55 years ago tonight at the Ealing Club when Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Eric Burdon gathered around Alexis Korner

//Top: Entrance to Ealing Club stairwell with jeweller’s to its right, early 1960s. Photo: ealingclub.com. Above: The entrance as it is today// “Suburbia is the breeding ground for the richest and most innovative cultural production of the 20th and 21st centuries” Rupa Huq, writer and MP for Ealing Central & Acton, 2013 An advert in […]

March 17, 2017

1970s

My first concert: Count Basie and Frank Sinatra at the Royal Festival Hall, May 1970

I am fortunate enough to be able to state that the first live music concert I attended was the midnight double bill of Frank Sinatra and The Count Basie Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall in May 1970. I was 10 years old. My resourceful mother wangled tickets for the entire family, with one of […]

February 2, 2017

1980s

Revenge of the suburbs: David Bowie fans shine in doc about the 1983 Milton Keynes Bowl gigs

Fittingly Britain’s most surprising rock star has found his way to Britain’s newest and most surprising city, where high tech meets ecologic, where concrete meets conservation, where the silicon chip meets the fibreglass rod… Steve Taylor, South Of Watford, Summer 1983, London Weekend Television While putting the finishing touches to my forthcoming book about The Face […]

November 1, 2016

2010s

Death And The Lady: Nick Abrahams’ film for Shirley Collins’ first record in 38 years

“Shirley has a voice that seems to be in touch with the traditions of the past, but also the dark mystery that makes England so weird, wild and mesmerising, and it is these two aspects that I wanted to convey in the video.” Nick Abrahams, 2016 I’m captivated by the magical film made by Nick Abrahams […]

September 24, 2016

1980s

Voodoo And Magic Practices: The book which inspired McLaren and Westwood’s Witches collection

This is the book which inspired the late Malcolm McLaren to unite the design ideas he developed with Vivienne Westwood for their Autumn/Winter 1983 fashion collection Witches. At the time McLaren was completing his album Duck Rock, which was conceived as an ethnological travelogue and modelled on the LP series Dances Of the World’s Peoples released on the […]

September 23, 2016

1970s

Reckless Daughter: A barnstorming Joni Mitchell anthology

Hats off to barnstorming Barney Hoskyns for compiling new Joni Mitchell anthology Reckless Daughter, which is published in November. I fell under Mitchell’s spell in my early teens at the behest of an older brother and was lucky enough to see her live in the gig-crowded year of 1974 at London’s New Victoria Theatre. Even while […]

September 22, 2016

1970s

Sharks: The return of the Sharkmobile and a great shot of the band with Nora Foster in Let It Rock designs

Singer-songwriter Steve “Snips” Parsons has been in contact; the reunion of early 70s British rock band Sharks (which he fronted) moves apace – with an album out in September, next week they are launching a crowdfunding appeal to bring back the so-called Sharkmobile. This was guitarist Chris Spedding’s Pontiac Le Mans which – at the behest of […]

July 8, 2016

1960s

Punk Rockers meet The Cockettes founder downtown: When Fayette Hauser, Rory Johnston + Malcolm McLaren spent a wild weekend in Sin City

To mark the arrival in London of the legendary founder of The Cockettes Fayette Hauser for screenings of rare films featuring the transgressive troupe, here are some extracts from an interview she gave me for the forthcoming Malcolm McLaren biography. I’m also featuring photographs Hauser took when she hooked up with the late McLaren on […]

April 20, 2016

1970s

Chris Spedding: Unsung hero of Seventies style from Alkasura + Granny Takes A Trip to Let It Rock, Sex + Seditionaries

Guitarist Chris Spedding is one of the unsung heroes of Seventies style. I’ve been a fan of his music and look since 1974, when I acquired Jab It In Yore Eye. This was the second album by Sharks, formed by Spedding with other survivors of the early 70s music scene after leaving jazz-rock outfit Nucleus and […]

March 13, 2016

1970s

‘Don’t look over your shoulder, but the Sex Pistols are coming’: 40th anniversary of their first review

Today is the 40th anniversary of the gig at central London venue The Marquee by the Sex Pistols which generated their first substantial media coverage, a prescient 200-word review by Neil Spencer on page 31 of the February 21, 1976 issue of the New Musical Express.

February 12, 2016