1960s
Liz Thomson
Dylan aficionados will get the cover art reference immediately: one of Elliott Landy’s celebrated Woodstock photos, taken in 1968. Joan Osborne, Grammy nominated “no-nonsense Dylan” (New York Times) interpreter, is wearing neither hat nor guitar on the sleeve of her latest album but the allusion is clear and two of the songs on what she hopes will develop into a “songbook series” (in the manner of Ella Fitzgerald’s homage to the great American songwriters) are from The Basement Tapes.On this her ninth studio album, the Kentucky-born singer-songwriter who’s called New York City home for some Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
August is often a quiet month on the release front but theartsdesk on Vinyl came across a host of music deserving of attention. Now that even Sony, one of the biggest record companies in the world, are starting to press their own vinyl again, it’s safe to say records aren’t disappearing quite yet. On the contrary, the range of material is staggering in its breadth. So this month we review everything from spectral folk to boshing techno to the soundtrack of Guardians of The Galaxy 2. Take the plunge.VINYL OF THE MONTHFOS Captain Free (Near The Exit Music)London-based Greek artist Katerina Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
According to Pete Frame’s book Rock Family Trees, Fairport Convention had 15 different line-ups between 1968 and 1978, the period covered by the new box set Come All Ye – The First 10 Years. Fairport Convention #7, extant from November 1971 to February 1972, featured no one from the first three iterations of the band, which had taken them up to June 1969. Evidently, the actuality of Fairport Convention is fluid.Despite this, there is an established and (relatively) clearly defined arc. One traced by Come All Ye. Their first album, made with Judy Dyble as their singer, was a response to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The 1960s were “hilarious”, says one young character in this revival, starring Broadway icon Stockard Channing, of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s 2009 family drama at the Trafalgar Studios. How so? “Oh you know, the clothes, the hair, the raging idealism.” The thought of hippies marching for political causes, smoking Gauloises on the Left Bank or storming the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and all the time wearing sandals and beads. Yes, to anyone under the age of 60 that must seem funny. But not, of course, for anyone who was actually there – especially if they were a radical and a Read more ...
David Nice
Like his smash-hit My Night With Reg, Kevin Elyot's first and last plays have a role to play in the history of gay theatre, but do they work? Emphatically not in the case of Twilight Song (★★), completed – one is tempted to say, sketched – shortly before his death in 2014, though four out of five actors at the admirable Park Theatre give it their best shot. Coming Clean (★★★) is a different matter: a frank and well-structured essay in a crumbling relationship from the early 1980s, before AIDS truly came to the fore in the London scene.Unfortunately Coming Clean – the innuendo isn't pertinent Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Between them, Marylebone Beat Girls and Milk of the Tree cover the years 1964 to 1973. Each collects tracks recorded by female singers: whether credited as solo acts, fronting a band or singer-songwriters performing self-penned material. That the two compilations dovetail is coincidental – they were released by different labels on the same day – but they embrace the period when the singer-songwriter was codified and when, as the liner notes of Milk of the Tree put it, “female voices began to be widely heard in the [music] industry.”As that quote suggests, Milk of the Tree: An Anthology Of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In media coverage of Woodstock, Santana always seems to be overshadowed by the oft-mentioned cultural significance of Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner”. However, go check their performances, side by side, for pure visceral thrills, and it’s Santana’s amped Latin explosion that comes up trumps. If he hadn’t spent the better part of the Seventies and Eighties turning out tedious jazz-fusion (as Hendrix might well have done, had he lived), Santana would be on many more 21st century posters and T-shirts.1999’s collaborative Supernatural album famously rehabilitated him as a commercial entity and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Victim was released in 1961. Six years would pass before the passing of the Sexual Offences Act cautiously exempted from prosecution men over 20 who had consensual sex in private. Yet the Basil Dearden suspenser probably played an equally important part in de-stigmatising homosexuality by highlighting the ugliness of homophobia.Dirk Bogarde is needle-sharp as Melville Farr, a sophisticated London barrister with a successful practice who is about to become a QC - and whose tamping down of his homosexuality has filled him with angst. He lives peaceably, however, with his wife Laura (Sylvia Syms Read more ...
graham.rickson
Baron Munchausen’s exploits have been filmed before. Terry Gilliam’s star-studded 1988 version floundered thanks to a sub-par script, and there’s an infamous 1943 German adaptation, commissioned by Goebbels. This one, Karel Zeman’s The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, is far better than both. Completed in 1961, it’s technically stunning. Knowing how Zeman’s tricks were realised doesn’t diminish their brilliance, and one of the bonus features from this Second Run release shows a group of contemporary Czech film students attempting to reproduce iconic moments from the film. Baron Munchausen was a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Time Has Come was issued in late 1971. Anne Briggs’ second album and her second to reach shops that year, it followed an eponymous set released that April. That was on the folk label Topic and produced by the pivotal A. L. Lloyd, who had been key to propagating Britain’s traditional music since the late 1930s. The Time Has Come was issued by CBS and produced Colin Caldwell who, at that time, was also working with the rock bands Aynsley Dunbar and Curved Air. The time had come for Anne Briggs to dance with the mainstream.In the liner notes of this new reissue of The Time Has Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
To anyone other than Eighties and Nineties indie obsessives, the guitarist from The House of Love and Levitation and the singer from Adorable getting together in 2014 did not cause a stir. However, both had stylistically leapt away from their pasts, and the resulting album, Broken Heart Surgery, showcased rich, heart-worn songs, filtered through a sensibility somewhere between Lee Hazelwood and John Barry 1960s film scores. It brought them a new audience. Their second album is equally palatable.Boasting great cover art by photographer Rosanne de Lange, featuring the now disappeared car Read more ...
Liz Thomson
I was 10 in 1967 though I remember much about the year, indeed about the era, not least the release of Sgt Pepper and the first live global satellite broadcast, when the Beatles sang “All You Need is Love”, and all the great transatlantic hits, including of course Scott Mackenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)”. Soon would begin my obsession with the 1960s – Joan Baez was the gateway drug, an album from my sister’s collection my route to learning guitar and her voice and music my entree to Bob Dylan and to the folk and folk-rock that enthrals me still and to Read more ...