1970s
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Make it Your Sound, Make it Your Scene – Vanguard Records & the 1960s Musical RevolutionKieron TylerSeymour and Maynard Solomon’s Vanguard Records hasn’t been given the same amount of recognition as Jac Holzman’s Elektra, despite both labels being equally important and having trodden – at least up to the late Sixties – very similar paths. This neat four-CD box set should ensure that Vanguard gets more recognition.Like Elektra, Vanguard cast its net into New York. Also like Elektra, its earliest releases didn’t suggest a coherent strategy. Viennese waltzs, Elizabethan Read more ...
howard.male
Given that Ziggy Stardust was a figment of David Bowie’s imagination it seems fitting that, for all intents and purposes, Bowie himself now appears to be a figment of our imagination. What’s he up to these days? Is he still living in New York with his beautiful Earthling wife and daughter? Or did he finally manage to accumulate enough wealth from his record sales to finance a return to his own home planet? These questions and many more are not even touched upon in this hour-long documentary.However, fanciful whimsy aside, with no Thin White Duke available for comment, the programme-makers Read more ...
sheila.johnston
You might not think that a drama about German parliamentary politics in the 1970s would be of great urgency today. But when Democracy, Michael Frayn's play about Willy Brandt and the Günter Guillaume spy scandal, first opened in 2003, Brits swiftly discerned links with another charismatic politician, the first left-wing leader in decades, while across the Atlantic the womanising German Chancellor looked very much like Bill Clinton. Today a new spin appears and Democracy is described as "exploring the Machiavellian nature of coalition government."Brandt ended his first speech after being Read more ...
theartsdesk
Can: The Lost TapesKieron TylerDespite being compiled from previously unreleased material, the extraordinary The Lost Tapes is as wonderful as last year's 40th Anniversary edition of Tago Mago. This archive trawl outpaces previous exhumations like Limited Edition, Unlimited Edition, Delay ‘68 and Prehistoric Future by a very long distance. Not because it’s a three-CD set, but due to the sheer quality of what’s heard. Can still had material on the shelf equalling what they issued. Little is from the post-Damo Suzuki configuration of the band (it’s roughly half-and-half between the Suzuki and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Sex Pistols played their final live show on 14 January 1978 in San Francisco. According to the third and final programme in the Punk Britannia series, “for many, it would be the end of punk”. It certainly was for ex-Pistol John Lydon, who'd form Public Image Ltd. Taking on the task of tracing what happened next was a challenge. Nothing was neat. Loose ends, new strands and evolution of the existing meant it couldn’t be. If this programme succeeded, it was in portraying the turmoil that came in punk’s wake.Bringing order where there is chaos is always difficult. As an overview of the Read more ...
bruce.dessau
It is always easy to remember the first time: 11 November, 1974, Hammersmith Odeon. Sparks. I cannot recall the exact seat where I was sitting when I lost my rock 'n' roll virginity, but it was the second stalls block on the left and the seasoned gig-goer on my right tipped me off that you can tell when a band is going to do an encore because the roadies leave the amps turned on. Look out for the red light. Sure enough, Ron and Russell Mael returned to do their biggest hit to date, "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us".Nearly four decades on they were back in West London last night with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“You're a wasted face, you're a sad-eyed lie, you're a holocaust.” The devastation of Big Star’s “Holocaust” manifested the mood of the album it was recorded for, which was supposed to be the Memphis band’s third. Last night celebrated this classic musical evocation of fragmentation. Capturing that on stage was a tall order. Playing the songs along with a string section reading from sheet music could never be as spontaneous as the chaotic, booze-fuelled sessions that birthed what became Third.Even so, this extraordinary album was brought to life, a life it never had back in 1974 when it was Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
Scissor Sisters’ breakout cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” was so downright preposterous it looked likely to doom the New Yorkers to one-hit wonder status; it’s the kind of balls-out release that comes along only very infrequently. Thankfully for everyone, however, they’ve gone on to become one of our most treasured pop acts - headlining arena tours in the UK, enjoying life at the top of the charts and attracting fans from across the board.That gaiety, slink and uncompromised cultural slant have remained consistent throughout their nine-year reign in the mainstream. On the verge of Read more ...
graeme.thomson
My, what strange and wondrous treasures await the record producer given exclusive access to the private vaults of a Beatle. He will, for instance, find entire radio programmes preserved on multi-track tape, and recordings of F1 cars roaring past at some unspecified race track. He will stumble upon a humbled Fab being given his very first sitar lesson by Ravi Shankar, and be privy to a brief musical moment beamed in across the decades from a room at the Jaipur Palace Hotel. There will be a few decent songs, too.One day every last 1/4 inch of this eccentric audio trove may well be exposed to Read more ...
howard.male
It’s hard to think of any other records as exuberantly hedonistic as the handful of singles this London band rattled off at the beginning of the 1980s. Yes, they were accompanied by the then necessary punk sneer which said, This is all strictly ironic. But the music couldn’t lie. The music really did want you to go wild in the country, even if naughty Annabella Lwin just wanted to sneak off for a fag. Or was naughty Annabella just an illusion too? The 40something Lwin who skipped and twirled onto the Islington Academy stage last night certainly had as much energy as the 14- to 18-year-old Read more ...
fisun.guner
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the wunderkind of New German Cinema, worked at a prodigious rate. By the time of his death in 1982, aged just 37, he’d made over 40 feature films and directed over half as many stage plays. He also made films specially commissioned for television, something that was certainly looked down upon by both mainstream and avant-garde film-makers in the Seventies. Treating his television projects with no less commitment, Fassbinder was an arthouse film-maker who broke the mould in many ways, though his output must be said to be of vastly variable quality.I Only Want You to Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The Hourglass Sanatorium tells the surreal story of a man’s visit to a dilapidated medical institution where his ageing father is being held in suspense between life and death. From start to finish, the film portrays a dream world in which time is constantly subverted, as if the hero were freely wandering between parallel universes.Made in 1973, this bewitching film was directed by Wojciech Has, whose other great work The Saragossa Manuscript is also being released in a restored version. The script of The Hourglass Sanatorium is based on The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Read more ...