1980s
Music Reissues Weekly: Theatre Of Hate - OmensSunday, 20 March 2022
During the first week of February 1982, Theatre Of Hate got as close to the mainstream as they’d ever get. They opened that week’s edition of Top of the Pops with a run through of “Do You Believe in the Westworld?” which was then at 40 in the Top 40... Read more... |
Album: Tears For Fears - The Tipping PointThursday, 24 February 2022
Tears For Fears were an odd non-presence through their most successful years. They were right up there in the premier league of stadium rock-pop bands, but had none of the Celtic romantic bombast of U2 and Simple Minds, weren’t as weird as... Read more... |
The Souvenir Part II review – the problem with posh realismTuesday, 08 February 2022
The Souvenir Part II apparently concludes Joanna Hogg’s fly-on-the-wall drama about a woman film student's emotional evolution as the victim of both her older boyfriend's abuse and the disdain of her male instructors. It’s a psychologically... Read more... |
Memory Box review - exquisitely made drama set in LebanonFriday, 21 January 2022
Memory Box is that rare thing, a glimpse into a lost world from its traumatised inhabitants. Made by the Lebanese artist-filmmakers, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (a husband and wife team), it’s an intergenerational drama split between Beirut... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Gun Club - Preaching The BluesSunday, 09 January 2022
“The Gun Club were true originals and Jeffrey Lee Pierce a genius. They were the inspiration behind many bands, I myself never thought about being a singer until I dropped the needle on Fire Of Love and in that instant I knew what I wanted to do... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Looking back at 2021Sunday, 26 December 2021
The archive release which had the greatest impact, and still does, was Linda Smith’s Till Another Time 1988-1996. After it turned up, the reaction to a first play was instant. How could this have escaped attention? The compilation opened the door on... Read more... |
The Hand of God review - Sorrentino's unsentimental educationThursday, 16 December 2021
“It was the hand of God,” says the Neapolitan family patriarch about a rather unexpected consequence of Maradona's coming to play for the city’s team. That gives us a date, 1984, and, while the adolescent protagonist Fabietto remains in Naples, a... Read more... |
The Holiness of Sex: Leonard Cohen's Biblical TheologyWednesday, 15 December 2021
On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature rather than Cohen. Not being a Nobel prize adjudicator I couldn’t answer the question but I did... Read more... |
Madness and Squeeze, Brighton Centre review - enjoyable annual December nostalgia rompWednesday, 08 December 2021
Madness frontman Suggs is asking the capacity crowd at the Brighton Centre if any of them are in school-age education. Quite a few are. There are actual young people here! Some are with parents (even, possibly, grandparents), but gaggles of... Read more... |
House Of Gucci review – gloriously gawdy trashThursday, 25 November 2021
Back in 2013, Gina Gershon chewed up the scenery in the daytime movie House of Versace. Focusing on the murder of Gianni Versace, it was a tacky, cheap drama that knew what it was, and was all the more entertaining for it. The same can’t be said of... Read more... |
OMD/Scritti Politti, Brighton Centre review - an engaging, ebullient good timeThursday, 18 November 2021
A persistent moan of this writer in recent years, about gigs attended by those his own age (54) and up, is that, however good the band is, the audience are stationary, staring, semi-catatonic. They don’t twitch or move, facing stage-wards earnestly... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Essiebons Special 1973-1984 Ghana Music Power HouseSunday, 14 November 2021
One of the most interesting tracks on Essiebons Special 1973–1984 Ghana Music Power House is Joe Meah’s mysterious "Dee Mmaa Pe". It’s not mentioned in the compilation’s accompanying booklet, and Joe Meah doesn’t figure in any of the standard... Read more... |
