1980s
David Nice
When Sean Mathias wrote A Prayer for Wings 35 years ago, the subject of young carers devoting their lives to parents with disabilities had just come as a revelation. That it's still very much a shame under another Tory government keeps this play topical, More important, it's eloquently written, with no false notes to the tedious daily grind of life for Mam and Rita in the disused Welsh church they're renting, and nothing too incredible about the dreams and hopes of the monologues they address to the audience.That helps to make the seemingly fantastical, the presence of angels and devils in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been 15 years since Ben Elton, known as Motormouth in his 1980s heyday – last toured. A decade-and-a-half ago, one of the instigators of alternative comedy tells us at the top of the show, he could have still passed muster as young or cool. Now, at the age of 60 and the father of grown-up children, he’s having something of an existential crisis.He admits he’s in danger of sounding past it as he lists the things about the modern world that confuse or depress him, but this is no grumpy old git rant (although he cleverly plays with that trope a few times in his two-and-a-half-hour show). Read more ...
David Nice
Advance publicity overstated the case for The Mask of Orpheus. "Iconic"? Only to academics and acolytes, for British audiences haven't had a chance to see a production since ENO's world premiere run in 1986. "Masterpiece"? Sitting there after the second interval 33 years ago, surrounded by empty seats long vacated (by fellow critics, shame on them, among others), and facing a third act with a sense of fatigue, I hardly thought so then. And though I can hear the virtues more clearly now, the dead directorial hand of Daniel Kramer has turned an already complex, sometimes obscure layering of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Prior to this week, it had been 35 years since hardcore punk firestarters Black Flag had set foot in the UK. That said, it was not without some trepidation that I made my way to one of Birmingham’s more compact venues to see a band who had once been genre-defining, get on stage and do their stuff. After all, Black Flag’s golden years were more than a generation ago, in the mid-1980s, and with a very different line-up. Iconic vocalist, Henry Rollins has long since hung up his microphone to write books, tour his spoken word show and appear on all-manner of TV documentaries – mainly about punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Prior to the UK dance music explosion of summer 1988, house and techno were American micro-scenes, geographically restricted to Chicago, Detroit and New York. Small coteries showed interest in the UK, but few thought of making the stuff. Mancunian producers 808 State, however, were early adopters, recording an album that year and later charting with iconic 1989 hit “Pacific State”, a futuristic, Balearic instrumental. 30 years on, their seventh album is both forward-looking and a tribute to old analogue technologies.808 State, once a four-piece, is now the duo of long-term members Graham Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s reckoned that this time next year vinyl sales will have overtaken CDs. It’s still a small market and anyone who thinks vinyl will one day replace streaming is living on Planet Lah-lah. There’s so much coming out even theartsdesk on Vinyl cannot review it all, but what we can do is devote 7500 words to what grabs our attention. We are not limited by genre or by new vs reissue. We eat it all up and want more. So check below for the juice on what’s out there. Dive on.VINYL OF THE MONTHMambo Noir Trio Mambo Noir Trio (Oona)If you see the name Matti Bye on anything, check it out. His 2017 Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the lyrics of 1989’s “Doin’ Our Own Dang”, Jungle Brothers’ Mike D noted his combo were “Breaking the beat others wished they broke.” Going further, he acknowledged “Cause you’re trying to feel what’s on my reel to reel.” Jungle Brothers recognised they were not on their own. During the same year, the like-minded De La Soul released their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.Both outfits had links with hip hop collective Native Tongues which, directly or indirectly, also related to or spawned A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and Chi-Ali, and influenced Digital Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While bands such as The Birthday Party, Siouxsie and the Banshees and, especially, Bauhaus had a hand in inventing goth music at the start of the Eighties, it was The Sisters of Mercy who defined it. Their combination of black clad cowboy shtick, mirror shades and dry ice worked a treat. In recent years, there have been rumours that the band’s live shows are less than impressive, mentions of a tendency to focus on unreleased material while dressed in leisurewear. Happily, this was certainly not the case tonight.The Sisters’ output, especially their early records, has dated well; gritty, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The work isn't finished on Big, if this stage musical of the beloved 1988 Tom Hanks film is ever to, um, make it big. A Broadway flop in 1996 where it was among the last shows directed by the late, much-admired Englishman Mike Ockrent, the material finds a sweetness in its West End incarnation that eluded it Stateside. But even with onetime boyband member Jay McGuiness adroitly capturing the manchild played by Hanks onscreen, the show remains awkwardly positioned between the satiric and the sentimental. And a ruthless pruning wouldn't go amiss either: by the time we'd got to the long-aborning Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In March of this year Edwyn Collins released his ninth studio album, Badbea, his fourth since two life-altering cerebral haemorrhages derailed him in 2005. It’s a vivacious collection that runs the gamut of what guitar pop can be, from acoustic strumming to psychedelic riffing to lo-fi punkin’, all catchy as burrs. His set is peppered with it. By the time he reaches the encore, even the slow, elegiac title track, with its gloomy references to “a ruined monument to life and death”, holds the audience rapt.Clad in a Fred Perry-style white shirt with red trim, Collins initially appears on stage Read more ...
Marianka Swain
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical – which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, set in late 1970s/early 1980s New York – picked up Tony Awards in 1992 for its book and score, and was nominated again in 2016 for an acclaimed revival. Yet the UK hasn’t sighted this landmark piece until now, with Tara Overfield-Wilkinson directing and choreographing an engaging if somewhat chaotic production.Daniel Boys plays Marvin, who recently left wife Trina (Laura Pitt-Pulford) for lover Whizzer (Oliver Savile, pictured below) – while maintaining close ties for Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Just two years after It Chapter One became the most successful horror film ever made, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is once again giving the American town of Derry absolutely nothing to laugh about. But this time around it’s audiences who may feel unable to enjoy the irony of a killer clown. For Chapter Two feels like a pointless, nay horrific case of déjà vu. Andy Muschietti’s decision to divide his adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel into two – the first part dealing with the characters as children, the second with their adult selves – initially seemed a strong Read more ...