On Saturday I made a rare visit to London. I realised that I have not been in central London for a long time: the last few times I was in London it was only Hammersmith for Sunday night comedy. It must be more than a year since I took a train into Victoria. What finally [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Music'
Elton John at the BBC
April 28th, 2011 · No Comments · Music
This evening I watched something I had recorded over the weekend – Elton John at the BBC – and an hour just flew past.   Quite often these shows (Stiff at the BBC, Reggae at the BBC, etc. etc.) have been almost entirely a load of TOTP clips with maybe a bit of OGWT and with [...]
Much Later with Jools Holland
April 27th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Life, Music
Tonight I waded into the backlog of episodes of Later with Jools Holland that were recorded on the V+ box, starting with the end of the one from two weeks ago with Robbie Robertson, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and Cee-lo Green – fast-forwarding through Glasvegas. After that I moved onto last week’s episodes. I’ll [...]
Tags: TV
Crawley Anthem
April 25th, 2011 · No Comments · Life, Music
On Thursday night I went along to the Hawth where there was a meeting about something called the Crawley Anthem. This is a project which aims to write a song about the town, arrange it, record it and film it. Anybody with first-hand experience of my musical abilities will be relieved to know that my [...]
Tags: Crawley
Paying for Spotify
April 17th, 2011 · No Comments · Music, Technology
While I’m not overwhelmed with happiness at the idea of Spotify putting more limits on its free service I’m not totally distraught either. If anything I’m a bit surprised they have survived so long while offering so much for nothing. At the end of the day, if you want to provide music legally a lot [...]
Tags: Spotify
Top of the Pops
April 9th, 2011 · No Comments · Life, Music
Like many people, I have been wathcing those old 1976 TOTP episodes on BBC Four with some interest. I must have watched TOTP every week, or nearly every week for the couple of years around 1976 so I’m amazed to find quite so many performances I had entirely forgotten, sometimes by artists I had completely [...]
Gang of Four: Content
February 28th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Music
I’ve been listening to Gang of Four’s new album, Content, on Spotify this evening. It really is a magnificent album right from the metronic funk of the opening track to the abrupt end of the last track. In fact it is nearly as good as their debut album Entertainment! and that is not damning it [...]
Tags: Gang of Four·Reviews
Reggae Britannia
February 13th, 2011 · 5 Comments · Music
Last night I watched Reggae Britannia on the BBC’s iPlayer. It was a worthy addition to BBC Four’s xxxxx Britanna series but, as always, it was frustrating to see what was missed out. I know you can’t fit absolutely everything into 90 minutes, but not even mentioning Misty in Roots in passing? Of course, any [...]
Tags: TV
More zombieness
February 6th, 2011 · No Comments · Life, Music
If the film Dead Snow didn’t whet your appetite for Scandinavian zombie-related artistic endeavours, how about this: the debut album from Swedish thrash metal band Zombiekrig, called UndantagstillstÃ¥nd is on Spotify. All sung in Swedish, but does that matter in this genre? I spent a happy couple of hours watching Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth on [...]
Only a few more hours
February 6th, 2011 · No Comments · Life, Music
Only a little over three months after moving house, I finally got round to wiring up my amplifier to the DVD player. Been meaning to do it for ages, but so far I have put up with getting the sound from DVDs through the TV speakers and have not had the urge to listen to [...]
Tags: DVD
Have you heard of the categorisation of political activists into...