the Kinks
‘I think The Kinks could have found a better frontman’: Ray Davies interviewed
At 74, Ray Davies is as sharp as ever. Michael Hann talks to him about America, angry groupies and being a reluctant frontman
How refreshing to find the BBC doing its job instead of handwringing about Islamophobia
Here’s the bad news. One day you or someone like you will be shopping in a mall or enjoying a…
Why plotting a sound map of London is impossible
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
Ray Davies: part of Swinging Sixties London — and apart from it too
As Johnny Rogan notes in this new biography of Ray Davies and the Kinks, it is almost 50 years since…
Barry Humphries’s diary: The bookshop ruined by Harry Potter
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
The quest for the perfect guitar riff is a noble one – if not quite the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe
A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old son, who’s taken up the guitar, announced that he’d learned something new. He then…
The punk who inspired a generation of British woman to pick up a guitar
Viv Albertine is deservedly famous as the guitarist of the tumultuous, all-female English punk band The Slits. Their debut album,…