The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
It occurs to me sometimes that this column is, essentially, one long and painful confessional. I admit to enjoying all this unfashionable and uncool music so others don’t have to. ‘Ah, the man who likes Supertramp,’ someone once said to me at a party, just before he was stabbed by an unknown assailant. No one
The Jam were once described as the ‘last great English singles band’. For a group that released such classic chart-toppers as ‘Going Underground’ and ‘Town Called Malice’ that might seem fair enough, but it grievously underestimates their musical canon. The quality of their output on LPs, B-sides and even on recordings that were never released
There was a time when ‘classical music’ meant something you could put your finger on. It denoted the musical period between roughly 1750 and 1800, when Haydn, Mozart and many others wrote symphonies, concertos and instrumental pieces with a sense of form and grace that were likened to the art and architecture of Classical Greece
Last month, on the most glorious of autumnal days, the world of music paid its last respects to Robert Tear. St Martin in the Fields was packed and the singing, as you can imagine, was magnificent. Sir Thomas Allen gave us Kurt Weill’s ‘September Song’, Sir John Tomlinson contributed Sarastro’s aria from Zauberflöte, and Dame
How is it possible to have come this far without featurig this song? Madness, man, madness. Anyway, here are Ira and Charlie Louvin with I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby. Dang they’re good.
I don’t know about you but I have to steel myself these days to turn on the Today programme in the morning. There is always the terrifying prospect that an infuriatingly overexcited Robert Peston will come on, barely able to contain his glee as he reports that one’s own bank or pension fund has just
The Biophilia live show at Harpa, Reykjavik is another cog in the complex wheel that makes up Björk’s eighth album, which is not simply a collection of nice songs, but a concept record about nature, a series of educational apps and a showcase for its specially created instruments. The performance is, however, where it all
In all the heavier-duty excitement of Liszt’s anniversary I had failed to register that W.S. Gilbert expired 100 years ago; and, perhaps just as significant, the copyright of the D’Oyly Carte opera company expired 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember the fuss which that moment provoked — the highbrows hoping to kill
What with one thing and another, I had rather lost track of what Sting was up to. Still on the lute? Moved on to nose flutes? Thrash metal rereadings of back catalogue? It turns out that he has taken to the road with an orchestra, in a heroic stand against the bitter frugality of these
The human voice has always been celebrated as one of the most direct forms of musical and personal expression. This is especially true in jazz, where improvisation is such a key element. We so often listen to singers ‘baring their soul’, revealing something ‘deep within’. The human voice has always been celebrated as one of
Well, after the sodding rugby* I think it is time for some George Jones and Things Have Gone to Pieces: *Well done England.
Before Stephen Fry walked on to the stage at the Barbican on Monday to take part in a discussion on the place of classical music in today’s society, he asked his Twitter followers to suggest new names for what he sees as an off-putting label, ‘classical’. The replies that flowed in were typically informed and
Teenage obsessions are a strange and terrible thing. How, exactly, does an album – which is, after all, nothing more than a recording of some music – seem to embed itself so completely into our identity? How does it become something so crucially important that we can’t imagine our world without it? With hindsight I
What was it Sir Thomas Beecham said about Stockhausen? ‘I’ve never conducted any of his music, but I once trod in some.’ So far as I know, Beecham never commented on the work of Pierre Boulez, but I’m sure his verdict would have been the same. Both composers adopted a modernist language that is politely
CNN recently referred to Birmingham as ‘the unlikely birthplace of heavy metal’. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition entitled Home of Metal (until 25 September). All the gnarly-mouthed, guitar-thrashing kings of metal hail from the Black Country: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death. Walsall boy Noddy Holder, lead singer of semi-metal
Here’s an improbably, even impossibly, young Steve Earle jamming with a bunch of great old boys at Guy Clark’s place way back in the day. It’s a groovy side of country and, you’ll observe, one fuelled by ample quantities of booze, tobacco and dope. Quality all the way. And, blimey, Steve’s just a kid singing
Actually, this is in memory of the Man in Black’s life-support machine Marshall Grant who died this week. But here are the boys at San quentin with I Walk the Line, a tune Cash wrote in 1956 that, it is said, was inspired by Grant:
I love the story of Jane Eyre more than life itself, which has never been much cop but, infuriatingly, I could not love this adaptation. I say ‘infuriating’ because what it does right it does very right. It is stunningly mounted, for example, with ferocious landscapes and howling winds and the sort of storms that
I have just finished a book (writing one, not reading one, you fool) and, as ever, I am hoping that it’s good enough and people will like it. Can you ever know? In this respect, and in quite a few others, it’s a little like a band putting out a new album, which they may
The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra will be giving the concluding two concerts of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival under its chief conductor Jonathan Nott. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra will be giving the concluding two concerts of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival under its chief conductor Jonathan Nott. The programmes aren’t what you might expect from one
This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I consider to be the most moving High Renaissance music there is. This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I
You’ll notice that the great man has some good friends helping out on this version of Riding That Midnight Train. Among them: Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs. All good, rollicking stuff.
Is it true that Bob Dylan is 70? I would never have guessed: there has been so little about it in the newspapers. No doubt he is out on the road right now, on his never-ending tour, murdering his old tunes with a relentless indifference, unbothered by what his fans might think. But you have
Sure, you don’t necessarily think of Elvis as a country singer. But then you remember his gospel roots and the rockabilly and it all makes sense. How could such a great American ever escape the greatest American musical genre of them all? He never did. Or, if you prefer, he just often returned to it.
They’re back. In August the capital fills with bored, dim-witted, half-naked semi-vagrants who have nothing to do here but get in the way of Londoners who do have things to do here. Tourism is an invitation to robbery. If you aren’t going to a place to work, you’re going there to get worked over. The
In honour of the debt-ceiling fiasco currently crippling Washington George Jones’s Things Have Gone To Pieces seems rather appropriate. Happily, it’s also a great song.
Who was Carlos Kleiber, and why has he been voted the best conductor of all time? Carlos Kleiber — the name evokes both Hispanic and German spheres — cancelled performances, never gave interviews, claimed he only conducted when the fridge was empty, and told Placido Domingo he’d prefer to devote his time to drinking wine
American trio Low are what you get when a band evolves far from the established music scenes of laidback California and buzzing NYC. Fronted by husband and wife Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, their sound evokes the relative isolation and five-month winters of their native Duluth, Minnesota, with glacial tempos and minimal arrangements, laced with
Everyone needs to return to the Carter Family from time to time. It’s a country pilgrimage. Here the ladies perform My Clinch Mountain Home and Foggy Mountain Top. Class all the way and forever.