Unless you’re really pretty hot on your music knowledge, you’ll only know Peter Straker by referencing a video he’s been in (most likely, Freddie Mercury’s cover of The Great Pretender) or by saying, “he’s the bloke that was in the original Hair show”. It’s unlikely…to an extraordinary degree, that a cartoon light bulb would appear […]
It seems fitting that music was one of the few constants in LaVey’s life. As a child, playing the piano or organ was something that, although his parents supported, they had no need to encourage. Way before the birth of rock n roll, the music he played would most likely have been classical music and […]
It’s 1998 and after countless albums, The Residents go back to the beginning…right to the beginning. Subtitled ‘Curious Stories from the Bible’, ‘Wormwood’ is not, as you may expect, a vitriolic series of broadsides against Christianity nor even religion in general but rather a celebration of some of the overlooked eye-popping moments which forever live […]
In the wake of the death of his wife, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s next film project was always going to have emerged from a metaphorically dark place. As it happens, the British weather ensured his film of Macbeth also came from a literally dark place, with appalling meteorological conditions combining with production costs (Hugh Hefner […]
Putting you on the spot, there’s every chance you can’t name a song by Tommy James & The Shondells. You know them and will emit an elongated “ohhhh” when prodded but you’ll think nothing more of it and go back to forgetting their name again almost instantly. I realise this is a tremendous opening salvo […]
Until the mid-sixties, jazz was the domain of Herculean drug gobblers – tar-encrusted-lung machines who had mastered circular breathing and rat-a-tat-tat drum patterns who might occasionally jolt awake sleepy bar patrons in swanky clubs in New York and New Orleans, or the bowler-hatted trad plodders playing ‘Three Blind Mice’ in unusual time-signatures to mutton-chopped wife […]
By the mid to late 50s, popular music – including jazz – had already become so bored with itself that it had packed its bags, a couple of packets of Vesta and headed East. Not TOO far East, mind – just far enough to doff its cap to Mr Singh at the corner shop and […]
I recently cleared out a storage unit I’ve had for the best part of ten years. An appalling totem to my decisions as to what to keep in life and what to throw away (short answer – keep it all, just in case) it’s slightly telling that the three final boxes I removed (one of […]
Just as in 1974 when their first album, “Meet the Residents” entered an unsuspecting world, The Residents defy easy description and remain as enigmatic and mysterious as ever. No-one truly knows who the band members are or were; their styles range from seemingly novelty covers to scabrous cultural and social commentary to inspired rock and […]
Now, let’s not get carried away. Sir Lord Baltimore’s rather paltry output essentially zooms in on 1970’s debut album, Kingdom Come and the following year’s self-titled release – 2006’s significantly delayed affair skews the figures somewhat. Indeed, the band’s history is littered with brevity and low numbers – their lifespan; their live appearances (though always […]
