Okay, I’m going to put this right out here. I’m guilty. I suspect I might be guilty of something that we may all be guilty of but I’m not going to use that as an excuse. I’m guilty and I’m going to make a full confession. So, here goes.
Roy Harper may well be rock’s least well-known legend. The only non-band member to have sung a lead vocal on a Pink Floyd song (Have A Cigar from Wish You Were Here), he is also the subject of a Led Zeppelin song (Hats Off To (Roy) Harper). David Gilmour, Paul And Linda McCartney and Kate […]
This is bass player and composer Antoine Fafard’s fourth album and features Gary Husband on drums, lead synth and piano and Jerry De Villiers Jr on lead guitar.
This is actually from 1985 but is now available for the first time on CD along with eight bonus tracks included. When it first came out Kerrang said it was a “distinctive and attractive alternative to the mainstream flow of things” and that’s as true in 2016 as it was then.
You may not have heard of the Crescendo festival that takes place each August in the beautiful French tourist resort of Saint Palais sur Mer in the Poitou Charente area of France, but it’s possibly the best organised festival I’ve ever attended and is in an absolutely magnificent setting on the cliff tops looking out […]
In March this year, Billy Bragg and Joe Henry carried their guitars on to the Texas Eagle train in Chicago bound for Los Angeles. During the journey, the pair recorded songs while the train stopped to pick up passengers. With one eye on the train, to make sure that it didn’t pull off without them, […]
This month John Scott breaks out Richard and Linda Thompson’s timeless classic from 1974.
In a former existence, Edinburgh’s Summerhall art space was a veterinary college. Tonight’s gig is located in The Dissection Room and its tiled walls, linoleum floor and viewing gallery create a certain unsettling atmosphere that turns out to be quite appropriate. Normally a standing venue, we’ve been provided with extraordinarily uncomfortable plastic chairs to sit […]
Amtrak’s Texas Eagle train runs from Chicago to Los Angeles, covering 2,728 miles and taking just under 67 hours to complete its journey. Tonight Billy Bragg and Joe Henry are showcasing a set of songs that they recorded when they took that trip together in March this year.
I’m really not sure what to make of this album. That’s not to say that I’ve initially approached it only to then back away with a kind of “what the hell is this?!!” type of response, but moreover I’ve played this album some 20+ times and still really don’t have a clue what to make of it […]
I’ve been a fan of Hopkins’ work for a number of years. The eagle-eyed amongst you will already be aware that Hopkins has previously worked with Coldplay and his track “Light Through The Veins” was reworked into what became the introduction to opening track “Life In Technicolor” from Coldplay’s album ‘Viva la Vida Or […]
When Rickie Lee Jones toured her Pirates album in 1981, she comfortably filled Edinburgh’s 3,000 seat Playhouse Theatre. Tonight, The Queen’s Hall, at less than one third of the size, is somewhat less than half full. The lack of seat sales is undeniably disappointing but is perhaps unsurprising. Jones is an uncompromising musician who has […]
The sleeve notes for Eye’s Of Blue’s Crossroads Of Time opens with a bit of an odd one “Sometimes a band can anticipate history to their own detriment. There is such a thing of being too far ahead of the game and finding everyone else is still playing by the old school rules…The story of […]
When I was a youth I had the door to my bedroom painted with all psychedelic patterns, dragons, mushrooms and the like. Somewhere on the door I also had a poem that started “I am Bufo bufo, not yet rested from the great work” and on the frame over the door I had “It’s an […]
The Tomcats were a British R&B/Mod band formed in Ealing in 1965 but it is in Spain they were most well known. The story goes that just before they were about to make it big on the R&B scene in London the band jumped in a van (bought by one of the band’s mum) and […]
This month, John Scott revisits the 1968 classic from Pink Floyd, Saucerful Of Secrets.