Category: Music
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David Bowie Photography Exhibition Hits Essex
Geoff MacCormack was just seven years old and was wearing the brown uniform of Burnt Ash Primary school when he first met David Jones. They went to cub scouts together and were in the choir together. It transpired neither the cubs, choir nor school would end up providing the boys with the strangest outfits they…
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Gaz Coombs Unveils Songs From New Album At ULU
It has been quite a journey since Gaz Coombs began his rock career as the teenage lead singer of…. The Jennifers. Signed to Nude Records in 1991 – the contract signed by his mum as he was too young – The Jennifers tilted a vain lance towards stardom, but their songs, with titles such as…
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The Brits 2018: Stormzy’s Boots, Dua Lipa’s Swimming Cozzie and Liam Gallagher’s Coat
It’s genuinely a highlight of the musical year, if only for the thrill of the unexpected, but if we learn nothing else at The Brits each time, it’s just how difficult being a TV presenter is. At least, the three plucky presenters inevitably made it appear so on ITV’s “Red Carpet” Show. It can’t be…
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Jen Cloher: An Album Of The Year…
Album of the year lists are both a blessing and curse. As a way to demonstrate your discerning taste there are few better ways to impress your friends. On the other hand, there are fewer more effective ways for your friends to demonstrate how much greater their taste is than yours, and how mundane and…
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Can Dream Wife Hit The Top 40 UK Album Charts?
There are many plagues of the modern world. Internet passwords. Staying over at a friend’s house and waking up first. The shrinking of the Toblerone bar. But most of all, Dry January. If ever there was a miserable, overly-long, grim, sleet-and-rain-ridden month of the year to drink your way through and forget, it was January.…
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Belle & Sebastian And The Horror Of Spotify Playlists.
In a world where people consume music through pre-determined streaming service playlists with grim titles such as “Cinematic Chillout”, “Music for Concentration” and “Songs for Sleeping”, how does a band that is already nine albums into a career spanning over twenty years grab the attention of the zombified masses? Masses moreover, who willingly listen to…
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Sweet Billy Pilgrim Launch Stunning New Album At St Pancras Old Church
As the dystopian nightmare of 2017 fades, to be replaced with fresh, new dystopian horrors with a shiny “Made In 2018” badge on them, we find ourselves looking for a fresh start. And what better way to find a fresh start than turning to a band about to release their fifth album? Well, okay, on…
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A New Year, A New Band: Shame
2018. A new year, a fresh start. A chance to shed the winter coat that you unwittingly piled on when you bought, and then consumed, those second and third tubs of Heroes and Quality Street over the festive season. It’s a chance to move more, eat less, make resolutions, quit things, start other things, fix…
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Every Record Tells A Story’s Albums Of 2017
Being barged out of the way by stressed shoppers. Not being able to find the thing your kids put on the top of their list. Bringing a dead tree into your house and covering it with shiny balls. Spending slightly too long in the company of your family. Having to go to an unfamiliar supermarket…
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Queens of the Stone Age – Live In London
Josh Homme has come a long way since his formative teenage years when his band, Sons of Kyuss, filled the hot, star-filled Palm Desert sky with cacophonous noise, bonfire smoke and teenage attitude, playing gear powered by generators to a seething crowd of bored desert kids. A far cry from tonight, where Josh Homme has…
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Why Independent Record Shops Shouldn’t Fear Sainsbury’s Compilation Albums (Too Much)
You can see why the start up of it’s own record label by supermarket chain Sainsbury’s would provoke within independent record shops the sort of confusion and suspicion you might otherwise only witness when a particularly trendy flock of sheep at an indie disco spots a wolf dressed like Kurt Cobain. Large retailers don’t have…
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Help Celebrate “One Of The Country’s Great Record Shops’” 40th Birthday
On the 28 October 1977 a thirty-seven year old Peter Driscoll opened a new record shop at 55 Elm Road in Leigh on Sea. It was the year of Punk and The Sex Pistols, so naturally the UK’s charts reflected this cataclysmic social upheaval, with the nation’s number one record that week being “Yes Sir,…
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Vinyl Subscription Services: Which One Is Best?
Not sure whether to sign up to a vinyl subscription service? Here’s a look at a few… Last time, we looked at Vinyl Me Please and its cocktail recipe. It was all very shiny and pleasing, but didn’t solve the perennial issue of potentially lumbering you with records as welcome in your collection as Mariah…
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Vinyl Me? Please…
In which we take a look at the US vinyl subscription service and check out the most important aspect of their monthly offer: The cocktail recipe…
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The Five Golden Rules of Setting Up Your Own Album Of The Month Club
An Album of the Month Club is a wonderful thing. It’s like having a friend with great musical taste who is compiling, nay, “curating” * music for you to add to your collection. Yay! Or is it? What friend would “curate” a selection of music and then insist you buy it from them? And then…
Every record tells a story 