Every Record Tells A Story
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More Pictures of The Horrors and The Black Belles
Following my earlier Horrors post, here are a couple more photos of Wednesday night’s gig at Chinnerys in Southend, including a couple of support band The Black Belles. The Black Belles are signed to Jack White‘s label Third Man Records and this is their first UK tour. They play The Barfly in Camden tonight and…
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The Horrors! The Horrors! Southend’s Chinnerys shakes to secret JD Roots homecoming gig by The Horrors.
Seeing The Horrors play live at their home town of Southend was a special moment. Chris Martin’s campaign against tinnitus had a setback last night as Southend on Sea got to welcome home The Horrors at a special gig at tiny local venue / sweat pit Chinnerys prior to the band’s UK tour later this…
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Things You Don’t See Anymore #2: The Bootleg Tape Market Trader
Bootleg recordings of live shows can now be found on-line – but this wasn’t always the case. Bootlegs used to be under the counter – or more often, on market stalls in cassette form or (if you were really keen / wealthy) on vinyl at bootleg record fairs. After Queen’s triumph at Wembley, I began…
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Rock’s Greatest Frontman
Who is Rock’s Greatest Frontman? The question of who is Rock’s Greatest Frontman has taxed the minds of the finest academics across the land, and has been debated in some of the most important arenas including Cabinet Rooms, Parliament… …Buckingham Palace, and not forgetting The Crooked Billet pub in my home town of Leigh on…
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Gered Mankowitz Photo Exhibition at Snap Galleries
There’s a great photo exhibition on in London with images of The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. If NME photographer Dean Chalkley has the best job in the world, then running him a close second is a man I met yesterday. Guy White is the owner of Snap Galleries, a specialist rock n roll photo…
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The Top Ten Best Rolling Stones Books…ever!
The best books about the Rolling Stones? Read on… The Rolling Stones pretended they wouldn’t be touring in 2012 to celebrate their 50th anniversary, and Keith claimed that as Charlie didn’t join the band until 1963, he had a decent get-out clause to postpone the festivities until next year. So whilst we waited patiently for…
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The Rolling Stones In Rice Krispies Advert Shame! (and other breakfast stories)
Rock stars and Breakfast cereals are not the most obvious bedfellows… So what do The Rolling Stones and The Charlatans have in common (aside from having a greater appetite for banned substances than the Bulgarian weightlifting and Tour De France teams combined)? As I re-read The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones recently, there was…
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Tim Burgess of The Charlatans Telling Stories: “I Wanted My Book To Be Like Pulp Fiction…”
Charlatans lead singer Tim Burgess launched his autobiography Telling Stories this week at a special event at St James’ Church in Piccadilly. Reading extracts from his book, Burgess revealed snippets of life on the road with a rock band, which as most of us have long suspected appears to involve long and convoluted attempts to smuggle banned substances…
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The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones…and The Best Music Books of All Time
The 26th April 2012 sees the re-release of one of the greatest Rock Books of all time – The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth. The book mixes a history of the band with a first hand account of being The Stones’ live-in writer at the height of their notoriety. Extraordinarily, it…
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Record Store Day: Noel Gallagher Actually Does Something Surprising….
So Record Store Day came and went, and hipsters and anoraks alike (guess which one I am) can try to get some sleep after camping outside their record store overnight and then playing their records all day (Unless they are too scared to play their records in case they “lose value”)… I was told someone…
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Every Record Wins Kreativ Blogger Award!
Just three months in and already the awards are flying through the door. Well, not exactly flying, and that’s my own, inaccurate, use of the plural. But hey – a shiny Kreativ Blogger award statue now sits proudly on my desk. Metaphorically speaking. I don’t actually have a desk. Or a statue. To such giddy…
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AC/DC’s Best Album – Live from the Atlantic Recording Studios
AC/DC’s Live from The Atlantic Recording Studios is a lost classic – and in my view is their best album. Very soon after I bought AC/DC’s Fly on the Wall, The Friday Rock Show broadcast an entire live show of AC/DC from December 1977 live from the Atlantic Recording Studios. I was there hovering over…
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AC/DC’s Worst Album?: Not what you think it is….
There are some records I own that I think are great, despite all evidence to the contrary. The album might have had a critical mauling akin to Spinal Tap‘s “Shark Sandwich“, it might not be fit to hold a candle to the band’s previous efforts, and it might, to all intents and purposes, have been…
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In the beginning…before Later with Jools Holland…there was The Tube…
There was a time before Later…with Jools Holland. This was a time of The Tube… In 1986 it was still challenging to hear heavy metal on mainstream media. It would have been easier for Ghengis Khan to pass a CRB police check to help out at his local school than for the UK public to…
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Keith Moon “lined up for the Olympics”
There’s a great story reported by RollingStone.com that says the London Olympic Committee has approached Keith Moon’s agent to see if the drummer would like to take part in the summer’s festivities? It is of course refreshing that the Olympic Committee is not being ageist, and is prepared to overlook Moon’s past bad behaviour at…
Every record tells a story 