• Speed of Life: David Bowie

    January 11, 2016 - By 

    For a long time, it looked entirely likely that David Bowie’s final musical statement would be a number entitled ‘Funny Little Fat Man’, performed in an episode of Ricky Gervais’ comedy series exploring the underbelly of celebrity, Extras. Gervais was a massive Bowie fan (as was his character, Andy Millman), and in the scene, he struggles to hide his obvious delight that his idol is in on the joke, acerbically skewering Andy Millman (and by extension, Gervais) as an unfunny, unloveable loser, with the entire world joining in on the chorus. Bowie, in total contrast to Gervais, is imperial, every…

  • Star Wars: As If Millions of Voices Suddenly Cried Out In Terror…

    December 15, 2015 - By 

    I don’t know if you were aware, but Star Wars is coming back. Yes, lightsabers will soon be in vogue, talking back to front will be cool again, it will, and random acts of violence against guys in white armour will be totally ok. The original films form a crucial building block of my childhood, and like many people of a certain age, Star Wars is so omnipresent that it’s become very difficult to imagine a world without it. For a whole generation of kids (and adults) this will be their first opportunity to experience something new, a long time…

  • ELO: Never Been Cool

    November 25, 2015 - By 

    In the annals of rock history, it’s unlikely that there’s any band less cool than ELO. Ignorant of stylistic trends, they started out uncool, and remained ever so. But behind the fuzzy hair, black shirts, and sunglasses of Jeff Lynne, there lies a creative pop mastermind, and a resolute quest to finish what the Beatles started. For something it’s easy to laugh at, ELO always treated pop like it was very serious business indeed. When The Beatles finally called it a day in 1970, it left an impact that we’re still coming to terms with today. More so than Elvis,…

  • 20th Anniversary: Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

    October 20, 2015 - By 

    There’s a moment on the song ‘1979’ when, after a subdued but ethereal sounding intro, the thumping drums of Jimmy Chamberlain burst in, augmenting the subtle electronic percussion that has hitherto anchored the track. On the one level, it’s just a simple trick of song arrangement, building up an expectation and then subverting it, but on another it’s pure magic, like when Dorothy wakes up in Oz and the world has gone from black & white to colour. There’s no reason why Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness should work. It’s a double album that came in an era when…

  • The Song (Struggles) To Remain The Same: Led Zeppelin at Live Aid, 13th July 1985

    July 14, 2015 - By 

    In no uncertain terms, Live Aid was a turning point in the history of popular music. Never before on this scale had pop and rock musicians striven to present themselves as a community, a socially conscious bunch of friends who were just trying to, y’know, save the world, man. But rather than a collective of friends, this was more like a club, and the membership was pretty damn exclusive. As the cream of the pop scene clamoured to be involved, one of the most exclusive bands in rock history was waiting in the wings, ready to play it low key.…

  • Time Flies: Buggles, Punk Rock and the Rebirth of Yes

    June 29, 2015 - By 

    It’s tricky to put a band like Yes in historical context. In their pomp, they were one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who. They filled arenas with people, and they filled slabs of vinyl with complex, multi-layered progressive rock. Along the way, they filled plenty of rock critics with a sense of anger mixed with despair, and they filled a generation of kids with the desire to grab guitars and do the exact opposite of what’d made them so successful over the course of the 1970s.…

  • Classic Album: Television – Marquee Moon

    June 10, 2015 - By 

    I was 17, staring forlornly out of my bedroom window to a street clad in the dimming light of dusk. As the stars began to pierce through the veil of night, one by one, two haunting chords began their journey towards the infinite. As duelling guitars spiral towards their chaotic, yet inevitable conclusion, I found myself standing beneath the Marquee Moon. Just waiting. To my teenage ears, this was perplexing. The music I was listening to, the epic title track to Television’s debut album, had been, and continues to be described as a punk record. But where were the distorted…

  • What Happens When You Add Toto To David Lynch

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    On paper, there seems no situation that would combine the disparate elements of film-maker and master of the surreal, David Lynch, future Captain Picard and Professor X, Patrick Stewart, former Police-man Sting, ambient music guru and former glam rock icon Brian Eno, and soft-rock superstars Toto. Surely, you might say, if there was something that brought all these people together and united them on one project, that project would be a crazy, unwieldy thing, probably unloved by all? Well, if you did think that, you’d probably be right. Released in 1984, Dune was intended to cash in on the sci-fi…

  • In Search of Space: Exploring The Fringes of The Mind With Hawkwind

    May 6, 2015 - By 

    As Hawkwind’s first four years on record are collated on a new 11cd boxed set, This is Your Captain Speaking… Your Captain is Dead, Steven Rainey delves into the murky world of space rock, and discovers much more than simply a band responsible for unleashing Lemmy on the cosmos. At the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, astronaut Dr David Bowman is pulled into a vortex, going on a journey into the infinite, a kaleidoscopic assault on the senses that could mean everything or nothing. Both Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke weren’t exactly in hurry…

  • Classic Album: Pink Floyd – Obscured by Clouds

    March 20, 2015 - By 

    In the wake of the solar eclipse that has captured people’s imaginations, and clogged up their social media feeds, Steven Rainey takes a bit of artistic licence and delves back into Pink Floyd’s history to rediscover an album that finds them revelling in the darkness caused by the blotting out of the sun.Technically, Obscured by Clouds is a soundtrack album for the French film La Vallee, a reasonably obscure oddity that finds a woman going on a voyage of self-discovery in New Guinea. I haven’t seen it, and I’m betting you haven’t either (and if you have, fair play to you –…