• Preview: Recreating The Velvet Underground & Nico @ The MAC

    May 16, 2017 - By 

    This Saturday (May 20) Belfast’s the MAC will host a special event celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground’s seminal debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico. We speak to bandleader Donal Scullion about its legacy and what to expect on the night. Go here to buy tickets, priced £12.50-£25.00. Hi, Donal. How did the idea for this show first come about? Had been chatting to Stu Campbell (The MAC), he said they were thinking of doing the 50th anniversary of that album and would I be interested in playing or organizing it. It was always a big album for me…

  • Magic and Loss: A Tribute to Lou Reed

    October 28, 2015 - By 

    Two years ago, the musical world lost one of its own gentle giants.  Lou Reed, the Brooklyn-born poet, musician, and artist, died of liver disease at the age of 71, leaving behind a profoundly lasting legacy that’s transformed countless lives, careers, and artistic endeavours.  Some of the 20th century’s most iconic artists cite Reed as a notable influence.  And yet the waves made by this larger-than-life presence often go unnoticed by modern music consumers.  Taking risks held a constant stay throughout the corpus of Reed’s work, lending an evolutionary quality to decades of his music, and likewise influencing decades of…

  • That’s The Story of my Life – The Life and Death of Lou Reed

    October 28, 2013 - By 

    When all is said and done, Lou Reed was never the easiest figure to love. For someone who is so intrinsic to the very notion of what we consider popular music to be, for someone who tore up the rulebook so fundamentally and set us all free, it’s rarely been an easy ride. And now that he has moved on, that journey will only become more difficult. Like all the truly great artists, to be “into” Lou Reed is to be “into” a variety of different personas, of different masks, of different ideologies. The snarling twenty-something, sunglasses strapped permanently to…

  • Lou Reed: A Tribute Playlist

    October 27, 2013 - By 

    Arguably punk’s greatest ancestor, Velvet Underground founder and uncompromising solo artist and collaborator for the last five decades, Lou Reed has passed away the age of 71. One of the finest songwriters of the twentieth century (and, for many, beyond) his songs and art traversed genre, sentiment and style, dividing critics and fans from his 1972 self-titled effort right up his notoriously at odds collaboration with Metallica in 2011. From heroin and the NYC underground to Diet Coke and t’ai chi, Reed came a long way from the sixties, constantly re-affirming his right to be restless and fearlessly re-inventing his musical manifesto…