‘We’ll get to all those classics you’ve driven a hundred miles to hear a little later…’ There are two kinds of Richard Thompson fan: those who prefer his electric tours and those who enjoy him most playing solo acoustic. Nottingham used to get his acoustic tours, but his visits this century have been with a band. You’ve had to travel to see him solo, though it’s always worth the journey. The last one I saw was ten months ago, in Sheffield, where he was touring Acoustic Classics. Yet, while Thompson is one of our greatest songwriters, he’s also one of our greatest, most distinctive guitarists. Band shows allow him to solo and stretch out. He must love playing them, because the prices are the…

There always tends to be one week where the gigs pile up. Just did four in five days, Wednesday to Sunday. Would have made it five in six if I’d got to the great guitarist Michael Chapman at the Running Horse last night, but it was the first day of term and I was knackered. Suede (acoustic) were excellent at Rough Trade. On Friday, Trombonist Dennis Rollins was in terrific form with the house band at Nottingham’s newest venue, the wonderful Peggy’s Skylight, a jazz club I’m sure I’ll be writing more about. Only been open a month and we’ve been three times: an inspiring, imaginative venture which, as Rollins pointed out, has no equivalent outside London. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets were stunningly good…

  The All Night Bookshop was inspired by our first visit to the USA in 1992. We spent the best part of a month driving round California, starting and finishing in San Francisco. One of our first ports of call was the legendary City Lights Bookstore, co-founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who is, amazingly, still alive). The bookstore stayed open until midnight, an unimaginable concept in the UK, and still an unusual one (unless a Harry Potter novel is being published). I remember which notebook I jotted down the idea in. It has a black rubber cover and is somewhere in the loft. Sue bought it for me when she visited the original Getty museum in LA. You weren’t allowed to park and the place was…

One last archive review no longer on the Post website before the autumn round begins in a couple of weeks. This was Laura Cantrell‘s third Glee show. I reviewed the other ones here and here. Nearly time she came back again. Modern country music has an embarrassment of fine female singer/songwriters. Few have as pure a voice or acute a song-writing sensitivity as Laura Cantrell. On her third visit to this venue, she does not have a new album to promote, a rather enjoyable collection of her BBC recordings. Most were made for John Peel, a huge fan of hers. Once again, Mark Spencer is on guitars and pedal steel. His feisty, accomplished accompaniment occasionally drowns bassist Jordan Caress. Opener Pile of Woe could sum…

Anniversary tours come thick and fast. Can it really be 30 years since the JAMC’s debut Psychocandy? Evidently so. This band’s early, short, chaotic, feedback soaked gigs are a thing of legend. It feels utterly wrong for them to play their incendiary album in full, in order, like a museum piece. But that’s what they’re here to do tonight. For most fans, they never topped their debut, but the first part of tonight’s show is there to remind us that they produced plenty of other fine material. The band did move on from the Phil Spector meets the Velvet Underground noise (more recently adopted by Glasvegas) that they specialised in, to a more classic rock sound. But they never lost that chunky, mesmerising melodic edge,…