Ray Gosling died yesterday. Ray was a Nottingham hero, fighting for the community in St Ann’s in the 60’s, and a wonderful broadcaster on TV and radio. I only got to know him after the death of his partner, Bryn, at the turn of the century. He was a mess then, a shambolic figure who I’d see now and then in the co-op we happened to share, until he went bankrupt and lost his house. After that, he began a slow, partial comeback, with a bunch of TV documentaries about his life falling apart. My colleague John Goodridge, at Nottingham Trent University, saved his huge accumulation of papers from going into skips and established an archive. After I got a job at NTU, running…

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela left South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre 53 years ago. At the Manhattan School of Music, he met a pianist from Harlem called Larry Willis. They’ve been friends throughout long, successful careers, collaborating often since forming their first band in 1963. Seeing two such stellar performers together in such a small venue is a rare privilege. It sold out instantly and I missed getting tickets (put the onsale date in my diary then forgot…). Luckily, I was able to land the slot reviewing it for The Nottingham Post. This is an extended version of my review for them. Zena Edwards opened with an impressive, varied forty minutes: the highlight was her poem ‘Settle Down’, with kora accompaniment. She has a…

Glasvegas first headlined Rock City over four years ago, on the NME tour. Their Phil Spector meets The Jesus and Mary Chain sound saw them on the verge of being huge.   But it was third on the bill Florence and the Machine who went on to headline arenas. Glasvegas made an underwhelming second album and had personnel changes. Tonight, promoting a strong third album, When The TV Screen Turns To Static, they have everything to prove.   Lead singer James Allan has lost the shades and is a more relaxed, if still often unintelligible stage presence. New drummer Jonna Löfgren wears the raybans instead and the basement’s brick wall backdrop suits the group. With Löfgren  standing to play, they look like the Velvet Underground…

  Laura Cantrell should have been the next Nanci Griffith. She has a better, sweeter voice and writes songs of a similar, yet less sentimental calibre.However, she’s had the misfortune to peak at a time when there’s a glut of great female singer/songwriters. So many that it’s hard to keep track of: although the Cosmic American Music Club does a great job of bringing the best to the city.New album, No Way There From Here,  is as good as anything Laura’s done. Yet I suspect this brief tour takes place in time snatched from her day job as a banker. Fine guitarist and backing singer Mark Spencer finished touring with Jay Farrar on Sunday and joined Laura the next day. On this opening night, it…

  Today marks the end of the first stage of eBook publishing by East Lane Books, a digital imprint named after the location of our allotment. It’s designed to bring some of my Young Adult novels back into print and open them up to a new audience, who missed them because they were marketed for teenagers. While the one-off Point Crimes and some of the other novels that I’m not currently bringing out are primarily for teenagers, books like The Beat series and Festival seem to work just as well for most adults, and have distinctly adult themes. Indeed, Love Lessons often found itself in the adult fiction sections when it was first a bestseller, back in 1998. It took until the mass market edition in 2001 for…