I’d uploaded two songs to write a blog post about today, but figured without getting hold of the new Robert Plant album, which is officially released tomorrow. I’m on my third play and it’s magnificent, far stronger than its very enjoyable predecessor, Raising Sand, fully deserving of the five star review in Friday’s Guardian. I’ve already written at length here about my falling out with Led Zeppelin, so I won’t revisit those recollections. What I will say is that music as good as this – drawing on the last fifty years and named after Plant’s pre-Zep group, Band of Joy – completely justifies his decision not to get on the reunion past glories gravy train. Here’s one of the bluesier cuts, a Lightnin’ Hopkins number.…
While we were in Toronto last month, there were posters for the Scott Pilgrim movie everywhere. I read a lot of comics, but I’ve never got around to this series, so wasn’t aware that it was Canadian and, indeed, set in Toronto. Though when we visited Casa Lomo (pictured: fascinating place, with an incredible story behind it) and saw the Scott Pilgrim poster amongst the display of movies that had been filmed there, that should have been a big clue. In my defence, most of the movies that use the location fictionalise it, ie as the X-Men’s base. Scott Pilgrim doesn’t, and uses the hand rails on the steep stairs we climbed up from the road to spectacular effect, and will doubtless, deservedly, boost attendances.…
Above are the promised photos from inside and outside the Hold Steady gig in Vancouver. Below is an early version of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’, a bonus track from the compilation Morning Glory. I first heard this song (like most people of my generation) on a single by Coctea Twins’ spin-off This Mortal Coil, which is lovely, but is more about the sound than the lyrics. The version that turned me onto is was the one played live by Robert Plant’s Priory of Brion (the band never made an album – the version I heard at Glastonbury was far superior to the over arranged one on Plant’s subsequent Dreamland). I was never a big Buckley fan, maybe because the only album anyone had…
The Vogue is a lovely old restored theatre in downtown Vancouver and when we get home I’ll put up some shots Sue took of the place and the band. We got there ten minutes before The Vogue’s Facebook told us the band were onstage and were warned there were no passouts. The guy on the door insisted on opening and smelling my water then let me take it in. You were allowed to drink in the theatre, but £5.50 for a small can of Bud made the prices at Rock City look wonderful (and at least most British venues sell at least one good beer). We were told that the support band were the Au Pairs, which seemed unlikely, but put me in a good…
Summer’s in retreat but I still managed to spend most of my last Nottingham Sunday afternoon in the allotment, reading Stanley Middleton’s final novel A Cautious Approach. Meticulously edited by Philip Davis, it brings to an end the 45 novel career of my old friend. Odd, for the first time, not to be able to discuss it with him afterwards. But odder still that, for 13 years, I was able to talk about novels with a writer 40 years my senior, one who I read with huge admiration before I’d begun to seriously write myself. The new novel is beautifully written and, as so often with Stanley’s novels, contains unexpected scenes that shift your perceptions of the characters. Like nearly all of his novels, it’s…