This is the last post of the year bar my best songs of the year cd countdown, which starts tomorrow. I’ve been to three gigs in the last four nights. Follow the links to read about Squeeze (disappointing) and Beth Orton (outstanding) in the Nottingham Post. I wasn’t reviewing last night’s gig. In fact, until a week ago, I didn’t have a ticket. Tried to get good seats the moment they went on sale, months ago (couldn’t stand, because of going with an ill friend) but was only offered ones at the back. Finally found a pair near the front on eBay and they arrived on Tuesday. Phew. Funnily enough, the seats were very close to where Mike and I sat the first time I…
Yesterday, I finished reading Gorm Henrik Rasmussen’s excellent book about Nick Drake ‘Pink Moon: A Story About Nick Drake‘ and went to see a wonderful new documentary, ‘Searching For Sugar Man‘. Impossible not to draw links between the two. Unfortunately, I’d read a piece about the documentary that gave away a major surprise. The less you know about the singer Rodriguez before seeing the movie, the better. No big spoilers here. The film tells the story of a singer-songwriter from Detroit who made two great but ignored albums in 1970 and 1971, then vanished. He was rumoured to have killed himself onstage as a protest against audiences who talked through his music. Drake made three albums in his lifetime and walked off stage during his final…
This is a much extended version of my review for the Nottingham Post. After two hours forty fun-filled minutes with Elvis Costello’s Spectacular Singing Songbook at the Royal Concert Hall on Saturday night (highlight, the revived, relevant again, ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’), I was back for a show the same length. In the balcony this time, rather than my favourite spot – the middle of the fifth row – and with a twenty minute interval. The show started so promptly (7.30!), we missed the opening remarks. Each of the acts was introduced by Andrew Batt who put the tour together and also worked on all the recent sandy re-issues including compiling and mixing the 19cd boxset. All credit to him, but I’m not sure this…
Above is the cover of the second Bone & Cane novel, What You Don’t Know, which was published as a Kindle exclusive on Christmas day, and is only 99p during the ’12 days of Kindle’ promotion. Other eBook editions follow in February, with the trade paperback out in early May. I hope you enjoy it (and it you do, please leave a brief review – they made a huge difference to the sales of Bone & Cane). And have an excellent holiday. Below you’ll find my christmas gift to you. Right click and ‘save as’ each song to download. Every year since 1988 we’ve made a best of year music compilation to give to friends. For the last few years I’ve been putting it online.…
Literature happens in the provinces. In a week when the metropolitan literati fall over themselves to boast that they’ve never heard of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner, the great Tomas Tranströmer, Sue and I recalled seeing him read in Huddersfield, twenty odd years ago (Did she read with him? The mists of time won’t part). And I found myself on a panel at a new literary festival, entirely about independent presses, chaired by Simon Thirsk, founder of Bloodaxe Books, who publish Tranströmer in this country and will have all of his books reprinted by Tuesday. This was the first States of Independence West, after two very successful SoI East days in Leicester over the last two years, and it was good to see so many…