Hack at work.
Killing Bono
"The best book I have ever read about trying to make it in the music business" - Elton John
"A fantastic book, which manages the difficult trick of being simultaneously very funny and very sad." - Bob Geldof
"I was Neil McCormick's fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he'd make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count. He's written a great book" - Bono
Robert Plant: a joy to behold
Publishes 02 Sept 2010
Only the hair remains the same
Robert Plant & The Band of Joy: One Mayfair, London (live review)
Warming up for his UK tour, Robert Plant played a secret gig in a converted church in London’s West End. “It’s nice to play in one of the Houses Of The Holy, now sadly obsolete and available for receptions of all kinds,” the singer joked.
It was the only reference to Led Zeppelin that the erstwhile rock deity made all night but the privileged few hundred worshippers had no cause for complaint. With a smile of real enjoyment lifting the corners of his goatee beard, Plant and his carefully assembled group of Nashville session players blew through a set of sinuous, groovy, high-powered roots rock, country, folk and gospel that radiated musical joy.
Indeed, Plant has named his new ensemble The Band Of Joy, in honour of his pre-Zeppelin psychedelic blues outfit.
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The Libertines: The return of the Likely Lads
Published: 26 Aug 2010
The Libertines, HMV Forum, London
They arrive onstage to Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’; four men dressed in black staring at their feet and instruments, barely acknowledging the 2,500 strong audience or each other. But as the first clanging chords of ‘Horrorshow’ ring out, the place erupts, with energy, with noise, with emotion. Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, the Likely Lads of British indie, appear to be singing at the same mic, in a head-shaking frenzy like a couple of mop tops in a storm of Beatlemania, but you can barely hear them for the lusty bellowing of the crowd. The Libertines are back.
The first time I saw The Libertines, in a densely packed Glasgow club in 2003, they almost broke up after the show. I’m not sure they were built to last,
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Carry On Katy: how Lady GaGa made Katy Perry look tame
Published: 27 Aug 2010
Katy Perry: Teenage Dream (Virgin)
Katy Perry must curse the day Lady Gaga donned her exploding bra. Just two years ago, Perry was the new bad girl on the pop block, done up like a Forties burlesque pin up, singing smart, funny anthems about youthful misbehaviour.
She had costumes, wigs, an engaging wit and hit No 1 in 25 countries with the provocative I Kissed a Girl. Then along came Gaga like a haute couture disco Valkyrie and suddenly a faux lesbian snog didn’t seem quite so risqué.
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Skream: Dubstep steps out
Published: 6:35PM BST 06 Aug 2010
Skream: Outside the Box (Tempa)
This is supposed to be the year in which the underground club sounds of dubstep go mainstream. Which, in the fast moving, ever proliferating and sub dividing dance scene, surely means the genre has just about reached its expiration date. Put it this way: I’m nearly 50 and I’ve been playing this album almost incessantly around the house, while my kids yell at me to turn that rubbish off. Somehow, I can’t imagine this is the reaction dubstep pioneer Ollie Jones actually intended.
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Kris Kristofferson: a throwback to an old mythic America
Kris Kristofferson, Cadogan Hall 29 Jul 2010
For a singer-songwriter who can barely play guitar, struggles with the harmonica and only has a few notes in his gravelly voice, Kris Kristofferson has come a long way. At 74, standing tall and straight at the centre of an otherwise empty stage, he held a London audience completely spellbound by the magical power of an open spirit and truly great songs.
You can’t argue with classics like ’Me And Bobby McGee’, ’Sunday Morning Coming Down’, ’Help Me Make It Through The Night’ and ’For The Good Times’, and no one here was in the mood to. Every scuffed note and wobbly harmonica solo (“Well it ain’t Bob Dylan but it’s all we’ve got,” joked Kristofferson after one particularly lame effort) was treated with indulgent delight.
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Nas and Damian Marley: two tribes don’t go to war
Nas and Damian Marley, Hammersmith Apollo live review * * * * *
Published: 21 Jul 2010
the dude with the hair is the reggae superstar
The police were out in force for this concert bringing together superstars of two musical genres not particularly celebrated for advocating compliance with the letter of the law: hip hop and reggae. Perhaps it was the explicit declaration of opening number ’As We Enter’ that had Her Majesty’s constabulary concerned, when rapper Nasir Jones declares “I got the guns” and Damian Marley gleefully responds “And I got the ganja.”
Any apprehension that this might prove anything other than a celebratory union of exceptional talents was misplaced. Hammersmith Apollo was packed with the loudest, happiest, most upbeat audience I have witnessed in a while, and it wasn’t all down to secondary inhalation.
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Latitude: they threw a picnic & a festival broke out
Published: 19 Jul 2010
The first thing I saw as I arrived at Latitude was Sadler’s Wells ballet company staging Swan Lake on a platform on a river, a dancing, dying swan surrounded by reeds and rippling water. A massive rock festival crowd had gathered to enjoy a bit of high culture in the sun. The psychedelically painted sheep, munching grass in their enclosure, blithely ignored the whole spectacle.
Backstage at the literary arena, veteran performance poet John Cooper Clarke described Latitude as “the festival for rock fans with library cards.” Over in a packed comedy marquee, proudly working-class comedian Micky Flanagan joked that the middle classes were out in force because “they’ve heard about the falafels”.
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Kylie Minogue sings like she can still squeeze into those hotpants
Published: 25 Jun 2010
Kylie Minogue: Aphrodite Parlophone, £13.99
“I’m your golden girl, I’m your Aphrodite,” sings Kylie Minogue. The Australian sweetheart has undoubtedly brought the light of sunshine pop into the world, but I have never really seen Kylie as a goddess, more a gorgeous mortal raised up to the heavens by her lovely smile and give-it-a-go attitude.
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Stevie Wonder at Hard Rock Calling
The sun was shining and so was Stevie Wonder.
The soul superstar was in a joyful, playful mood, teasing his audience with joky song intros, comical banter and impossible singalongs. In the opening minutes he utterly bamboozled the crowd with a ridiculously jazzy call-and-response, laughing with delight at the mangled return (Stevie: “Be-ba-boo-boo-ba-ba-ba-ba”. Crowd: “Beaugghh!”). By the end, he had the 48,000-strong audience singing, “God is good” with the gusto of true believers – not a refrain you often hear at a massive open-air concert.
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Oasis: ABBA for boys
Oasis: Time Flies… 1994 – 2009, CD review
Published: 24 Jun 2010
a rare moment of brotherly love for the Gallaghers
Time has, indeed, flown. Britpop has passed into the realm of nostalgia, a brief moment when the nation became obsessed with the fractious relationship of a couple of brawling, Beatles-obsessed siblings from Manchester. In a career spanning 15 years, we’ve had the B-sides and the Best Of (which was essentially highlights from their first two albums). Now, with Fathers’ Day looming, comes a final compilation and a chance to assess retrospectively whether Oasis were worth the fuss.
Time Flies features 26 singles, although not arranged chronologically, because, as band leader Noel Gallagher admitted, that would have left “all the real iconic stuff at the front”.
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