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
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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What does Rihanna want with a black guitar?
Rihanna did a showcase in London this week, to mark the launch of her new album ‘Rated R’ on Jay Z’s Def Jam label. You will know Rihanna for her inescapable 2008 hit, ‘Umbrella’ (ella-ella-ella) an addictive slice of hip hop inflected R’n’B pop. 12 million record sales over a five year period have made the 21-year-old Barbadian a bona fide global pop star. And so the showcase was everything you might expect, short, slick and spectacular, with the star of the show singing some hits and some new tracks, while strutting about in various provocative outfits. The only unusual thing was the band behind her, which was essentially an Eighties style heavy rock band reinterpreting her urban grooves as power chord pop rock, with slightly disturbing hair metal tendencies. It was as if Beyonce had decided to go on the road with Def Leppard.
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