It’s been said many times in the past 12 months or so (in reference to the Gil Scott Heron track) that this revolution will be televised. And Facebooked and Tweeted. And indeed it was on Twitter that I heard Tom Morello was going to play a gig at the Occupy movement’s London tent city...
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There’s something about Orange Amps. They are as aurally as they are aesthetically pleasing; the logo typeface as iconic as the product itself. Over the years, Orange has provided amplification for artists as diverse as Fleetwood Mac, James Brown, the Beach Boys, Tina Turner, Johnny Cash, Madonna, Slipknot, Kid Rock, and countless other up-and-comers...
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London indie foursome Stricken City announced recently that they were bowing out, with the swansong album ‘Losing Colour’. The band has issued a video to accompany the title single, and frankly, we think it’s quite special. The song itself is… okay. But the video – telling the tale of daily mundanity through the repeated...
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Last year saw a musical Christmas miracle in the form of an organic, grass-roots movement that toppled the multi-million-pound star-making machine of X Factor with an anti-establishment anthem that declared “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”. For four consecutive years Simon Cowell’s progeny had taken the coveted Christmas number one slot....
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Patti Smith, the punk poet high priestess of the late sixties and seventies, read from her new book ‘Just Kids’ at London’s Southbank Foyles store recently. Smith, a former book store worker herself, told how she enjoyed the opportunity to embrace the bibliophile within, and the intimate setting that a bookstore reading afforded. She...
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This year the UK has witnessed a Christmas miracle. A miracle in the form of an organic, grass-roots movement to topple the multi-million-pound star-making machine that is the X Factor with an anti-establishment anthem that declares ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’. For four consecutive years Simon Cowell’s progeny have taken...
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Nice guys don’t always finish last. A case in point is Frank Turner – probably one of the nicest and most genuine guys in the UK music industry, who has finally, in 2009, found the critical and commercial success he’s long deserved. And while we’re bandying clichés around, here’s another one – this time...
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The Gossip are the three-piece punk rock electro band from Olympia, Washington’s underground scene who broke through in the UK in spectacular style in 2006 with the single and album ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’. Lead by the unlikely rock star, lesbian, feminist, fashion icon and ‘cool’ person Beth Ditto, the infectious trio...
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East Los Angeles punk band The Bronx, are, in a word, incendiary; one of the most exciting live bands around, with the kind of passion and energy that can incite a riot. So when I heard that the riotousness was being swapped for serious reverence onstage, in the form of a new side-project for...
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I went to Austin, Texas in March, for South By South West. SXSW is a musical extravaganza of hundreds of gigs staged behind almost every second or third door along the main strip, 6th Street, and surrounding roads, where you can see music performed from lunch time till the early hours for four days...
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