Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Or Why It’s All in the Groove
Any music fan will tell you that nothing beats the intensity and emotional charge of listening to live music. After all, before the good Mr Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, what else were we to do?
Was Punk Born In Peru?
Has life lost its lustre? Feeling at a loose end? Then revel in 02:53 of glorious anarchism from the 1960s.
Ordinary Giants: A Retelling of Our History
Woody Guthrie, the celebrated American singer and songwriter, famously said, “It’s a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.” In a world dominated by the bland, commercialised music of the pop charts, it’s good to see that there’s still a place for folk music.
Ivor Cutler: The Search for Simplicity
Ivor Cutler, the cult poet, songwriter and children’s writer was a master of off-beat humour and eccentricity. He was once described as having the on-stage “demeanour and voice of the weariest human being ever to be cursed with existence". But it never felt contrived. And he captivated his audiences for almost 50 years with a range of works that were utterly unique.
A Cloudburst of Material Possessions: A Message for Our Times?
Leonardo da Vinci’s achievements as a painter often overshadow his skill in other fields. The breadth of his curiosity was simply astonishing. He was the quintessential Renaissance man: inventor, engineer, anatomist and architect. As Freud once noted, Leonardo was “like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.”
Books Matter: The Subtle Power of The Story of Ferdinand
We were all children once. And we remember the stories we heard or read as we grew up. They helped shape how we view the world. They introduced us to different places, different cultures and different people. They opened our eyes to the richness and diversity of life around us.
Remembering Dorothy Ashby: The Hip Harpist
The pedal harp isn’t normally associated with jazz. A standard orchestra instrument in the music of the Romantic era, it was re-invented for jazz in the 1950s by the late, great Dorothy Ashby. One of the unsung jazz pioneers, she demonstrated the harp’s potential in a lead or solo jazz context. Suddenly, it was possible to listen to bebop played on this unlikeliest of instruments.
Van Gogh: The Red Vineyard at Arles
Vincent Van Gogh’s art has often been viewed through the prism of his turbulent personal life. He experienced recurrent bouts of mental illness, featuring bouts of depression as well as psychotic episodes, and may have been suffering from bipolar disorder. He committed suicide at the age of 37. But this interpretation demeans him as an individual by reducing him to his illness.
Remembering the Moon Landing
The first moon landing took place on 20 July 1969. The 50th anniversary of this incredible achievement has rightly been an opportunity to celebrate the skill and heroism of the two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who planted the first human footprints on the Moon’s surface. We can also marvel at the massive technical effort required by the NASA team to get them there, and back, safely.
Attica Blues: The Power of Music
In September 1971, the bloodiest prison riot that the United States has ever experienced took place at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York. Archie Shepp, one of the great American jazz saxophonists, was outraged by its brutal suppression. He quickly went on to record Attica Blues, one of his finest albums, in January 1972.
Cor Baby That's Really Free
News that John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett have been touring again rolls back the years!
How Luton Influenced Poetry
Over two hundred years ago, the Romantic poet William Blake wrote some of the most striking lines in English poetry:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour.
La Vie de Bohème: The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki
What links the maverick Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki and Puccini, the famous Italian opera composer? Not an obvious question, I must confess! The answer is they both produced works based on the 19th-century novel Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger.