Lynnrd Skynrd‘s Sweet Home Alabama had two things going for it (more than many songs): A riff to launch a thousand ships, and an authenticity that was carved into the song by both its lyrics and delivery. Its two-fingered salute to Neil Young was just part of it. This song stood on its own merits, […]
In the same year that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel topped the album charts with Bridge over troubled waters, Gil Scott Heron recorded his debut album A New Black Poet – Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. The difference couldn’t be more stark, both in terms of outlook and reception. Simon and Garfunkel were at the […]
Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, put his finger on it when he wrote in his 1950’s poem Advent, ‘We have tested and tasted too much lover, through a chink too wide comes in no wonder’. Experience too much of something, and you become immune to its splendour. So, it should come as no surprise that it’s […]
The Rolling Stones have, with a few honourable exceptions (sympathy for the devil, and perhaps Street Fighting Man), had very little of consequence to say over their lengthy career. It’s the skill and swing with which they’ve presented their unbearably light offerings that has made them one of the greatest rock n’roll bands of all […]
I’m a fence-sitter (as painful as that may be, literally and metaphorically) when it comes to the dread argument about Politics in music. Like most things in life, it all depends on how it’s done. When you forget the primacy of the song, whilst evangelising, you’d be better off – and equally effective, which is […]
It’s hard to choose just one song from Loudon Wainwright’s skeletal, bruised, shocking – and yes, at times extremely funny – 1979 live album a live one. Wainwright is a far more versaitile songwriter than he’s often given credit for, and this collection, perhaps more than any other, shows off his talent in a raw […]
I had reservations about picking a tune so newly-lodged in my mind for the Monkeys Tunes (great idea, by the way – reviewing single songs). Ever-mindful of the ‘o.k computer fallacy’ (where Q readers voted radiohead’s then latest album as the greatest album of all time), I was more inclined to pick something sure to […]
The artist Robert Luxemburg, in the thought-provoking Steal this film II (freely available through bit-torrent – download it, watch it, pass it on), talks about the absolute fear that record companies and the film industry have that the average consumer will, with the aid of cheap technology, morph themselves into producers. With the aid of […]
An unusual choice, perhaps, given that it’s probably not the strongest song on an album – from the choirgirl hotel – which is arguably not Tori Amos’s strongest, even though it boasts Playboy Mommy and Jackie’s strength. And yet there’s something very special, and at the same time characteristic about this gentle love song. What’s great about […]
