I cannot imagine Terry Riley to be an aggressive man, I cannot imagine him to have strong and absolute principles of what music should be, what good music should sound like and what separates music as art from music as entertainment. I cannot imagine Terry Riley having an argument with Beyoncé after watching one of…
Lost in Music
I’m lost in music… I have so many great ideas of things to write about. In no particular order: Hüsker Dü’s drummer Grant Hart and other unsung heroes of alternative music, Terry Hall, Shane McGowan, Sinead O’Connor and other artists with uncompromising personalities and largely unseen or unaddressed histories of abuse, the great records I…
Saint George
2016, Annus Horribilis, the year that brought the first installment of Donald Trump, the year that completely upset the natural order with the death of David Bowie, later followed by Prince and Leonard Cohen, the year I would very much like to forget, or pretend never happened, contained one strange anomaly, a Christmas event I…
How I learned to stop loving Lana (not totally, but still…)
I will make a counterpoint, show what I mean in the opposite. I´m talking about experiencing Olivia Rodrigo in concert, a fast paced, happy, energetic, pleasantly nasty experience. She wrapped the audience around her finger from the first bar of the first song, combining a perfectly balanced set with crystal clear vocals and excellent audience…
Dynamic Appraisal of Oasis
Oasis is and never was the greatest band in the world. Not even the greatest Rock band. Right now, with the big reunion tour hanging over UK and Ireland, you could, with only a hint of nastiness, call them the greatest Rock ´n Roll swindle, but face it, they´re on the same level as The…
Love Letter to Small Venues
The smell of sweat. The tall guy standing right in front of me. Someone singing into my ear. The life-size proportions of the singer on stage. No dancers. No choreography. No influencers. No parallel streaming on Internet. Buying my ticket at the venue itself. Old people, young people, people too old to be here, people…
Fatal distraction
The stage set-up and your elevated kit makes you the centerpiece, the focal point of today’s gig, the visual point of convergence, where all energy comes together. Is it on purpose, did the band decide to become miniscule by comparison, minions in a show designed around a massive drumkit and, by extension, you the drummer?…
Open letter to Bruce Springsteen
Dear Bruce, Some songs deserve to be forgotten, erased from history never to be mentioned again. Some songs warrant complete eradication and deafening silence in the aftermath. You have one, and right now that puts you in the same league as Sting. Do you really want to be talked about in the same breath (pun…
Music for elevators
It stopped me in my tracks. At first I didn’t know why, but then I realised, the music in the elevator I just came out was an instrumental version of ‘Don’t look back in Anger‘, complete with a sweet, nondescript string section. It stopped me in my tracks for two unrelated reasons. First, the sudden…
Love me…please!
The audience was gradually getting nervous as Black Midi extended songs beyond recognition, almost stopped playing altogether, engaged in prolonged stop-start patterns with satanic pleasure and then, all of a sudden, started the next song without even waiting for applause. This was exciting, dangerous, finally a band pushing boundaries of technical possibilities, song structure and…
