On May 7th 2018 I will be sixty years old. It seems that each decade is some kind of landmark achievement and the more decades that go by the larger the gap is supposed to grow between you and your or anyone else’s youth. In my case obviously, married to a girl much younger than […]
Whereas Laura Marling brings you down leafy lanes, sits you on top of barges in summer canals and strums the shimmering strings of her acoustic guitar whilst musing on the plight of the soul, Siv Jakobsen cracks the ice inside her, splintering shards across a desolate landscape, whilst staring into the flames of a cottage […]
Second Life were a German power trio from Bad Camberg close-ish to Frankfurt. The line-up consisted of guitarist/vocalist Holger Schmidt with Karl-Heinz Traut on drums and Klaus Meinhardt on bass. They made one self-titled album on Metronome in 1971 before morphing into Tiger B. Smith and having some success on the seventies live circuit supporting […]
I’m back and I’m scared! After weeks and weeks of touring in a generally freakishly warm America, I arrived in England yesterday evening to Siberian cold. So the flu has ravaged the US in a winter of extremities of hot and cold but did you now about the pandemic in 1918. Tens of millions of […]
Roaming around the planet you notice that music from your own country couldn’t have been made in somebody else’s country – or planet. The Allman Brothers couldn’t have come from Liverpool, Echo And The Bunnymen couldn’t have come from Florida. Thanks for both of them at their best. I’m in Austin and to Texan ears Wolf […]
As we leave for LA tomorrow I thought I would cast my ears back to the glorious Californian Rock Star infested seventies and see who might have been lurking there. Look who I found! Humble Pie at The Forum in LA in 1973 with Stevie Marriott on vocals and guitar, Clem Clempson on guitar and […]