It’s come to my attention that there’s a double bank holiday this week. How did I work it out? When I spent most of Thursday and Friday, days that I normally do my own writing work, doing university stuff, to make up for the university not being open the first two days of next week. Thanks for that, your majesty, and have a good one. To be fair, I’d switched one bit of teaching to later in the week so that I could go and see one of our greatest literary figures, the magus of the Midlands, Alan Moore, speak at Nottingham Contemporary on Tuesday night. And he didn’t disappoint. I got to ask him two questions. Was he ever going to complete his 80’s…
This review first appeared in the Nottingham Post SINCE leaving family band The Felice Brothers, Simone Felice has recorded with The Duke and the King, undergone a heart bypass and become a father. Life-changing stuff, and tonight’s triumphant show was both as dark and as affirmative as they come. Kicking off with new album highlight New York Times, Felice took us on an intense journey that included a song for his daughter, classics from his old bands and a mighty trio of cover versions, the best of which was a delicate version of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here (with a few added lyrics). The loudest applause of recognition came for a sublime Union Street and the lovely If You Ever Get Famous. Other…
I’m in the middle of a very busy time and my partner has jetlag from a conference abroad, so it took a bunch of very good reviews and word of mouth for us to give up our one free night to go and see ‘Mary Shelley’ at Nottingham Playhouse. I didn’t know Helen Edmundson‘s work and don’t have a strong interest in the Romantics, but you don’t need to know anything about the period or the literature before going to see this terrific play. It’s absorbing and historically lucid in a manner that reminded me of Stoppard at his best. But rather than the huge cast you tend to get in Stoppard’s historical plays, this has just six actors, playing William Godwin (the excellent William Chubb,…
Most mornings these days, I have a session on my exercise bike before breakfast – gets my metabolism going, stops my knees from seizing up and lets me catch up on radio programmes or podcasts I’ve missed. I sometimes watch TV shows, but rarely first thing in the morning: it just feels wrong somehow. Yesterday’s exercise bike listen also felt wrong, as it was all about people who work in the night. Jarvis Cocker hasn’t always been a national treasure. As a Sheffield born writer and Pulp fan, I wrote a letter defending him when The Guardian (and just about every other organ) condemned his mooning Michael Jackson at the Brits in 1996. This is now seen as the gesture that cemented his reputation as…
Sorting through the unlistened to live recordings in my collection, I found a show from Jackie Leven, recorded in Essen, a year before he died. Jackie’s shows were as renowned for his storytelling as his singing, often laugh-out-loud funny, always in a thought provoking manner. Anyway, I spotted a description of this song introduction as being about Randy Newman, who I’m a huge fan of, but it’s also, as it turns out, about Joni Mitchell, who I’m an even bigger fan of. Not only that, but it features one of my all time favourite Joni Mitchell songs. So I figured I had to post it here and share it with the world. In my diary for four weeks ago is the rescheduled Jackie show at…