SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS, ROCK CITY MARCH 7TH This review was written for the Nottingham Post. In the UK, the Dap-Kings are best known for backing Amy Winehouse on ‘Back To Black’, but their regular gig is with veteran soul singer Sharon Jones. An eight piece band, with two backing singers, the Dapettes, they played fifteen minutes of warm-up, including a terrific rendition of Howard Tate’s classic, Stop. Then Sharon Jones stormed on stage to sing He Said I Can. In a set dominated by tracks from recent live album ‘Soul Time’, Jones showed that, when it comes to funk, she’s the best in the business. What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes and When I Come Home were highlights, with audience members…
Not had time to blog much recently: lots of marking combined with working on a very complex first draft. And, let’s face it, blogs are over and have been for years. If you want to find out what I’m reading or thinking, follow me on Twitter (there’s a box on the left, which always shows my latest tweets and retweets). Don’t friend me on facebook, where I rarely post (and please don’t like me on facebook, I have nothing to do with the automatically generated David Belbin page on there). If I had got round to blogging this month, here’s what I would have written about. The terrific Jackie Leven complilation compiled by Paul Du Noyer, who writes a lovely accompanying article in the March…
Here, for those of you of a trainspottery persuasion, are my 40 favourite albums of 2011. Plus, as a bonus, one of two tracks from an underpublicised limited edition Christmas single by Rumer. This is a Gilbert O’Sullivan song, which always sounded rather mawkish in his version, but she respects the innocence of the lyric and adds some romance. Rather special. Oh, and a track from The War On Drugs, who would have made it onto my best of year comp, only I didn’t get the album until December 23rd. Fantastic stuff. Rumer – We Will The War On Drugs – Brothers PAUL SIMON – So Beautiful Or So What THE ARCTIC MONKEYS – Suck It And See THE WAR ON DRUGS – Slave Ambient…
Above is the cover of the second Bone & Cane novel, What You Don’t Know, which was published as a Kindle exclusive on Christmas day, and is only 99p during the ’12 days of Kindle’ promotion. Other eBook editions follow in February, with the trade paperback out in early May. I hope you enjoy it (and it you do, please leave a brief review – they made a huge difference to the sales of Bone & Cane). And have an excellent holiday. Below you’ll find my christmas gift to you. Right click and ‘save as’ each song to download. Every year since 1988 we’ve made a best of year music compilation to give to friends. For the last few years I’ve been putting it online.…
This is my review of last night’s show from the Nottingham Post, with a download of one of the show’s highlights and a bonus cover version, which (if I remember correctly) Rumer put out to her fans on Valentine’s day this year. It’s a year since Rumer played a six song set to Smooth FM competition winners at the casino down the road (my Post review here). That night, she was a nervous presence, yet won over the audience with the quality of her voice. The songs turned out to be growers, too, and Seasons Of My Soul got to number three in the album chart, going platinum with over 300,000 sales. Tonight, on her second headlining tour, the concert hall was all…