I first saw Jackie Leven more than 30 years ago, at the Ad Lib club in Nottingham, fronting his band, Doll By Doll. I’d just bought their debut album, which I thought was staggeringly good, and dragged my new girlfriend and a visiting mate along. That album Remember consists of six tracks of blistering, rock music and a gorgeous ballad, Janice, which I adored (still adore). The Ad Lib DJ obviously adored it too. He played the track no less than five times before the band came on. It is never a good idea to play music by the band who are about to appear and, sure enough, in revenge, Doll By Doll didn’t play the song that night. Never mind, they played a visceral,…
Welcome to my new website and blog. One of the new things that I plan to do here is post a song of the week, every week. As an appropriate way to start, here’s a superb new song, The Suburbs, from the forthcoming Arcade Fire album. It’s just come out on a white label 12″. Can’t wait to hear the album and see them live again. Note that songs of the week are for promotional purposes and will only be available for a short time, so visit often! Some will be songs that the artists themselves have released to the internet, like this one. Others will be obscurities that have never been released on CD or favourite numbers by artists that I believe deserve wider…
I’ve had some problems with ftp servers recently or I’d have written about graphic novels, my friend Brick (John Clark) and today’s Nottingham visit by Posy Simmonds (as lovely a person as expected) and Bryan Talbot (whose ‘Alice In Sunderland’ is fantastic). Above are a couple of panels from the second page of a two page spread that John and I have done for the third issue of Tripod Magazine, just out, a literary mag that covers Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. You can hear the Tripod podcast and get info on how to obtain the magazine here. The story is called ‘If Shakespeare were alive today’ and the plot concerns Shakespeare and Da Vinci being transported to the near future where they’re forced to work…