I don’t read or watch TV interviews with performers normally. They need to burnish their public persona and that gets in the way of anything interesting. Not so with this John Lydon interview. Perhaps its the advancing years or the vapidity of the current music scene but he seemed determined to share his sense of […]
I was working at the Ellis-Wright Agency when it expanded and changed its name to Chrysalis sometime in the late summer or autumn of 1968. Jethro Tull’s first album ‘This Was’ was released in November that year, but you could argue that Chrysalis really emerged when records started appearing on it’s own label in late […]
Peter Grant told me to book some warm-up college gigs for The New Yardbirds, which I did. I assume Richard Cowley and Kenny Bell booked the club dates. Peter subsequently appeared in our office to approve the bookings and tell me that the band now had a proper name, Led Zeppelin. I protested a bit, […]
Audu Maikori, CEO of Chocolate City, is the winner of the British Council’s International Young Music Entrepreneur (IYMEY) of the Year award 2007. Audu, 32, is a law graduate from the University of Jos and his company, Chocolate City is an entertainment company that administers a record label, artist management, entertainment facility management, recording studio, […]
Thankfully musicians continue to refuse, like horses led to the fence. Refuse to appear and disappear based on an idea of what they do, or shouldn’t do, required by a view of music, which has a limited sense of the possible. Gerry Dammers appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall like a magic genie…leading his Spatial […]
The British Council held a competition for ‘International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year’ featuring aspiring music people from ten different countries, Argentina, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Poland and Venzuela, who having competed successfully in their own country came to the UK last summer for the final.There they had the opportunity to […]
‘Long Way Home’ is Frankie Miller’s first new album for twenty years. I’ve been listening to it and reflecting on his life whilst I recover from a back injury suffered when a wave rolled over me in India. I’ve known Frankie since he was in ‘The Stoics’ a Glasgow band that moved to London around […]