R.I.P.
Fifty years ago Steve Harley’s Cockney Rebel were the second band I ever saw. They were riding high in the charts with Judy Teen and I’d been a huge fan since I first heard this song a year earlier. I thought it was the strangest and most compelling piece of music I had ever heard.
I discovered Can at the age of 16, back when I was at school. Not because I was some sort of cool avant-garde kid but purely because they put out an album for a cut-price 59p.
Sunday Times – July 10, 2011
Almost exactly nine years ago I was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park in downtown New York, talking to Justin Townes Earle. He was a troubled young man who made music of searing honesty – the vital component of the hybrid of blues, country and folk that he sang and played.
I see Neil Simon has died. I must say I had assumed he died decades ago but by coincidence last week I watched Murder By Death, a spoof whodunnit with an all-star cast.