July 2009
Beatmag webmaster, boozehound & questionable disc-jockey, Tim Gomersall, takes us through a night playing alongside the big boys (and girls) in London town…
Firstly, a confession. By the end of this gig I was rather plastered. In fact, I was so inebriated that the fact that i actually saw the last band only came back to me a few days later. Anyhow, I will try my best to fill in the blanks, and provide a balanced review of the night. And if there are any glaring holes in my memory, then I will fill them up with sparkles of imagination. (more…)
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Glastonbury 2008
Long after the fuss has died down, as the Winter sets in, we’ve decided to treat you to a little slice of Summer with the ultimate Glastonbury account from our man in the field, Caspar Gomez
Ever read an account of Glastonbury that got it right? They’re almost always some jaded London hack giving a drab concert review of the Pyramid and Other stages, concentrating on a load of samey indie bands, interspersed with comments about mud, whether there is any or not. These hacks, and I see them year after year, spend most of their time in the hospitality area where they’re also camped, which is basically Camden/Shoreditch transposed to Somerset, so they can sit about chatting to the same people they always chat to in the same mildly cynical way, as if they’re really a bit above/outside everything. In the meantime, the rest of us are spread over a vast area, enjoying one billion kinds of mayhem in an entirely different universe from The Fratellis. The best accounts of Glastonbury are badly written blogs all over the ‘net wherein wide-eyed enthusiasts let their amazement take control whilst recounting what they and their mates got up to. Who cares about the Kings of Leon? I mean, really, if it’s all about The Editors live in a field, why don’t you fuck off to Reading/Leeds and eat shit-burgers and drink piss with the NME massive. Anyway, enough ranting, here’s my Glasto for you: (more…)
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Jerry Lee Lewis live at the 100 Club London
The original ‘Hell raiser’ returns to London for a couple of cliquey dates to intimate crowds of rock and roll yuppies: After all, who else could afford the £100+ tickets for Jerry to show us that he still has it, albeit in a doddery kind of way?! (more…)
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Thomas H Green heads out on a booze-laden promotional beano in Tennessee
On Tuesday I received a phone call asking if I’d like to go to Jack Daniel’s birthday barbecue in Lynchburg, Tennessee, on Thursday. Since I live on the south coast of the UK, this was rather nice but unexpected. Some people I’d heard of were going to play music too. Sounded like fun. Thus it was that I found myself above the Atlantic less then 48 hours later watching Matthew Broderick in a film called ‘Diminished Capacity’, a contender for the naffest flick of recent years (although I’ve since seen ‘Death Sentence’ with Kevin Bacon which is possibly even worse). If the in-flight films are on overhead screens they’re always edits of the naffest ‘family’ fare but who cares – beer, food, reading and bad movies for eight hours is a wonderful break from the normal demands of life. (more…)
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Live Highlights of 2007
Heavy Trash / Copter / The Micragirls
The Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, UK
By Guy Oddy
South Birmingham seems to have become the home of some fine garage rock of late, with local bands like the Courtesy Group, The Big Bang and Mills and Boon flying the freak flag for high octane rock ‘n’ roll with a distinctly raw taste. It seemed only fitting, therefore, when Jon Spencer (of Pussy Galore, Boss Hog and the Blues Explosion) turned up to play some tunes with his latest outfit, Heavy Trash, and to check out the scene. (more…)
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Guy Oddy checks out Soweto Kinch live at the Jam House, Birmingham, UK
Soweto Kinch has a problem. He wants to be part of both the hip hop and the jazz scenes. While the jazzers have embraced his take on the bebop/hip hop nexus, as witnessed by Kinch’s nomination for Album of the Year by the 2007 BBC Jazz Awards, the hip hop community remain largely indifferent. (more…)
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The Bestival
Isle Of Wight, September 2006
It doesn’t get much better than wandering through the fancy-dressed Saturday night Bestival crowd, bumping into Altern-8 in the portaloos, ordering a drink next to a five-man Viking ship, and dancing with Bill & Ben, the flowerpot men. With the bloodstream a cocktail of this, that and the other, every wannabe fairy’s wing sparkles extra bright, every hint of the setting sun glows extra orange, behind the increasingly thick cloud cover, and we Beatmaggers cannot think of any festival we’ve enjoyed so much in recent years. (more…)
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Fairport’s Cropredy Convention 2006
By Guy Oddy
Let me put my cards on the table from the outset. I have never been a big fan of folk music or folk-rock. Sure, I had a brief flirtation with Nick Drake when I was a student. But didn’t everyone? So, that doesn’t count. However, with the present media fixation on the likes of Devendra Banhart, Seth Lakeman, Eliza Carthy and the nu-folk scene, and ever increasing numbers of my contemporaries telling me that “Richard Thompson is quite good actually”, my attention was recently drawn to something that I had always considered the very antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll. I found myself wondering if there was actually anything new and interesting happening here, or if the media had just zeroed in on this scene in the absence of anything else of any interest happening. (more…)
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