Harry's Place Arts

This is a guest post by Ben Cohen “Happy Pay-sack.” Mick Jones’s opening greeting at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, reliably delivered in his South London brogue, won roars of approval from the assembled crowd, many of whom were skipping the second Passover seder to see the original line-up of Big Audio Dynamite in the flesh. [...]

Time has been kind to Tracy Tracy of The Primitives.

Former Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman, according to The Guardian, “has criticised music video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, claiming they will lead to fewer young people taking up real instruments.” “It encourages kids not to learn, that’s the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and [...]

Michael Bérubé was contacted by the BBC to give an opinion on the Iggy Pop car insurance adverts currently being shown in the UK. They are intensely annoying and impinge on my enjoyment of the new series of Battlestar Galactica. Here are Bérubé’s thoughts. Mr Berube may live in Pennsylvania but thanks to the internet [...]

“I’m doing very well” Morrissey tells us in the opening line of his new album in a tone that suggest he knows we may not be fully inclined to believe him. Sensing this announcement may be received with some scepticism, he spits out: “drop dead”. It does seem however that Morrissey, despite having finally (as [...]

This jaw-dropping comment was overheard at a London branch of HMV (truly, it was!). Customer to staffer: “Do you have any Buddy Holly CDs? He’s back in the charts and I’m seeing him live next week!” How would you have answered that one? I suppose in a way, it is a tribute to Holly’s lasting [...]

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform at halftime of the Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday.

The BBC has a really sweet story. (It’s a video report, and alas you can’t embed video from the Beep, so you’ll have to follow the link…) An 82-year-old heavy metal fan from Weobley in Herefordshire has spoken about his longstanding love affair with rock music. Ben Sidwell reports I was thinking about it though, [...]

Hello dear Harry’s Place Arts reader.  As you will have noticed, there have been no reviews by me the last two months.  This has not been a capitulation to the enormity of the task, merely a re-grouping while I was enjoying adventures in the housing market.  These now completed, I shall soon be returning to [...]

Last night I went to see Tel Aviv garage rock power trio Monotonix at the Luminaire. It was the second time I’d seen them – the first time was at a bit of an artwank gig at the Corsica Studios a few months back.  I had enjoyed them massively that time, but I couldn’t quite [...]