Spoon / Mute The live CD is a precarious beast. Cementing the band’s reputation or besmirching it with cash cows. Or somewhere in between — servicing the more obsessive of a band’s fanbase, kneecapping the bootlegger. I’m often cautious — for a band like Can, how much is it adding to know that they could turn out the goods live? Well a fair amount. There’s a lot of […]
Can
Faber and Faber tl;dr – you probably need this book if you’re a fan of Can. You probably need it if you’re a fan of well-written things about music.
Mute Problem the first: a month or so really isn’t enough time to deal with this. What I really wanted was a properly stodgy, fagend cash-cow studio slurry. Selfish, but it’s much easier to go ‘while there’s highlights on discs 2 and 3, ultimately it’s for the Can fanatic’. The review writes itself. Of course, that’s not the case, and I’m left with an album that’s better than […]
Irregular #5 The South Bank Centre, London 8th-10th April 1999 The last five to ten years have seen an exponential rise in the number of intriguing events at London’s premier Arts Council-funded cultural centre on the South Bank of the River Thames, thanks to an innovative booking policy and the success of the events themselves, expanding the venue beyond its associations with Radio 3 “serious” music concerts and […]
Kosmische @ The Garage, London 12 September 1998 A legend or two popped into The Garage, held an audience captive for a couple of hours, and it was just as might be expected – half a trip back in time, and half a slice of something timeless. Damo Suzuki nearly three decades on still has the stage presence of the Can days (at least that evident in Peter […]