For some, the name Don McLean is instantly synonymous with his career defining song American Pie. I’ll admit even I was involuntarily ignorant of his career before watching American Troubadour. Sadly, I still feel like I don’t really know much more about him now. The documentary, which runs just under two hours was recorded by American production...
Even as a relative newcomer to the Oxford music scene, I’m all too aware of the highs, and lows, which come with the music industry, but nowhere is this better conveyed that in Anyone Can Play Guitar. Tracking the history of a small town, from the heyday of Radiohead and Ride, to the lows of Dustball, The Candyskins and countless others who almost, but...
‘People have this idea that folk singers are like, out in the sticks with sheep and cows and wearing wool sweaters, and I’m a bit of a stereotype. I can’t help it.’ It’s no wonder then that Karine Polwart’s latest DVD (Here’s Where Tomorrow Starts) is filmed in a variety of locations including the studio in the Borders where many of her...
‘In 1988 Fats Waller came back to me in a dream. He was sitting at a piano and said he he really liked what I did with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. He told me I should do the old songs and reinterpret them in my own way, like Joplin did in hers. It wasn’t until some 20 odd years later when Allen Toussaint played...