Does rock ‘n’ roll have a conscience? Should it? Does it even matter? While there are many who like to keep their politics and their music separate, rock ‘n’ roll has spawned dozens of artists who used the medium of music to promote and advance their political views and...
On this day, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we are privileged to have an interview with and an auto biographical contribution from Peter Kennard, world renowned for his photomontages. He has also very kindly given us access to 36 images from his collection depicting war in general but Afghanistan...
Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class Owen Jones £9.99 Hard to believe that anyone has still not read this book but it remains a steady seller in the shop and on pop-up stalls when we are out and about around the country. Owen Jones explores how the...
Did you ever hear the story of how I got my first play on Radio One? People think it’s apocryphal, involving as it does the procurement of an Indian take-away, but I’m here to tell you that it really happened.
I was in my mid-20s at the time, a veteran...
Stiff Little Fingers – the band at the vanguard of angry, gritty, overtly political music in this country. Alongside The Clash (who incidentally were the catalyst for their formation like many other bands) they told us exactly what the problems were and it usually came back to social class and...
Dr Feelgood was a band of the 1970’s. Famous for ‘Milk and Alcohol; Roxette; She Does it Right... their pub blues changed the music scene. It dragged it from big venues in which the audience became increasingly regarded as consumers back to a tactile arena of smoky beer-swilling public...
I could only manage to get to one of John Foster’s plays in his double bill about Robert Louis Stevenson at Lighthouse Poole on Thursday night, 25th October.
In the end, I chose “The Weevil in the Biscuit” and I was not disappointed. This depiction of the relationship between RLS...
A crucifix and garlic sprigs can't save you now,
Nor a plea for deliverance
From the darkling that lurks
In lengthening shadows and turbid hollows
To drag you down in deathly murk.
Holy water and a stake cannot halt your demise;
Blessed, sharpened or otherwise.
Lessen the fear
And succumb to the will
Of a rabid demon thirsting...
In the summer of 1972, I was driving a girlfriend out to the Moonfleet Hotel for a drink, and it was just getting dark when we got to the trees just before the bridge, and she screamed out, "Stop!" She said we were about to run over a woman...
Clive Stafford Smith is one of life’s necessities. He is a man who we don’t think we need until we need him. He is a man you want standing when, as Pastor Martin Niemoller famously poetically described, everyone has failed to speak out and there is no one else...
