Let those who never thought culture stopped at the first world's borders, who never thought it was only happening in English, cast the first stone at Paul Simon and mock his work as patronising. To do so is to miss the point. Western music will die on its feet unless it learns to assimilate outside influences rather than repel them and if people like Simon or David Byrne or any of the other World Music daytrippers can offer a handrail to the nervous then so be it.
In the past Paul Simon has successfully drawn on diverse American musical traditions and has worked with, among others, the gospel group the Jesse Dixon singers and the South American folk-group Urubamba.
SIOBHAN LONG meets RON HYNES, writer of Sonny and hears him talk about Paul Simon, Donegal and the lack of support for artists in his native Newfoundland.
Surprise has a looser, more atmospheric approach than we normally get from the pristine and musically-disciplined Simon, with lots of swirling textures serving as provocative soundwashes behind the unmistakeable vocals.
Frank Oz may be the man behind those cuddly muppets, but he’s no pushover in person. Now, his chequered career as a director culminates in the darkly comic Death At A Funeral.
If last year’s line-up (Shania Twain, Pretenders), seemed a little below par following previous appearances by Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, the fourth Source Festival was very much back on track with a much stronger bill.
Combining pop, folk, haunting harmonies and emotionally intelligent lyrics, their lovingly crafted sound is both completely contemporary and yet somehow timeless.
The Beach Boys, Beatles and – whisper it – Fleetwood Mac are all on the menu as Sunderland’s Field Music give emo, New Rave and whatever else is 'in' this week the cold shoulder.
New York quartet Vampire Weekend are set to be one of the breakthrough bands of ‘08 thanks to their inspired brand of Afro-beat tinged rock. Just don’t mention Paul Simon.
Songwriter to the stars Gretchen Peters on record company inertia, the need for revolutionary new artists, and what it means to be an American musician in these highly fraught times. words Jackie Hayden
You’ve never seen them like this before. Now available on DVD with extra features and footage, the new edition of The Beatles Anthology is as close to a definitive visual tale of the band as we’re ever likely to get. Producer Chips Chipperfield tells Colm O’Hare how it came together
He’s Ireland’s latest singer-songwriter sensation. But Colm Lynch is no mere Damien Rice clone. In fact, his debut album, A Whisper In A Riot might be the most exciting thing you’ve heard in years.
He may be trained to kill, but recently James Blunt has been seducing vast swathes of the population with his poignant love songs. Lured to the Hot Press Chat Room, he tells all about his number one album, the Queen, being shot at in Kosovo and lesbian swim parties.
One of Ireland’s premier singer/songwriters whose work has been covered by Christy Moore and the Corrs, Jimmy MacCarthy’s latest album The Moment illustrates a lighter side to his character. Below Jimmy gives us the inside track on the songs, the singers and the craft of writing
Jackie Hayden makes a courtesy call on Eleanor McEvoy and interrupts her putting the finishing touches to her new album. Instead of showing him the door, she shows him around!
Having written his own obituary on his latest album, RANDY NEWMAN rises from the grave to discuss love, age, irony, honesty, the importance of melody and the tightrope act of being an idealist in pessimist's clothing. JOE JACKSON helps roll away the stone.
Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden? It doesn t get much
better than this. JOE JACKSON goes
backstage for a brief but revealing encounter with Joni and, from a vantage point to die for, finds two 60s legends who can still send shivers up the spine at the end of the millennium.
Joe Jackson sneaks a peek at Wayne Studer’s new book Rock On The Wild Side, which gender-bends its way through three decades of gay imagery in rock music from Jimi Hendrix’ first kiss to George Michael’s shuttlecock.
Boyzone are, irrefutably, Ireland s first ever bona fide Pop gods. Reviled by many but dreamed about, screamed at and lusted after by far, far more, they are the men boys of the moment. Joe Jackson meets Louis Walsh and John Reynolds, the Svengalis behind Boyzone, and asks Steve, Shane, Ronan, Mikey and Keith what it s like when every female alive wants to shag you senseless. As if he doesn t know.
Overall, the ultra-smooth consistency of the homegrown production and Gartside’s sugar-coated vocals could make this album a monotonous experience for non-fans.
Did you ever find yourself wondering ‘Where have I heard that song before?’ Well, Andy Darlington may be able to help as he trawls through the tangled undergrowth of that increasingly common phenomenon: The Cover Version
What links Richard Harris with Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkel with The Supremes, and Frank Sinatra with er, Ghost Of An American Airman? Why, the music of Jimmy Webb, of course, one of the most widely-respected songwriters of all-time. Here he talks to JOE JACKSON about his friendship with Richard Harris, his encounters with Elvis and his deep-rooted love of Irish music.
Adam Duritz of Counting Crows and Kieran Kennedy a mutual appreciation society that went public during the Heineken Green Energy Festival get together to discuss songwriting, critics, genius, mediocrity and what it takes to be a rock n roll outlaw. Referee: PETER MURPHY.
In the second and final part of our exclusive interview, JONI MITCHELL tells her story from the ground-breaking Blue to the present day.
Having grown increasingly disenchanted with a music biz providing junk food for juveniles it took the classic songs of Billie Holiday and Etta James to restore her faith and give her own career a new lease of old life. Once a romantic always a romantic, she tells JOE JACKSON
In the second and final part of our exclusive interview, JONI MITCHELL tells her story from the ground-breaking Blue to the present day.
Having grown increasingly disenchanted with a music biz providing junk food for juveniles it took the classic songs of Billie Holiday and Etta James to restore her faith and give her own career a new lease of old life. Once a romantic always a romantic, she tells JOE JACKSON
In the second and final part of our exclusive interview, JONI MITCHELL tells her story from the ground-breaking Blue to the present day.
Having grown increasingly disenchanted with a music biz providing junk food for juveniles it took the classic songs of Billie Holiday and Etta James to restore her faith and give her own career a new lease of old life. Once a romantic always a romantic, she tells JOE JACKSON
In the second and final part of our exclusive interview, JONI MITCHELL tells her story from the ground-breaking Blue to the present day.
Having grown increasingly disenchanted with a music biz providing junk food for juveniles it took the classic songs of Billie Holiday and Etta James to restore her faith and give her own career a new lease of old life. Once a romantic always a romantic, she tells JOE JACKSON
Boyzone are, irrefutably, Ireland s first ever bona fide Pop gods. Reviled by many but dreamed about, screamed at and lusted after by far, far more, they are the men boys of the moment. Joe Jackson meets Louis Walsh and John Reynolds, the Svengalis behind Boyzone, and asks Steve, Shane, Ronan, Mikey and Keith what it s like when every female alive wants to shag you senseless. As if he doesn t know.
Boyzone are, irrefutably, Ireland’s first ever bona fide Pop gods. Reviled by many but dreamed about, screamed at and lusted after by far, far more, they are the men – boys – of the moment. Joe Jackson meets Louis Walsh and John Reynolds, the svengalis behind Boyzone, and asks Steve, Shane, Ronan, Mikey and Keith what it’s like when every female alive wants to shag you senseless. As if he doesn’t know.
While the great unwashed will be familiar with the voice of Eddi Reader from the Fairground Attraction radio staple and TV-commercialised 'Perfect', more learned students will have gloried in her contribution to Donal Lunny's Coolfin album.
The author of the influential *AwopBopAlooBopAlopBamBoom*, Derryman NIK COHN has helped lay the foundations of serious rock criticism. Here, the author of the short story on which "Saturday Night Fever" was based talks about his latest book, "The Heart of The World". and tells JOE JACKSON why Elvis is King and Dylan is crap.
Many Irish holiday-makers will be heading for the United States this year. But there’s much more on offer in that vast playground than the dubious prospect of sweltering in the crushing heat of an Orlando football stadium in June. Jackie Hayden travelled with a bunch of media types to the small town of Lynchburg in Tennessee and visited the source of one of the world’s great spirits, Jack Daniels, making some musical connections along the way.
He may indeed be from Limerick but if you think you’re going to get a subheadline that mentions bringing home the bacon, acting the ham or even being on the pig’s back, then you’re sadly mistaken. Instead we’re going to keep things simple. Mick Hanly has just released a new album entitled Happy Like This. What better occasion for Jackie Hayden to visit him in his Kilkenny home and look back over his career to date, and to remember the days when he hadn’t a sausage (would you cut the crap, please? – Ed)? Pix.: Brendan Fitzpatrick.
The wild rise and fall of the coke-snorting, heavy boozing, rampantly horny music biz mogul who knew Dylan, Jagger, Jackson, Springsteen and Streisand better than most. And now he’s ready to tell all.
One of the world’s leading contemporary composers, Philip Glass, will perform a selection of his solo piano music in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dundalk this week.
If you’re Randy Newman you’ll also need a piano, some borrowed dominants and lashings of irony. And that’s just for starters. Joe Jackson hears about the private, public and musical lives of one of American music’s most singular talents.
"Vampire Weekend certainly have one of the best band names I’ve heard in ages, although their music unfortunately proves less exciting than one might have hoped."
This follow-up to his 2005 debut Wax & Seal was recorded on his ingenious Living Room Tour, during which he played at private homes throughout Ireland.
Few tracks get the same treatment, yet they all remain anchored in her unmistakable delivery, a package containing a voice, six strings and more truth than you might want
It would appear that The Long Stay’s Brendan Donnelly, Sean McAuley and Brendan McCullough are pretty much intent on keeping it country…kind of. First Collection is a set of sweet, slightly inoffensive new-country/acoustic offerings.
Five years since her last album and Enya produces a new one with all of thirty-seven minutes of fresh material. It isn’t exactly what you’d call an excess of productivity.
The delicate instrumental title track that opens A Day Without Rain promises much in that it’s lead by a warm piano and features attractive widescreen strings.
"...with an album proper to offer this time around, it seems that Johnson is back with a vengeance – fans of his effortlessly laid-back acoustic fare will immediately warm to this strong collection of songs."
Keyboardist Herbie Hancock achieved legendary status through his adventures with Miles Davis and a myriad other jazz outfits, although his profile as an innovator has been lower since his jazz fusion activities in the '70s.
Sure, this is Roesy live and dangerous on stage at The Spirit Store in Dundalk, but he might as well have been beamed up into your living room, such is the intimacy and immediacy the album creates, despite its miserly 32 minutes.
The Blue Aeroplanes, an English pop group, write songs, my friends, which are taller than the combined heights of all our houses and sexier than blindfolds.
Rónán O Snodaigh is the singer and bodhránist with Kíla, and the title of his second solo album translates as “Ró’s Waves”. It’s an adventurous concept, an album of a dozen percussion-based songs, richly leavened with Irish language vocal chants and guest offerings from singer Tara Mooney.
'Hold On', the opening track on this, Tribe After Tribe's latest album, is so frighteningly good, so savage and unrelenting with its screaming guitars and African vocal and drumming techniques that Pearl Jam's claim that this band from Africa-via-LA are going to be the next big thing seems as irrefutable as the fact that two and two makes four.
Few, if any performers in the English folk tradition - with the exception of Richard Thompson - have as distinctive a style or presence as Martin Carthy.
She certainly gave them what they’d come to hear and like her or not, Twain is a seasoned performer with more than enough hits to carry a major event like this.
Perhaps it’s attributable to the noticeably low room temperature – the Ambassador, bizarrely, is tonight colder than even Dave Letterman’s notoriously igloo-like NY studio – but whatever the reason, New Jersey pop-rock masters Fountains Of Wayne are disappointingly sluggish getting out of the traps on the occasion of their debut Dublin gig.
All things considered, the past twelve months are unlikely to be considered essential in the rock’n’roll scheme of things. It was a year when few new acts came to the public eye and those that did weren’t breaking any particularly new ground.
The annual Celtic Connections festival is sadly under-profiled in Ireland, especially when it can attract knock-out performances from the likes of Roddy Frame.
Hezbollah may be a significant part of the problem, but there is no justification whatsoever for the indiscriminate murder of civilians, of which the Israelis are guilty in Lebanon.
As Mikam Sound celebrates its 30th year at the top of the Irish sound-hire and production business, Jackie Hayden talks to its driving forces, Paul Aungier and Mick O’Gorman, about their early days, the changing face of the music industry here and abroad and the phenomenal success of their Mosco Sound Design off-shoot.
Elvis was first sighted in a 7-Eleven in central London, sneering at the staff while purchasing cigarettes and condoms, looking for all the world like the new king of rock'n'roll, shabbily dressed and sharp-tongued, a man with a mission. It seems such a long time ago, now.
A new decade kicks off Sinéad O'Connor's revolution of the heart, followed by covers with A House, Stone Roses, The Pixies, AC/DC, Paul Simon and more...
Jackie Hayden travelled to Nashville, Tennessee for a once-off invitation-only gig starring Frank Black, Guy Garvey of Elbow and Richard Hawley at the Jack Daniel’s Distillery as part of the celebration for Mr Daniel’s birthday.
Q: Which top Irish quiz-masters’ pathological obsessions include Something Happens, Shamrock Rovers and the amount of shopping days left to the next Suede gig? A: George “You Started, So I’ll Finish” Byrne
