The band announced today that they will issue their upcoming Graffiti Soul tour entirely on USB sticks that concert-goers can purchase directly after each show.
It’s a long time since they graced the stadium circuit, but Simple Minds are still thinking big. Jim Kerr takes time out from sunning himself in Sicily to tell Ed Power their plans.
This is one of those albums which so dramatically varies in quality within its allotted time-span that it's impossible for the writer to deliver a succinct, conclusive positive or negative verdict, other than to say that when Simple Minds are good they're great and when they're bad they're dreary.
This is one of those albums which so dramatically varies in quality within its allotted time-span that it's impossible for the writer to deliver a succinct, conclusive positive or negative verdict, other than to say that when Simple Minds are good they're great and when they're bad they're dreary.
Simple Minds will be teaming up with OMD, special guests on their current tour, to perform a cover version of Kraftwerk's 'Neon Lights' during their Graffiti Soul shows later this year.
Knowing how hard it is for people to get babysitters, Simple Minds have given six months warning that they’re playing the Dublin Ambassador on February 1.
These words of wisdom belong to jim kerr, a working-class boy from Glasgow who proved that he was as good at scamming it as the next man. Now he's back for one more shot with the new Simple Minds album Neapolis. Interview: colm o'hare.
While it’s not as daring as their other current mix CD, ‘How To Kill The DJ’, this new selection does nonetheless manage to fuse classic acid and techno tracks from Fast Eddie, Vapourspace and Mr Fingers with Hawkwind, The Stranglers, early Simple Minds and The Temptations!
Formed by Eoin McEvoy and Frank Kearns, CWN had the big sound and bombast of acts like Simple Minds and Big Country but, eventually, not enough hits to fuel the machine. Now the re-release of their debut Urban Beaches, plus bonus tracks, and the first release of the cancelled No Shelter give pause for a re-evaluation.
The Amy Winehouse camp claim that media reports about her health are “overblown”, and that she has no plans to pull any of her live appearances, which include Oxegen in July.
Kirsty MacColl has added another string to her bow with a new album heavily influenced by Cuban and Brazilian music. She told Niall Stanage about the album s genesis, the break-up of her marriage to Steve Lillywhite and why there s no Left in Britain anymore .
Or not without crediting your sources at any rate! Their first three Top Ten singles sampled Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Phil Oakey. Here modernist electric dance crossover ???? Utah Saints argue the morality - as well as the aesthetics - of sample-theft, explain its problems, name the guilty men, and then glimpse a vision of the future playing support to U2 in Portugal. Interview: Andy Darlington.
Meet hot new Dublin quintet THE HIGH BABIES. They re endorsed by Bret Easton Ellis, produced by Kim Fowley and wanted by Madonna. Could this be the first great Irish rock sensation of the 21st century?
PETER MURPHY reports. Cathal Dawson gets the pics in.
On the eve of Kraftwerk’s headlining appearance at the Electric Picnic, mainman Ralf Hütter talks with rare candour about David Bowie, U2, hip-hop, cycling and why sometimes even man-machines have to smile.
Exclusive: The new Coldplay album, X & Y, is set to finally hit the stores next month, and Hot Press has been granted a special sneak preview. Ed Power here gives a track-by-track guide to one of the most anticipated albums of the year.
Forget The Sunset Grill or Whisky A Go Go, it was Osborne Mushet Tools that gave birth to the only hard rock band capable of giving Madge and Wacko a run for their money. The man who put the steel into Sheffield tells the story
In all of Ireland s hydra-headed entertainment industry, no other act simultaneously inspires as much love and loathing as The Wolfe Tones, a band who, annually, attract huge support at Siamsa Cois Laoi, while, no less vociferously, their detractors continue to dismiss them as the musical wing of the IRA, and worse. On the occasion of The Wolfe Tones celebrating 25 years together as a group, Eamon McCann went to meet them.
In 1991, five years after the death of Phil Lynott, the late Bill Graham wrote in Hot Press of Philo's enduring legacy. Over ten years later his words are as relevant as ever
UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN FREQUENTING THE LATE-NIGHT HOSTELRIES OF DUBLIN, YOU’RE UNLIKELY TO HAVE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO ENGAGE IN A BATTLE OF WITS, ER, MANO A MANO, WITH ACE QUIZ MASTER GEORGE “I KNOW A LOT MORE THAN YOU DO” BYRNE. WORRY NOT. THAT’S WHAT THE HOT PRESS QUIZ OF THE YEAR IS FOR. NOW GO FOR IT. SECONDS OUT!
His TV breakthrough came when he told Pat Kenny about how he hung weights from his penis. Since then it’s been wild globetrotting and fluent Irish all the way. And now, in his latest spectacular for the viewing public, Hector O hEochagain has only gone and bought himself a share in a racehorse.
Critical brickbats aside, the success of TRAVIS seems to know no bounds. Here FRAN HEALY and co talk to STUART CLARK about drugs, Oasis, Paul McCartney, Ali G, and drunkenly dancing on computers! The man who took the photos: STEVEN FISHER
Backstage at Creamfields, JOHN WALSHE talks to FATBOY SLIM about the joys of fatherhood, being one half of the posh and becks of the chemical generation; sharing a hot-tub with Baz Luhrman and how he got Christopher Walken to tap-dance
With an Irish tour approaching and a new album in the shops, Luka Bloom looks back on three decades that have taken him from busking in a pub in Newbridge to the big stages of Europe and America. In this candid interview with Jackie Hayden the man also known as Barry Moore talks about brother Christy, overcoming stage fright, finding an original voice, dealings with the music business, the need to combat racism - and why he remains a wannabe bogman
Heard the one about the Irishman, the Bronx and the tab of industrial-strength acid? Stuart Clark hadn t either until that most eligible of bachelors, David Holmes, talked him through the mad month in New York that inspired his Let s Get Killed album.
Liam Fay calls on Shane MacGowan at home, where over mugs of brandy, the singer cheerfully rationalises his notorious alcohol-intake in the face of widespread concern that he might be drinking himself to an early grave. The premier Pogue disagrees, predicting instead a happy fulfilling life away from the stage, in which he would own and run a fully-licensed restaurant in London and face extended vacations in Thailand.
Nearly a decade after the release of their debut single, U2 are widely regarded as the No. 1 rock band in the world. But the album and the film "Rattle And Hum" depict another kind of reality entirely. Larry, Adam and The Edge talk to Niall Stokes.
The trauma of his mother's death; the joy of his marriage to Yvonne; the truth about his sex life; the pressures of growing up in public; the importance of peer respect; the offers of a solo career; and how America might hold the key to keeping boyzone together. In his most personal and revealing interview to date, ronan keating talks to joe jackson
The trauma of his mother's death; the joy of his marriage to Yvonne; the truth about his sex life; the pressures of growing up in public; the importance of peer respect; the offers of a solo career; and how America might hold the key to keeping boyzone together. In his most personal and revealing interview to date, ronan keating talks to joe jackson
The trauma of his mother's death; the joy of his marriage to Yvonne; the truth about his sex life; the pressures of growing up in public; the importance of peer respect; the offers of a solo career; and how America might hold the key to keeping boyzone together. In his most personal and revealing interview to date, ronan keating talks to joe jackson
MIKE SCOTT once fronted the greatest rock n roll band in the world, but before the world got a chance to wake up to the fact he had gone west and invented raggle taggle. Now with a new Waterboys album, A Rock In The Weary Place, just released, Scott takes time out to reflect on his strange but true adventure. By PETER MURPHY
COLOURSOUND IS the innocently monikered collective put together early last year by former Cult guitarist Billy Duffy and Mike Peters, one time spike-topped frontman with ’80s Welsh outfit The Alarm.
THIS DUO are clearly being groomed for greater things, judging by the amount of pre-publicity and general fuss that has accompanied their lavishly produced debut.
1986 was an excellent year for Irish bands. Single released were aplenty, but the ones that took my fancy included Brush Shiels’ elegaic 'Old Pal’, Dorian Mood’s ‘It’s A Funny Thing’, and Something Happens!’
Whereupon we find our Mancunian maniacs still keeping their Drugs Against Rock campaign in full swing. *I smell dope/I smell dope*, shouts Ryder (Shaun never sings - he either talks or shouts!) and you don't doubt him.
1985 has got to remember as the year when one of the most spoiled, wasteful, self-indulgent and ephemeral industries on earth suddenly woke up, not only to the urgent insistence of its conscience within the person of Bob Geldof, but to its power to actually achieve something, (to raise money and thereby save lives), given the right motivation and mechanism.
Hales has ploughed his own furrow in an admirably single-minded and low-key fashion, deservedly earning himself a loyal following for his Tindersticks/ Joy Division-indebted brand of spectral melancholia.
Hales has ploughed his own furrow in an admirably single-minded and low-key fashion, deservedly earning himself a loyal following for his Tindersticks/ Joy Division-indebted brand of spectral melancholia.
Such a strange and contradictory year. Mixed fortunes complemented perfectly by a bizarre range of listening choices. A disc for every mood, and every memory.
Casting a cold eye on 1986, one must be frank that, although it was a good year, the absolute pinnacles that have marked previous years were absent. Perhaps ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ and ‘Born In The USA’, and their respective tours in 1985, not to mention Live Aid, drained a lot of emotion.
An unsatisfying year for albums. In this video age I’m rapidly falling victim to the 'Instant Gratification Syndrome’. Why wade through 45 mins of uneven music for the sake of one or two highlights when it’s so easy to make video and audio recordings of favourite songs.
By some bizarre coincidence, the new album from The Smashing Pumpkins hits the shops within a week of Oasis' new offering, as both bands approach their latest outing on the back of line-up unheavals, mounting media opprobrium and a previous release which sold roughly half of the one before that.
It s a kind of an honour to be invited in here. The scenery isn t so special a rented office in an industrial park in west Belfast, lined with concrete.
The finalists, chosen from the hundreds of entries received, were all winners of the regional heats that had taken place up and down the country since January
...it was a year like any other year at Féile - except that there were dozens of extra acts on show, on not just two but three stages. There was also the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, the Chris de Burgh stripper incident, Michael Hutchence dispensing condoms...and a rather loud Little Red Rooster that nearly got itself strangled. And the crack Hot Press team of reporters who attempted to keep up with it all? Words: Bill Graham, Stuart Clark, Tara McCarthy, Lorraine Freeney and Chris Donovan. Pix: Cathal Dawson.
