Oh dear. After all the accolades, the successful tours and the lifetime achievement awards, Duran Duran have misconstrued this as a burning desire on the part of the world to hear an album’s worth of new material.
Live at the Marquee on Friday June 29: They were the gaudiest of the ‘80s pop sensations. 20 years on, Duran Duran leader Simon Le Bon explains why the good time boys are a band for the long haul.
The Duran Duran sound and Suede-like lyrics in ‘She Waits For Me’ all lend themselves well to an excellent historical reconstruction of another musical era. A slick production, the big guitar sound has all the right festival twang and shriek to it. “We want to make pop music cool again,” goes their manifesto, so it’s up to you whether to take that as a gesture of optimism or a snide dig.
While there’s nothing on this newie to replace ‘Rio’ or ‘Girls On Film’, there’s a style and depth in both the production and performances to make it worth watching Top Of The Pops again.
Gone were the flash Miami Vice style suits that were synonymous with Le Bon & Co and in came the dressed down casual, yet young and funky look, by which I mean baggy pants and trainers. But this isn’t a fashion review...
…In October, actually. The reunited band’s guitarist and songwriter, Gary Kemp, talks about their rivalry with Duran Duran, inspiring Quentin Tarantino and the group’s long association with Ireland.
Morrissey of The Smiths has taken the place of both Duran Duran and the Thompson Twins, single-handedly wiping them out, at least on my one increasingly [used] cassette. When I told him whose conversations we were taping over he said, "Good. I'll talk louder then." Not a man to be taken lightly.
As revealed in the last issue of Hot Press and officially confirmed today, Antony & The Johnsons pay a June 21 visit to Cork for the Live At The Marquee series of gigs.
It’s been four years since Mansun released their debut single on their own Sci Fi Hi label, and since some of this, their third album, was recorded on Pink Floyd’s houseboat, it looks like they’re doing something right.
There was no getting hammered and doing fuck all work over Christmas for Damien Rice with the Kildare man journeying to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert.
Roll out the Union Jack and strike up the first verse of Rule Britannia. Al Murray is bringing his pub landlord character back to Dublin. Looking forward to the gig, Murray talks about stripping to his boxers in front of Dita Von Teese and hanging out with Phil Collins and Alex James (while remaining fully clothed).
Throughout the pioneering events of Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8, Bob Geldof has repeatedly achieved the impossible, twisting the arms and consciences of self-absorbed rock stars to get them to think beyond their egos and stimulating recalcitrant politicians and a jaded media into doing things that are not really difficult at all but thinking makes them so.
Damien Rice and Snow Patrol have both been confirmed for the London leg of Al Gore’s Live Earth extravaganza, which takes place in multiple locations on July 7.
The producers of choice for everyone from Justin Timberlake to Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo are also earning plaudits for their rock and hip-hop influenced side project, N*E*R*D
They come from Los Angeles, support Rotherham United and have a lead singer who loves Andrew Lloyd-Webber as much as he does Arcade Fire. Stuart Clark meets Orson's rather peculiar Jason Pebworth.
In the instant world of pop music, it would be fair to say that life can be a bit of a rollercoaster – as some of our homegrown teenybop maestros discovered in 2001. But WESTLIFE and SAMANTHA MUMBA are still riding high.
BY STEPHEN ROBINSON
INTASTELLA ARE ON A ONE-BAND CRUSADE TO BRING GLAMOUR BACK TO BRITISH POP BUT WHERE DO SHAUN RYDER AND THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED THE SEX PISTOLS ENTER INTO THE EQUATION? STUART CLARK JOURNEYS TO MANCHESTER TO FIND OUT.
A full 17 years after their acclaimed eponymous debut exploded onto the American alt-rock landscape, Milwaukee malcontents The Violent Femmes are back with a new album (Freak MAgnet) and the same old typically off-kilter worldview. Interview: PETER MURPHY.
Take one Super Furry Animal, one lap-top wizard and one disgraced motor industry executive and you get synth revivalists Neon Neon and the year's best concept album.
Not even a suspect device on the railway line could prevent the Bacardi/hotpress team from reaching Belfast for the Northern leg of the new-look plugged format.
The band churn out the dreariest material from both Sam’s Town and Day & Age, and – although I’m definitely in the minority – I find myself feeling a bit bored.
Crack houses, stripping, underwear parties, hate mail from Pink Floyd fans and Elton John’s dog – are you ready for a tasty slice of camp pop history as told by Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters?
We asked the members of hotpress.com to submit questions for Korn’s kilt-wearing frontman Jonathan Davis and then locked him in a room with just a spotlight and a tape recorder
Having amicably but firmly put the Cranberries behind her, Dolores O’Riordan found refuge in motherhood, but is now raring to get back on the road with her first solo album.
In a heartfelt interview, Dolores O’Riordan talks to Hot Press about her new solo record, her decision to move to Canada and the debilitating effects of fame. Plus, why a Cranberries reunion may be a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
catherine doherty clambers aboard the Heineken RollErcoaster and joins Revelino, The Nude, Mesner, and Abbaesque for a crazy white-knuckle ride into deepest Munster.
The first time The Killers played Oxegen they fretted whether anyone would turn up to see them. Now they’re sweeping in to headline the main stage. They talk to us about being chased by papparazi, growing up in Middle America and sharing a bill with Bono and, er, Gary Barlow
BLOODHOUND GANG might not be paragons of good taste, but they do live out the rock n roll lifestyle like no other band. JIMMY POP talks to STUART CLARK about swearing, drugs, porn stars and amusing Germans! Pop Pic-er: Declan English
You’ve grown your hair and want to make a bitching rock record. Who do you call? Arctic Monkeys tell Stuart Clark about their remarkable journey from Sheffield to the Mojave.
Only $12 million’s worth of box-office for Michael Bay’s latest opening weekend? Whither cinema? Surely people have been longing for another two hours plus of incoherent bangs and crashes and mind-numbingly long chase sequences?
It's head-scratching, nail-biting, on-the-tip-of-your-tongue time again, as GEORGE BYRNE presides over our renowned annual music quiz [this is for the year 2000]
30th Birthday Retrospective: He was the original art-rocker and the quintessential ladies’ man. Bryan Ferry looks back at three decades spent at the frontline of pop.
Since Dolores O'Riordan appeared on the cover of Hot Press at the beginning of the year, her life has changed dramatically on both a personal and professional level. Not only has she starred in the Wedding Of The Year, but she's also sustained a serious leg injury, appeared on the Late Late show, and became a dab hand at dealing with media begrudgery. In between all this, The Cranberries found time to record a new album, No Need To Argue. Interview: Cathy Dillon.
With a little help from Timbaland and The Neptunes, Justin Timberlake’s debut solo album justified propelled him from N’Sync baby food salesman to purveyor of the slickest dancefloor pop since the days when Michael Jackson was black. here, via the wonders of modern technology, HP eavesdrops as the boy wonder receives a Woodward & Bernstein-style investigative enema from the Euro-press.
With compass in hand and their newly unfurled Map Of The Universe nestling comfortably on their laps, Blink are boldly going where few Irish bands have gone before. But what happens when they get to Cork and Ballybunion? Intrepid explorer LIAM FAY dons his rucksack, climbs aboard the Blinkmobile and survives to tell the tale.
Bobby Gillespie's still staying up all night but now it's because there's a baby in the house. Otherwise, it's all systems go for Primal Scream at their bunker hq - Witnness cometh, Mani's back and Kate Moss, Kevin Shields, Robert Plant and AndrewWeatherall all feature on the groundbreaking evil high
Tales of high profile solicitor Gerald Kean's astonishing ability to make truckloads of money - and spend it - have become the stuff of tabloid wet dreams.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it's been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof's standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it's been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof's standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it s been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof s standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
After a career barely spanning five years, there is a definite feeling amongst those who know about such things that POLLY
JEAN HARVEY is destined to be one of the true rock music greats. Her darkly visceral, sexual and lacerating work has struck a
raw chord, and made her the object of passionate adoration. But it has also cast her in the eyes of some as an
"axe-wielding bitch cow from Hell."
LIAM FAY travels to meet ze monsta, but instead finds a home-loving Yeovil lass who likes nothing better than gardening and whipping
up pots of rhubarb marmalade.
Mother Records' expansion plans receive another major boost with former Sugarcube Bjork signing to the label for all European territories excluding the UK. Mother will also be handling Irish distribution for The Levellers and are about to release a new 12" by Bumble, suggesting that earlier reports of their demise were decidedly premature . . .
’85 was a remarkably stagnant year. Twelve months after the end of ’84, little seems to have changed or advanced musically and I only hope and pray we won’t be running on the same spot when ’86 ends.
Though often overlooked, some of U2’s most exciting and challenging music through the years is to be found hidden away on the flip side of their singles. From U23 to Melon bill graham rides the wild horses of the U2 back catalogue and finds that there’s quite a few thoroughbreds among their many cover versions and experimental remixes.
With the death of Kurt Cobain in April casting a shadow over the following months 1994 will hardly go down as one of the most joyous in Rock history. Your guide to a month-by-month account of the names and events of the past year. Stuart Clark.
