Where: Night and Day Café Manchester When: 5th May 2009 I suppose when you go to see a group called Rev Peyton’s Big Damn Band, you don’t go expecting an evening of introspective loveliness, and there was most certainly none of that. Nothing deep. There was though plenty of strut, plenty of gumption, a song about tomatoes and a portly woman playing the washboard. Just like I doubt Seasick Steve is a queasy mariner, I […]
Good art it seems is often born out of pain and such is the case with Malcom Croft’s work, a Stockport based artist who was forced to give up a successful career as a press photographer after an accident left him seriously injured. As a photojournalist for the Press Association and the Manchester Evening News, Malcom had the great knack of being in the right place at the right time. He was on hand to […]
Who ever heard of a Wolverhampton troubadour? It’s not really a place you would expect to breed troubadours, but obviously Scott Matthews slipped through the net. You don’t often take a stroll around the Bullring and bump into a Woody Guthrie like character carrying around a battered guitar marked “This Machine Kills Fascists”. Although, honestly I’ve never been to the Bullring, it could be full of Woody Guthries for all I know. However the blurb […]
A balmy, sun streaked Manchester is what greeted Dirty Projectors, on their inaugural trip to the city, to perform. The good thing about Manchester is that it looks its self in grey slate sky’s yet sparkles when the sunshines. It’s a rare gift. Manchester is built for the rain, everything feels in sync when you walk through Albert Sq and its raining. But when the sun does shine and this increasingly glass city does sparkle, […]
Robert Leeming I’ve got to say before I lay into Aidan Moffat’s new album that I really like the cover. If that sounds crass then I apologise. But I do really like the cover. A silhouetted gravestone against a rising sun, bordered by an MB Games logo, of old…you remember..Kurplunk, Buckaroo those kinds of things and a gold pen scribbled title ‘From Heaven to Scotland’. Irony I suppose, imagery, a good cover, a very good […]
Jeff Goldblum is dead? But I saw him just the other day At the bus stop Minding his own business Buzzing To himself Like we all do I breezed past him in my tailored raincoat He caught my eye Or his caught mine Or it was mutual Or he liked my raincoat And he produced a tissue from his pocket And wiped a tear away
Robert Leeming 