Category: Music

So what’s the final verdict on the weekend? A great concert, certainly. Some great performances (and some pretty terrible ones). Hundreds of thousands of people giving their support to a great cause that has truly got the country behind it. But, but, but. Still the doubts linger. Full credit to Pink Floyd (and The Who…

I was very lucky last night to get a chance to go and see Brian Wilson play a concert in the rather lovely surroundings of Hampton Court. What a fantastic night. The weather was obviously excellent, and it was a shame that we didn’t bring a picnic like just about everyone else. The concert itself…

No ticket for me, but then it’ll be better on the TV anyway. Andy Kershaw, writing in today’s Independent, is very angry. When Bob Geldof first announced the line-up for the Live 8 concerts, African artists were notable by their absence. And this whole thing is about Africa after all. But a week or so…

My nephew is now two, and a while back my brother surprised me by playing a CD from They Might Be Giants that he’d heard on Jonathan Ross’s radio show which is for pre-school kids. Now St Etienne and Belle & Sebastian are getting in on the scene.

The underground is festooned with posters for the Royal Opera House’s Rigoletto. But the photo of Paolo Gavanelli in the poster, makes him look like an evil John Peel. You can see the picture currently on the ROH home page here.

It seems that The Beatles haven’t made enough cash and that the British government want to give them the rest of my adult life to keep earning. That way, EMI will invest more money in new bands. Alternatively, their shareholders will get richer, and the record companies will get let off the massive screw-ups they’ve…

Not that I’m in any way recommending it, but if you enter the Coca-Cola win a music download (or ringtone) on promotional cans, you currently pretty certain to win. I’m edging towards a full free album’s worth of tracks.

So it’s all change with both the Radio 1 chart show and Top of the Pops. The chart show (remember, that’s the CHART show), is going make the chart countdown just a “minor part of a wider chart show”. Umm, right, yeah. Why exactly do people tune into a chart show? To find out where…

Those illegal downloads really are killing music. Here’s the proof… Oh…

Today, round two of the music industry’s shameful battle to retain copyright in recordings over 50 years old took effect. From 1 January next year, Elvis’ earliest recordings come out of copyright in the UK, meaning that others can release them and profit from them with impunity. It sounds bad. But we’re talking about artists…

And so it came to pass. The BPI, is announcing today (free reg. reqd.) that it’s sueing “uploaders” of music. Now I still don’t really understand what they mean by “uploaders”. Do they mean “encoders” or “rippers” of the music? Because everyone who leaves a song in a shared directory surely becomes a lender as…

The Cowboy Junkies are touring again, and were on NPR the other day.