Because Everybody Else Has One

Got life if you want it... This review is also up at Channel 24 , where the blurb should read "timed" not "times", by the way. What it's about A documentary about the concert that took place on 12 December 2012 to raise funds for those affected by Hurricane Sandy. What we thought I genuinely have no idea how or why this film is gracing our cinemas right now, as it certainly isn't timely and I can't see it making much of a splash against the Easter holiday movies that are currently on release. I'm kind of happy to see it though. Its mixture of Hurricane Sandy footage, backstage glimpses into the 12-12-12 concert and the concert itself aren't exactly revelatory and they add up to a relatively sub-par music documentary that doesn't have the backstage drama of a Gimme Shelter, the satisfying concert feel of a Last Waltz or even the spiky, often funny social conscience of CSNY's Deja Vu. Still, though it's hardly essential ...

While seemingly the entirety of Johannesburg's population under the age of 35 were attending Coldplay's massive one-night-only stadium concert, I found myself enjoying a rather different concert experience. Cine 2 at Sandton City's multiplex is normally host to press screenings that Ster Kinekor hold for their 3D releases but last night that by now very familiar - and, it has to be said, rather nice - cinema offered up something a whole lot more interesting than a pointless stereoscopic conversion of The Lion King. I don't want to speak ill of what I'm sure was a great concert-going experience for Coldplay fans (personally, I could take them or leave them) but I can't imagine it being more electrifying than this woefully under-attended showing of a previously unreleased concert film that caught The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band in one of their most interesting, not to say best, creative periods. Sadly, this was only one of a small handful of showings f...

I consider this album to be as underrated now as I did when I wrote this original review. Some of the points that I made about the album are, in retrospect, dubious (Who's Been Sleeping Here? Dylanesque?) but this album seems unfairly dismissed by most critics and The Stones themselves. I should mention that this is the American version of the album,which substitutes a few of the songs for Ruby Tuesday and Lets Spend The Night Together - songs that were only released as a double-A-side single in the UK. Admittedly, however much I like or love most of the songs here, none of them are as good as Ruby Tuesday and Lets Spend the Night Together but considering that those two songs comprised one of the greatest pop singles of all time, it's hardly fair to judge the rest of the album against their peerless brilliance.  From Epinions.com (Originally published 7 December 2003)    1967 was a hell of a year for rock and roll. The Beatles showed the world how arty rock and r...

A double dose of old Rolling Stones reviews for today. First up, we have Tattoo You. This is an interesting review in that  you can see my appreciation for the album rising as I wrote about it. Things haven't changed. This is still the last truly classic Stones album.  From Epinions.com (Originally published 22 August 2005) Tattoo You was an album that was absolutely doomed to be one of the Stones’ worst ever embarrassments. Not only did it have unenviable job of following up an album that is generally regarded to be their worst effort yet, it was never really intended to be much of an album at all. Seen as little more than an excuse for another Rolling Stones tour, Tattoo You was compiled from old outtakes, previously discarded tracks and the odd newly recorded track – all to be released in the early nineteen-eighties, the decade that would prove to be the bane to all the once-great sixties acts. Yup, the odds were all stacked pretty firmly against this album. Unbel...

Simply, one of my all time favourite albums by one of my all time favourite bands. The review's OK too - even though I was apparently an "avid country music hater" at the time. For shame. It just goes to show how much one's music tastes can evolve over the course of half a decade. From epinions.com Between the years 1968 and 1972 the Rolling Stones were at the top of their game, releasing no less than four classic studio albums and one of the most beloved live albums of all time. In the middle of all this though - 1969 to be exact - the band itself was going through turbulent times, with the death of founding member and lead guitarist (if such a thing applies to the Stones), Brian Jones. On both 1968’s Beggars Banquet and 1969’s Let It Bleed, Keith Richards played the vast majority of the guitar parts because of Jones being incapacitated due to his major LSD addiction. After Brian was found dead in his swimming pool soon after being fired by the band, The Stones reali...