Tyne Theatre, 5 May 2022 — Well, it’s been a mad old time. This was the week of the five gigs¹, and tonight is the last. It’s always nice to come to the Tyne Theatre. It’s a lovely auditorium, and the vibe is always relaxed and friendly. I had a brief but friendly chat in the…

Newcastle City Hall, 3 May 2022 — Oh, to be 17 in 1967, down at UFO or any number of the other groovy happenings in the Summer of Love. For those of us too young to have ever been there (i.e anyone under about 70), this is the closest we’ll ever come, even though there’s no smell…

Durham Gala Theatre: 29 April 2022 — There’s just something about a Half Man Half Biscuit gig that’s not quite like anything else, especially for repeat offenders like me . Yes, it’s a roomful of mostly middle aged men jumping up and down like loons and not worrying about the arthritis until you can’t get out of…

Middlesbrough Town Hall: 8 April 2022 — A lot has happened to Rachel Parris in the last three years, and the pandemic, as we discover later, appears to have been the least of it. We’re in the Crypt tonight, and the audience is, on the whole more, probably female than male, even though this is also very…

Ok, so I talked about Zoolook, and because I’ve done that, I feel that I really have to talk about Equinoxe now. Equinoxe is a problematic album in the Jarre canon, because it’s the one immediately after THAT one, the one everyone knows, or at the very least knows one…

1984. The year of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Madonna, Wham!, Band Aid, the LA Olympics, and that freakish clay model head in Lionel Richie’s video for Hello. Oh, there was also Threads of course, but that’s another story entirely. Don’t have nightmares, kids. But 1984 was an interesting year in…

Harrogate Theatre, 25 February 2022 — It’s been several years since now since the original incarnation of Scarred For Life appeared in its embryonic form, around the time the first volume of Steve Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence’s retrospective about having the living shit scared out of you by television was published. Quite a lot of what…

The Stand, Newcastle, 28 February 2022 — Another liberal (in all senses) dose of Andy Zaltzman, now firmly installed in the mainstream¹ as the host of The News Quiz, and very much non-bearded Wonder of Test Match Special. Last time I was in The Stand we were in what now are increasingly coming to be known as…

Nigel Blackwell, The Bard of Birkenhead (and his cohort), returns. Nearly four years after No One Cares About Your Creative Hub, So Get Your Fucking Hedge Cut (NOCAYCH) comes HMHB album number fifteen. And, let’s be honest, quite a lot has happened since then, but we’ll come to that later. …