The storms battering the South Coast have blown themselves out by the time Club Uncut reconvenes for another year at The Great Escape festival. It’s after midnight and very nearly pitch-black in the Dome Studio just before our first night’s headliners, The Hold Steady, dramatically hit the lights, then the stage. “As the song says,” Craig Finn promises, “we’re gonna have a real good time together.”
What is Lawrence for? Given the acclaim for the recent “Lawrence Of Belgravia” documentary, you could be forgiven for thinking that his role as a British eccentric and pop star manqué is now much more important than the actual music he makes. That his character is more entertaining than his records.
Neil Young
Hammersmith Apollo
Thursday, March 6 2008
The last time I saw Neil Young at the Apollo was in 2003, when he was touring to promote his ecological country rock opera, Greendale, still unreleased at the time, which meant no one had heard any of the songs. The unfamiliarity of what he then played provoked among the audience a certain restlessness that quickly gave way to collective dismay when it dawned on them that he wasn’t going to play merely a selection of songs from the record, but the album in what turned out to be its indigestible entirety.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
April 9 to 15, 1997
Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer, aged 49. Although a much-respected cult figure in her own right, a handful of Nyro's songs became million-sellers when recorded by others, including Barbra Streisand ("Stoney End"), The Fifth Dimension ("Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic") and Three Dog Night ("Eli's Comin'").
