Audience

Black Sabbath founder turned reality TV star in the Uncut hot seat

The E Street Band to play Born To Run, Born In The USA and Darkness in full live

The first show by James Blackshaw with additional musicians begins a little oddly. A man plays a brief tuba solo, then settles down to some concerted texting on his phone. It turns out that this is a false start, however. The James Blackshaw Ensemble might contain a cellist, two violin players and a flautist, but the tuba player – warming up, it transpires – is here to accompany the support act, guitarist/pianist Tom James Scott, through a series of hushed, minimal pieces.

There were so many people packed last night into the Scala to see Okkervil River that if I’d arrived any later, I probably would have had to watch the show from across the street, on the concourse of King’s Cross Station.

I mentioned yesterday’s that I was just off to see The Hold Steady at the Islington Academy and I duly went and they were, as ever, duly brilliant – urgent, incendiary, delirious, a symphonic juggernaut, a hurtling thing, a wholly rousing noise.

Violent, but tender, Sean Lennon’s mum is back!

We have music’s most famous former janitor in the hot seat very soon

Superbad director smuggles pathos and nostalgia into a Fast Times fairground

Fear and loathing - and dancing - in Essex. Cannes Jury Prize winner 2009.

Live-in-the-studio Crowes fly high