- Simon Godley
Profile
A veteran of some four decades spent lost in music, I have consumed cassettes, vinyl, compact discs and digital downloads with equal vigour. The same three albums, however, and whilst their exact order may change, just keep on floating right up to the surface – London Calling, Exile on Main Street and Marvin’s What’s Going On. During this time I have supplemented my appetite for all things recorded music by going to literally hundreds of gigs and festivals. From first seeing Yes at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow in 1972 through Led Zeppelin, CSN&Y, The Who, Dylan at Blackbushe Festival, The Jam, The Ramones and two immortal Clash gigs at Newcastle Poly, the seventies gave way to three sublime Tom Waits’ shows at Edinburgh Playhouse during the eighties. Highlights since then have included eight Glastonbury Festivals, a smattering of Vs, Rhythms, Leeds, Latitudes, a solitary Connect and the now sadly defunct Phoenix, numerous Spiritualized performances of similar magnificence, The Stone Roses, Tony Bennett, My Morning Jacket and an astonishing Kraftwerk set at Manchester Apollo in 2005, none of which, though, have yet to better Neil Young and Booker T & the MGs in the Finsbury Park rain in 1993. But the beauty of compiling such ridiculously self-indulgent lists is who knows what hidden treasure might be unearthed around that very next musical corner?
Reviews:
Rachel Harrington - Rachel Harrington & The Knock Outs Album Review- At first glance the new Nashville sound currently taking shape in various basements across from the Cumberland River bears precious little resemblance to Rachel Harrington’s fourth...
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Cherry Lee Mewis - Heard It Here First Album Review- It is now 154 days to Rhythm, Bedfordshire’s very own triumvirate of festivals. Just over five months before one of that county’s daughters (by way of North Wales) takes to the Rh...
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All Tomorrow's Parties - 9th-11th March 2012 @ Butlins Somerwest World Live Review- Are the wheels starting to come off the ATP express? It still continues to circumnavigate the globe from America to Asia, hoisting its fiercely independent flag in New Jersey and ...
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Portico Quartet @ The Duchess - 06/03/2012 - Live Review- David Bowie once asked is there life on Mars. If the answer to his question was in the affirmative and had some of that planet’s people been transported into the translucent blue d...
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Shelby Lynne @ Middlesbrough Town Hall/ The Crypt - 23/02/2012 - Live Review- She is Shelby Lynne. She is a singer, a songwriter and a performing artist. She grew up in Alabama, in the south east of the United States of America. She is now 43 years old. ...
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Alabama 3 - Shoplifting 4 Jesus Album Review- “If you do it in the name of the Lord, you can get away with murder”. These are the thoughts of Chairman Larry Love, espousing the standard Alabama 3 blueprint of religion and law...
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The James Low Western Front - Whiskey Farmer Album Review- Oh well, that’s another 27 minutes and 34 seconds of my life I will never, ever see again. And to think I could have saved myself that extra half an hour if I had only first studi...
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Babybird @ Brudenell Social - 07/02/2012 - Live Review- “You’re gorgeous”. A lone female voice shouts out across the Brudenell as Babybird take to the stage, the first syllable of the adjective flattened by her West Yorkshire vowels. It...
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Thomas Truax - Monthly Journal Album Review- The first and last time I saw Thomas Truax he had stepped from inside the Oporto bar in Leeds where he was playing and onto the pavement outside. He had left his assortment of home...
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The Doors - L.A. Woman (40th Anniversary) Album Review- Within four months of the release of L.A. Woman the Lizard King was dead, left lying in that comparatively unremarkable plot of ground in Père Lachaise Cemetery. For all we know h...
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St. Vincent @ Brudenell Social - 16/11/2011 - Live Review- There is a strange disconnect between Annie Clark and her audience. As if operating in some invisible bubble, power would seem to be the key to this apparent degree of separation....
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Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks,Girls @ The Ritz - 10/11/2011 - Live Review- First there was new wave and then there was no wave. Now there is now wave. And this evening it is at The Ritz. But whatever the wave, it’s different for Girls. Despite their be...
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Carrie Rodriguez @ New Roscoe - 30/10/2011 - Live Review- Maybe it was down to the clocks having just gone back or the fact that people had chosen to celebrate Halloween one night early? There again it could have been out of a mark of re...
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- Tindersticks @ Barbican Centre - 24/10/2011 - Live Review
- It is 20.15 hours, the scheduled start time, and eight men emerge into the low light of the Barbican stage. They move towards their pre-determined positions, where a phalanx of ins...
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Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost Album Review- During “Forgiveness”, the colossal centrepiece upon which this second full album by Girls pivots, the band’s songwriter and linchpin Christopher Owen opines “Nothing’s gonna get an...
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Roddy Frame @ Brudenell Social - 10/10/2011 - Live Review- This is the sound of a no longer quite so young Scotland. Now 47 years of age, Roddy Frame tonight charts the distance from the East Kilbride new town of his birth to the movie ca...
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Carrie Rodriguez,Ben Kyle - We Still Love Our Country Album Review- At 29 minutes and 36 seconds long, this record is neither an EP nor an LP, but one listen will tell you there is no such ambiguity about its title. It is not about Rodriguez’s pat...
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Terry Reid @ Backstage at the Green Hotel - 04/09/2011 - Live Review- Every single article or review about Terry Reid mentions, without fail, the fact that he famously turned down Jimmy Page’s offer to fill the then lead vocalist vacancy in the group...
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Rhythm Festival 2012 - 26th-28th August @ Old Warden Park Live Review- Johnny Cash once invited us all to get rhythm. Yet despite the festival of the same name having moved some 12 miles south east this year to the beautiful surroundings of the Old W...
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Deer Shed Festival @ Baldersby Park, North Yorkshire 22-24 July 2011 Live Review- Outside there is a world that lies screaming. There is devastation in Norway and another lone gunman opens fire in Texas. Five more perish. Two high-speed trains crash in China; ...
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Amadou & Mariam @ New Century Hall - 14/07/2011 - Live Review- Eclipse is the story of Amadou and Mariam. It is a story about two musicians from Mali in Western Africa both of whom are blind. Their blindness does not make them unique in the ...
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Waldner - Found & Lost Album Review- Elvis, Madonna, Bono, Prince, Beyoncé, Björk, Sting. To that list can we now add Waldner? Well, like Morrissey before him Waldner has gone down the surname only route but unlike ...
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Marybeth D'Amico - The Light Inside Album Review- The last time I heard Marybeth D’Amico, in fact the only time I heard Marybeth D’Amico was almost two years ago to this very day. She was stood in the back room of an 18th century...
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MONO [JP] @ Sound Control - 09/06/2011 - Live Review- During “Violence”, Ian Hunter suggests that the intense, injurious physical force of the song’s title is the only thing that makes any sense. There are times during this performan...
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Phosphorescent @ Brudenell Social - 04/06/2011 - Live Review- There is a moment this evening when the spotlight above the Brudenell’s emergency exit door turns a vivid emerald green and radiates its beam through Matthew Houck’s silhouetted pr...
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