
STORIES: I MIGHT REGRET TELLING YOU
she digs into the deep recesses of herself with the same emotional honesty that has come to define her music

BAND BOOKS: DIFFERENT STORIES
I have selected two books, each written or co-written by two members of The Band, Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson respectively.

THE UNIVERSE IN THE WORD
a poetry reading event organised by the hard-working arts enthusiast Mercedes Minguela

COLDPLAY: Viva Coldplay!
, Coldplay's is an exceptional and compelling story and "Viva Coldplay" does it full justice.

ABORIGINAL SONGLINES
There is another, more grounded perhaps, definition of a songline, sometimes known as a dreaming track. These are amongst the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia.

A DANGLING CONVERSATION
It began with Larry telling me he had been watching a music documentary series on Sky Arts about how so many black musicians and writers were paid only a pittance for their catlogues, because of signing contracts that they didn´t realise were offering royalties that were less than one per cent of what recording companies were offering to white musicans.

WHEN WAS NOW AND THEN?
photo book She is just such an artist. I grew up in the same generation as Linda Ronstadt did and I love her rock and roll and country-rock songs and in an early middle age I loved her harmonies with Emmylou and Dolly Parton on the Trio releases. Then there were a couple of soul classic singles with Aaron Neville before she moved into Spanish language recordings, stage musicals and Opera.

NORMAN MAILER a man of his own creation
Mailer could write about anything compellingly and uniquely.

THE INVENTION OF ANGELA CARTER
Her life was as vigorously modern and unconventional as anything in her fiction.

ANGELA CARTER: a fairy tale?
Carter was deliberately messy, awkward, even paradoxical in her behaviour: she never allowed herself to settle into any predictable guise or attitude for long