Culture
/
On The Record

Jim Carroll

Music, Life and everything else

Archive

Shut Up & Play the Hits: a requiem for LCD Soundsystem

The best gigs-on-film are often nothing like the gigs you experience in real life. Real gigs are messy affairs. Even when the band are on fire up on that stage, kicking out the jams as if their lives depend on …

10 things we learned from Watch the Throne

(1) Now, that’s what I call a show. Jay-Z and Kanye West brought the Watch the Throne juggernaut to Dublin at the weekend complete with giant podiums, lasers, projections of sharks, birds, pitbulls and marauding jungle animals, a gigantic stars-and-stripes’ …

Dexys: one of those things

Let’s talk about the passion again. It will not have escaped the attention of those who study the music media for comings and goings that Kevin Rowland and Dexys have returned to the limelight with a new album “One Day …

You can’t, you won’t and you don’t stop

The very first thing I searched for on the internet was information about the Beastie Boys’ magazine Grand Royal. Back in 1994, we were living in the land of dial-up modems which took forever to go through the motions, but …

Archive: Youssou N’Dour

It’s not every day that one of your past interviewees decides to stand for president of his country, but I suppose Youssou N’Dour could never be regarded as your typical interviewee to begin with. His decision to challenge Senegal’s incumbent …

Amy Winehouse RIP

Very sad news about the death of Amy Winehouse at her London home this afternoon. She was just 27. Whatever about those drink and drug demons which dominated coverage after the success of “Back to Black”, Winehouse was a hugely …

Archive: Gil Scott-Heron

As reported yesterday, the great Gil Scott-Heron died in a New York hospital on Friday night at the age of 62. After the jump, you’ll find an interview I did with him when he was promoting the “I’m New Here” …

A walk across the rooftops with The Blue Nile

There’s a great quote on the dust-jacket of Allan Brown’s new book “Nileism” about The Blue Nile which goes a little way to summing up this most perplexing of bands in a pithy line. No, not the quote from Chris …