tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208951522026-01-28T09:56:46.310+00:00Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-25101993850829937982022-12-07T16:41:00.008+00:002022-12-07T22:06:29.994+00:00

A few weeks ago, when the news was bad, I sent Gordon an email. I wanted to say something; anything. Gordon didn’t want cards and had limited use for sympathy, so I emailed an apology. I had a nagging memory about a historical injustice dating from 1988. It was about punk rock. It was about Gordon. Where were we? We were in a basement in Stockbridge, finding our voices. We were in the office

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-49276649895796603732022-10-11T15:02:00.016+01:002022-10-11T22:33:01.840+01:00

I used to see Paul Morley in the street. He lived nearby, and occasionally could be glimpsed outside Sainsbury’s glowering intensely in his long coat, black turtleneck and post-modern trousers. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to thank him for his music journalism in the NME, which was passionate and pretentious at a time when being passionate and pretentious was the best thing going. I wanted

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-69201261568872622402022-07-22T22:56:00.002+01:002022-07-22T22:56:22.742+01:00

When I started Alternatives To Valium the idea was that the artists could supply their own material without the interference of a journalist. It quickly became apparent that - as much as they might complain about interviews - musicians weren’t great at interpreting themselves. One of those who tried was the late Colin Vearncombe of Black, who supplied this manifesto. I borrowed part of it for the

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-81691502575154215382022-06-13T11:08:00.013+01:002022-06-17T11:29:54.216+01:00

 The early reviews of Howard Jacobson’s Kalooki Nights have focused on the anger. There is a lot of it. There is anger about the Holocaust, about casual anti-Semitism, and the refusal of English Jews to make a fuss. But actually, anger doesn’t quite do justice to the complex of feelings conjured by Jacobson’s prose, because the fury is wrapped in black comedy. And while it is

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-82454257897933283352022-05-20T14:10:00.012+01:002022-05-20T14:41:31.110+01:00

My book, Alternatives To Valium: How Punk Rock Saved A Shy Boy's Life is out now, published by Polygon. Click on the links to buy directly from the publisher, or order it online or from your local bookshop. The Scotsman review said: "The early years are a blast, from McKay's views on his first teacher ('Does she even like children? If she does, it's a secret') to his memories of his first fanzine

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-54011348030958176192020-09-06T15:04:00.005+01:002020-09-06T15:05:43.075+01:00

When the cinematographer Christopher Doyle appeared at the Edinburgh film festival in 2008, he interviewed himself, because, he said, he would ask more difficult questions. Here are some of his answers. On film school. “Film school is only good for your sex life.”On his remake of Psycho with Gus Van Zant “A $24m art project” and “a celebration of shower curtains”.On himself.”The Keith Richards of

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-67491284981865662722020-07-31T17:16:00.005+01:002020-07-31T17:39:16.978+01:00

November 2003: Recently, Alan Parker was asked to name his five favourite films. He thought about this, felt the reflex twitch towards Citizen Kane, then realised he didn’t have an open mind when he first met Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles’s masterpiece. Before encountering the wonders of Xanadu, he had read about Kane and understood it to be the best film ever made.So he thought again and

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-28899115843497688602020-06-26T12:31:00.001+01:002022-06-13T14:16:54.314+01:00

Two days after opening night, and Jessica Lange’s Midwestern drawl has turned into a weary croak. She is, she confesses, “a little worn out. My voice has taken quite a hit. It’s that thing after the opening, your whole body wants to relax, finally.”The play is Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Lange appeared on Broadway in a production that was mauled by American critics. London has been

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-55062619005340444922019-10-15T11:11:00.003+01:002023-05-03T11:50:49.826+01:00

In a long and varied career, Brian Cox has specialised in flawed, powerful men. He’s been King Lear, Hermann Goring, Hannibal Lecter. He’s currently playing Lyndon Johnson on Broadway. As Logan Roy, the patriarch of Jesse Armstrong’s brilliant satire of the uber-rich, Succession, Cox has arrived at the perfect role. Roy is a media mogul, in the vein of Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone (patriarch

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-77640858633553856122017-04-10T21:27:00.000+01:002020-01-04T17:00:24.450+00:00

Whenever he addressed business seminars on the secret of his success, Tony Wilson, the newscaster and former boss of Factory Records, liked to quote Sid Vicious. Sid was once asked his opinion of the man in the street. “Fuck the man on the street,” he replied. “The man on the street is a cunt.” For Wilson, the quote had shock value. In a conventional business environment, where every decision

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-53733691209981030292016-10-15T10:35:00.001+01:002016-10-15T10:37:55.345+01:00

When Sharon Horgan was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme, she was asked whether it was possible to make divorce funny. Horgan’s reply, like her writing, was a masterpiece of vague certainty and unbending doubt. She cited a remark made by Gwyneth Paltrow - the actress who coined the phrase “conscious uncoupling” to describe her own emotional trainwreck. Paltrow reportedly asked her father

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-42414818254250041082016-01-15T09:58:00.000+00:002016-01-15T09:58:05.800+00:00

The Oscars are marketing, so to comment on the nominations is like comparing Flash to Daz. But, since my exposure to contemporary cinema is roughly confined to reading the sides of buses, I do feel qualified to offer an opinion or two. So, obviously Leo DiCaprio will win in the Best Male Actor Who Got Fat and Looked A Bit Wild Like Brian Blessed category. Eddie Redmayne will not, even though he's

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-8461882200157544522015-04-14T14:16:00.002+01:002015-04-14T14:16:44.438+01:00

See here for my interview with Montage of Heck director, Brett Morgen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/43C8xpHHgDTcJMpWLNYgV9H/cobain-the-myth-enhanced-and-attacked

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-3179420386324369652014-03-02T20:25:00.003+00:002014-03-02T20:30:25.566+00:00

You might, with some effort, be able to find a flicker of sympathy for Pi With Willie Nelson in Surfer, Dude ers Morgan. Not long before his CNN talk show was canned, the celebrity celebrity interviewer interviewed Matthew McConaughey. It should have been a simple assignment. McConaughey was there to bask in his own success; a career turnaround which has seen him transformed from romcom hunk to

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-85344450490692289022014-02-04T14:26:00.003+00:002014-02-04T14:31:21.461+00:00

Sofia Helin is Saga Noren, the detective at the centre of The Bridge, the brilliant Scandi-noir series which just concluded on BBC4. Except that she isn’t, obviously. Saga doesn’t have an emotional radar. She is blunt to the point of rudeness, obsessive about her work, and disarmingly pragmatic about sex (if she wants it, she has it, with no care for social niceties). Sofia is different. She

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-29292871180198876252013-11-15T10:54:00.000+00:002013-11-15T10:54:17.969+00:00

There’s an extraordinary moment towards the end of The Butler, Lee Daniels’ warm-hearted epic film about the American Civil Rights struggle. It comes when the now-retired White House butler, played with calm authority by Forest Whitaker, makes a pilgrimage to his father’s grave, at an old cotton plantation in Georgia. Whitaker and his wife – an exuberant Oprah Winfrey – are clad in shell-suits,

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-47068937758011465102013-11-12T18:13:00.000+00:002013-11-20T11:35:49.572+00:00

Chris Forsyth, it’s true, is a little surprised to find himself described as a new artist, after a decade of service with noise band Peeesseye, and a number of collaborations on the fringes of space rock, free jazz and (it says here) intergalactic glossolalia. But there is a sense of a sudden snapping into focus on his new solo album, Solar Motel. It’s a fierce, exploratory record, which sounds

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-54424516111629367092013-07-16T14:28:00.001+01:002013-07-16T14:30:25.208+01:00

Vini Reilly’s first album, The Return of The Durutti Column, was more notorious for its sandpaper sleeve than the music contained therein. The sleeve was a Factory Records joke, designed to destroy neighbouring albums. Joy Division were employed on a piece-rate to stick the sandpaper sheets onto the sleeves. “I was highly embarrassed,” Reilly recalls. “I hadn’t done anything to help them

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-373718644839619652013-06-25T11:27:00.002+01:002013-06-25T11:30:09.437+01:00

Chance with Johnny Cash Chance Martin has lived many lives, and goes by many names. He has been, variously, Mr Freedom Man, The Stoned Ranger, Johnny Chainsaw, Captain Quick Tour and Orson Green. Currently, Martin is professionally known as Alamo Jones, sidekick to “Cowboy” Jack Clement on Sirius XM, a Nashville-based satellite radio station.  But in 1981, working as Chance, he released

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-76967250427009173102013-06-04T17:23:00.003+01:002022-06-17T17:30:49.796+01:00

Blurred vision: Stephen & Katrina of the Pastels With five albums over a 31 year career, the Pastels could never be accused of being prolific. But even by their standards, a 16 year gap between LPs seems a little excessive. “It doesn’t feel that it took so long to us,” says Stephen McRobbie (nee Pastel). “Although in some ways it does, in that the studio we started recording it in

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-6934187294795126442013-04-10T11:08:00.001+01:002013-04-10T11:10:49.740+01:00

MC Taylor’s 2011 album as Hiss Golden Messenger, Poor Moon, blended folk, soul and gospel, revealing Taylor as a writer inside his own lyrical universe; hewn from Biblical imagery and folk mores. The beautiful sequel, Haw, is the same, but moreso. The arrangements are bigger, the language more dense, the symbolism darker. Hat act: HGM's MC Taylor “We didn’t set out to make a record that was

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-75577174697755031452013-02-19T09:46:00.001+00:002013-02-19T09:55:39.925+00:00

The latest piece of archaeology by the Paradise of Bachelors label is an extraordinary album of Viet Vet country boogie. First released in 1983, and sold through a small ad in Soldier of Fortune magazine, it’s the work of Vietnam veteran Edwin Bankston, who wrote the songs in the decade following his service aboard the aircraft carrier Kittyhawk. The ad read: “For a lot less than a box of ammo

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-57160010467369575972013-02-18T13:11:00.000+00:002013-02-19T08:17:43.008+00:00

Thomas Hoepker: View From Brooklyn, New York City, USA, 11 September, 2001, in Magnum Stories During the course of researching his book about the photography of John Hinde, documenter of the Butlins holiday camp empire, Chris Boot came across a quote from Fellini. “All great photographs,” the great director said, “have something wrong with them.” In the case of Hinde, whose propaganda

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-14665294123613188112013-02-05T11:45:00.004+00:002013-02-05T11:45:56.436+00:00

Reg Presley of The Troggs died yesterday. As a tribute to his raw brilliance, here's an interview I did with him about recording The Troggs' greatest hit, Wild Thing.   My influences were Louisiana Red and Lightnin’ Hopkins and the blues from America were sort of kicking us. But we also realised that it wasn’t quite the same in England. So you heard those influences, heard those sounds,

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20895152.post-44263337253696025572012-11-26T13:12:00.004+00:002012-11-26T13:12:50.866+00:00

Dame Evelyn Glennie provided one of the highlights of the London Olympics opening ceremony, leading 1000 drummers through a re-enactment of the industrial revolution in a thundering collaboration with Underworld. For Glennie, it was a moment of triumph in an extraordinary career. Now, thanks to a remarkable story of vinyl archaeology, the roots of that success have been exposed, with the

Alastair McKayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03652654491260441697noreply@blogger.com0