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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
David Smyth's rating
Reader rating
There must be plenty of struggling young folk musicians out there who can’t wait to be 60. That’s the age when the kudos finally start to roll in, it seems.
Sexagenarian Detroit guitarist Sixto Rodriguez has recently joined fellow lost folkies Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs in being rediscovered decades after their albums had registered barely a ripple among their contemporaries.
This was only his second ever London concert, although strangely, he’s been well loved by South Africans and Australians for longer, which explains an uncharacteristically rowdy Barbican audience.
Jive talking as though the Sixties were still going, his sharp, biting voice sounding exactly as it does on marvellous recently reissued
1970 album Cold Fact, the intervening decades of teaching and working in motor factories must have been kind.
The rapid strumming and spat lyrics of Inner City Blues and This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst, had some of the style and venom of mid-Sixties Dylan.
I Wonder and Like Janis demonstrated a fine ear for a pop tune but the greatest applause was reserved for signature song Sugarman, a dreamy, psychedelic appeal to a drug dealer to hurry over.
“It’s a descriptive song, not a prescriptive song. Stay off drugs,” warned the older, wiser man in the spotlight, making the most of the
fact that people, at last, are listening to him.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Travelled all the way from York to watch this gig, arriving back home at 5am Sunday morning. First heard Cold Fact in South Africa when I was 12-years-old and it remains one of my favourite albums 36 years later.
Although older and frailer, Rodriguez put on an outstanding show and the packed audience clearly enjoyed every moment. In between songs one fan shouted 'you're better than Dylan'. Maybe not better but certainly right up there in the pantheon of great American singer-songwriters. To this day he remains criminally underrated. If you haven't heard him then take my advice and check him out.
- Kim Mayo, York, Yorkshire
