There’s a lot to be said for the charisma of premature death. And the manner of his particular dying – turning blue on a motel floor at the age of 26, his heart fatally faltering, ice cubes being stuffed up his ass in a pathetic attempt to bring him back from the brink after one binge too many – booked Gram parsons an automatic place of honour in a rock’n’roll Valhalla already overcrowded with dead young heroes, Jimi, Janis, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and more already among its spectral population when Gram died in September, 1973.
DIRECTOR Jacqui and David Morris
STARRING Don McCullin
Towards the end of last year, war photographer Don McCullin recently travelled to Syria for one last trip to the frontline.
Interviewed on Radio 4 from Aleppo in December 2012, 76 year-old McCullin said, “I’m not important in all this. I’m just a carrier pigeon bringing this back home.” An amazing, humbling reflection on a career spanning close to 50 years, that saw Don McCullin cover Biafra, Vietnam and Northern Ireland, bringing back home photographic proof of the horrific fallout of war on civilians.
The sales of albums in the UK fell by 10 percent in 2012.
The statistics, released by the BPI, also reveal that the CD album market shrunk by a fifth, with sales of albums on CD down 19.5 percent year-on-year with only 69.4m albums sold.
Sales of digital and physical albums combined fell overall again by 11.2 percent to 100.5m over the past 12 months – although singles sales hit a new high.
Following on from yesterday's Top 75 new albums of 2012 post, here's our Top 30 compilations, reissues and box sets of 2012, with links to the original reviews where possible.
Have a great Christmas and New Year, folks!
Ladies and gentlemen... please enjoy our Top 75 new albums of 2012, with links to the original reviews where possible. Tomorrow, we'll post the Top 30 best reissues, box sets and compilations.
