Endorphin-rush rock'n'roll: remastered, relentless, essentialAs Zeppelin fans of all creeds and nations prepare to make the pilgrimage to London’s O2 arena on 26 November, it may not have escaped their notice that the reunited, hot-ticket, must-see Zep are about to attempt something truly precarious. Never mind Valhalla, consider Guernica. Watched by 20,000 people, three men aged 63, 61 and 59 will endeavour to lend the requisite fury and intensity to songs that are now closer historically to the Spanish Civil War than to 2007.
I've been gently kicking myself for the past few days after discovering The Necks were playing a couple of shows just down the road from me in Dalston. By the time I tried to get tickets on Sunday afternoon, they'd long sold out. Their new album, "Townsville", is compensation of a kind, but it also makes me regret missing them more than ever.
A couple of weeks ago or so, I used the online appearance of a new Wu-Tang Clan tune to complain – from a dilettante-ish position, I admit – that 2007 has been a thin year for hip-hop. It now looks like the Wu album may have been put on hold for a while, though apparently there is the substantial compensation of a new Ghostface Killah album instead.
Because you can never attend enough international film festivals, here's STEPHEN DALTON's report from this year's VIENNA FILM FESTIVAL.
Tanks and armoured cars rumble ominously through the centre of Vienna. The streets are eerily empty, as all civilian traffic has been removed from the city’s main inner ring road. It looks like a military coup is underway.
Sometime last week, we had some kind of half-assed straw poll in the office about our best gigs of 2007. You can probably guess a lot of the stuff that came up: The White Stripes, The Hold Steady, Arctic Monkeys, Dylan, Wilco, Lou Reed’s "Berlin". Good gigs. I held off submitting any suggestions, though, not least because I suspected I’d see my favourite gig of the year on Friday night.
