Category: music

Yazoo are back!

I was very happy to hear that top 80s-pop combo Yazoo are reforming. Almost 30 years after Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet first got together, the pair are going to tour the UK in June.

Now, I’m very happy about this, as Upstairs At Eric’s is a cracking album and I thought they wrote some great music.

My one slight irritation is the price of the tickets for the tour.

The pair had immense success after they went their separate ways, Vince with Erasure and Alison as a solo artist, but they’re clearly back to make a quick buck, if you ask me.

Tickets cost £45 each – and that’s before any touts snap them up. Given that Yazoo only produced two albums, it’s a bit much to ask that much, whatever the nostalgia factor.

Anyway, if you need any reminding of how good they were, have a listen to Don’t Go – one of their finest tracks!

Is Kylie’s bondage act a step too far?

Kylie Minogue“Kylie Minogue wows US audiences with bondage performance” screamed the headlines.

In a bid to crack the American market, which she has surprisingly yet to do, Kylie dressed up as nothing more than a high-class call girl to perform Can’t Get You Out Of My Head on the Us version of Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing With The Stars.

The thing is, shouldn’t Kylie be a bit beyond all this ‘shock factor’ by now? Isn’t this act just a bit ‘ewwww’?

Maybe she feels she has something to prove after her battle with breast cancer, but now she’s into her third decade of a pop career, can’t she just settle for producing good music and not try to fool people with a lot of flim-flammery?

‘Cracking’ America can take years and, although not exclusively, is a young person’s game.

Given that Kylie is unfeasibly successful throughout most of the rest of the world, it surprises me that she feels the need to try and make it in the US.

I also look at the Minogue now and just see a slightly tired once-youthful pop star desperate to keep her star bright.

Kylie, just keep it simple – make good pop songs and people will come.

Mazzy Star – Halah

It’s A’s birthday and this song reminds me of her birth, simply because it was one of the albums that we took into the hospital to listen to while we were waiting for her to arrive.

I don’t actually think it was playing when she was born, but it brings back happy memories…

Mazzy Star were effectively a one-album wonder, their debut She Hangs Brightly, although they released two further albums later in the 90s.

They never really had any success in the UK and have picked up a sort of cult status in this country, mainly through the help of the internet.

Their singer Hope Sandoval has a wonderful ethereal quality to her voice and, since Mazzy Star’s split, has recorded with a folk hero of mine Bert Jansch.

Halah is a dreamy, almost psychedelic track from She Hangs Brightly and typifies this album. Glorious!