A couple of farewells…
Posted by Andrew Adams on January 12, 2009
Filed Under Culture, Music |
First of all I would like to wish all Mutantblog readers a Happy New Year. Sorry for the lack of posts recently, this was due to a combination of home and work commitments and laziness, but mostly laziness.
Anyway, I have been stirred out of my stupor by a couple of sad pieces of news for us music lovers. Firstly, this week will see the closing of The Astoria, one of London’s best venues for gigs.
It has always been a favourie venue of mine - big enough to attract decent acts whilst still small enough to retain a good atmosphere, and easy (for me) to get to, being smack in the middle of the West End. I can’t possible remember every band I’ve seen there but off the top of my head I can recall great gigs by The Scissor Sisters, The Sleepy Jackson, The Cramps, Sparks, Alice Cooper, My Life Story, Flesh For Lulu, Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, All About Eve, John Cale, Catatonia and many more. It will be sadly missed.
As will Ron Asheton, guitarist with The Stooges, who died last week. The first two Stooges albums were way ahead of their time, probably the first real “punk” records and very few others can match them for their sheer raw excitement, which this was down to a comination of Iggy Pop’s manic energy and Asheton’s raw and brutal guitar work. There is a good obituary here and below is a clip of the Stooges performing TV Eye on their comeback tour a couple of years ago - probably my favourite guitar riff of all time.
Comments
Leave a Reply