My Best Tunes

Imagine Donna Summer turning out for a “Rock Against Racism” gig in the late Seventies. That is essentially what we had in Saturday’s line-up in Stoke-on Trent, which brought in former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland standing up against the British National Party.

“This part of the evening’s been made possible by Mr Richard James Edwards,” singer James Dean Bradfield simply observes. As the Manic Street Preachers play their new album, Journal for Plague Lovers, through, its lyricist, Richey Edwards, is represented by pink feather boas draped round a vacant mic-stand. Edwards has remained crucial to the band’s story since he, in all probability, committed suicide in 1995. He hasn’t been their conscience; the remaining trio are overloaded with that. But the Manics have always struggled to retain a link to who they were in the early 1990s: intellectual provocateurs, led out of south Wales by desperate punk dreams. Edwards’s notebooks, handed to bassist Nicky Wire shortly before he vanished and the source of this album’s words, restore that spirit in a somehow living collaboration.

Imagine Donna Summer turning out for a “Rock Against Racism” gig in the late Seventies. That is essentially what we had in Saturday’s line-up in Stoke-on Trent, which brought in former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland standing up against the British National Party.

“This part of the evening’s been made possible by Mr Richard James Edwards,” singer James Dean Bradfield simply observes. As the Manic Street Preachers play their new album, Journal for Plague Lovers, through, its lyricist, Richey Edwards, is represented by pink feather boas draped round a vacant mic-stand. Edwards has remained crucial to the band’s story since he, in all probability, committed suicide in 1995. He hasn’t been their conscience; the remaining trio are overloaded with that. But the Manics have always struggled to retain a link to who they were in the early 1990s: intellectual provocateurs, led out of south Wales by desperate punk dreams. Edwards’s notebooks, handed to bassist Nicky Wire shortly before he vanished and the source of this album’s words, restore that spirit in a somehow living collaboration.

Staging a month-long series of gigs might have been the only way to reflect the rich and diverse legacy of Island Records, the independent company Chris Blackwell founded in Jamaica 50 years ago. As it was, the week of events held in London just about did justice to Island’s illustrious past as well as its present and future within Universal, the biggest of all the majors in the industry. Pick of the bunch was Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, some very special guests and Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, who contributed so much to Island’s success in the Seventies and is now back on the legendary label.

The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star’s life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.

McDonald is a venerable Jamaican-born percussionist and this is his downstage moment. Over a 40-year career he has recorded with Gil Scott-Heron and Jackie DeShannon, so is not to be regarded as a one-trick pony. And so it proves on this largely enjoyable trip around a world of teeming rhythms, recorded both in Larry’s homeland and NYC. The presence of such JA heavies as Sly Dunbar and Toots Hibbert cannot disguise the essential New Yorkiness of the album, nor compensate for the lack of songwriting. But songs are hardly the point.

The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star’s life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.

McDonald is a venerable Jamaican-born percussionist and this is his downstage moment. Over a 40-year career he has recorded with Gil Scott-Heron and Jackie DeShannon, so is not to be regarded as a one-trick pony. And so it proves on this largely enjoyable trip around a world of teeming rhythms, recorded both in Larry’s homeland and NYC. The presence of such JA heavies as Sly Dunbar and Toots Hibbert cannot disguise the essential New Yorkiness of the album, nor compensate for the lack of songwriting. But songs are hardly the point.

There’s some fine playing on this debut disc from Horses Brawl, the recorder/fiddle and guitar duo of Laura Cannell and Adrian Lever. Bulgarian wedding music jostles with a love song from Renaissance Spain (”Pase el Agoa”), while “Merula” binds a canzonetta by the eponymous composer with Telemann and a Bolivian melody. Sadly, the recording sounds overproduced and not remotely wild. For folk/early-music crossover fans, this is harmless fun of the Voix Bulgares-meets-Red Priest type.