Doin’ the Maths

Where: Xoyo Club, London
When: 25th October 2011
Who: John Foxx and the Maths, Gazelle Twin, Tara Busch

30 years after the beginning of his solo career John Foxx is at the peak of his powers – and for the first time since Ultravox!, he is in a regular band context.

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Perkelt : Recalling the Czech-ered past

Sometimes you just hear something that is so unusual and innovative that you just know that there must be an audience out there for it…….

Something like that happened to me the first time that I heard Perkelt. I was wandering around Stratford-Upon-Avon trying to visualise in my head the structure of a Shakespearean production that I was eager to develop ……. when I heard some folk music.

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“What Masques, What Dances Shall We Have, to wear away this long age of three hours?

What: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Where: Stratford-Upon-Avon
When: 4th of August 2011

This is the third play that the Royal Shakespeare Company have performed from the Shakespearean canon since the launch of their new theatre – and to say that I did not approach the grim exterior of that new theatre with much enthusiasm would have been something of an understatement.

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It all seems such a long time ago…………

I grew up in a coal mining town in Yorkshire. Descendant of a long line of coal miners. In 1979 / 80 or thereabouts, I would have been playing Subbuteo on my Mum’s kitchen table with my friend, Andrew Spence. He’d always be Barnsley, I’d always be Leeds. At the side of the pitch on a chair, I’d have a cassette player set up where I would force Andrew to listen to my taste in music. Around that time it would be Sad Cafe’s “Facades” album. He didn’t rate it. That year he got me into John Foxx, Gary Numan, David Bowie. I got him into precisely nothing. Last time, I was in Barnsley, I called in on him as a a surprise. I looked through his cd racks. I spotted “Aja” by Steely Dan which was one of the albums I would have recommended back in the day. He just said he’d got it because he’d read about it in the music press but he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

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