MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes
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Excellence virtually guaranteed
The Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival is online this weekend and it's got an outstanding line-up of old and new radical performers
PUNK-FOLK MAESTRO: Babar Luck
New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
AN ENTIRE summer has been cancelled. It’s heartbreaking but the only redeeming feature is the fact that everyone — or at the very least everyone who has access to a computer and a level of technical knowledge beyond that of a bemused triceratops — can be at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival.
I heartily recommend you log in and watch, wherever you are and whatever the weather is like and whether or not you like festivals, camping, mud, stubbornly convex toilet facilities, stoned hippies, welcoming pools of sick and random people asking if you want to buy horse tranquilliser, etc.
I know most of that doesn’t happen at Tolpuddle — it’s just my memories of 40 years of festival experiences rolled together for your amusement.
More from this author
After storming hundreds if not thousands of barns and some such up and down Britain and overseas over the last 30 years, ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER stops, if only for a nanosecond, to reminisce about the faithful bunch at his side all those years that are the inimitable Barnstormers
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's announcement that there'll be visa-free touring for musicians in some European countries is a beyond a joke
These are my choices, according to the Tories, should my arts career go tits-up. I’m not impressed.
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