Music reviews

My report about, and photos from this year’s WOMAD world music festival in Wiltshire, where, as usual, there was some excellent music from around the world — with my favourites this year being Mokoomba, Souad Massi and Horace Andy, and with a non-musical highlight being an appearance by the great Michael Rosen.

My review of the WOMAD festival’s welcome return to Charlton Park in Wiltshire for the first time since 2019, and my reflections on the festival’s history, and my 20 years of attending and working in the children’s workshops, which culminate in a children’s procession through the festival site on its final evening.

My review of BAC Beatbox Academy’s ‘Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster’, the top-rated show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019, which is back on tour after two years off the road because of Covid. If you get the chance to see it, don’t miss it!

My thoughts on the eve of England’s second Covid lockdown, set to last for a month from November 5, in which, as well as being critical of the government’s typically slow and muddled response, I also reflect on the importance of live music and other forms of culture, and how they have flickered to life, against all the odds, since Covid hit, as well as how they might resume when this lockdown ends.

Linking to a video of my band The Four Fathers playing at a small party in a park in south London on August 29, 2020, and my assessment of the changing rules regarding gatherings, which would now make this illegal — although whether or not the new ban on gatherings of more than six people is a proportionate response by the government to an increase in infection rates is something that, I believe, needs discussing.

Videos made using found footage by Bren Horstead, the drummer of my band The Four Fathers, to accompany the release of our most recent studio recordings, which we recorded in December with the great Charlie Hart (Ian Dury, Ronnie Lane): ‘The Wheel of Life’, ‘This Time We Win’ and ‘Affordable.’

Today, Bandcamp, the US online music service, is waiving its fees to help musicians, so please feel free to buy any of the studio recordings by my band The Four Fathers, including our brand-new online single, ‘The Wheel of Life’, a meditation on mortality and living in the moment.

Promoting the release of ‘This Time We Win’, the new single by The Four Fathers, which I wrote last year, inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, and which we recorded in December with Charlie Hart, who also plays Wurlitzer piano on it. Ironically, the arrival of the coronavirus has led suddenly to seriously reduced emissions, although our leaders are desperate to restore “business as usual” as soon as they can, a delusional position that we hope as many people as possible will resist.

A three-in-one article, launching the new song, ‘Affordable’, about the housing crisis, by The Four Fathers, plus a review of the campaign to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, one year since the trees were all cut down by contractors working on behalf of Lewisham Council and Peabody – and some photos of protestors’ posters put up on the hoardings around the garden last week to mark the anniversary.

Today marks 25 days until the UK is supposed to leave the EU, and my band The Four Fathers are taking the opportunity to release — via Bandcamp — our anti-Brexit anthem, ‘I Want My Country Back (From The People Who Wanted Their Country Back)’, which has become something of a live favourite over the last few years.