NME SINGLES REVIEWS - July 2010 NME - July 11th, 2010

Villagers – Ship Of Fools Essentially benign, Villagers here lay a tense and never quite consummated Eighties post-punk/neo-psychedelic guitar chug over nautical singer-songwriterly metaphors. Ship Of Fools is sure to comfort morbidly introspective young people who feel adrift, or at sea, or storm-tossed, so to speak, in their daily lives. Sadly, it seems to fade…

Edinburgh Tips - July 2010 The Financial Times - July 11th, 2010

Every year at around this time journalist are asked for their tips for the best shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Professional critics can’t just pick all the things they have chosen before and know are the best because, like the low rent entertainers they essentially are, they too need to vary…

Sponsorship Of The Arts - July 2010 The New Statesman - July 1st, 2010

Apparently we must all tighten our belts. That’s easy for David Cameron to say, cycling everywhere and being all trim and fit. I’ve put on two stone in the last three years of constant touring. But it’s not only my waistline that, apparently, needs squeezing. Reading between the lines of The Big Society manifesto, Dave…

Comedy In Opposition - July 2010 GQ Magazine - July 1st, 2010

The sacred clown of the Lakota, The Heyóka, is the perfect comedian. He speaks in gibberish, goes naked in freezing weather, starves when food is plentiful, dances backwards through holy rituals, washes in dirt, and shares his shame with everyone; The shaman-clowns of the pueblos, the koshare, descend from the rooftops, naked and howling, to…

The World Cup - May 2010 Time Out - May 1st, 2010

Until Time Out e-mailed me asking me to write something on ‘why people should avoid the world cup’ I wasn’t even sure that it was the World Cup this year, and I assumed all the England flags I see flapping out of windows indicated the presence of proud BNP supporters. I am not interested in…

Evan Parker’s musical utopia - April 2010 The Guardian - By Stewart Lee - April 22nd, 2010

When I, a comedian currently fashionable in broadsheets, and an uncomprehending fan of Free Improvisation, was invited to publicise and programme Freehouse, the Cheltenham jazz festival’s new experimental strand, Evan Parker was the first musician I wanted to contact. For me, the 66-year-old saxophonist is the greatest living exponent of free improvisation. Nearly half a…