Jerry Springer: The Opera - December 2003 Time Out - December 1st, 2003

Two and a half years ago the composer Richard Thomas asked me to help with a Battersea Arts Centre workshop of his un-finished epic, Jerry Springer The Opera. I thought it would take a couple of months. We didn’t expect a National Theatre run, or a West End transfer, and we certainly didn’t expect to…

Nick Cave - September 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - September 14th, 2003

Lord Melvyn Bragg has flung open the gate of terrestrial television’s last remaining temple of culture and welcomed in a former heroin addict who sometimes physically attacked his own audiences, and whose only chart hit was accompanied by a video depicting him murdering Kylie Minogue. Tonight’s South Bank Show features the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave.…

Calexico - February 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - February 11th, 2003

Joey Burns has been biding his time. To see his group, Calexico, delivering their enthralling fusion of twangy guitars and widescreen soundtrack atmospherics live, often accompanied by a Mariachi band in traditional costume, one wouldn’t assume that such an explosive performance was the result of patience. But for over a decade, the rhythm section of…

The Folk’s Back Home – Shirley Collins - January 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - January 5th, 2003

While appearing in a production at the National Theatre in 1977, the English folk singer Shirley Collins lost her voice to nerves, and her musician husband to an actress. She rarely performed in public again, eschewing the peripatetic life of the entertainer to raise her children alone. But, in the previous quarter-century, she had travelled…

Spinner Takes All - May 2002 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - May 12th, 2002

Four decades after his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man movie has honoured the original adolescent anti-hero with an undisclosed budget so high that, according to its director, “if you knew how much it was, it would give you a nosebleed”. Spider-Man once survived attack from an alien entity disguised as his…

Patti Smith - April 2002 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - April 7th, 2002

The assumed rivalry between Blondie’s vocalist, Debbie Harry, and the poet and singer Patti Smith is one of the most persistent subplots in histories of the 1970s New York punk movement. Apparently, downtown wasn’t big enough for the both of them. But despite their shared pedigree, Harry has become an icon and Muppet Show guest,…