James Gandolfini. Such incredibly sad news about actor James Gandolfini who has died of a suspected heart-attack at the age of just 51 while on holiday in Italy. Only a couple of weeks ago Pam Corkery and I were talking on The Two (Newstalk ZB Friday and Sunday evenings from 8pm) about how The Sopranos…
Category: Artists: A-C
Robin Gibb’s Death 1 Year On – A Stunning Secular-Gospel Bee Gees Song From The Early 70s
The Bee Gees circa 1981. One year ago today I was lying by the pool in Bali, checking email and realising one of my heroes had just died. If you click here you can link to the piece I wrote later that day in a disastrously a/c-free internet cafe about Robin Gibb’s death and what…
Bobby Womack Live In Auckland – His Most Monumental Song
Bobby Womack. Things have been a bit of whirlwind lately and – forgive me Bobby – but I somehow forgot that soul great Bobby Womack was playing in Auckland tonight. Realising my error just before show time, not surprisingly I missed out on tickets to the man who once played guitar in Sam Cooke’s backing…
Wishing Billy Joel A Happy Birthday With His Saddest Song
Billy Joel. A very quick post to wish Billy Joel a happy 64th birthday. I hope Billy gets inspired by Rod Stewart who has said goodbye to years of writer’s block and has finally released an album of new, self-written songs (Time). And while it may not seem like a particularly long time, believe it…
The Bee Gees 1972-74 – A Hidden Gem From Their Most Forgotten Era
For Anzac day I was trying to think of an appropriate song and funnily enough, a Bee Gees song popped on my iPod and there it was, the perfect song. A slow, almost genteel acoustic ballad, King And Country ranks as one of the Gibbs’ great forgotten works from their transition period in the early…
Andy Gibb With A Country / Pop Song John Denver Would’ve Been Proud Of
I wrote a post yesterday about it being 25 years this week since the death of Andy Gibb and mentioned that many music fans might be surprised to learn much of his songwriting was in the country vein. This taps into the endless frustration I have with people’s idiotic appraisal of late 70s music in…
25 Years Since Andy Gibb’s Death – A Remarkable, Lost Song
Andy Gibb. A little over a week since Barry Gibb’s triumphant Mission Estate Concert in Napier (in front of 20,000 fans, see article below about my backstage experience), the Gibb family are in the news again today, specifically Andy. If he was still alive, today would be his 55th birthday and in just five days…
Backstage With Bee Gee Barry Gibb At The Mission Estate Concert
The Two went on tour this past weekend and despite inept road-signs, several u-turns, a missing map-book and an embarrassing absence of modern phone-internet technology, we made it to Napier and back to Auckland in one piece. In the process Pam Corkery and I also had the most welcoming, humbling, human and enthralling backstage…
Barry Gibb Mythology Tour Concert Review – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Barry Gibb at Rod Laver Arena, February 12. Because one Barry Gibb concert was never going to be enough, I decided to jump across to Melbourne for a whirlwind couple of nights to see the second most successful songwriter in music history* play Rod Laver Arena just 11 nights before he’ll be here in New…
Why Cliff Richard Is Much Cooler Than You Think
Last night I saw my very first childhood music hero in concert, the third time I’ve now seen this most unfashionable of pop stars in a live setting. When I was five years old, Cliff Richard was it. Sure, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon were up there too, but top of the pile as a…
Richard Ashcroft Sampling The Bee Gees – 10 Years Since Maurice Gibb’s Death
He was the glue, the joker, the multi-instrumentalist and the rock ‘n’ roll of the Bee Gees and today, it’s 10 years since Maurice Gibb’s sudden death. Thinking back to the news headlines after Maurice died (due to complications from a twisted intestine), so many stories referred to him as “the quiet Bee Gee” which…
The Barry Gibb Interview 2012 – The Full Transcript Plus Another Forgotten Bee Gees Classic
A few weeks ago I interviewed (alongside my co-host on Newstalk ZB’s The Two, Pam Corkery) the last remaining Gibb brother, Bee Gee Barry Gibb. A feature article based on this interview will be appearing in New Zealand’s number one current affairs magazine The Listener in January ahead of Barry’s concert at the Mission in…
