In his own words: Army life, cockney geezers - and a divine revelation in Neasden ... The first single I bought … ... Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers: That's What I Like (1989) ... Growing up in an army barracks I remember hearing a lot of army-related songs, mostly about Hitler's genitalia or lack of, the QM's stores and one perennial favourite, that went something along the lines of "left, right, left, right, left" , which I could hear belting out from the parade square even as I put on the
The Faroe Islands, halfway to Iceland, has a tiny population with a huge appetite for fish, whale hunting and astonishing music. Will Hodgkinson meets the indie bands and folk singers - and the group that plays cement mixers ... Audio slideshow: Hear Faroese music and see more photographs by Murdo Macleod ... On a rain-soaked beach in the Faroese village of Gøta, Jón Tyril, founder of the G! Festival, is telling me about this summer's event. I've expressed concern that a stage, an audience and
Nutty boys? Well, yes, but with a new concept album about the capital, Madness have morphed into 'the working-class Pink Floyd' and made their masterpiece, says Simon Garfield ... The bus at the end of the road says "World Tour of Camden". On the open-top deck is a band about to perform a song they first played 30 years ago. About 500 people in the street below are readying themselves to bounce up and down. It is late April. The sun is shining. Has there ever been a simpler recipe for happiness?
On the final day of the Lake of Stars festival founder Will Jameson is not kicking back with a celebratory Chibuku Shake Shake, the local, lumpy maize beer and an acquired taste. Instead, he's planning how the festival can grow. "There is nothing like this in Africa, and I think there's the potential to have a festival for 50,000 people here," he says ... Jameson's love affair with Malawi started a decade ago when he arrived as a volunteer in his gap year. He had never heard of the country when
The voice is quavery and hesitant, the sound of a frightened, exhausted young man. The trebly nature of the recording - on a cassette, over the telephone - makes him sound old, paper-thin, and accentuates the slight hitch in his voice. For he is talking, quietly and surely, about his own self-destruction: "I can't drink, I can't, like the doctor said if I drank anything even remotely like the way I've been drinking for the past however long, I've got six months at the absolute outside to live."