Dylanesque – BBC radio interview, music mag profile and London gig review

You’d have to be pretty careless to have missed the UK release of Dylanesque, Bryan Ferry’s new album of Bob covers. It’s been everywhere - if I’d been doing the PR, I’d be delighted with the album’s exposure.

Latest sightings include:

* Mark Radcliffe (Ferry fan and the brightest button on BBC Radio) interviews the enigmatic Byron about Dylanesque in tomorrow night’s show, Tuesday 2230 GMT, BBC Radio 2. You can listen on the web as it’s broadcast (and for seven days thereafter).

www.bbc.co.uk/radio2



* Observer Music Monthly profile: Thanks to Martin Cowan: “More from Bryan Ferry in yesterday's Observer Music Monthly:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2033516,00.html



* And Ferry’s well-received promo tour reached London with a sell-out at London’s Albert Hall. Review from The Independent here:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article2369594.ece


Gerry Smith

Joss Stone slammed

Let’s be honest. I can’t stand Joss Stone’s music. Or any of her supermarket popster contemporaries – Norah Jones, Katie Melua, Jamie Cullum. Or those earnest young men who drone on from the same hymn sheet.

Why? Because what they offer has been done before, many times over. And it has been done far, far better.

So I was intrigued to see Joss Stone’s new album/gigs slammed in the press. “Big voice, little to say” was the message. Which had been exactly my own reaction when she was being praised to the skies at launch a few years ago.

But to single out Stone for such criticism is very unfair. Hell, all the big soul singers are guilty of the same sin – over-excitable, inappropriate vocals, limited content, poorly expressed. Haven’t the critics currently slamming Stone ever listened carefully to Aretha Franklin or Tina Turner?



Gerry Smith

Amy Winehouse live – music for grown-ups, boozing for losers

Amy Winehouse, the exciting young Brit chanteuse, is currently managing the almost impossible - attracting demanding jazz fans, while getting the mass bonehead market to shake its collective ass and persuading 30-something supermarket impulse buyers to throw the new album into the trolley alongside the baked beans and the cat food.

It can’t last forever – at some point, hard artistic choices will have to be made. But, for the moment, Amy Winehouse is setting the popular music agenda in these parts. And producing some great art.

Friday’s screening by BBC 1 of a recent London hotel gig underlined just why she’s making waves – great voice, charismatic on-stage persona, strong material, and a wonderful band.

It also reminded you how it could all end up in tears. Much as a I value non-conformity, the sight of Winehouse clearly under the influence of booze, seeking refuge in a glass throughout the gig, exchanging “f*ck off!s” with a heckler, was dispiriting.

Somebody may be persuading her that playing a foul-mouthed lush is a good career move. Music fans will be praying that wiser counsels prevail. Amy Winehouse is an outstanding young musician; here’s hoping she doesn’t p*ss it all away in show biz excess. Boozing brazenly in public is for losers.


Gerry Smith