... tell me this isn't a genuine charity letter.
Alas, not - for it is indeed genuine.
Now maybe I'm just a hoary old cynic, but please - attaching a sellotaped miniature bamboo crutch on a charity appeal for landmine relief strikes me as a rather misconceived idea. Surely people who've received a Nobel Peace Prize ought to think better than this.

Don't Look Back is a season of concerts promoted every year by the people behind the marvelous All Tomorrow's Parties festival. The idea for the shows is a simple one - so simple it's a wonder nobody has thought to capitalise on it before. (Although I know that the odd artist has, particularly in recent years, done the odd show of a similar nature and it's not the most original concept in rock and roll.)
A band or singer is invited to perform their most supposedly classic record, in its entirety, and then play a few extra things to flesh out the concert. Hitch and I have been to a fair few DLB shows and in the main they deliver brilliantly. Tortoise doing Millions Now Living Will Never Die was a triumph, and Tindersticks' performance at the Barbican was a fitting (apparent) end to their career. More problematic is when a much older band revisits a record that has gone down in legend - sometimes because the record is best remembered as a legend, and sometimes because the band should have stayed a thrilling memory rather than a bloated parody of their former selves. To wit: Iggy and the Stooges doing FunHouse was magnificent, Gang of Four playing Entertainment! rather embarrassing (even more so for those of us sittting in the fron row looking at the sweat dripping down their wrinkled faces).
This year is a mixed prospect so far - Sonic Youth (rapidly rising up my personal chart of most overrated rock bands of all time), House Of Love (once thought to be the saviours of British guitar rock - hmmm...) and Slint performing Spiderland. (Speaking of which - didn't Slint reform for a few extremely select shows including headlining an ATP weekend with the promise they'd never play together again? He who makes the rules breaks the rules too obviously - especially if hes an overzealous concert promoter.)
Anyhow - there are more DLB concerts to be announced soon. So in the spirit that if you don't ask you don't get, herewith my Top 10 wish list for future Don't Look Back evenings:
YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS play Colossal Youth
TOM WAITS & CRYSTAL GAYLE play One From The Heart
DEVO play Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo
ARCADE FIRE play Funeral
RED HOUSE PAINTERS play Red House Painters (Rollercoaster)
DEXY'S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS play Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
BOARDS OF CANADA play Geogaddi
KRAFTWERK play Trans Europe Express
JONI MITCHELL plays The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL play In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
and a couple of ludicrously implausible ones for good measure (yep, even more improbable than the ones above)
KATE BUSH plays Never ForEver
STEVIE WONDER plays Innervisions

Hope you all enjoy this gem from Aphrodite's Child featuring a very young (and surprisingly slim) Demis Roussos. I simply love Aphrodite's Child and this is one superb clip.

This was given to me at Oxford Circus tube the other day. Isn't it funny how it manages to be both touching and yet very scary at the same time.
(And perhaps not as scary as the fact that it took me nine attempts to load this image - and it only finally allowed it after I had blurred out the phone number. Blogger cyber-censorship or just paranoia on my part? Hmmm ...)

... only one more day to go until this comes into the world.
To say I am excited would be a gross understatement.

To the Astoria the other Saturday night for a concert by the new, solo Jarvis Cocker. This was always going to be a great night anyway, as our good friend Janne (who is rather smitten with Jarv and has the honourable distinction of having gone with him to a karaoke bar where he performed Toto’s magnificent ‘Africa’) was celebrating a rather major birthday.
Anyhow, I’ve been okay with the Jarvis solo record but have yet to love it as much as the best of Pulp (which, in my book, means ‘This Is Hardcore’). However, there’s nothing like being in the presence of the man himself and the live show really brings out the best in the new songs – loud and energetic and funny and bitter. Cocker starts the show by throwing a ripped up copy of the Daily Telegraph into the audience and later explains that’s because their review that morning called him “the Judi Dench of Indie Rock”. Inaccurate (as you’d naturally expect from the Telegraph) since the Jarvis on stage is more like Morrissey scripted by Joe Orton. Ironically so, in fact, since as he points out, he has to leave the stage by 9.30 so the disco dolly club G.A.Y. can start in the same venue at 10. And right on time he duly leaves with a strobe-frenzied rendition of ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath, the layers of irony as dense as an oversized French onion.
This being a Jarvis Cocker gig, and this being a room full of people who love his particularly sardonic take on Britishness and the vagaries of life, something ridiculous happens early on in the set that seems to me to sum up the rapport between Jarvis and his audience. Not long into the song ‘I Will Kill Again’, a particularly skewed ballad about a warm-hearted, friendly man with a secretive dark side, a host of red balloons is released into the crowd, which they bounce and punch to keep afloat during the song. “That must win the award for the least appropriate use of balloons at a gig,” Cocker announces, then “Are you the same ones who did that at Koko (another London venue) because they’re all left over from your Grandad’s cancelled party?”
And sure enough when I finally manage to grab one of these balloons it reads ‘Happy 80th Cyril – and surprise family reunion”. Turns out the balloons genuinely were intended for the audience member’s grandfather’s surprise birthday but he died before it was due to take place, so they’ve kept them and are throwing them into the audience at gigs - in his memory. This seems to me to sum up everything that is great about Jarvis Cocker and the world he’s written about in song through the years. Pop music would be a much duller place without him.