RPM: Revelations Per Minute
Sarah Walters is CityLife's music and arts writer and a graduate in English (U.Manchester) and Journalism & Politics (U.Salford); doubling up is her worst habit. She hates K bands and loves street art. She works, she gigs, she sleeps. And when she's not doing that, she's laughing at The Big Lebowski, pouring herself a Stolichnaya* or entertaining her troublesome schnauzer, Tommy Tinribs III. (*Other vodka brands are also available.)
By Sarah_Walters,
21 April 2009
More stunning examples. If it's yours, let me know and it could lead to a CityLife profile.
By Sarah_Walters,
21 April 2009
When reading the news this week that MTV viewers had voted as the second greatest album ever - second, I should add, to Michael Jackson's Thriller (the channel has only revealed the first 26 results out of a possible 300) - Craig David's Born To Do It, I found myself in a moral quandary.
Not, I should also add, because I agreed with it. But because the channel chose to drag in its ubiquitous presenter and radio DJ Zane Lowe as the voice of reason, to nervously inform the viewers that they had made what you might call... *cough*... a mistake.
Now, perhaps it's my tendency to play Devil's advocate, or more likely my general dislike for Lowe himself (who can really watch him conduct an interview without screaming at the TV: "Just finish the *'^"*^"^^* question!!!"?), but I found myself wishing I agreed with the MTV viewers.
Maybe Craig David is a musical genius, had I merely missed the subtle complexities and intellectual facets of his slick brand of soul hip-pop? Perhaps I had overlooked the hidden profundities in his message: 'The crowd said, 'Bo, Selecta',' I considered.
Erm... re-ee-wind...
It was hopeless; it was a view I couldn't stomach. Even finding myself in league with Zane Lowe was better than the prospect of ever having to hear David's 'groundbreaking tunes' again.
So, imagine my delight at finding I had a get out clause... that MTV itself had limited entries in its Greatest Ever Album poll to 1981 onwards - the year the channel started. It was a featureless year in a decade that music and fashion forgot, and MTV had knitted in a clause that eliminated just about ever Greatest Album Ever from entry.
Phew-ee-wind.
CityLife would love to hear your Top 10 albums choices. You can send them by posting them in the comments box below.
By Sarah_Walters,
01 April 2009
More of Hayley Proudfoot's photographs from the Northern Quarter, Manchester.
If it's yours, claim it! And it could lead to a CityLife profile.
By Sarah_Walters,
27 March 2009
Here at CityLife, we do our best to champion Manchester and its cultural exploits. And we know how tough it can be for bands to get that vital first bit of coverage in a papers.
So, we've come up with an idea... With the assistance of my wonderful snapper, Hayley Proudfoot, we'd like to give you a helping hand. We're going to take you out on a photoshoot, grill you for a little interview for this blog, and then we'll let you go again with a clutch of jpegs you can use to further your band's cause - for nowt!
If you fancy getting involved, leave a statement of interest below and I'll contact you through your CityLife profile, or email me directly at sarah.walters@citylife.co.uk.
By Sarah_Walters,
26 March 2009
Today I learnt that telling a musician she has an androgynous voice is rarely going to get you into her good books.
But I learnt it's also good to break up your questions to see how the first part goes down (imagine if I'd got to the bit where I'd asked about her androgynous appearance...phew...).
Needless to say, the reaction didn't make it to the final cut of my interview with Mica Levi of Micachu & The Shapes, which you can read here:
http://www.citylife.co.uk/music/features/12967_micachu_s_the_diamond_girl_for_2009
By Sarah_Walters,
25 March 2009
Anyone else finding it hard to break away from Chinatown Wars?
I feel like I've been rummaging round in virtual bins for days and I'm starting to think I might actually be on the run from the police. In fact I'm so immersed that when trying to describe the sensation of taking my eyes away from the DS screen's miniature world of tiny cars and pixel-wide men to do things in real life, I decribed it as "looking at the big world".
I think I might need help. See my review over at the Digital Life blog on this website.
By Sarah_Walters,
24 March 2009
It is with ecstatic whoops that i had the pleasure of opening an unassuming envelope this morning and pulling out a copy of Tank Girl One, a repackaged version of the collected Tank Girl series, drawn by Jamie Hewlett (now most famous as the artistic half of Gorillaz and designer of Monkey: Journey To The West) and written by Alan Martin.
Now being re-released in five digestable nuggets, the books celebrate the 20th anniversary of the very first Tank Girl strip in the sadly defunct Deadline comic. If you saw the terrible movie, don't let it taint your view... the comic is pure gold.
For those who don't know, Tank Girl was a bounty hunting, gun-totting lunatic who drove a tank, shaved her hair, often got naked, and spent her time screaching round the desert with her Koala pal and Kangaroo boyfriend (Booga) getting in and out of scrapes.
The movie made Tank Girl world famous. She even had her own shoe line in a high street footwear chain.
The books, though, celebrate the character's time on paper. To beef them up for collectors who still have the originals, there's previously unseen artwork in them, new intros from the creators and even a new novel: Tank Girl - Visions of Booga, with current artist Rufus Dayglo.
See/buy them all at www.tank-girl.com.
By Sarah_Walters,
24 March 2009
There's a lot of it out there - street art is now as much a feature of the city's character as its iconic buildings or historic art collections.
Only in Britain, unless you're Banksy or Cutup, most it goes uncredited. And yet it's often a witty and intelligent comment on the area is it created in. Take Banksy's sewer rats, Paul 'Moose' Curtis' clean graffiti, created by washing the dirt off the wall, or Another Limited Rebellion's Skull-A-Day project, drawing skulls on the streets of NYC around the trodden-in splats of chewing gum.
So, I'm launching the Street Art Social, which basically means that me and my helpful assistant Hayley Proudfoot will be scanning the streets of Greater Manchester looking for fine examples of street art, taking pictures of it, and putting up a new weekly post of fine examples here for the world wide web to appreciate.
Hayley's taken some shots in the Northern Quarter of the city, all viewable by clicking the image above. If any of them are yours, give us a shout.
And I want your contributions! If it's your art - CLAIM IT! Send me a link to your website or more examples of what you've done and we can post it up here. And if you want to recommend cool street art websites, do that too.
But I also hope it'll open up discussions about the value of street art, provoke questions around the legal issues surrounding it and, perhaps, create both a map of some of our greatest examples of street art and a virtual map of our city's finest street artists.
If you want to get involved, claim work or discuss stuff email me at sarah.walters@citylife.co.uk or comment on the relevant post.
By Sarah_Walters,
20 March 2009
From the clever, quasi-religious layout of that old rusty sandwich tin to the uppercase scrawl of those digitally added words, this is exactly the way to respond to tabloid tittle tattle.
Looks like John Squire won't be on board for the rumoured Stone Roses reunion, after all...
By Sarah_Walters,
20 March 2009
CityLife is staunchly in the G.O.O.D. camp about Manchester International Festival's 2009 calendar, but some of our readers have already started to disagree, one predicting it will be the end of Manchester International Festival altogether.
The festival launched a shiny ceremony yesterday with many guest appearances form the likes of Elbow's Guy Garvey and Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller. What was I most impressed with? Rufus Wainwright's faces. Here is a visual documentary of what Rufus Wainwright (Rufus b*****y Wainwright, people!) made of the glittering launch party at Manchester Art Gallery. Ah... it's the way he pulls 'em...
By Sarah_Walters,
16 March 2009
Who wouldn't want a natter with a girl like Lily Allen?
A second generation celebrity who got chucked out of school for behind the bike sheds shenanigans that would make most parents' hair curl - but apprently made her's laugh - who is never afraid of a controversial gaff and has sold millions of records?
There's no denying that she gives good copy (just as, in school, there was apparently no denying that she gave good... *cough*... we'll leave that there, CityLifers).
So what do you do when Lily Allen won't talk to you? Even when you call from your Salvador Dali phone?
...You talk to James Morrison.
Hush that collective sigh! Hell, the housewives need us as much as our regular CityLife fashionistas; Take A Break and daytime shows with Pip Schofield can only sustain you for so long before the cabin fever grips and you find yourself lying on the floor with a brush in one hand and a tin of gloss in the other painting the skirting boards.
It's a scary thought, but it happens to the best of us.
The moral of this story? Lily Allen keeps you off the gloss paint. Or something like that...
