WITH a wealth of material going back nearly 40 years, it would be hard for any one person to come up with as good a set list and showmanship as David Essex does.Read
THE Kooks couldn't have got a worse press in recent months if they'd rigged the Zimbabwean elections or gone on stage clutching the Olympic torch every night.Read
WITH breath-taking film from the BBC television series of the same name, The Blue Planet Live! takes the audience where it can never hope to go in real life.Read
"LOVE the score, who's this Mahler guy's agent?" an ignorant Hollywood executive is supposed to have said after the premiere of the 1971 arthouse film Death In Venice, which featured the long-dead Mahler's mighty Fifth Symphony.Read
EDWYN Collins was given a rapturous ovation from the Glee Club after finishing his set with the brilliant 1995 hit A Girl Like You, because they'd never met a singer recovering from a brain haemorrhage before.Read
PITCHED somewhere in the cavernous gap between The Cure and Smashing Pumpkins, Captain are a confused band who just cannot be all things to all men.Read
IRISH favourite Dominic Kirwan rocked with his West Midland fans in a show that had groovy grannies crowding in front of the stage yelling for more.Read
THIS is an excellent, light-footed show, with a pleasing team of dancers and, in Andrew Alton, who also directs, a central character who has clearly thrown himself into the business of learning to tap.Read
WHEN a band is touring a new album they have a tough choice to make - do they play new songs and promote the album or give the audience all their old favourites?Read
WITH Arctic temperatures outside and a muted atmosphere inside the draughty, cavernous, not quite full NIA it seemed that The Beach Boys faced an uphill struggle to bring some Californian sunshine to Birmingham.Read
BASSIST Norman Watt-Roy does not go in for all that two set stuff, he told the audience at the Garrick, so it was a straight 90 minute set, ending with a long Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.Read
"I CAN feel the gods of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest all around me here tonight," drawled Phil Anselmo, a man so laid back it's a wonder he doesn't perform from a horizontal position.Read
