The Bikeriders review - beer, brawls and Harley-Davidsons

★★★ THE BIKERIDERS Beer, brawls and Harley-Davidsons

Austin Butler is leader of the pack in Jeff Nichols' biker-gang bonanza

The best-known book about motorcycle gangs is Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, a classic foundational text of the so-called “New Journalism”. It was published in 1966, two years before Danny Lyon’s The Bikeriders, the source material for Jeff Nichols’ new movie. Lyon (now 82) was primarily a photographer, but in this case accompanied his pictures with interviews with his subjects.

Music Reissues Weekly: Margo Guryan - Words and Music

MARGO GURYAN The jazz composer who changed tack to embrace Sixties pop

Lavish box set dedicated to the jazz composer who changed tack to embrace Sixties pop

Late summer 1966. Jazz was Margo Guryan’s thing. She was not interested in pop music. This changed when she was played The Beach Boys’s “God Only Knows.” Amazed by what she heard, she tuned in to pop radio for the first time. Her head was further turned by The Beatles and The Mamas & the Papas. A copy of “God Only Knows’s” parent album Pet Sounds was bought.

Music Reissues Weekly: The Beatles - Stowe School 1963

THE BEATLES - STOWE SCHOOL 1963 A schoolboy’s momentous tape recording

A schoolboy’s momentous tape recording

“We hope if you like it, you'll buy it,” says Paul McCartney. It’s 4 April 1963 and The Beatles are on stage and about to perform their third single “From Me to You.” It’s out in a week.

To his left, John Lennon instantly responds to the entreaty. “And if you don't like it,” he retorts. “Don't buy it.”

Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine Gallery review - art designed to change the world

★★★ JUDY CHICAGO: REVELATIONS, SERPENTINE Art designed to change the world

At 84, the American pioneer is a force to be reckoned with

Being a successful artist is not Judy Chicago’s primary goal. She abandoned that ambition six decades ago when the Los Angeles art world greeted her with hostility. Now she’s having the last laugh, though. At 84 she is being heaped with accolades, including induction into America’s National Women's Hall of Fame, and is enjoying worldwide celebrity.

Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's The Secret Public - How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture

JON SAVAGE'S THE SECRET PUBLIC How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture

A significant release

Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.

'I think of her as a proto-punk': documentarist Svetlana Zill on Anita Pallenberg

'I THINK OF HER AS A PROTO-PUNK: DOCUMENTARIST SVETLANA ZILL ON ANITA PALLENBERG The co-director considers her revelatory account of the Stones' muse of mayhem

The co-director considers her revelatory account of the Stones' muse of mayhem

Anita Pallenberg was a vital presence in the Stones’ most vital years. Her bright eyes and hungry mouth betrayed a ferocious appetite for pleasure and adventure, taking her from a nun-schooled Rome childhood to New York’s downtown art crowd, then modelling in Munich, where in 1965 she engineered an encounter with “shy” Keith Richards, a similarly callow Mick Jagger and her first, violent Stones lover Brian Jones. Richards saved her from Jones’ paranoid abuse in 1967, and they became notorious outlaw lovers for the next decade.

Music Reissues Weekly: Andwella - To Dream

How a cult psychedelic band laid the ground for a massive Demis Roussos hit

Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.

Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love In The World

WEST COAST CONSORTIUM - ALL THE LOVE IN THE WORLD Top-drawer British harmony pop

Top-drawer British harmony pop band whose promise was unfulfilled

West Coast Consortium’s first single was July 1967’s “Some Other Someday,” a delightful slice of Mellotron-infused harmony pop which wasn’t too far from The Ivy League’s “Funny How Love Can be” and The Rockin’ Berries’ “He’s in Town” – each of which were hits in, respectively, 1965 and 1964. All three bands were on the Pye label and its associated imprint Piccadilly.

Blu-ray: The Dreamers

★★★★ BLU-RAY: THE DREAMERS Bertolucci revisits May '68 via intoxicated, transgressive sex

Bertolucci revisits May '68 via intoxicated, transgressive sex, lit up by the debuting Eva Green

Isabelle (Eva Green) leans over, her long hair catches fire from a candle, and Matthew (Michael Pitt) devotedly snuffs it out. She doesn’t miss a beat at this real-life accident, consumed already by The Dreamers’ closed world of a Left Bank apartment in May ’68, where sexual transgression stands for the barricades and baton charges outside.

Music Reissues Weekly: Congo Funk! - Sound Madness from the Shores of the Mighty Congo River

CONGO FUNK! Sound Madness from the Shores of the Mighty Congo River

Assiduous exploration of the interconnected musical ecosystems of Brazzaville and Kinshasa

Brazzaville is on the north side of the Congo River. It is the capital of the Republic of the Congo. Kinshasa is on the south side of the Congo. It is capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaïre. The cities face each other, about 1.5km apart, divided by the river and being in different nations.