Music Reissues Weekly: Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Singles

ISAAC HAYES - HOT BUTTERED SINGLES Plugging a gap in the story of the soul giant

Plugging a gap in the story of the soul giant

After the chart success of his second album, June 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul, it was inevitable that any single had to represent Isaac Hayes in a different way to the LP. The album’s 12-minute version of “Walk on by” would not work as a seven-incher. There was also “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which clocked in at over 18 minutes. They did, though, become the A- and B-sides of a tie-in single. But only after significant editing.

How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review - mummy issues drive autobiographical dramedy

★★★ HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER, KING'S HEAD THEATRE Jonathan Maitland writes of his mother, but should we laugh or cry?

Lots of heartache, but a strange void where the heart of the play should be

It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006 memoir differently. My house laughed a lot (me especially) but some see the tragic overwhelming the comic, and the laughs dry up. When it comes to humour, as is the case with mothers, it’s each to their own.

Reykjavik, Hampstead Theatre review - drama frozen by waves of detail

★★★ REYKJAVIK, HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Drama frozen by waves of detail

Richard Bean’s new play revisits the Hull fishing industry of the 1970s

“Don’t take a piss in the house of a woman you have made a widow.” The mixture of earthy comedy and tragic pain in this piece of parental advice is typical of the tone of Richard Bean’s Reykjavik, his new work play which explores the lives of the Hull trawlermen of the mid-1970s.

Album: Bastille - &

Dan Smith attempts to pare back to less bombast but doesn't always succeed

Grandiloquent indie-synth-pop outfit Bastille have been around for over a decade. Three of their four albums have been chart-toppers (the other one still made Top 5 and went Gold). They are no flash in the pan.

The Apprentice review - from chump to Trump

A blistering study of The Donald’s bad education

It’s common to say that Shakespeare would have liked such-and-such a modern story, but I think he actually might have gone for this one. The Bard’s eye was drawn to cruelty at every turn, and bad-to-the-bone cruelty seeps from each scene of The Apprentice, a drama about Donald Trump’s rise to fame and gain.

Salem’s Lot review - listless King remake

★★ SALEM'S LOT King's small-town vampires suffer vicious edits amidst tantalising folk magic

King's small-town vampires suffer vicious edits amidst tantalising folk magic

A boy’s dead friend scratching at his first-floor window, Nosferatu-like vampire Barlow rearing up with heart attack shock…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV take on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot scared a teen generation out of their skins.

This new film exists first as a failed franchise equation, adding Conjuring Universe producer James Wan to IT screenwriter Gary Dauberman as writer-director (he also wrote The Conjuring’s Annabelle series), but suffering heavy cuts prior to this much delayed release.

French Toast, Riverside Studios review - Racine-inspired satire finds its laughs once up-and-running

 FRENCH TOAST The English and the French, the men and the women, the young and the old, lock horns in Seventies farce  

Comedy gains momentum when characters are rounded out

It’s always fun jabbing at the permanently open wound that is Anglo-French relations, now with added snap post-Brexit, its fading, but still frothing, humourless defenders clogging up Twitter and radio phone-ins even today. So it’s probably timely for Gallic-Gang Productions to resurrect Jean (La Cage aux Folles) Poiret’s farce Fefe de Broadway, adapted as French Toast.

Music Reissues Weekly: The Devil Rides In - Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult

THE DEVIL RIDES IN - SPELLBINDING SATANIC MAGICK Pop & rock embrace the dark side

When pop and rock embraced the dark side

Just over two weeks before Christmas 1967, The Rolling Stones issued Their Satanic Majesties Request. The album’s title appeared to serve time on the peace-and-love, flowers-for-everyone good vibes of the psychedelic era. A year later, the Stones’ next LP, Beggars Banquet, went further. It opened with "Sympathy for the Devil." “Just call me Lucifer…or I'll lay your soul to waste,” sang Mick Jagger.

Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy review - from clever conceptual art to digital decor

★★★ MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN, ROYAL ACADEMY From clever conceptual art to digital decor

A career in art that starts high and ends low

Michael Craig-Martin was the most playful and provocative of the conceptual artists. His early sculptures are like visual puns, a play on the laws of nature. On the Table, 1970 (pictured below right), for instance, appears to defy gravity. Four buckets filled with water stand on a table; so far so ordinary. But the table has no legs and is suspended from the ceiling by ropes and pulleys.