New Music CDs Round-Up 10

The-Dream: dark excess

Including The-Dream, Sia, Tom Petty, Giggs, David Weiss and Ed Harcourt.

This month's most interesting new music CDs according to theartsdesk music team includes a dark take on sex and consumerism by The-Dream, which is CD of the Month, "morally ambiguous" South London gangsta rap from Giggs, disco pop from Sia, Scissor Sisters and Robyn, "indietronica" from Grasscut and Tobacco, heritage rock from Tom Petty, immaculate jazz from David Weiss and a compilation of old Colombian dance music. Stinker of the Month is Eminem who is cordially advised to take up religion, get fat or do charity work. Reviewers this month are Joe Muggs, Thomas H Green, Bruce Dessau, Howard Male, Adam Sweeting, Russ Coffey, Marcus O'Dair and Peter Culshaw.

Forever Young, BBC Four

Insurance salesman James Osterberg likes to let his hair down in the evening

A bunch of old rockers ruminate on why they just keep rolling along

Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his against-all-the-odds lengthy career. But it could just as easily represent many of the world-weary yet resilient musicians interviewed in this unexceptional but nevertheless diverting documentary.

Diary of a Strumpette, Part Four: The show must go on!

Still waiting for the free gin: Miss Kitty Kowalski, Miss Velma Valentine and Miss Bettina Winters

It's not so easy being glamourous at Glastonbury, discovers Miss Kitty Kowalski

Well folks, it wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t showbiz, it wasn’t all fun ‘n’ games. It was Glastonbury, in all its dirty, pungent and chaotic glory. But, despite all the pitfalls, The Strumpettes did it, and, somehow, did it in style.

Glastonbury at 40, BBC Four

Disappointingly conventional plod through the festival's televised highlights

You could tell Glastonbury at 40 was in trouble as early as the opening three minutes, when it cut from a well-heeled, ageing hippie survivor mumbling about “earth magic” to footage of Robbie Williams in 1998 bashing his way through the entirety of "Angels". The programme stumbled into the vast gulf between those two concepts as uncertainly as a reveller stumbles into the wrong tent at four in the morning, and never once looked like finding its way back home.

Art Gallery: Ray Lowry - London Calling

A new exhibition pays tribute to one of the great sleeve designs

It’s hard to believe that it’s 30 years since the release of The Clash's London Calling, an album that sounds as vital, immediate and relevant today as it did then. Yet there are probably people who remain more familiar with London Calling’s iconic cover than the music contained on the two discs of shiny black vinyl that came with it. Perhaps that’s one reason a new exhibition inspired by London Calling is about the cartoonist and illustrator Ray Lowry, rather than The Clash or the album itself.

Diary of a Strumpette, Part Two: How the call came to Glasto

Miss Kitty Kowalski presents the inside track as her band heads to Glastonbury

Well, folks, only 10 days to go til The Strumpettes hit Glastonbury and let me tell ya, we’re gettin’ a little hot under the collar. It turns out this ain’t some big practical joke that Velma cooked up to give us all a fit o' the vapours. We’re goin’. Next week. And this little Strumpette is quakin’ in her boots.

Greenberg

Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig are excellent as an odd couple in Noah Baumbach's latest

Anyone who saw Ben Stiller in Zoolander will know that he is a very fine actor. He made his over-the-top character both believable and lovable (well, up to a point on the latter, but you know what I mean) while playing the fashion model’s absurdities for every laugh he could get. And now a fascinating counterpoint comes with his touching and beautifully reined-in portrayal of another narcissist, Roger Greenberg, a 41-year-old failed musician turned carpenter who is recovering from a breakdown.

Tom Waits to edit Mojo?

Tom Waits: a new career as a hack beckons

In what sounds like a hoax, but sources claim is really true, it seems that Tom Waits will be editing the 200th edition of that magazine for old rockers Mojo.  While we don't usually publish Press Releases, we will make an exception. You can judge the authenticity for yourself.

 

Malcolm McLaren: Artful Dodger, BBC Two

TV eulogy to the Pop-cultural catalyst

Bearing in mind this had been cobbled together in the two weeks since Malcolm McLaren’s death, and was fronted by the ubiquitous Alan Yentob, it could have been a dog’s breakfast of a programme. But it did manage to pinpoint various elements about Malcolm rather accurately, for those of us lucky enough to know him. One aspect which came through was his rather child-like quality. Probably the best story about him that his assistant for many years Sarah Bolton told me at a dinner after his funeral last week was how Malcolm was a huge fan of The Sooty Show – whenever it came on, work would stop and they would quite often find themselves rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Bearing in mind this had been cobbled together in the two weeks since Malcolm McLaren’s death, and was fronted by the ubiquitous Alan Yentob, it could have been a dog’s breakfast of a programme. But it did manage to pinpoint various elements about Malcolm rather accurately, for those of us lucky enough to know him. One aspect which came through was his rather child-like quality. Probably the best story about him that his assistant for many years Sarah Bolton told me at a dinner after his funeral last week was how Malcolm was a huge fan of The Sooty Show – whenever it came on, work would stop and they would quite often find themselves rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Malcolm McLaren: 1946-2010

A friend recalls a cultural catalyst and artist, and the architect of punk

We have lost one of the great cultural catalysts of our time, a brilliant provocateur, a different kind of artist. Malcolm McLaren was a dear friend, who will be painfully missed – we spent, for example, Millennium Eve together with a few friends in France. When Malcolm hit on the “serious joke” of running for Mayor of London in 2000, he roped me into being his agent. It was a lost cause, of course, but at times it was a surreal and often comic adventure. But then one of his favourite sayings was “Any fool can be a benign success, it takes real courage to be a failure”.