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Just Backdated

Just Backdated

Just Backdated is the blog of music journalist Chris Charlesworth.

43 articles

List of articles in the library

By date | By artist | Most recently added

The Beatles: On Air – Live At The BBC Volume 2

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 7 September 2014

WHAT DO Gwendolyn Hopkins of Nottingham, Diane and Jenny of Bedford, Jill, Janet, Mary, Brenda and Lynn from Wakefield, Carolyn Hill and Jane Richards from ...

ABBA: Live At Wembley Arena

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2014

ABBA NEVER REALLY wanted to bother with performing live at all. They would have preferred to be a studio band, a bit like Steely Dan, ...

David Bowie, Dylan Howe: Dylan Howe: Subterranean – New Designs on Bowie's Berlin

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2014

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT to imagine the look of dismay on the faces of executives at RCA Records when David Bowie delivered the tapes for ...

The Kinks: Sunny Afternoon: Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 16 May 2015

A FEW WEEKS AGO Ray Davies was in the building that houses Omnibus Press to attend the launch of a book entitled 100 Years Of British ...

Elvis Costello: Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2015

LIKE A HANDFUL of rock stars I have encountered along the way – among them Townshend, Bowie and Zappa – Elvis Costello would have made ...

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: The Agora, Cleveland 1978

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 12 December 2015

BRUCE WAS LEADING a leaner, meaner E Street Band in 1978, road trained to the nth degree from playing night after night throughout '76 and ...

Paul McCartney: Philip Norman: Paul McCartney – The Biography

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, June 2016

WHAT MUST IT be like to be Paul McCartney? Deluged by gargantuan levels of fame since the age of 21, he has remained squarely in ...

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run (Simon & Schuster)

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2016

TWO OF THE best Bruce Springsteen shows I ever saw were at Wembley Stadium in July of 1985. ...

Gillian Welch: Boots No. 1 - The Official Revival Bootleg

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 28 November 2016

THE ARRIVAL OF A new record from Gillian Welch and her partner Dave Rawlings is an eagerly anticipated event at Just Backdated. ...

David Hepworth: 1971 – Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2016

THERE CAN'T BE many amongst us who haven't at one time or another wished we could turn the clock back to a period in time ...

Paul Simon: Peter Ames Carlin: Homeward Bound – The Life Of Paul Simon

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2016

IF EVER A career in music was pre-ordained, it is that of Paul Simon, the ambitious, gifted and ever-so-scrupulous first son of a professional double-bass ...

The Beatles: Steve Turner: Beatles '66 – The Revolutionary Year

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, February 2017

"ED SHEERAN," screams the cover of this months GQ magazine. "How he became the biggest pop star on the planet." Not while Paul McCartney walks ...

Wilson Pickett: Tony Fletcher: In The Midnight Hour – The Life & Soul Of Wilson Pickett

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, February 2017

ABUSE RUNS in the family, or so they say. Those ill-treated as children go on to ill-treat as adults and it's near impossible to break ...

Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington: The Roxy, 14 December 1976 – 23 April 1977, Our Story

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2017

ON DECEMBER 14, 1976, after a brief stint as the first in an endless stream of optimists who tried to manage the Damned, Andrew Czezowski, ...

The Stone Roses: Wembley Stadium, London

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, June 2017

TO WEMBLEY STADIUM for the sell-out Stone Roses show, my first visit to the "new" Wembley, which towers up far higher than the old one ...

Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains: Pink Floyd at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, July 2017

AT THE START of the V&A's Pink Floyd exhibition there is a photograph of the first ever van that transported the four-man group and their ...

Allan Jones: Can't Stand Up For Falling Down: Rock'n'roll War Stories

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, August 2017

THE AGE OF DEFERENCE had yet to lapse when I joined Melody Maker in 1970. Four years later, when Allan Jones joined the paper, it ...

Joe Hagan: Sticky Fingers – The Life & Times of Jann Wenner & Rolling Stone Magazine

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 3 November 2017

THE IMAGE OF the brooding, avaricious, power-hungry newspaper proprietor was set in stone by Orson Welles in the film Citizen Kane and through the ages ...

Khruangbin: The Universe Smile Upon You and Con Todo El Mundo

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 22 May 2018

FOR MY BIRTHDAY last week my daughter bought me two CDs by a Texas instrumental trio called Khruangbin, which, roughly translated, is Taiwanese for aeroplane ...

Joe Penhall: Mood Music (Old Vic, London)


Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 3 June 2018

MOOD MUSIC is a play about the music industry, specifically the abuse of power that enables an established, controlling figure to benefit from the creativity of ...

The Doors: Jerry Hopkins

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 5 June 2018

MY WRITER FRIEND Jerry Hopkins, who died at the weekend aged 82, was a grizzled old veteran of rock's seminal years. ...

Jimmy Page: Chris Salewicz: Jimmy Page – The Definitive Biography

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, August 2018

BACK IN 2012 I was involved in convoluted negotiations with Jimmy Page's lawyer for Omnibus Press to publish a trade edition of the photo book ...

Roger Daltrey: Thanks A Lot, Mr. Kibblewhite – My Story

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2018

AMONGST THEIR many virtues, the Who were disgustingly honest. Jagger only told you what he wanted to tell you, Led Zep were taciturn, Floyd aloof ...

The Who: Live at the Fillmore East, 1968

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2018

WELL, WELL, WELL, what have we here? Praise be, for it is nothing less than the first "new" and officially sanctioned live recording from the ...

Taylor Jenkins Reid: Daisy Jones & the Six

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2019

IN DECEMBER 1972 I found myself in the US reporting for Melody Maker on a Deep Purple tour as it visited Des Moines and Indianapolis. In ...

Bill Haley Jnr & Peter Benjaminson: Crazy Man Crazy – The Bill Haley Story

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, April 2019

IT WAS MY misfortune to see Bill Haley on stage for the first and only time in November 1979, about 15 months before he died, ...

Elton John: Rocketman: Melody Maker Memories of Elton

Film/DVD/TV Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, June 2019

MONDAYS ON Melody Maker were always a bit stressful for me. It was the day when we had to come up with a front-page lead story ...

The Beatles: Danny Boyle's Yesterday

Film/DVD/TV Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, July 2019

A WORLD WITHOUT the Beatles is not somewhere I would want to live, but this is the unlikely scenario on which this strange, occasionally enjoyable ...

Blondie, Debbie Harry: Debbie Harry: Face It

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2019

IT IS A popular misconception that – once they have tasted chart success and seen their faces in magazines – music stars like Debbie Harry ...

Elton John with Alexis Petridis: Me

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2019

A POPULAR musician who has stepped on stage dressed as Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse and Amadeus Mozart, complete with elevated, powdered wig, is unlikely to ...

John Entwistle, The Who: Paul Rees: The Ox – The Last Of The Great Rock Stars, the Authorised Biography Of John Entwistle

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2020

IN 1990, JOHN Entwistle spent two months in the region of Connemara on the west coast of Ireland, where fierce winds coming off the Atlantic ...

David Mitchell: Utopia Avenue

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 24 July 2020

DAVID MITCHELL is a distinguished author whose books are regularly reviewed by fellow novelists in upmarket broadsheets. His best known work, Cloud Atlas, is a dazzling ...

Eddie Floyd with Tony Fletcher: Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood – A Life In Soul

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 30 September 2020

EDDIE FLOYD isn't a household name like Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding, his private life was never as lively as Marvin Gaye or James Brown, ...

Shane MacGowan: Richard Balls: A Furious Devotion – The Authorised Story Of Shane MacGowan

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2021

WITH HIS uncombed hair, rotten teeth and charity shop clothes, not to mention the obligatory bottle, Shane MacGowan presented himself to the world as a ...

Blondie: Brighton Centre

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 28 April 2022

TO BRIGHTON for a Blondie concert and the realisation that what I've missed the most during the Covid-induced famine of live gigs is the feeling ...

Elvis Presley: Elvis — The Movie (dir. Baz Luhrmann)

Film/DVD/TV Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, July 2022

ABOUT 45 minutes into this extravagant, fast-paced, acclamatory biopic of Elvis, the camera focuses in on its hero sat on a folding chair at an ...

Deep Purple: O2 Arena, London

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2022

TO THE 02 by riverboat, courtesy of my old friends Deep Purple, though only three survive from the group I covered extensively for Melody Maker between 1970 ...

Chuck Berry: RJ Smith: Chuck Berry – An American Life (Omnibus)

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2022

"HE DIDN'T have personal friends," says Dick Allen, a showbiz agent who worked with Chuck Berry for years. "I travelled all the time with him. ...

Bruce Springsteen: Only the Strong Survive

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 17 November 2022

I REMEMBER… I was introduced to soul music through Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band whose 1966 album Hand Clappin' Foot Stomping' Funky-Butt… Live! retains ...

Phil Spector: Spector (Sky documentary)

Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, January 2023

THERE WAS no more pathetic sight than the prison shots of Phil Spector, wrinkled and bald, his dignity in ruins, his vanity undone, his arrogance ...

Paul Gorman: Totally Wired – The Rise & Fall of the Music Press (Thames & Hudson)

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, January 2023

THE HOME computer and its promiscuous offspring the internet were wrecking balls, demolishing much that was worth treasuring. Amidst the debris they left behind, the ...

ABBA: Voyage

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, February 2023

"I CAN'T believe it," sang the Who in A Quick One. "Do my eyes deceive me?" ...

Slade: Daryl Easlea: Whatever Happened To Slade? When The Whole World Went Crazee (Omnibus)

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2023

AT LAST! At last an author with insight, sympathy and commitment has written a substantial book about Slade that dissects the highs and lows of ...

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