When Gary Clark Jr.’s right hand hits the strings of his electric guitar, it’s almost always a downstroke — as if he wants gravity on his side. At a crammed Mercury Lounge on Tuesday, the notes fall off his guitar like raindrops. Ripe fruit. Bombs. Sixties-inspired blues-rock shouldn’t steal your breath so easily in 2011, but Clark’s playing can be almost paralyzing. A dumbstruck front-row fan can’t seem to get his hands to clap between songs. “Wow,” he says, arms pinned to his sides. “Wowwowwow.” Read full article > >

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Blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr. is poised to be a breakout star in 2012

Sixties pop group The Monkees calls off nine remaining US tour dates, in a dispute over ‘business matters’.

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Monkees call off remaining tour

The rain sheeted down; time washed away. I looked down from the rooftop in Saigon where, more than a generation ago, in the wake of the longest war of modern times, I had watched silent, sullen streets awash. The foreigners were gone, at last. Through the mist, like little phantoms, four children ran into view, their arms outstretched. They circled and weaved and dived; and one of them fell down, feigning death. They were bombers. This was not unusual, for there is no place like Vietnam. Within my lifetime, Ho Chi Minh’s nationalists had fought and expelled the French, read more

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Vietnam: The Last Battle

Made in Dagenham, a film about women battling for equal pay in the sixties, is not “a lament” but a “celebration” of the lives of working-class people in the UK, its director has said.

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Made in Dagenham ‘shows British spirit’