John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

April 6, 2018 / Album Reviews - Archive

BOTH SIDES OF THE SKY (Legacy) 9/10 Jimi Hendrix snuck up on the blues from behind, popped a hallucinogen in its mouth, clamped shut its jaws and waited for the gulp. Where his contemporaries Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck (all born within 28 months of each other) aspired to some…

April 5, 2018 / Features - Archive

Years after he had a hit with a bossa nova version of Paul McCartney’s song The Fool on the Hill, Sergio Mendes received a letter from the Beatle thanking him for his interpretation. Burt Bacharach was similarly appreciative of what Mendes did with The Look of Love. In the late…

April 3, 2018 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Lennox Theatre, March 17 5/10 The gap between intent and outcome is the hardest artistic chasm to bridge. The second hardest is to detach the work of art from the causal impetus, so it becomes self-contained, rather than being reliant on the audience’s sympathy for the artist’s peeves du jour.…