Jon Bryan, Author at Backseat Mafia

Reissue: Rush – All the World’s a Stage

For all Rush’s reputation as dazzling progressive rockers on their studio albums, they have an enviable parallell reputation as a thunderously hard rocking live act. While their 70s studio albums…

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Reissue: Rush – 2112

Over the last four decades Rush’s fusion of heavy metal and prog has seen them solidify their position as one of the most consistently popular rock bands on the planet.…

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Live Review: Bang Bang Romeo at The Plug, 21 March 2015

It’s been almost a year since I last saw Bang Bang Romeo live. That’s not to say they haven’t been playing the gigs, indeed their multiple appearances at the Tramlines…

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Not Forgotten: David Byrne – Feelings

In retrospect Feelings is probably the last time that David Byrne made a conscious effort to make an album that might sell to an audience beyond his most obsessed fans.…

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Not Forgotten – The Cult – Electric

The Cult, bless their ridiculous hairstyles, couldn’t have found it easy to follow-up their unexpectedly successful album Love, particularly as it had included one of the key rock songs of…

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Not Forgotten: Thea Gilmore – Avalanche

It can’t be easy being Thea Gilmore. Widely hailed as one of the best songwriters of her generation, yet receiving almost no radio play and little media coverage. She’s been…

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Not Forgotten: Warren Zevon – Life’ll Kill Ya

It’s tempting to retrospectively view Warren Zevon’s final three albums as a loose trilogy based around the theme of mortality. While the post cancer-diagnosis musings of My Ride’s Here and…

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Album Review: Taylor Locke – Time Stands Still

A few notes of electric piano and semi-distant slide guitar stamps Time Stands Still with the hallmarks of a West Coast album with a whole heap of promise. The opening…

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A Beginners Guide to Neil Young

From Beatles and Byrds indebted folk rock with Buffalo Springfield, to guitar-slinging misfit, to singer-songwriter intimacy, to professional misery-guts, to increasingly unpredictable rocker, to still moving elder statesman, Neil Young…

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Not Forgotten – The Music Career of Leonard Nimoy

The sad passing of Leonard Simon Nimoy will inevitably result in many obituaries re-analysing his film career both in front and behind the career. Quite how many of those same…

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