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colin randall
London/France
Salut! Live reflects my passion for folk and related music - I'm a journalist and lifelong Sunderland supporter, based in France and London, from where I write about most things under the sun and the rain
Interests: film, football, france, badminton, folk music
Recent Activity
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We knew Damien Dempsey was a powerful, gutsy songwriter and song interpreter (see Pete Sixsmith's pieceon his gripping version of Ewan MacColl's Schooldays Over.) We did not know he was also a life-saver. After a show in the Irish town... Continue reading
Posted Apr 28, 2023 at Salut! Live
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What a heroine and what a tribute. Moonlighting from her band, Rachel Unthank joined another North-eastern artist, Paul Smith, for a short tour, which our Andrew Curry caught at the Bush Theatre in London. The heroine? Linda Thompson, once famously... Continue reading
Posted Apr 10, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Here's one for the media studies class. How do you get a complimentary piece about a radical leftwing enemy of the capitalist system into a newspaper nicknamed the house journal of the Conservative party? Do you damn with faint praise,... Continue reading
Posted Apr 6, 2023 at Salut! Live
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On St Patrick’s night, I was privileged to be present (as Gerry Logue's guest) at an excellent and enthusiastically received performance by Three Men and a Dog at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, west London. There is more on... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Salut! Live is immensely grateful to Andrew Curry for his series of outstanding reports from the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. See all instalments by clicking that link. It has clearly been a tremendous event and Andrew has found some... Continue reading
Posted Mar 18, 2023 at Salut! Live
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For the fourth part in his superb series looking back at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, Andrew Curry considers the important role played by performers whose names and music may be less familiar than the event's headliners …. Herkja:... Continue reading
Posted Mar 9, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Andrew Curry's retrospective reports from the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow have been much appreciated and widely read. I am glad to say there is more to come after this look at the work of Jim McLean ... THE SONGS... Continue reading
Posted Feb 27, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Celtic Connections, a really absorbing Glasgow festival, is over for another year. But Andrew Curry is still feeding on recent memory. For his second look at the 2023 event, he offers his thoughts on Transatlantic Sessions ... The Transatlantic Sessions... Continue reading
Posted Feb 21, 2023 at Salut! Live
Andrew Curry is a neglectful music website editor's dream. He comes up with ideas for which gigs he should review, pays his own way there and into the venue and files his articles as promptly, cleanly and engagingly as if... Continue reading
Posted Feb 12, 2023 at Salut! Live
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As 'Jake', John Clark was an inspired member of the little team that made Salut! Sunderland a half-decent site for fans of Sunderland AFC, also respected by many supporters of other football clubs. At the end of 2019, repeated technical... Continue reading
Posted Jan 18, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Rolling Stone magazine, as I read online yesterday, places Sandy Denny 164th in its list of 200 “greatest singers of all time”. If that seems insultingly low, as it initially did to me though it was hardly any surprise, imagine... Continue reading
Posted Jan 6, 2023 at Salut! Live
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Just when I thought I had one solution to the failure of my attempts to showcase Ed Pickford's noble anthem in appreciations of ordinary people, The Workers’ Song, as sung by the Pitmen Poets, a much better one popped along.... Continue reading
Posted Dec 26, 2022 at Salut! Live
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Salut! Live wishes as a happy Christmas and prosperous a new year as our masters will allow. It's been a strange year for this site, exhilaration at some astonishing statistics recording many hundreds and sometimes even thousands of daily visitors... Continue reading
Posted Dec 24, 2022 at Salut! Live
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I do not always nominate a best-of- year album or other piece of work. This year, I feel bound to do so. I have heard nothing better all year than the Pitmen Poets' rousing and timely rendering of one of... Continue reading
Posted Dec 19, 2022 at Salut! Live
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In praise of Linda Thompson. It'll take just a little while to get there unless you scroll down ... One of the perks of working for the arts desks of the bigger newspapers was, in happier times for journalism, the... Continue reading
Posted Dec 15, 2022 at Salut! Live
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Colin Randall writes: into my e-mail inbox popped a seasonal offering from the Albion Band, one of the most important evolving musical projects from decades of British folk and folk-rock. I am not the world's greatest fan of Christmas songs,... Continue reading
Posted Dec 12, 2022 at Salut! Live
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This article was devised and started before Sunderland vs Millwall. And then updated at half time and finished after the final whistle on a heartening 3-0 home win ... Long neglected, Salut! Live's Loft Vinyl series - the product of... Continue reading
Posted Dec 3, 2022 at Salut! Live
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This website, or rather its grumpy old owner, has a chequered history when it comes to Fleetwood Mac. I absolutely loved them in their original incarnation as a British blues band. Albatross was a departure of sorts but such a... Continue reading
Posted Dec 1, 2022 at Salut! Live
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Kris Drever is another of Salut! Live's neglected artists, a man I have long admired but all too rarely written about. Barbara Dickson gave him a little shout-out when she was interviewed for these pages in 2020 and, much more... Continue reading
Posted Nov 23, 2022 at Salut! Live
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I've been meaning to post something about Lindisfarne for some time. They've had mentions, for sure, but their achievements deserve more. My first encounter with this brilliant Newcastle band was, appropriately since my childhood beat was County Durham and my... Continue reading
Posted Nov 21, 2022 at Salut! Live
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To reach the little music venue I love most of all from, say, Piccadilly Circus, there’s a choice to be made. It’s a short walk but this part of central London is invariably busy. Accept that reality and just weave... Continue reading
Posted Nov 13, 2022 at Salut! Live
As years go by, acquaintance with death is unavoidable. Friends, relatives, former colleagues and people you know a little or a lot succumb to nature's way of doing things. The certainty of mortality hardly makes it easier when loved or... Continue reading
Posted Nov 12, 2022 at Salut! Live
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It is hard to think that it was as long ago as 2009 that I sat in front of my laptop in Abu Dhabi - where I was then working - and sent Rachel Unthank a stream of questions which... Continue reading
Posted Nov 10, 2022 at Salut! Live
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As I struggle to digest news of the death of Colin Irwin, an outstanding journalist but more importantly a man it was impossible to dislike, images of that kind, intelligent, impish and slightly quizzical face of his stream into my... Continue reading
Posted Nov 4, 2022 at Salut! Live
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For most professional musicians, some gigs stick in the memory and for all sorts of reasons. In the final year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign and life, Steve Ashley turned up, as long planned, for a performance in Kent. It... Continue reading
Posted Nov 2, 2022 at Salut! Live