Eight records Keith Richards would take to a Desert Island If we ever needed proof Keith Richards is now an English national treasure, just take a listen to the old Stone smokily cackling away on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs. Once the genteel preserve of crusty academics, senior politicians and other UK establishment figures, Desert Island Discs…
Bet Kylie Minogue’s arse isn’t quite the R’s you were expecting. Thanks to the UK Sun newspaper for the picture. The P, Q & R of the AMERICA’S Gift Index The arse above belongs to Australian pop singer and actress Kylie Minogue. It has been voted the best arse in Britain. And if you’re a straight guy or a not-so-straight girl, it’s…
CHECK THE MNO Index of AMERICA’S Gift below Christopher Marlow: English playwright who greatly influenced Shakespeare The young guy above is Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlow, stabbed to death aged 29 in a London pub brawl in 1593. But why is he in AMERICA’s Gift? Well, it was Marlow’s play ‘The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus’ that kicked off…
The JKL Index to AMERICA’S Gift: The untold story of how blues evolved. I welcome any excuse to include a photograph of the great Lonnie Johnson. This shot must have been taken around 1925. Check those spats. According to the index of AMERICA’S Gift, Johnson is the blues’ most common surname, with King next (although two of these…
The ‘G, H, I’ index to AMERICA’S Gift: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HOW BLUES EVOLVED. James Hewlett started the blues ball rolling Believe it or not, a Trinidadian actor performing Shakespeare’s Hamlet in New York in 1822, one James Hewlett, is known to have bowed to audience pressure and interrupted his soliloquy to sing a popular American slave song of the…
