WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Album reviews
Latest releases from Roger Fakhr, Ryley Walker and Le SuperHomard & Maxwell Farrington
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Roger Fakhr
Fine Anyway
(Habibi Funk Records)
★★★★
GROWING up in the cultural melting pot of 1960s and 1970s Beirut, Roger Fakhr recorded an album’s worth of English-language songs amid the increasing violence in Lebanon, releasing just 200 copies in 1977.
That album, along with some other tracks recorded in Paris, has now been rereleased as Fine Anyway. Fascinatingly, it is the sun-dappled influence of California, not the “Paris of the Middle East” that runs through the music, specifically the hippie singer-songwriters of Laurel Canyon: check out the strong Crosby, Stills & Nash vibes of opener The Wizard.
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