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Peter Barrett

Peter Barrett has written 12 posts for The London Word
26-year-old Pete Barrett first entered the world of journalism whilst on tour with the Grateful Dead in '72. Following work as Leonard Cohen's ghost writer he became roving photographer for the Daily Bugle, but left after repeated attempts on his life by the Green Goblin. After spells at Rolling Stone, Paris Vogue and the Hackney Gazette, he entered the world of restaurant criticism, training the young AA Gill. He dreams of one day becoming football editor for the News of the World, and cites Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs as his greatest fans. Incidentally, none of this is true.

F**king Men at the Arts Theatre

‘This is America. It still matters what you do with your dick’

Priscilla Ahn at the Pigalle Club

Any set list that contains a Harry Nilsson song, a Willie Nelson song and a song about boobs gets the thumbs up from me.

Evan Dando at the Macbeth, Hoxton

It has been a long-held belief of this writer that ‘guerrilla’ gigs are thoroughly deserving of their peculiar name on account of the fact that they, like so many militant rebel organisations, are badly run, short on cash and full of lunatics. This week’s musical insurgence at The Macbeth in Hoxton proved to be no [...]

Brown’s Bar and Brasserie

An Englishman, a Frenchman and an American walk into a bar. They like the place. They pool their money and buy it. They open it up together on their terms. The Frenchman (sullen, unpredictable, genial) heads for the kitchen. The Englishman (courtly, urbane, affable) designs the décor. The American (quick-witted, smooth-tongued, amorous) takes charge of [...]

Richard Thompson Live at the Barbican

Playboy magazine could never have seen it coming. It was 1999 when Los Angeles’ most hallowed of cultural monthly publications sought the recommendations of renowned musicians in order to compile the definitive list of the ‘10 greatest songs of the millennium’. Of all the contributors and all the contributions to this supreme register of musical [...]

Dega Breaks, Haunts and To The Bones

Just over my left shoulder hangs a large black and white print of the late, great Muddy Waters, the celebrated ‘Father of the Chicago Blues’. As a struggling country blues musician in Issaquena County, an impoverished patch of pre-war, segregated Mississippi, Waters scraped a living playing to illegal juke joints filled with gamblers, brigands and [...]

Salute Petra: A Tribute to Luciano Pavarotti

It seems that opera is very much like physical exercise. Most people know very little about it, tend to avoid it as best they can, mock those who do take pleasure in its multifarious delights, yet nevertheless claim at any available social opportunity, so as not to appear slobbish and unsophisticated, that they truly relish [...]

The British Museum’s Babylon: Myth and Reality

For many Londoners the ascendancy of sin, exaltation of deviltry, incurrence of the wrath of God, fall of man and the crumbling of a once great empire is but the chronicle of any given inebriated Friday night out in Soho. For those of us however who have either a keen interest in ancient world history [...]

Mr Motivator’s London Eye Workout

Oh this bizarre and wonderful city. Only ‘neath the grey skies of London could you behold such a sight. In the shadow of the London Eye, 52-year-old grandad Derrick Evans yesterday lead two hundred of London’s most (fool?)hardy citizens through a leg-pumpingly, kaleidoscopically colourful performance of the Funky Chicken.

Mandy Patinkin Lights Up Duke of York’s Theatre

It is credit to Patinkin’s consummate stage performance that he can make this many mistakes and still have such an assemblage of London’s finest pearl-clad showgoers whooping for more.

Journeys of a City Girl

Cath Millman
Londoner Cath Millman's travel blog takes us beyond the big smoke - read her blog

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