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"IT'S hot in London tonight" were the words that rang around a packed, sweaty Brixton Academy on Thursday night.
Standing on the speakers at the front of a packed Brixton Academy, dripping with sweat and still with that trademark spiky hairdo , was the man of the moment: Billy Idol.
For anyone in the auditorium it could have been 1986 all over again. Billy doesn't look any different now to then, and still possesses the ability to grab the audience by the cahoonahs.
When the night closes with one of the living legends of
rock playing the greatest song The Beatles ever wrote, you know you've
been somewhere special.
Drowned in feedback, the eyes in his grizzled face screwed shut, Neil Young - whose own back catalogue stretches 40 years and at least as many albums - tore through a fearsome cover of A Day in the Life to end a jaw-dropping two-hour set.
And what a day...
By James Desborough
A Hop Farm in Kent brewed up one of Britain's most unusual yet entertaining festivals on Saturday.
The Mighty Boosh festival featured the magical madness of the comedy show heroes with some of the finest live performers on the circuit.
Around 40,000 people witnessed Boosh heroes Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt's first crack at putting on a day long extravaganza - and it went with flying colours, and a mixture of surreal characters.
Imagine headlining at the 02 Wireless festival, playing to thousands in Hyde Park? Reason to be cheerful? Not so with Morrissey.
Like storm clouds over Glastonbury, miserable Morrissey moaned while singing and winged between songs. He even had a pop at pop princess Kylie's recent OBE. "She's just been rewarded for her contribution to music," he said dryly.
WATCHING the legendary Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, it's easy to see why so many reviewers resort to cliché.
Jet-black mullet and handlebar moustache, check. Howling feedback, guitar riffs like bullet shots and Old Testament-style lyrics, check. Doom-laden songs of lost love and death, check.
Thankfully, we can add a few more to those: packed concert, adoring audience and one of the most exciting rock 'n' roll acts performing anywhere, check, checkity, check.
Lock up yer daughters. Rock queen Madonna's back on stage - and she's feelin' frisky at (nearly) fifty.
While sugar-sweet Kylie launched her tour in a blaze of stardust and colour just up the road, a scuzzed-up Madge played her Paris gig dressed in head-to-toe black.
And as the set wore on, she got DIRTY with her dancers...
Kylie Minogue kicked off her £10m KylieX2008 tour in Paris ... and guess who was in the front row?
Her ex Olivier Martinez was snapped among the 10,000 French fans at the Barcy stadium - the birthplace of cabaret.
TWO years on, the "da-da-da, da-da-da!" chant in Chelsea Dagger is still being yelled every Saturday at football grounds around Britain.
And it was yelled here for half an hour before the lads came on.
But if Chelsea Dagger is their best-known song, the Scots have plenty of other glam-rock chants to hand, like Henrietta and Baby Fratelli.
NEARLY 15 years after their first hit, are Supergrass still, well, all right? Nah, they’re way better than that.
Teenagers when they started charting, drummer Danny Goffey and bassist Mick Quinn only look about 15 now (singer Gaz Coombes is going bald, but hides that under a stetson).
Legendary Charlatans front man Tim Burgess is in fine form as he knocks back his Red Bull in London's Hard Rock cafe.
"We've been going nearly 20 years now and we're still going strong," laughs Tim.
"Everyone in the band's still massively up for what we're doing. There's a great vibe. We're The Charlatans through and through."
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"FANK yoo very match! I feel very lucky toe night!"
Speaking more like Dawn French's impression of her from French And Saunders than any normal human being, Icelandic pop pixie Bjork's in a good mood.
But you wouldn't guess that from the deathly slow first half of her show, part of her first proper tour in a decade.
SHE’S hot, she’s heading for number one tonight - and she has a mystery lover to thank for it.
For new pop sensation Adele admits her debut album 19 is sprinkled with references to a certain lad she’s obsessed with.
“If I want, I can go out and pull any bloke I want—and I sometimes do. But I can’t stay away from this one boy I keep going back to,” she confesses.”
“OOH, I could hear me nan cheering then!” Adele may be a hot new chart star with the voice of an angel, but in between songs she’s pure Vicky Pollard.
After finishing a heartbreaking cover of Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love, she has a coughing fit. “Eurgh, I’ve got, like, a scab across me throat. I’m such a lady, ain’t I?”
