Nigel Leggatt's Blog

Hollywood, Apartheid and Rugby Union – it really shouldn’t work. But check out the spine-tingling trailer for Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s Oscar shoo-in, out later this year.

Just finished Nick Cave’s fabulous new book, “The Death of Bunny Munro”. Cave is clearly so-much more than just another celebrity writer and in Munro, he has created a tragic, funny, grotesque anti-hero. The Bunny Munro website is well-worth checking out to see Cave reading extracts from the book and get the chance to win the bunny suit from the front cover.

The concept is simple. Beck gets a bunch of his music mates around and reinterprets a classic album over the course of a day. Then he gets long-time collaborator Nigel Godrich round to tart it up and posts it on his site, along with some suitably low-fi videos.

Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground have got the treatment so far.

One of the highlights (quite literally) of our recent trip to New York was our pre-dinner Saturday evening stroll along the High Line, the former railway line which has been transformed in to a stunning above-street garden.

Fab views of the city and the river and generating a real buzz in this already great part of town.

Artist Vincent Valdez is opening a new exhibition of his work in Los Angeles this weekend. With impeccable timing, Burn, will feature cityscapes showing the City and its people in “a process of destruction and regeneration”, with many of the paintings depicting local landmarks engulfed in flames.

First track off the new Massive Attack album was previewed last night on Zane Lowe’s Radio One show. Splitting The Atom features D. and G. along with Horace Andy. Listen here.

  Mssvttck - Splttngthtm by slsrx

I know this is a total indulgence, but Kind of Blue, the album that pretty-much shaped modern music, was 50 years old this week – a pretty good excuse to post this video of a simply fabulous version of So What. Brilliant.

There will not be a dry eye in the house when Edwyn Collins takes the stage at the Edinburgh Festival on Saturday night. 30 years since the release of Falling & Laughing, back in the town of his birth and it’s his 50th birthday.

But the real celebration will be for the remarkable and brave progress he is making from the two serious strokes and subsequent MRSA he suffered in 2005. There’s some great footage on the BBC Radio 4 site showing him rehearsing for the Edinburgh show and an interview with Edwyn and his wife, Grace, where they talk candidly about his illness and recovery.

This is at least ten years old, but I only stumbled upon it at the weekend. MMW have long-been one of my favourite bands – they are all shit-hot musicians and this collaboration with John Scofield is amazing. But just look at their faces. This is some seriously extreme jazz-gurning. You could watch this with the sound turned down and still know what they were playing. Great stuff.

Really looking forward to having a go at this. 

David Byrne is a genuine genius and his Playing the Building project is just another example of his restless creativity.