Theatre review: Horseless Carriage of Curiosities, Brighton Fringe Festival

In the mid-19th century, no self-respecting home was without an electric-shock machine, a state-of-the-art gadget that, it was claimed, could cure everything from poor eyesight to baldness to problems in the bedroom.
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Theatre review: Butley, Brighton Festival

Forty years ago Simon Gray wrote a play about a hard-drinking, venomously cruel English professor in the midst of a crisis. Directed by Harold Pinter and starring Alan Bates, Butley was his first big hit, swiftly transferring to Broadway and later being turned into a film. That it has since been neglected by directors has been attributed to Bates's indelible performance, though watching Lindsay Posner's revival, starring The Wire's Dominic West, you suspect there are other reasons why it has been given a wide berth.
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More man, music, and mystique

What is it about Bob Dylan? Routinely hailed as the voice of his generation, a man who expanded the possibilities of popular song, he is treated with the kind of awe reserved for literary giants and continues to be the subject of academic enquiry; his vast body of work is studied at universities and endlessly picked over by critics and biographers.
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Book review: Reelin' In The Years by Mark Radcliffe

Named after a single by Steely Dan, Reelin' In The Years is a pleasant ramble through five decades of pop culture seen through the eyes of a music-loving northerner and told through a series of singles that each represents a year of his life.
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Music review - The Great Escape, Brighton

Brighton's answer to the South by South-West festival has, it appears, already outgrown its roots.
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Music review - Asian Dub Foundation, Brighton Festival

In his book 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Dorian Lynskey offers an intriguing challenge to the assumption that the protest song has had its day.
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The anti-popstar: Moby regains his focus

Moby's life has driven him to drink, drugs and therapy. Now we can see it too, in a photo album and show. He talks to Fiona Sturges and shows us some of his pictures
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Book review: Breakfast in Nudie Suits: Out of Tune and on The Run with Gram Parsons, By Ian Dunlop

No country (or western) for old men
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Book review: No Regrets by Carolyn Burke

Much has been written about the singer Edith Piaf, France's "Little Sparrow" who was famed for her impoverished childhood, her doomed love affairs, her illnesses and addictions and her mastery of la chanson réaliste. So what can there possibly be left to say?
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Emmylou Harris: 'I smoked country music but I didn't inhale'

She may now be winning Grammys for 'contemporary folk', but Emmylou Harris is finally ready to confront the heartache and loss that made her the queen of the red-raw country ballad. Interview by Fiona Sturges
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Online arts: Click-fix culture

You can watch a rock concert and tour an art gallery from the comfort of your armchair. But can it replace the thrill of the real thing? Fiona Sturges finds out
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Music review - Jesca Hoop, Ballroom, Brighton

If you suspected, from her fairytale name, that Jesca Hoop was not entirely of this world, a few minutes in her company confirms it.
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Fame at last for rock'n'roll's unsung star

Darlene Love was the unacknowledged voice of many Sixties pop hits. Now that's all about to change. By Fiona Sturges
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Book review: 33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey

In May 1970 Neil Young was relaxing on the porch of his road manager's house in Pescadero, California, when he was handed a copy of Life magazine. It contained a vivid account of the deaths of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest earlier that month.
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The real stars know when to call it a day

As Mike Skinner calls time on The Streets, Fiona Sturges says that Girls Aloud would do well to consider a similar coda
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