BLOGS

PHILIP ROTH – JUST ANOTHER PENIS WITH A THESAURUS?

Predictably, inevitably, the great novelist Philip Roth is now receiving the full Updike treatment. He has become 'problematic'. His novels should 'recontextualised'. He is on the wrong side of Me Too. It has been a few years now since that...

Read more

Snarky, sanctimonious and and always off the record – the British establishment is at work

One revelation in last week's Oprah Winfrey interview with the Runaway Royals was so startling that even I, who doesn't give much of damn for any of them, was rather intrigued. It was claimed by Prince Harry that  what is...

Read more

Femjep and murder – when will TV begin to see the connection?

A horrible, haunting murder has this week prompted the usual hand-wringing on news programmes and online. Why should women take responsibility for their own safety? Is there something intrinsically wrong with men? Or sentencing? Or the police? Or the press?...

Read more

THANK YOU TO MY TEAM – 35 YEARS OF FANDOM IN A SONG

It was in January 1985 when with my son Xan, who was seven at the time, I first entered the Loftus Road Stadium in west London.  Neither of us had been to a proper, professional football match before, but Xan...

Read more

FRIDAY SONG: DORY PREVIN, THE LADY WITH THE BRAID (1971)

She wrote songs for Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Doris Day, co-composed with Harold Arlen (Over the Rainbow’) – and was a pioneering singer-songwriter of the early 1970s. She wrote a song called ‘Control Yourself‘, had a career defined by...

Read more

‘Terence Blacker – Saved by a song’ A new profile in The Living Tradition magazine

In the latest edition of The Living Tradition magazine, Simon Haines has written a profile  of me to tie in with the release of the new CD Playing For Time. You can read it here: LT_Issue135_Terence Blacker

Read more

FRIDAY SONG: JOHN SEBASTIAN, NASHVILLE CATS (1966)

Surprisingly few songwriters have a natural ability to convey warmth.  Performers can do it, and composers can turn it on when the lyric requires, but only now and then does one come across a songwriter who can put a smile...

Read more

FRIDAY SONG: CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND, LET’S GENERALIZE ABOUT MEN (BLOOM, SCHLESINGER, DOLGEN AND BROSH MCKENNA, 2017)

It’s possible that you may not have come across one of the funniest and most innovative series to have been on our screens in recent years. It ran between 2015 and 2019 but, because it was on Netflix and was...

Read more

FRIDAY SONG: Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez, EXTRA (Chip Taylor, 2002)

The great lyricist Sammy Cahn  – he wrote the lyrics to many of Frank Sinatra’s best-known hits  –  published a funny, swaggering boastful memoir called I Should Care. Not a man to hid his light under a bushel, Sammy claimed that as...

Read more

FRIDAY SONG, Charles K Harris, AFTER THE BALL (1892)

Many of my older Friday Songs –   notably, ‘Shine’, ‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’, ‘Hong Kong Blues’ – have moved with the times. They have been adapted to our fretfully changing world by each new musical generation. This...

Read more

Writer's Shed

On...