Gosh. I went to a lot of gigs in July, including a three-day residency at Alexandra Palace wearing all the hats that annoy my partner with impunity, a gull supervising a legend in Margate, and Kylie Minogue showing up with…
I was struck by a sudden fear of never seeing David Byrne play songs by Talking Heads again, and so made an ill-advised last-minute Twickets purchase to go to the Latitude Festival for the day on the Friday. It was…
A strange thing happened to me a little while ago. I was waiting for a verification code for a 2FA login, and it hadn’t arrived, so by chance I looked in the spam folder of my work email. About ten…
I know, I know — it is mid-July and I am fashionably late with June’s gig reviews, but it turns out when you spend the entire month running around venues across the country, it takes a moment to recover. This…
This month featuring: spooky basements, cursed wishes, alien conspiracy and plenty of John Waters and Divine (plus one of the queerest sci-fi cartoons in history). Repo Man (1984), Alex Cox – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick –…
At the weekend I spent a couple of hours at the lovely Walthamstow Trades Hall for the 17th Walthamstow International Film Festival, which was showing some 80-odd short movies over the course of a few hours. One of the things…
Urgh, I’ve already had to live through two eras of “They aren’t going to be making Doctor Who anymore” and it looks like we are just about to enter a third, with the announcement today that there won’t be a…
In this month’s round-up: Why sitting in the front row for Milton Jones is a high-risk health hazard, the unexpected joy of reconnecting with Super Furry Animals in a brutally sweltering O2 Academy Brixton, and how a post-pub wait for…
This month featuring: the perfect folk horror, a Brazilian mistake, Stevie Wonder stealing John Lennon’s show and road-trip horror going off the rails (plus why the “big light” ruins David Lynch). Power to the People: John & Yoko Live in…
![[Martin Belam with a beer, as ever]](https://martinbelam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/600_stalbans_beer-150x150.jpg)
After a very enjoyable six months as one of the main writers for First Edition at the Guardian, I am heading off to pastures new as Libby Brooks and Hettie O’Brien become the permanent dream team there. From today I…