Revenge of Riff Raff

Album Review: The Wildhearts, "P.h.u.q."

January 31, 2011 Add Comment Edit

The mongrels of Brit rock due to their scatty diversity. Whether it be punk, metal, pop, rock, it's all evident here along with the bar...

Live Review: Little Barrie, Daikanyama Unit, Tokyo, 10th December, 2010

January 30, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Daikanyama's Unit turned out to be a strange venue in which to hear Little Barrie, the rock trio from Nottingham, England. Descendi...

Transcript Interview: Mitch Ikeda, Manics photographer

January 28, 2011 Add Comment Edit

In January 2003, I interviewed the Japanese photographer Mitch Ikeda, famous for taking pictures of the Manic Street Preachers, as wel...

Preview: Hope n' Glory

January 28, 2011 Add Comment Edit

HOPE N' GLORY are a quartet from Madingley. The boys in the band are Richie Van Jupp (on lead vocals/ lead guitar), Marty Dickson (bass...

Album Review: Bush, "Sixteen Stone"

January 24, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Brit band with big, grungy American sound in the mould of Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Derivative. But a couple of songs, particular...

The Fly Column (in German): Leichen-Pool

January 23, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Jeden Monat bieten wir in der Kolumne von "The Fly" eine Wette an. Es geht um eine Auflistung der Zwangsaussteiger, auf eine Aufz...

Album Review: Drive She Said, "Drivin' Wheel"

January 22, 2011 1 Comment Edit

Imaginatively entitled Drivin' Wheel , this is the American AOR band DRIVE SHE SAID's debut album. As I figured it was drivin...

The Fly Column: Clash of the Punks

January 20, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Green Day's Billy Jo was over in London recently on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Punk. Billy was also here to seek inspiration for...

Live Review: Fish, Royal Albert Hall, 9th July, 1990

January 19, 2011 Add Comment Edit

What's all this then? Fish the TARTAN TROUBADOUR amidst the regal splendour of The Royal Albert Hall? Yes, truly a setting altogeth...

Preview: Coldplay (in French)

January 18, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Coldplay se concentre sur le commerce équitable C’est quoi cet engouement des rock stars pour sauver le monde ? Bono est le croisé de...

Album Review: Deicide, "Once Upon the Cross"

January 18, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Deadly dose of Death Metal, complete with caveman vocals, jurassic riffs, and dumb, perverse ramblings about the joys of Satan. The mus...

Album Review: All Off, "From Midnight to Sunshine"

January 17, 2011 1 Comment Edit

I still think the greatest compliment a Japanese rock band can get is that they don't sound remotely Japanese. If that's the standa...

The Fly Column: Mr Sincerity... Jon Bon Jovi

January 14, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Climbing up a window pane the other day, a sudden thought struck me: "How does Jon Bon Jovi manage to say the same thing to a differen...

Preview: Firewind 2011

January 10, 2011 Add Comment Edit

Heavy metal groups are notorious for their complex genealogies, as members switch bands and moonlight for other outfits. Greek metal warhor...

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!