Revenge of Riff Raff

Revenge Recommends: "Innocent Exile" by Iron Maiden

October 28, 2012 Add Comment Edit

A very young Iron Maiden with Paul Di'Anno on vocals, looking like a lost lounge singer, performing Innocent Exile from 1981'...

Interview: Gary Glitter

October 28, 2012 3 Comments Edit

THE SHOW MUST GO ON Born Paul Gadd but changing his stage name to Paul Rowen, GARY GLITTER's early career was one of virtual an...

Photo: The Manic Street Preachers

October 27, 2012 Add Comment Edit

James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire on stage at Studio Coast, 26th November 2010. Photo: C.B.Liddell

"John Lennon is a Trademark of Yoko Ono Lennon"

October 25, 2012 4 Comments Edit

20 years after he was gunned down outside a New York apartment block, John Lennon is still with us. Here in Japan, he's with us e...

Album Review: Mystery Jets "Serotonin"

October 23, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Mystery Jets' bright but unremarkable 2006 debut Making Dens garnered attention mostly because the father of lead vocalist/ keyboar...

Interview: Richie Sambora, Bon Jovi

October 21, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Faith Hope and Clarity Just before Richie Sambora, guitarist with Bon Jovi, calls from Toronto, I pick up an old biography of the ban...

Revenge Recommends: "Assassin" by Marillion

October 21, 2012 Add Comment Edit

A standout track on a very powerful album, Assassing off Marillion's 1984 album Fugazi (Italian for 'fucked-up' apparent...

Album Review: Jimmy Barnes, "Heat"

October 20, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Apparently Mr Barnes, the god from Oz, was trying to rediscover his roots on Heat . What he has done is created a record steeped in fine...

Album Review: Thunder, "Backstreet Symphony"

October 20, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Rising from the ashes of Terraplane, guitarist Luke Morley and drummer Harry 'H' Aitken founded a band called Thunder. The album ...

Interview: Gruff Rhys

October 18, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Super Furry Animals' frontman shows solidarity with the Manics Taking time out from Super Furry Animals, Gruff Rhys takes a momen...

Live Review: Japan Blues and Soul Carnival, Hibiya Open Air Concert Hall, May 30, 2010

October 15, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Missing the first two support acts at this year's Japan Blues and Soul Carnival, I arrive at the Hibiya Open Air Concert Hall in ti...

Revenge Recommends: "No Love Lost" by Warsaw

October 15, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Warsaw was Joy Division's earlier monicker, and this potent track, No Love Lost , with a pummeling three-minute instrumental lead-...

Album Review: Magnum, "On the Thirteenth Day"

October 13, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Magnum return with a much anticipated studio album that, in addition to delighting their sizable and loyal fan base, may offer this hard-...

Interview: Johnny Van Zant & Gary Rossington, Lynyrd Skynyrd

October 10, 2012 Add Comment Edit

BACK TO THE FUTURE As a full moon beams over the bayou, some fireflies circle the bare light bulb shining from Mama's front porc...

Profile: Shinki Chen

October 09, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Shinki Chen is a Japanese rock legend as much for what he hasn't done as for what he has. Since his 1972 eponymous solo album, the ...

Revenge Recommends: "Hocus Pocus" by Focus

October 08, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Focus were a Dutch progressive rock band formed in 1969. They were led by Thijs Van Leer, a classically trained musician. On Hocus P...

Album Review: Slash, "Apocalyptic Love"

October 07, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Eschewing the superstar co-star vocalist carousel that he employed on his previous outing, Slash has kept his touring buddy Myles Kenne...

Live Review: The Quireboys, Hammersmith Odeon, April, 1990

October 06, 2012 Add Comment Edit

HORNY DEVILS!? At long last it's my turn to cast my beady little eye on the Quireboys. Commercial hype and success has led to ...

Album Reviiew: Neal Schon, "The Calling"

October 02, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Every once in a while guitar virtuoso Neal Schon takes a major detour from his main day job as Journey's lead guitarist to indulge in...

Preview: Muse, 2007

October 01, 2012 Add Comment Edit

Lyrically musing on what’s wrong with the world The great thing about being a teenager, or even a 'twentager,' is that you ...

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!