tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22607337047385200842024-03-14T18:05:54.230+00:00boxofpeppersTaking waffling about music to unexplored heights (and depths) - Currently pre-occupied with 500 SinglesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-26109425111530828932017-12-04T20:28:00.000+00:002017-12-04T20:28:05.475+00:00David Thomas Broughton - Live at MIMA Middlesbrough 2nd December 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf63Ur6yqYEHToN9FZiP5eMjLHbwzWmPGh61I9UMDsF3XrriNoAREJUk060Yp4ZxHB9kGJCH4gvJ1hUG4nPkeITFJxsYOZ1Xjr3VXe2GVDi197T13gSzqryI6sIP648hAMruRfkz5hNMzd/s1600/DTB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="720" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf63Ur6yqYEHToN9FZiP5eMjLHbwzWmPGh61I9UMDsF3XrriNoAREJUk060Yp4ZxHB9kGJCH4gvJ1hUG4nPkeITFJxsYOZ1Xjr3VXe2GVDi197T13gSzqryI6sIP648hAMruRfkz5hNMzd/s400/DTB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was at MIMA, Middlesbrough on the evening of Saturday 2</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nd</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
December 2017. I want to make sure that we have that on record.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were others there too. David Thomas Broughton (jeans,
jumper, scarf, beard) stepped onto the stage without fanfare; a stage
constructed under the stairs in the black, white, grey and glass foyer. A bright, multi-coloured curtain serving as a back-drop in an area almost certainly more used to storing stacking chairs than hosting gigs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is no ordinary venue, and this is no ordinary gig.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This gig is all about atmosphere. All about the experience.
Songs start sweetly and, via various combinations of loops, whistles, rattling
loose change, electronic blips (somewhere between feedback and the sound of the
air being squeaked out of a balloon) and a small electronic toy megaphone, collapse beautifully in upon themselves. At times it’s like listening to two
radio stations, nestled closely on the dial, tuned in together, battling gently
for dominance. These are slow, gentle, glorious, almost self-sabotaging,
descents into mayhem. Tunes are sometimes spectacularly rescued before slipping
away again, only to flip beautifully into the next.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David’s magnetic, occasionally unnerving, stage presence
and his tendency to move from one track to another without pause leaves no
space for applause until the entire set is over. It’s almost as if the audience
feels that applause would be an inappropriate way to break the atmosphere. At
one point David balances precariously on the rear left hand corner of the stage.
Later he becomes deliberately entangled in his own microphone cable. David also
uses his miniature megaphone to fantastic effect, occasionally using it to
replace his microphone but, more often, pipping it percussively and looping it
repeatedly until it sounds like a choir of Clangers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At times he leaves
the stage beneath the stairs altogether and steps toward us, singing
dramatically and mournfully toward the corrugated roof 50 feet above our heads.
There’s every reason for the sound quality to be challenging in such a unique
venue, but the purity of the performance and the priceless work of the sound
engineer mean it’s actually astonishing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Choosing highlight songs seems a touch futile, as every
moment is shot through with magic, however ‘Nature’ and ‘Liberazione’, when
David forgets the words and ad-libs a few lines admitting to such, were my own
personal favourites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ultimately, however, it’s all about the intensity of every minute,
the overwhelming joy of the experience. The simple act of being able to say you
were there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photo credit: Eugene Cheah</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-69686811736088917032017-02-21T21:58:00.000+00:002017-02-21T21:58:33.333+00:00Album review - Meursault - I Will Kill Again<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prepare to be unnerved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve been listening to, immersing my ears in<i>, I Will Kill Again</i>, the latest album
from Neil Pennycook (and some extremely talented friends), under the guise of
literature’s greatest outsider, Meursault. Four years in the making and
recorded beneath the sunshine of Leith, it’s unnerving and disarming and heart-warming
and haunting and strange, right from its opening track (enigmatically entitled
‘…’), all tinny piano and bowed banjo, and, just when you’re starting to warm
to it, up pops a slightly robotic, cold voice to chill the blood with the words
“I. Will. Kill. Again.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s an ‘all bets are off’ opener, strapping in the listener
for a ride to some dark but beautiful places; ‘Ellis be Damned’ is musically
sweet but lyrically frightening and, on an album where you’d be best advised to
expect the unexpected, ‘The Mill’ is a deftly handled melodic number until,
three minutes in, it’s gloriously rear-ended by a yelping harmonica,
simultaneously out of place yet perfectly suited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the anti-sea-shanty, ‘Ode to Gremlin’, guitar, piano and
voice combine superbly. It’s raw and fragile and there are absolutely no hiding
places in its sparse, open arrangement.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/199254610" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/199254610">Meursault - Klopfgeist</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/songbytoad">Song, by Toad</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unbelievably, from this point<i>, I Will Kill Again</i> slips its leash and starts running even wilder;
‘Klopfgeist’ finds Pennycook at his most inventive, with its cut and paste
backing track, part Kanye, part Norman Collier, a lyric about Sinatra’s last
words and a sparingly sprinkled piano. And ‘Belle Amie’, my favourite of a
great bunch, has a fractured vocal (“It’s true that I still miss you, and it’s
true that I’m still angry”) over a delicate waltz, barely there in some places,
cacophonous in others. ‘Gone, etc…’ boats another fragile vocal, set to a
backing of piano, valve hum and Geiger counter (possibly).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The title track holds the whole album together, as all great
title tracks do, by means of a craftily constructed lyric, thoughtful and dark,
as the story hinted upon in the four word opener unfolds across almost seven
intriguing minutes. It’s a deep and complex tale of suppressed thoughts that holds
the attention throughout, until it finally fades into the gentlest of piano
themes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s important to stress here that albums of this quality
are rarely made alone, and the contributions of Liam Chapman, Faith Eliott,
Alex Livingstone and Reuben Taylor can’t be underestimated, the powers of <i>I Will Kill Again</i> would be considerably
diminished without them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sad to say, I can guarantee that you're unlikely ever to hear another
album like this one, which is all the more reason to seek it out and treasure
it deeply.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I
Will Kill Again</span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> is
released by Song, By Toad on 27<sup>th</sup> February 2017.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>UPCOMING LIVE DATES (full band shows):</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">25<sup>th</sup> February (<span style="color: #222222;">Song, by Toad's GRANFALLOON</span>) – Summerhall, Edinburgh </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">4</span><sup>th</sup><span style="color: black;"> March - The Lexington, London </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><i><b>Don't forget you can still get your hands on one (or all) of my books at Google Play by following these links;</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_The_Great_Cassette_Experiment_The_Joy_of?id=CQcVDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">The Great Cassette Experiment</a></b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_Writing_about_music?id=2KwQDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">Writing about music</a></b></i></span><br />
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_More_writing_about_music?id=CPfTDQAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b>More writing about music</b></i></span></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-65949610265019068322017-01-29T13:04:00.003+00:002017-01-29T13:07:15.684+00:00Modern Studies, live at Sage Gateshead 25th January 2017<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you aren’t aware of Modern
Studies then please take note: You should be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They’re a (largely, but not
entirely) Scottish band whose debut album, Swell to Great, was released last
year and gathered considerable acclaim. That’s not really the important bit.
The important bit is that they make great music; thoughtful music with depth,
and catchiness and, like all the best music, a little dollop of weirdness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Central to Modern Studies’ sound
is a slightly wheezy harmonium, that infuses the music with a distinctly
analogue glow in an increasingly digital musical world and sees their tunes
sliding around the little-known spectrum where ‘otherworldly’ lurks at one end
and ‘Victorian Sunday school’ sits primly at the other. If this all gives the
impression that Modern Studies are a bit grey and fusty then please forgive me,
because they’re entirely the opposite; this is ‘feel good’ music, as those who
have gathered in the magnificent Hall One at Sage Gateshead tonight will tell
you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Modern Studies (Emily, Rob, Pete
and Joe) are here tonight primarily to support King Creosote, but their warmth
soon engages those who have been sensible enough to arrive early, and the
reaction rises from an appreciative ‘this could be interesting’ ripple of
applause for their opening track, ‘Supercool’, to a full-on whooping and
hollering for their last, ‘Ten White Horses’, which, like many of their tunes,
starts slowly and quietly, then swells majestically with the aid of an almost
military drumbeat and glorious group harmonies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In between, the harmonium is used
to best effect on the hymn-like introduction to ‘Bottle Green’ and when coupled
with the double bass on the mournful and hypnotic ‘Sleep’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For my money though, it’s the
timeless ‘Father is a Craftsman’ that’s the best of the night, it’s intelligent
and beautifully constructed and it sounds like it was written by a little-known
folk singer back in 1962, rather than lovingly crafted by Emily Scott. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Not a bad way to spend Burns’
night.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><i><b>Don't forget you can still get your hands on one (or all) of my books at Google Play by following these links;</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_The_Great_Cassette_Experiment_The_Joy_of?id=CQcVDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">The Great Cassette Experiment</a></b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_Writing_about_music?id=2KwQDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">Writing about music</a></b></i></span><br />
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_More_writing_about_music?id=CPfTDQAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><b>More writing about music</b></i></span></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-23234240729348462732017-01-13T20:33:00.000+00:002017-01-29T13:03:27.907+00:00Modern Studies on tour in January 2017<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In an industry that loves to put artists in little boxes
with neat labels it’s always refreshing to find musicians that steadfastly
refuse to fit in. So refreshing, in fact, that it’s so very often the difficult
to categorise musicians who turn out to be the most entertaining.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Modern Studies, who released their debut album <i>Swell to Great</i> in 2016 to some positive
kerfuffle are one such uncategorisable and entertaining band, consisting of Emily
Scott, Rob St John, Pete Harvey and Joe Smillie. Quiet, thoughtful songs, written
mainly by Emily on a wheezy old pedal harmonium, found fans across the discerning
members of the BBC 6 Music squad, ending up on their ‘Recommends’ playlist and
grabbing a top 20 spot in Mojo’s albums of 2016 list (just above Bob Dylan’s <i>Fallen Angels</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Later this month Modern Studies support King Creosote on
their tour, playing six dates in Liverpool, Birmingham, London, Bristol,
Cardiff and Gateshead before they play at Joe’s Glad Café in Glasgow as part of
Celtic Connections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">They’re definitely worth catching up with, as you’ll see
from their slightly unsettling video for ‘Swimming’, from <i>Swell to Great</i>, below;</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/177423099?color=ff9933" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/177423099">Swimming</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user55070307">Modern Studies</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Full list of tour dates;</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">20</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">21</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – Town Hall, Birmingham</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">22</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – The Barbican, London</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">23</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>rd</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – Colston Hall, Bristol</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">24</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – Tramshed, Cardiff</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">25</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January (supporting King Creosote) – Sage, Gateshead</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">26</span><span style="color: #0e0202;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: #0e0202;"> January – The Glad Cafe, Glasgow (Celtic Connections)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;">Don't forget you can still get your hands on one (or all) of my books at Google Play by following these links;</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0e0202; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_The_Great_Cassette_Experiment_The_Joy_of?id=CQcVDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">The Great Cassette Experiment</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_Writing_about_music?id=2KwQDAAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank">Writing about music</a></span><br />
<a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Neil_Pace_More_writing_about_music?id=CPfTDQAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More writing about music</span></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-46881677115171677192016-08-10T22:32:00.001+01:002016-08-10T22:32:23.022+01:00Archive Interview - Kathryn Williams (interviewed May 2015)<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are few greater pleasures in life than sitting down
with a cup of coffee (an Americano with milk if you’re offering) and having a
chat with somebody who shares your interest in all things musical. And that, in
a nutshell, is what I did with Kathryn Williams one morning last week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I started by asking Kathryn (a Cappuccino, if you’re
wondering) to explain the background to her new album <i>Hypoxia</i>, which started life as a commissioned work about Sylvia
Plath’s legendary book, ‘The Bell Jar’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I got a call from New Writing North asking me if I wanted
to write some songs for the anniversary of 50 years of ‘The Bell Jar’ and to
perform the songs at Durham Book Festival, which I did, and then I couldn’t
stop thinking about it, so I spoke to the record label, One little Indian and
said could I turn that into my next record and they said that I could. So I
spent a long time just working the rest of the songs while I was on tour doing
the last album. I’d written five or six songs originally, then I did more and
the whole record came around.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wondered whether all of the original songs made it onto
the album.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yes, but I wrote three or four songs before I got good” At
this point Kathryn laughs, as she continues to do at regular points
throughout. “They just said write
anything about Sylvia Plath. They sent me all of the books, all of the
biographies, spoken word CDs and it was really overwhelming.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I ask if Kathryn was faced with a strict deadline for
completion of the project, she replies, “I was. I’m always kind of faced with a
deadline. I don’t think I can work without that. I mean I’ve got three projects
that I’ve been doing for the last three years that have had no deadline, and I
think that unless someone gives me a deadline they’re never going to come to an
end . The Durham Book Festival was right in the middle of my tour so I had to
write on the road. On days off, like at the side of the A1 in a really scuzzy
Travel lodge with only a Little Chef for company.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I ask whether Kathryn normally has a nice, quiet relaxing
place where she writes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Strangely ‘Cuckoo’ on this record and ‘Sequins’ which was
on the last album were both written in Ed Harcourt’s bath. He wasn’t in the
bath” she explains swiftly “He wasn’t even in the room. That’s become kind of a
thing now; I’ve said to Ed for every album I do now I’ll have to write a song
in his bath. I take a pen and paper with me everywhere. I mean it gets harder
to write only when inspiration strikes because when you’ve got kids and job and
tour and record, so it becomes, well, I make those times. It’s all about the
process and loving the process and respecting the process, being delicate with
it. Stephen King has got a book called ‘On Writing’, and it’s absolutely
brilliant; it’s part memoir and it’s part talking about how to write and I’ve
learnt so much from that book. He says get down to the slog of it, write, and
always edit by 20%. It seems to work."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then I comment that we’re very close to the album’s release
date.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I know, fucking hell!” she says, as if she doesn’t really
want to be reminded of it. “Yeah, it’s nerve-wracking, but I used to be really
disabled by my nerves, like 15 years ago for The Mercury, (The music prize, for
which Kathryn’s album <i>Little Black
Numbers</i> was nominated) I had stage fright. I had to sit down to perform
because I would black out with nerves, I missed out doing loads of TV and
interviews and stuff because I’d just be too scared and not turn up. It’s
nothing like that now; I think the perspective of having kids and knowing that
you’re not the be all and end all of everything, I’ve kind of got over myself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We discuss Kathryn’s ability to write songs that stir the
emotions, and I wonder whether there are particular artists who have the same
effect on her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, I absolutely love Ron Sexsmith and I think Steve
Nieve has that kind of thing as well, that sort of vulnerability. Even the John
Lennon and Yoko Ono album with the track ‘Mother’ on, which was a big reference
for ‘Cuckoo’. Just to try and have that braveness to be vulnerable. I feel like
that when I write lyrics as well, I used to always think it was a negativity to
be raw….. I mean the Sylvia Plath thing is quite interesting because I’ve
written character stories and character songs before, and I’ve written songs
for other artists, for pop artists, but this is kind of a weird amalgamation of
the two where I was writing delving through the characters of ‘The Bell Jar’
and the themes and get further into what it all meant and why she’d chosen
these people and how it reflected back on her. She has an unblinking and
muscular way of writing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then we turn to the subject of the musicians that Kathryn
likes to listen to and to work with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well Chris Difford, he’s a dear friend of mine. When I
write songs I’ll often send him something like this sort of recording
(referring to the mp3 recorder with which I’m recording the interview). I did
one the other day and realised that on the recording it had the washing machine
on spin. And Neill MacColl, and Boo Hewerdine, and Michelle Stodart, and Steve
Nieve, Georgia Ruth. Ed Harcourt, he’s
been a massive, massive support. He helped me with this record; he produced it
with me, and let me write in his bath! I’m really lucky to have a real core of
musicians and artists who I respect and they respect me and I can call up and
say “I don’t know what I’m doing, will you help me?” It’s funny I don’t sell a
lot of records, but I think that I do sell records to people that make music.
Maybe I just say this to myself so that when I can’t pay the bills it feels
better. I don’t have mass appeal but I often get championed by people that make
music, like Guy Garvey, and that’s the kind of thing that keeps me going and
makes me think that maybe I’m on the right lines. “<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I ask whether Kathryn has a record collection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah. I’ve got four big things of vinyl and then we’ve got
two walls of CDs and then about 40 foot of floor space of CDs and we’ve still
got tapes. I’ve got an iPod, but I haven’t really got down into all of that, I
just like the physical things, I find it hard. I haven’t done Spotify either
just because…” at this point Kathryn pauses as if reluctant to continue with
this particular subject “I know that it’s a fantastic tool for the other person
but it’s just something that I can’t swallow as an artist.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I confess to succumbing to Spotify recently, Kathryn
asks me if it’s any good, and do I love it? At this point it’s my turn to
pause. I explain that I do like it, in spite of my better instincts, further
explaining that it allows me to discover previously unexplored musical avenues,
prompting Kathryn to ask if I then go out and actually buy the music that I
like. I tell her that I invariably do, but comment that, rather obviously, not
everyone does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“If it was used just like that it would be OK” Kathryn
continues “I’ve got to just accept it and move on because it is the right thing
in order to find new music. In some ways it would be more honest if it wasn’t
paid for. It is difficult when people get into that mind-set that things are
free, that music is a free commodity.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I do like the idea of something earning a wage almost for
each time that it’s played. But you wouldn’t be able to get a day in a studio
to record four songs for probably ten years earning on Spotify of all of my 12
albums, and when you put that in context it’s just crazy. There’s been this
thing recently of a backlash against that, a “just get over it and move with
the times” and I kind of feel like I’m torn between the two, because I know
that Spotify is good and I know that I will go on it soon because there’s less
and less avenues to get to good new music.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I like my iPod, but I don’t use it that much. I’ve started
to do a thing where once I’ve dropped the kids off art school I come home and I
have a coffee and I put on a vinyl album, and spend like half an hour or an
hour with a coffee listening to an album. It’s just a slowing down. It’s like
fast food, there’s nothing better than spending a couple of hours with friends
on a good meal, that European way, and I don’t know how my music will fit into
this fast paced world. But this is not a record that you can just switch on;
you need to spend time with it, like sitting down with a book, giving yourself
the respect to delve deeper.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I tell Kathryn that I heard ‘Heart Shaped Stone’ recently
when in a branch of a well-known coffee shop, and wonder if hearing her music
while out and about still surprises her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, it’s fucking brilliant! I love that. It’s not like it
happens all the time. I’ll get texts from someone saying “switch your radio on
now!” and I’ll get the end of a song, it’s a fantastic feeling. 6Music’s been
great like that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then we briefly discuss Kathryn’s recent appearance as
featured artist on Guy Garvey’s 6 Music show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Someone texted to tell me I was going to be on and I was
doing the washing up. So I called the boys in and told them “Mum’s going to be
on the radio” and then we had a dance around the kitchen to all the songs; it
was really sweet. It’s a good feeling; I mean I’m not cool like that but it’s
good, it’s what you want, you want people to hear it. The problem for me, and
my career and my music is that people have an idea of what I do without ever
hearing it. I’ve had people say to other friends “I want to go to that gig
because she’s really folk isn’t she?” and I’m like “I’m not folk”. Only people
who aren’t into folk call me folk and everyone in folk calls me pop so I don’t
belong anywhere. But I like it if there’s a song on the radio because people
are actually making an assumption based on fact. I have this, maybe it’s like
an innocence, but I do think that maybe if people hear the music then they’ll
like it, but it’s just trying to get music heard.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kathryn has a well-known history of covering songs
imaginatively, and when I start to ask whether she has one lined up to play at
her forthcoming gigs she quickly interrupts,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I’ve got one!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I ask if it’s a secret and, while she’s good enough to
share its identity with me, she would prefer it to remain a surprise, although
she is happy to reveal that it’s a Neil Young song with lyrics that fit in
sensitively with the new tracks from <i>Hypoxia</i>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“It’s funny because when I did the covers album (Relations,
released in 2004) I thought it would be a way to show people what my record
collection is and who I loved, and it just didn’t work out that way at all. It
was strange; the songs sort of choose you, in the same way that Leonard Cohen’s
‘Hallelujah’ chose me. When you do a cover version you’re stepping into
something else and there’s certain ones that you know you can pull apart and
re-interpret to better effect. I never want to do it when cover versions to me
sound like a ‘Stars in Their Eyes’ version of the original and I’m never
interested in doing that; I always want to bring something different to it. The
‘Dancing in the Dark’ one was great. I never have a big plan. I don’t know what
the fuck I’m doing.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder if there are any songs that don’t make the cut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Yeah, tons and tons. I write all the time. The last retreat
I did I wrote 11 songs, and some of them would be co-writes, and I’ve just come
back from Sweden and I’ve written 13 songs with a guy called Peter Jöback and I started writing with another
massive artist over there called Loreen and I do lots of co-writes with people
like Josh Kumra. And then I’ve got about 70 or 80 songs recently that haven’t
been recorded and I’m writing towards the next album already. I’ve been writing
for Tim Lott, the writer, I’m writing a musical for him and writing a project
at the moment for ‘Nobody knew she was there’ about women in history who were
overlooked or overshadowed; that’s three quarters of the way done and that’s
coming out next year. I’m in a band with Michelle Stodart and Georgia Ruth,
we’re calling ourselves ‘Rum Tits’ but that’s not going to be the final name!
I’m in a band with a bloke called Tobias Fröberg and Ed Harcourt called
‘Jumping Elephants’, so I’m writing songs all the time, that’s why the house is
in such a bad state! “<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I ask if any songs that were previously rejected are ever
given a second chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">“Yeah, sometimes the process isn’t based on a value
judgement, it’s a context judgement. So with this album I’m not going to put in
a song that I’ve got about flying a kite and freewheeling down a hill and
having fun. I mean I do write some songs that are shit, but not a lot. I know
that sounds like I think I’m brilliant and I don’t mean that. ‘Heart Shaped
Stone’ for example, I wrote with Neill MacColl for the album </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Two</i><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"> and it hadn’t fitted on any album
since and when it came to </span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Crown Electric</i><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
it was there, it fitted what we were trying to do with that record." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Originally published by NEMM.org.uk</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Read more in <b>'Writing About Music'</b> available on Amazon Kindle and Google Play Books,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">or you can meander with me through 130 classic (and not so classic) albums of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in <b>'The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy of Cassettes'</b>, also available on Amazon Kindle and Google Play Books</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-7936014829064580102016-07-12T21:00:00.001+01:002016-07-12T21:01:15.396+01:00Archive Interview - Steve Hackett (interviewed June 2015)<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As you’ll almost certainly know by now, I’m not averse to a
little bit of progressive rock. In fact, in the right mood I positively lap it
up, with a particular regard for those two prog behemoths of the 1970s, Genesis
and Yes. So it probably goes without saying that I positively jumped at the
chance to interview Steve Hackett. I started by asking Steve about the writing
process for his latest album, Wolflight, and whether he has a particular place
where he likes to write.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well, funnily enough, I’ve just moved house. So once again
I need to get myself into not just a different headspace but a different
physical space, as you can imagine what it’s like when you’ve just moved. What
I was doing before was I’d wake up with ideas at about five in the morning,
which is the Wolflight itself, the hour before the dawn and much of the time I
would work on paper because I find that lots of my ideas come in that form. Of
course that’s not the only way I work, but I like to work with an instrument to
discover new harmonies and chord relationships, but normally in a simple
manner, on paper. Riffs kick in like that and lyrics come that way, but I find
for orchestrating something I have to have an instrument there. Many years ago
I managed to write on keyboard but that’s way back, that’s 40 years ago. I find
guitar leads me to plenty of new places, especially with different tunings and
I’m experimenting with that at the moment. Part of it was written in an open G
minor tuning and an open G tuning as well, I found that very useful. But do you
know that the writing process is one that’s so multifarious I can’t describe
it. I find it’s generally good to have an idea of a story when doing the
lyrics. I liked The Beatles best when they had some kind of story. It helps to
focus the mind if I get an idea of the character of the song, something might
be a character portrait that would influence in a certain way. I think The
Beatles were masters at flashpoints in ordinary people’s lives and they made
the ordinary extraordinary. I probably go for a bit more exotica than that, and
I go for imagined situations at times. With the Wolflight song I was trying to
imagine this ancestral procession right back to early man and reading about
that, thinking about that, then encountering wolves myself and I could see how
a relationship could be built up with early man.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Steve then told me about the band he’d put together for the
forthcoming tour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“My regular band will be expanded by one other guy and
that’s Roine Stolt, of The Flower Kings and Transatlantic, plus Nad Sylvan, so
there’ll be two Swedish guys in the band. Mainly it’s going to be a rock band.
I would like to look ahead to the point when I can play more ethnic instruments
with the line-up, and I think that because I’m being required to do quite a lot
of Genesis tunes, it’s in the contract I’ve got to do Genesis stuff” he
chuckles at this point, “because it went so well a while back when for two or
three years I did nothing but Genesis songs. The success of that has affected
the way I’ll be presenting the new album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I asked Steve which musicians he particularly enjoys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I love Joe Bonamassa, I like him as a guitarist and we’ve
met a couple of times. He’s done one of the Genesis tunes and funnily enough I
met him with Chris Squire as Chris and I were working together doing one or two
things and Chris is also on the album. He was the one who introduced me and Joe
Bonamassa was playing a Yes tune so there was a connection. Although in the
main it’s a blues approach, he reinvigorates the blues for me, and that’s not
easy to do because there is a sense of, with blues, that you’ve heard it all,
but I think he expands it a bit; there’s obviously the connection to Hendrix
and Zeppelin and all the templates and the blueprints that have been before. I
think that he does it with panache, so I do enjoy his playing. Funnily enough
I’ve worked with a number of guitarists over the years that I think I was an
influence on and I think have subsequently influenced me and one is Nuno
Bettencourt who I worked with briefly in Japan; I worked with him along with
Paul Gilbert, and they were both terrific. Also John Paul Jones, we were all
working together doing a very Zeppeliny orientated set, but there were some
Genesis things too.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At this stage I asked Steve whether the BBC’s recent
“Genesis: Together and Apart”, which brutally skimmed over his post-Genesis
solo career, had brought him an increased following.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well I think I was marginalised in the edit!” He pauses for
a moment, “I seem to remember that the BBC and particularly the director, John
Edginton, came in for a lot of criticism from Mike Rutherford in particular,
but the director, Paul, tweeted that Mike had asked for more Mike and The
Mechanics and less of me. So you can draw your own conclusions from that!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I remarked that many people had commented that they thought
it was unfair that Steve’s solo material had been overlooked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“‘Edited out’ I think is the word! But I think that, let’s
put it this way, the cat is out of the bag
because the director has thought that, and it hasn’t worked, the usual
blaming others has not worked. I basically gave that a lot of time; I did a lot
of interview stuff to camera. I gave it hours of my time and you can see what
came out in the end, so it wasn’t a great advert for me, but on the other hand
I didn’t even get to say nice things about the band, which I did. I didn’t get
the chance to praise Caesar, let alone assassinate him!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Following Steve’s refreshing openness, I moved to safer
ground by asking for suggestions of where a new Steve Hackett listener should
start. Understandably, Steve said that he would point a new listener in the
direction of Wolflight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I think that is a good place to start. I think that variety
was the album’s calling card; all those extreme choices I’m proud to say have
been vindicated because the album has taken off and it’s always nice to see
your stuff in the charts. But if you’re a classical listener then I would say
you might want to hear the tribute albums that I’ve done, six pieces of Bach or
even A Midsummer Night’s Dream, original compositions and orchestra, the Royal
Philharmonic. When I did Midsummer Night’s dream a number of years ago that
started picking up a whole bunch of listeners who were listing to Classic FM
and had no clue that I was a rock guitarist. Rock is only really part of it.
Perhaps if you’re an actor you’re known as a character actor or you always play
the villain or whatever. I think for musicians it’s perhaps the same; people
think ‘oh, yes, he does prog rock’ so that means it’ll be difficult time
signatures, lots of stabs, and all of that but I don’t think I’m really all
about that. I don’t think that I’m typically progressive, other than lots of
variety during the course of one song. With a lot of this I look to The
Beatles, around about the time of The Magical Mystery Tour.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I comment that no-one ever seemed to think of The Beatles as
a prog band.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No-one ever says that do they? The idea that occasional
salvos of orchestra and shifting sands throughout the course of a song, and
also the musical continuum that was part of Sergeant Pepper is now considered
to be the mainstay of prog. And not only did The Beatles start that but they
also are responsible for World Music as we know it, the idea of inviting in the
rest of the world, mainly India in the Beatles case, but nonetheless, things
were invited to the party that previously had been excluded; orchestral
movements, the electronica and the ethnic instruments are what helped to broaden
the appeal of The Beatles. I’ve always been aware since then, particularly from
the 1980s onwards, that music really became narrower and people didn’t really
come across like a Royal Variety Show, but nonetheless that’s where The Beatles
pitched their tent, it was part George Formby and part Chuck Berry and
somewhere between the two this sort of anglicised version of Rock and Roll was
made possible; influenced of course by Dylan and Dylan’s stories about
individuals. So if you were to ask me who I’m most influenced by I’d say The
Beatles certainly and then every other guitarist on the planet, somewhere
between Hendrix and Segovia, but beyond that, in terms of great songwriters,
it’s Jimmy Webb who stands head and shoulders above the rest. Again I see that progressive
link from MacArthur Park onwards. Progressive people love MacArthur Park, all
the Genesis guys adored it and funnily enough I heard a version that Thijs van
Leer of Focus did, just himself singing and piano, doing all the parts. It’s no
accident I think that that song was all about the detail as much as anything
else; interesting chord sequence, not just verse/chorus, but extra parts and an
instrumental workout in the middle and you got the template straight away for
masses of 70s genesis stuff.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Originally published by NEMM.org.uk</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Read more in <b>'Writing About Music'</b> available on Amazon Kindle and Google Play Books,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or you can meander with me through 130 classic (and not so classic) albums of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in <b>'The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy of Cassettes'</b>, also available on Amazon Kindle and Google Play Books</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-60101122209746783442016-07-04T19:59:00.000+01:002016-07-04T20:04:43.494+01:00Archive interview - David Gedge of The Wedding Present (interviewed in October 2014)<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Can you believe it’s been 20 years since the shiny
guitar-driven nugget that is The Wedding Present’s <i>Watusi</i> landed with a crash
into the drawers of our collective CD players? Two decades on it’s lost none of
its considerable lustre and if you love it like I do, or even think you might,
then you’re in luck because David Gedge and the gang have decided to tour the
country playing the aforementioned album to eager crowds in its full 1994
entirety.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In anticipation of the band’s gig at The Cluny on
10 November we chatted to David about longevity, reissues, musical heroes and,
of course, <i>Watusi</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I started by asking David whether, given the
impending <i>Watusi</i> tour and the reissue programme of Wedding Present albums, he
had any inkling in the early days that he’d be an artist who enjoyed this
kind of longevity<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“It’s kind of a difficult question to answer
because on the one hand no, I definitely didn’t, I never really planned more
than the next 6 months so even when we started we never really had a long-term
plan to do loads of tours and albums and carry on for thirty years, but at the
same time, if I’m honest with you I’ve kind of always had nothing else that I
wanted to do, kind of growing up from an early age I’ve always been obsessed
with music and wanted to be in bands or be a DJ or something. I’m kind of
driven to do this. It’s like any other thing, you can’t imagine yourself in 30
years, you just concentrate on what you’re doing at the time. </span></span><span style="color: #636363; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’ve always been obsessed with music and wanted to
be in bands or be a DJ or something. I’m kind of driven to do this."</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">David explained that he’d recently given the album
a run through at his ‘At the edge of the sea’ festival in Brighton, so I
cheekily asked if he’d had to re-learn any of the tracks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Oh, Yeah,” (he chuckles) “I don’t really play my
LPs. It’s kind of a weird thing, once you’ve done it you move on to the next
thing. When we come to actually play something like this live we generally have
to go back and try and work out what we did really, because it’s not written
down or anything, there’s the odd note but it’s generally trying to piece it
together from memory. It’s a funny thing to go back and re-analyze something
from 20 years ago with a new line-up. It’s fascinating to be honest and it’s
quite good fun.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I ask David if he could see one artist play one of
their albums live, who and what he would choose.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
After a very deep breath, he responds “Blimey, there’s a question. While
you’re asking I’ve already thought of three. One that would never happen now
obviously is The Velvet Underground playing what’s actually a live album, The
Velvet Underground 1969 Live, which is definitely my favourite live album of
all time. I would definitely like to have seen that. Of studio albums I was
definitely thinking of The Pixies’ <i>Surfer Rosa</i> or My Bloody Valentine playing
<i>Loveless</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I ask about influences, David goes on to tell
me “In some ways I try not to be influenced, I never wanted to sound like any
other artist. I don’t mind people who sound like other bands but I wanted The
Wedding Present to have a unique sound really. Having said that, obviously
everyone is influenced, so guitar bands from the ‘60s onwards really, starting
with The Beatles, going through glam rock and punk and then I love The Velvet
Underground and bands like that. The same as everyone else really, New Order,
Pixies, Sonic Youth. I’d say my background is definitely guitar bands. And
probably John Peel was my greatest influence, I used to listen to that
programme all the time from being about 16 onwards all the way through school
and university and being in a band myself. I think my main influence was the
stuff that he used to play on the radio. Somebody said that we were very
fortunate that John Peel liked the band and obviously I did feel very fortunate
and I felt flattered, but at the same time I think it was a foregone conclusion
because I knew we were going to be a John Peel band because of the fact that I
absorbed all that stuff that he was giving me. That became The Wedding Present
and we slotted in to that sort of band really. It would have been very
disappointing had he not liked us.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"I try not to be influenced, I never wanted to sound
like any other artist. I don’t mind people who sound like other bands but I
wanted The Wedding Present to have a unique sound."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I turn thoughts back to the forthcoming Cluny
gig, David explains that his only previous visit to the venue had been as a
compere for a tour showcasing new bands. “I remember thinking at the time,
great venue actually, nice kind of intimate size. It’s got the production
values, a good PA and the lights, seemed like a really good place to play and
at the same time it wasn’t too big. I’m really looking forward to playing there
actually.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Originally published by NE:MM (nemm.org.uk)</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-78046467463988455672016-06-19T22:04:00.000+01:002016-06-20T06:58:55.355+01:00Album review - Great Raven - Magnetic Smoke<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJe3Nz_TGkkuDAJsw-18QuWp2Nq7QLoMqD_OrS5c1gljZbkNXQZmEVWnHrf5am4p6fUArFnd4-TrNHxKN9ebpIebUV_p1JPN9HpQ7md_ZPD-loBIRAz3F5QNbSOkKMY_Gv9W2Or_mNt0Ut/s1600/Great+Raven.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJe3Nz_TGkkuDAJsw-18QuWp2Nq7QLoMqD_OrS5c1gljZbkNXQZmEVWnHrf5am4p6fUArFnd4-TrNHxKN9ebpIebUV_p1JPN9HpQ7md_ZPD-loBIRAz3F5QNbSOkKMY_Gv9W2Or_mNt0Ut/s320/Great+Raven.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Daisy and Antronhy of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Great Raven have become frustrated with songs that outstay their
welcome. Across ten very brief tracks their album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Magnetic Smoke</i> seeks to document the summer solstice with a
combination of sparingly used instruments, found sounds and genuinely unnerving
vocal interludes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In places it’s like Björk with fewer beats
and more cowbells, a more nightmarish Laurie Anderson, or even the more
experimental, ambient 1980s output of 1970s axe hero Bill Nelson. The pursuit
of brevity serves the album well on most tracks, however others, like the
sparse, double-bass driven ‘Yellow River Segue’ and the atmospheric, hypnotic ‘Dream
Echo’ are much too good to be restricted to just a minute and a half. On the
upside, the album’s 17-minute length means you can experience the whole thing
all over again in virtually no time at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">‘Cease & Desist’ has a moderately treated
vocal, backed by a throb that almost becomes a heartbeat in places, and at its
demise blends gloriously into the instrumental ‘Pipiano’ which, despite some competition,
has become firmly lodged in my favourite track slot. ‘Pipiano’ and ‘Yellow
River Segue’ flirt with the fringes of jazz, but never in such a way that they
threaten to get into trouble. From ‘Pipiano’ onwards <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Magnetic Smoke</i> doesn’t miss a beat, from the horror film undertones
of ‘The Others’, to ‘Sea Sleep’, the closest Great Raven get to an actual ‘song’,
and ‘Organ-I-Sing’ which appears to employ a small pipe organ to play a
wordless, one-minute downbeat sea shanty to close the album in style. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Albums that defy easy characterisation often
turn out to be the most interesting and enjoyable, and Magnetic Smoke manages
comfortably to be both.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Available from 21<sup>st</sup> June 2016 at
NGland.bandcamp.com</span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-22779882925454814542016-05-24T21:45:00.000+01:002016-05-24T21:48:10.580+01:00Archive Interview - Penetration (interviewed in August 2015, prior to the release of 'Resolution')<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Last Sunday afternoon I had an interesting
chat with a band about old music and new music. Nothing unusual in that, you
might think. Except that the band in question were the legendary Penetration,
the old music that we discussed was the shifting of tectonic plates that was
punk rock and the new music that we chatted about was Penetration’s first new
album in 36 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I started by asking the most obvious question
of all. Why record and release a new album now?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “On the last lot of gigs it became
apparent that we were becoming almost our own tribute band. We’d been out doing
shows now since 2002 and not done anything seriously in the studio; a couple of
7” singles came out but that was it. After the last lot of gigs we felt that to
make ourselves a proper band that we’d make a record. It kind of brings you
together really, it unites you as a team when you make a record in the studio.
I knew that we’d make a good record as well because I had it in my head how I
wanted it to be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Was then album ready to go when you
announced the Pledge campaign to record it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob (firmly) “No” (they all laugh.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Was it a leap of faith?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “It was, in a way. Pauline did some solo
shows in Australia and when we came back we kind of made our minds up. The
thing I liked about the Pledge campaign is that you give yourselves a deadline
and if you don’t do that you would never get an album finished.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Once we pressed that button for the
Pledge campaign at the end of January and the counter started going around like
that (Pauline makes a clock hands gesture at this point) and it got to 100%
quite quickly, I thought ‘Oh my God, shit’. At that point all we had written was ‘Guilty’,
we’d already done ‘The Feeling’, we’d already done ‘Sea Song’. ‘Two Places’
we’d had for quite a while but hadn’t really done anything with it and we had a
few little ideas kicking about. The drummer that we had had left, so we were
drummerless at that point as well. Rob had the idea of a team of people to put
together, he’d already gone into asking John Maher, Fred (Purser), all of
that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “I knew exactly how we wanted it to be. I
knew we wanted to work with Fred, we wanted it to be a Penetration album, we
wanted to have that sound. So I sat down with Fred and we had a couple of
nights talking and chatting about what the album would sound like and where we
were going with it. I can hardly remember anything about recording the first
album, or the second album to be honest with you, but he knew the whole process
so we compared notes as to how we were going to do it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “It was an absolute team effort. At
that point we had the basic chords for ‘Just Drifting’ but we had no lyrics. We
had the basics of a song that became ‘Betrayed’. I always knew that we would
come to a sticky point three quarters of the way through. John came down, he
lives on the Isle of Lewis, maybe four consecutive weekends to do the drums.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “There wasn’t any panic though, I was
really confident we could make a good album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Does it feel like a natural progression
because it certainly sounds like one? It doesn’t feel like there’s a gap of 36
years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “I’m interested in you saying that
because it was always a big thing was that it was going to be ‘the next
Penetration album’ .”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “We needed to retain the essence of
what Penetration is. I stand back in the writing so that the guitarists or
whoever can come up with the chords because that’s the way Penetration used to
do it and then I shoehorn into that. You’ve got the two guitar thing going on,
you’ve obviously got Rob who’s there from day one, you’ve got my voice from day
one but you’ve also got a wealth of experience to draw from as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “I find this an interesting concept,
bringing a wealth of experience to, what was on those early albums, as much
about youthful exuberance as anything else.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Oh yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “I think experience can bring its own
problems, because what you don’t want it to sound is contrived or planned with
an eye on a certain area, but it was so natural the way that the album was made
that very quickly that issue just disappeared.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “And it unfolded as it wanted itself
to. We just did whatever we thought was necessary and it didn’t matter if it
fitted in that bag or that bag. We wanted to make an album, not a series of
tracks, we wanted to make it a whole thing, a whole listening experience.
Originally we wanted a lot of the tracks to run into each other because we
didn’t want the scenario that you have these days where you have the download where
you go ‘oh, I’ll have track two. I like track three’ where they never know the
titles. We wanted it so that it should be listened to as a full album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “I think that’s right, down to the fact
that we thought of it as two sides as well. We were thinking of a vinyl album,
the length of a vinyl album, well some of us were.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “We wanted to make a <b><i>proper
</i></b>album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “If we can backtrack almost 40 years, is
it true that you formed after seeing the Sex Pistols perform live?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “I think we were already sort of
formed before that, because we were practicing and we were doing complex stuff
like ‘Roadrunner’ and ‘Pills’ by the New York Dolls and I think that was
slightly before or around about the same time. But seeing the Sex Pistols you
knew that something new was going on, you knew that that was the past and this
is now. We probably started to form the band slightly before.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “Yeah, I think you’re right, although I
wasn’t part of it then. I was the mate with the car.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “But it’s very obvious when listening to
the original Penetration albums that you had influences that were earlier than
that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Oh, absolutely. I was going to see
bands from the age of fourteen. I was very, very lucky.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Where did you go to see them?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Mainly the City Hall, or The Mayfair
or Middlesbrough Town Hall. I even travelled, I saw the New York Dolls at York
University, Lou Reed at Crystal Palace Hall when I was about fifteen. I saw all
the great bands that passed through, Bowie when the City Hall was three
quarters full, Bowie at Sunderland Top Rank, Roxy Music, Cockney Rebel. I saw
all of that early ‘70s stuff, and I mean all of it, anything that was worth
seeing. Prior to the punk thing I saw Bruce Springsteen’s first gig in this
country, prior to that you started to get the American stuff coming through,
Patti Smith’s ‘Piss Factory’, ‘Little Johnny Jewel’, those sort of independent
releases, Ramones, Jonathan Richman. So that was prior to the Pistols really. I
was very influenced by that New York, American scene prior to punk and I think
what you got in this country was the attitude. It was like ‘we don’t give a fuck’,
like ‘hey we’re young, this is our world, you lot have got it all wrong’. It
just felt like something that we could claim. To me punk was about being
inventive, following your own muse, doing something that was unique to you. So,
yeah, I was really switched on and (to Rob) you were as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “Yes, from thirteen, fourteen, there was
stuff we’d go to see. We’d go to the same gigs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “I started going to gigs in the late
‘70s. I was going to gigs in Sunderland, I remember going to Sunderland Mayfair
to see The Stranglers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “I was really lucky, I was fourteen
and I had an older boyfriend who was four years older than me and he was really
switched on. I was so lucky; I was young to be going out seeing all that stuff.
I had very understanding parents, looking back.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “I feel that this album messes with my
concept of what came next because it was always the Pauline Murray and The
Invisible Girls album that came next for me, yet this new one seems to somehow
fit in between.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob (to Pauline) “You had that theory, didn’t
you, that this is the missing link?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Well I actually think that. I think
this album is the missing link between the third Penetration album and The
Invisible Girls.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “It’s jumbled into one isn’t it? We set
it up within the framework and idea of it being a Penetration album and tried
to put the certain elements in place, but then all the stuff that you’ve done
in the past gets thrown into the pot as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “So who do you find exciting musically
now?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The response is a brief silence, then nervous
laughter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Ha, a resounding silence.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “I don’t like a lot of contemporary
stuff, but that said I do listen to a lot of radio 6. I hear it and there’ll be
something that I’ll like. It’s almost like you know too much, like ‘well I know
where that’s come from’ and for me I’d rather go back and listen to where it
originated. Since Penetration split and since The Invisible Girls album we’ve
had this thing called post-modernism and it’s changed everything. And we’ve had technology and that’s changed
everything. It’s a different listening experience, a whole different experience
of how we take in popular culture now. I think it’s a more superficial activity,
even for younger people, not just for us. I do think White Stripes made some
brilliant music actually, but I don’t really go out and buy the records. It’s
around and if I hear it I hear it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “There’s a lot of good original stuff
around, there really is but it never gets out there, that’s the problem.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “There’s a lot of people from around the
‘80s that’s still making great music. Nick Cave is still making great albums,
and Morrissey is still making great albums I think.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “That air of cynicism just used to go
through pop music and those commercial areas but now that cynicism goes through
the independent scene as well and the alternative scene, or the left-field
scene and you just don’t feel there’s an air of authenticity. Look at Mumford
and Sons, that hideous band, their latest album suddenly they’ve gone all
electric. You know it’s a marketing issue; it’s not a creative issue. It’s like
‘well you know we’ve done that folk thing that people are starting to not
really like as much, we’re a bit uncool, we’ll make the next one electric.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “And get our hair cut!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “and you just think ‘oh, fuck off!’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “I think people just aren’t turned on
to music any more. They’ve become very distracted by what the mass people are
interested in. Money, how big it is, if everybody wants to go to it, coffee
table band music really. They’ve even turned on to Nick Cave now ‘oh yes, we’re
going to see Nick Cave’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “Nick Cave at the Sage. Oh dear!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “The metropolitan media elite, they
decide suddenly that someone like John Cooper Clarke is the nation’s
favourite. We knew that in 1977”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “He’s doing nothing different to what he
was doing back when there was only 200 people turning up to his gigs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “It’s interesting because I think that
people say that the music business is in trouble, and it is, but the media are
more in control of the whole thing now, than they ever were when punk broke.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “With the punk thing people took
ownership of their own movement, but it was soon infiltrated and used by
others.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “And there was great journalism as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “You don’t really get writers like
that any more, where people will analyse something. They cut and paste your
press release now. You think ‘well could you not get your own angle on that,
what’s the matter with you?’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “There were some writers at that time
that tended to over-analyse and be pretentious but that was part of the fun of
it, you could always pull them up if you thought they were going too far.
Certainly that kind of analysis of music, there’s a lot of that disappeared
now.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “When we lost John Peel, did we lose the
last of the pioneering disc jockeys?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob (as if to egg Paul on) “Go on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “That fucker was well past his sell-by
date! I think this thing about John Peel, he’s held up as some sort of hero and
he wouldn’t have had a show without the music. He made a decision to start
playing punk music when two months before he was playing Jethro Tull and Yes
and things like that and it was really the bands that made the music.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Was there a switch flipped that changed
things from Pink Floyd to punk?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Oh, there was.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “There was a proper paradigm shift and
that should never be forgotten. It happened within days.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “I saw it happen before my eyes. For
instance I went to see the Doctors of Madness at Middlesbrough Town Hall, and
I’d been to see them quite a lot, they were a left-over from the Glam era which
I loved and the Sex Pistols supported them and they made that band obsolete
there and then. And that was it for that band. It was as quick as that, and a
lot of those old bands were frightened by it because they knew their time was
up.Young people were out there, making their mouths go and those people had had
it good. Whoever hadn’t behaved themselves right were turfed out. Some people
made it through, like Iggy Pop made it through, Bowie made it through, Lou Reed
made it through, some people did make it through; Marc Bolan did to an extent.
He embraced punk and they embraced him, but a lot of the excessive early ‘70s
people were laid to waste overnight and it was definitely an immediate type of
shift. You just turned your back on them, and I’d loved a lot of those bands.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “All those people who talk about when
punk hit it was like they were out at sea and there was a fucking storm and the
ones that knew how to sail, this is a terrible analogy isn’t it, that knew what
they were doing, who were experienced and clever, they saw it out and they
found calmer waters.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “A lot of people just went to ground
didn’t they? Just disappeared off to Bermuda for five or six years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “And I think history has proved that we
were probably right as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Nobody can put their finger on it
though. They try to analyse punk again and again. They’ve picked over it so
much that there’s nothing left to analyse. But they still can’t get a handle on
it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “It was a point in time as well wasn’t
it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “I don’t think that our age can ever be
recaptured though can it? The people who were being outraged were the ones
who’d came through the war and were looking for an easier life and the youth
were coming up and wanted to kick against this easy life that everybody had. The
people in power and local politicians were people who’d been in the forces, so
they were easily outraged by these kids who were bored and constrained. And
you’ll never recapture that kind of outrage. There were questions in Parliament
about punk rock. You’re never going to get that about any music culture again.
That outrage can’t be replicated.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “And the hippies were put in their
place. All the sixties people who had pioneered for this and that had suddenly
turned into the capitalists of the day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “We had a tailor-made enemy with the
hippies.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Never trust a hippy. Malcolm McLaren
said that and no truer word was said. I will always use that as a yardstick.
Never trust a hippy. I’ve found it to be very true on a lot of occasions.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “I’ve recently seen Penetration described
as a ‘first wave’ punk band?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “There’s no argument that Penetration
were a ‘First wave’ punk band. They played The Roxy, I think it’s very
important that the single came out in 1977.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Musically everything comes from
something else. The Pistols were very like ‘60s, Small Faces, traditional
really.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “They were souped-up Mods really.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “The music was pretty traditional
when you think it was coming from something that already existed, as Jonathan
Richman would have been coming from The Velvet Underground. Everything is connected;
nothing is set on its own. What set The Pistols apart, because musically they
were fairly conventional, was the lyrics and Johnny Rotten’s delivery of them. And his look, his intensity. I’d never heard anybody sing ‘God save the
Queen, she ain’t no human being, she made you a moron.’ I had heard something
like ‘Pretty Vacant’ previously in something like ‘Blank Generation’ but, lyrically
some of the things that he was coming out with, he would have been hung, drawn
and quartered in another century, uttering those words out into the open like
that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “But to them that was very natural, that
wasn’t contrived either.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “It takes a lot of courage to come
out with those things when no-one’s ever said them before. I can’t think of
anyone who’d said stuff like that about the establishment.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “I don’t think even they realised how
inflammatory it was. I think they were just doing what they were doing; they
were having fun. I think even they were taken aback.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “What did they have to lose? What did
any of us have to lose? We were all from working class backgrounds; what did
any of us have to lose? Nothing really. We just saw it as a bit of fun at the
time, a bit of a laugh. I didn’t think 36 years later we’d still be sat here
talking about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “I know that you’ve played live gigs
recently, but it must feel different playing to promote a new album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Ooh, it’s going to be really
different. We haven’t started bloody rehearsing yet and we’ve only got four
weeks to go. And we have a drummer who’s in the Isle of Lewis, we can’t get him
down here all the time. It’s going to be very different to the last time we
went out.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “There’s a lot of tracks which were
just worked out in the studio. We’ll have to re-work them out and see which
tracks work best live.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “How much of the new album are you going
to play live?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “Quite a lot, I would say.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “We’ve sort of worked out a set list and
it includes most of the new album.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “Was it important to you to have a ‘physical’
release?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “The record buying public is going back
to physical purchases. This was mixed in a studio to be listened to on a hi-fi
system.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neil “It’s true that most people now don’t
listen to music on particularly good systems.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “They listen to it on shit! Most modern
music sounds shit. Most modern music players sound shit. MP3s are shit, by
their nature. It nearly all sounds shit and it’s on shit players everywhere you
go.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “And we asked Vaughan Oliver to design
the sleeve as well, because it’s a whole physical package and we wanted that
quality and that kind of experience.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Steve “It’s the people who wanted the
physical package who enabled this album financially.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “The Pledge campaign didn’t have a
‘download only’ option, we made sure it didn’t. It was always going to
available physically, on CD, or, if you buy the vinyl you get a download code.
It was never intended to have just a download option.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At this point I thank the group and wish them
good luck with the album’s release.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “We know it’s a great record so any
criticism is like water off a duck’s back. You’re always going to get that. The
most frustrating thing to me would be to be ignored. It’s better to be hated
than ignored. I think that quiet confidence that we all had throughout it is
key.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rob “And the live gigs are going to be more
exciting for us because this adds an extra element playing brand new songs.
It’s just going to add to the tension, to the excitement for us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paul “We’re not idiots; we’ve all been to see
bands where we’ve sat through the new stuff, just waiting for the classics. We
know that, but we think that at least 50% of the set is going to be new stuff
because we’re excited about playing it. That will come across. I think it will
also help the old material as well. I’m just ready to start stuff now, my
fingers are itching.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pauline “We want as many people to hear it as
possible because it’s all done for the right reasons.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><b>Please don't forget that you can download and read 'The Great Cassette Experiment' and 'Writing About Music' from Amazon and Google Play Books. </b></i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-35149499406293400952016-05-24T21:25:00.000+01:002016-05-24T21:48:40.565+01:00Archive Interview - Scorpio (interviewed April 2016)<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The history of Scorpio, Mele Mel (only
one ‘l’ in ‘Mele’ now, apparently), Grandmaster Flash and the rest of The
Furious Five is a complicated one. In many ways it’s easier to just accept that
the past is the past and glory in the news that there is a future for the
hip-hop trailblazers. I chatted to Scorpio, an original member of The Furious
Five recently and he started, as all interviews should but few do, with a full
introduction;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“First I’d like to introduce myself. I’m
Scorpio from the original rap group Grandmaster Flash, Furious Five and now me
and my partner Mele Mel travel the world, we go out as Grandmaster’s Furious
Five featuring Mele Mel and Scorpio. I want to start by saying ‘respect to the
UK’. We love the UK. If I had to live any other place besides where I live it
would definitely be the UK. We love coming over there. The tour’s gonna be
incredible, we’re touring the whole countryside, up and down, with the original
Sugarhill Gang, Wonder Mike and Master Gee and Hendogg, so we’re gonna have a
great time. It’s the original essence of true hip-hop from our era and it’s
gonna be nothing but a party all through the UK.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I tell Scorpio that when I first heard
‘Wheels of Steel’, ‘The Message’, ‘White Lines’, ‘Scorpio’ and ‘Step Off’ it
opened up a window onto a completely different world for me. We continue by
discussing the legacy of hip-hop, and specifically Scorpio and Mele Mel’s part
in making it the worldwide phenomenon that it is today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“I think that the influence of hip-hop
is even stronger today because it has so many social media outlets, it can
spring across all borders, all barriers, all languages. We go to places all
over the planet where people can barely speak our language but they can sing
our songs, lyric for lyric. On the big picture, hip-hop, besides just being a
great music and a great feeling, helps so much with racism, because us kids
coming from The Bronx would’ve never interacted with different people but
because of the love of the music we all have a common ground and once you stand
on that common ground you really realise that you got more in common than you
don’t. When we travel all over the world, most of the people that we play for
are not the people of our colour, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s the unseen
part of hip-hop that people never talk about. Everybody grow up with
stereotypes ‘these people are like that’ or ‘those people are like this’ but
when you meet on the common ground of music you see most of that stuff that
they preach about other people being just a bunch of crap. We definitely see
our influence everywhere we go. When I look at television, 70% of the
commercials got hip-hop in it, rap in it. All of that is fruit from our original
tree. When I drive my car, I stop at a light and look over at a person who
doesn’t know me, but they’re playing hip-hop. If I go on vacation, if I go to
any place on the planet I can see something of my work that we created in The
Bronx and it’s all over the planet now. A lot of the time a lot of people say
‘You all should be rich; you should have what they have’. Of course, like
anybody else we would love to have the economic gratification, but we are rich.
What we did and what we brought to the planet you can’t really put a price tag
on that. I know our worth, and you can’t even put a dollar on it. ”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The boys are touring to promote their
new single, ‘Some Kind of Sorry’, so I ask Scorpio whether they have more new
material.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Oh yes, we gotta whole stack of new
material just ready to go. We have a whole album ready to go, it’s already cut,
it’s already mixed, it’s already mastered. Our first single is being released
on May 27<sup>th</sup>, and we’re having our release party May 28<sup>th</sup>
in Manchester and coming to Newcastle Riverside on June 5th. This tour is
really all about the original Sugarhill Gang getting their name back and
performing under that name but it’s also gonna incorporate our release for our
record on that tour.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At this point our conversation turns to
the new stars of rap and hip-hop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“With all due respect I really used to
like Kanye’s earlier stuff, I think he was brilliant in the songs and the
concepts. I really take my hat off to him because that was part of our original
blueprint of hip-hop. And Kendrick is just bringing that pure-hip-hop back.
When you look at him he ain’t walking around with no big chains, no big rings,
no big nothing, it’s just pure hip-hop. He’s probably the closest reminder of
when we first started. I know when he’s rapping, when he’s doing what he’s
doing, it’s coming from a pure place, he ain’t trying to fluff it up with a
whole bunch of other stuff around him, the biggest diamond, the biggest chains,
it’s about his craft and I really respect him for that. He’s sticking to the
original form more than anybody who’s out there.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I ask Scorpio who influenced him and
Mele Mel back in The Bronx.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Our only influence, we would have to
say, would be Kool Herc. He was a DJ outta The Bronx who actually came before
us and he and his crew was the people that we used to look up to, go to their
parties and check out what they was doing. It was because of him that made us
want to do what we do. Just like we was the inspiration to a lot of other
people, he was our inspiration, even though he didn’t like us!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then we discuss hip-hop’s earliest days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“If you was ever to go and pull up old
pictures of The Bronx it looked like a third world country. Most of the
buildings was burnt out, a lot of gangs, dope deals, different things like that
and out of that concrete grew a rose and that rose turned out to be hip-hop. We
weren’t taking trips to Beverley Hills and having stuff to compare it to,
that’s all we seen. Certain things that was on TV, certain lifestyles that was
on TV that was like a fantasy, not reality. Because we was in that position and
because we wasn’t privileged, because we didn’t have the luxury of going to
fancy hockey games or things like that we had to make something with our time
and that’s what hip-hop was. Like a rose from the concrete.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“It was a whole movement, it was almost
like a big circus where you have everything, you got the elephants, you got the
tigers, you got people flipping and that was hip-hop. And it was in one place,
The Bronx. For a spot like The Bronx to birth something that explosive is still
incredible. You know you’ll always have a lot of people saying it came from
this and that, and that they had this and they had that, but it truly, truly
started in The Bronx. I have to say that, not because I’m a Bronx cat, but
because that’s just a fact. Nobody else was playing hip-hop and nobody
definitely wasn’t rhyming because Mele Mel and Kidd Creole was the ones to
really start rhyming on beats.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, Scorpio signs off as politely
as he started. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“I want to thank all our UK fans, we
can’t wait, we gonna be over there May 26<sup>th</sup>, so look out, we gonna
have a great time.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>Please don't forget that you can download and read 'The Great Cassette Experiment' and 'Writing About Music' from Amazon and Google Play Books. </b></i></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-70481521761583729262015-08-23T19:12:00.005+01:002015-08-23T19:12:44.333+01:00Archive interview - Duke Special, April 2015
durham <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was lucky enough recently to
chat to Duke Special in the middle of his tour of Ireland and I asked him what
we can expect from his imminent album and his forthcoming tour when it hits our
shores later this month.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The album is called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Look Out Machines!</i> and it’s a little bit
of venturing into new territory for me, there’s a lot of synthetic drums and
synthetic strings and a lot of beats; it’s a very rhythmic album. Kind of
tipping the hat to 80s influences like Depeche Mode and The Blue Nile so
there’s influences on there that haven’t really featured so much on previous
records. The songs are very direct on this record, it’s not as concept-based an
album, the songs are there to be whatever they want to be. The tour is
primarily solo on this occasion, with collaborations with guest artists.
There’ll be still plenty happening, I’ll be mixing it up a lot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The production on the album is by
Dave Izumi and Phil Wilkinson, both are people I’ve worked with many times
before, Phil drums live with me a lot. There’ll be a full band in London,
Dublin and Belfast, the other dates in March and April will be solo with three
different guests at various points, there’s Paul Cook and The Chronicles, She
Makes War and the inventor Thomas Truax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve worked with Gary Clark on this
album on the song ‘Look Out Machines!’ He was someone I wanted to write with
and it was like a blind date, just going round to his house and meeting him and
hoping that there was something we’d have in common that he’d want to talk
about. He just started playing keyboard and I started scribbling down lyrics and
we came up with ‘Look Out Machines!’ And another song actually, which may see
the light of day sometime called ‘Tennessee Williams is Breaking my Heart’.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I then quizzed Duke about his
well-known love of old audio equipment and his involvement with the Shellac
Collective.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Shellac Collective is an
umbrella of enthusiasts of all things gramophone and 78 rpm. It’s headed up by
a guy called Greg Butler, ‘Greg’s Greats’ is his website and he’s an amazing
man, the most knowledgeable person I know, and has the biggest knowledge of
recorded music and he’s probably got the biggest record collection I’ve ever
seen. He has about 150,000 78s and The Collective is basically just like-minded
people who come together for different events such as Camp Bestival and I met
DJ 78 probably around 7 or 8 years ago. He’s from Norwich and I know he’s been
using a gramophone on stage and he offered to come and spin some shellacs in
the foyer of the arts centre I was playing in before I went on stage. That’s
where we first met and then gradually we’ve got to know each other and then
I’ve been roped in to playing the festivals, DJing with him and I’ve set up a
gramophone club in Belfast. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think that there’s something
about the aesthetic, the attitude, the passion.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I turned to the inevitable
question of musical heroes there was none of the hesitation I’ve grown used to
with most artists, just a swift delivery of a very impressive list.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The Beatles, Elliott Smith,
Magnetic Fields, Tom Waits, Ivor Cutler. I wanna be him when I grow up!” When I
point out that this seems to be a fine ambition my comment is met with a prompt
reply “I could do worse!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Duke continued to tell me that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Look Out Machines!</i> will also be
available on wax cylinder.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Yes, it’s a very, very limited
run we’re doing. It’s released obviously digitally, on CD, vinyl and wax
cylinder. It’s pretty expensive just because the process is quite expensive;
it’s available on Pledge, through Pledge Music. There’s only a couple
available, I’d say the demand is going to be quite limited. I’ve made 78s
before and vinyl and sometimes people buy stuff like that even if they haven’t
got a player, but it’s definitely easier finding a record player than a wax
cylinder player these days. Maybe this will encourage a renaissance!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<strong><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First published by NE:MM (now at nemm.org.uk) and reproduced with kind permission.</span></em></strong></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><strong><em>Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</em></strong></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p></span></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p><strong>and/or follow me on twitter @boxofpeppers</strong></o:p></span></o:p></span></o:p></span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-10923782261131972552015-08-23T19:02:00.000+01:002015-08-23T19:02:18.437+01:00Archive interview - Nils Lofgren, November 2014
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nils Lofgren is
genuine musical royalty. A member of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a 46
year career, both as a solo artist and with various bands alongside, amongst
others, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Ringo Starr and Jerry Lee Lewis, Nils
has recently issued a career-spanning ten disc, 189 track box set, Face the
Music. On Friday 23 January 2015, Nils and his band bring their 16 date UK tour
to Sage Gateshead.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I interviewed Nils
earlier this month and I started by asking him about the box set and whether,
46 years ago, he’d had any idea that he’d have such a successful career.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Err, no.” he
replied with succinct honesty. “I was a classical accordion player from age 5
to 15 doing Beatles medleys at the ninth grade variety show and I really just
picked up the guitar as a hobby. It was through The Beatles and Stones that I
discovered Stax, Volt, Motown, the old blues, the whole floodgates of music. My
brother Tommy was playing guitar and showed me a few chords. In Middle America
nobody thought you could do what The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix did. When I was 16
I saw The Who and then later that same night in a different venue saw The Jimi
Hendrix Experience and that night I was possessed with the notion of being a
professional rock musician and a year later at 17 I hit the road with my band
Grin. Of course at that time I was just worried about finding a few gigs on the
weekend and making a few bucks to pay rent. I certainly wasn’t greedy enough to
envision a 46 year run with some of the great bands of all time and be sitting
here putting out a 189 track box set of 10 discs and a 136 page book
illustrated by Dave Marsh. I’ve worked fairly hard but I didn’t create the gift
of music, I got it from my folks and some higher power, God’s fine with me, I’m
not religious at all but I like to think I’m spiritual and believe in some
higher power.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was possessed
with the notion of being a professional rock musician<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I continued by
asking Nils if he’d rediscovered any tracks when putting together Face the
Music, and whether any of them would be played on his forthcoming tour.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Yeah, many of
them. I never really listen to my old music, so here I was presented with a
wonderful project where I had to listen to all of it! There were hundreds of
basement tapes and demos to plough through. There were unreleased tapes that we
found that I’d forgotten about and it was really a great stroll down memory
lane. My goal was figuratively to not have to get off the couch and move the
needle on the record; I didn’t want to have to skip tracks and I spent months
and months and months assembling not only the songs but a running order. Of
course some albums I might take three songs from, some you might take six from;
you wanted them to flow with each other and then from album to album and that
was no easy task. I had a great mastering engineer, Billy Wolf, who I’ve worked
with for years, who put all five decades of sounds together. Shockingly I can
say that I could listen to this thing front to back and basically enjoy it,
which really surprised me because I’m always thinking about the next chapter –
at this point of course it’s a tour of the UK then my plan is to come home and
start writing and see what comes up to make another record next year, a solo
album. Looking back to this level for a year and a half was something I would
have never done without the gift of a company willing to go find these tracks,
which are mostly out of print, and allow me to share them in this box set.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nils continued by
telling me what we can expect to see at the gigs next year.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Well I’m with my
buddy Greg Varlotta who was with me for the last three or four runs in the UK.
Of course we’ve got the many acoustic guitars, electric guitars, keyboards,
piano, synth, tap-dancing, trumpet playing, singing, harmonies but we’re going
to change the set a bit especially Face the Music. I’ll be going back and
playing some songs I don’t usually play, some of my favourites that I’ve
forgotten about, and certainly do a selection of the bonus disc tracks, there’s
40 of them there, songs that I never play. So we’ll be playing a different
selection of songs amongst hopefully the classics that people expect to hear
and change up the shows and, of course, my improv guitar playing is always
there. I love playing a lot of soloing and just taking chances to see where it
leads. We were out of the Face the Music box set but we’ve got more and you can
get them at nilslofgren.com and they come with a special pin that Amy, my wife,
made, reflecting the cover shot which is me with my frizzy Jimi Hendrix hair at
16 in a band called The Shot when all we did was the Cream catalogue and the
Hendrix catalogue. It was a power trio of teenagers in Bethesda Maryland.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, however,
Nils’ famous trampoline won’t make a tour appearance.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“My whole life I
played basketball and of course I’ve been doing that trampoline flip since 1969
and I destroyed my hips, they were bone on bone for many years. I was in agony
and six years ago I had both hips replaced and the surgeon assured me that if
the trampoline didn’t go in the closet I’d be a cripple within weeks. So now
I’m just happy to jump around and walk with no pain and I’ve taken up, of all
things, tap-dancing. My buddy Greg Varlotta is a master tap-dancer and he gave
me lessons. He taps in our show more like a percussion instrument and a couple
of times we’ll have a little ‘tap off’ where we play against each other. I
don’t overstay my welcome because I’m not very good but it’s kinda fun.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nils explained why
playing in the North East of England holds special memories.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’ve been coming
there for 40 years since the Tonight’s the Night tour with Neil Young in ’73. I
flew there from London in the ‘80s to play a TV show of all things and jumping
on an 11 o’clock flight back to London I bumped into Ralph Steadman, the
historic illustrator for Hunter Thompson, and we’ve been friends ever since. As
a very big fan of Ralph’s art it was a very historic meeting and it led to a
great friendship and he’s done a couple of album covers for me, Breakaway Angel
and Crooked Line. We’ve had some great gigs all over the UK and Newcastle is
certainly no exception.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I asked Nils to
tell me about his first trip to the UK.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’d been there in
’69 to take a field trip to the historic rock town of London, England. Graham
Nash was kind enough, from my connections with Neil Young, to let me come into
the studio and hang out with them and have some tea here and there and just
have a chat and kind of spend some time with him and also Greg Reeves, bass
player on After the Gold Rush. Greg and I got together on a project he had that
I don’t think was ever released. I just wanted to get to London and I had a
great couple of weeks there and thanks to Graham Nash and Greg Reeves had some
friends to hang out with.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I continued by
asking Nils about The Loner his well received album of Neil Young covers and
whether he had any plans to repeat the formula with other artists.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t. It was
not really something I’d ever thought of. Somebody mentioned it and I thought
‘why would I do that?’ Out of respect to Neil’s writing, and I think he’s as
great a writer as we’ve ever had, I took about 30 songs and sang them to my
dogs and cats for about 3 weeks. I didn’t go to the studio, I didn’t record
anything, I wasn’t committed to the project, I just sang ‘em. And, you know,
they sounded like karaoke for about a week or two and then all of a sudden
there was a batch of about a dozen or so that sounded like I might have
something and I decided that if it was all live, with no production at all and
no fixes and they were just live tapes of these beautiful songs in the barest
form with one guitar and one piano there might be something special there. I’ll
probably sing one or two in my upcoming tour of course.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the
forthcoming gig firmly in mind, I rounded off by asking whether the
crowd-pleasing ‘Mud in Your Eye’ was based on true events.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Way back in the
‘70s my brother Tommy and I were on the road together in my band and we were
playing down south and I think Tommy started dating a girl that we met on the
road. I took a lot of liberties; it’s kind of vague at this point as it’s so
long ago. But it was loosely based and inspired by my brother and a liaison he
had down south and it led to the song with upright bass by Scotty Ball, a
classical bassist at the time and one of my first guitar teachers after my
brother Tommy. Scotty went on to become a classical, extraordinary musician and
now he’s a professor and teaches but he played that beautiful upright on ‘Mud
in Your Eye’. It’s one we still do in the show. And of course it’s on the box
set.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally Nils,
polite throughout, finishes with a ‘thank you.’<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #636363; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Thanks for letting
people know what I’m up to and spreading the word. I really appreciate it,
we’re very excited to get back there and our intent is to do some inspired
shows for everyone who shows up.”It was very much my pleasure, Nils, and there
are very many people here who are equally excited by the prospect of seeing a
legend in our very own back yard.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><em><strong>Originally published by NE:MM (now to be found at NE:MM.org.uk) on 30th November 2014 and reproduced with kind permission.</strong></em></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</em></span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p></span></o:p></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-90879415391544524182015-04-20T15:37:00.000+01:002015-04-20T15:37:07.328+01:00Archive interview - Matthew Healy of The 1975, September 2013<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a cool
September night in Newcastle a vibrant young band take to the stage at The
University. The venue was booked and tickets were released, it’s probably not
unfair to say, before The 1975 were famous. By the time the concert comes
around they’re the proud possessors of a number 1 album. It's the first night
of a 3 month tour that will see the boys play dates across the UK, America and
Europe. Suffice it to say that the sheer energy and swagger of the band on
stage and the infectious enthusiasm of the amassed crowd, buoyed by their
understandable smugness that they'd had the foresight to get their tickets
months ago, are reflected in a memorable, soaring performance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I chatted to
Matthew Healy on the tour bus before the gig last September and asked him the
rather too obvious question I'd never had the chance to ask another living soul;
“how does it feel to have a number 1 album?” “We spent 10 years of people
telling us we’d never even get a record deal, it’s really surreal, very
humbling” Matthew replied, slightly hesitantly, as if he still can’t quite
believe all of this is really happening.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When asked about
musical heroes Matthew reels off an incredibly eclectic, genre-jumping, and
somewhat daring I feel bound to add, list of musical heroes, as befits a band
who defy easy categorisation. From classic soul artists like Marvin Gaye, Otis
Redding, Al Green and The Supremes to 1990’s R&B acts like Boyz II Men,
D’Angelo and Toni Braxton, from acts “who were at their peak in the 1980s”
Michael Jackson, Prince and Peter Gabriel to Talking Heads, Primal Scream and
the Jesus and Mary Chain, Matthew runs through this list of musical and
cultural icons with abandon. When I raise an eyebrow at the mention of Phil
Collins, Curtis Stigers and Michael Bolton, Matthew gently but firmly chastises
me about the musical snobbery of my own generation which is refreshingly
missing in his own. “Not so over-encumbered with irony and cynicism” were his
exact words. He's right of course. So we chat about the concept of the lazily
named guilty pleasure for a while, with specific reference to our shared
admiration of Supertramp, and Matthew tells me about his Dad’s mates who just
happened to be in a band named Dire Straits.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inevitably too, as
we're on the tour bus (their 6th or 7th bus this year, Matthew tells me,
matter-of-factly) my thoughts turn to the gnarly old question of tour bus film
consumption. For a band who take their music seriously the response is, with
the exception of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gangs of New York</i>, light-hearted
and escapist. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Office, Alan Partridge,
South Park</i>'. I sense a very special fondness for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Team America: World Police</i> too.Songwriting, Matthew tells me, is an
organic process undertaken, for this hectic year at least, while on the road.
He finds it slightly puzzling when bands take themselves away somewhere
specifically to write material for a new album and tells me at this point that they’re
“well into the second album, we make music because it makes us happy.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interview originally published in NEMM (North East Music Monthly).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</span><br /></strong><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;"><strong>The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</strong></span></a></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-39256519293165018052015-03-31T21:32:00.000+01:002015-03-31T21:32:39.073+01:00500 Singles - Numbers 1,2 and 3 - ABBA - Knowing me, knowing you, Summer night city, The name of the game<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JZeMGV9N-IE/VPnZMZ7ypwI/AAAAAAAAIUM/Wa7MvnsiQaM/s1600/ABBA%2BThe%2BName%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGame.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JZeMGV9N-IE/VPnZMZ7ypwI/AAAAAAAAIUM/Wa7MvnsiQaM/s1600/ABBA%2BThe%2BName%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGame.jpg" height="317" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s
more than fitting that the first single I ever bought should appear on page 1
of the 500 Singles list. </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From what now seems like a dangerously young age I used to walk
one mile from our house close to Sunderland General Hospital (now known as
Sunderland Royal Hospital) into Sunderland town centre, to meet up with friends and
spend Saturday looking around the shops of the fine metropolis of Sunderland. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes I even had
money to spend, and of course as everyone knows that was the only way to ensure
admittance to Josephs’ toy shop. If you didn’t have any money to spend you
simply weren’t allowed to idly browse the wonders on the first floor (it was
boring sportswear on the ground floor) regardless of the amount you’d spent
last week on a new Subbuteo team or a John Player Special in black and gold for
your small oval of Scalextric track. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then, one particular Saturday in 1977,
something significant happened. We wandered down windswept Walworth Way (the
bleakest environment outside the Arctic Circle) and instead of spending my
pocket money on sweets or toys I made a bee-line for that most independent and
cutting edge of music retailers, WH Smith and handed over my hard-earned for a
copy of ABBA’s ‘The Name Of The Game’. My first single. Orange Epic label,
orange paper sleeve. My second single was ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, but there
are no prizes for second place. By the time I bought ‘Summer night
city’ in 1978 I’d already shifted my musical affections in the direction of The
Boomtown Rats. I guess that’s just the way life goes.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Than</span>ks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p><br /></span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-18834843368780315492015-03-17T20:52:00.001+00:002015-03-17T20:53:32.511+00:00500 Singles - Number 189 - Havana Let's Go!! - Spanish Cabaret<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GrQabwUy4rQ/VQiSZ9nF_OI/AAAAAAAAIio/6r-9VkY0EHE/s1600/Havana%2Blet's%2Bgo%2BSpanish%2BCabaret.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GrQabwUy4rQ/VQiSZ9nF_OI/AAAAAAAAIio/6r-9VkY0EHE/s1600/Havana%2Blet%27s%2Bgo%2BSpanish%2BCabaret.jpg" height="320" width="316" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Some
of the most interesting tales to emerge from the artists on this list come from
those that merit little more than a footnote in other accounts and the
story of Havana Let’s Go is one such tale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In
1981 they released two singles, which turned out to be the sum total of their
recorded output. One was one of the greatest forgotten pop singles of the early
1980s, the catchy and quirky ‘Torpedoes’, and the other was the much less
impressive ‘Spanish Cabaret’, reviewed by Smash Hits Magazine’s Dave Rimmer in
less than glowing terms as follows ‘This does indeed sound like something you might
hear in a cabaret while on a package holiday in Benidorm Nice sax, but this is
really just another plastic salsa record with nothing to recommend it’. Ouch.
To provide some context, Dave also reviewed Bucks Fizz’s ‘The land of make
believe’ and Imagination’s ‘Flashback’ in the same edition, commenting on the former
(which subsequently became a Number One single) with ‘The rot starts here’ and
the latter, surprisingly, as ‘a slick slice of strutting, soulful disco pitched
somewhere between Smokey Robinson and The Bee Gees’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Some
reports have Havana Let’s Go’s potential for world domination as being
scuppered by a BBC ban on ‘Torpedoes’ as a result of the Falklands conflict
and, while it’s difficult to prove this either way after over 30 years, it
seems unlikely as a year had passed between the release of the single and the
UK Government’s desire to protect a few islands (and associated Islanders) on
the other side of the planet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">There’s
very little in the way of solid facts to be found about Havana Let’s Go, except
to say that their lead singer was called Joanna Havana, drummer Mark Tanner had
been a member of Punk group of legend, Bazooka Joe, who numbered Stuart Goddard
(or Adam Ant if you prefer) within their ranks and were the group that The Sex
Pistols supported at their first public appearance. And guitarist Andrew
Morahan went on to become an award winning director of music videos for Wham,
George Michael (including the banned video for ‘I Want Your Sex’) and Guns ‘n’
Roses and the film ‘Highlander III: The Sorcerer’. More recently Morahan
directed the video for Band Aid 30. He does have pedigree though; his Dad,
Christopher Morahan, Directed episodes of the 1980s TV classic ‘The Jewel in
The Crown’ and cult comedy film ‘Clockwise’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</em></span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p></span></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-87830831573355077712015-03-09T16:40:00.000+00:002015-03-09T16:40:00.118+00:00500 Singles - Numbers 4 and 5 - Adam & The Ants - Stand and deliver, Young Parisians<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4jXvvIrwODY/VPnXUFml0BI/AAAAAAAAIUA/FI3sOAQWtTI/s1600/Adam%2B%26%2BThe%2BAntz%2Byoung%2Bparisians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4jXvvIrwODY/VPnXUFml0BI/AAAAAAAAIUA/FI3sOAQWtTI/s1600/Adam%2B%26%2BThe%2BAntz%2Byoung%2Bparisians.jpg" height="320" width="317" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">You
have to have some sympathy for Adam Ant, the punk upstart who sought guidance
from punk’s best known svengali, Malcolm McClaren, who promptly conspired with
his group, The Ants, to sack their lead singer and become, essentially, Bow Wow
Wow. Adam and his new Ants came out fighting though and for a brief period
during the early 1980s became an act that were simultaneously mainstream and
potentially disturbing at the same time. (Imagine 1 Direction being painfully
open about their love of S&M and including tracks like ‘Mile High Club’ and
‘S.E.X.’ on their albums and you’ve got some idea of the balance of
acceptability and danger that Adam had at the time). Adam’s rise was
stratospheric, but his time at the top of pop’s tree was reasonably brief with
not much to write home about outside his releases (and re-releases) in 1980 and
1981; Adam and the boys’ Christmas single in 1981 is one of the most
excruciating ‘white people rapping’ songs you’re ever likely to hear, but if
you were around at the time you’re highly unlikely to forget, courtesy of this
single, that the group at the time consisted of ‘Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee,
Gary Tibbs and Yours Truly’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">Andrew
and I saw the ‘Prince Charming Revue’ at <st1:placename w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newcastle</st1:place> <st1:placetype w:st="on">City Hall</st1:placetype></st1:placename>
and it was a memorable spectacle, walking the plank between punk, glam rock,
theatre and pantomime. Sometimes it fell off. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"></span> </div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-69678171601647197132015-03-07T19:32:00.000+00:002015-03-07T19:32:00.086+00:00500 Singles - Number 320 - Otway & Barrett – DK 50/80
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E3SY-U6ImFg/VPiuY2UGzHI/AAAAAAAAITU/T9jUD0kAUT8/s1600/Otway%2B%26%2BBarrett%2BDK%2B5080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E3SY-U6ImFg/VPiuY2UGzHI/AAAAAAAAITU/T9jUD0kAUT8/s1600/Otway%2B%26%2BBarrett%2BDK%2B5080.jpg" height="320" width="315" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">John
and Wild Willy are perhaps best known for their 1977 hit single ‘Really Free’,
popular at a time when Punk principles were as important as Punk musical styles.
It’s a unique piece of hippy folk rock (influenced by: Dylan from ‘The Magic
Roundabout’ / Influence on: Neil from ‘The Young Ones’). Three years later the
boys came very close top having a second hit single with a ‘tune’ only similar
to ‘Really Free’ in its absolute uniqueness. ‘DK 50/80’ combines bits of
another record played backwards with repeated lyrics sung at breakneck speed
and rendered almost completely unintelligible by two artists whose only regard
for mainstream music seems to have been as a boundary to steer firmly clear of.
In short, it’s a lost masterpiece that never fails to cheer the heart of anyone
lucky enough to hear it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Just
at the point at which it was about to storm into the popular music charts (on
the back of a series of gigs targeting towns and cities with chart return shops
where admission could only be gained with a copy of the single) the much sought
out invitation arrived to be on next week’s Top Of The Pops. So far so good.
Until The Musician’s Union called a strike and the filming of Britain’s best
loved weekly chart music show was cancelled leaving ‘DK 50/80’ stranded at the
heady heights of Number 45.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Both
men continue to work in music, Otway’s own website describes him, rather
harshly I think as there are many more qualified candidates, as ‘Rock and
Roll’s greatest failure’ and pictures him recumbent in a Sinclair C5. In 2002
John graced the charts again with ‘Bunsen Burner’ which reached all the way to
Number 9 and therefore becoming his ‘Greatest Hit. It’s almost certainly the
only song ever written with lyrics designed to help the singer’s daughter with
her chemistry homework.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Barrett
is also a talented woodworker. You can see some of his pieces, many with a
musical theme, at wildwillybarrett.com, a website which comes with the veiled
warning that ‘The novelty and sheer ebullience of his work cannot fail to
provoke a reaction’. I'm the first in a long line of talented joiners and
woodworkers to have absolutely no talent whatsoever in that department, but they look pretty
good to me. Although it’s probably fair to say that if you bought one and
popped it in your living room or kitchenette it would be unlikely to go
unnoticed by visitors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Otway
and Barrett’s ‘Best of’ glories in the appropriate title of ’40 Odd Years:
1971-2011’ and if you’ve got nothing to do this afternoon can I respectfully
suggest that you rummage within this wonderful collection to check out the
equally magnificently titled (and downright magnificent) cold war themed
‘Natasha You’re a Smasha (But You’re Working For Russia)’. I’d steer away from
their version of the American Civil War tune ‘Two Little Boys’, made equally
famous by those unlikely bedfellows of Scottish Music Hall star Harry Lauder
and shamed antipodean dauber Rolf Harris for a few good reasons though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available if only you're brave enough to follow this clever little link;</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-50443842137644588642015-03-06T15:59:00.000+00:002015-03-06T15:59:50.489+00:00500 Singles - Numbers 53 to 57 - The Boomtown Rats – I don’t like Mondays, Like Clockwork, Mary of the 4th form, Rat Trap, Someone's looking at you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kmD1yQkmG_Y/VPitGmG5JpI/AAAAAAAAITM/4SrFbl5XWjg/s1600/Boomtown%2BRats%2BRat%2BTrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kmD1yQkmG_Y/VPitGmG5JpI/AAAAAAAAITM/4SrFbl5XWjg/s1600/Boomtown%2BRats%2BRat%2BTrap.jpg" height="313" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">As
we’ve already established, the first single I ever bought was ABBA’s ‘The name
of the game’, but pretty soon, like most spotty boys at the time I fell prey to
the lure of Punk. My first punk obsession were The Boomtown Rats and pretty
soon I’d turned to the dark side, purchasing in swift succession the powerful
anthem to schoolroom obsession ‘Mary of the 4<sup>th</sup> form’, the staccato
delivery classic ‘Like clockwork’. Soon to follow was the claustrophobic ‘Rat
trap’, the number one single that delivered the UK from the monotony of endless
weeks of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Summer nights’ (and eventually
gave way to the potentially worse chart-topping prospect of Rod Stewart’s ‘Do
Ya think I’m sexy’) and then ‘I don’t like Mondays’, to the best of my
knowledge the only single ever to reach the top of the charts to take a school
massacre as its subject matter. Eventually, an inexplicably German copy of
‘Someone’s looking at you’ was added to the collection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">At
some point along the line, The Rats stopped being punk. In fact I even have
some nagging doubts now that they were ever musically a punk band, but they
certainly had a Punk attitude – Johnnie Fingers always wore his Pyjamas for
goodness sake, it doesn’t get much more punk than that. And of course Bob
Geldof could always strip the paint from a whole houseful of doors with one
cutting phrase. Great chunks of the first three albums now sound like they were
made by a tight band with a Bruce Springsteen and Shangri-Las obsession (if you
can’t see the Springsteen comparisons (and now that I’ve made it I find it
difficult to see anything else!) then just have a nifty listen to ‘Joey’s on
the streets again’ from the first album (it’s even got exactly the right
saxophone solo) or ‘When the night comes’ from ‘The fine art of surfacing’ you
may be a little more convinced). The Rats fell out of fashion as rapidly as
they’d somehow found themselves in it but as my Punk first love they’ll always
have a little piece of my heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">As
a footnote, ‘Tonic for the troops’ was one of the first albums that I owned,
ordered from the Amazon of 1978, my Mam’s Grattans catalogue along with Jean
Michel Jarre’s ‘Equinoxe’ and Darts’ ‘Everyone plays Darts’. What a bizarre
mixture of musical tastes I had. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"></span> </div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, you can still bag a copy of my Kindle book by following this handy little link;</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-46536831245847756432015-03-05T19:15:00.001+00:002015-03-05T19:15:46.092+00:00500 Singles - Number 137 - Ian Dury & The Blockheads – Reasons to be cheerful pt. 3
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pRkG1LBybyc/VPiqE-oJcGI/AAAAAAAAIS0/ZUeInTSdklw/s1600/Ian%2BDury%2Breasons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pRkG1LBybyc/VPiqE-oJcGI/AAAAAAAAIS0/ZUeInTSdklw/s1600/Ian%2BDury%2Breasons.jpg" height="320" width="317" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘The
more I listen to ‘Reasons to be cheerful’, the more it sounds like the best
kind of national anthem, one capable of inspiring pride in those of us who
spend too much time feeling embarrassed by our country’. Not my words,
obviously (they’re too poetic to be me for a start), but the words of Nick
Hornby, hero of list makers across the globe, from Highbury to Hollywood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I
can see where Nick is coming from as Mr Dury can swell even the least patriotic
of chests, although if you’ve read my book, the excellent ‘The Great
Cassette Experiment – The Joy Of Cassettes’ (gratuitous link at the foot of this post!) you’ll know that my own colours are
very firmly nailed to the mast of The Lilac Time’s ‘Let Our Land Be The One’
alternative national anthem-wise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Ian’s
famously chirpy list song, sees him in typically playful mood. Too often lazily
categorised as ‘Punk’ (listen to the sleazy Spyro Gyra Saxophone section here
and you’ll soon realise that there was much more to Ian and The Blockheads than
that), Ian was really an uncategorisable trailblazer, a musical John the Baptist
if you like, without whom much of the quirkier side of the music of the late
1970s and early 1980s would never have found an audience. Unfortunately he may
also have paved the way for the awful ‘Toast’ by The Street Band, but you can’t
have everything.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">‘Reasons
to be cheerful pt. 3’ (don’t go looking for pts. 1 and 2, because like the
films Oceans 1 to 10, they don’t exist) is, as the title suggests, a list of
reasons to be cheerful, and includes, but is not limited to, Buddy Holly, nanny
goats, yellow socks, cheddar cheese and pickle, and actor, circus boy and
contortionist’s son, Bonar Colleano.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">It
also features, at one point, a naughty Ian ‘being in his nuddy’, but, luckily, there’s
no reference to his ‘rhythm stick’.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available by clicking on this nifty little link;</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: #009eb8;">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-77460107286567861442015-03-04T21:45:00.000+00:002015-03-04T21:51:56.334+00:00500 Singles - Numbers 243 & 244 - Kid Creole & The Coconuts – Annie, I’m not your daddy & Dear Addy <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd5qg7F-RV0/VPd54ioLAEI/AAAAAAAAIRU/26I69RMT-rY/s1600/Kid%2BCreole%2BDear%2BAddy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd5qg7F-RV0/VPd54ioLAEI/AAAAAAAAIRU/26I69RMT-rY/s1600/Kid%2BCreole%2BDear%2BAddy.jpg" height="315" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In
1982, The Face magazine called Ze Records “The most fashionable label in the
world” and it was largely due to the likes of Kid Creole and the Coconuts and
label-mates as diverse and unusual as Suicide, Material, Nona Hendryx, Alan
Vega and Was (not Was) that the reputation of this record label, founded by
Frenchman Michel Esteban and Brit Michael Zilka was held in such high regard.
That and the fact that they weren’t frightened to take chances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In
common with many other bands of the era, Kid Creole and The Coconuts seemed to
be as pre-occupied with style as they did with music, but their style was that
of the dance band era, brightly coloured suits, big hats, risqué lyrics in a
Cab Calloway meets Disco-Tex and The Sex-O-Lettes style.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In
later years Kid went through quite a few Coconuts, but in their glory years,
the lineup included August Darnell (as Kid was really known), his wife Adriana
Kaegi (aka ‘Addy’) and musical director and collaborator Andy Hernandez (aka
‘Coati Mundi’ and they were a bright and cheerful diversion.
‘Dear Addy’ is actually the lead track on their 1982 ‘Christmas in B’Dilli Bay’
EP, entertaining in a low-key ‘out-take from South Pacific’ kind of way.
‘Annie, I’m not your Daddy’ was more successful, and, of the two is the one
you’re more likely to catch on the radio from time to time, with its
controversial tale of a disputed paternity suit (this is still 1982, remember!)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span> </div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available if only you're brave enough to follow this clever little link;</span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></o:p></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" target="_blank">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes!</a></span></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-56126138861472316082015-03-01T16:03:00.000+00:002015-03-01T16:03:18.094+00:00500 singles - Number 297 - Anthony Newley – Lifetime of happiness<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h8qFdrE6jV0/VPM38N4_mdI/AAAAAAAAIPs/qwVDkY-1IAw/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h8qFdrE6jV0/VPM38N4_mdI/AAAAAAAAIPs/qwVDkY-1IAw/s1600/001.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like
many of the singles on the 500 singles list, how I happen to be in possession of this particular
gem by actor, songwriter, crooner, raconteur, former husband of Joan Collins
and role model for the young David Bowie is an absolute and total mystery. But
here it is.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now
better known as an actor (he was the Artful Dodger in David Lean’s definitive
film version of Oliver Twist and Matthew Mugg in Richard Fleischer’s equally
definitive film version of Doctor Dolittle) and songwriter (writing the theme
from the James Bond film ‘Goldfinger’ with John Barry and the soundtrack to the
film ‘Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory’ with co-writer Leslie Bricusse,
which proved to have a life far beyond the garishly coloured film). Most
surprisingly, in a revelation as shocking as the news that Michael Nesmith’s
mother invented Tipp-Ex or that Hedy Lamarr invented the fore-runner to
Bluetooth, Newley and Bricusse also penned the Nina Simone classic ‘Feeling
good’. Although if you have a listen to Newley’s own version you’ll hear it has
none of Nina’s balls. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Released
by Decca in 1960, hot on the heels of two consecutive Number 1 hit singles for
the 28 year old from Hackney with the cheeky smile (‘Why’ in January 1960 and
‘Do you mind’ in March 1960) the single, whose actual A side is ‘If she should
come to you (La Montana)’ is a double sided croony gem of the kind that was
damned to imminent extinction by the looming sounds coming out of Detroit and,
ultimately, Liverpool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If
you have any doubts about the Newley/Bowie comparisons can I suggest that you
listen to Anthony’s ‘Pop goes the weasel’ and David’s ‘The laughing gnome’ back
to back if you can manage it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading and, don't forget, my Kindle book is still available if only you're brave enough to follow this clever little link;</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-44797016949921992422014-11-02T15:11:00.001+00:002016-05-24T21:53:03.328+01:0010 significant records<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Every now and again I come up with a list. It's what men do to avoid the real world. So here, since you asked, is a list of 10 records of special significance. Not necessarily 10 brilliant records, although some are undoubtedly brilliant, but 10 records that for one reason or another really mean something to me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Benny Hill – Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When we were kids we’d often spend family Saturday nights at the bowling alley, located at The Mayfair at The Wheatsheaf in Sunderland (for years I thought this area of Sunderland was actually called The Wear Chief for some reason). Progress dictates that this venue has now been demolished and replaced by a Renault Garage. It wasn’t the bowling that sticks in my mind, although obviously I still have a soft spot for the shoes, but my first encounter with a Jukebox. Boy did we love that Jukebox, and of course my brother Andrew and me weren’t of the age where we wanted to listen to the varied musical styles that were on offer. Quite the opposite; we knew what we liked and we wanted the same records played every week. For me was Benny Hill’s tragic ode to an amorous milkman and his love rival Ted. For Andrew it was Melanie’s ‘Brand New Key’. How the other bowlers must’ve loved us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Carpenters – Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the mid 1970s my Dad had a Rover with an 8-track cartridge player and a limited library of cartridges including Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Olivia Newton John, ABBA, Simon and Garfunkel and, of course, The Carpenters. We knew every track on every one of these albums by heart, including the places where some of the tunes stopped part way through before resuming after a brief pause while the player swopped to another of its 8 ‘tracks’. The only one I can ever remember my Dad buying new was ABBA’s ‘Arrival’, the others simply seemed to have always existed. This is where my love of cheesy, mainstream pop music started and continues to this day. Most remarkable and most memorable of all was The Carpenter’s ‘Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft’, a haunting tale of reaching out to extra-terrestrials, performed by the chirpiest looking brother and sister act ever seen. I’m a lot older and possibly slightly wiser now, at least enough to know that they weren’t quite as chirpy as they appeared.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ABBA – The Name Of The Game</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From what now seems like a dangerously young age I used to walk from our house into Sunderland town centre, meet up with friends and spend Saturday looking around the shops of Sunderland. Sometimes I even had money to spend, and of course as everyone knows that was the only way to ensure admittance to Josephs’ toy shop. If you didn’t have any money to spend you simply weren’t allowed to idly browse the wonders on the first floor (it was boring sportswear on the ground floor) regardless of the amount you’d spent last week on a new Subbuteo team or a John Player Special in black and gold for your small oval of Scalextric track. Then, one particular Saturday in 1977, something significant happened. We wandered down windswept Walworth Way (the bleakest environment outside the Arctic Circle) and instead of spending my pocket money on sweets or toys I made a bee-line for that most independent and cutting edge of music retailers, WH Smith and handed over my hard-earned for a copy of ABBA’s ‘The Name Of The Game’. My first single. Orange Epic label, orange paper sleeve. My second single was ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, but there are no prizes in this list for second place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Electric Light Orchestra – Sweet Talkin’ Woman</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now a fully fledged record buyer I found it hard to resist the pull of a record shop. Still do. So when I went to Scout camp at Sandsend on the North Yorkshire coast the following year I had only one thing one my mind – where could I get my hands on vinyl? A planned walk to the bright lights of Whitby turned out to be just the ticket, and it was in a record shop in that most haunted of coastal resorts that I spotted the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, a copy of ‘Sweet Talkin’ Woman’ on translucent purple vinyl. I bought it on the spot, and just like ‘The Name Of The Game’, I still have it. Of course because we were at Scout camp I had to wait almost a week before I got home and finally had the chance to play it on our radiogram.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Human League – Empire State Human</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After sitting my ‘O’ levels and before the results were known (spoiler – I got them all, unlike my ‘A’ levels) I went to stay for a fortnight with my uncle in Nottingham. He had the best record deck I’ve ever seen, a collection of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin on vinyl (which I hardly touched having been warned off the stuff by many a punk luminary) and an Alfasud, which if not already cool enough, had an oil gauge marked ‘olio’. The real excitement of that Nottingham break lay in doing whatever I wanted and in spending most days in Virgin Records. I’d never seen a Virgin Records store at the time, this was a few years before Richard’s store arrived in Newcastle. It seemed like it was light years away from the familiarity of stuffy old HMV (although in hindsight it was almost exactly the same). At this stage every last penny of my pocket money was being spent on music and I must’ve spent a lot of my limited funds in the Nottingham branch of Virgin. One single I bought XTC’s ‘Towers Of London’, remains a favourite to this day, but the other was the one that turned me on to alternative electronic music forever, and that was ‘Empire State Human’. After this I hunted down everything that Phil, Martyn and the boys had recorded (still got it all!), and then, as obsessive music fans do, I hunted down most of their influences too. Not many people did it in this order, but I did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Spizzenergi – Soldier soldier</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the height of what was then known as the era of the ‘New Romantics’ we would go downstairs into Heroes in Sunderland and listen to the best vinyl that it was possible for the DJ to lay his hands on. Most notably the more danceable stuff by The B-52’s (Planet Claire, Give Me Back My Man and Dirty Back Road), the glorious, unique, downright grubbiness of Cabaret Voltaire’s Nag Nag Nag and things like ‘Tar’ by Visage that sounded lost on an album but totally at home in a dark pub or club when played loud. But the standout record from this period was Spizzenergi’s ‘Soldier Soldier’ probably because this was the only place (other than on my own record player) that I’ve ever heard it played.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin – It’s My Party</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The first record we ever danced to. It doesn’t get much more significant than that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Angelo Badalamenti – Theme From Twin Peaks</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the latter part of 1990 and the early part of 1991 we were pretty much broke. With a baby on the way we abandoned our living room and moved into the smaller dining room, because it was easier to heat with the old open fire that was in there. There was room for one settee, the telly and my entire record collection in two cupboards in the alcoves at either side of the fire. In this withdrawn and almost hallucinogenic state we discovered Twin Peaks. If everyone who claims to have watched this series when originally broadcast had actually done so then it would have run to at least seven or eight seasons. It was menacing and spooky and completely inexplicable for the most part, and, as you won’t realise if you’ve only seen the cleaned up remastered versions, apparently shot with a dirty sock draped over the camera lens. We were addicted. I’m not entirely sure I’m looking forward to a new series.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Teenage Fanclub – Don’t Look Back</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It has to be said that leaving a job purely on a matter of principle might not always feel like a wise move, but, for a brief moment, before the ‘God, what have I done?’ worry sets in, it feels wonderfully liberating. I wasn’t completely irresponsible mind (I don’t think I ever have been!) because I had another job lined up. And a monumental day, such as the start of a new job or the first drive of a new car, requires monumental music and in the 1990s and on discerning record decks/tape decks/CD players/MP3 players since, monumental music very often means Teenage Fanclub. For this particular day I chose ‘Grand Prix’ without really realising that part way through my first journey to my new job up would pop ‘Don’t Look Back’. Perfect.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Sleepy Jackson – Morning Bird</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While we were waiting for the arrival of our granddaughter I put together a playlist of tunes on an MP3 player for my daughter to listen to while in hospital. Just the usual preparing for a baby mixtape with a mixture of great stuff (‘This Love’ by Craig Armstrong) and relevant stuff (‘Waiting For Baby’ by BMX Bandits) and stuff that just felt like it belonged on there, like ‘Morning Bird’ by The Sleepy Jackson which will always remind me of the time before and after the arrival of Eve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><i style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>Please don't forget that you can download and read 'The Great Cassette Experiment' and 'Writing About Music' from Amazon and Google Play Books. </b></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Thanks for reading!</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-44594857780673241052014-07-19T23:16:00.001+01:002015-02-12T21:02:56.262+00:00King Canute, Spotify and The Two Week Summer Holiday mixtape <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixO0QYc1ql5ZDHdSBCYAIy29pAGQnqcInFvFBEssTWyPFZOyE_DTkvHiDxsrDJ1c9rcLE_PTrL1TvKLOnsx8X33ENyTak7SS_yW6d_X8gxnmrqjzCgt-x8uoPfJaKox3iMK9dmYpGoxQXK/s1600/2014-07-07+10.19.22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixO0QYc1ql5ZDHdSBCYAIy29pAGQnqcInFvFBEssTWyPFZOyE_DTkvHiDxsrDJ1c9rcLE_PTrL1TvKLOnsx8X33ENyTak7SS_yW6d_X8gxnmrqjzCgt-x8uoPfJaKox3iMK9dmYpGoxQXK/s1600/2014-07-07+10.19.22.jpg" height="320" width="264" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Until fairly recently, like a typical luddite, I've remained pretty unconvinced by the charms of Spotify.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Skinflint that I am, I dabbled with the reasonably limited free version until about six weeks ago when I finally took the plunge and finally let the tide wash around my ankles like a latter day King Canute. If the sea was streamed digital music and the King was a short bloke with an unhealthy vinyl fetish.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So to celebrate being away from work for a fortnight (I'm joking of course, I love work really) here's my 100 tune Two Week Summer Holiday mixtape.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hope you like it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://open.spotify.com/user/boxofpeppers/playlist/1Nrp1GthlEUFa3J852UtKP</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I can be so bold, why not follow me on Twitter @boxofpeppers or,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You could even hunt out my book on Kindle (It's relatively cheap but not nasty) 'The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy of Cassettes' by Neil Pace</span><br />
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<b><i><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></i></b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-57406798711949610652014-07-13T22:41:00.001+01:002015-02-12T21:04:29.692+00:00A day (and a night) at the Opera <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like to think of myself as a reasonably cultured individual. I've read Kafka and Camus (and, on more than one occasion, the first 16 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses). I'm not averse to watching films with subtitles, and I usually avoid newspapers with red tops as if my very life depended on it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Musically though I'm a bit of a heathen. I've never been to a ballet and the only classical music I know is the kind that turns up in tunes like 'Lady Lynda' by The Beach Boys or the magnificent Pet Shop Boys' modern classic 'Love is a Bourgeois Construct'. Until last weekend I'd never been to 'The Opera' either, so when I was offered the opportunity to do so I jumped at the chance, blissfully unaware that I'd volunteered for a marathon experience. In German. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the day approached I started to harbour a number of serious concerns. What should I wear? (images of capes and monocles flooded my overactive imagination). Was it obligatory to take a little pair of binoculars? Would I manage to stay awake throughout Opera North's epic performance of Richard Wagner's 'Götterdämmerung ', beginning with an introductory talk at 2.30pm and concluding at 10.15pm and, crucially for an opera performed entirely in German, would I be able to locate the ubiquitous umlaut in Microsoft Word?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pre-show talk turned out to be hugely informative. I learned that 'Götterdämmerung ' means 'Twilight of the Gods', although when the time came for questions, even the translation of the title was called into question by one audience member. I also learned about diminished fifths and the need to be particularly alert to hear the three steerhorns making a brief appearance during Act two. I did notice that the man sitting next to me fell soundly asleep in the middle of the talk and wondered how we would all fare during the actual performance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The show itself (is it acceptable to refer to it as a 'show' I wonder) opens with three women, apparently known collectively as 'The Norns' banging on for 20 minutes about a rope that snaps. It must have been a fairly important rope as they all seem to become quite upset about it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once we hit Act one the pace picks up and the whole affair really rocks along. Considering it's in German it's fairly easy to follow, with the aid of helpful surtitle translations into English. Surtitles are like subtitles on screens above the stage, apparently. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Orchestra sound magnificent (six harps!) and, with all the marks of a good film soundtrack, are barely noticeable for much of the time. Even though it doesn't particularly sound like it, I mean that as a huge compliment. The whole opera singing bit was impressive too. I can never see it replacing Teenage Fanclub in my musical affections, but in the context of an opera the opera singing was pretty much perfect. First and foremeost this particular opera was an impressively elaborate way to tell a wonderfully engrossing tale. If you're unfamiliar with the story contained in Götterdämmerung it goes something like this (spoiler alert!). A boy, Siegfried, gives a girl, inevitably glorying in the name of Brunnhilde, a magic ring that he acquired when he slew a dragon. The boy, encouraged by the girl, embarks on a quest but is tricked into drinking a potion of forgetfulness by two half-brothers so that their sister can marry the boy and one of the half-brothers can marry the girl. The boy then disguises himself as one of the half-brothers using a magic helmet so that Brunnhilde will marry the half-brother and Siegfried will marry the half-brothers' sister. Actually I haven't been entirely clear there because the half-brothers' sister is actually only a sister to one of the half-brothers and a half-sister to the other one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did I mention that Brunnhilde is a Valkyrie? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Act two opens with the extremely loud and prolonged rustling of a carrier bag. Presumably this is a later addition not present in the original performance from 1876. And so continues a tragic tale of love, disguise, betrayal and revenge that ultimately results in the demise of the entire aforementioned plus Brunnhilde's winged horse, Grane, and, eventually, all of the gods, hence the title. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It may sound like a cliché, but the hours did genuinely roll by and I really was in awe at the level of respect shown by an attentive and knowledgeable audience. Needless to say, nobody felt the unfathomable urge to sing along and not a single person was tempted to film one single little part of the performance on their mobile phone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I came away feeling just a little bit more cultured, but more importantly privileged to have spent a few hours in the presence of supremely talented musicians and performers, and a wonderful, polite, respectful audience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Article originally published on the NE:MM website and reproduced here with permission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you'd like to you can now buy my book for your Kindle - The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260733704738520084.post-48102821721791770262013-12-01T13:53:00.000+00:002014-10-20T20:09:46.218+01:00The Music Room - Twerking my way back to you (or 'Sex and the CD')<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sex
and music have been splashed all over the news recently. From the implausibly
named Robin Thicke with his unsavoury lyrics and scantily clad friends to
someone who used to be teen heroine Hannah Montana brazenly 'Twerking' with
implausibly named Robin at the MTV awards. At this point, for readers over the
age of 22 I'd better explain that 'Twerking' is defined in the indispensable
Urban Dictionary as, 'basically a slutty dance'. In fact the delightfully named
triple album 'Twerk It' is currently riding high in the UK hit parade. It
features the aforementioned Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus and, it probably goes
without saying, Little Mix. 60 tunes, old and new, tailor made for twerking to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
preponderance of sex and music made me (and Sinead O'Connor and Annie Lennox)
wonder whether it’s a new phenomenon. Is music any more sexually explicit now
than it was when we were all knee-high to grasshoppers?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">'Absolutely
not' I hear most of you shout. Sex and music have been inextricably linked ever
since Adam realised that being in a band was the fastest way to get into Eve's fig
leaf. Of course it was a while before he found any bandmates, and when he eventually
did they were brothers, and everyone knows what happens when you have brothers
in a band.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you don't believe that sex and music have been inextricably linked since the
very dawn of time then here’s the proof. 22 years ago the UK number one single
was ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’. And what do you think Marvin, to whom Robin has been
implausibly linked, was singing about on ‘Let's Get it on’? Do you have any
idea what Bill Haley, and Big Joe Turner before him, was referring to when
singing, 59 years ago, about a one-eyed cat in ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
what about Tommy McClennan’s 72-year old blues (and carpentry) classic ‘Cross Cut
Saw Blues’, which opens with the immortal lines;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘I’m
a crosscut saw, drag me ‘cross your log,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m
a crosscut saw, drag me ‘cross you log,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Babe
I’ll cut your wood so easy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
can’t help say “hot dog”’!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
have admittedly been recent subtle changes, however. Changes that were set in
motion by Madonna and carried forward by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Changes that resulted in the more explicit becoming more mainstream. I’m also
thinking at this point of Britney Spears video for ‘Toxic’. As I often do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ultimately
though, popular music is all about rebellion, about shocking adults. In many
ways that’s the whole point of it. Consider Little Richard’s lyrics and sexual
ambiguity. Or maybe Elvis Presley’s hips. Or how about the ‘in your face’
attitude towards drug taking that pervaded the late 1960s (and the club culture
of the late 1980s). Or possibly the long hair and make-up so beloved of the
finest proponents of glam rock. Or David Bowie, not sure if he’s a boy or a
girl. Even the anti-establishment stance and lack of accepted musical talent of
Punk, so shocking that ‘God Save The Queen’ wasn’t allowed to reach the top of
the charts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hopefully
you’re starting to get the picture now. Miley and Robin’s antics are designed,
and even literally choreographed to shock. So if you feel outraged by their
attention-seeking behaviour, then their plans have well and truly worked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><b><i>Originally published in the very wonderful NE:MM magazine</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><b><i>Blog - nemmonline.blogspot.co.uk</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><b><i>Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/nemmmusic</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><b><i>Twitter - @NEMusicMonthly</i></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still available for Kindle - 'The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy Of Cassettes', the perfect Christmas gift (typed without a hint of irony).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just head to <b><i>http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FN7XQT2</i></b></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08869953038520769022noreply@blogger.com0Durham, County Durham, UK54.77525 -1.584851999999955354.628735999999996 -1.9075754999999552 54.921764 -1.2621284999999554