Rob's Reviews

Lets Hear It for Marine Girls!

2010-11-24T14:50:00.005Z

Marine Girls - Tracey Thorn's First Band

I've been experimenting with Twitter while waiting for my next tranche of independent work. I stated following all sorts of people in my profession, but that got pretty boring pretty quickly, so then I started following musicians including Tracey Thorn.

She tweeted that there was going to be a meet up of Marine Girls, Tracey's first band that disbanded in 1983. This got me thinking about the band that isn't played in this house anymore.*

Here are some links to a few Marine Girls videos. Okay, the songs all seem to have been recorded in one take in a back bedroom in Hatfield, but there's no doubting the potential this band had in the early eighties. So, if you like The Smiths, The Raincoats, Durutti Column and Young Marble Giants, then you'll probably like this.

Here goes:

* I've lost the cassette + not Alison's favorite band:)

AfroCubism - Worth The Wait?

2010-11-23T16:36:00.005Z

AfroCubism - A Collaboration with Toumani Diabate, Kasse Mady Diabate, Bassekou Kouyate, Eliades Ochoa, Djelimali Tounkara and Fode Lassana Diabate. Nonesuch Records

What wait?

Well, it seems that AfroCubism should have been made in 1996. Instead, we got The Buena Vista Social Club.

The story goes that some of the Malian musicians playing here should have been in Cuba in '96 to collaborate with the Cuban seniors who went on to make Buena Vista, but visa issues got in the way.

So, after an hiatus of fourteen years, is AfroCubism worth the wait?

For me .........no.

There's very little on this album that gets me going. West African music has a lot of Cuban influences blended with traditional griot rhythms anyway and I'm not sure that just adding a Cuban singer and styling does much. I must admit I was expecting an album that produced more than the sum of its two parts - something like the two Songhai albums, but we don't get that here.

If you like Malian music you'll be familiar with a lot of the material on AfroCubism. I think you would be better off pulling out your Toumani Diabate, Orchestra Baobab, Kasse Mady Diabate and Bassekou Kouyate albums and listening to them again. I don' think the world needs yet another version of Jarabi, for example.

If you like Buena Vista Social Club, but don't really listen to West African music, then give AfroCubism a go as it's a good introduction to Malian music. The playing is great, if a little subdued.

Beware - there is a version of Guantanamera on this album.

Japanese Whisky

2010-11-23T14:15:00.003Z

Suntory Yamazaki 10 Year Old Single Malt Whisky c. £28 per 75 cl bottle

This is good whisky. Really good whisky.

I'd heard glowing reports of Suntory's Yamazaki and, having been drinker of Japanese whisky for thirty years on and off, I thought I'd give it a try.

I've always enjoyed the soft sweetness of Suntory Old, the blended whisky that is the staple of most Japanese bars and clubs, but Yamazkai is a step up from this in terms of bouquet, flavour and length.

As soon as you open the bottle, the Yamazaki bouquet leaps out at you. It's light, summery and herbal with hint of burnt honey and orange. Hold the glass a few inches from tour nose and you can still smell it.

Yamazkai tastes like it smells - orangey, sweet with herby apricot/marmalade notes with a little bit of cranberry.

The finish is a bit minty and spicey with hints of oak, but it's not too woody. For such a young malt, Yamazaki has an amazingly long length to it.

The Japanese like drinking whisky as a long drink called Mizuwari - whisky, ice and water, often with the main ingredient diluted to almost homeopathic levels. A Mizuwari made with Yamazaki does not taste like watered down whisky - it still retains a dry sweetness and is great with food.

Since buying this bottle I've discovered that Yamazaki is also available as 12 and 18 year old versions. As this current bottle of 10 year old won't last long, I think I'll try the 18 year old next.

I bet I won't be disappointed.

Po Pi Po

2010-11-16T16:02:00.005Z

Hatsune Miku - J-Pop at its best

No comment. No analysis, just a fun video of Hatsune Miku playing live.

She's a hologram.

I love this song. Play it here.

Giddy Up Rumer

2010-11-15T14:57:00.005Z

Seasons of My Soul, Rumer

Well this is it - this year's dinner party album for people who don't care about music that much, but know what they like.

It fills the gap left by The Carpenters and and will sell shedloads this Christmas. So, if you like Karen Carpenter, Carole King, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield, then you'll probably love this record.

Seasons of My Soul is an inoffensive, luscious album of ballads written and sung by Rumer, a new artiste for me at least. She has a warm, golden, soft voice and her songs, mainly about love and relationships, are superb. At times though, it does feel like being in a bubble bath with Burt Bacharach, Karen Carpenter and late period Cocteau Twins - it's that dreamy.

Rumer has the knack of writing songs that sound as if you've known them for years, so you need to beware of ear worms (bits of music that get stuck in your head and keep repeating) - be careful when listening to Slow and Aretha particularly.

I've played this album a lot in the past week, but I'm not sure if this will last as Seasons is very one paced and one toned.

It needs to giddy up a bit, but there are a lot of tracks here that will sit well in any romantic/relaxing playlist.

What A Great Idea - The Book Club for Albums

2010-11-11T15:16:00.006Z

There's a very interesting piece by Kate Mossman in this month's issue of The Word magazine - a book club for albums!

I, like many of us I guess, no longer sit down and listen to an album all the way through. I might play one in its entirety occasionally, but it will be on in the background to accompany me in eating or doing the washing up or something like that. I do listen to the music, but I don't often feel what I hear and I certainly don't notice any subtleties in the music or production.

The idea behind the Living To Music and Classic Album Sundays events is to gather a small group of people together to listen to a favourite piece of vinyl (it has to be vinyl apparently) and then talk about it afterwards. Notice the afterwards bit - you have to sit and listen and not talk, fiddle with your mobile or pop off for a wee.

After the album has played out, you then discuss it with the other club members. It is a bit like a book club, but I imagine that everyone attending will have listened to the set piece beforehand or will have a good working knowledge of it. They will certainly have opinions.

It sounds like a great idea to me. I used to do it all the time when I was a student. What do you think?

Find out about Living To Music here.

English Whisky?

2010-11-09T16:28:00.007Z

Chapter 6 Single Malt, St. George's Distillery, Roudham, Norfolk, England, £30+ per bottle

I was intrigued by the recent advertorials in the local press about a new whisky that has been made in Norfolk. So, Alison and I decided to visit the distillery in Roudham, which is just outside Norwich.

I wasn't really expecting much having drunk whiskies from other non-Scottish producers and found them a little, err, strange. Sure, they're brown and alcoholic, but don't taste very much like the real thing. But the whisky made at St, George's Distillery is something else. It's not great yet, but it's getting there.

I expected the distillery to be a small operation located in a barn or similar on a farm. I was wrong. St. George's is a modern, purpose built facility with equipment tailor made in Scotland - it look and smells like the real deal. We took a £4 tour with one of the whisky makers who took us through the process from growing barley locally to the final bottling stage. Then we got to taste it.

You can buy only two types at the moment - Chapter 6 and Chapter 9. The latter is a new one, which is very peaty and not at all to my taste as I don't really like peaty malts. Chapter 6, on the other hand, was a very nice single malt. We bought a bottle.

So, what does it look, smell and taste like?

It's a very light pale lemon colour with a nose that is zingy with hints of vanilla and pear notes. The taste is again very fresh, with some hot and peppery notes, a little bit of dried grass with light, sweet vanilla. The flavours don't jump out at you, but it is satisfying. Given that Chapter 6 is only 3 years old (the minimum time for the spirit to be called whisky), it has a very short finish and not much length, but this is to be expected from such a young whisky. It is very drinkable and at 46% proof you need to be careful with it.

So, how does it compare to Scottish Whisky?

Not bad at all - it is a serious contender. Of course, it will benefit from a few more years in the cask and I imagine that a 10 year St. George's will more than hold its own with more famous malts from further north.

It's quite pricey at over £30 per bottle, but this does not seem to be putting off drinkers. I tried to buy some at the whisky shop at the airport, but apparently it's hard to get hold of unless you buy it from the distillery - I've not seen it in shops yet.

I will be keeping my eye on St. George's.

St George's website here

Living National Treasure

2010-11-08T17:34:00.008Z

Jah Wobble's Nippon Dub Ensemble, Norwich Arts Centre, 5th November 2010

The Japanese honour certain individuals or groups as living national treasures because of their unique contribution to the arts and culture. If we had a similar scheme here in the UK, Jah Wobble should be our first candidate.

I've always held Jah Wobble in high esteem, but after seeing the Nippon Dub show on a cold and wet Bonfire Night in Norwich, he's really gone up in my estimation.

Why's that then?

Three reasons:

The Show & The Musicians
The Direction
The Rapport

The Show & The Musicians

The Ensemble come on stage in silence and wait. Wobble, the star, is on the back line. The female taiko drummer then delivers an incredibly powerful and skillful solo that knocks the breath out of you (it did me, but I was standing right in front of her). And then they're off - the bass line rumbles in and we hear Cherry Blossom of My Youth for the first time. Japanese music can sometimes sound very alien to the western ear, but it goes very well with dub reggae (reggae is popular in Japan btw - they even have their own form, Okinawan Reggae).

It's very difficult to marry the very delicate sounds of Keiko Kitamura's Koto (here), Shamisen (here), Clive Bell's Shakuhachi (here) and the bamboo flute of the Japanese female (whose name I didn't catch) with very deep, ominous bass, electric guitar, percussion, drums and trumpet, but it works. Believe me it works.

The show runs for nearly 2 hours with a short break and in that time, the music evolves in waves - first Nippon Dub, then a fantastic version of an Augustus Pablo tune, Dawn Penn's No, No, No, then a pitch perfect rendition of Visions of You and back to Nippon Dub tunes again.

Wobble has put together a set of master musicians, many of them very young indeed. The drummer is on par with Sly Dunbar (very good on that double tom tom beat). Clive Bell, Wobble's stalwart woodwind player, was on top form as ever, Keiko Kitamura's delicate Koto playing was wonderful. At one stage a very scared looking young guy in a track suit came on and played on one tune and we were then in Don Cherry/ Miles Davis territory, but in a Japanese Dub Stylee - he later told me that this was his first gig (!).

The Direction

Jah Wobble conducts the ensemble, not from the front, but the back. The band are constantly checking on him, they surround him because he makes the direction and pace change often - at one stage they played so fast that it seems to me that they'd take off. I've only seen this kind of approach deployed successfully once before when I saw the late Joe Zawinul band. You know, Joe Zawinul of Weather Report and Mikes Davis? That's how good Wobble has become and the band obviously have great respect for him.

The Rapport

Wobble, as we know, is a Geezer - a working class East Ender with no pretensions or air of self importance. He has a very good way with the audience. I told him he was playing on form tonight, he took it in good faith and then told us an anecdote about the hassles of getting to Norwich that day. None of that 'how dare you speak to me' attitude you can get with some stuffier musicians. He's happy to tell you that the interval is designed to sell more beer and that it's really not good for you (he's been teetotal for 23 years). He notices who the attentive fans are and makes a point of shaking your hand at the end of the set. He diffused a potentially difficult scene with a very annoying , F word shouting, drunken heckler by saying: "No mate, It's all right I'm talking.'"

You Must Go

If this show is on in your town or one within a few hours travel, you should really make the effort to see it. Wobble will change direction next year and Nippon Dub may be no more. I, for one, am looking forward to the next iteration. And the one after that.

Please note that the photo is copyright Mike Richardson - please ask first if you want to use it - just send me a message and I'll pass it on and you can take it from there.

Thanks for Duck Rock Malcolm

2010-04-26T16:21:00.004+01:00

Duck Rock, Malcolm McLaren, 1983 - £4.99 on iTunes

A lot's been written about Malcolm McLaren since his death this month and I don't think I can really add much to that particular canon.

What I can do though is write an appreciation of the album that first got me interested in African and so called World Music..........Duck Rock.

Duck Rock was made in 1983 and takes the form of a radio phone in show hosted by New York DJs the World's Famous Supreme Team. You get a track, then some chat, then more music, but this time from a different genre. It's a recipe for a complete mess, but the album still has a strong narrative and some very catchy tunes. It spawned two hits: Buffalo Gals and the skipping song, Double Dutch.

Apart from The Message I'd never heard hip-hop before listening to this album. I'd never heard much African music, apart from Osibisa. Never heard any Country music apart from Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash. Latino was, and still remains, a complete no go area as life really is too short.

For me, the African tracks on Duck Rock really stand out. The Mahotella Queens feature well before Paul Simon brought them to our attention with Graceland in 1986. Most of the African stuff on here is South African and without doubt interest in this form of music grew after Duck Rock came out.

I re-bought Duck Rock last week. I downloaded it from ITunes and since then I've played it every day.

Whatever you think of Malcolm McLaren, Duck Rock is masterpiece.

Hot Fact: Trevor Horn wrote most of the tracks with McLaren and Anne Dudley also did some too.

Two Twos

2009-12-01T16:21:00.010Z

Henry Brothers + Dove and Boweevil, Acoustic & Eclectic Evening, Olive’s Cafe, Norwich, 27th November 2009

Well, I leaned something at this event organised by Richard Penguin (here) last week at Olive’s Cafe in Norwich:

Where the Dobro got its name;

Why the Salvation Army is the best charity shop to find old vinyl.

I got this information from the Henry Brothers, an Americana/Folk close harmony singing duo who sing songs about death, betrayal and murder. Despite the grim subject matter of their material I found them engaging, funny and very talented.

One plays a double bass, the other a Dobro. And, as you can see from the photo, they have an interesting dress sense - part Charlie Chaplin, part old Bluesman and they claim to be identical twins, but as you can see they’re nothing of the sort really. They can play really well and I enjoyed their set immensely, despite the fact that this kind of music isn’t usually my cup of tea. Great material and wonderful bottleneck slide Dobro. They seem to be doing well on the UK’s burgeoning festival scene. I wish them well.

Their MySpace page is here.

Next up was Dove and Boweevil another duo whose music is another genre I have difficulty with, but again they won me over. They play Blues/Folk or what I’d call East Anglian Delta Music - very redolent of the big skies and wide rivers we have here in Norfolk. It’s a mixture of Blues, Folk and Soul music with a small s.

Boweevil (aka Mark Howes) plays guitar and Dove (Lauren Dove) sings. I particularly liked Boweevil’s slide playing - he’s really very good. It still astonishes me that musicians of this calibre don’t yet have recording contracts, but that’s life I guess. Dove’s voice is not what I expected from singer who sings the Blues - it's lighter than many singers who sing this kind of music, but she can project and the combination of her voice and Boweevil’s guitar playing work very well together. I'd be very interested to see where they go with this.

Check them out on MySpace here.

And the things I learned?

The Dobro got its name from the company who made this type of resonator guitar, designed to amplify the sound of the instrument so that it could compete in terms of volume with other instruments before amplified playing was the norm. So, the Dopyera Brothers invented the Dobro. Geddit?

Why is the Salvation Army a good place to look for bargains on (possibly) rare vinyl? Well, Oxfam have vinyl junkies who can sort the wheat from the chaff, the Salvation Army don’t (yet).

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Unplugged & Magnificent

2009-11-30T15:45:00.008Z

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Playing The Piano, Decca/Universal, Cat No: 4763609

I love this album. It's the best thing I’ve heard all year and it’s probably the best Ryuichi Sakamoto solo album to date.

No collaborators this time. No experimenting with different genres and styles. No overdubs. No vocals - just Sakamoto in a Tokyo studio with a grand piano playing acoustic versions of material from his extensive back catalogue.

Not only has he covered pieces from his film scores (tracks from Merry Christmas, Last Emperor, Sheltering Sky all appear on this album), but he’s also done an amazing job of interpreting the oriental electronica of YMO (here) and material from his collaborative, genre skipping solo albums. I had to pull out my Sakamoto vinyl albums to check out what tracks such as Amore, Tibetan Dance and Riot In Lagos actually sounded like in their original form as they are so different on this album - different but still instantly recognisable as Sakamoto compositions.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has been playing the piano since the age of three. The pieces on Playing The Piano are played with great technical skill and by that I don’t mean it’s all note perfect, which it is, but he does have the ability to tease great depth, texture and reverb from the instrument. This 57 year old man who used to practise writing Debussy’s signature as a boy has made a major contribution to modern classical music with the release of Playing The Piano. And it’s all his own work. Sublime. Buy it now as the deluxe edition and get an additional CD of new environmental music for free.

LINKS

Link to my playlist of Playing The Piano on Spotify (seems that the free accounts are now as rare as the proverbial):
Sakamoto - Playing The Piano

Link to Sakamoto playing The Last Emperor here

Q: Would I buy it again if I lost it or had it stolen?
A: Of course.

Q:Will I still be playing it next year?
A: I will play it regularly until I cease to exist.

The Quiet Man Returns - David Sylvian

2009-11-19T15:53:00.000Z

I’ve been an on and off fan of David Sylvian for the past 20 years or so and it now seems that he has a new album out - Manofon, not that you’d notice as it doesn’t seem to be advertised (or played) anywhere and only made it onto his website a month after its release. This still is from a video of one of the tracks, Small Metal Gods - play it and try to count the tiny, spooky planes; it’s ever so slow and rich - the link is here.

Sylvian has come a long way from being ‘the world’s most beautiful man’ in the early 80s when he was fronting Japan. Since then, he’s regularly made solo albums with a number of collaborators, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Akikio Yano, Robert Fripp and Holgar Czukay. With each new collaborator, the musical style changes, but it is always quiet and reflective stuff.

If you haven’t heard any of Sylvian’s music before, then try this playlist I put together on Spotify (you'll need a free Spotify account to play it though).

David Sylvian

Punny

2009-11-18T14:53:00.006Z

Milton Jones & Paul Karensa, Norwich Playhouse, 17th November 2009

Milton Jones is a punner. He likes word play and his set consists of over an hour of pun after pun after pun, delivered so quickly that I couldn’t take any notes. I’ve heard him on the radio over the years and thought that he might be hard work if he were given a long slot, but I was wrong.

Jones’ puns and word play are not edgy or cynical, but they can be surreal and they are all very clever. He reminds me a bit of a small boy who has been left alone in an attic with a dictionary for extended periods of time and told to amuse himself by finding pun-able (?) words. As a result we get skits on learning a Scandinavian language by eating Finish dishwasher tablets and how he is unable to count up to ten in French because he has a wheat allergy and can’t get past 7 (it’s huit btw). It’s not all puns on the way words are written and pronounced though as Jones has more depth to him than that.; his piece on the working titles of drafts of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, where each version’s title gets nearer and nearer the published title was a masterstroke.

Milton Jones was supported tonight by Paul Karensa, a standup from Cornwall. Karensa is an amiable ex Mathematician who uses Mathematical formulae to respond to hecklers and to decide the most popular male name in the audience - it’s Malcolm, apparently. He was a great start to the evening and I think we'll be seeing more of him.

The World’s Greatest Drummer? Don’t You Mean The World’s Most Miserable Bugger?

2009-11-11T15:26:00.007Z

Ginger Baker, Hellraiser, The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer, John Blake, 291 pp.

I heard Ginger Baker being interviewed on the radio last month and two things struck me: gosh, Ginger Baker is still alive and he sure hasn’t mellowed with age (he’s now 72). Baker was talking about this new autobiography, Hellraiser, written with his daughter Nettie. He came across as so grumpy, interesting and belligerent that I just had to read this book.

Many writers, it seems, have tried to document Ginger’s life, but in true Baker style some attempts were ‘rubbish’, some writer’s credentials just ‘didn't add up’ and the ‘large female journalist’ was only interested in tales of graphic sex. So, Ginger has written the book himself.

A better title for Hellraiser might have been ‘Top Gear’ as much of the book describes Baker’s experiences of cars, vans, rallies, driving (with or without a licence), car crashes and near misses. ‘Top Gear’ also in regard to his 18 year addiction to heroin - there's not a lot of graphic sex in the book, but there is an awful lot of drug taking of heroic proportions.

Baker started his musical career by hanging around the jazz venues of Soho scouting for work. An avid desk top drummer at school, it seems he took up the drums with little or no tuition. He played with a variety of bands before finding a home with the Graham Bond Organisation. He then formed Cream with Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton. Baker had had clashes with Bruce over the years and it seems that he was none to happy about Bruce joining the band. For the record, Ginger Baker did not and does not like Jack Bruce - this comes across very strongly in the book.

Cream, of course, split as did Blind Faith, the supergroup formed by Clapton and Steve Winwood and Baker. Ginger then went on to form his own band, Ginger Baker’s Air Force as well as making records with the Gurvitz Brothers - they too all broke up. After this it seems that he lost interest in making music and decided that losing money on ill advised business ventures was the way to go.

For a self confessed hard nut, Baker is a pushover as far as business is concerned: he buys horses and loses them; he sets up a studio in Nigeria and loses it; he builds polo fields and facilities only to have them knocked down through lack of planning permission; he leaves an employee with a desk full of signed blank cheques and is surprised to find she’s long gone when he takes an interest in the business; he pays easily avoidable tax demands because his ex-wife bins his mail. And yet he keeps going on - he currently lives in South Africa, where he is an avid polo player and, of course, he has issues with the local whites.

Hellraiser with its anecdotes of drug taking, car crashes, silly drug smuggling (driving a car load of Marijuana himself from Nigeria to London, anyone?), fights (many) is a very entertaining read. Although the book is called an ‘autobiography’ it’s actually nothing of the sort - it’s better described as a memoir. There are some key dates, but not a lot of detail such as discographies, tour/gig dates or set lists. The book also does not have an index and given that many faces from the popular music scene of the last thirty years appear in Hellraiser, it would have been nice to be able to find references to them more easily. Still, you can say that about most rock books.

Bass Slapping, Trouserflappingtastic!

2009-11-03T16:47:00.006Z

Memoirs Of A Geezer, The Autobiography of Jah Wobble, Music, Mayhem, Life, Serpent's Tail, 335 pp.

What was Sid Vicious really like? Did Malcolm McLaren have any redeeming qualities? What was it like to be in Public Image Limited and how much did you earn? How has Wobble managed to keep ahead of the music game despite alcoholism, depression and stint on the London Underground?

All these questions and more are answered in Wobble's comprehensive, unputdownable memoir of his life since his birth in Stepney in 1958. Memoirs Of A Geezer is a fairly traditional autobiography, beginning with his birth into a working class, Catholic family and then moving on through punk to PIL, to solo success via the odd brush with the Law, haunted houses, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bangladeshi racists and Brian Eno.

The real story begins when Wobble met John Lydon (Rotten) and John Beverley (Sid Vicious) at Kingsway College where they were all trying to get some badly needed O Level qualifications. All faces on the very nascent punk scene, they didn't do terribly well at Kingsway - Lydon leaving to join Sex Pistols, closely followed by Vicious and then Wobble who dropped out to do one of his stop gap stints driving vans and and teaching himself bass. To some extent Wobble plays down his friendship with Vicious, who he describes as "lost soul" who "struggled to connect with anyone or anything." Notably, Wobble does not mention Vicious' death.

The most gripping and revealing part of Memoirs is the chapter devoted to Wobble's time with Public Image Limited. It started well, with Wobble laying down PIL's deep bass lines, making a successful first album, appearing on TOTP and going abroad for the first time, but it wasn't to last. Keith Levine's heroin addiction led to lost time (and money), non musician Jeanette Lee joining the band created ructions, the fact that Lydon had two flats while Wobble was on only £60 per week with no publishing rights does not make for a happy band. Lydon is not criticised directly by Wobble, but you do get the impression of a person who will drop you if someone more interesting, useful or richer comes along. Wobble was no saint either though, and to his credit he discusses his violent episodes, or "skirmishes" as he puts it, very frankly. There must have been a lot as: "I was surprised to recall the number of fights...I was involved in, they took far longer to tally up than I had expected."

Of course, PIL was thirty years ago and since then we have seen the auto didact Wobble go from strength to strength with a few deep dips in between. There is no doubt that he has made an original contribution to the canon of thoughtful popular music, and for me he kick-started the interest and popularity of so called World music. Wobble obviously has a very strong will and this has sustained him during times of no money, no prospects and no interest. I for one, am glad that he didn't throw in the towel.

Jah Wobble: you are somebody, I repeat, you are somebody.

Five Thousand Analogue Edits

2009-10-30T16:22:00.011Z

Holger Czukay - Movies

This album - made in 1980 by Can's ex-front man Holger Czukay - is one of the first to use sampling techniques. It must have taken many, many hours of listening to shortwave radio to find the music clips, funny noises, speeches and so on that populate Holger Czukay's classically influenced, sublime, world music breakthrough album.

I used to have a copy of Movies on cassette and played it to death in the 80s and early 90s, then I lost it and forgot all about it until I read Jah Wobbles' autobiography last week. Wobble describes working with Czukay and, of course, Movies gets a big up from the inventor of trouser flapping bass. Apparently it took over five thousand edits to make Movies - this was in the days when an edit meant physically cutting and splicing bits of tape together. It must have taken months to produce.

I found Movies on Spotify last week and I've played bits of it most days since then. It is funny, a bit German and achingly beautiful in parts.

The link to my Spotify playlist of Movies is here. If the link doesn't work, then find it on Spotify.

If you haven't got a free Spotify account yet, then get it here.

Have a laugh and listen to Cool In The Pool. If you're in love or if you've just lost one, then try Persian Love - I dare you not to cry or at least get a lump in your throat.

Jah Wobble's Memoirs of a Geezer will be reviewed here next week after I've read it again.

Mein Kampf For The Hollyoaks Generation

2009-10-22T14:17:00.005+01:00

Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith, Penguin Books

For me Mark E. Smith is bit like Morrissey - more interesting to read about than listen to at length. If you’ve ever seen Mark E. Smith being interviewed, you will have noticed that he’s difficult, unpredictable, seemingly not very nice and not very lucid . He’s defensively aggressive, funny, original, willfully inconsistent and very hard work. See for yourself - here’s Mark being interviewedby Lauren Laverne.

Those expecting a potted history of life and times of Mark E. Smith and The Fall will be disappointed by The Lives and Tales. It does contain some facts, anecdotes and stories, but it is mainly a book that selectively settles scores, and presents Smith’s views on everything from football, media graduates, pubs and young people to computers, journalists and the cult of personality.

The book was not written by Smith (annoyingly ghost writer, Austin Collings, is not credited on the cover). It seems to me that Smith dictated/ranted and Collings recorded it, transcribed it then and then tidied up the prose.

Strangely, it does read as if Smith wrote it though as the wit and invective are firmly in place. Here’s Mark on a range of topics:

On John Peel
“We never depended on John Peel for our livelihood. I don’t put my career down to him.”

On Dress
“Nobody takes a scruff seriously, that’s one thing I’ve learned.......imagine doing business with with a berk dressed like a vagrant....It just doesn’t work.”

On Oasis
“I’ve never really liked Noel Gallagher. Liam’s alright...I feel sorry for him actually - it’s always our kid this our kid that, always his fault. I’d hate to have a brother like Noel.”

On Bob Geldof
“Geldof’s a brilliant chancer. He’s built a whole career on Live Aid and do-gooding; a whole career that wasn’t there before. I mean, who listens to The BoomTown Rats and who buys his albums.”

The list goes on: Jo Strummer, Mojo, Factory Records, Stone Roses, Madonna, Through The Keyhole and Paul Morley.

I’ll stop there and say it’s a good book, even if you don’t like The Fall.

Hold The M&Ms! - Bands & Their Riders - Answers

2009-10-21T17:03:00.001+01:00

I posted this quiz about bands and their riders recently and here are answers:

Question 1 - A vitamin B-12 injection in the butt + 3 Oxygen tanks

a) Diana Ross
b) Elton John
c) Smokey Robinson
d) Ozzy Osbourne

Answer d) Ozzy Osbourne

Question 2 - One bottle of Bombay Gin (but only on Tuesdays)

a) Marilyn Manson
b) Pearl Jam
c) Sheryl Crow
d) Peter Gabriel

Answer c) Sheryl Crow

Question 3 - A hotel suite located no higher than the 5th floor

a) Aretha Franklin
b) Jennifer Lopez
c) Rihanna
d) Bruce Springsteen

Answer a) Aretha Franklin

Question 4 - A private games room to play table football (artiste supplies table football)

a) Eric Clapton
b) Rod Stewart
c) Boy George
d) Rolling Stones

Answer a) Eric Clapton

Question 5 - Ten pairs of boxer shorts

a) Sting
b) Moby
c) Cher
d) Jay-Z

Answer b) Moby

Awesome Tapes From Africa

2009-10-21T14:41:00.004+01:00

Music From Africa You Might Not Have Heard

Thanks to my friend Jon in Scotland for putting me on to this blog about African music. There's very little in the way of comment or criticism about artistes who appear on the site, but there are lots of clips of music to play. And not a single Youssou N'Dour track among them!

The site's author, thursdayborn (don't think that's his real name), has collected dozens of cassettes from across the continent and sampled them and then put them on his blog. I'm not sure if this is dodgy or not, but you certainly can't download the tracks, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. To some extent I guess he's giving worldwide exposure to musicians who otherwise have to rely on word of mouth and sales of cassettes from local market stalls.

For me, African music (well, the stuff that comes out of Mali and Senegal) is in the doldrums at the moment - it's all getting a bit samey. I'm not taken with the current wave of 'Desert Blues' as, to me, it just sounds like stoned blues bands from the early 70s going off on an overlong jam - Grateful Dead in Tuareg robes as far as I'm concerned. It's refreshing then to be able to listen to other sounds coming out of Africa - sounds from Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, Zambia and Ethiopia.

I thought I knew a fair bit about 'other' music from Africa, but on looking at the listings here, there are very few I've ever heard of. There's some early Oum Koulsoum I've seen before but that's about it.

I'm going to play a track a day from this site (it streams Quick Time clips). Should keep me going for a while!

Check out Awesome Tapes From Africa here.

Devon Sproule & The Amazing Mantler

2009-10-18T17:36:00.009+01:00

Devon Sproule + Mantler, Norwich Arts Centre, 16th October 2009

This was an interesting evening's entertainment. You certainly got your money's worth, but I think I'm getting too old to stand in one place for 2+ hours these days!

First up, and introduced by Devon Sproule, was Mantler, aka Chris A. Cummings, a singer and electric pianist from Canada. I was bit worried when a dumpy, balding bloke (yeah, like me, I know), dressed in an ill fitting white dinner suit, frilly orange shirt and white shoes then came on stage and sat at a small Bontempi like keyboard with a very battered beat box.

To me, he looked like the offspring of Tiny Tim, Van Morrison and The Penguin (Danny DeVito vintage) and I waited for a set comprising of ironic, cod 60s nightclub standards sung off key by someone well past his prime - alright for a few minutes and then a little bit wearing.

I was very, very wrong indeed. Mantler plays and sings grown up, jazz influenced, complex and beautiful ballards. There are bits of Roy Ayers, Big Star, Donald Byrd, Gil Scott-Heron and Steely Dan in the mix, but he is very much his own man. I'm not sure how successful he'll be, but I wish him well as he's original, well prepared and has a sweet voice. Here's a video link to his song, Childman - notice the very creative use of cheap props to create an incredible atmosphere.

I hadn't seen Devon Sproule live before, but had seen her and her husband on Jools Holland (here) last year and was taken with the swing influenced, Appalachian, roots Americana song they played. I was expecting an acoustic set tonight, but Devon now has a band with bass, drums, guitar and later keyboards when Mantler joined them on stage. I'm not sure that this is a good thing as, at times, she was too far back in the mix. See her sing solo here and make up your own mind.

Devon has a wonderful voice very much like Laura Cantrell and the songs are lyrically well structured. She is note perfect. The set was little slow in getting grooving as they seemed a bit nervous, but they did have the audience (quite a large audience for NAC) with them though for the entire set. There is no doubt that Devon Sproule is on the way up - it's deserved, but I would have preferred something with fewer musicians getting in the way of her voice. Loved the Black Uhuru influenced reggae song a lot though.

There's are link to Devon's MySpace page here. If you get the chance, go and see her.

Hold The Brown M&Ms!

2009-10-08T16:22:00.006+01:00

They Asked for What? Bands and Their Riders

I've written before about how difficult it is to make it in the music business. You spend years slogging around the country playing what are technically termed 'toilets' and, if you're talented (and lucky!), you make it. And if you make it, you get a rider - the technical set up you want, the hotel you want and the kind of backstage catering you just can't do without.

I guess we've all heard the (true) urban myth that rock band Van Halen insist that all brown M&Ms be removed from bowls of sweets. At first it seems unreasonable for the band to ask some backstage person to pick out the all the brown M&Ms by hand (yuck), but In actual fact, Van Halen's rider is not as childish as it first appears - the clause is in the contract to ensure that promoters read the entire specification very carefully. Van Halen's stage equipment, lighting and special effects are so heavy that unless the stage is fit for purpose, the floor gives way as it did once in Pueblo, Colorado - the promoters had not checked the contract and neither did they remove the brown M&Ms.

So, there is method in having a rigid, non-negotaible rider, but is this always the case? I've been looking through the Smoking Gun's scans of dozens of riders (here) and I'm not sure that many of them are there to ensure due diligence on the part of the promoter. Some of them are understandable - Aretha Franklin insists that air con is shut off and the vents in her dressing room are covered because air con dries out the throat and vocal cords. But some of them are a bit outrageous - Bjork must have one of the following available whenever she wants: masseuse, acupuncturist and reflexologist, for example.

I've had a lot of fun looking through the riders, so who do you think demands the ones below? A blue M&M for anyone who gets them all right (and no looking at the Smoking Gun site).

Question 1 - A vitamin B-12 injection in the butt + 3 Oxygen tanks

a) Diana Ross
b) Elton John
c) Smokey Robinson
d) Ozzy Osbourne

Question 2 - One bottle of Bombay Gin (but only on Tuesdays)

a) Marilyn Manson
b) Pearl Jam
c) Sheryl Crow
d) Peter Gabriel

Question 3 - A hotel suite located no higher than the 5th floor

a) Aretha Franklin
b) Jennifer Lopez
c) Rihanna
d) Bruce Springsteen

Question 4 - A private games room to play table football (artiste supplies table football)

a) Eric Clapton
b) Rod Stewart
c) Boy George
d) Rolling Stones

Question 5 - Ten pairs of boxer shorts

a) Sting
b) Moby
c) Cher
d) Jay-Z

Good luck!

Stuart Maconie - National Treasure In Waiting

2009-10-05T15:08:00.006+01:00

Cider With Roadies, by Stuart Maconie, Ebury Press

I love this book. I bought it at a station bookshop hoping it would keep me occupied for yet another tedious rail journey and I've since re-read it twice.

If you read, or have read, the music press in the last 15 years or so, you will probably be familiar with Maconie's work at the NME, Q magazine and, of course, now BBC Radio and TV. He's the guy who coined the term Brit Pop and who also started the urban myth that Bob Holness played sax on Baker Street (he didn't btw). Like Stephen Fry, Stuart Maconie is up there as a national treasure in waiting although Maconie is the better writer - he's witty, modest, self deprecating and the anecdotes and stories are very funny.

Cider With Roadies is a gentle introduction to Maconie's record collecting, gig going, band forming and music journalism from the 60s to the almost now. It's a very warm book, written by a man who obvously loves pop music and likes people. It's not just a book about music though - for me it's a piece of social history describing the very recent past almost as if it were another country. And back in the 70s Britian was certainly another country: there were no computers, music was on vinyl, you heard new music on John Peel because he was the only one who played it, you had to save up for things, booze was relatively expensive - you knew where to get the cheapest pints and on what night, there was very little technology - black and white telly for most people, no computers, no cassettes - so no portable music platforms and then there were the clothes. Here's Maconie on the fashions of the 70s:

"Everyone wore flares; only the degree, gradient and angle of flare differed according to age and subculture. Your dad's Man at C&A slacks would be just off the perpendicular, your French teacher wore purple bellbottoms whose colour matched his tinted aviator specs, you and all your peers wore Oxford or Birmingham bags so vast at the ankle that Scouts could do their Duke of Edinburgh thingy sleeping beneath them."

Maconie has been going to gigs since the age of three, when his Mother took him to see the Beatles at one of those shows that used to take place in cinemas 60s (Freddie & The Dreamers for me at Nottingham Odeon, 1964, aged 9 btw). From then on he seems to have followed, seen and later commmented on most of the pop music trends - from Prog Rock to Northern Soul to Punk to Power Pop to New Wave to Madchester Baggy. His experiences are enviable - drinking with Mark E Smith, accompanying The Stones Roses to Switzerland, interviewing David Bowie and...being a mate of Elvis Costello's dad. Maconie writes with such warmth about music and musicians that I can see why critics compare him to Alan Bennett.

Like Kill Your Friends by John Niven (reviewed by me here), Cider With Roadies is required reading for anyone interested in contemporary music and recent socio-cultural history or those who are thinking of starting a band. Unlike Kill Your Friends, Cider With Roadies is about real events experienced, reflected on and written about with seemingly effortless skill.

So, don't kill your friends, instead grab a half of Chestnut Mild, fire up the record player and put on the first Gentle Giant album - if you get bored there's always Lark's Tongues in Aspic.

God Collar

2009-09-25T14:31:00.002+01:00

Marcus Brigstocke, Norwich Playhouse, 24th September 2009

If I were Marcus Brigstocke I'd stay well away from mosques, synagogues, churches, temples and the like for the next few months because this show certainly had no nice things to say about organized religion and the existence of God. He had a go at most religious belief systems, but the attack on the more fundamentalist Muslim social mores was enough, I feel, to earn him a f@wa from the more extreme strands of the Islamic faith. To be fair, he should also avoid Atheists - Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens also get a good kicking.

In this very long show, Brigstocke focuses on the 'God Shaped Hole' within himself - he wants to believe in God, but finds that God as depicted and worshipped by various religions is not a very nice being at all.

Brigstocke has a very good rapport with his audience. He is assured, very well prepared and his take on the subject is original. A lesser comedian would have had difficulty keeping the set together (it's nearly 2 hours long).

If you get the chance, go and see him - it's very good entertainment and there are many laughs in it as well as tender moments such as the description of the loss of a dear friend and his daughter wishing him Happy Luck on this tour.

Arabic Music Star Comes to Norwich For A Good Sit Down

2009-09-24T15:38:00.005+01:00

Natacha Atlas & The Mazeeka Ensemble, Norwich Arts Centre, 23rd September 2009

While watching Natacha Atlas last night a number of thoughts went through my mind:

Is she with us?

Will she ever move?

Does she know the lyrics?

Has she brought her knitting?

What doesn't her face move?

Well, she did move (eventually), she did know the lyrics (but kept referring to her music stand), she didn't get out her knitting, but it was very difficult to read what she thought as her face was immobile (via unnecessary plastic surgery I'd imagine - she's only 44 btw).

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed this concert and I've been a follower of her music for many years, but it didn't quite work for me last night.

The brilliant Mazeeka Ensemble (keyboards, percussion, bass, oud) came on, laid down a rhythm and after a moment or two Atlas arrived on stage looking a bit like an Arabian Barbara Cartland. She then sat down for most of the set and barely moved - she didn't have a chaise longue or a handsome youth fanning her with ostrich feathers as I guess that's only for the larger venues.

They played a set of two halves - the first part was very Arabic, very Fairuz like in many ways (she did a Fairuz song) - got me thinking that I'd prefer to see Fairuz as she might have had some charisma. The second half was a little more energetic with versions of popular Western songs such as Nina Simone's Black is the Colour and La Vie En Rose.

I must say though that it was very much a one paced gig until she............. stood up and danced (but only for the one song mind). The audience were ecstatic at this point, but to me it was a little more than a shimmy. Atlas is certainly very talented, the band is tight, but maybe she is unwell or not that happy at appearing in small venues like this one. Maybe it was just an off day.

For me, The Mazeeka Ensemble were the highlight of the evening. Keyboard player, arranger and mc Harvey Brough brought a lot of banter to the set, anchored by the blinding talented percussionist, Ali Alim. Clara Sanabras, who also played the warm up set as Clara Sanabras And The Real Lowdown, coped really well with the tricky to play Oud and other old stringed instruments I'd never heard of before. I really enjoyed her set which was a bit like Jacque Brel does Jake Thackery in a Latin Quarter stylie.

Verdict: Good, but not great

Would I go again: Yes

Talent: Clara Sanabras, Harvey Brough, Ali Alim

The Death of Music’s Final Physical Format & Do I Care?

2009-09-03T15:46:00.006+01:00

Vinyl, Reel to Reel, 8 Track, Cassette, CD...... RIP

As with the vinyl album, the audio cassette, reel to reel tape and the 8 track cartridge player, the writing’s on the wall for Compact Disc Digital Audio and I'm wondering if I care or not.

CD prices are now half what they were ten years ago, unit sales are way down, most popular music can be acquired for almost free (or free if you have the nerve) and you can carry your entire collection of music around in a device less than the size of a fag packet (another product also on the way out).

Just a few years ago bands toured to promote their new album/cd. Now they release a CD to promote a tour - they make much more money that way. As the price of packaged music has fallen, so have we seen a big rise in the price of concert tickets. In the 60s, 70s and 80s you saw a band to see if it was worth buying their music - it was cheaper that way, but affordable because gig tickets were about 25% the cost of the album. Even in Norwich, at an arts centre, it now costs more than the price of a CD to see even a slightly well known artiste.

I first heard a CD in a department store in Tokyo in 1982 and I was really impressed by the sound quality. I'd been listening to the ex-pat platform of choice, the music cassette, of home recorded audio for years and the clarity of the jazz clarinet I heard in Parco really did beguile me, but it was years before I bought a CD player. In fact I didn't actually buy one until the mid 90s even though at that time I was a producer of CD-ROM multimedia all because I thought vinyl sounded better. So I was never a big fan of CD in the first place I guess, but will I miss it when it's gone? Vinyl as a serious platform for me died ten years ago, I still play vinyl occasionally, but I don't buy any new stuff. I chucked out several hundred home taped cassettes a few months ago to get rid of the clutter and I no longer have a player anyway.

Why I'll Miss Physical Music Media

1) The demise of the record shop. For many people of my age (I'm 55) going into a record shop, particularly an independent one, meant that new music could be found serendipitously and could be touched. You can't do that by buying downloads. You also don't get that record buying camaraderie. Where's the fun in checking out yet another online shopping basket?

2) The sound quality. Vinyl has a degree of warmth to the sound, CD is brighter (artificially?), but can we really be serious about listening to highly filtered and processed mp3s through an earphone socket? I'm currently testing out Spotify by playing tracks from a netbook though my hi-fi and it sounds ok, but there's no real depth at all to the experience. I find the same with iTunes played via a dock.

3) I don't value mp3s as I have nothing to hold or touch.

Why I Won't Miss Physical Music Media

1) I'll lose the mess. I have hundreds of CDs and records, numerous CD players and I'm getting fed up with the clutter, the dust attracting qualities of jewel cases and the lack of order. I try to alphabetize my collection, but end up making small piles of CDs in most rooms. I haven't got enough storage and don't want to live in a room decorated with shelves of shiny, plastic spines that have no overall colour scheme. The CD collection can be iTuned or otherwise sampled and the discs put away forever.

2) I have very few records or CDs where I like every track, so instead of programming them out I can make playlist of the best stuff and never listen to the filler again.

3) Digital stuff is indexed as a matter of course - I can make the digital equivalent of a mix tape in a matter of minutes.

4) I can play things randomly. As the world gets more interactive and personalized, I feel the need to be played something that I didn't expect.

I'm not really sure where the whole digital music thing leaves the hi-fi manufacturers. It's clearly insane to pay thousands of pounds on equipment to play thin, top end samples. I wonder what they'll do now?

Whack A Kitty

2009-08-18T14:44:00.002+01:00

Saw this on Gordon Powels' Facebook page. No kittens were harmed during the making of this movie (possibly).

Have You Played The Roundhouse?

2009-08-12T14:25:00.005+01:00

Playing The Building, David Byrne, The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London

You can now play the Roundhouse - one of the UK's best loved music venues. Not 'play' in the sense of getting up on stage and performing, but 'play' using the building's dome, pipes and scaffolding to create tones and banging sounds.

David Byrne (him out of Talking Heads) has set up an interactive sound installation in the dome like space that is The Roundhouse. At its heart is an old pump organ from which tubes and pipes radiate into the metalwork of the building. When you play the organ, air is blown in to the piping and metal superstructure of the venue to create tones of various pitches. Small hammers are also controlled by gusts of air that bash them against the metalwork.

I think I can safely say that it would be very difficult to get a melody out of this instrument. I didn't actually have a go myself (the queues were too long on the 'pay what you want' day we went), but I saw about 8 sets of people have a go and most of what they produced sounded very similar - long tones reminiscent of the beginning of an Orb song and click, clack percussive sounds.

I'd be very interested, though, to see and hear what a proper musician, who knew what the keys did, could get out of it.

Playing The Building is well worth a visit if you live in or near London - go on a Monday an you could get in almost free.

Here's what it looked and sounded like:

Here's David Byrne talking about the project:

photo & video © G.R. Baxter 2009

Latitude

2009-07-21T16:26:00.008+01:00

The Nice Festival

We went to Latitude last Friday and, despite the weather reports, it didn't rain. Billed as the middle class, Guardian readers festival, Latitude is friendly, clean, well organised and lacks the edge that you sometimes get at festivals.

The Latitude site is quite small and is rammed full of things to do - from watching bands to seeing plays, listening to poetry, watching films and eating. It's difficult to get bored there. Most stages are close together, so you don't have to walk miles and miles to see anything. The downside of this is that there is quite a lot of noise pollution from stage to stage.

No drugs, no violence, no attitude, no police, no heavy security, no tribes, very child friendly, pretty good toilets with hand gel! = nice festival.

Highlights

Teitur, who we saw a few weeks ago in Norwich. Good set and I'm glad he's still a nice boy, despite the sleeve notes on The Singer.

The Brownies - Norwich band, very loud, a bit like the B52s at times. Lots of songs seemed to start with "I'm So, You're so" though

Comedy tent - Dave Fulton, an American ex coke dealing biker - very, very funny, but very, very hard core. I can't repeat any of the jokes here.

Duckworth-Lewis Method - Neil Hannon's (him out of Divine Comedy) new band with a cricket themed set. Reminded me of the Kinks, Village Green Preservation Society and Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Great set.

The Pretenders - God, Chrissie Hynde is scary. Excellent set that provided just what the audience wanted: The Pretenders Greatest hits. It wouldn't have dared rain while Chrissie was on stage.

Squeeze - Just caught 3 songs by them, they are doing a greatest hits tour. Very good.

Regina Spektor - she's absolutely tiny! She did a fantastic set, mainly from her latest album and the previous one. She has a really warm rapport with the audience.

Pet Shop Boys - great light show, amazing dancers. I don't know whether it's me, but doesn't every PSB song sound the same?

Sharon, You Are Spoiling Us

2009-07-16T15:34:00.003+01:00

Sharon Robinson, Everybody Knows

It's very rare for me to play an album all the way through these days and I seldom put something on repeat play, but I did both with Everybody Knows - that's how good it is.

Sharon Robinson was a bit of an unknown for me until I read that she'd produced Leonard Cohen's last album. In fact she has been writing, performing and singing for many years and has a great credits list including The Temptations, Rufus Wainwright, Roberta Flack, Diana Ross and Randy Crawford.

Everybody Knows is an understated, late night soul album. Its pace is slow with understated beats, sympathetic backing vocals and simple mainly piano and guitar accompaniment. The nearest thing I can compare it to is Sade's first album, Diamond Life, but it's a lot better than that, of course. There are also echoes of Cassandra Wilson and Diane Reeves (when she's not doing scat singing, that is) .

For me, the quality of the song writing and Robinson's interpretation of her material are the best thing about this album (3 tracks written with Cohen btw). Many of the songs are narratives about love, desire, loss and loneliness and Robinson uses her alto voice to tease out maximum emotional impact - she doesn't sing so much as swim through her material. Listen to some of Everybody Knows here to see what I mean.

Would I buy it again if it got lost or nicked?
A definite YES

Will I still be playing it in 5 years time?
YES

Would I have any of the tracks played at my funeral?
YES - Invisible Tatoo and I'd make sure it was played during the slow numbers at the end of the evening.

Are there are any uses for Everybody Knows, apart from just listening to it?
YES - I imagine it is a prelude to romance.

I Want One!- Japanese Useful Music Pt2

2009-07-14T16:29:00.006+01:00

Yamanote Line Musical Key Chain

Each station on the Yamonote Sen, Tokyo's Circle Line, can be identified not only from the platform signage, but also from its short jingle - played when the train arrives at the station. Each of the 29 stops has its own melody and you can now buy them all as key chains for about 500 yen each (about £3.50)

The tunes are useful because they help blind people know where to get off. They're also good for two other groups: the inebriated (loads, particularly late at night) and the people who have fallen asleep (50% of the average carriage).

Want to know what it sounds like? Play the video.

Ikebukuro Keychain Jingle from Michael John Grist on Vimeo.

Teeth

2009-07-07T13:53:00.007+01:00

Teeth Don’t Fail Me Now

I finally got to see Let's Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary about Chet Baker and it got me thinking about musicians and their teeth. Some have got great teeth, but many, particularly the British have got really awful ones.

Chet Baker, like many people, had false teeth - the originals being lost to neglect or a mugging, depending on who you believe, and given that Baker was a long term junkie who died in 1988, I guess we‘ll never truly know.

A dearth of teeth clearly limited Baker’s playing range, but what about other musicians? Are bad teeth an asset? Can you play with bad or missing teeth? Who had the best or the worst teeth ever? What are the best songs about teeth?

The Teeth, The Mouth & Embouchure

Bad teeth are certainly no asset to wind players because not having a full natural set affects the embouchure - the use of the facial muscles and teeth to play an instrument at its full range with a clear tone and without damaging the player’s muscles. Baker wasn’t alone amongst jazz players in having embouchure issues: Bix Beiderbecke couldn‘t play without his false pivot tooth and once had band members sifting through snow to find it before a gig; Bunk Johnson, a New Orleans jazzman had to retire until funds were found to buy him new teeth.

Embouchure problem are so destructive to a musician’s career that they now have dental shields available to help the toothless wind players.

The Best Teeth Ever

Well, the best ones are going to be American, aren’t they? For me, The Osmonds had the best teeth and there’s no doubt their pearly whites helped fix the wholesome family brand in viewers' minds. I remember seeing them on The Andy Williams Show in the 60s and couldn’t believe the knashers on Donny and Marie. Understandable, of course, as we didn’t have cosmetic dentistry or even braces in the UK then.

The Worst Teeth Ever

It’s got to be someone British, hasn’t it? Well, no, he’s actually Irish - Shane McGowan. He now no longer seems to have any teeth, but the stubs he sported since the late 70s really were revolting. Didn’t hurt his career much though - I’m sure the bad teeth helped in promoting The Pogues as a hard drinking group of ruffians.

A close runner up is The Specials’ Jerry Dammers, but I think he lost his teeth due to an accident rather than neglect. Dammers has unashamedly kept the huge gap in his front upper set.

Here are some other notable candidates:

David Bowie pre Let’s Dance - crooked, stained teeth the result of too much smoking and cocaine sniffing.

Pete Doherty - stained and crack rotted teeth

Amy Winehouse - missing teeth - take you pick of reasons

Thom York - The Bends was named after his teeth

Shaun Ryder - mangled and neglected before he spent 10K on having them fixed

Celine Dion - tiny extra teeth before they were removed

Freddy Mercury - not in bad nick, but they certainly made a statement

Joe Strummer - awfully neglected teeth - had false ones for years before he died

The Best Song About Teeth?

The first song I heard about teeth was All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth by Alvin and the Chipmunks in the early 60s. It’s here if you can bear it:

Lowell George

2009-07-06T14:27:00.005+01:00

Exactly a week ago, on the 29th of June, I started thinking about Little Feat, a group I love, but don't really listen to anymore. I kept hearing snatches of songs in my head until Friday, when I gave up and got As Time Goes By, a Little Feat Best Of. I read the sleeve notes only to find that Lowell George had died on 29th June 1979.

Strange.

Live Looping

2009-07-01T16:40:00.004+01:00

I'd never heard of Live Looping before seeing Girl In A Thunderbolt a few weeks ago - in fact at that time I didn't know that's what GIAT was doing. Live Looping is basically a new way of making music - musicians create their own background by recording bits of their playing and then have them looping for as long as required during a song, piece or track. So by Live Looping one solo musician can sound like many.

There seems to be a growing Live Looping movement and we went to see one of its foremost exponents, Andy Butler, last week at Olive's vegetarian cafe in Norwich. I don't normally go to veg places - they remind me being a Sociology student in the 70s and I've been well out of that scene for many years. On entering Olive's I found that nothing much had changed - it was hot and humid, very sweaty - the fug was slightly masked by Body Shop cologne. I didn't like it much, but they do serve alchohol and we managed to get comfy seats right at the very front, so it was ok in the end.

The front means about 2 feet from the performers, so we got a very good look at the kit laid out on the floor - pedal after pedal wired into more pedals and black boxes - it looked very complicated. And Live Looping is very complicated - you not only have to play live in front of an audience, but you also have to sample loops, layer them and play them back whilst still moving forward with the piece. Andy Butler is very skilled at this and I'd imagine he's had to put in the 10,000 hours practice you need to be considered very good at something.

The music itself took me back to the 70s of Fripp & Eno and Tangerine Dream - very spacey, seductive and easy to drift off into a reverie. Butler has obvioulsy listened to his Steve Hillage because at times his music sounded like Fish Rising thirty years on - that's a compliment, not a criticism.

If you have a chance to see some Live Looping, then I'd encourage you to give it a go - the sets are short, the gigs are often cheap to get into (we paid a pound) and the company is very pleasant (if you ignore the Body Shop high notes that is!).

Andy Butler's site is here.

OH. MY. GOD! - Introducing Amy Allison

2009-06-24T14:45:00.007+01:00

You might be forgiven for thinking that this is Janice, Chandler's ex from Friends, but it's actually Amy Allison, a singer songwriter from New York. There are similarities - the face obviously, but also the voice, which is a bit like Marmite - you either love it or you hate it. Main difference for me is that Amy Allison is one of the best lyricists and composers around these days.

We've been listening to Amy Allison for some years now after buying her Everything And Nothing Too album in 2006. She's the daughter of Mose Allison, the jazz pianist and composer - he's been covered by everybody from The Clash and Van Morrison to Elvis Costello (who, incidentally duets with Amy on her latest album).

Amy Allison's main strength isn't her voice, which I think is great btw, but her ability to write lyrics that rhyme, scan and pull you into her stories of love, dejection, rejection, family, place, regret and, of course, men and their limitations. Combine this with an informed and practised compositional ability and you could be forgiven for thinking that the Brill Building had started churning out hits again.

I don't understand why Amy Allison isn't better known in Britain. Everything And Nothing Too was recorded in East Kilbride and the latest album is called Sheffield Streets. I think she's fairly well known in Ireland, but the Irish usually seem to latch onto American folk singers way before us.

Link: Amy singing with her dad here.

Link: Amy tracks on My Space here.

Tip for Male Smiths Fans (a bit sexist though):

If you are having difficulty in convincing your wife, girlfriend or female friends of the sheer brilliance of The Smiths, then play Amy's version of Everyday Is Like Sunday from Everything And Nothing Too. Don't tell them what it is and when they're sitting there singing along, only then tell them it's The Smiths. After that it's only a few small steps to appreciating Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now and Girlfriend in A Coma.

Regina Spektor

2009-06-24T11:45:00.007+01:00

I've been thinking about writing a post about Regina Spektor for some time, but never seemed to get around to it. I guess now is the time as she's all over the music press and will definitely break over here in a big way this Summer - we're going to see her at Latitude in July btw.

Spektor is based in New York, but was born in Russia into a Jewish Orthodox family. Her mother and father are both musicians and she has obviously been classically trained in piano and composition.

I first heard Spektor's music about 3 years ago, and being a sucker for female singer/songwriters in general, got into it straight away. Her music is difficult to pigeonhole though - it's not jazz, it's not folk, it's not classical, it's not rock, but you can hear that it has been informed by those genres.

Every song on the two albums I have (Begin To Hope & Soviet Kitsch) is different - it's as if she tries to give each song its own musical style, rather than developing a Regina SpektorTM style for an album overall.

Having said that, you can pick out some characteristics that identify it as a Spektor production:

* Unusual vocal techniques - exaggeration of vocal style such as using the glottal stop and beat boxing

* Unusual percussion - drumsticks on chair legs, for example

* Classical piano styling

* Fantastic, controlled timing

* First person character studies - a bit like short stories

* Songs with strong, almost abstract narratives

* Themes of Love, Death, Religion, Relationships

* A bat's squeak of Russia

Spektor is still pretty much an unknown in the UK. You can buy her music at good prices at Fopp or online. I haven't heard the latest album, Far, which came out this week, but reviews seem pretty good. Not sure that having four producers (including Jeff Lynne!) is such a good idea, but given Spektor's eclecticism it might just work.

Check out Regina Spektor's My Space page here to listen to some of her music.

Oh! What A Night!

2009-06-01T17:56:00.007+01:00

Teitur and Girl In A Thunderbolt, Norwich Arts Centre, 29th May 2009
Well, this turned out to be a fantastic evening, despite my reservations. This is what was bugging me before the event:

1) On his last album cover, Teitur, looks like he needs a slap for being a little bit too pleased with himself and as for the sleeve notes on The Singer, well;

2) I heard Girl In A Thunderbolt on My Space and thought I'd heard it all before i.e it was mundane and noisy;

3) Our friend Setsuko, from Japan is coming and she's never heard of anything like this and doesn't go to live gigs and has only been in the country about 4 days.

We arrived and it all got good very quickly. A quick beer and into the hall......to see only 8 other people waiting to see Girl In A Thunderbolt. I really felt for GIAT, especially as it was just her and some equipment that she uses to record musical phrases as backing loops - she does this live btw - not easy. She did a very short set, but made repetitive loops from guitar, percussion and an organ like thingy. Setsuko said: "I like this - it's avant garde." Thank goodness for that - we won't be leaving early and she won't be disappointed. I liked GIAT, she's got a voice a bit like Skye Edwards (her out of Morcheeba) and she really does have balls to face a non- crowd like this one tonight.

Then it all got very interesting with two meaningful coincidences. We were fiddling with the camera to take some souvenir shots and got chatting to a Canadian woman who liked Teitur and had actually been to the Faroe Islands (that's where Teitur's from) as had our friend Alan (he took the photo and owns it) who was with us - how many people do you know who've been? Then Joe, the woman's husband came back from the bar, introduced himself and I discovered he's half Japanese and had lived near Setsuko in Hiroshima when he was younger. Cue introductions and chatting in Japanese - this doesn't happen very often at all in Norwich, but I was really glad it happened tonight - it really gelled the atmosphere.

The headline act, Teitur, came out to a slightly bigger crowd, but still way under a hundred people. Teitur's very well known and popular in Iceland and Denmark (the Faroes are Danish btw) and I guess he might have expected a larger audience, but he came across as nice, polite and very grateful. His music is complex, requiring higher order musical skills and lots of practice to get right. He and his band were able to bend sound, change pace and tempo very quickly. He has a good voice and great timing. The last time I attended a gig this good was Fleet Foxes last year - they have a lot of things in common in terms of musicianship, but Teitur is definitely a one off. So what's the music like? I can't really say - it's under 'folk' in iTunes, but that doesn't really describe it.

Make your own mind up here.

Jolly, Bubbly, Lovely

2009-05-07T14:33:00.006+01:00

Pizzicato Five - The Best Band You've (Probably) Never Heard Of

If you read this blog regularly, you'll no doubt have noticed that I like some modern, electronic Japanese music - notably YMO, Cornelius and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I've also been a fan of Pizzicato Five since seeing them on Channel 4's The Tube in 1995, so I thought I'd introduce you to them. The clip is here (it's a bit rough, see the post out if you can as it gets better):

Pizzicato Five spearheaded Tokyo's Shibuya-Kei movement in the 90s, producing energetic, quirky, hipster style music, heavily influenced by British pop culture of the 1960s (think The Avengers, The Beatles, Tonic suits, Mary Quant, Scooters, Sta Prest). The Japanese do this kind of thing very well - making new albums that sound like new releases from the 1960s. This stuff isn't pastiche or a faithful copy though, it's more original than that - you can see where they are coming from, but they've taken our output, put it through a mad Japanese mincer and then thrown it back at us. It works if you like that sort of thing- and even if you don't it's never boring.

See for yourself - here they are in 60's mode:

Here they are again imagining that they're on Ready, Steady Go:

As Pizzicato Five say: "Welcome to a collection of unintended indiscretions before a microphone and camera."

French Darleks Launch Norfolk & Norwich Festival

2009-05-02T12:21:00.003+01:00

Well, this was a god way to kick-off the 2009 N&N Festival - a free performance from French gliding street band, Le SNOB. As you can see from the photo, the 9 piece group wear long black robes, glide Dalek like around the space and play amazingly quirky brass, string and percussion instruments.

They are led by a severe looking, flaming torch wielding, woman who herds and conducts them around the space (just on front of the Norwich Forum in this case). The show lasted about 40 minutes and we were treated to some interesting versions of Eric Satie's Glissando and what sounded like the theme music to The Exorcist. The music is good, but it was the choreography that wowed the audience the most - they process, they form a line to glide into the punters and then stop just short only to do the same again to other parts of the space.

It was at times a bit like being at the BBQ that never quite lights though - the space smelt of lighter fuel - at one point there were 10 torches burning. Add to that the rings of fire and fire pathways the woman laid and you do get a bit whiffy. Don't wear a new suit if you go and see them - you may regret it.

Brother & Sister Make a Listenable Jazz Album

2009-04-29T12:31:00.005+01:00

Where Rivers Meet by Zoe and Idris Rahman

Like many people I've unsuccessfully tried to get into jazz over the years. To me, a lot of jazz is inaccessible, sounds somewhat, err, squeaky and is for the initiated only.

The jazz canon is wide and deep with genres revealing sub genres - it's a bit like the radical left in the olden days. This means that you really have to put some time and effort into appreciating it and I seldom have the time or the motivation. Sure, I like Chet Baker, Flora Purim, George Duke, some Miles Davis , one or two Coltrane tracks, a lot of Moondog but that's about it. I do 'get' jazz, but I seldom play it - that's why this album is so refreshing - I actually want to play it. And my wife likes it as well! Not wishing to be sexist, but I'd say that there are more Jazz Widows than Jazz Widowers.

Zoe and & Idris Rahman are a British Bengali brother an sister duo - she plays piano, he plays clarinet/flute. I'd say this is a jazz album informed by traditional Indian styling. It's a gentle album, two thirds instrumental and a third with Bengal vocals (like the stuff on Nitin Sawhney's albums, but more understated) and some almost not there tabla playing. This is late night listening, it's quiet, poetic and smooth, but not ear candy. I would have put a Spotify playlist together, but they are not listed (yet).

A big up to my friend Neil in Scotland for introducing this to me - I wouldn't have heard of it otherwise.

Cheer Up Terry, You're In the Money Now

2009-04-08T12:43:00.004+01:00

Saw The Specials on Jools Holland last night and thought they were absolutely brilliant. Sure, they're all older and there's no Rico but they sounded just like they did all those years ago. Pity they couldn't patch up their differences with Jerry Dammers - not sure what's it's all about but maybe he wanted to do Gangsters in a Sun Ra Arkestra stylee.

But, for Goodness sake Terry Hall ....cheer up you miserable bugger you're in the money now! Take look at this clip on the iPlayer (4 mins 30 secs in) and you'll see what I mean - the band appear to be being jerked around by a mad puppeteer, while Terry just stands there looking miserable.

I never saw The Specials as I was out of the country at the time, but I still play the records. I haven't bought tickets to this latest outing of the elderly because I don't think seeing bands like The Specials would be very gripping in a large concert hall. Perhaps the two tracks on Jools Holland might suffice.

Worth pointing at that Ghost Town, as it did in the early 80s, will once again become a sound track to yet another recession. Get the candles in, wire up your stereo to a car battery and get out your old Specials albums.

How To Get Ahead In The Music Industry..... By Killing People

2009-03-24T16:30:00.005Z

Kill Your Friends by John Niven
Meet Steven Stelfox, a 27 year old A&R man working for a record label during the Brit Pop boom of the mid 1990s. He's an arrogant, cynical, racist, sexist, misogynistic, alcoholic, cocaine sniffing, prostitute using talent spotter. He's also not had any hits recently and this makes him do anything to stay in the game and if that means murdering the competition, then so be it.

I found Kill Your Friends very funny, but also disturbing because it is almost real - many of the bands are made up, but we do get appearances from Oasis, Blur, The Manics, Robbie and the Spice Girls. If you've ever been to a gig, you will have noticed that the rules change once you enter the venue - people you pay good money to are rude, you have to queue, and as a punter you have the lowest place in the pecking order. This is the anomic world that Stelfox inhabits, not that he seems to attend that many gigs.

This book isn't a whodunit as we know from page one who did what to whom, but when the violence comes it is no less shocking than the murders in American Psycho or Murakami's In The Miso Soup. Murder for Stelfox though is just a means to an end - staying at the top of the music game. He only gets financial and status gratification, nothing more. As Stelfox says: "no one knows what they are doing and have to live with the fact that one day they'll be fired." So you might as well murder someone who stands in your way then!

Gratification of other kinds is a bit of a full time hobby for Stelfox though. His intake of cigarettes, drugs and drink is only matched by his use of 'ostros' (prostitutes) and porn. He is quite despicable in his treatment of, errr, everyone really apart from his superiors. People like you and I who attend gigs, buy music and merchandise are 'tolers' and have to be shown the way to the dole office. Women are 'fat boilers' , 'cows' and 'sows', and he can't understand why you have talk to women. Here's Stelfox on talking to women: "This is the thing about girlfriends. They'll say to you:' What are you thinking?' I am always thinking about cash and fucking, but you can't really say that can you?" I won't quote Stelfox on black people, as I doubt it will get through your spam filter.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in modern popular music. If you are offended by racism, sexism, drug taking, prostitution, sex toys and gore, albeit treated satirically, then don't buy it as you will be very offended. If you are an aspiring musician looking to make it in the music business, then Kill Your Friends is required reading if only for this statistic:

Twelve thousand demos are received every week by UK record labels i.e. half a million a year. Only a couple of hundred artists are signed each year by UK labels. Out of these, twenty might make break through to some degree. Out of this twenty, ten will recoup the money invested in them. And you have to rely on someone like Steven Stelfox. Don't give up the day job.

Welcome Back John Cooper Clarke, National Treasure

2009-03-11T10:12:00.008Z

Saw a brilliant Culture Show last night on the telly featuring John Cooper Clarke. I'd almost forgotten about him and had read nothing about him, apart from that he used to live in a shared house with fellow heroin addict, Nico, in Manchester(Nico was in The Velvet Underground).

Anyway, looks like he's back on the road again. He came across as a lovely man, funny, self depreciating and still looking like Dylan circa Subterranean Homesick Blues. If he comes to Norwich I'm definitely going to see him.

Here are some links to very bad quality youtube clips (click here and here for links if you just get the email):

Outed! Shazia Mirza, Norwich Arts Cente, 4th March 2009

2009-03-05T09:59:00.007Z

"You'd better give me a fucking good review", said Shazia Mirza after outing me as a critic/blogger at last night's gig in Norwich. My fault, I guess, for sitting in an aisle seat in row 2 and taking notes in a small venue. Each time I made some notes she stopped and asked me questions - quite enjoyed it actually.

I haven't seen Mirza live before, but had seen bits of her set on the telly and she's actually very good. It's difficult to see where she can take the act, but she's unique as I guess Britain's only female, Asian, Muslim comic. And that's the show - jokes about being a hairy Asian woman, jokes about letter boxes and burkhas with some Primark references thrown into the mix.

Oh, and she engages with the punters - possibly a little too much. The gig starts with her walking into the audience and demanding to see the lesbians, then the Asians and then she took articles of clothing from people and kept them. It then got a little bit 1980s Julian Clary - she goes through the jacket pockets and, well, you know the rest. I also found the usual references to Norwich a bit wearing - they all come here and say the exactly the same thing and we're getting fed up with it.

Sitting in the bar before the gig, I made some notes on first impressions of what tonight would be like. Here goes: "lesbians, very cold venue, don't sit too near the front if you're making notes." Right on all three.

Go and see her - she's good fun and does a very long set that doesn't get boring.

Don't take notes though.

The Man Behind The Slime - Count Arthur Strong, Norwich Playhouse, 28th February 2009

2009-03-01T16:28:00.004Z

It's The Man Behind the Smile, of course, but with this being an Count Arthur Strong Show, the stage sign ends up being wrong.

This is Strong's (aka Steve Delaney) 'retrospective' show, including cleverly edited real old TV clips from Dixon of Dock Green, a This Is Your Life spoof and some very clever, and hilarious, monologues. I was absorbed into his world and laughed so much that it was painful.

I went to a John Shuttleworth gig recently and was mildly disappointed because I didn't buy into the character or the world he inhabits, but this was not the case with Arthur Strong. You know he's not real, but we've all met people who are similarly un-self aware - he's no longer a star, never was, but he acts like it and that's the joke. Strong is a fictional, retired entertainer of the old school, complete with whistling dentures and is inflicted with chronic malapropisms, non- swearing Tourette's - combine these together and you get a very funny act.

The funniest part of the show for me was when Arthur was reminiscing about appearing on The South Bank Show with Melvin Bragg, excerpt he confused Melvin Bragg with Melvin Hayes, the actor (link here if you don't know who he is - hope the audience did last night). It was hilarious to see Strong tying himself in knots in a triple whammy of lack of preparation, malapropisms and Tourette's. I laughed so much that I considered shouting at him to stop.

He's brilliant. Go and see him.

Spotify

2009-02-27T14:52:00.005Z

I've just registered for an account with Spotify, the new music sharing service. Its basic model is free and it allows you to set up playlists on your machine and share them with other Spotify friends. Your playlists reside on Spotify servers - you can't download and 'own' the music. I think it's a good idea, particularly for those of us who travel a lot.

Does anyone want join also and we can share playlists as you can't access other people's lists without being a member?

Register for a free Spotify here.

Japanese Music Pt 2 - Sundays at Yoyogi Park - Police Ban Fun & The Dancing Elvises

2009-02-26T14:58:00.008Z

Sunday afternoons in Tokyo were made much more interesting by a visit to Yoyogi Park - that is until recently. It looks like the Police are clamping down on the world's most trouble free gathering of young people.

Yoyogi Park is in central Tokyo, near hyper trendy Harajuku and Shibuya. It houses the Meiji Jingu Shrine. For many years now, young people have congregated at the entrance to the park to pose, dance and sing. Being Japanese, of course, they have to be part of a group and wear a uniform, so the park is populated with Dancing Elvises, Rockabilly Boys and Girls, Takanoku Zoku (aka Bamboo Shoot People, alas now replaced by Rockers) and Cosplayers.

All good clean, if a little bit weird, fun. Can't see why they want to close it down - there's very little trouble, no drugs and, as you can see in the videos it does attract a lot of tourists.

Here's a video of Dancing Elvis pictured getting ready to go out:

Here's a video of the first wave of Dancing Elvises:

Here's some Dancing Girls:

Here's the warning:
"On the street, the playing of instruments, and the selling of goods or food is prohibited"

Japanese Music Pt.1 - Useful Music

2009-02-26T11:30:00.004Z

I don't about you, but I think there's too much music around these days, not too much being made, but too much being played too loudly in too many locations. Clothes shops are the worst, closely followed by restaurants and cafes. It's worse if you even can't escape it on the street (cue link to Norwich's Puppet Man - bearable for about 15 seconds, but I think you get what I mean).

There is a case though for playing music in public to help people with disabilities. The Japanese are past masters at this and have had musical street crossings for decades (I first heard them on the first Yellow Magic Orchestra album in 1979 - it's the funeral march that you hear in the first minute). Instead of a bleeping noise or ticking sound, you get music - and the music can be different in different part of the country - Toryanse for one city and Coming Through The Rye for another.

In this first installment of a series of posts about music in Japan, I'll kick off with a few crossing jingles. Please to enjoy, as they say in Japan.

Fukuoka - Kyushu

Tokyo

Kyoto

Do The Twist!

2009-02-24T16:48:00.001Z

Here's Frosty. He can dance - look here.

What is it with me and bass players?

2009-02-23T14:41:00.003Z

I don't know whether there are more around than any other musicians, but I keep either working with, meeting or living next door to ...bass players. Here's the current crop and my bass player history:

Neighbour Rob - plays bass and is in band.
Mike from work - plays bass and is in a band.
Colin from London Met University - plays bass and is in a band.
Prof John Cook from London Met University - plays bass and is in a band.
Phil from my old job - plays bass and is in a band.
Jack, my friends' son plays bass in band.
I sang with Jah Wobble , who plays bass.
The bassist from Budgie, Burke Shelly, once asked me if I could get him any dope - I was 15 and didn't know what he meant.

Love Cats

2009-02-09T11:00:00.000Z

I got sent this and thought I'd pass it on.

John Shuttleworth, Norwich Playhouse, 3rd February 2009

2009-02-04T16:09:00.005Z

We saw this guy years ago when he first launched the John Shuttleworth persona and he was very good - you really did buy in to the JS world, but I'm not so sure the same is true these days.

The gig wasn't bad, but I didn't laugh very often and I didn't find the new songs that involving or funny. I think perhaps he needs to come up with another main character. There were some reasonable gags though such as the one about the teat on bottled water being good training for the hospice.

Fellows was rather flat during the first half of the show, but after the interval he appeared as Brain Appleton, the part time Media Studies lecturer from an FE college. This character was better, even funny with some funny songs about Prog Rock.

To really get John Shuttleworth you really need to feel part of his world and tonight I didn't. Having said that, many people were obviously big fans and joined in with his greatest hits during the encore, which was the best bit.

Jah Wobble & The Chinese Dub Orchestra

2009-02-03T13:58:00.007Z

Chinese Dub (well some of it is)
I've been waiting some time to get my hands on this album and had the devil of a job finding it in record shops. In the end I gave and ordered it from JW's label, 30 Hertz, and it arrived the next day.

We saw the Chinese Dub show in Norwich in July last year and it was fantastic - tight band, lots of different Chinese people singing and dancing and some really heavy music. Very tight, but to me there was a lot of back catalog stuff - Heaven & Earth, Lang Tang Way, old reggae standards (No, No, No) and Solaris in the set - the Chinese Dub was about a third of the total. So, I was intrigued to see what the album would be like - it doesn't disappoint, but it's not a Chinese Dub album, in fact, most of it isn't dub and Heaven & Earth is a much more Chinesey album.

Chinese Dub kicks off with three tracks of drone:
Space, Ulian pipes, + a bit a Tibetan feel = Not Dub
Silence - same drone, some fiddle familiar to JW fans = Not Dub
Walking the Horse - same drone, Chinese singer a bit of throat yodeling = Not Dub
Then the drone drops back into the mix to reveal Solitude, which has a hit of shamisen, slightly atonal singing and .....you hear a bit of Wobble, but no dub.

Then you hear of lot more when the album gets going on L1 Dub - we have Dub! Kang Ding Love Song is next up and this sounds like Studio One light dub with Jackie Mittoo on organ - lots of Chinese wailing on this one. The two standouts tracks follow: Dragon & Phoenix and Dragon & Phoenix Dub - this is where it starts - heavy dub.

The album then goes a bit schizophrenic - there's some more Chinese on Horse Mountain Song, we then get a Bil Laswell inspired (it sounds to me) piece, L1, and the album completes with 2 fluttery flute and jaw's harp tracks.

Verdict
This is a very good album - good for late nights - you can't dance to it. At 48 mins, it's too short and it needs some more dub.

Compared to Damon Albarn's efforts on Monkey I'd say that this album marries two styles of music very well.

I've always had a problem with Jah Wobble albums in that there are always tracks I don't want to play. There are one or two on this album - drop the drone please.

There's bit from the promo for the tour here.

The First Remix Album

2009-01-29T11:04:00.006Z

Remixes are now part of the musical landscape and everything seems to get remixed eventually. But here's (possibly) the first - The B52's Party Mix! It came out in 1981 and I first heard it in Tokyo in 1982. I've always had a soft spot for this Athens based 1950s looking outer space pop group I love their style and wackiness.

Part Mix! takes six tracks from the first two B52's albums and makes these excellent songs sound even better. They retain the lyrics and just soup the songs up even more. I listened to the album on vinyl for the first time in years last night - there are techniques you hear a lot in remixes already present in this recording and it's 28 years old. It's very good for parties.

Listen to tracks here (the first 6 are from Party Mix!).

Musicians - Choose Your Genre Carefully

2009-01-27T13:13:00.006Z

I did a program on statistics for Social Scientists with Brendan Burchell, a Sociologist from Magdalen, Cambridge, last year. We used dataset of dead musicians to help students understand tabular data.

The spreadsheet we put together makes interesting reading to anyone interested in popular musicians and how they typically die. To some extent, the type of music a musician plays predicts their cause of death. Now, many of the people I'm going to describe here died young, so they're a bit unusual, but the stats do make you think about the effects of their genre of music on their health. The stats are slightly skewed as there are far more Rock musicians than any other genre, so they figure highly in any sorting of the data.

Here are the results from a survey of 316 deaths :

Genre Most Likely to Die by Suicide
Rock - 20/36
Pop - 7/36
R&B - 4/36
Jazz - 2/36
Folk/Country 2/36

Genre Most Likely to Die Of A Drugs Overdose
Rock - 32/39
Pop - 3/39
Blues - 1/39
Folk - 1/39

Genre Most Likely to Be Murdered
Rock - 7/18
R&B - 6/18
Reggae - 2/18
Pop - 1/18
Jazz - 1/18
Country - 1/18

Genre Most Likely to Die of a Heart Attack
Rock - 23/39
Pop - 8/41
R&B - 4/41
Blues - 4/4

Genre Most Likely to Die in A Plane Crash
Pop - 8/21
R&B - 5/21
Jazz - 4/21
Rock -4/21

Unusual Deaths

Some musicians die in very odd circumstances:

Three died of poisoning.
One was hit by a train.
One fell out of a hotel room window.
Three were electrocuted on stage.
Only one has died of anorexia.
Only one has died from a fall.
Two members of the same band killed themselves.

BTW Moma Cass Elliot didn't die from choking - it was a heart attack.

I Got The ZE Christmas Record!

2009-01-15T13:12:00.006Z

Here's me with the copy of the ZE Christmas Record that Katy from work bought me. Nice one Katy! Sorry I haven't flipped it - use a mirror to look at your monitor.

Don't Leave It Too Late

2009-01-13T10:47:00.007Z

This isn't perhaps the best topic to start the new year, but have you ever thought about what music should be played at your funeral? You're probably going to have one at some time, so I'd think about it now - you don't want to leave it to others, particularly not funeral directors. If you do leave it to the men in black then you might get one of the 10 most played songs at UK funerals. Here they are and it makes grim reading:

1. Wind Beneath My Wings - Bette Midler
2. My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
3. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
4. The Best - Tina Turner
5. Angels - Robbie Williams
6. You'll Never Walk Alone - Gerry And The Pacemakers
7. Candle In The Wind - Elton John
8. Unchained Melody - Righteous Brothers
9. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon And Garfunkel
10. Time To Say Goodbye - Sarah Brightman

That lot are designed, as you can see, to get the tear ducts pumping, but they are so generic that they don't say much about the deceased. So, what can you do to make sure you're not one of the people who start rolling in their grave without first being put in it?

Here are my tips:

1) Select 2 songs only - remember you'll probably get hymns as well anyway.
2) One song should be played as incidental music as mourners arrive and get settled in - something nice and contemplative - Tavener or Tallis perhaps.
3) Your second or main song should be played as you're carried out - this is the one that people will remember, so choose it well.
4) Put together a playlist of your favorite songs that can be played at some kind of post funeral party (don't have it straight after the funeral as people will be upset and will want to get on the road home).
5) Put your 2 songs and playlist on your computer, on a CD, a USB or on playlist site like Deezer and make sure people know where it is otherwise you might get Candle In The Wind after all.

These are my tracks:

Incidental - The Bridal Chamber, John Taverner
Carry Out - Public Image Ltd, Public Image

Party Tracks (ongoing):

Agadoo, Black Lace
Dream Baby Dream, Suicide
Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Ivor Cutler
Was, Amy Allison
Come Running, The Eagles (the reggae ones)
Sweet Dreams Will Come, Nanci Griffith
Hotter Than Mojave, Iris Dement
Too Much Too Young, The Specials
Tong Poo, Yellow Magic Orchestra
In Nim' Alu, Ofra Haza
Land, Patti Smith
Redhill, Jerry Douglas
Om Namah Shiva, Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart
Coma Girl, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
What Do I Get?, Buzzcocks
New Rose, The Damned
Mi Gente, Joe Zawinul
Trailer Music, Pizzicato Five
Betcha Wouldn't Hurt Me, Quincy Jones
My Funny Valentine, Chet Baker
Talk About Sufferin', Ricky Skaggs
The Sweetest Girl, Scritti Politti
Shoplifting, The Slits
What Difference Does It Make?, The Smiths
Tainted Love, Soft Cell
Feeling In Time, Spirit
Birthday, Sugarcubes
Intruder, Susanna
Respect, Otis Redding
Say A Little Prayer, Aretha Franklin
Firecracker, Yellow Magic Orchestra

Yearly Round Up - Five Good Albums and One Turkey

2008-12-30T16:57:00.010Z

Well, everyone else is doing it, so here's my top 5 albums of the year and the biggest turkey ever to be put in my cd player:

Good 1 - Just A Little Lovin' - Shelby Lynne

This is a stripped down and immaculately produced album from Shelby Lynne. She covers the Dusty Springfield songbook. It's a good late night listen. Cilla's version of Anyone Who Had A Heart is still the best though.

Good 2 - Kurr - Amiina

Four women from Iceland, who play quiet, orchestral music on a variety of instruments - from violins to bottles to saws. I imagine small children might like to do expressive dance to this. Amiina do the orchestration for Sigur Ros.

Good 3 - Mande Variatons - Toumani Diabate

Sounds very much like his Kaya album from 1989. Just a guy with a kora playing complex, reflective and ancient Malian music. The bit from The God, The Bad And The Ugly is a nice touch.

Good 4 - Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Baroque American music from 5 young guys with tight harmonies and even tighter playing. When we saw them live, they were better than the album. The album is brilliant, however.

Good 5 - Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos - Susanna

I reviewed this two or three blogs entries down from this. She's just put out a new album called Flower of Evil, another one of her covers albums. Never thought someone would do an ambient, haunting version of Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, but she has.

And The Turkey Of The Year Is...........

Ys - Joanna Newsom

Overhyped - every reviewer's album of the year - until something listenable came out in March that is. She plays harp (with polymetric styling no less) and, err, sings. Well, she doesn't sing because she can't sing, she just kind of whines in her little girl's voice that could strip paint. I took it back, life's too short.

Why Do World Music Magazines Suck?

2008-12-30T14:24:00.007Z

Don't, whatever you do, buy a world music magazine and think it will keep you occupied on a long train trip. It won't and you'll be fed up before the first unexpected and protracted delay to your journey. You'll run out of interesting articles to read and you'll feel ripped off by the hype, the price and you won't even be able to play the free CD (not that you'll want to listen to most of it anyway, what with 80% of it being unlistenable).

I've been buying these kind of mags on and off for more than ten years, I even used to subscribe to one until I realised what a shocking waste of money it was. I'm not one for the term 'World Music' anyway - it might have been useful in the early 80s, but now it's a slightly insulting cliche - i.e. music from poorer countries or music made by minorities.

So, what sucks with these magazines?

1) There are too many adverts. The copy is hidden away on pages that are packed with adverts for obscure albums that you will never get to sample before buying.... and then you won't play as they're probably intensely tedious, apart from the one stand out track and that was on the free CD anyway.

2) The writing is descriptive and predictable. Sure, you get an occasionally good piece from a known writer, but it's not enough - we need something more for this money. The album reviews pages are often the worst - that's where they let the amateur reviewers run loose with their 'elegantly simples' and 'evocative of twilight experieneces'(Imade those up btw) comments. Don't get me on to the letters pages - anoraky in the UK run riot imo.

3) They are expensive. I picked one up the other day and it looked interesting because the cover didn't feature Sami throat singing in Greenland or Klezmer bands in Gdansk. It was about American music....only 5 pages though. This mag was £6 and thinner than a Sunday supplement. It did have a free CD though and that had 2 good tracks, but I had them already.

4) They don't have any depth and seem to be written with the minimum amount of research having been done. I bought one of the big two world mags recently as it had a special feature on Fela Kuti - I thought I might learn something, but what did I get?

Kalakuta Republic - Check
The Wives - Check
The Marijuana - Check
Thee Beatings - Check
Coffin For Head Of State - Check

..I learned more from a copy of the NME I found in a shop in Malacca, Malaysia in 1980. Also there's more in Wikipedia.

5) They have free CDs - not normally a disincentive to me as they're a great way to hear snippets of new things. But, this is the world music mag's USP - providing music so esoteric and awful that even the musicians' families probably just say: "that's nice dear, why don't you go out play it with your friends...in the next village?" There's always one good track though - well worth the six quid.

6) They have no market and so have to make one up. That's why you get the world's music bucket scraped bi-monthly just in case it sticks with someone who likes music other than the top 100. Really, there is no need, so please stop publishing.

7) They always have articles (and tracks on the free CD!)about The Buena Vista Social Club. Haven't we had enough of this? It was cheesy when it was first made and remains as cheesy as the Camembert you had in the fridge over Christmas. Don't get me wrong - good luck to the Cuban seniors, but does anybody actually listen this stuff? I guess it's a nice soundtrack to a few days in Havana.

They don't do online very well either - just try listening to something from this 'interactive sampler'....Perhaps the free CD wasn't so bad after all!

I imagine I've upset some people - please do comment.

At Last! The ZE Christmas Album!

2008-12-19T17:05:00.008Z

I've found it! I first heard this amazing album on a cassette my friend Jon sent me in Tokyo in the early eighties.

It's the best Christmas album ever! Given that it's on ZE Records (the home of Kid Coconut, Was (Not Was) and Suicide), it's ever so left field, but ever so wonderful as well. And guess what? Some kind soul has uploaded it to deezer.com so we can all listen to it!

I've been trying for weeks to get my hands on this record, but no one seems to have it - think it's been deleted. My favourite track is by The Waitresses and the one everybody likes is It's A Big Country by Davitt Sigerson.

Here's the listing and link to the deezer page

1. My Silent Night - Lisi
2. No More Christmas Blues - Alan Vega
3. Things Fall Apart - Cristina
4. Bells Of Christmas - Gentleman League
5. Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
6. Sleigh Ride Helena - Noguerra
7. Christmas Fever - Charlelie Couture
8. It's A Big Country - Davitt Sigerson
9. Christmas On Riverside Drive - August Darnell (Kid Creole)
10. It's A Holiday - Material
11. Christmas Time In Motor City - Was (Not Was)
12. Christmas With Satan - James White
13. Hey Lord - Suicide

If you have a copy, then please let me know, particularly the white vinyl one (yeah right).

Best Album I've Heard in 2008

2008-12-15T15:28:00.011Z

Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos by Susanna Wallumrod
This was made in 2007, but it's an album I return to time and time again. The songs are about aliens, travelling and beautiful things like lilies. This is a late night, quiet album - often there's not much there apart from her voice and very understated accompaniment. It's a bit like a Nordic Joni Mitchell - her voice is very similar to Susanna's, but this isn't a Joni album, it's stranger than that. If you get a chance, listen to the first track, Intruder, a song about welcoming aliens to earth; it's just voice, theremin and piano, but it really does get you shivering (in a nice way).

Susanna is best known for her version albums with The Magical Orchestra. Her version of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart is far slower and sparser and better than the original. I'd check her out if I were you.

Patti Smith's Horses 33 Years On

2008-12-13T12:16:00.011Z

I first head this record in 1975 in my friend Jon's study bedroom at Lancaster University. There wasn't music around like this then - it was all Frank Zappa, Genesis, Alex Harvey, Robin Trower, Pink Floyd and the like. This album set the tone for what was to come post 1976 - punk, art rock and new wave. I recently bought Horses for less than fiver at Fopp on impulse and it still sounds very new - it hasn't dated at all and we play it a lot. It's a, errr, seminal album.

If you haven't heard it, here's a postview. It's an album made by a poet - Patti Smith - and her Group, the poetry's spoken, whispered, sung and shouted against rock, reggae and punk beats. The poetry can sometimes grate a bit - it's not happy stuff, it's a bit self absorbed, very b/w Maplethorpe era New York - it's poetry you can see and smell. Patti Smith's skill is in weaving this poetry into tunes with hooks that hook you in played by one of the tightest bands ever.

Highlights:

Gloria - it's 2 minutes in before she releases you from the tension of the build up and and shouts 'G.L.O.R.I.A.'

Free Money - starts out like a lullaby, ends up like All Along The Watchtower on cheap speed

Kimberly - Chicory Tip meets Baudelaire

Land - Horses AND Land of A Thousand Dances

If you've already got it, dig it out play it. If you haven't, buy it for yourself for Christmas.

Wow and Flutter

2008-12-06T16:44:00.003Z

The Very Best of Ethiopiques

There's two words you don't hear much these days - wow and flutter. They're terms audiophiles use to describe irregularities in the playback of analogue recordings and there's plenty of that on the 28 tracks that make up this double CD.

Many of the tracks seem to have been recorded in mono, in clubs and small studios on dusty tape decks and they sound very, very old. The wind instruments need new reeds and the guitar strings have obviously been boiled, the pianos need a tune. That aside, there is some stunning music here amongst the annoying makeweight stuff. It should have been a single CD - there isn't enough 'very best' Ethiopian music in my opinion. I do like the album though.

Recorded between 1963 and 1976, the tracks comprise film scores, jazz, soul, desert and some of the most scary tracks I've heard in a long time. Most of the them have appeared before on the numerous Ethiopiques compilations.

This an album of two halves - CD1 is much better and more consistent than CD2; the latter is patchy, the first is more focused on film music, but not all of it.

There are sublime tracks on CD1 by Tesfa Maryam Kidane, Mulatu Atatqe, Menelik Wesnatchew - music that must have been made for the screen. The James Brown of Ethiopia, Alemayehu Eshete makes an appearance on 2 tracks on this CD, one's great the other, well, I'll leave it up to you to decide. The second disc has some film stuff plus tracks that sound a bit like Japanese chanson, Chinese pop with an African twist. Having said that Mother's Love by Tsegue Maryam Guebrou is almost a homage to Erik Satie.

What does Ethiopian music sound like? It's varied, so it's difficult to pin down, but imagine this: a small sweaty night club in a city where you don't quite know the rules; a small stage, lots of smoke, sweat and watery whisky; an air of menace and you're not sure who's friendly and who isn't; no cultural anchors - you are completely at sea. Listen to tracks 2 & 8 on CD 2 on your own in the dark, you'll see what I mean.

Would buy it agin if I lost it or had it nicked?
I would if I could get it as cheap again - I got it as a twoferone on Amazon

Put anything on ipod?
Yes, all the film stuff, but not the songs that sound like a man with piles after eating very hot food.

Listen to some samples here:
http://www.ethiopiques.info/

Rich Hall Norwich Playhouse - 3rd December 2008

2008-12-04T11:29:00.005Z

Not sure I should be reviewing comedians on this blog, but as Rich Hall's set is half Standup and half Standup with Country music I guess he can be included.

I have seen him before, but only on telly and only very short pieces on other shows. He doesn't so much tell jokes but stories. He has a high level of audience engagement and interaction. Yes, he does pick on people in the front row, but it's fairly tame stuff - mispronouncing local place names and a bit of ribbing about the victim's occupation. His skill is in then weaving these people into his set. And the set is long - nearly 2 hours - but he managed to engage us with his skill and personality.

Some of the humour is how he sees Americans and how Rich, as an American,sees us. His story about being commanded to attend Buckingham Palace as an American of influence and his presentation to the Queen and Prince Philip was hilarious - I'm sure it didn't happen, but being seemingly accused of being a Canadian by Prince Philip and his subsequent removal from Buck House as an impostor was priceless. Philip misheard "Rich Hall, Comedian" for "Rich Hall Canadian" - I guess you had to be there.

The second half of the set saw Hall appear as Otis Lee Crenshaw, Hall's uncle and Country musician in the style of Farron Young and Johny Cash. This is more of a Bandana than a Hat Act. He's joined by 2 musicians/foils, one on various guitars, the other on banjo. The songs are comic, but you get the feel that he knows his Country music, particularly Pat Alger, who he possibly, unconsciously draws on musically. I mentioned that he weaves front rowers into his act; he does this particularly well on the fly, referencing people as he seemingly makes up the lyrics. He's very good at this.

Was it worth going?
Yes

Best bit?
A guy from the front row gets up to go the toilet just as Hall starts his final song. Hall stops and then finds out about the guy from his friend and then waits for him to return. We seemed to wait for ages, but Hall kept us hooked. The toilet goer is, of course, brought in to the song on his return.

With some comedians you do think they should be doing something else. Not this guy.

A Quiet Night In # 1 - Peter Broderick's Home

2008-12-02T16:37:00.006Z

This is a very soft and interesting album from Peter Broderick and it's perfect for a quiet night in (or rather 38 minutes as it's very short).

It's on the same label as Fleet Foxes - Bella Union (started by the guys from Cocteau Twins)- and there are echoes of Fleet Foxes, but this is a unique album. I've heard a lot of male singer/guitarists recently and many of them don't really grab me - this guy does.

His speciality is layering his own voice to make it sound like it's a group of Peter Brodericks singing. Most tracks are him and maybe one or two others playing acoustic instruments, but there's a lot of space and the sound is very warm. I did detect a bit of Art Garfunkel from The Boxer era, but that's no bad thing. Just a warning, iTunes labels this music as Folk!

Home starts with Games, and it's just his voice layered and very beautiful for it. He then picks up the guitar and delivers And It's Alright, again very understated, but complex in a simple way (eh?). The album follows this pattern with Below It being the stand out track. So, if you like voice and guitar based music that sounds very modernly old, then this is for you.

Would I buy it again if I lost it or got it nicked?
Yes

Would I play it often?
Most weeks, I'd say

What tracks would I burn or put on iPod?
Home
Below It
Games Again (bit of Eno and Spiritualized)

This is his My Space page - tracks from this album play automatically btw:
http://www.myspace.com/peterbroderick

Monkey - Journey From The East to the West-End to the East-End and Back Again

2008-11-24T15:36:00.007Z

Monkey - Journey To The West
O2 Arena, London 22nd November 2008

Monkey - Journey To The West had a lot in common with our trip to London to see it. We had to travel through bad weather, use messed up trains, ignore the passengers from hell and then try to negotiate the land of crowds. It turned out alright in the end though.

We live in Norwich and it's often difficult enough getting to London even when the trains are running properly. Today, they weren't - we had to go to Ely then to Cambridge, then change again to get to London. Train to Ely: full of football fans drinking beer at 8.57 in the morning; train to Cambridge - had to stand; train to London sat in front of middle class children from hell. We got there in only 2 and half hours.

First stop agnes b in Covent Garden to buy clothes, next stop sushi bar, then on to the O2 arena.

Scrub that - it was a tent, not an arena.

Things started to go downhill. We bought a beer and juice for six quid. Six quid! I hardly ever go in pubs, so I find the prices really shocking. Programs were £10.We then went to our seats - not too far back, but on the right-hand side of the stage, so we had to crane our necks. The seats were really small and hard. A very bored and uncomfortable grumpy dad next to me kept causing autonomic Mexican Waves through the power of his harrumphing alone . I'm thinking; "temporary seats at permanent prices - it's all Damon Albarn's fault".

Then it started. The Monkey logo/pictoram is projected onto a screen at the front of the stage and gets closer and closer. It fills the screen and continues to zoom in leaving just two slashes of red, which then part to reveal the stage. We see an animated cartoon introduction to the story - an egg on top of a mountain, it rolls down to earth and then cracks to reveal Monkey. The story has now begun.

The story is simple - Monkey and his friends - Tripitaka + Horse, Pig and Sandy travel from location to location in order to reach Paradise. In each of the locations fights are often fought, weapons or knowledge collected. That's it - the story is very simple. The choreography isn't. Neither are the fight scenes. Nor are the sets or acrobatics.

There is a new set for each new scene (under sea, peach banquet, spider women, volcano city, paradise). Each scene has a CGI Intro projected onto one of the two planes of semi- transparent curtains. This is very effective, especially when real smoke issues from graphical volcanoes, for example.

The real wow factor stuff is in the flying that is in most scenes. Actors - sometimes up to 7 at one time - fly through the air dance, fight and then land on very small footprints - it's very accomplished stuff. In under the sea, they do swim like fish, the spider woman scene has flyers spinning webs.

Did I mention that we got crap seats? Well, in the intermission, we serendipitously met up with Neil who used to work for me at Anglia and he had 2 spare tickets that he couldn't sell and they were at the front in the middle row. He asked us to join him and from then on the show got really good. We could see the fight scenes, hear the singing and felt much more part of it. The end scene of enlightenment, Paradise, was brilliant, with a troupe of plate spinners doing amazing stuff, making their plates look like flowers. Visually sumptuous.

I'd read a bit about how Damon Albarn had had to learn Chinese musical composition for this production, but I'm not sure that it showed very much. The music, provided by an orchestra, kept reminding me of things I couldn't quite put my finger on.. and then I got it just at the end. It was a mixture of Minnie Ripperton's Loving You, with backing by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and I'm sure I heard a bit of The Carpenters in there as well.

If you've got the money and it's on again - go.

Bland Bombshell

2008-11-18T17:54:00.005Z

I've been dithering about writing a review of the new Nitin Sawhney release, London Undersound, for a while - I didn't like it much when I first got it, and I hate writing bad reviews or bad things in general really. So, I listened to it again - eight times in fact - and it hasn't grown on me. It's still bland - for me at least. You may disagree, so check out his web site where you can hear bits of it:

http://www.nitinsawhney.com/

Sawhney's made much better albums than this. He's put a lot of work into the writing, playing, recording and collaboration, but it does come across as an over researched, undergraduate essay - a 2(i) rather than a 1st - lots of footnotes and references, but lacking that spark required for true originality.

There's been a lot of press about this album and other reviewers have given it good ratings. It's about what Londoners feel the city is like after the 7/7/05 bombings - through music. Profound? Emotive? Thought provoking? Not really - it' some nice tunes with nice words and many cliches - 'it's a dog eat dog world' anyone?

For those who don't know much about Nitin Sawhney, all of his albums have a mix of musical style ingredients and London Undersound is no exception:

Rap bit - check
Jazz bit - check
Latin bit - check
Flamenco bit - check
Reggae bit - check
Scratchy, Trip Hop like bit - check
Indian solo singing - check
Bansuri and sitar -check
Guest artistes (this one's even got Macca on it) - check
Bits from the radio in between all the other bits - check

This makes his albums sometimes formulaic and reviewing this one is like trying to knit with jelly - you think you're getting somewhere with a track and then it slips away, you can't remember it and you have to start over again. It's easy on the ear when it could have been hard on the tear glands.

Would I play it again?
No, but I'll put the Ojos de Brujo and Imogen Heap tracks on my ipod, maybe even Days of Fire.

Would I buy it again if I lost it or it got nicked?
No

Would I buy another Nitin Sawhney album
Yes - I'd like him to do some extemporization

Welcome to the Casbah Club

2008-11-11T09:46:00.008Z

The Clash - Live At Shea Stadium
Kosmo Vinyl, like Bernie Rhodes*, is not a man to argue with on this wet evening in New York in October 1982.

It's obvious that some of the eighty thousand people in the audience need to be barked at and told to enjoy themselves - most of them are here to see The Who and, well , The Clash are just a support band, aren't they?

This was definitely an odd gig. There's an undercurrent of disinterest - the audience boo and at times Joe Strummer has to ask them to "stop yackin." Despite a certain amount of unfamiliarity with The Clash's songs the audience are pretty much won over by the time they finish with I Fought The The Law though.

This is a band who are on the top of their game. Of course, Topper Headon, isn't playing tonight due to the legal and physical fall out of heroin addiction. Terry Chimes, aka Tory Crimes off the first Clash album is sitting in and you can't hear the join - he plays a blinder.

The set list has some has some strange omissions - there' s no Janie Jones, no White Riot, no Police and Thieves. They didn't do I'm So Bored Withe USA - understandable given the reception.

Would I buy it again if I had it nicked or lost it?

Yes.

Here's the set list:

Kosmo Viinyl Introduction
London Calling
Police On My Back
The Guns of Brixton
Tommy Gun
The Magnificent Seven
Armagideon Time
Rock The Casbah
Train In Vain
Career Opportunities
Spanish Bombs
Clampdown
English Civil War
Should I Stay OR Should I Go
I Fought The Law
Tommy Gun

* The Clash's manager. The man The Specials say you shouldn't argue with on Gangsters.

East Anglian Boy

2008-11-06T20:55:00.006Z

Thanks to.............. kittymoomins for sending me this link to a video that really describes very well, the county I live in in England. It's very funny, but informative. Overseas readers
might need to listen carefully....oh, ok I'll give you the gist, so you don't have to bother watching:

It's about East Anglia, the best county in Englington. We're known for being inbred yokels, tractor boys who haven't mastered the tenses. Delia is big round here.

Anyway make your mind up - follow the link (I'll be able to hot spot pix next week I hope).

Whoever put this together.............nice one. Heretis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDuW3joTBq8

Eena Meena Deeka

2008-10-31T10:48:00.007Z

Do you live in England? Do you watch telly? Then you must have seen the HSBC commercial featuring this sweet, uplifting song.........Eena Meena Deeka.

I checked it out so you don't have to and it's one of the first rock n' roll songs to appear in a Hindi movie. Listen to it. Remind you of something? For me it's like the rhyme eeny meeny miny moe before it got to the bad bit.

I love the words in this song even though I don't understand them - I can't help smiling when they say 'maka naka, maka naka' and 'rum, pum po!'. And, yes, it's Asha Bhosle on vocals.

Here's (maybe)the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJH9kXo_3o

Here's it is in a 3D stylee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GrGCJI-bZI&feature=related

Here's the HSBC advert
http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Washing-Machine-Cookery-Business-with-HSBC-HSBC-Bank/64535

Fleet Foxes + Norwich Waterfront + 28th October 2008

2008-10-29T13:43:00.001Z

Fleet Foxes are now too big a band to play at a venue like the Waterfront, a small, low slung, damp feeling space in Norwich. It was heaving last night. And what a night it was.....

I never saw The Byrds. I never saw The Beach Boys...but no matter as I've been lucky enough see Fleet Foxes....from almost a ring side seat (a big up to you Mr Security Guard for letting Alison sit inside the wings and, almost, you know, like, hang out with the Foxes entourage).

Fleet Foxes are 5 young guys from Seattle who sing like angels and play as if joined at the hip. They're a ragged looking bunch - all hair, lumberjack shirts and, yes, most of them have beards, but the sound they produced last night was out of this world - vocally pure and ethereal, musically so together that you just know that years of practice have gone into this. 'Practice makes perfect', or so they say. Unique talent plus practice makes something better than perfect........Fleet Foxes.

Essentially they are a rock choir who sing harmonious, untainted music that does literally send shivers through you. It's bucolic, archaically poetic and evocative of the imagined America I had as a child (I'm 54) It's ancient and modern at the same time without sounding dated.

The set tonight was their debut album, played pretty much track by track. They kicked off with the a capella Sun it Rises and then started to play the album out. I've read stories of bands on the same bill as The Byrds giving up after hearing them sound check and I'd imagine the same to be true of bands playing with Fleet Foxes - they are just so incredibly good that it's almost impossible to believe they aren't miming. There is a star of course - Robin Pecknold - he gives good banter and then, of course there's that voice, yes the voice of angel (I was so not going to write that, but the cliche is apt).

No encores tonight. They played, they left the stage, the lights came on. Then one came back to pack his guitar away (no guitar techs yet). We chatted to J Tillman (drums and, also it transpired the support act tonight - thought he looked familiar) and Casey Westcott, who apologized for the sound quality. No need to apologize. It was a privilege to be there.

Jah Wobble invites me up...

2008-10-29T12:03:00.001Z

I went to see Jah Wobble's Chinese Dub show at the Arts Centre in Norwich in June. Great set, amazing Chinese dancers (particularly the face changers), lots of stuff from Heaven and Earth, Langtang, Invaders of the Heart and even some PIL stuff .

This was a show and a half by anyone's standards and it kept getting better as the night wore on. Basically different Chinese, Mongolian and Tibetan dancers and singers provide additonal magic to Wobble's music. The operatic Face Changers were probably the best act, changing masks so quickly I couldn't see the join, despite standing only a few inches away from them.

The Chinese part of the show then finished and Wobble says he can't follow that so here's some old reggae standards - Dawn Penn's No,No,No and then more. It gets better - he's doing stuff from Invaders of the Heart (Visions of You), he gets off stage and into the audience and duck walks, all the time playing like a demon. I shook his hand and grovelled (he's a bit of a hero of mine).

He gets back up on stage.

He starts the intro to Public Image by PIL.

He points at me to get on stage.

I point at myself - Me?

Yes son. YOU.

I get up and wonder what the fcuk to do for a second as Wobble and band are now right at the back of the stage . I'm at the front. I grab the mic. The music is playing through and around me. It feels wonderful.

I realise I haven't a clue what the words are.

It's a thirty year old track that my shuffle occasionally plays so I wing it and just keeping singing the 'hello, hello' bit and the 'you never listen to a ....'.

I throw in bits of Poptones ('drive to the forest in a japanese car')

I'm sweating it, I love this and I wish I knew the words better. This feels so good and oh so terrifying at the same time.

My wife Alison's in the audience and the husband of her colleague and I am starting to freak. Imaginary headlines flood my head: "Ageing trendy ruins Jah Wobble Gig", so thank goodness Wobble, like the gentleman he is, comes from the back of the stage and joined me in a duet - I was a bit behind, but it did look like I knew a bit more than I did. I left the stage to high 5s. Wobble played the final song. We went home.

I didn't sleep for 2 nights. Anything like this happened to others?