Music Goulash

Incisive interviewing?

2011-10-13T18:03:00.000+01:00

Being somewhat Radio 4 available these days I tend to have it on all the time in the background, absorbing the bon mots and nuggets of information as they drop like sparkly raindrops from the jewelled lips of the erudite presenters. I’ve even become an aficionado of Woman’s Hour.

You may snigger and ridicule but there has been many a time that I have learnt a lot from this programme but I do prefer Libby Purves to Jane Garvey. I think it must be down to their interview style. Ms Purves tends to be conspiratorial and inclusive in her tone whereas Ms Garvey tends to the confrontational and hectoring, though I’m sure she’s lovely really; she wasn’t this morning though.

Katherine Jenkins was on, she of the fabulous lungs and shitty repertoire. Now as far as I’m concerned everyone is allowed to make a living singing whatever they want. My old man used to be a big fan of Ms Jenkins and the like, though in her case it might have been the figure hugging couture that swung it. The lovely Welsh songstress was on to publicise her latest album of anodyne quasi operatic silliness, which was fine. She has a wonderfully busy life, being all lovely and that, running around all over the place and being Welsh.

Unfortunately three years ago she gave an interview to Piers Morgan where she, with great honesty, admitted to having experimented with drugs. As always celebrities have to garner this honesty with “my drug shame” or “I’m warning other young people” or “this is my biggest regret” rather than accept that a huge percentage of us experiment with drugs at various times of our lives. In 2011 this really shouldn’t be the subject of ridiculous over-reaction it so often is, and it certainly shouldn’t be a fucking topic dredged up by some lame arsed BBC researcher or presenter to hit someone over the head with.

Until we start to address drugs in a far more adult way and stand up to the hysteria generated by the filth that passes for media in our country (Britain) we are never going to achieve anything. As so many have said the war on drugs has been won; by drugs. That said we are seeing a drop in the number of people addicted to heroin and crack™. You know why? Because it has taken this long for people to wake up to the fact that junkies are tedious boring whiners who don’t wash enough, steal your shit and can always be relied upon to let you down.

Junkies are also waking up to the fact that it’s a full time job for Christsakes and being as most of them are lazy arsed wasters they really don’t want to be dealing with full time jobs! Ergo the drop in their numbers.

But come on people. Most of us have smoked a spliff or dropped a pill or snorted lines off the top of a toilet in our local pub, or off the pinball table in my case. It really isn’t cause for tabloid horror. Katherine Jenkins was honest about her youthful indiscretions, it hasn’t done her any harm and she’s made a shed load of money and is extremely hot. We must move the discussion because, on the whole, drugs can be a lot of fun.

The youth know this and older people do as well. The ridiculous demands of a media whose practitioners have, in the main, indulged themselves, and still do, do us no favours at all; all it does in reinforce the prejudices of the ignorant, maintains the pointless status quo, with the levels of slaughter in Mexico one of the by-products, and helps enhance the image that the media is full of shit and has no idea what it is talking about.

And as for you Jane Garvey you should be ashamed of yourself.

Manu - Global Citizen.

2011-09-21T17:46:00.000+01:00

Today the legendary Manu Chao will be playing a free concert in Phoenix, Arizona to publicise the state's anti-immigrant policies; policies that have given Phoenix the soubriquet "Capital of Prejudice". As the citizens of the USA merrily make a bonfire of their hard won rights and liberties, in much the same way as we have been doing in the UK, it behoves us all to pause for a moment and think about it. Currently a Federal judge is the only person preventing the implementation of Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and the imposition of police powers more akin to Syria or East Germany (when it existed).

The Western capitalist system is crashing, the exploitation of the developing world is coming home to roost and the extreme right is on the rise, particularly in the southern states of the USA. Good people need to speak out.

If I was anywhere close I'd be there, eating great food, dancing to brilliant music and partying hard for the good cause this represents.

Bambara Mystic Soul

2011-09-20T19:00:00.000+01:00

I have a very good friend. His musical taste is impeccable. In fact on many occasions he has introduced me to some blistering rock music that has never crossed my radar. Often we make compilation CDs for each other, laughing at our nerdom and flaunting legality. So last time I thought “here’s a man with taste, he’s going to love this African music”. Weirdly when he thanked me for the compilations he loved the reggae, the disco, the soul but he added “I couldn’t really get my head around the African tracks”. I was stunned. Mind you even my partner murmurs similar thoughts sometimes.

I cannot understand this. Not at all.

For me music, like the human race, originates in Africa. Well the music I like does anyway.

These days I look at a label like Analog Africa in the same way I look at Stax or early Motown, or Young Turks and 4AD. You can trust them. What you hear is always good, and if it doesn’t stroke your palate in the way that thrills it still resonates as interesting music; it makes sense.

Now AA have brought out a new compilation. As usual the boss man Sami Ben Redjeb has scrambled through piles of dusty tapes and archives to find more gems from the 70s, that’s the way he rolls. Then he polishes them up and brings out to all of us. The one thing, though, that continues to perplex me is this; why was the music in this area of the world during the 70s so vital and exhilarating? Was it to do with the early days of independence, before cynicism and sadness kicked in with the corruption that took hold with many of those early political elites?

Whatever it was I wish some of the British bands today could drink deeply from its cup of knowledge.

If you’re wondering where Burkina Faso is, it’s here in a pretty dry part of the world. Yet this corner of the world has brought forth some rich interdependent music where Afro-funk, Afrobeat, Islamic tradition and European sound has been mixed up and represented to us. Wherever you look the music speaks and with the appearance of those crazy Cubans during the Cold War a whole other musical flavour got added to the mix. Mmmmmmmm.

The compilation features Amadou Ballaké heavily, which is understandable given his ubiquitous talents. He appears with l’Orchestre Super Volta and Les 5 Consuls on tracks like Johnny and Baden Djougou, these tracks possess a sense of place to them, the spidery, mesmeric twisting figures with a vocal style that conjours up images of a dry, hot horizon. One of my personal favourites is Mamo Lagbema’s Love, Music and Dance. It has this urgency to it, echoes of the kind of music Kool and the Gang were doing around Spirit of the Boogie or The Chambers Brothers.

Compaore Issouf is another favourite. A scorching groove, almost Farfisa figures and this semi-falsetto voice. This wouldn’t have been out of place in some club playing rare groove.

Overall this album nails it. Makes it. I love it but then I’m biased.

Maybe I’ll try running this past my mate one last time.

This track isn't on the album but shit it's good.

Lost My Way

2011-09-08T20:10:00.002+01:00

For someone who once made a living being creative the loss of the creative drive can be likened to the loss of vision or some other sense. Where once lyrics or phrases fell into the consciousness like falling leaves in autumn the mind now resembles the blasted, barren landscape of winter. No birds singing except for the crass snarl of the crow, almost mocking me across this waste land; everything seems pared back to the barest essentials. There is no fat of the land and we live in drought and fear.

I have spent so many nights trying to work out how I arrived in this place. All the obvious reasons seem just that; obvious. Made redundant in 2008 after a decade of the warm embrace of office life, of the to and fro of humour and the ebb and flow of friendships the idea that going back to a singular life did not seem so daunting. But those ten years had caused a shift. Writing had been for specific subjects, the safe cocoon of salary that meant never really calculating hard decisions; these had all been good in some ways but had led to an atrophying of the artist’s feral sense of survival.

I have always walked on the sunlit side of most streets, or at least tried to. As life gathered it dust around me, like a real life Peanuts Pigpen, your light steps become heavier somehow, but the things that are supposed to drag our feet, children and marriage, have brought me nothing but a lightening of the spirit. It is the loss of creativity that weighs heaviest. It erodes away gradually as the weariness of non-recognition starts to grind. In many respects I was lucky, luckier than many, but the late realisation that these companies and corporations that hold and control your copyrights were not prepared to do anything to actually exploit them to your advantage came to late for that burst of desire, of need to express myself through words and music. I found myself emoting into a void.

The release of writing about something tangible was initially wonderful. But like most pleasures in life after a while it dulls the senses and one moves from the joy of the new into the comfort of the mundane. Music played all the time but after a time one couldn’t really differentiate between the good and the merely OK and music became almost wallpaper, after being my all in all. Then nothing.

At first I assumed that finding some form of paid employment would not be too difficult, after all I’d made so many contacts at the magazine, all the PR companies wanted my attention, offered me lunch, invited me places. I’d forgotten this was the music business, I don’t mean that pejoratively, but we live in an ephemeral world where friendships are based upon gain and advancement. Too often the naïve think they are really making some actually bond with another person only to discover that this all evaporates in the heat of departure from the metaphorical stage. You are as popular as your last gig, song, by-line or review. That’s just the way it is (as Bruce Hornsby said).

But the silence and the humiliation of dealing with a benefits system designed to belittle and ignore scrapes another level of thought from your mind; the level that filters vocabulary into lines or sentences. There are moments when you think that the political class is talking about you when they redirect the public’s fear and loathing from this week’s scapegoat to the disabled and sick. The righteous political anger that fed a young band’s output turns inwards and thickens the spirit. All you can do is wait for it to pass.

Finally things start to lighten but what damage has been done? People look at you differently and somehow I feel different. I’ve been asked so many times in the last couple of years to become involved in things of a creative nature but the spirit has been weak. Now the time to start fighting back has arrived. To become involved politically, to find the words of songs and pluck them from the air and to rediscover music, to write again with the freedom of expression that you only have when you have nothing. People died and some of me went with them.

It’s time to rebuild.

The son also rises.

2011-03-30T19:33:00.000+01:00

I can still remember the moment when I first heard Seun Kuti's father, Fela Kuti, for the first time. The track was I.T.T. on the Black President album. It was something of an epiphany comparable with hearing the Velvets, Big Youth or The Ramones for the first time. The very soul of the music exuded protest and anger, before Africa became the cause du jour it woke so many of us to the realities of modern Africa; not the poverty but the corruption, the terror and the nepotism the pervaded so much of African society, and still does.

Ironically, at the time, I.T.T. was the original bastard multi-national, they even won compensation for damage done to their factories in Germany that were bombed by the allies because they were building Focke-Wulf planes for Hitler. They are American. When Fela was recording I.T.T. the company was co-opting African leaders through bribery and corruption, leading the charge of the modern day economic colonialists. Times have not changed though Africa rises and now Seun steps into his father's shoes.

From Africa With Fury: Rise sees Seun Kuti linking up with his father's smooth-cool outfit Egypt 80 and the result is so refreshing that it makes most music around us seem monochrome and flat. Moving at a speedier rate than his old man did, with his laid back Afrobeat horn grooving machine laying down the law, Seun kicks off the dust from the shoes he's stepped into and heads off into our brains at a modern speed. Egypt 80 lock in behind him, horn arrangements flowing and Seun spitting the political lyrics, decrying the filth that crawls over his country, from the generals to the Western businessmen, from the oil companies poisoning their land to the local politicians who let them.

Tracks like African Soldier and Mr Big Thief gives us the setting for this new anger, Slave Masters and Rise speak of the new economic exploitation that exists in the Third World today. As Kuti says: "Nobody wants to stand up for anything, everybody wants to toe the line."

Produced by Eno and John Reynolds (who has worked with Sinéad O'Connor and Natacha Atlas) the album sounds great. Punchy and fine.

Go out and buy it OK.

Look back in disinterest.

2011-03-04T13:42:00.002Z

Francesca Cassavetti

Just read a piece by one time NME writer Johnny Dee. In it he muses on the declining circulation of music papers and whether or not the internet is the main cause of this drop in readership. After all, as he rightly points out, the average music fan can find all the information they need from various sources on line: gossip, music, reviews, downloads and pictures are all readily available. What isn't available is any discernment, any filtration or any comparisons or introductions to other artists.

Anyone who has grown up with popular music has their own golden age, except for people who are in their musical moment now, most of these memories will be located somewhere around the mid-teens to mid-twenties when for the majority of us music played its most central role in our lives. As we age, and take on different roles in life, father, mother, worker, adult, music remains a constant for many but the hunger to source new sounds and artists recedes. Modern children though have grown up in households (well the ones with music loving parents anyway) where the range of music available will probably span several scenes and genres. My kids grew up with everything from the 60s to now, a major focus on punk, reggae and world music as well as soul, pop and heavy funk.

They hear the stories of music scenes that were found rather than foisted upon them, where word-of-mouth played a bigger role than a tweet or a Facebook posted track; the eternal quest for the "next big thing" (©NME) was not yet upon us - that arrived around 1984 with the rise of the Thatcherite pop era. They heard the records of their parents' youth, The Stones, The Beatles, The Clash, The Stooges; music that sounded different because it was different. It was being made without a map, it was recorded on tape so its sonic presence was different, indefinably different but the difference is there. The artists themselves genuinely offered a different way of living, of seeing the world, because in the UK and the USA at that time society's rules were still governed by a bourgeoisie that had no concept of an individual lifestyle. If you doubt this then check out Julian Temple's film The Filth and The Fury. You will be amazed by some of the talking heads in the film, figures who seem like they're from the 50s rather than the late 70s.

Now we live in a world where the individual's desires and needs are paramount. Not wishing to sound like some relentlessly nostalgic duffer I can't say this is a bad thing. As my teenage son has pointed out many times "these are the best days to be living" in terms of all round comfort and safety. But that said we are increasingly divorced from each other because of the technology that brings us together. Via the computer the youth can access horror, pornography, music and each other without leaving their bedrooms. So how can today's musicians be shocking save for the tired old tedious rubbish of bad boy behaviour. Our musicians have no history; very few reference influences other than bands who were also a mélange of influences. I can't remember who said it but it went something like this: "Talking Heads were influenced by art, by literature, by architecture, they were influenced by James Brown, by George Clinton, Chuck Berry and The Ramones but (Insert name of any band here) are influenced by Talking Heads."

Eric Burdon once said that no-one could be considered a real musician unless they were avid music collectors. Maybe mp3s have changed that, maybe not. To paraphrase Mick Jones' famous quote "Like iPod like brain". If the only music you're open to is like the music you make then you fall into some time loop; that seems to be where we are now. Pop music has always been with us. All of us imagine some golden age where the charts were full of challenging music but the reality is far duller. For every Pistols, Ramones, Suicide, Blur there was a corresponding Gilbert O'Sullivan, Rod Stewart, Bucks Fizz or Renee & Renata. Memory is the great sieve, we shake the dust of the past through it and we're left with the nuggets. But I digress.

Greedy publishing companies increase the cost of their magazines relentlessly as circulations fall they want their profits to rise. Editors come and go as they fail to stem this haemorrhage of readers; there are no Canutes out there. Where once just carrying a copy of the NME, or Melody Maker or Sounds, would define you as a person now we have websites on smartphones - not exactly the same thing.

Yes we have a huge market for festivals and major shows; some argue that this is merely a reflection of society's sense of dislocation, the need to gather together again to connect with like-minded people. Because these huge audiences aren't reflected at the gig going coalface. The Barfly, Fibbers, the smaller Academy venues, they're all struggling to survive because there is no excitement in the live music lower divisions. When a band like, say, The Vaccines appear there's no real time to develop. Because they generate a ripple from the off this soon becomes a tsunami thanks to the web, people become blasé quite quickly and even though the band are snapped up the pressure to deliver something, anything is immediate. No more is it enough to build support, hone a bunch of songs for the first album and deliver something just as real. We need the profits NOW, we need the junkie rush NOW we need something new.

Add to this the post-slacker, post-punk, post-humour attitude, the "everything I have to say is in the songs" kind of view then you get a really boring read. When we are young we need heroes, we need someone to hold in high esteem, someone who makes more sense of the world than our stupid parents who have never lived, never loved and don't understand anything. We used to get that from writers like Charles Shaar Murray, Adrian Thrills, Paul Morley or David Quantick. They moved on, like the bands, and no-one filled their shoes.

A young miner once said something about my band, in the kindest way, towards the end of our career that I think is completely appropriate to say today about our music papers:

"You used to be good - but now you're wank."

At the end of my Teather.

2011-02-08T16:48:00.000Z

So, deciding I'd take part in this grand pantomime we call democratic politics in Great (sic) Britain I decided to write to my local MP, Ms Sarah Teather.

Now though I didn't vote for her, so my conscience is clear, I did vote as I really do believe in the democratic process. I also have a laughable naivety in that I sort of imagine that when a political party goes "we pledge to oppose tuition fess, no seriously, we really do. Hey why are you laughing at me over there? No, really, we really hate tuition fees" I sort of imagine that they'd want to keep their word.

Particularly when they are a minority party who's percentage of the vote was inflated by students flocking to their cause; but hey, that's just me.

So working on the principle, as expounded by Hilary Clinton, that if you vote, regardless of who you vote for, you are entitled to full representation and to have your opinions valued and your problems helped, I contacted Ms Teather regarding the rather impressive volte face her party, the Liberal Democrats, has recently made in the policy of university tuition fees. I wasn't particularly surprised or impressed with her response.

Now one of the major points with their standing-on-our-heads routine that I can't get my head around is how a debt of £27,000 is fairer than a debt of £9,000. When you factor in the extra debt of around £10,000 for the maintenance load that brings it up to 37 versus 19 (thousands that is, wake up at the back). So under this much fairer than that dreadful system that the last government had a young student skipping through life with nary a care in the world will happily leave university with the much fairer debt of a FUCKING HUGE SUM OF £37,000, which should please them no end rather than the crushing, unfair debt of £19,000. So can we start from there?

One of the reasons these new extortionate fees have been introduced, apart from wanting to dissuade scum from bettering themselves obviously, was to scythe through university funding. Lest we forget this bunch of posh boy no-hopers keep reminding us that none of this is ideological it's because in bailing out their chums in the city the country suddenly found itself well broke innit. So deep cuts have to be made in funding for education and universities will have to be funded by fee paying students. OK? Well.......

According to Ms Teather:

"Under the new system every graduate will pay back less per month than is currently the case. Furthermore, the poorest 25% will pay less overall than under the current system and only the top earning 40% of students will pay back what they borrowed in full"

Great. So 60% of people will never be able to pay back their debts. For their entire working life they'll have this huge millstone around their neck, impacting on their credit rating, ability to get a mortgage or just a normal loan. Add to this the fact that the universities won't be getting their money. Who has to pay these fees then? The tax payers? What is the point of loading all this stress onto young folks if, at the end of it all, the tab will be getting picked up by the rest of us?

Now currently they reckon that 36% of young people go to university so by my reckoning that means that 14.4% of young people will be paying for our university system under these plans. Well that's really going to ensure that everything turns out fine.

So next time a LibDem politician climbs onto a soap box near you and makes any promises bear in mind that these promises are all negotiable; that is negotiable if you're a scum sucking Tory apologist desperate for a seat at the top table. I hope they enjoy their moment in the sun because I think, come the next election, they will go the way of the dodo.

Next week I'll be discussing how the LibDems helped take away some school money from kids and then created a system whereby these kids will now have to go begging to their schools for any help.

I sign of with another quote from the egalitarian Ms Teather:

"Please be assured that I am committed to the establishment of a fair and progressive system for funding higher education, which enables more people to access higher education"

Oh really?

Angola Fresh.

2011-01-18T19:00:00.002Z

Whenever I listen to one of Analog Africa’s astonishing compilations I am reminded of the scene in the Third Man where Harry Lime draws a historical (though inaccurate) comparison between the creativity engendered by upheaval and conflict to that of a peaceful environment:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

This springs to mind far more with their most recent release Angola Soundtrack: The Unique Sound of Luanda 1968-1976.

The people of Angola have lived with conflict, from their war of independence through the years of a brutal civil war, for the last fifty years. Their country, potentially one of the richest in Africa, has been a pawn in the Cold War and a victim of political violence that claimed the lives of millions including one of the artists that appears on this compilation, David Zé.

Though these particular recordings were made in an eight year period, the last seven years of colonial rule and the first year of civil war, they show the artistic fertility that lay there in a society struggling to claim its right to self-government. The performers, like their Czech brethren during the last days of Communism, became vehicles for spreading the word and being a touchstone for defining the essence of being Angolan. As you listen to this album you marvel at the dexterity, imagination and beauty contained within it.

From Mamukueno’s opening, Rei do Palhetinho, that lilts and swoops in its story of wine drinking and the shimmering glory of Os Kiezos’ Congolese influenced Comboio you feast upon a music that lived in a world of influence, influences that came not only from the Blues but from the rhumbas of Havana and Kinshasa, from the psychedelic guitar playing that was making inroads in the West and from the meringue rhythms and Latin percussion; it was a mix that makes the sound of the Sixties pop bands seem pale and insipid, in fact most of the current acts peddling their retread R&B or indielandfillrocknroll fall by the wayside.

Like their modern day equivalents, Buraka Son Sistema, the music is sucked in, absorbed and made better.

This album, which you should buy by the way, continues Analog Africa’s run of home runs. Each one smacks the competition out of the park. That they mostly sprung from societies that were in a state of flux, or upheaval, says much for the resilience of Africans and their strength of spirit. This album came out in November but like a classic novel or a beautiful painting it will never age; it doesn’t have to be bought at the moment of release, it wears no meat dress.

I haven’t gone through each act on this compilation because it just sounds like a train spotter reporting on their day at the station, but I will leave you with something about David Zé.

In May 1977, while London was in the grip of punk, factions within the MPLA mounted a coup against the leader Aghostino Neto. The MPLA was at the time a Marxist-Leninist party and, as tends to be the case, was subject to all the factionalism and conspiracies that come with that territory (see anything about the Spanish Civil War). The attempt was led by the 8th Brigade of FAPLA (Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola); it failed, thanks to the intervention of Cuban troops, and the aftermath was bloody. Neto used the coup as an excuse to do some house clearing. In fact tens of thousands of Angolans were rounded up, summarily tried, executed and buried in mass graves. David Zé, at the time a serving soldier in FAPLA was one of them. Like Stalin and so many other shitty tyrants the world over Neto had no regard for the damage he did and the swathe he cut through Angola’s future.

This song by Zé isn’t on this compilation but in it he sings “on the day I die, do not cry for me, do not think of me”. Now maybe people can.

Political ranting.

2010-10-12T19:02:00.002+01:00

Thanks to Steve Bell - please don't sue me!

OK, so I am a political person, I am left wing and I think a society is best served through taxation and funding; so that's my manifesto out of the way up front so if you have a problem with that I suggest you stop reading now and go back to exploiting the poor and sick or whatever it is that right wing folk do in their spare time.

What I am finding so stunning about the current government is the speed with which they are ditching all their promises and pledges made prior to the election last May. Now I know that every political party betrays its promises at some stage but we usually get at least a year before they go snake eyed and shifty but this shower really take the biscuit. I mean we all knew there were economic problems; however you wish to colour it the bankers drove our country over a cliff and then asked us to pay them for the pleasure. Now the Tories amongst you will splutter in that fat-lipped dribbly way that they do and go "ah yes but Labour spent all the money so had nothing in reserve to pay us, er I mean the financial system, when it all went tits up" and I would say HAH, you are an arse!

When Labour came into power in 1997 we really were a third world country. The 18 years of Tory misrule had left our infrastructure ruined, our hospitals broken and our state education system derelict. All the money that had been earned from North Sea Oil had been spent on tax cuts that favoured the rich, our heavy industries had been destroyed along with the rich communities they had supported and we had become a nation that knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Then came Blair.

Blair broke promises. He also illegally invaded another country. Gordon Brown was derided by the suave Blair but he, more than any other man, actually made a difference in the face of the financial tsunami that swept the West's economic system. He threw money at it; he kept people in jobs, in their houses and hopeful and we voted him out of office. Now we have The Coalition.

Like an 80s comedy double act (The Management) Cleggy and Cammy promised everything we wanted. Hell the LibDems went so far as to sign pledges that they wouldn't raise tuition fees, the Tories swore that they wouldn't axe Child Benefit or any other universal benefits and, hey, here we are less than six months after the election and these boys are bailing. Bastards.

They cheerfully sell the lie about university fees as something that makes a real difference to people's earnings citing that on average a graduate earns £100k more over their working life than a non-graduate. Hmmmm, so that works out at roughly two and a half grand a year more; but wait, if you have debts of £30k (like my daughter will have) then that reduces the figure somewhat and my son may well end up with debts of fifty or sixty grand, which seems a pretty shitty return; particularly if you add interest to this. Now if you are an average earner, like most of the population, your kids will be means tested for the loans! These are loans for fuck's sake. If you get a median salary then the chances are your kids get a reduced loan. If you are pleasantly rich this doesn't matter and if you are poor it doesn't matter but if, like the majority of us, you are neither hot nor cold Cable will spew you forth.

Now all of us middle class people don't read The Daily Mail and we don't vote Tory. Loads voted LibDem. Well that worked out for you didn't it you stupid muesli swilling morons in your open toed sandals and inane bad dancing at your suburban parties.

Now don't ever tell me that voting never changes anything because right now you're about to get your arses reamed by Toryboys with LibDem strap-ons.

Been a long time.....

2010-10-08T16:34:00.001+01:00

Returned to the blog today to find it encrusted with dust and cobwebs. Somewhere along the line I lost the impetus to write, started thinking that I had nothing to say, sank into a grey depression, not really a depression more a long wet afternoon of the soul (Alfred Prufrock springs to mind) and finally I span off the road. Then came Cameron and Clegg and gradually my anger rose until, finally, I would appear to have rediscovered my mojo.

Musically things are looking back to move forward. It was my birthday recently and my son and my partner both gave me albums that have long been out of my collection. What is it about rediscovering music that lights you up again? The saddest thing about it though was that both albums still tower over much of the contemporary musical landscape, and I don't say this as a "in my day we made proper music" sense but more out of sadness. There is a freedom and experimentation in these records that seems to be absent today. Considering that they were both released through major labels it is scary to think that they would probably stand no chance in today's world of focus groups and decision by committee. Record labels should look to those reasons, rather than blaming kids downloading music, for their sales decline. Anyway.....

The first album was The Man Machine by Kraftwerk. First released in 1978 this work of electronic genius has yet to be surpassed. Featuring tracks like The Robots, The Man Machine and Metropolis it posits a vision of the future that is here. Its cold electronically generated sounds have an unbearably beautiful quality to them. Maybe because they were originally recorded onto analogue tape prior to digitisation but the depth of the sound, its richness of timbre if you will, is absent in so much electronic music of today. The album also contains The Model; if ever a song has been written that sonically represents the cold and soulless world of the catwalk this is it.

The second gift was Television's Marquee Moon. Released in 1977 it represents perfectly the intelligence and imagination at work in the New York punk scene, though quite how they ended up being lumped into punk still amazes me. That said, at the time we needed a short-hand to describe groups that had broken away from the confines of rock as it was, and now how it has become. These days punk seems to mean anything that sounds shouty and a bit angry, but not really that angry. Compare today's take on punk with what was available then: Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell, Blondie and over here The Clash playing with imagery, The Buzzcocks, The Pop Group, Magazine, Siouxsie. These weren't bands who saw salvation in traditional song structure. For me Marquee Moon represents one of the greatest guitar albums ever made. The songs, with the strangled yelps of Tom Verlaine, were different beasts from what we were safe with. They offered a vision of the future, as much as Kraftwerk did with their Teutonic ice sculptures, and a different path, away from the classis 12 bar verse chorus verse chorus that modern music still clings to. I can't really begin to describe the exhilaration that I still feel as the opening notes to the title song kick in.

However I am still listening to new stuff. The Ninja Tune XX two disc compilation is a great snapshot of cutting edge urban music from one of Britain's most delicious labels. All sorts of good things are available on this huge spread. From The Bug to Roots Manuva and Toddla T to Eskmo. The label's founders Coldcut even turn up. Coldcut were responsible for one of rap's greatest moments, the remix of Eric B & Rakim's Paid In Full that introduced Ofrah Haza to a thirsty public.

This compilation is the final word in where it's at right now.

I also got sent the new Keziah Jones track, Lagos vs London, remixed by the estimable Gilles Peterson. I'm not usually much of a fan of KJ as I have found his music falls between stools but this track, and in particular the remix, shows a way forward for Jones that offers him a chance to break out of the confines of his former approach. More of this please sir.

Anyway, back to where I started. The Coalition is upon us populated by people who think £50k a year is an average salary and that the employment wastelands, where the only work on offer is call centres or lap dancing clubs, will somehow burst into bloom and flourish as they force poor people into desperation. The difference between this lot and Thatcher was that Thatcher made sure the Police got paid so when it came to breaking strikers heads they did so with enthusiasm; the C&C Shit Factory are cutting police numbers and pay, making them pay for their training and generally fucking everybody around. So when the angry poor come crashing down Whitehall who they gonna call? Murdoch?

All Down The Line

2010-05-27T18:07:00.000+01:00

Last night I finally got round to watching the documentary that had been shown in the Imagine slot on BBC1 about the recording of Exile On Main Street. It featured a lot of footage that had been shot for Cocksucker Blues along with other bits and pieces from home movies and stills shot by a lucky French photographer, Dominic Tarlé, who had turned up initially to shoot some pictures of Keith and Anita and ended up moving in for six months (in the doc he used the almost Bill Clinton defence of I never took drugs really!). As a historical record it was great but as a snapshot of a band at its most chaotic and brilliant it was better.

Watching it with a mixture of voyeuristic delight, similar to watching a YouTube clip of a car crash, and jealousy, in the sense that you wished you'd been there, I was taken with the darkness of it all. The complete and utter feeling of plunging towards night that was evoked, even though the doc was heavily censored; no Gram Parsons, Ian Stewart or very little reference to the destruction that was left in the wake of four months or so surrounded by junk dealers. But God it looked like the place you wanted to be. Like engineer Andy Johns said, he was twenty one and there was no other place anyone wanted to be. You just wondered how the hell they pulled it all together.

For me Exile remains the last word in rock albums, in fact it finished a quartet of Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers; these four albums made all future rock albums redundant; and this come from someone who recorded albums with a rock punk, albeit punk. It made all future Stones albums redundant as well. After Exile they never made another complete piece of work. We can all point to tracks we loved from later albums but there is nothing left to be said. People just didn't make records like those anymore, they had nothing left to say and the whole drug fuelled careering into disaster so epitomised by Keith Richards became sad sorry fan-copy activity when done by Johnny Thunders, Stiv and Dee Dee (all people I love). Richards opened a door into a whole period of hassle for the rest of the band as he waded in the waters of opiate; but at least he sort of kept it together unlike so many others who followed in his wake.

For me these times became a watershed moment in rock music. Rock had to change but so many bands only wanted to be The Stones. They based their look, their chops and their drug intake on the blueprint drawn up by Mick 'n Keef never thinking that new roads need laying. Even punk bands descended into the same errors that so many R&B rock outfits had, getting feather cuts, emulating their heroes but never quite cutting it in the same way. The fact is most of them thought that the drugs needed to come first instead of the music; for all his intake Richards never lost sight of the music.

It also helped to be really really rich with hangers on who want to sort it all out for you.

So now they've remastered and re-released Exile again, adding extra tracks that have been added to in modern studios. I'm sure it's great but I'm not going to bother. For me the album was complete, I don't need extra versions or songs that didn't make the finished album. I got a remastered version a couple of years back and I play it every other week but I still miss the scratch that was on my vinyl copy, right in the middle of Just Want To See His Face. I love the strained sound quality the record has, the sense of sweat and confusion.

Everytime I hear it it triggers memories for me of all night sessions and my own out of control times. Much as I still love and buy music no modern records offer me the same sense of being there as so many albums of that period can do. Within a few years of Exile's release SSL mixing desks came into prominence and with it the end of bleed through. Every track was gated and compressed. Those background sounds, those loose asides that peppered records of that time disappeared and then Fairlight and Pro-tools finished the job. There are still bands out there who deliver a sense of being in a gang but it's never on the record. It has all been so cleaned up.

Exile is the last word of fabulous decadence. The end of days for rock as an idea, a force for bigger ideas. No other band could have done this over four albums; from Street Fighting Man through Gimme Shelter and Moonlight Mile to the last fading note of Soul Survivor there's a body of work that others can only dream of. Resplendent in ragged glory, dropped chords and loose harmony they offer us a defining moment.

The Kings are dead, we're a Coffee Republic now.

Mambo Loco, damn right!

2010-04-21T17:39:00.004+01:00

As everyone and his brother has said already "Wow this is on Analog Africa and they usually do brilliant African compilations and such and this one is Latin music!" Well, yeah; and you know what? This is grade A amazing.

Now I must declare a big love for Colombian music in its many forms, and I'm not such a scholar that I can name them all but there's a good piece here on Analog's blog that gives you a better background to Anibal and his music than I can. That said it appears that Colombian music lends itself to modern ears, and in many instances to modern remix techniques or re-interpretation, and Mambo Loco is no exception.

Stick this disc on and from the off you are launched into a swirling storm of rhythm and groove that is just so insistent and immediate that it is impossible to remain unaffected; as far as I'm concerned that's a sign of a rockin' record. The problem is when you try to describe this kind of music to someone invariably it's a fail.

"So, what's it like then?"

Weeeeeelllll, he plays accordian.

"Oh, like The Furies?"

Er....no. It kicks up lot more dust and passion than that.

"What? Like country music?"

A bit.

"Garth Brooks?"

NO!! Look it's like comparing the Sex Pistols to Yes, or Keith Richards to Cliff Richard. It's hard edged, it sprang from rough soil and flowered further in the scene created by the early narco-culture that grew in Colombia along with the drug trade from the 60s on. It has power and pride and speaks to your soul in a way that makes you want to drink beer, dance and have sex. Everything good music should do.

Velasquez is living proof that the best art comes from turbulent times and places. Like another one of Colombia's heroes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anibal is a one off.

More than a clown.

2010-04-14T16:03:00.004+01:00

I never knew Malcolm McLaren. Like so many of my generation I certainly knew who he was but I never met the man. To be honest over the years his "I am punk" mantra wore a little thin but now that he has died I find myself thinking, yeah, I guess you had a much bigger hand in it than most of us; and not just punk.

I tend to agree with Jon Savage's take on Malcolm in that 1977 was a mess, something would have happened, but if McLaren hadn't been involved it would have all been a bit depressing, more like Britpop; two good bands and a lot of Shed Sevens. McLaren brought an intellectual spark to the whole moment with his talk of Situationists, admittedly most of the youth who avidly gobbled up his tricks had no real concept of what Situationists stood for, and his embrace of new ideas left many floundering. His partnership with Vivienne Westwood gave punk the fashion edge that most music movements lack. The clothes helped form the movement even if few could afford to buy them; they still showed the way forward and stamped a vision in all our heads. Clothes became a statement in themselves and I still remember the shock in suburbia of walking into pubs with straight leg trousers, it was enough to get you beaten up and many of us were thanks to the hysteria that was whipped up around us by the sick-fuckery of the tabloid press. McLaren's antics served to pour petrol on the fire of a Britain locked into mediocrity and greyness, a country that still remains terrified of its youth to this day.

Punk was so much more than just the music. There was a complete upheaval in design and pecking orders. Suddenly people in their twenties were no longer prepared to wait until an opening appeared that would allow them a junior assistant position, they just went out and did it. Older executives, across the board, were caught unaware and scrabbled around for anyone or anything that understood this change and in the confusion a lot of second rate rubbish came through with the real talent but the catalyst was Talcy Malcy, giggling and capering about like some mad Pied Piper as London clawed its way out of a hole. Then he got bored and moved on.

He may never have had the same commercial, or personal, success that he enjoyed with punk but from where I was standing the things he did later were far more interesting. Of course loads of us knew early rap and hip hop but it was McLaren who constructed something different and wonderful out of it. Duck Rock remains one of the best albums made in modern music and brought so many different strands to our ears; his use of South African music mixed in with New York beats showed how music shouldn't be held in some cryogenic chamber to be revered by strokey-chinned world music buffs endlessly debating whether something was authentic or not. It cried LOOK AT ME YOU FUCKTARDS, look at this we are living breathing laughing fucking drinking musicians and we celebrate the dance. Then he did it to opera.

McLaren was the first swallow of summer. He arrived with something invariably long before anyone else was ready for it, like Vogueing or whatever, and then months later somebody else would rock up with an inferior version and by then Malcolm had moved on.

Now he has moved on again. Unfortunately, right now, Britain needs someone like him more than ever as our country stumbles around trying to choose between various characterless nonentities, with a popular culture held by the throat by a music industry so terrified of the future they are trying to relive the past and a design culture that merely recycles old ideas and claims they are being ironic. Ironic as in Alanis Morrisette, not ironic at all.

We have no more heroes.

I listen to the radio....

2010-03-02T18:38:00.004Z

So Mark Thompson, the Director General of the British Broadcasting Service, has just announced his plans for the future of the BBC. These proposed changes are “rooted in a clear vision of what the BBC exists to do.” He asserts, at the start of his confused and badly written article in The Guardian, that the BBC’s mission is to “inform, educate and entertain audiences”. So why these particular closures?

One reason that is worth considering is that Mark Thompson doesn’t really like music. Maybe he doesn’t quite understand it, or is unable to put it into any kind of cultural context; after all his background is purely news and current affairs. Not that that in itself is a bad thing but if your entire world view is governed by a focus on news to the exclusion of all other cultural outlets then it does pose a problem.

The rising public anger at the announcement of the planned closures has been led, in the main, by listeners and supporters of 6Music. This should come as no surprise really. The demographic for the average 6Music listener indicates a pretty attractive group for any broadcaster but the problem is there is nowhere else for these listeners to go so of course they will be enraged that the only outlet for music they like is to be closed by a man who appears to have no idea what constitutes contemporary music; and here lies the crux of the matter.

Some have argued that Mr Thompson needed to announce these changes in anticipation of an incoming Conservative government that will be in greater thrall, if that is possible, than the current government to Rupert Murdoch. Red in tooth and claw free marketers, populated in the main by men (invariably men) who enjoyed no real experience of teenage years (pace Cameron & Osborne allegedly) so have no concept of music other than pop music they danced badly to at Young Conservative dances. These people see music, like racial minorities, teenagers and workers, as all the same.

In 2008 the UK music industry was worth £3.6bn, and that’s a whole lot of money. These revenues are generated by musicians playing live, recording music that people with disposable incomes want to go and see. They range from outfits like Slow Club or Tuung through to major artists like Gorillaz and Radiohead. Pop plays a part as well, JLS, Cheryl Cole and other TV created stars all add to the mix; but don’t pretend that these artists are anything other than fictional constructs for the downloaded disposable age. The role music plays in people’s lives is determined by intelligence and creativity. Pop music is, and always will be, a momentary soundtrack to our daily lives but will never hold sway in our memory the way that the poet artist will.

It is argued that the BBC is doing things that could easily be done by the commercial sector. That is an utter bare faced lie. If the BBC was not setting the pace then the commercial sector, as always, would fall back upon lowest common denominator programming. Radio 1 is often held up by those with no idea about how the music industry works as a prime example of “something the private sector could do better”. Unfortunately this is not the case. A quick glance at the playlists for Radio 1 and, say, Capital FM in London should illustrate this point. Radio 1 plays and exposes new pop acts, as well as rock and R&B artists, whereas Capital plays what is already broken and commercially successful; for instance the Black Eyed Peas feature on both their A and C lists. If Radio 1 was privatised then the UK music industry can kiss goodbye to a vehicle for breaking new acts. Commercial radio is all about advertising.

Now on to 6Music. There is no radio station playing the kind of music that 6Music plays, anywhere in this country. They play music for people who maintain a connection with the kind of music that speaks to them of their lives and experiences. People like Thompson cannot see or understand this concept because, though they may pay lip service to “real” music, jazz or classical, anything played on music radio is deemed to be pop. They claim Katherine Jenkins is an opera singer when she has never appeared in an opera, she sings showtunes or their equivalent. If you apply that criteria to drama then Shakespeare carries no more weight than Coronation Street – and those folk who claim that if Shakespeare was alive today he’d be writing for Eastenders are simply wrong – and How Hot Is My Daughter carries as much power as Life!

A part of the BBC’s remit is to stimulate creativity and cultural excellence; doing away with an outlet for creativity and cultural excellence is not the way forward. We are lying to ourselves if we think otherwise. For those of you who seem to believe that the magical private sector will fill this gap then I despair for your gullibility and ignorance. The commercial sector has had this opportunity and has fallen short. Take a look at 6Music’s playlist compared to XFM. The 6Music playlist is drawn from a wide range of labels, many of whom are small independent companies who have no other outlets for exposure; XFM’s playlist in drawn, in the main, from major labels, which is not surprising given who pays for the advertising.

One of the things this country can take pride in is our music industry. Since The Beatles and The Stones kicked it all off we have consistently produced bands, and acts, who have pushed forward the boundaries of music that the rest of the world has struggled to reach. Innovative bands from other countries are usually recognised first in the UK (Kings of Leon, Air, The Velvet Underground) having been played by DJs of the stature of John Peel or Gideon Coe. For many of us the first time we heard acts like Big Youth or Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou were on shows by those two stalwarts of radio. Once they’ve gone we will never get shows like those back again.

Save music: save 6Music.

So long.

2010-02-26T18:37:00.003Z

When we are weary and in need of strength,
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember him.

When we have a joy we long to share,
When we have decisions that are hard to make,
We remember him.

At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember him.

At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of the summer,
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn,
We remember him.

At the rising of the sun and its setting,
We remember him.

It is with great sadness.

2010-02-15T19:02:00.006Z

On Wednesday the 3rd of February 2010 at roughly 2.45pm my Dad died.

I was there, sat next to the bed and talking aimlessly about stories in the paper. Someone had told me that the last thing to go is the hearing so you have to keep talking, communicating, reaching out and begging them not to go; and then telling them that it’s OK, we can manage now, Mum’s waiting and I want you to be free.

Many would say it was a good death, whatever that means. At home, with his family. But from where I stood there seemed to be so little dignity for this once proud Yorkshireman. Everyone is very kind; everyone is very caring; just as long as you’re staying at home the powers that be are all very happy. It keeps you off the balance sheet. They promise you all the support you need and my brother asks them “is that the case because my little brother is disabled and can’t pick our father up” and they go “oh no problem just pick up the phone and we’ll be there” and you do two hours later to be told “oh we’re all going home now can you call so and so or so and so” but they’re not there either and you weep. You stand and weep and the tears roll down your face and you beg your father to let go and rescue himself from this pain. Then he dies.

And you forgive them.

The house is too quiet so I put on Handel’s Messiah. Not just any old Messiah but Mozart’s arrangement of the Messiah. I’d bought it for him directly from the Huddersfield Choral Society and he had loved it. It was part of our family’s genetic make up. Every Christmas he’d come downstairs in his dressing gown and stuck his vinyl copy on the big stereogram, turned the volume up, grinned and we all new Christmas had started. Now I played it as he lay dying and as the glorious rich tones of Comfort Ye swelled through his flat I could see a peace settle and move across him. I sat there as CD1, the first movement flowed around us and I breathed in the air and held his hand and felt his recognition, his connection to those earlier days surrounded by a younger, less complicated family and with his wife still upstairs in bed; and I knew he was there.

As His Yoke Is Easy faded so did my father. I wanted to believe that he had calmed and lay sleeping. I could see the covers still rising and falling. Couldn’t I?

No.

Daddy’s gone.

A sudden sense of loneliness.

2010-01-21T15:34:00.002Z

My Dad is dying.

I've sat here, at my keyboard, for nearly an hour trying to think of some different way of starting to write about my current life, to try to find some way of stating the obvious that doesn't looks so harsh and brutal but I can't find the words. These are the only words that come to me. Like some looming, dark and close storm clouds I know that the storm will break over me in the very near future; and I'm terrified.

I shouldn't be, I know. Hell, I'm in my fifties and I have already lost one parent but the idea of becoming the last stop on the road fills me with dread. Until now I have always had this man to turn to, for advice, for consolation, for support. You never stop being a son, a child, until the moment that you are alone. I know my brother must be having similar thoughts and fears, but siblings have a different love, they aren't obliged to bear responsibility, unlike a loving parent who holds true to that unwritten, unspoken contract that you make with you children. Whispered into their ears at birth and in the quiet moments of bedtime reading "I'll always be there"; and they are.

My father is a Yorkshireman, born and raised in Golcar, near Huddersfield. Like so many of his generation it could be argued that the Second World War was a life saver in the sense that it broke the designed path to his future and opened up worlds to him that would never have happened had the madness not fallen over Europe. He left the small village for the wider world, trained in Canada, saw a young Frank Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in Toronto, posed with his mates atop the Empire State Building, their RAF hats bent and forced into the shape of the cooler looking US Air Force style. In Chicago he saw bluesmen in bars where bartenders avoided asking the 19 year old underage drinkers for ID because they never knew how many would live to drink legally, and my Dad laughing as he told me that they all intentionally wore their uniforms for precisely that reason.

All these stories came out of my father as our lives moved around each other; as the shape of our relationship changed, from child parent interaction into the realms of friends. But I always remain the son, regardless of how many beers we've shared or those unspoken moments of complete understanding when neither of us needed to acknowledge what passed between us. As he grew older I learnt more about the follies of his youth and realised that I had so much more in common with this man than just a quirk of fate. All my life he had seemed born into the role of responsible provider; someone who had provided his family with security and a sense of safety, leavened with humour, but in the main a steady dependable man. It was a shock to be told and to realise that we had a difficult adolescence in common, problems at school, early leaving, confusion as to what to do in life. So many things that put my life into context, that made me comprehend that my own life wasn't some kind of aberration. He had grown into his role, it didn't come naturally and that, for me, was the biggest lesson he has taught me.

Now I'm a father and I'm having those hard times with my own teenage son. He is a gem; bright, amusing, good-looking and very, very funny. But I'm his Dad. Because I'm his Dad I worry that he'll screw up at school, I worry that his social skills will fall apart because he plays too much Xbox. Hardly a day goes by when we don't clash heads over something and I can see in his face the blank assumption that I have been put on this earth solely to make his life as unpleasant as possible, that all the future has to hold for the two of us is an unrelenting period of abrasive love. Then it passes.

My father has the invidious position of being the grandparent. From his lofty love he can see this relationship between my son and I within the context of my life with him. All these roles are being played out again, with different haircuts and trousers, but the script is essentially the same. I am eaten up with a middle class desire to see my child achieve some kind of material comfort and emotional security and, if he holds true with the script, my son sees me as some bourgeois prick who has no idea what life is like at 15; but like my father did for me I am only trying to explain how the world turns and why should he believe me? I just hope that as the time passes he too will see the truth I've arrived at.

My Dad is dying and I can't do anything about it. I can't turn back the progress of this disease that is turning him into a shell of the man he was. I try not to show my distress when I stay with him, as I try to make him eat something or have a drink or as we talk together and he drifts in and out of sleep. All I feel is that I don't want his pain to go on, but I don't want him to go. I just want him to know it's OK. He can go now if he wants because I think I've finally worked out how it works.

I love you Dad.

Nick

Rachid Taha and the Dilemma of Seating

2009-11-16T13:50:00.004Z

Pic: rockographer.com

Taha's new album, Bonjour, has divided the critics. Actually, to be honest, it has divided me from most (if not all) of the other critics. But more of the new album in the next post. This is all about the live event.

Rachid Taha live is a subject that, generally speaking, most people are in agreement on. Live he is in his element; it's just that pretty much every time this spiritual heir to Joe Strummer appears on a London stage it's in the hallowed halls of seated venues. You could argue that the trade off lies in the quality of the sound against the space to seriously get down to his luscious groove, and the presence of seats didn't seem to impede the dancing feet of the hundreds of beautiful women who can usually be found at this bad boy's concerts.

Unfortunately I missed the opening set from co-headliner Vieux Farka Touré and walked into the cavernous Royal Festival Hall one verse into Taha's opening number, Ila Liqa, taken from Bonjour. Now band wisdom usually advises opening a show with a crowd pleaser, a well known number, that gets the audience behind you from the off. Taha doesn't seem to need this on the evidence of my own eyes; as I walked into the hall it seemed that the entire venue was already on its feet with people cramming down in front of the stage. With a drop of the shoulder and a tip of the hat the band slipped into Shuf and the crowd went nuts.

As always at Rachid's gigs there's a weird cross-section of London; from stately looking mature Levantines to fabulous beauties dancing like professionals, to bohemian grannies to wild freakin' raver dudes, they are all represented. They would probably be at a Clash gig were they ever to have reformed. That said Rachid is a rock act and he ought to be at the Empire or Brixton Academy, he should be playing somewhere where the sweat drips down the walls and the sound distorts and speaker stacks wobble disconcertingly as a packed pit bounces dangerously. The fact that he can pretty much conjure up this experience in the polite Royal Festival Hall says something about the power of his performance.

Aided and abetted by long term band mates Hakim Hamadouche, Guillaume Rossel, Rachid Belgacem, and Yves Aouizerate with Didier Thery on bass Taha tore the place up. Having seen him whenever I can, whenever he's in London, and being accused of being a too forgiving a fan I can honestly say that Stephan Bertin is the best guitarist I've seen appearing with him. His wild lead playing, behind Belgacem and Rossel's solid percussive groove, reminded me of Material in early-80s New York. It was no surprise to see the young long hair up on the balcony throwing himself around in almost rock-acid house ecstasy as these kings of future punk said how it was to be.

Through Je t'aime Mon Amour into Bent Sahara into a blistering Barra Barra (Black Hawk Down indeed), take a breather for Ecoute-Moi Camarade and on to Ya Rayah the crowd soared and dipped and the ladies went woooooo. I did too. The love flowed. Over the years there has occasionally been an almost Shane MacGowan moment with Taha at times; was he so fucked up that he'd collapse, or just mumble incoherently, would he be able to perform at all? But these days he seems to be happy with the moment and whether he was refreshed or not he was completely in the moment, centre stage and dominating. Slipping between English, French and Arabic depending on his mood or excitement. By the time he brought Vieux Farka Touré back out for Rock the Casbah and a stunning closer Garab, where Farka Touré played blistering guitar over one of rock's tightest rhythm sections, you thought the roof was going to come off.

This isn't world music, this is, like his compatriot Manu Chao, the natural heir to the original punk rock movement when young musicians sought wider roots to the rock music they wanted to play. The purer world music fraternity often dismiss Rachid's version of Rock El Casbah as "turgid" but I think they're mistaken. If reports are correct - read here - then Taha may well have more right to play Casbah than he's given credit for. All I know is that every time he plays he delivers. I have seen many bands over the years but Rachid Taha is in an elite group of maybe four or five in that he continues to offer us a different view.

Thanks for keeping the flame alive.

(The poster of this got the date wrong but check the young guy on the balcony!)

Mark's great talent

2009-11-13T18:30:00.002Z

Mark and I wrote together a lot. From the start we kind of clicked and his huge musical ability somehow allowewd him to understand my incoherent descriptions of what I heard or meant. He played, wrote and programmed everything so quickly that, for me and many others, working with others always seemed so fucking slow!

This song sums up something. I miss him.

Mark Alexander Smith - one of the greats.

2009-11-03T17:47:00.006Z

I just found out today that one of my dearest friends, Mark Smith, died yesterday. I cannot begin to say how much this has hurt me and left me feeling bereft and adrift.

I've known Mark for more than twenty five years and in that time we've written songs, produced, played, drank and caroused. For much of it I was the one who did the drinking and carousing being as Mark was never one to drink or whatever. His big vice was cigarettes and coffee and many of his friends worried that these would not be good for him. As yet we don't know if we were right.

Mark was one of the best of us. There will be many times in life when you hear that expression and it will be said as a cliché or as a platitude; in this case it was a true evaluation of the man. He was one of the finest musicians I have ever met or had the honour to play with. He was best known for his prowess on the bass guitar but once you'd spent sometime in a studio with Mark you soon realised that his knowledge of composition, his skill with keyboards and arranging would add a lustre to any run of the mill project. Perhaps the greatest compliment was that if anyone could polish a turd, as the musical saying goes, Mark could.

In his personal life he was self-effacing. Always quick witted and humourous he had an ability to calm any tense situation, smooth over difficulties in recording studios making other singers and players feel that they were really happening, even when they weren't. As a friend he could always be relied upon to offer moral support, good advice and some sensible interjection; he was the first person I told when my wife told me we were having a child. We were in Stockholm at the time working with a dreadful band but it was always good times.

The last time I spoke to Mark was this weekend; after many years of not playing or creating any music I had been persuaded to put something together. I called Mark and asked him if he would be up for trying something a bit different, but still diamond. We had songs we'd written years back that still sound fresh; other friends who were class acts were all up for it, particularly if Mark was involved. Mark was enthusiastic about the idea, and I knew, thanks to him, it stood much more chance of being special. Now I'll never know.

Mark Smith was a very common name for a very uncommon person.

I loved him and I miss him more than I can express.

Rocksteady, hats off to the men!

2009-10-14T16:47:00.002+01:00

This album is a soundtrack for a film by Swiss film maker Stascha Bader that looked at the short lived precursor to roots reggae, rocksteady. In some ways it can be compared to Wim Wenders Bueana Vista Social Club in that it revolves around a reunion of major figures from that period. Meeting up in Tuff Gong Studios the veterans re-recorded some of the major songs of the period; sadly some of the artists are no longer rocking so stars of equal stature and ability stepped in to fill the gaps, for example the legendary U Roy fills the gap left by Scotty on a new version of Stop That Train.

Unfortunately I missed the film so I only have the YouTube clip to go on, and this album. As a stand alone piece of music it works; all the favourites are here - You Don't Love Me, The Tide Is High, Rivers of Babylon - which may pose a problem for the real reggae fan being as they will probably have the originals already, in all their raw glory. That said there's space in the world for beautifully realised versions, well recorded and solidly performed. Music buffs will appreciate the high recording quality that has been brought to the project.

Probably lovers of Cuban music found the Buena Vista versions lacking in a certain essence that their scratchy earlier versions possessed but speaking as someone who was never that acquainted with the originals they worked fine for me. This record should have the same effect on people who haven't spent many nights nodding into the bass bins of their youth. In fact some versions stand out; Derrick Morgan's Conquering Ruler and Hopeton Lewis' Take It Easy go down like cold stout on a hot Kingston afternoon and the playing throughout is smooth, as you'd expect with the god-like Ernest Ranglin MDing the project.

If you already have these tracks on various compilations you might not be bothered getting the album, unless you're a completeist, but if you want to know where it all came from and you don't know where to start this is a good place.

Love the gun you’re with.

2009-09-29T21:24:00.000+01:00

Kalshnik Love (geddit??) is the new album from Medhi Haddab’s latest creation Speed Caravan. Haddab was one of the members of DuOud, shortlisted for the Radio 3 World Music Award two years running (2002, 2003 fact fans) which is no mean feat given the competition. He brings a freshness and power to the oud that drags it out of the pigeonhole marked “Indigenous instrument” and slams into BIG ROCK SOUND box. Yeah.

That said his conspirators on this album are no mean sheiks themselves. Pasco Teillet, Hermione Frank and Simo Bouamar pile on the pressure and add the flavours that make this album a contemporary rock thing that I’m sure will be dissed by many in the strokey-chin fraternity of the world music critic forum because it doesn’t adhere to the laid out plan. That’s because it’s a modern rock album, or just a modern album. Like Rachid makes. Funnily enough he’s on here.

That’s not to say that this is all good. There are a couple of tracks that sort of wander about a bit, not really doing much as if to say “well we needed to fill the space up…..a bit” but that’s OK (ever bought a Police album? Shit, they were mainly filler.). They do a couple of covers that hit the mark; their version of The Cure’s Killing an Arab brings an urgency and meaning to an already great song. Rachid Taha appears in the background calling out that he’s the Arab in Camus’ original story, The Outsider, which the song is based upon. It’s angry and direct.

Then there’s the Galvanize cover. The Chemical Brothers’ original was a thing of beauty and now the Speedies make it a scary monster of a track with a blistering chat over from the venerable Spex MC from the late lamented Asian Dub Foundation alongside some background mumbles from an old mate of mine, Paul Kendall. Add voices from Micro Brise le Silence and there’s a storm of spinning, fighting, twisting rhythm that drives the song at speed down Magic Street. Yeah.

Sidestepper’s remix of Daddy Lo throws Colombian groove into an already heady brew to full effect.

It’s a Friday night album. Stick it on before you go out to get in the mood or when you get back and you want to keep the party going. It is the sound of modern rock music; where reggae gave a different base (bass) to punk then modern bands should look to rai to lead them out of the blues rock cul de sac, particularly if they’re French.

The oud has never sounded better.

Vivian Girls

2009-09-18T23:29:00.000+01:00

My daughters - I fucking love them.

Still fighting the Civil War

2009-09-15T14:01:00.003+01:00

Joe Wilson is a Republican from South Carolina. This bland statement gives an air of respectability to this man and his political views that they don't deserve. It's a bit like saying Nick Griffin of the BNP is a conservative politician; he's not, he's a fascist.

Joe Wilson is a racist pig.

The brilliant New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written an excellent piece about the current rabid Republican opposition to President Obama - read it here - and how it is straying from open political opposition to ideas and policies into the realm of straightforward racism. White greasy Southerners who still cling on to discredited ideas about racial supremacy raise the spectre of a black man in charge in the same way that their fathers in the 60s raised the spectre of a supposedly sexually rapacious black man wanting to have his way with all the white ladies. The vocabulary may be different but the thoughts are the same.

In 2000 Joe Wilson led the campaign to keep the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina's state Capitol. This is a bit like the Germans wanting to keep the swastika flying over the Bundestag; actually it's not a bit like at all, it's exactly like.

Anyway Joe here's a flag for you to print off and stick on your sleeve. Feel free to make full use of it.

Fab, gear, whatever....

2009-09-08T17:14:00.004+01:00

Now there's no getting away from the fact that The Beatles were a world changing phenomenon. Before they arrived it was camp young men emoting for their predatory gay managers or earnest beardies playing the Blues in a studied and, lets be honest, very polite way. Four Scousers come along, roughly hewn from rock n roll.

They were rude, opinionated and brash; no change in Liverpool there then. Despite being packaged into suits and ties they retained that bored and vicious streak that made them a global brand. Their talent and exploration of the possibility of anything gave other fearless individuals the gap in the tired British edifice to plunge through. After a while though they became safe. Sure Sgt Pepper's was a turning point, but things would have changed without it. It was released in 1967, Brian Wilson had released Pet Sounds in '66; you could argue that of the two albums Pet Sounds was the more challenging. Add to this Captain Beefheart releasing Safe As Milk in 1967, now this is far more challenging - without a doubt. No songs there about Martha and Mr Kite.

Don't get me wrong. The Beatles were a huge brand but look where we are now. They've become an Xbox game; nice.

Alongside The Beatles came The Stones, The Who and The Kinks. Bands that visibly posed a threat. No attempt to package these guys for a cosy pop career. They oozed a surly charm and were openly contemptuous of the status quo. Sure they made great singles, but their very presence made a lot more sense to the angry and excluded. They were pop, but pop like The Clash or The Ramones were pop. They were our pop. They didn't sing songs about Yesterday and racoons. They were nasty.

So now there are endless programmes on about The Beatles as the BBC conspires with EMI to help sell their records and everyone gets misty eyed about the Sixties again and we have to watch endless documentaries interpreting history through the eyes of Beatles fans. It's so predictable. Programmes made by researchers in their twenties who Google some basic phrases and declare it to be gospel. Lazy and tawdry, with little or no value when it comes to assessing the past.

Last night I caught Pop Britannia; purportedly all about "The Sixties" but so wrong. There is this inability to see that period as anything other than a homogeneous mass of clear eyed pop puppets making cheery music. They lump the likes of The Stones, Who and Kinks alongside the likes of The Troggs and Herman and The Hermits as if they all co-existed in some big house of fun with the same intellectual value to everything they did. It would be the same as putting JLS and Radiohead or Girls Aloud and The Vivian Girls in the same category. Some were on a journey of discovery, others were being manipulated and controlled by old school management.

There were differences; important differences. The bands who seemed to pose a threat were harried, hustled and busted on a regular basis. Others were allowed to become "The Voice of a Generation" on a regular basis. If you were a kid in the Sixties your parents would buy you Herman records and complain when you played The Stones. That pretty much sums it up.

I never really liked The Beatles anyway.

The song remains the same?

2009-08-17T15:45:00.002+01:00

Where does songwriting go to when you lose the muse? The rhyming couplet, the clever play on words or just simply the unforgettable line that will trigger memories; sometimes they just dry up. Like an Australian drought, what was once a raging river is now a dry riverbed with tumbleweed blowing in the wind.

I spent a decade and a half of my life writing songs. They poured out of me like water from a rock struck by Moses (I think it was Moses), on occasion I have banged out two or three songs in a day. They were good as well. OK, so you’ll have to take my word for that, but they were. The only problem was, in my case, I never quite got my head around the fact that people who want other people to write songs for them don’t want great tunes that deal with child abuse and the threat of war. They want anodyne la-la-la stuff. Now I’m not saying that my songs were all about heavy topics, when I wrote love songs usually Smokey Robinson was sitting on my shoulder – I hasten to add that I’m not comparing myself to Smokey, merely explaining the process.

This point is the crux of my dilemma. How do you define songwriters? There are obviously two main kinds of writers, and not just good or bad. There are the writers like Holland Dozier Holland or Linda Perry, they can construct great melodies, strong structures and catchy tunes; the music they make is memorable. Then there are the writers in bands or the singer-songwriters, those whose expression is defined by the entity in which they exist as an artist. You could call these the poet writers. People like Neil Young, Pete Townsend, Lily Allen or Tom Waits.

The poet writers move through the times they live in, they supply snapshots of reality seen through the prism of their perception. They reinterpret the truth but they never lie. The music they make exists in the construct of their own making but often, such is their skill, the songs they write have such universal application that others can sing them and though the cover might not carry the same weight and power that the writer imbues in their version it still has resonance. Then there are those album tracks that you can’t imagine anyone else ever singing. The Pixies’ Monkey Gone To Heaven, Small Change by Tom Waits or Baba O’Reilly by The Who for example; and anything by Bob Dylan in his early years.

That’s not to say that the poet writer always gets it right. Neil Young, possibly one of the strongest and most forthright of performers, has varied wildly over the years, but the road he treads tends to be the right one. His latest effort, Fork In The Road, is a great example of monomania tending to overshadow a good idea. A whole album about a car? Without the thrill of a Rocket 88 or a paean to a Cadillac wrapped up in snappy lines and twisting couplets it becomes a tad samey! But a man who wrote Ohio and Living With War has to be given some leeway.

I bring Neil Young into this because at his recent appearance at Glastonbury he bestrode the stage like a colossus. He has the look of some weird, wild mountain man who has seen too much and lived to tell the tale but he can invest early songs like Down By The River or Hurricane with as much authority and meaning as they had when he wrote them. Like a shark he continuously moves forward, believing in the maxim that for an artist to develop they must change, continuously. That’s why some bands or performers fall by the wayside. In the time they sprung to the fore they invested the world with meaning but times change and if writers don’t notice that change, or reflect it, then they fall away and become irrelevant (cf. prog rock vs punk).

The tragedy is that, in Young’s words, no modern artist stepped up to denounce Blair and Bush’s Iraq campaign, there was a lot of blogging and furrowing of brows but the voices of the musicians were silent. Modern artists seemed petrified at the idea of rocking the boat and damaging their careers; they seem ill-equipped to comment and the public appears to have little desire to hear anything outside of their comfort zone. It is as if music has ceased to be any force for change and just become the soundtrack to dinner parties and train journeys.

In the past the professional writers, like Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, have felt able to comment on the world around them. Maybe because the demand from the street was such that the creators of pop music couldn’t avoid the subject songs like Cloud 9 and Ball of Confusion came to be written. Maybe. It’s far more likely that Norman and Barrett were aware of the society they lived in, as was Berry Gordy.

Motown eventually lost the plot when Gordy moved to the West Coast, becoming home to saccharine soul.

But even as the great writers of Motown reflected on the world around them the biggest section of writers by far were asked to deliver songs that basically helped you through the day. In effect gave us aural wallpaper for the soul. Kylie singing Cathy Dennis’ Can’t Get You Out of My Head might not bring down governments but it does raise the happiness quotient around us for three minutes or so. But songs like that seldom come along; songs that determine the moment.

If you are older, like I am, often you’ll think of songs that shaped moments of your youth. For me songs like Shame Shame Shame by Shirley & Company defined a particular drink and drug fuelled rampage through strange Liverpool club culture in the 70s. A time, for me, of such unbridled fun and excess that I find it hard to understand that this song isn’t stamped on everyone’s consciousness who were late teens or early twenties in 1975. It got to number 6 and she never had another hit. That was one of mine; most of us have one.

The fact is most songs that are written for artists who can’t write their own material tends to have little value. It gets churned out, shovelled onto the field of dreams like slurry and decreases the perceived value of music. There’s so much demand for mediocre music to drive forward X Factor, major record labels and commercial radio stations that any concept of quality control has gone. Like the short, intense rush of sugary sweets or crack cocaine record label executives demand songs that flash and burn in an instant, the hook of the moment that comes and goes like a bad lover leaving nothing but regret and the slight sense of squalidness.

There are still moments of brilliance but given the quantity of material needed it should come as no surprise that so much is meaningless and only serves to denigrate music’s value.

So go out there and watch the small bands that have something to say, cheer for the singers who choose difficult material and stop rolling you eyes when some young front person steps up to the mic to announce a song about how crap society is. We need those idealists and dreamers.

Either that or hand the keys of the world to Tony Blair and Simon Cowell.

Silence is the price.

2009-07-24T14:53:00.004+01:00

The excellent CMU Daily drew my attention to a recent survey that was carried out for tech firm Telindus by Opinion Matters/Tickbox.net on the subject of online copyright. According to CMU the actual question asked of over 2,000 people was: Do you agree with this statement "I think musicians should derive royalties from their albums, singles and music videos that are downloaded online"? Turns out that 60% of the people asked don't think that musicians should get royalties, that these creative people should not earn a penny for their efforts once they appear online.

When I read this I thought "Nah" or "This can't be true, surely?"; but it is the case. That means that the majority of the corpulent, complacent, over-fed and spoilt British public think that they are perfectly entitled to gorge themselves on the creative juices of our singers, writers and players without any thought for how these said artists might survive. I can understand how people might think that the likes of Girls Aloud or JLS lead some strange Reality TV life where money isn't needed and Simon Cowell buys them everything they need but the truth is far from that.

The music is written for them by people who have, in many cases, spent years trying to get a break. Often, like footballers, their earning window is short. In most cases the majority fall by the wayside after a very short spell (I must confess an interest here!) and the one or two songs they wrote, that achieved any recognition, go on earning them a modest stipend for years. A lot of musicians just disappear leaving nothing but a ripple in the gutter where the sucker went down.

Now CMU, in their mailout, posit the thought that the fault for this may lie with the copyright organisations in that they fail to explain to the poor ignorant masses that people who make music need to eat, buy clothes and shoes and maybe have families and support them. Heaven forbid that music makers should be allowed those kind of luxuries. The Great British Public (©Daily Mail) have essentially conflated everyone else apart freom them and the bloke they drink with down the pub as lying, thieving, scrounging bastards; and we have the press to thank for that. Not the easy target blame them for everything press but the over simplifying, blinkered vision wrap it up neatly in concepts that miss the point and fail to explain difficult ideas properly press.

The way to explain the idea that musicians should earn from their work and toil would be to catch a certain number of file sharing, copyright thieving individuals and make them carry on working their jobs as usual but for nothing. No wages, no benefits, nothing; and publicise that. Then after three months they should be re-interviewed again on the concept of music makers earning nothing for their efforts and compare it to the experiences of said scrotes. So, do you still think music should be free, you twat.

The truth is if musicians can't make any kind of a living from their recorded output then there is no difference between the real creatives and your Uncle Billy who always monopolises the piano at family gatherings entertaining everyone with dreadful renditions of the worst songs from the repertoire of Celine Dion. There is no reason why they should bother recording at all, and then all that will be available for the so-called music fans would be advertising jingles and incidental music from bad American TV drama. Mind you judging from the seeming general level of intelligence of the public that wouldn't pose much of a problem.

For the rest of us music is much, much more than the background noise for a dinner party. It's the soundtrack to a summer, the trigger for memories and as important as a fistful of beer and a couple of spliffs on a great night out. It's not just the wallpaper, it's the walls and foundations. Music is as important as water, food and air and if it disappeared we'd feel it. Suddenly Mungo Jerry wouldn't soundtrack a memory of being 17 and in love on a brilliant summer's day, because, going by the ideas of the sample interviewed for the survey, it wouldn't exist. Whatever you might think of Lady Gaga this year you can bet she'll soundtrack the loss of virginity, the first time getting drunk, the first time falling in love or the first heartbreak. We can't write our own soundtracks, they just happen around us. Musicians make them and if we don't pay the piper there'll be no tune.

If you can't see the value in that then you're a person lacking in imagination and emotion and you're probably in the 60% of people in that survey; you wanker.

Check this out part 3: Apparently

2009-06-17T17:37:00.004+01:00

James at Big Dada sent over a new track by the Anti-Pop Consortium. Now being the shallow ass fool I can sometimes be I didn't check it out immediately for various reasons like:
1. I'm a shallow ass fool.
2. The name made me subliminally think of the Anti-Nowhere League - who were fucking rubbish.

So once I'd thought about it and once I realised that James, and Big Dada/Ninja Tune, would never have anything to do with music as crappy as the ANL I gave it a listen, and then another and kept on playing it. Then I went to their myspace and listened to everything they have there as well.

It was like a huge lungful of fresh air, like standing at the top of a mountain on the sunniest day of the year with a gentle breeze blowing the cleanest air into your body, like being a kid in the extra maths class when the penny finally drops on some weird theorem or such. There's a long line of consciousness, from James Baldwin through the Last Poets, to Gil Scott-Heron to Boogie Down Productions and KRS 1 into Public Enemy. If you are tired of pumped up steroid fuelled fools telling us all about their gun/car/penis/hoes/bitches* (*delete where appropriate) and for once would like to hear something that posits another route to realising potential, another way of viewing things, then check them out. Anti-Pop Consortium offer a different paradigm. You can free download here.

Apparently.

Put the needle on the record....

2009-06-16T09:30:00.005+01:00

Photo: Phil Breeden
Last Friday night I was asked to DJ at the wonderful Luminaire. Situated on London's exotic Kilburn High Road it's a small venue of great repute set amongst a sea of style and sophistication. (I'm working on the principal that most people reading this have never actually been to Kilburn!)

Anyway the occasion was the first London gig by a old band from the days of punk called Punishment of Luxury. I took some comfort in the fact that they too looked nothing like their pictures of the early days. Whereas I have avoided drawing attention to the difference between the young god-like figure I used to cut and the distinguished elder statesman of punk that I have become Punilux made, I feel, something of a faux pas in projecting their early band photos onto their backdrop as they played. This was an unfortunate then and now scenario and I think we all know that when the then was 30 years back the now does not tend to come out as well!

That said they were a wonderful bunch of guys and, musicwise, were tight, proficient and could certainly teach many bands I have seen recently a thing or two about set pacing, performance and communication. Needless to say they went down a storm with an adoring audience who were loving and warm and knew all the words. All power to them.

There was also a young Ealing band called Depot on the bill and I strongly recommend anyone to check them out. Drawing on the reggae/ska period of the late 70s, like The Members or The Ruts, they gave real pleasure. Their material was punchy and to the point and the band were tight, composed and excellent. Normally I'd pick out an individual to praise in such situations but in this case that would be unfair as every member of the four piece brought an intrinsic element to the whole. The keyboard player kicks in occasionally with a trumpet and this adds a slash of colour to the flow of their sound that is ear grabbing and immediate. I haven't enjoyed a new band as much since I heard Arctic Monkeys for the first time. Plus they'd just finished their A levels that day.

They were telling me that they had to play a second set and were worried that they didn't have enough material. Unfortunately I had to leave half way through the second set but not before I had been blown away by their dub stylings and their ability to improvise around their incredibly tight rhythm section. I hadn't seen anything like it since the last Members gig when we'd smoked enough weed to keep Kingston going for a week and stepped outta Babylon. I strongly recommend them to anyone.

As for me I was great. Playing a mainly punk/reggae set with a bit of NYC in 1980 thrown into the mix I was pleased to see how well all that stuff goes down. It still sounds fresh and vital and, to be honest, I don't think there's anything to touch a bit of roots reggae. Rockers time now!

Britain's Got No Idea of Priority

2009-06-01T14:36:00.002+01:00

So some woman who can sing a bit but isn't very attractive in the terms of TV world crashes and burns because the pressure on her was enormous, the scrutiny of the press and media centred on the premise that she was as ugly as sin but really a lovely person and how amazing is that, she'd pretty much been led to believe that she was a shoe in for the number one spot and then it all evaporated - in front of many million people. Then she had what is often called, ironically, "an episode".

OK, so she has been all over TV and such for the past few weeks as the media handlers for Britain's Got Talent got their machine into overdrive and thrust this person into our homes whether we wanted to know about their cheesy talent show or not BUT that does not mean that in the midst of a huge financial crisis, a political system in freefall and a overall sense that our political leaders really need to get a fucking grip, from both major parties, and get our financial system reformed and our political system overhauled that I want to see the Prime Minister of my country spending time commenting about a bloody television freak show and telling me he's been spending time chatting to shallow media hacks when he should be dealing with all the other rubbish going on in our lives.

My god, a plane full of our neighbours went down in the Atlantic with no survivors but the lead story is bloody Susan Boyle. Where the hell is our sense of priorities in these times? Britain's Got Talent is cheap entertainment, it's a freak show, it's bread and circuses, an excuse for ITV to make programming that involves little thought or imagination. Like I said, it's a freak show.

If you want to be a singer great, go out and fight for it, play some gigs, write some songs but don't for a minute think that the couple of appearance on a television show is going to make you successful in any meaningful way. A couple of years of cruise ship appearances or, in the best scenario, a career in musicals. It's not going to make you wealthy; if anything it's going to destroy the rest of your life. When the cameras have gone and the hacks stop doorstepping and people stop shouting at you in the street because there's a new TV non-personality being pushed the hunger doesn't go away, it grows and eats at you. You want those fleeting moments of fame back. You don't want to go back to what you were, but you don't know what else to do because everything that happened to you was controlled by other people. The songs were supplied to you, you were told where to be and when and, unlike real bands or musicians, there is no personal hinterland of support. It's bad enough being for real when the label turfs you out and doesn't return your calls but there's talent to fall back on.

Karaoke singers don't have that option.

Back from what seems like a long break.

2009-05-26T13:02:00.005+01:00

So I've not been around for a bit, thanks to a fall in my own hallway that resulted in a broken shoulder, damaged ribs and a trip to the hospital. They even had to give me morphine before they could move me, which under usual circumstances would have been great but in this instance hardly made a dent in the pain quotient. Seemed like a big waste of fine opiates if you ask me.

Anyway I didn't much feel like typing for a while, particularly as it was my right arm that was out of action and typing one handed with the left is a long and laborious process. So instead I have had a chance to catch up on some of the music that I've been sent in the meantime and one of the stand outs of this batch comes, unsuprisingly, from that finest of labels, Analog Africa.

Legends of Benin is the fifth release from this label, rapidly establishing itself as the delicatessen of dance music, and stands shoulder to shoulder with their previous releases that include the towering gem that is African Scream Contest - Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin & Togo 70s. Once again compiled by label boss Samy Ben Redjeb this labour of love in not just an exercise in finding the very finest cuts for our delectation but it's also a great example of doing the right thing. Ben Redjeb has tracked down the composers, or their families in the case of those no longer alive, to license their work directly so that any money made goes to the makers of the music.

This kind of behaviour is so very rare, unfortunately, in the consumption of music from messy markets. Even though I'm not particularly a fan of UB40 they are held in very high esteem by many Jamaican musicians because they did the same thing ewhen compiling their massive selling Labour of Love albums. It was very unusual for Jamaican writers to get paid once the song had left their heads and UB40 put a lot of money back into the hands of the creators. I would love it if Ben Redjeb is able to do the same thing as this album is one of the most satisfying and delicious collections I've heard in a long time.

The compilation focuses on four towering figures from the Benin music scene, Gnonnas Pedro et Ses Dadjes, Antoine Dougbé, El Rego et Ses Commandos and Honoré Avolonto, who recorded these tracks between 1969 and 1981. They range from the birth of Afro-Soul-Funk, in the form of Feeling You Got by El Rego, through Benin's take on Afrobeat by Honoré Avolonto that shakes to the very foundations and challenges the great Fela to a booty shaking dance off. Then you have the subtle rhythmic layers laid down by Gnonnas Pedro, that kicks the album off in a startling and original fashion. From the off your dragged into the midst of a musical spell that seems to make most of the material coming out of my radio seem redundant and vapid. Then there is the long hidden joy that is Antoine Dougbé who incorporates Vodoun rhythms into the pot along with Congolese rhumba to create a dark and snakey melange that rocks.

Now I know loads of you may be reading this and going "here we go again, some sad world music nerd claiming that everything recorded on a box in Africa is genius" but, believe me, I am not one of those. Too much music is stolen from around the world and sold back to us as works of rare suffering and beauty, and it isn't. But this is the real deal. I've played it to friends who won't watch films with subtitles for Chrissakes and they love it. Music should weave, make tapestries in the air and take you out of yourself to a place of sex and magic. It's what it's supposed to do, even folk music.

The people who made this music lived real lives, and some still do. Music shows sides of their character that doesn't find expression through being president of the Benin boxing federation or running a brothel (in the case of El Rego) or being the Devil's Prime Minister in the case of Antoine Dougbé (funny that, I thought that was Tony Blair's job!). That might seem like a lazy statement to make but when you hear this album punching out of the speakers you know that you are in the presence of masters.

We don't have many of them left these days.

Check this out: Part 2

2009-04-03T17:22:00.004+01:00

In 2007 Union Square released, The Very Best of Ethiopiques, which distilled the 23 volumes of the original series that had been released in France down to a two disc compilation. It was probably the most remarkable music released in the UK that year, without a doubt. As revelations go this one was astonishing. It catalogued music that had been made in the dying days of Haile Sellasie I and the early days of the brutally repressive military junta; once again proving that creativity often seems to flourish in the harshest of conditions.

One of the stars of this compilation was the virtuoso vibes player Mulatu Astatké.

This is a man with a broad, deep history behind him; trained in London, New York and Boston, played with Duke Ellington and the man who fused the music of Ethiopia with Western jazz without anyone noticing the join. He's also worked with the wonderful Jim Jarmusch on Broken Flowers. So we're talking urbane, cultured, witty and well fucking cool.

As a result of Karen P's Broad Casting sessions, promoted at Cargo, London, back in April 2008, Astatké hooked up with The Heliocentrics, an other-worldly group of Sun Ra type British out there musical headcases who ooze beats and snakey charm music. The two sides of the pie had only a day to rehearse after which they took to the stage and destroyed all before them Thankfully it was recorded for the Red Bull Music Academy Radio and you can still hear it here.

As both parties had enjoyed the whole thing so much they went into the studio and cut this new album, Inspiration Information (available on Strut Records), in six days. DO YOU HEAR THAT COLDPLAY AND U2, YOU SAD TALENTLESS FUCKS!! In six days. No shit.

And it's heavenly.

There really isn't any point in me giving you a track by track breakdown. That would be akin to describing a small part of a Rothko painting or a sentence of Shakespeare. It doesn't work like that. Just buy the record, put it on and bathe in the smooth flow of fine melody as it flows through your body like "good" radiation. However if you somehow feel that this all smacks of muesli fusion then you can always go back to your Lady Gaga records. If you really need a couple of tracks recommending, to check out first, then buy Dewel or Live From Tigre Lounge.

God help us.

2009-04-03T17:12:00.004+01:00

In today's CMU Daily (an excellent free mail out) I read this:

JOHNNY CASH REMIXED A new compilation of remixed Johnny Cash songs is to be released. The album, imaginatively titled 'Johnny Cash Remixed', has been co-executive produced by Snoop Dogg, Mathew Knowles and John Carter Cash. Snoop himself appears on the LP, on a version of Cash's 'I Walk The Line'.

Here's what John Carter Cash says about the project: "My father made his stead defying the expected and accepted way of things. He set the standard at the same time. He would have loved this remix record. While it stays true to the original recordings, the CD touches on undiscovered ground. My father was about staying true to tradition while creating ground breaking music".

It's enough to make you weep tears of black blood. If you need to wonder what justification I have for saying such a thing then you just don't understand the sanctity of the original. I'm sure Mr Cash would be thrilled.

It's just like the 80s only fatter and older.

2009-03-26T10:29:00.005Z

So, in the words of the Blues men, I woke up this morning and turned on the national morning news programme on the BBC to be greeted with the sight of three fat Yorkshire men sitting on the comfy sofa extolling the virtues of that 80s horror show, Spandau Ballet. These slightly over-the-hill Yorkshire boys turned out top be members of a Spands tribute band, Highly Strung. Now what was so laughable about all this was that the original band saw themselves as svelte peacocks who represented the peak of 80s desirability and here were their loyal impersonators looking like the lovers of the chip with a singular lack of style. In short a pretty fair representation of what the 80s stood for and the media world of today; and the way the band looks now.

I have to declare a prejudice here; I hated Spandau Ballet. I despised Gary Kemp's protestations of true working class credentials and his modern soul boy posings. I had nothing but disdain for their embrace of Thatcherite culture, and the singer Tony Hadley's embrace of Tory politics, and their belief that playing in a band was a "career choice" rather than a calling. Their music was the ideal soundtrack for the 80s in that it was vacuous, insipid and fussy. Tony Hadley held his microphone like some panty-waisted Holiday Inn bar entertainer who provides the backing track for fat sweaty businessmen as they pawed young women and dribbled saliva and gravy down their pampered double chins.

I'm not alone in this. Michael Hann wrote a great piece in The Guardian pretty much pointing out the same thing as I am doing; it was the comments that people made after the article that make for the best reading as nutters of various shades queue up to agree or froth at the mouth.

After the band broke up Gary Kemp achieved a degree of rehabilitation with his vocal support of the protest movement trying to organise opposition to Thatcher's divisive social strategies but it was an uphill struggle. The rot had set in and the youth had followed the lead from the likes of the Spands and Duran and eschewed political thought and embraced the vapid "cocktail culture". They took at face value the phoney sophistication and frilly shirted power dressing pushed out by this non-musical musical movement and gave us Blair, son of Thatcher. Soon we'll have Groovy Dave, son of Blair, and like John the Baptist we have Spandau Ballet reforming.

Why? I hear you ask. This is a group of people who fought a vicious and nasty case through the courts as the three dim ones from the band tried to lay claim to writing royalties they had had no hand in creating, except for having been in the same room when Gary showed them how it went. Hadley, Norman and Keeble laid claim to something, years after the event, that was never their's in the first place and like the financial culture that was spawned from the 80s they wanted something for nothing. Their case crashed and burned and in the end Gary Kemp owned their souls, or at least, in John Keeble's case, the drum kit. It is said that when the sad trio went out gigging as The Other Three from That New Romantic Band™ they were obliged to ask Gary if they could use the equipment because, as they had no money to pay his court costs, he owned it all.

Now we are expected to believe that all these differences have been buried and this cheesy band of brothers are all mates and that the music they make will be relevant and exciting. No it won't. It never was. It was never soul music, it was never vital and, most of the time, it was never of any value whatsoever. So I guess it's going to fit in perfectly with the onset of the New 80s.

Welcome to hell.

Punk rock and beer.

2009-03-19T20:55:00.004Z

Last weekend I went to see an old friend playing guitar with The Vibrators. The gig was at a small pub venue in Camden called the Fiddler's Elbow. It was one of the best nights out I've had in ages, probably since Luche Libre at least.

I'd had a call earlier in the evening from a good friend who's family were out of town for one reason or another and he wondered if I had plans. Now this person was one of that rare breed of young Americans in the late 70s who through college radio helped break punk in the States and opened a whole new generation to the fact that music could be instant and brash, and didn't have to have songs that went on endlessly. In fact it turned out that he'd been at a show my band had played in Paulo Alto and years later we met because our young kids went to the same school. Very punk.

So Cesca and I dragged him off to Camden where he had the pleasure of being weirdly hassled by a deaf guy in the bar and got quite drunk. The Vibrators were great.

Now we all know that these aren't young men we're talking about here. Like me they've been around the block several times and carry a lot more weight and grey hair than we used to, but they can still make music that fires you up, doesn't hang around being boring and as a band they can still throw shapes that put the present crop of panty waisted fringe boys to shame. In particular the Finnish bass player, Pete, throws his bass around with great beauty and fervour. It was real.

The next day my friend called me up, feeling somewhat groggy and said "that was one of the best fucking nights I've had in ages".

Age will not wither us.

The future of music: Part 2123

2009-02-17T18:12:00.003Z

Got Cable TV through from the ever wonderful Leah Stafford at Sainted PR. I wish, I thought, as I downloaded this thing I'd never heard of; like I need yet another new band yadda yadda yadda. And then.

Well I reckon it's the freshest, finest and most original thing I've heard since the last time, which was some time ago. Apparently they're signed to the Sufjan Stevens co-owned label, Asthmatic Kitty, and seem to plough a suitably "we are the new obscurists" furrow with their references to their sound being like "that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Presence album" and their About Fol Chen on MySpace being all convoluted and strange, but hey, they're young and fabulous so who gives a fuck. It's from their forthcoming, imaginatively named album Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune's Made.

Apparently they have a singer called Melissa Thorne, her voice on this lead off track is like having the most drop dead gorgeous sexual person approach you in a Las Vegas cocktail lounge after you've ordered the best Martini ever and suggesting, through droopy eyelids and bored lips, that maybe you'd like to go back to her motel and have the most dirty sex you'll ever have a chance of having; of course it never happens, but it sounds as good as that would be. With an impreceptible pinch of Janet Jackson and that deadpan drum machine that Prince invented, but used here in as classy a way. Apparently Angus Andrew from Liars is guesting on vocals as well, but I didn't notice.

I was in a Vegas cocktail lounge, finishing my drink.

Cachaito, he's gone. And Lux has gone with him.

2009-02-13T13:02:00.008Z

On July 26th 2001, I went to a see cachaito play at Ocean in Hackney. Ocean was a great venue, but unfortunately it was right in the middle of Hackney so getting there, parking or hanging out often posed a problem. I took an old mate of mine who hadn't heard of the legendary Buena Vista bass player, let alone heard his recently released solo album. As it turned out it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to (another being Steppenwolf in 72, I know, I know but you had to have been there); the band were wondrous, apart from the cool-as-fuck presence of the man himself, I mean look at the picture above, there was this fantastic flute player, a tall, gangly Algerian guy who threw these lithe and deadly cool moves and a couple of percussion players who weren't the usual look-at-me -I'm-the-crazy-drummer.

The crowd was a ripe cross section of East London. There were the usual knitted muesli brigade and there were local bloods in big hats as well as old punks and dreads. To a man and woman we were all blown away and won over. There were raised eyebrows from the jazzier purists when Cachaito threw some decks action into the mix but to the rest of the audience this was like lighting the blue touchpaper. The place went up.

The album that the majority of the set came from was one of the most original and refreshing albums released that year, his eponymously named album still sells and I recommend you all rush out and buy it.

Anyway, he's upped and died and the world is once again short of one of the best. It's amazing isn't it, Cliff and Dubya are still walking the planet, Dick Cheney draws breath and Cachaito and Lux Interior have left the room.

There's very little I can say that would paint a real picture of the unique Lux Interior from The Cramps. They ploughed a pretty straight furrow but their furrow was a thing of rare and sibilant beauty. To see the man in full flow, pants down and microphone stuffed into his mouth while the lovely Mrs Interior, Poison Ivy, ground out the crunchy riffs was really a thing of rare beauty. Here they are in the delicate Bikini Girls With Machine Guns, which I have in shaped vinyl. (Sorry about the ads on the clip but it was the best quality I could fine.)

New stuff, old stuff?

2009-02-13T12:41:00.005Z

So the wonderful Natasha at Toast sends me news of KIG's new release Head, Shoulders, Knees n' Toes. Soon to be gracing the charts via a release on AATW. Now y'know this will do the business, releases on AATW usually do. I'd never heard of the band but Funky House as a genre has been on the radar for a while. In fact ever since my friend, and relation, Fab Four Freddie C told me that he'd tired of his burgeoning grime career due to the number of dim young men carrying guns and that Funky House was the future. I nodded sagely and pulled my woolly cardigan closer.

On the strength of this track I reckon he may be right. You see, when someone says "House" I imagine the loping deep bass of Chicago and Detroit with a smattering of Italo-house piano stabs but KIG has Britain through it like a stick of rock. With an edge of soca beats and a touch of dancehall this couldn't have been made anywhere else but London. That said I went and checked out the original version of this track, the track and video had been put together by the band themselves and once a head of steam builds up an outfit like AATW/Island step in, remix and re-release. Now that is all well and good but often some elusive edge of greatness gets lost in the corporate mix. Here's the original.

Now here's a link to the new version - click here - it might just be me but I reckon the original wins by a nose. What do you reckon? In the overall scheme of things it doesn't really matter, I know, and I hope KIG go on to do all the things they deserve to do. This track is cracking and as a genre this music is urban UK, well urban London at least; and let's be honest shall we, outside of London doesn't really matter.

Ron Asheton: RIP

2009-01-06T15:49:00.004Z

Rolling Stone has carried the story that one of the world's most original guitarists has died. Ron Asheton was the man who made The Stooges sound so good. From his gonzoid guitar came the throttled filthy sound that defined Detroit and drove the punk movement of a decade later. If you don't have any Stooges albums in your record collection then you are very, very stupid.

I saw him at a Meltdown a while back and he stood there, dressed in the uniform of some straight American tourist and pulled out of his guitar the most incredibly distorted thrash that I have ever had the great pleasure to witness. No other guitar player ever came close to his sound though they all lived in hope that they might one day achieve such wonder.

Without Ron there would have been no Iggy. Ron, you were the daddy of them all. Bless you.

Shooting yourself in the foot: Part 1

2009-01-06T11:49:00.003Z

Those poor people who work for Zavvi received their Christmas present from “The Man” with a grim sense of stoicism. As soon as the weird shop chain that no-one ever admitted shopping in went to the wall (Woolworths), taking with it the distribution arm of eUK, the writing was on the wall for Tricky Dicky Branson’s offloaded albatross. With the demise of eUK Zavvi had nobody running their websites, handling fulfilment and sales; an absolute fatal blow in the new world of online sales. We’re not talking about digital sales here either, this is people wanting physical product.

With outfits like Play.com and Amazon powering ahead with the online sales, both download and physical, the high street chains need every weapon in their arsenal to keep ahead of the game. Zavvi lost the plot somehow and have paid the price. The saddest thing about this is that there are now several hundred people who know and love music out on their ear with no prospect of ever finding a job in the industry again.

Real record shops, like Rough Trade, continue to thrive. In fact Rough Trade posted sales gains for the year way above the industry norm and against the run of the market. Why? I hear you ask. Well….they are a proper record shop. People like going into these places and browsing, actually touching the product and marvelling at the walls plastered in posters both new and historical. They like standing around talking all nerdy about music, while listening to whatever it is that the wonderfully fine people who work there play all day long.

In my local Rough Trade, Talbot Road off Portobello, you often see generations of the same family buying music. This is no exaggeration. Not only is the love of music palpable in the atmosphere but there are sales people who can advise and direct you; they breathe music, they are often in bands or they DJ. It might all be a bit Hi-Fidelity but, y’know, I liked the Jack Black character in that film. I’ve seen people in that shop walk out smiling after buying 250 quids worth of music, knowing that ever album they have bought is a doozie. Solid gold easy action. You are not going to get that kind of bliss hanging around a fucking laptop looking at the iTunes store or hoping to find someone in Tescoburys who may have half an idea if the new Killers album is as good as Hot Fuss or even Sam’s Town.

Which brings me to the point of my ramblings; who is to blame for the state we’re in? Well who do you think?

Yep. Our old friends the major record labels.

As the boy band girl band explosion of pop started to generate the last drops of money to be drained from the pockets of the pop hungry masses the labels looked for outlets that guaranteed big units. At the same time the major supermarket chains were looking for new loss leaders that would be one more reason for the consumers to come through their doors; a little Northern Line with you pot noodle? Initially the labels were printing money. The grocers took delivery of the product at the required price, at first. As they proceeded to mop up the life blood for the small independent record stores, that is the sale of chart albums and pop frippery, the number of outlets for new music or off the radar material dried up as the indies lost business and started closing down.

There were a lot of shouted warnings from the likes of ERA, the retailers’ body. The majors didn’t care, they were coining it in. As usual the men (they are always men) in suits (they are always in suits) could not hear the calls, the warnings, the sound of the future drying up. Just like they never understood what was coming down the digital road at them. The people who run the music industry are, by and large, ignorant, stupid and greedy people. They have as much empathy with the makers of music as the Lord of the Manor does with the peasants tilling his fields.

Blinded to the realities of fashion and the market these ugly men got so involved with the grocers that they became no more to the grocers than another hill farmer. That is someone to be exploited, ripped off and abused. So there was no surprise then when the grocers turned around and said “we don’t want to pay these prices anymore”. The ugly men were surprised, but then they are ignorant bastards and never read the papers. They didn’t realise that this is what our rapacious grocers to – to everyone.

Meanwhile the independent shops, the brave purveyors of love for music, the frontline in musical movements, the spreaders of the word and the builders of careers, well they had all gone to the wall. On top of that the shifting flimsy market for pop had discovered that they could download it for free from The Internet or somefink. The major labels put no value on music, they saw it as just another commodity in the slash and burn days of the Noughties. So why should the public think any different.

Hell, they’ve seen it on telly. All these popstars are millionaires; they win X factor Celebrity On Ice and then that lovely Mr Cowell makes them really rich and their life is wonderful. Isn’t that right Gareth?

Now the majors want to get it all back. Though too many stable doors have come off their hinges and they have no real idea what to do, they want it back. But there aren’t any small shops left and now we’re losing the chains. Even the people in the chains were lovers of the art, they could tell you the difference between Bon Iver and Bon Scott, point you towards new good stuff and generally tolerate spotty teenage boys, and sometimes girls, hanging around the shop looking for inspiration.

That is what drove us forward. That is what made the music sing. That is what it was all about. And the people who should have known this? Well they are still being paid stupid money, they are still whining that it’s not their fault and they still don’t understand.

Musicians need to be paid to make music. If they are smart enough to make their own records and you like them then go and buy their music. Go and buy it from a shop like Rough Trade, or Rounder Records, or Ray’s Jazz at Foyles; buy it from someone who might sneer at your choice and suggest that you “check this out”. Buy it from the beating heart of the music industry, and, if possible, buy it on an independent label. Or it will all disappear.

It’s a love thing.

Rudos Boys rule!

2008-12-07T18:49:00.008Z

Last night was quite possibly one of the most brilliant nights out I've had in London. It's the run up to Christmas and what better way of spending it than to kick back with a greasy taco and a frozen margarita, with your squeeze sat next to you in the front row of a Mexican wrestling night at the Roundhouse. Life really doesn't get much better than this.

From the moment the evening starts you know this is not an event for the PC-bound or faint of heart. I mean they actually refer to the mini wrestlers as dwarfs, and that spells Christmas. The closest you get to Snow White, apart from in the toilets, are the fabulously foxy juanitas marching around the ring holding up the signs indicating what round it was - like we gave a fuck!

This has a part for everyone. There's pantomime, there's cartoon world, there's drama and there is endless supply of frozen margaritas. Oh yeah, heaven. So the night kicks off with what I guess you'd call the clown element, like a circus. Only these aren't clowns. These are mini dudes who have muscles where most of us have fat. They spin, they throw themselves through ropes, over each other; they rock. I have heard that they tend to score very high on the pussy card as well. Featuring stars from Mexico like Octagoncito and Pequeño Pierrot this four way tag event sets the tone of the evening. Fabulously clad and honed to perfection my only thought was one of them looked like just a small bloke, not a dwarf (as they were announced). Mind you the wonderful MC, Gregorio ‘El Caballero Ingles', voiced similar thoughts.

You then have various bouts featuring the glorious Exoticos, Cassandro and Ruby Gardenia. Two cross dressing lovelies who most assuredly would not be hassled by queer bashers on Clapham Common as they would be perfectly capable of ripping off the arms of said scum and beating them to death with the soggy end. They were marvellous. In fact the main bout would have been something of an anticlimax had it not been for the appearance of El Hijo del Santo.

El Hijo is a superstar in Mexico, a god. Even we Londoners, starved of sun and magical realism, have heard of him. He comes on for a three-way tag event. Now I am ringside for all this, surrounded by ankle-biters all screaming and shouting and calling out for the good guys. The technicos are the good guys and the rudos are the bad guys. It's all pretty straight forward and traditional. It's Christmas, it's pantomime and, fuck me, Mystyco de Juarez has just landed in mine and my partner's lap. We spill our margaritas and we scream with laughter. Who cares? I have shaken hands with Hator, the heavy metal wrestler. A rudo. My hero.

Next time these guys are in London you have to go. If you don't then you will never know just how much fun can be had watching big blokes in masks throw each other around. It is raw.

On top of that the music is incredible with down and dirty mixes of all kinds of Latin American funky stuff, from grooves you know to new sounds all spun in with excellence by DJ Toy Selectah of the Mexican super group Control Machete.

If you don't get there next time then you have no taste.

Check This Out: Part 1

2008-10-31T15:40:00.003Z

Just been sent some news on Mike Bones by the wonderful Nita Goldstar. I'd never heard of this guy before but he's so new York I fell in love with the sound of his lead of release immediately. The track, What I Have Left, makes me want to get on a plane and get back to NYC circa 1981. His label, The Social Registry, is funky.

This is brought to you by the Musicgoulash Good Shit Alert.

Death Disco Libre!

2008-10-31T15:20:00.003Z

Now some may say that Alan McGee can be a bit of a knob sometimes but there's no denying that he keeps the flame burning for music that isn't licking corporate arse. That is a good, good thing. Now an even better thing. His regular Death Disco night at the always fabulous Notting Hill Arts Club will be free entry from January 1st 2009. This is a fine offer for two reasons: one, it's on Friday nights so there's lie in time on Saturday; two, there's no better place to go.

So forget the rubbishy bubble and squeak music beloved of ShoHo's geek-pie sporting fraterinty and Go West young folk.

Amadou and Mariam: Welcome to Mali.

2008-10-20T18:01:00.006+01:00

Prior to the release of the genre defining Dimanche à Bamako the wonderful people at Because Music took me over to Paris to see Amadou & Mariam debut the album with a concert at La Cigale. Appearing with them that night was the album’s producer, Manu Chao.

What struck me, and my brother-in-law who is a Parisian music journalist, was that the audience was comprised mainly of extremely hip young things. Quite possibly this was because Manu’s appearance had been flagged up in the media prior to the gig and this scion of French music is the biggest draw there is, but the fact remained that the audience loved and understood the whole thrust of the music; and what wasn’t there to love?

Amadou plays guitar like a cross between Carlos Santana and John Lee Hooker. His sense of dynamics is in a field of its own. Add to this the vocal inflections of his wife, Mariam, with a tonal quality that seems to move from Arabic scale to Western scale with ease, depending on what she feels would best suit that part of the song, and you have a recipe for a music that defies pigeonholing.

Now when Manu Chao came to produce this album he didn’t approach it as a Westerner with an almost reverential, but patronising, view to African music; he approached it as a musician, as someone who makes genre defying music himself. He rolled in several of the techniques he uses on his own albums and in doing so he created the most successful album ever by an African artist. Some mariachi horns here, some spun in samples there, it didn’t matter as long as the overall effect was enhanced and expectations surpassed.

Now many “World Music” purists were unsure of all this. I remember one major figure in the UK world music scene telling me that he wasn’t that sure of the album that somehow it didn’t ring true; it was too produced. I argued why shouldn’t it be? What stops African musicians from being allowed to embrace the same techniques and technologies as any other musician in the world? It seems to me to be some weird kind of reverse prejudice.

As a body of work Dimanche à Bamako was easily the best album released in 2005 and Amadou and Mariam went on to achieve sales and exposure comparable with a successful Western act, as well as winning several prestigious awards. Now they have a new album coming out, Welcome to Mali, and I bet you can hear a big “BUT” coming down the road.

The album kicks off with the Damon Albarn produced Sabali. My initial thought, and I do mean initial – like the first 40 seconds or so – was, hey this is happening, this is good. But then it goes all Phil Oakey, all Never Ending Story; in fact it doesn’t really go anywhere. It seems as if Albarn had a spare fifteen minutes and a backing track left over from some other side project and decided to bestow his munificence upon them.

Now this is really disappointing for two reasons: one, Damon Albarn is one of the most consistently creative forces working in music today and he should have done better, as evidenced by the second track Ce N’est Pas Bon, that was recorded merely with his participation; and two, Amadou and Mariam deserve better.

I say that not from the position that most of the journalists who write about them seem to always take, namely that they are both blind and oh isn’t it amazing how the dear things have achieved so much; that information is of public record, it seems to have been the only topic pursued by lazy writers since they broke through in 2005. Let’s move on shall we? These two musicians have done far more in their lives than merely been blind, they have achieved more than the majority of musicians who try to make a living in the music industry regardless of race, continent or disability.

Amadou and Mariam deserve better because they are a huge talent. They are the money!

So onto the rest of the album. Magosa, Djama and Djuru are solidly in their magic territory. The rhythms and melodies intertwine, organ lines bubble up and disappear showing Amadou’s love of 60s r ’n b and its textures. The chops are loose and liquid, they move you viscerally as if your kidneys, liver and spleen feel the need to acknowledge the groove. Then we start the various “guest” appearances. A couple of them work because the guest doesn’t really get in the way, like Juan Rozoff and ~M~. A couple of producers and dance artists who add a little club magic to the mix but not in a way that has a cluttering effect.

Then we have K’naan and Keziah Jones. Frankly these are embarrassing. K’naan showed loads of promise early in his career but his ineffective copying of an out dated US rap vocabulary on Africa makes his contribution clumsy and sad. Keziah Jones brings little to the party. If that all sounds a little harsh then so be it. But wait until I get on to I Follow You.

Now if I decided to make an album of German tunes I’m sure I would sound ridiculous. The language doesn’t come easily to me and anyway I don’t need to prove anything. The same goes for Amadou singing in English. Here’s a guy who can probably speak several more languages than I will ever get round to learning but, given his French accent, singing in English was not a smart move. I mean we laughed at Maurice Chevalier and Johnny Hallyday for christsakes! Also the lyrics aren’t any good, they don’t really say anything and the result is a track that leaves a genius open to derision from morons in the Anglo music industry who will point to this and claim that is the reason why they can’t promote “foreign” artists, when said artists have sold far more than the shitty little indie band from Camden they have just signed for an inflated advance will ever, ever do.

Once that is out of the way it’s back to business and the last four tracks, including the so called hidden track Boula, will just blow you away. Sebeke and Batoma are possibly the most exciting and vibrant pieces of music I have heard for a year. The guitar lines, the breaks, Mariam’s voice, the majestic sweep of the music enthral, exhilarate and transport you to the finest dance bar in the world where the beer is always cold and the music is always hot. God these are great tracks.

So that’s about it really. Except to say that what is missing here is that little bit of extraordinary production that Manu Chao brought to the party. Not that I want all of life and music to remain in a state of stasis but there are producers out there who have similar outlooks, people who could bring an extra side to what is already wonderful music. They add an extra element that defines the album as something that transcends the pigeonhole so many writers and critics want to place music into; coming from Africa is hard enough without having your music explained away as somehow a marginal activity when compared to such towering no talents as Coldplay and Razorlight.

I reckon next time they should work with Thom Yorke.

Epilogue:

Last week I went to the Barbican to see Amadou and Mariam as part of the Africa Now series. The night before they had made the Africa Express night at Koko's their own. I couldn't make it to Koko, maily because the gig is the most disabled unfriendly gig in London, but apparently it was a madhouse of magic. At the Barbican, given the nature of the event, they came on to perform three songs. Obviously exhausted from the night before they performed Sabali, Ce n'est pas bon and Dimanche à Bamako. Damon Albarn came onstage for Sabali and the song made a whole load more sense when it was just Mariam, Damon and his melodica. After seeing the performance I couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't recorded the track like that instead of ladeling on the extraneous keyboard stuff.

The night was a bit of a curate's egg to be honest. The idea was to emulate elements of the East-West collaborations of Africa Express but only with African artists. Like I said, on the whole it was great. maybe a little exessive on the Toumani Diabate front but in all honesty I had gone for Amadou and Mariam and the legendary Rachid Taha.

Unfortunately Rachid didn't get onstage until gone 10.30 pm. Whether this was down to his enjoyment of backstage facilities or because of politics a lot of people had already left by the time he came on to play a short set. I noticed that when all the sub-Sahara acts had been playing there was a lot of interspersing of musicians, a general good vibe jam session quality to the event but when Rachid came on there was a marked absence of guests appearing with him. I have no idea why but I hope there wasn't any weird reason for it. Also who ever Rachid has playing guitar for him at the moment is a complete knob, more suited to some covers band from Colorado Springs than the true heir to The Clash.

Next time Rachid is in town you really need to go and see him. There are no British or American bands that come close to his elemental power, the only artists in the same league at present are Tom Waits and Nick Cave.

Anyway rock on Amadou and Mariam

Journey Into The Past

2008-10-14T16:42:00.006+01:00

So there I was sitting enjoying a beer or two with a mate on Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining and the yummy mummies were on their seventh bottle of vin gris and the conversation came round to the fact that the whole capitalist system was imploding and disappearing up its own arsehole. My friend mused on this and we both wondered whether or not the impending social fall-out would give rise to some good music.

A lot of people confuse the chronology of punk. It's quite common. There's the idea that punk happened during the winter of discontent and that it was the restless, revolutionary youth who helped bring down the corrupt and hidebound Labour administration and then took on the Tory fascists waving the flag throughout the years of mass unemployment. On paper that looks pretty good; but it's not true.

The purists argue that Punk was all over by mid-77. Others claim that it staggered on for a couple more years. Others say "who gives a fuck!". When The Specials released the epochal Ghost Town in 1981 unemployment hadn't even reached its peak. A year later it hit three million. There were no jobs and Tory politicians continued to demand greater and greater repression of the unemployed; demanding they find non-existent jobs in a moribund economy.

Well here we are again. There's a looming crisis, only this time the unions are emasculated and the cause of it lays at the feet of bankers who owe more to Rumplestiltskin than Keynes or Friedman for their economic philosophy. That said, if we are to compare the times then punk will have passed by now and we are in some grim industrial post-punk world peopled with bands like Prag Vec.

There are projections of six million unemployed in the UK by the end of the year, which is absolute bollocks; but a recession is upon us and can we all hope for some fantastic surge in music to complement these new old hard times. Well let's look and see what the soundtrack was for the last one....

Hmmmm.

Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Kajagoogoo, Phil Collins. It was a world of Anthony Price suits with the sleeves rolled up, of young bepermed men sitting on yachts and that great left wing thinker, Paul Weller, forming a band called The Style Council. In a word the last recession gave us some of the most insipid, spineless music that our music industry has ever come up with. Limp pop stars conspired with the most repressive government we had ever had (until Blair came along) to sell us an idea that somehow we could all live the dream merely by wearing nice suits.

They sold us out then and they will sell us out again. Anyone who dreams of some pop singer to deliver a coherent critique of the current political malaise is deluding themselves. If Das Kapital can be compressed into three verses and a snappy middle eight then we might get somewhere. There have been moments when bands have articulated the intense feelings of the age and the moment, but these are happy coincidences. Those bands who have ploughed that furrow have only been recognised as visionary many, many years later.

The reality of the moment is dictated by the charts and these were the charts in the dark days of 1983. Makes you feel proud doesn't it?

You can tuna fish.....

2008-10-08T14:15:00.004+01:00

So I've had a strange musical juxtaposition this week; from bang up to now, right this minute kind of thing and then back into time like some episode of Star Trek where the writers obviously wrote the whole thing on drugs.

First off the new opus from Mr Scruff, Ninja Tuna, available on the ever wonderful Ninja Tune label. A label so irredeemably lovely that they would have to release racist skinhead bands for me to go off them, or Clive Dunne's back catalogue. Whether or not the album is named in tribute to the label I dunno, but hey; who cares?

One of the things I like most about Mr Scruff isn't the music but the cartoons. Cartoons are great and the world needs more of them. That said the new album is as esoteric a mash up as you could imagine, veering between the almost soul-jazz of Music Takes Me Up (I know, I know - soul jazz *shiver*) and the hip hop shapes of the opener, Test The Sound, that should have stuck around for longer in my opinion. The Roots Manuva featured track, Nice Up The Function, is another treat but large parts of the record seem to drift off into wibbly wobbly shapes that might sound lovely in the background of a wine bar or something.......that said this track is scrumptious.

The other album that's been playing wildly in Suburban Mansions was last heard in 1951. Unfortunately I was only sent the available-only-in-Walmart shorter edition of the 3 CD box set of Hank Williams - The Unreleased Recordings. This is a fucking goldmine. The tracks were all recorded for an old radio show that was sponsored by a flour company for a radio station in mid-Tennessee; it's a snapshot in time and believe me, you don't have to be a god botherer to hear the absolute joy in tracks like Dust On The Bible. This particular track is a blue grass traditional that Hank makes his own but weirdly the lyric could have been written today with it's references to books and magazines and such. There's a lot of similarities between this breed of country and present day RnB with the constant referencing to god and the battle in the personality between doing the right thing and wanting the wrong thing (see Jerry Lee Lewis); but Hank was the daddy of them all.

There are tracks here that have never been available before, like Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain and Cherokee Boogie, that make you wonder what the guy could have achieved if he'd lived longer than 29 years. Songs like The Prodigal Son and the lachrymous Searching For A Soldier's Grave might not be everyone's idea of cutting edge but you just have to hear the yearning in the strained voice, the bruises and callouses in every note and you start to realise why he died so young. Nobody can carry that much pain and emotion and be untouched. Hank Williams was the yardstick by which every modern country artist should be measured, and from where I stand most of them don't even figure.

In my humble opinion everyone who claims to love music should have at least on Hank Williams album in their collection. If you like RnB, if you like reggae, even if you like big rock then you will relate to Hank.

Hank is cool. Hats off to Hank. Watch this clip - it's awesome.

Psapp my bitch up!

2008-09-25T17:10:00.004+01:00

Most people probably haven't heard of Psapp. They'll know the music of course; every time they watch Gray's Anatomy and go "oh I like this theme tune" they are psapping, to use the proper verb. That said any American fan of the band would have been sorely tried by the band's refusal to play said song on their last tour of the States; something that may well have undermined their push for the peak of Commercial Mountain.

That said this band is wonderful. Like a cuddly puppy that bites, or your favourite woolen pullover that always smells of home and baked bread and cigarettes. Their first outing, Tiger My Friend, was a lo-fi delight that heavily featured squeaky toys and off kilter melodies. It owed more to the worldview of songwriter Galia Durrant, a poet and beauty of some renown, who's illustrations have adorned all the sleeves for their albums. Their first album for Domino seemed to be a more desperate affair, as if they were trying just that bit too hard to be grown up. Who the hell wants to grow up?

Unfortunately for Psapp they had to go out and tour that album because that's what groups have to do when they get proper record deals, and believe me it's tedious to the max. Everyday you climb onstage and replicate the same set you played the night before to a different group of people. Afterwards there's always another party with a bunch of people who think they know you becasue they've read an interview and heard your singles. For artists who have a little more to say than the usual "we fuck girls we do" kind of rock or rap music it can be debilitating. There are moments onstage when a vocalist can find themselves thinking of doing the laundry rather than performing because the whole event has become just like any other job; one to be handled on auto-pilot rather than something that is an artistic statement. This is what happened to Psapp.

Galia came back to London completely disenchanted with music, and the business of music. Unfortunately for her she had believed that making music was an artform, which it should be, but in taking it out onto a gruelling set of tour dates her delicate, thoughtful, transcendent music became the soundtrack to people drinking, talking and requesting the TV theme. Those of us who know and love her wondered if she'd ever make music again. And she has, and it's great.

The Camel's Back is a better album than both previous outings. Carim Clasmann, producer and co-writer, has crafted a soundscape as beguiling as Tiger but with greater muscle; it puts flesh to the saying "the things that do not destroy me make me stronger". It's as if Psapp have rested, taken note of where it all went wobbly and thrown away any doubts or prevarication. This has original written through it like a stick of seaside rock.

From the life affirming I Want That, kicking of the proceedings, the album draws you in like a strip club barker. Songs like The Camel's Back, Screws and Homicide demand respect. This is an album of rare quality that deserves adulation and garlands. It probably won't get the attention it should because some dreadful fucking covers artist who has dribbled out of the X Factory will release their latest karaoke effort in the same week and Sony Warners EMI will put their millions behind safe pop. This, on the other hand, is real pop. Buy this, don't buy that. In fact buy it here at Domino. Belive me you'll love me for it.

Now all Galia and Carim have to do is turn down the demands to tour. What's the point? Play a few boutique shows and meet some beautiful people, go on telly or do interesting stuff; but don't go "on the road". You're not a rock band and you really don't need the hassle and the expense.

Forever soul.

2008-09-18T16:28:00.005+01:00

Probably the most influential song-writer and record producer of the modern era has died. Along with Barrett Strong he penned the genre defining hits for Motown that included Papa Was A Rolling Stone, Grapevine and Cloud Nine. On Rolling Stone he was the first to tape loop a bass line in order to create the hypnotic effect that underpins that whole song; in effect introducing the concept of sequencing many years ahead of its time.

Before he turned Motown around he'd been a pool hustler. How cool is that? Without Norman there would be no modern urban sound, things would sound different in this world of ours.

His production techniques gave rise to the whole area of psychedelic soul that laid the foundations for Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Stevie Wonder's immense trilogy, Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He broke down boundaries between musical styles and along with Sly Stone opened the ears of the world to the wonders of the fuzz guitar.

The first time I heard the full length version of Rolling Stone by The Temptations I wept. It was the majestic sweep and the sheer beauty of the music, the cascading strings and the sublime vocal arrangements that tore a hole in my heart and opened my mind to music far beyond the confines of my teenage years. Though I already knew Motown's catalogue of glorious singles it had never occurred to me that these acts were "album" artists. I still have my original vinyl version of All Directions, and I still play it to this day.

And to think some penny pinching no mark treasury scum were pursuing him to the ends of his days.

Have a drink to him. Here's why he was the Mozart of Soul.

Kano! Back To The Future.

2008-09-17T18:05:00.004+01:00

So a big envelope from the wonderful Toast PR falls onto my doormat. Ooooo, I think, this looks fat (or should I say phatt); I wonder if it's a wad of notes or a big bag of payola. But no! It's even better than that. It's a cassette. A fucking cassette. At first I thought I'd disappeared up a wormhole and come out into a parallel universe where the Walkman is still king. Until I checked it. Kano, 140 Grime Street. Thank you very many you lovely Toasties.

Now for too many of us middle class liberally types who are OK with US rap, because it's over there, but draw the line at grime, because it's over here and our tabloids say it's all about the crime, miss out on what is the definitive sound of the UK urban scene. It's not just black kids either. There is a whole scene of young folk looking for a definitive way to express whatever frustrations and anger they have with the way their world, both immediate and wider, is being run for them. For me it was punk, for my nephew it's grime. At the top of this scene, musical movement, whatever you want to call it is Kano, Wiley and Dizzee.

Now the UK music industry is notoriously racist, almost institutionally so. I'm sure that some over-fed label MD will splutter their disagreement, pointing out that Leona Lewis and Lemarr are both black. Yeah, they are; but their careers are controlled by stupid white men who's only connection to the street is through the rubber of the tyres of their BMWs. The music they make says nothing to me about our world or the times in which we live. They sound and act like the stage school stooges they are, and like Gareth Gates before them, they will be used up, wrung out and flushed away once the public moves on. Kano, Wiley and Dizzee will still be here.

Why?

Because they live in the moment, they control their destinies, they write music that says something to all of us, particularly to the unemployed, angry and exploited youth, the ranks of which will soon be expanding as once again the politicians let the moneymen fuck up our society without ever holding them to account. Now back to Kano's new tape.

Now I'm sure this will be coming out in CD form but whoever thought of sending it out as a mixtape should get a medal. Talk about old skool.

Kicking off with the title track you're straight into the first single, Hustler. Here's the excellent video.

I'm not sure whether the topless girls will be too much for the morality brigade but the point of the song is that music represents an outlet for people deprived of most standard forms of employment and enrichment, aside of drugs and prostitution. Following on from Hustler there's a roll call of blinding tunes - Hunting We Will Go, These MCs and Gangsta - the flow keeps going. Kano lays himself out there and the results are stunning.

Considering that his last album, London Town, was a genre defining moment it is both surprising and invigorating that he tops that with 140 Grime Street. It's time that the majority of our music journalists stopped referring to the US and their assorted X factorappers as somehow the start and end of urban music. Finally the UK can point to our home-grown talent as being far more relevant to our experience and society. On top of that Kano is releasing his new album through his own label, BPM Recordings, a move that should be applauded as so much of the UK music industry has no idea how to market a music that is recognised around the world as being a vibrant expression of the UK in 2008. If you want to know what's happening up East don't ask a major label exec based in London, ask a kid living in Buenos Aires or Toronto.

Now go out and buy the record.

Cokeholes

2008-09-09T12:10:00.005+01:00

Just got sent a link for this from the wunnerfull people at Outpost media. Death of the Neighbourhood have big pop brains behind them, in the shape of Stephen Jones. No, not the Stephen Jones who's the Harry Potter fan but Stephen Jones who was Babybird back in the mists of time. I haven't heard anything he's been up to for long time, I guess he'd tell me that he's been nuts deep in several "projects" but I like to think he has been spending all the cush he'd made selling two million albums.

Anyway this track is excellent. Hopefully Radio One DJs will play it to death with a knowing wink, with memories of their behaviour the previous night, as the lyric lays bare all the gnarly blaggy world of the professional party coke whore gimme a line please type person. The video isn't up to much but the song is ace.

Finally after all this time.

2008-09-02T16:00:00.004+01:00

Summer, it has to be said, was a bitch. This observation is made not as a statement about the weather, though that has added to the eternal sense of gloom and subdued emotions, but as a reflection on the intense emotional roller coaster it became. My wife's dad died and, as is always the case in moments like this, whole new elements of past turmoil were thrown to the surface as she and her brothers wrestled with conflicted feelings. That said he was a good man, though not in the classical sense of that phrase, but he sure as hell left a big mess behind to tidy up.

Music played as big a part as you could hope for, given the, what seemed like, endless drives up and down France with the ipod blaring reminding me of all the good stuff I'd forgotten about and all the new stuff I hadn't written about. As well as hearing old stuff again I got to know such great new stuff (well new to me anyway) like Sir Victor Uwaifo's Guitar-Boy Superstar 1970-76.

Now given the modest nature of the title I didn't know what to expect but if you're going to buy one record, or CD this week make it this one. Admittedly people may get a little tired after track 14 or so, but hey, don't turn your nose up at great value. However this music glides, swoops and lifts the spirits so it was ideal for me. Having been around the Island offices back in the day, when they were releasing King Sunny Ade and hanging out with Jumbo from Mango I can't understand how I never came across Sir Victor before. In the early 80s I co-hosted a club where we featured African acts, like Prince Nico Mbarga, who were passing through London. On top of the live bands we were the first to heavily feature all this brilliant music on the decks, and I still hadn't heard from Vic.

There are plenty of other writers out there who could give you chapter and verse on Victor's astonishing life, the fine essence of his music and what corner of the field his roots came from but as far as I'm concerned that just obscures the wonder that runs through this album like the word FUCKING AMAZING through a stick of rock. Tracks like Kirikisi, and Obodo Eyo with it's honey sax, Idogo or Iye Iye, on and on and on. The locked rhythm section, the sway and swoon of the music, the exquisite guitar work and all this was in the early seventies. Come on.

Hats off then to this Living Legend and Music Superstar, this Sportsman and Philosopher, this Sculptor and Inventor (as he points out on his website). I get so much mocking from friends for championing music from other languages, or other continents; for so many there's some kind of mental block when it comes to lyrics being sung in a foreign language, much the same kind of fear folk have of watching films with subtitles! Heaven forbid! Try to remember what was the last, well made British film and then look across the channel to France, Spain or Germany and marvel at the myriad examples of excellence. Well, y'know, music is the same (not France though.....) so rush out and buy Sir Victor and open up a whole new dimension in your life.

And finally.....

Hurrah Dawn Landes has released her version of Young Folks. Run as fast as you can to your compooooters and download it and make her a big big popstar. Here she is, she is beautiful and wonderful:

We Smoke Fags

2008-07-16T17:26:00.006+01:00

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh! new favourite band for this week at least. This band are wonderful; stroppy, sneery, loud and thumping. On their MySpace they reference The Slits and Public Image amongst others but there's so much more at work here. Their sound is solid, guitars and driving synths badda badda badda like a big throbbing love thing on the dancefloor. if I was a fifteen year old boy, or girl, instead of a fifty year old man, I would have this lot on repeat all the time. They would be the soundtrack of my life. Look.

The video was shot in Paris, according to Promonews, and that must have been a blast. Somewhere between Vince Clarke's angry grandson and These New Puritans (a past favourite band of the week) they deserve to have their picture up on millions of bedroom walls. I notice that Joey, Mr Main WSM obv, plans on producing the first album himself. Fucking brilliant.

So many fat-sounding bands end up getting pushed into the studio with some engineer-producer who has absolutely no idea of the power and thrill of live music, being on stage, shagging groupies and being generally totally misappropriate in their youth. As a result they worry if the hi-hat is loud enough, does the bass sound as good as the last Coldplay album and talk reverentially about the guitar sound on the Duffy album. Fuck 'em. Bands should produce themselves and be really careful who they give their stuff too to mix. So We Smoke Fags why don't you get Vince to do a remix for you, anyone who can make Happy Mondays sound good has to be an expert.

These guys can do a 38 date tour, according to Rough Trade's review, without even releasing a record.

The Joy Formidable's Austere

2008-07-07T16:34:00.005+01:00

Just played Austere, by The Joy Formidable (do you think this may be the French pronunciation?) and lo it was great. It kicks in a bit so so ish but just the warm, fat analogue sound of it all had this reviewer wanting to check out more. It's on the rather wonderful Another Music=Another Kitchen - home of the 80stastic Galvatrons - released on 18th August and I reckon everyone needs to check this band out. For a three piece they record a big noise, so rush wildly down to Powers in Kilburn that is opposite The Luminaire on 11th July. I will be the weird bloke lurking down the front with the comb-over and brown mackintosh on.

Sam Cooke, Obama and Me

2008-07-06T20:38:00.003+01:00

It's Sunday and I'm kicking back with three quarters of the family, eating, drinking wine and playing Sam Cooke. When A Change Is Gonna Come comes on the radio I'm almost close to tears. It has been a long time coming and maybe when Obama stands on the steps of the White House he should reflect on that, and acknowledge Sam Cooke for all the difference he made. Vote for Obama, he's our only chance.

CSS and their Donkey

2008-06-26T12:19:00.008+01:00

Having been accused too often of only liking bands because I want to be down with the kids (dahn wiv der kidz!) I can only point to CSS and say “Fuck You, I was there first”. I love this band. They are everything most British bands aren’t. That is influenced by things other than other bands, like art, life, literature and…er…other bands; at least interesting bands that don’t exist anymore like Death From Above 1979.

This gang of arty girls, and one guy, from São Paulo don’t really do the standard game of pop. Shoot me down in flames but when CSS appeared on our shores they were the catalyst that kick started the musical jolt of 2006. Their constant touring, their gigs were unfocused party time blow outs that were as much of a good time for the audience as they so obviously were for the band. Cool is dead, long live cool!

As far as I’m concerned the likes of Klaxons (who I also like lots) wouldn’t have happened. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at the list of favourite bands of 2006 as voted on Jo Whiley’s show. It reads like a list compiled by some lower ranking civil servant of the most mundane things of the year. Sort of explains why popular taste should never be allowed to govern artistic choice; it’s just sooooooo safe. Anyone with any great interest in music, those of us who remember various golden ages as being the very apogee of music, should go back and see who the most popular bands of their particular era were. It’s quite a wake up and doesn’t explain history as we know it, Jim.

So from Music Goulash’s point of view CSS were the saviours of British music in 2006 and anyone who says otherwise should be locked in a room with their shitty Razorlight albums. Suddenly there was some colour in the sound, not that they ever got played on the radio, well not much anyway. And now they have a new album out and it’s great.

Donkey is a good title. It’s stubborn and doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. Sensibly the band went back to São Paulo to record their new opus. It was produced by the token bloke in the band, Adriano Cintra, and then mixed by Spike Stent, who has become mixer of choice for so many. In this particular situation Stent was a good choice as his clear eyed crisp sound gives the album a pop punch that it deserves but he has a big enough love of music to retain the foibles and eccentricities that CSS are famous for.

From the kick off, with Jager Yoga, and into Rat Is Dead (a personal fave) that was given away as a free download the album announces it arrival with some force and focus. On their own, and in the ears of some humourless twats, some of the songs may be construed as naïve or simplistic, but this is an intrinsic part of this band’s charm. Lyrically songs like Left Behind are streets ahead of their musical, British born, contemporaries, like the Kooks or Fratellis, where the lyrics seem both lazy and inarticulate. Maybe it’s the Abba syndrome, where writing in a foreign language can appear simplistic on the surface but in the track the words are just so and seem to carry more weight than native born lyricists (The Day Before You Came).

So they are back and ripping up the summer months. I really hope that their planned relocations don’t have an adverse affect on who they are and what they do. They are global culture; they are the sense of humour in a corporate music world. Maybe they are the last gasp of the real art school band, which would be a disaster, but as Pete Brown once said The Art School Dance Goes On Forever. As Lovefoxxx sets up home with Simon Klaxon in London and three of the others also make the move, two of whom look like being my neighbours in Kensal Rise, which makes sense given the Little Brazil area of Harrow Road – one of the coolest places to go for a night out.

Tired of Being Sexy; I really hope not.

Boris proves his credentials.

2008-06-18T16:15:00.005+01:00

So like the fools the electorate can often be, and proving that the USA does not hold the monopoly on voting in morons and cretins, we elected as mayor of London one Boris Johnson. Now I'm a big believer in democracy and reckon that as long as you vote you have a right to complain and whinge, but if you didn't well.....fuck off. However when some oaf is elected on a platform of declared anti-racism, particularly after he had been guilty of ridiculous and blatant racism, you have to wonder what right he has to backtrack on all those pre-election promises.

Here we are then, with our new very own Colonel Blimp stepping in to tell the Rise: London United anti-racism concert, held annually, that they need to drop the anti-racism bit. Has anyone told the acts who had agreed to play it? That'll be CSS, Jimmy Cliff, Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Bassekou Kouyate and the Dub Pistols (with the legendary Terry Hall) to name but a few; all bands who have taken a reduced fee to play the event in solidarity with the message.

This happens at a time of a rising presence of the BNP (British fascist party) and racial violence. Kind of makes you wonder how Johnson's spokesperson, and cultural advisor, Munira Mirza can spit the words out when she suggests that it's no longer appropriate for the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to take part. We talking Uncle Tom here? Maybe she should discuss it with the recently elected BNP assembly member just to test her theory that racism is exaggerated in the UK.

Whatever your political persuasion, unless of course you're a fascist pig, racism represents the nadir of stupidity and does nothing to improve the society we live in. To actively prevent this point being made is at least stupid and at worst criminal.

Oh God! Another summer of love.

2008-06-18T12:22:00.007+01:00

It seems like we're gearing up for a summer of bleeps and squeaks from the look of it. Tracks that have fallen through my front door in the last couple of days all indicate that the age of stupid drugs and repetitive beats is back upon us. Hurrah!

First off Dolby Anol's new track Puppies, that's coming out on Back Yard (the people who gave us Gossip), is the sound of several pieces of electronic equipment falling down the stairs. being as the guys are from Glasgow there's a stereotypical chance that alcohol is involved, being as that's all they do up there. That said this is a marvellous collision of hardcore retro beats from 88, how the PR people manage to squeeze "electro house" into the equation beats me as I've always found house to be kind of mellow and it tends to be made on electronic equipment. This is Teutonic and smells of amphetamine.

The second track that, like a swallow, heralds a summer of off-your-face-is-that-my-tongue-I'm-chewing fun is the wondrously named Fukkk Offf with their Rave Is King track on Coco Machete (a label I am particularly fond of). Fukkk, whose real name is Bastian, comes from Hamburg and probably wasn't around for the fun in 88 but that doesn't stop him using a computer generated voice, that sounds nothing like Stephen Hawking, extolling the virtues of alcohol, drugs,overdrive, noise, neon lights, party people, rave is king and then it kicks in with the fattest analogue sounding bass and pump that I've heard since I first was blown away by Material's Bustin' Out back in 81. Can you feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel it???

Lovin' Alexis

2008-06-17T15:22:00.004+01:00

Hehehehe - absolutely love this review of Coldplay last night. His review of the album wasn't bad either. While I don't really go along with John Lydon's views about the band you have to admit he has a point. Even though Lydon sounds more and more like the piss stained guy who sits on the bench at the end of my street ranting and screaming at all the kids and young women who walk by, even though he's like the weird clown at a nightmare children's party and even though he hasn't been culturally relevant for around twenty years he still points out their bedwetting credentials.

I know, I know 30 million sales and counting; but I'd still rather have a Nick Cave album than a Coldplay.

Elephant Amongst The Pigeons

2008-06-17T12:29:00.003+01:00

It never ceases to amaze me the propensity of the American fan to head straight for the insult button when challenged about the veracity of any aspect of their culture. Weirdly I received two comments from "Anonymous", the second squealing in a piggy-like fashion about my ignorance of the Delta. In my travels around the USA I have always been surprised by the ignorance so may residents of that fine country show of their own heritage and lands. I once had the pleasure of a young lady in Corpus Christi who made herself available to me purely because I had seen the world outside of Texas. She was great, and I love Texans for their openness and warmth (well not all of them obviously).

My criticism of CTE is more a criticism of the herd mentality of the music industry. I have absolutely nothing against "kick ass rock n' roll", or "a great live show", but I do struggle with a music media and industry that is so desperate to discover some new messiah that they grasp at any weak straw or crumb of comfort. This has no benefit for the acts or the industry; when a band is pursued so relentlessly, with inducements and large cheques, the pressure on them to succeed from the off is intense and invariably leads to disappointment and career meltdown. I'm sure CTE are fine live but they are purely revisiting somewhere that has already been mapped out and rediscovered in a far more ground shaking way by the likes of The White Stripes or Black Keys.

And as for English fog, anonymous 2, maybe your stereotypical tornadoes has blown a huge new hole in your ass.

Cage The Elephant???

2008-06-16T11:21:00.007+01:00

So I was round at Promonews.tv HQ end of last week and the main guy, Dave Knight, was in the process of putting up the new video by Cage The Elephant. Naturally I was interested as there's been words on the wire about this band with various people banging on about their hotness and general fabulousness. So I was pretty disappointed when I discovered that they were basically the new Gomez.

What I mainly got from them was a band who, as usual, wanted to be The Stones but were coming at it via Black Crowes or a band like that. So in effect they are copying a copy-cat band, in that sort of phoney rock 'n roll fashion.

I know, I know. Lots of people liked Gomez and they won the Mercury Prize blah blah blah but come on. They were one of those bands that people like my brother in law, who let punk pass him by as he was on the road with Mike Oldfield, would deem "real music". Oh come on. A bunch of white college boys trying to be all delta does not make it real. If I come across a bit like Steve Buscemi in Ghost World well so be it. I'm sure they're a great night out but it's all a bit too contrived for me. Mind you I like the Ami Barwell pics on their myspace.

Anyway file under whatever.

Life after Music Week

2008-06-06T12:59:00.003+01:00

It's been a while but finally, after a very slow and long fade out I have left the building. Sort of sad but, to be honest, life had changed for the worse as the circulation continued to spiral down, previous publishers had wasted huge amounts of money on an almost internet bubble type pursuit of an illusory data revenue stream (I mean who really wants to pay £500 a year on finding out who does Amy's press?) and the years of atrophy had taken their toll. There are still some great people there, who love music and believe in the industry, but as always it is a bit lions and donkeys.

Now I'm here, and there as well, and plan on moving this forward as a place for slightly old farts to come for advice on what's good and what's crap. Believe me there is a lot of good music still being made out there but to read some of the "youth" mags you'd think that bands only had one good album in them - in The Twang's case not even the one (hey James, I thought they were the future of rock music!). So come back and check me out on a regular basis.

Extend the term - why?

2006-03-29T15:55:00.000+01:00

Music Week, the house paper for the UK music industry, is running a campaign to persuade the politicians that it would be a great idea if the period of recorded copyright enjoyed by European record companies should be extended from its current 50 year period to 75 years. The argument for this being that the poor, impoverished artists won't benefit from the sweat of their talents, which instead will be greedily acquired by plunderers of catalogue. While there is an element of truth in this the reality is that for the vast majority of artists contracts that they signed with avaricious record labels back in the 50's have not been renegotiated to reflect the changing times. Most musicians and performers, like the Humphrey Lyttletons and Kenny Balls of this world, still never see a penny. Major labels, who long ago subsumed these smaller labels into their friendly clutches, plead ignorance as to the whereabouts of any royalties so that the heirs to the like of Marc Bolan have never seen any cut from huge fortunes that have been made from the man's corpse.

If Music Week had any sense at all they would be supporting the line taken by the Music Managers Forum and campaign for all copyrights to revert to the artist, or their heirs, after 50 years. This way musicians could licence their material to whomsoever they choose and they would be in a far better position to see some financial return. For the music industry, and its supporters, to claim through teary eyes that the poor musician will be robbed of their money is a bit like Fagin complaining about the state of childcare. They have exploited and robbed musicians of every ilk for so long that for many of us the fact that we might be in a position to exploit our own music and make money from it comes as a welcome vision of the future. When the industry makes 40 pence a download from iTunes and the modern artist sees 4 pence then the artists from the 50s and 60s will be lucky to see 1 pence. Campaign for an extension of copyright indeed, but at least campaign for it to go back into the hands of the creators.

It's been a while.

2006-02-23T13:28:00.000Z

I meant to post this before or after the Brits but I was a bit preoccupied watching paint dry. Did we all watch it and cheer the posh twat Blunt collect awards for his dreadful weedy warbling? Just a brief appearance by Prince puts everything into context. Here was real style and genius and sheer sex. One thing that really puzzles me is why do they always get the Urban award so spectacularly wrong? Last year it was Joss Stone, this year it's Lemar. Lemar is about as urban as James Blunt and once again the British music industry show just how white orientated and out of touch they really are when they overlook Kano or Sway. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing.

On a better note there's loads of great music around, like Les Incompetents and Roland Shanks. The only problem being is that most of the sad hacks who write about them have a puddle deep knowledge of musical history. It's always Talking Heads - have they never checked out ATV, Wire, early XTC or even the fabulous Orange Juice. Now please you wet panted morons fuck off and learn something about where the current crop comes from before you start wittering on about stuff you have no idea about. And as for the Music Week blog - don't make me laugh you bunch of major label arse kissers.

It's Christmas, innit?

2005-12-21T13:39:00.000Z

So it's finally coming up to Christams and I'm starting to feel a tiny bit festive. It's the album of the year time around here and I know that my favourites won't appear anywhere in the mainstream round ups. The best release this year by far was the Manu Chao produced album from Amadou & Maraim, Dimancha à Bamako. This is probably the most wonderful and rounded album I have heard in a long time. It doesn't matter what kind of mood you're in this album will brighten up your day. The problem is most English speakers have an issue with either lyrics in a language they don't understand or what has been termed "World" music. The production, playing and mixture of influences on this album just leave you breathless.

On another tip I discovered The Subways through my fabulous daughter. They remind me a little of the Undertones, in their choice of subject matter. Other great releases this year were from the likes of Electrelane, Moussu T e lei Jovens, Wilco, Neil Young, The White Stripes and the very wonderful Psapp.

Do yourself a favour this Christams, though, and go out and buy the Amadou & Mariam album. Spread a little peace and love and remember, children make Christmas so try and make some children this Christmas.

Negativity

2005-12-04T15:20:00.000Z

I guess sometimes I get a little negative. My daughter has accused me of ranting and sounding "very angry" all the time. Well I guess I am sometimes. One way or another I've been kicking around the music industry for almost thirty years and in all that time I've seen so little change in favour of the people who actually make the music.

It so often seems that those people who do make it big pull the ladder up behind them; neither arguing for a better universal deal or attempting to make any changes to the practices of the major labels. On top f that I have to agree with Alan McGee about the current crop of stars, particularly the king of the bedwetters Chris Martin. I mean how ineffectual is that simpering twat with his "I want everyone to be nice" attitude. I heard him on the radio the other morning whining on about how punk was always so angry and confrontational and never achieved anything so he was being all understanding and compromising and, guess what..........he's achieved squat. Yeah, that's right, him and that big self-aggrandising idiot Geldof have done absolutely nothing for the world's poor after Live8 except make several more million people see them on TV.

More power to Albarn and Chao.

Price of Fame

2005-11-29T17:33:00.000Z

So Snowpatrol have sold over a million albums. Bully for them and their sound just like Coldplay approach to music. Still, whatever I might think about their music it doesn't alter the fact that the poor bastards have suffered for their art at the hands of Universal, the major that owns them. You might think that a band that sells a million might have a few quid in the bank. I mean, after all that represents around £10 mill to the label right? So how come the Snowies still owe Universal in excess of a million.

Come on musos out there. It's time to wise up and stay with the small labels, even better do it yourself. I don't just mean myspace but you know there has to be other people out there who would be prepared to get involved in a csual way, PR companies, distribution companies or awal.com - if you don't make the effort for yourselves then don't be surprised if you end up back at the fast food joint serving fries with everything.

Starting out

2005-11-24T10:08:00.000Z

Finally thought I'd start doing this after trying to persuade my teenage daughter that it would be "a good idea" if she took up blogging. Being as when I was her age I was invariably off my face or causing my parents excessive worries the fact that she seems a bit disinterested in current affairs is the least of my worries.

Having once been in a band I know find myself operating on the fringes of the music industry, which isn't so bad. At least I don't have to go through the shit that most of the poor kids trying to get off the ground have to do; that said it has never been a more auspicious time for them to get out from under the burden of the major labels. These greedy rapacious companies should bear the prime responsibility for the collapse, a few years back, in music sales. The fact that all they were marketing for almost a decade was the drek and detritus from cheesy TV game shows or production line pop should have caused no surprise when people just stopped buying.

Now these corporate hogs want to get their snouts into all other areas that bands can make money from. take it from me young musicians, don't do business with major labels. They are all intellectual copyright rapists. They are all over the moon with this new technology - downloading. If they'd been smarter at the start they wouldn't have been pursuing twelve year old kids through the courts. As for the bands, how come you're still having to pay packaging charges when there's no fucking packaging. For a 79 pence iTunes download the artist is lucky to see 4 pence on the sale. If they're lucky they'll make some cash on their publishing, but now the pigs are screaming that the publishers and artists are being greedy demanding a slightly larger cut - 12% - than they've been getting. Hey kids, wise up. Get yourself a good PR, get your name out there, build a website and sell your own downloads.