The song remains the same?

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.

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

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....

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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?