Guided by Voices, Half Smiles of the Decomposed. (Matador)
David Peschek, The Guardian
There's prolific, and then there's Guided By Voices. From Dayton, Ohio, and not so much a band as a cult, GBV have released, possibly, about 20 albums. This is to be their final release - though lest fans should panic, singer Robert Pollard also has a solo album out. Sole constant in the band's line-up, Pollard has, thankfully, largely shaken the tendency to write songs that consist of blink-and-you'll-miss-it snatches of brilliant melody that end as soon as they've begun, which made earlier records great listening for ADD sufferers, but otherwise frustrating. Half Smiles is US indie rock at its best. It has lyrical quirk wrapped in garagey rattle - though lovely stand-out Window of My World is uncharacteristically languid. Pollard has a limited but indefatigable gift for melody, which lifts conservative music out of the strictly ordinary. If he really wanted to fox the faithful, however, he'd plan a more radical career move.
dimanche, août 22, 2004
Soulwax
Soulwax, Any Minute Now (PIAS)
Dorian Lynskey The Guardian
Soulwax are in a curious position. Their own music is obviously their passion but most people love them for their hobby. As 2 Many DJs, Belgium's Dewaele brothers spearheaded the vogue for bootleg mash-ups and recorded one of the most ingenious mix albums ever made, As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol. 2. Fans of 2 Many DJs should, however, approach Any Minute Now with caution. It's a mystery how the same people who traverse genres with such agility as DJs could be behind an album of clunky MTV cyber-rock which sounds like Garbage fronted by Michael Hutchence.
The vocals are awful, the lyrics ridiculous ("Looking up evolution's skirt to see what the future brings." Pardon?) and the ultra-processed riffs plain ugly. Only one track does not disappoint: NY Excuse starts out like the rest of the record but is reworked as chugging electro-punk with LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang. A whole album in this vein could have been a triumph. As it is, the Dewaele brothers might want to consider giving up the day job.
Dorian Lynskey The Guardian
Soulwax are in a curious position. Their own music is obviously their passion but most people love them for their hobby. As 2 Many DJs, Belgium's Dewaele brothers spearheaded the vogue for bootleg mash-ups and recorded one of the most ingenious mix albums ever made, As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol. 2. Fans of 2 Many DJs should, however, approach Any Minute Now with caution. It's a mystery how the same people who traverse genres with such agility as DJs could be behind an album of clunky MTV cyber-rock which sounds like Garbage fronted by Michael Hutchence.
The vocals are awful, the lyrics ridiculous ("Looking up evolution's skirt to see what the future brings." Pardon?) and the ultra-processed riffs plain ugly. Only one track does not disappoint: NY Excuse starts out like the rest of the record but is reworked as chugging electro-punk with LCD Soundsystem's Nancy Whang. A whole album in this vein could have been a triumph. As it is, the Dewaele brothers might want to consider giving up the day job.
Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble, I Could Have Been A Contender
Adam Sweeting, The Guardian
In between employment as a conductor for London Underground and doing voluntary church work, Jah Wobble has spent 25 years probing music's outer limits. Wobble credits John Lydon with starting it all off by recruiting him to play bass with Public Image Ltd.
With Wobble's help, Lydon built PiL into a thunderous sonic laboratory, able to encompass dub, electronic music and avant-garde gibberings. Their stunning debut, Public Image, is the opening track on the first of these three discs, with Wobble's earthquake bass charging to the front of the mix, though Wobble reckons his favourite PiL track was the autistic funk of Poptones, remastered and included here.
It can be tricky keeping track of his progress since the tracks leap around chronologically without much apparent logic, but his most remarkable trait is the way he can pull together stuff from any time or any continent. Visions Of You, from 1991's Rising Above Bedlam album, pits an echoey, vapourous Sinéad O'Connor against tablas and the raga-saga of Wobble's bass. Snake Charmer, a collaboration with Holger Czukay, of legendary German experimentalists Can, was jittery funk-techno, stepping hard on the heels of Herbie Hancock. The slowly evolving layers of Requiem III (1997) display some familiar with composers like Part or Tavener, while who else could convert east London's grimy A13 into a spiritual pathway?
Adam Sweeting, The Guardian
In between employment as a conductor for London Underground and doing voluntary church work, Jah Wobble has spent 25 years probing music's outer limits. Wobble credits John Lydon with starting it all off by recruiting him to play bass with Public Image Ltd.
With Wobble's help, Lydon built PiL into a thunderous sonic laboratory, able to encompass dub, electronic music and avant-garde gibberings. Their stunning debut, Public Image, is the opening track on the first of these three discs, with Wobble's earthquake bass charging to the front of the mix, though Wobble reckons his favourite PiL track was the autistic funk of Poptones, remastered and included here.
It can be tricky keeping track of his progress since the tracks leap around chronologically without much apparent logic, but his most remarkable trait is the way he can pull together stuff from any time or any continent. Visions Of You, from 1991's Rising Above Bedlam album, pits an echoey, vapourous Sinéad O'Connor against tablas and the raga-saga of Wobble's bass. Snake Charmer, a collaboration with Holger Czukay, of legendary German experimentalists Can, was jittery funk-techno, stepping hard on the heels of Herbie Hancock. The slowly evolving layers of Requiem III (1997) display some familiar with composers like Part or Tavener, while who else could convert east London's grimy A13 into a spiritual pathway?
samedi, août 21, 2004
Album: The Prodigy
The Prodigy : Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, XL
By Andy Gill
20 August 2004
The Beta Band aside, it's not often that a group takes to slagging off their own work in public - but that's exactly what Liam Howlett has been doing, taking a pop at The Prodigy's 2002 single "Baby's Got a Temper" for being complacent and below their usual standard. It did, however, prompt him to a sudden scorched-earth reaction to the material he'd been working on for the band's follow-up to The Fat of the Land, which was unceremoniously dumped. Locking up his studio, Howlett took to writing a whole set of replacement tracks on his laptop, re-focusing on the group's core business of mighty beats and scrambled samples.
The result is Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, in effect a Howlett solo album, given the absence of both Keith Flint and Maxim. Instead, Howlett has drawn on the vocal contributions of various friends, some actual singers (Liam Gallagher, Paul Jackson from Dirt Candy), some rappers (Kool Keith, Twista, Princess Superstar) and some just celebs with an affection for rock'n'roll (Juliette Lewis). Not that any of them is allowed to impose themselves too forcefully: most are employed merely as samples, their voices mangled almost beyond recognition in Howlett's laptop laboratory.
For a while, it's a disappointing experience, with most of the early tracks falling short of The Prodigy's exacting standards. The opener, "Spitfire", has massive big-beat drums, a single huge fuzz-chord and a few swirls of Middle Eastern-sounding synth. It's no more than ordinary, as are "Girls" (stuttering electro-hip-hop), "Memphis Bells" (lumbering techno-funk) and "Get Up Get Off" (more electro-hip-hop).
Only with "Hot Ride" do things start to heat up. A rumbling chunk of psychedelic rock, over which Juliette Lewis extemporises lines from "Up, Up and Away", it has a kind of restless determination that the previous tracks lack. "Wake Up Call" is equally fractious, a scrambled sample-scape with a rap fragment from Kool Keith of Ultramagnetic MCs, who furnished the offending lines to "Smack My Bitch Up" - a track whose tempo and dynamic "Wake Up Call" seeks to recreate.
There's a very Eighties feel about some of the album - not just in the industrious electropop of "Action Radar", which recalls the early Human League, but most brazenly in "The Way It Is", which is built on the chopped-up riff to Michael Jackson's "Thriller", recast as a dirty electro-funk groove. That's not the most blatant appropriation, though: that dubious honour goes to "Phoenix", which is a mix assault on Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz". In its piratical swagger, it's indicative of the old-skool, underground attitude that Howlett is trying to regain with Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. But whether there are any tracks here with the compulsive individual character of "Poison" or "Firestarter" is debatable.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
By Andy Gill
20 August 2004
The Beta Band aside, it's not often that a group takes to slagging off their own work in public - but that's exactly what Liam Howlett has been doing, taking a pop at The Prodigy's 2002 single "Baby's Got a Temper" for being complacent and below their usual standard. It did, however, prompt him to a sudden scorched-earth reaction to the material he'd been working on for the band's follow-up to The Fat of the Land, which was unceremoniously dumped. Locking up his studio, Howlett took to writing a whole set of replacement tracks on his laptop, re-focusing on the group's core business of mighty beats and scrambled samples.
The result is Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, in effect a Howlett solo album, given the absence of both Keith Flint and Maxim. Instead, Howlett has drawn on the vocal contributions of various friends, some actual singers (Liam Gallagher, Paul Jackson from Dirt Candy), some rappers (Kool Keith, Twista, Princess Superstar) and some just celebs with an affection for rock'n'roll (Juliette Lewis). Not that any of them is allowed to impose themselves too forcefully: most are employed merely as samples, their voices mangled almost beyond recognition in Howlett's laptop laboratory.
For a while, it's a disappointing experience, with most of the early tracks falling short of The Prodigy's exacting standards. The opener, "Spitfire", has massive big-beat drums, a single huge fuzz-chord and a few swirls of Middle Eastern-sounding synth. It's no more than ordinary, as are "Girls" (stuttering electro-hip-hop), "Memphis Bells" (lumbering techno-funk) and "Get Up Get Off" (more electro-hip-hop).
Only with "Hot Ride" do things start to heat up. A rumbling chunk of psychedelic rock, over which Juliette Lewis extemporises lines from "Up, Up and Away", it has a kind of restless determination that the previous tracks lack. "Wake Up Call" is equally fractious, a scrambled sample-scape with a rap fragment from Kool Keith of Ultramagnetic MCs, who furnished the offending lines to "Smack My Bitch Up" - a track whose tempo and dynamic "Wake Up Call" seeks to recreate.
There's a very Eighties feel about some of the album - not just in the industrious electropop of "Action Radar", which recalls the early Human League, but most brazenly in "The Way It Is", which is built on the chopped-up riff to Michael Jackson's "Thriller", recast as a dirty electro-funk groove. That's not the most blatant appropriation, though: that dubious honour goes to "Phoenix", which is a mix assault on Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz". In its piratical swagger, it's indicative of the old-skool, underground attitude that Howlett is trying to regain with Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. But whether there are any tracks here with the compulsive individual character of "Poison" or "Firestarter" is debatable.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
vendredi, août 20, 2004
Ian McNabb
Ian McNabb Live : Metro, London
Betty Clarke, The Guardian
Ian McNabb, former frontman of 1980s band the Icicle Works, is a successful example of how to live with a pop star past. His solo career having won enough critical praise to outshine his old band, he's become an elder statesman of scouse rock - he casually tells a story involving protagonists from the Zutons and the Coral - while having enough momentum of his own to headline the new bands stage at this year's Glastonbury.
Falling somewhere Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Tarbuck, McNabb is both serious musician and outright ham. Big chugging chords and endless guitar solos nestle next to football banter, bad jokes and constant asides to bandmates - including Matthew Priest from Dodgy on drums - the mood is one of a celebratory lock-in after an FA cup final. "It's a wonderful show," McNabb opines, disguising his man-of-the-people persona behind a voice borrowed from Noel Coward, "based on true-life experiences."
He's right, on both counts. McNabb yanks his Bruce Springsteen-meets-Neil-Young fodder from the jaws of MOR, through his astute lyrics - offering a dissection on middle age - and catchy choruses. Singalongs are what he does best. Smiling at his past with the inclusion of the Icicle Works' Evangeline and Understanding Jane, he sounds as if he's being smothered by an out-of-practice male voice choir the roar of voices is so loud. McNabb graciously, gratefully, gives in. Stepping back from the mic, he sings only when his new-found backing vocalists momentarily run out of steam.
Though often too long, McNabb's songs are rock-fringed, pop gems. Fire Inside bristles with the frustration of dreams, Stone My Soul is a stab at blue-eyed soul that achieves realism and romance. Having lived up to everyone else's expectations, McNabb spends a second encore indulging in a bluesy, growling version of All Along the Watchtower, trying to surpass his own.
Betty Clarke, The Guardian
Ian McNabb, former frontman of 1980s band the Icicle Works, is a successful example of how to live with a pop star past. His solo career having won enough critical praise to outshine his old band, he's become an elder statesman of scouse rock - he casually tells a story involving protagonists from the Zutons and the Coral - while having enough momentum of his own to headline the new bands stage at this year's Glastonbury.
Falling somewhere Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Tarbuck, McNabb is both serious musician and outright ham. Big chugging chords and endless guitar solos nestle next to football banter, bad jokes and constant asides to bandmates - including Matthew Priest from Dodgy on drums - the mood is one of a celebratory lock-in after an FA cup final. "It's a wonderful show," McNabb opines, disguising his man-of-the-people persona behind a voice borrowed from Noel Coward, "based on true-life experiences."
He's right, on both counts. McNabb yanks his Bruce Springsteen-meets-Neil-Young fodder from the jaws of MOR, through his astute lyrics - offering a dissection on middle age - and catchy choruses. Singalongs are what he does best. Smiling at his past with the inclusion of the Icicle Works' Evangeline and Understanding Jane, he sounds as if he's being smothered by an out-of-practice male voice choir the roar of voices is so loud. McNabb graciously, gratefully, gives in. Stepping back from the mic, he sings only when his new-found backing vocalists momentarily run out of steam.
Though often too long, McNabb's songs are rock-fringed, pop gems. Fire Inside bristles with the frustration of dreams, Stone My Soul is a stab at blue-eyed soul that achieves realism and romance. Having lived up to everyone else's expectations, McNabb spends a second encore indulging in a bluesy, growling version of All Along the Watchtower, trying to surpass his own.
Strummer calling
As well as being a punk pioneer, Joe Strummer had an extraordinary hoarding instinct. Ian Burrell discovers the unknown side of the Clash front man
20 August 2004
In a slightly dilapidated country barn, piles of plastic bags were stacked on top of tea chests, suitcases and cardboard boxes, which themselves contained yet more plastic bags. The scene somewhat resembled an aid charity's collection for the victims of a foreign disaster zone. But these carrier bags contained, not food or clothing, but the writings and the polemics, the jottings, the doodles and the lost song lyrics that will shed new light on one of the most iconic figures in British rock music.
Joe Strummer never liked to throw anything away. The former singer with The Clash kept his set list from almost every gig, along with the scraps of paper on which he drafted the words of the band's songs. He held on to the fan mail that he received from around the world, and he retained the scribblings that he made on a daily basis about Britain, the world and the universe.
For months, with the permission of Strummer's widow Lucinda, the artist Gordon McHarg and one of the late singer's old friends - who likes to be known simply "Pockets" - trawled through this bagged-up archive. They found the set lists from entire tours - torn off by Strummer from his Fender Telecaster each night - and they have dug out the lyrics that never made it into finished songs.
There was Strummer's original scrapbook, painstakingly put together between 1975 and 1977 as punk drew its first raucous breaths, and containing every flyer, every review, each advert placed in the music press and every tiny reference from the listings magazines. At the back of the scrapbook, Strummer - who never ate meat - had pasted clippings of fish recipes from a newspaper column called Angler's Kitchen.
Then there was his little black hard-backed song-book, containing the earliest drafts of the lyrics to The Clash's anthem "London Calling". Each turn of the page reveals slight amendments to the words as Strummer revised a song that was to become a classic. Among the cases and bags were notes on at least six of the tracks from the London Calling album, which is being re-released this year on its 25th anniversary. The album was voted one of the five best albums of all time by readers of Q magazine.
The treasures include Strummer's record of The Clash's American tour of 1982, with the set list of every gig - each about the size of a credit-card receipt - carefully removed from his guitar and pasted side by side beneath the name of the concert venue. Another scrap of paper torn from a spiral notebook has the original words to the militant song "Know Your Rights".
This collection has been gathered up and brought to London, and will form the basis of an exhibition on The Clash singer and guitarist, called Joe Strummer Past, Present & Future, that will open next month and later move to Japan.
McHarg says: "Joe kept everything. His archiving was unbelievable. He was constantly note-taking, although he didn't always have a notebook but just wrote on whatever he could find. But no one has seen any of this stuff."
McHarg and Pockets have even found Strummer's written version of the legendary Vanilla Tapes, the missing Clash recordings that were recently discovered by the band's other front man, Mick Jones, when he was moving house.
The tapes, which were recorded at Vanilla Studios in Pimlico, central London, were made in 1979 when The Clash were at the height of their creative powers. It had been thought that the recordings were lost when a roadie left them on a London Underground train. The reissued London Calling will include the Vanilla Tapes.
There are also stacks of photographs sent to Strummer by Clash fans, including entire albums lovingly compiled by Japanese Clash followers who met the band on arrival at Tokyo airport and went on tour with them.
The other key element of the Strummer exhibition will be a collection of photographs showing the musician in the earliest days of his career. The exhibition has been timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary next month of Strummer's first significant public performances. Julian Yewdall, who took these remarkable pictures, was a housemate of Strummer's in a squat at 101 Walterton Road in Maida Hill, west London.
It was here that Strummer and some of his fellow squatters formed a band called The 101ers, who have acquired cult status among music fans as one of the bands that paved the way for punk. Maida Hill was the centre of the squatting movement that emerged in the mid-Seventies in homes that had been run down by the notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. The squatters had their own "estate agency", called Ruff, Tuff, Creem Puff, which gave advice on newly-vacant buildings.
Yewdall says: "It wasn't easy, and we lived for years with just a cold-water tap. The mains electricity had to be connected to the grid by hand by jamming the wires in. No one had any money, they were just scraping along." Strummer arrived in the area after dropping out of the Central School of Art and spending a short time in Newport, south Wales, where he first experimented with the guitar.
Strummer's real name was John Mellor. Born in Ankara, Turkey, he was the son of a Foreign Office official and attended a boarding school in Surrey. When he was 18, he adopted the name Woody after the folk guitarist Woody Guthrie, but soon after he arrived in Maida Hill he came up with Joe Strummer, a self-deprecating reference to his then limited abilities on the guitar. The 101ers started rehearsing in the basement of the squat, using old mattresses as soundproofing.
Yewdall, who had a minor role in the band as a backing singer and maraca player, remembers: "Joe was working as a cleaner at the London Coliseum opera house. I asked him what he wanted to do with his life, and he said, 'I want to be a rock'n'roll star.' Even then, that was all he wanted to be."
To build a following, The 101ers (who drove around in a hearse) established their own venue by renting - for £1 a night - the upstairs bar at the Chippenham pub, 100 yards from the squat. They called it The Charlie Pigdog Club * * (after the squat's resident pooch), and they charged 10p entry.
Strummer was to play the Pigdog 16 times. "It was a dump," says Yewdall, who later managed the band. "It was mayhem every time the 101ers played there. There were a few nights when things really got out of hand." According to a 1997 article in Uncut magazine: "For a few months... The 101ers shook the pillars of heaven themselves."
Yewdall's pictures capture the evolution of Strummer's rock'n'roll persona, swigging beer at basement rehearsals and - at a 101ers gig in the Red Cow pub in Hammersmith, west London - looking uncannily like Bruce Springsteen. He had the Elvis Costello look off pat as early as 1975.
The exhibition is being staged at the London Print Studio, whose owner, Jon Phillip, designed posters for some of Strummer's earliest gigs. Those posters will form part of the exhibition.
By early 1976, the 101ers were being supported at gigs by another west London group called The Sex Pistols. Strummer was attracted to the attitude of punk, and by that summer he had quit the 101ers for The Clash.
Meanwhile, the squatters and tenants living in the area around 101 Walterton Road evolved into one of the most innovative housing co-operatives in Britain. This same community later fought the Conservative leader of Westminster council, Dame Shirley Porter, who was forced to pay a £12m surcharge over the homes-for-votes scandal.
Right up to Strummer's sudden death in 2002, the former Clash front man continued to take every opportunity to highlight social inequalities and to break down cultural barriers. Debs Bourner, the community services manager of Walterton and Elgin Community Homes, a housing association that has helped to put on the Strummer exhibition, said the singer had been an inspiration to local people, not only because he fought against social injustice but because he incorporated music from different ethnic backgrounds into his work.
When questions were being raised about the fondness of some early punks for the swastika symbol, at a time when the National Front was strong, Strummer was always at pains to make clear where The Clash stood. "I think people ought to know that we're anti-fascist, anti-violence and anti-racist. We're against ignorance," he said.
Bourner draws parallels between the musician's views and the stance of the local community in fighting for their housing rights. "The residents here have made their voices heard, which is what Joe Strummer was doing through his lyrics," she says. She hopes to have the words "Joe Strummer was here" built into the brickwork on the site of the 101 Walterton Road squat.
The housing association agency last month held its summer fair in a small park immediately in front of the spot where the penniless Strummer had honed his craft. Duke Vin, the first reggae sound-system operator to set up in Britain and a resident of the area, gave an airing to some old records from the Seventies. Strummer had been a fan and a regular member of Duke Vin audience.
In the sunshine, at a stall decorated with pictures of The Clash front man, local children sat and designed their own multicoloured flags to be displayed at the forthcoming exhibition. The flags are a reference to Strummer's internationalist outlook and to the fact that his campfire at the Glastonbury festival was always surrounded by the banners of many nations. Visitors to the show will be given the opportunity to contribute to the event by creating their own Strummer-inspired flag designs.
McHarg says: "This exhibition shows that Joe Strummer's energy can still create waves in the present day, bringing together different communities in a spirit of friendship and action to create something special."
When Strummer left the 101ers and joined the musicians who would become The Clash, Yewdall continued to follow his progress for a while. He photographed Strummer, Jones and the bassist Paul Simonon at the famous August 1976 gig with The Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks at the Screen on the Green in Islington, north London. That show is now regarded as one of the most important events in the story of English punk. We know now that Strummer snipped out the music-press reviews of the concert and stuck them in his scrapbook.
Yewdall also pictured Joe backstage at the Royal College of Art in November 1976, wearing a jacket with the self-customised slogan "Passion is a Fashion". The expression is one of many phrases and idioms that recur in his writings.
Money from the exhibition will be donated to the Strummerville charity, which was set up after the musician's death to provide rehearsal space and studio time for young musicians.
The Strummer legend lives on. At this summer's Glastonbury, his former musical contemporaries Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, Glen Matlock of The Sex Pistols and the punk/reggae DJ Don Letts were among those performing on the Leftfield stage in a night dedicated to Strummerville. McHarg says: "Joe left a big hole. Everyone has to pitch in, because it is going to take a lot of us to fill that."
Joe Strummer Past, Present & Future, London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Road, London W10 (020-8969 3247), 4 to 18 September. The 25th anniversary edition of 'London Calling' is released on 20 September on Sony Columbia
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
20 August 2004
In a slightly dilapidated country barn, piles of plastic bags were stacked on top of tea chests, suitcases and cardboard boxes, which themselves contained yet more plastic bags. The scene somewhat resembled an aid charity's collection for the victims of a foreign disaster zone. But these carrier bags contained, not food or clothing, but the writings and the polemics, the jottings, the doodles and the lost song lyrics that will shed new light on one of the most iconic figures in British rock music.
Joe Strummer never liked to throw anything away. The former singer with The Clash kept his set list from almost every gig, along with the scraps of paper on which he drafted the words of the band's songs. He held on to the fan mail that he received from around the world, and he retained the scribblings that he made on a daily basis about Britain, the world and the universe.
For months, with the permission of Strummer's widow Lucinda, the artist Gordon McHarg and one of the late singer's old friends - who likes to be known simply "Pockets" - trawled through this bagged-up archive. They found the set lists from entire tours - torn off by Strummer from his Fender Telecaster each night - and they have dug out the lyrics that never made it into finished songs.
There was Strummer's original scrapbook, painstakingly put together between 1975 and 1977 as punk drew its first raucous breaths, and containing every flyer, every review, each advert placed in the music press and every tiny reference from the listings magazines. At the back of the scrapbook, Strummer - who never ate meat - had pasted clippings of fish recipes from a newspaper column called Angler's Kitchen.
Then there was his little black hard-backed song-book, containing the earliest drafts of the lyrics to The Clash's anthem "London Calling". Each turn of the page reveals slight amendments to the words as Strummer revised a song that was to become a classic. Among the cases and bags were notes on at least six of the tracks from the London Calling album, which is being re-released this year on its 25th anniversary. The album was voted one of the five best albums of all time by readers of Q magazine.
The treasures include Strummer's record of The Clash's American tour of 1982, with the set list of every gig - each about the size of a credit-card receipt - carefully removed from his guitar and pasted side by side beneath the name of the concert venue. Another scrap of paper torn from a spiral notebook has the original words to the militant song "Know Your Rights".
This collection has been gathered up and brought to London, and will form the basis of an exhibition on The Clash singer and guitarist, called Joe Strummer Past, Present & Future, that will open next month and later move to Japan.
McHarg says: "Joe kept everything. His archiving was unbelievable. He was constantly note-taking, although he didn't always have a notebook but just wrote on whatever he could find. But no one has seen any of this stuff."
McHarg and Pockets have even found Strummer's written version of the legendary Vanilla Tapes, the missing Clash recordings that were recently discovered by the band's other front man, Mick Jones, when he was moving house.
The tapes, which were recorded at Vanilla Studios in Pimlico, central London, were made in 1979 when The Clash were at the height of their creative powers. It had been thought that the recordings were lost when a roadie left them on a London Underground train. The reissued London Calling will include the Vanilla Tapes.
There are also stacks of photographs sent to Strummer by Clash fans, including entire albums lovingly compiled by Japanese Clash followers who met the band on arrival at Tokyo airport and went on tour with them.
The other key element of the Strummer exhibition will be a collection of photographs showing the musician in the earliest days of his career. The exhibition has been timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary next month of Strummer's first significant public performances. Julian Yewdall, who took these remarkable pictures, was a housemate of Strummer's in a squat at 101 Walterton Road in Maida Hill, west London.
It was here that Strummer and some of his fellow squatters formed a band called The 101ers, who have acquired cult status among music fans as one of the bands that paved the way for punk. Maida Hill was the centre of the squatting movement that emerged in the mid-Seventies in homes that had been run down by the notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. The squatters had their own "estate agency", called Ruff, Tuff, Creem Puff, which gave advice on newly-vacant buildings.
Yewdall says: "It wasn't easy, and we lived for years with just a cold-water tap. The mains electricity had to be connected to the grid by hand by jamming the wires in. No one had any money, they were just scraping along." Strummer arrived in the area after dropping out of the Central School of Art and spending a short time in Newport, south Wales, where he first experimented with the guitar.
Strummer's real name was John Mellor. Born in Ankara, Turkey, he was the son of a Foreign Office official and attended a boarding school in Surrey. When he was 18, he adopted the name Woody after the folk guitarist Woody Guthrie, but soon after he arrived in Maida Hill he came up with Joe Strummer, a self-deprecating reference to his then limited abilities on the guitar. The 101ers started rehearsing in the basement of the squat, using old mattresses as soundproofing.
Yewdall, who had a minor role in the band as a backing singer and maraca player, remembers: "Joe was working as a cleaner at the London Coliseum opera house. I asked him what he wanted to do with his life, and he said, 'I want to be a rock'n'roll star.' Even then, that was all he wanted to be."
To build a following, The 101ers (who drove around in a hearse) established their own venue by renting - for £1 a night - the upstairs bar at the Chippenham pub, 100 yards from the squat. They called it The Charlie Pigdog Club * * (after the squat's resident pooch), and they charged 10p entry.
Strummer was to play the Pigdog 16 times. "It was a dump," says Yewdall, who later managed the band. "It was mayhem every time the 101ers played there. There were a few nights when things really got out of hand." According to a 1997 article in Uncut magazine: "For a few months... The 101ers shook the pillars of heaven themselves."
Yewdall's pictures capture the evolution of Strummer's rock'n'roll persona, swigging beer at basement rehearsals and - at a 101ers gig in the Red Cow pub in Hammersmith, west London - looking uncannily like Bruce Springsteen. He had the Elvis Costello look off pat as early as 1975.
The exhibition is being staged at the London Print Studio, whose owner, Jon Phillip, designed posters for some of Strummer's earliest gigs. Those posters will form part of the exhibition.
By early 1976, the 101ers were being supported at gigs by another west London group called The Sex Pistols. Strummer was attracted to the attitude of punk, and by that summer he had quit the 101ers for The Clash.
Meanwhile, the squatters and tenants living in the area around 101 Walterton Road evolved into one of the most innovative housing co-operatives in Britain. This same community later fought the Conservative leader of Westminster council, Dame Shirley Porter, who was forced to pay a £12m surcharge over the homes-for-votes scandal.
Right up to Strummer's sudden death in 2002, the former Clash front man continued to take every opportunity to highlight social inequalities and to break down cultural barriers. Debs Bourner, the community services manager of Walterton and Elgin Community Homes, a housing association that has helped to put on the Strummer exhibition, said the singer had been an inspiration to local people, not only because he fought against social injustice but because he incorporated music from different ethnic backgrounds into his work.
When questions were being raised about the fondness of some early punks for the swastika symbol, at a time when the National Front was strong, Strummer was always at pains to make clear where The Clash stood. "I think people ought to know that we're anti-fascist, anti-violence and anti-racist. We're against ignorance," he said.
Bourner draws parallels between the musician's views and the stance of the local community in fighting for their housing rights. "The residents here have made their voices heard, which is what Joe Strummer was doing through his lyrics," she says. She hopes to have the words "Joe Strummer was here" built into the brickwork on the site of the 101 Walterton Road squat.
The housing association agency last month held its summer fair in a small park immediately in front of the spot where the penniless Strummer had honed his craft. Duke Vin, the first reggae sound-system operator to set up in Britain and a resident of the area, gave an airing to some old records from the Seventies. Strummer had been a fan and a regular member of Duke Vin audience.
In the sunshine, at a stall decorated with pictures of The Clash front man, local children sat and designed their own multicoloured flags to be displayed at the forthcoming exhibition. The flags are a reference to Strummer's internationalist outlook and to the fact that his campfire at the Glastonbury festival was always surrounded by the banners of many nations. Visitors to the show will be given the opportunity to contribute to the event by creating their own Strummer-inspired flag designs.
McHarg says: "This exhibition shows that Joe Strummer's energy can still create waves in the present day, bringing together different communities in a spirit of friendship and action to create something special."
When Strummer left the 101ers and joined the musicians who would become The Clash, Yewdall continued to follow his progress for a while. He photographed Strummer, Jones and the bassist Paul Simonon at the famous August 1976 gig with The Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks at the Screen on the Green in Islington, north London. That show is now regarded as one of the most important events in the story of English punk. We know now that Strummer snipped out the music-press reviews of the concert and stuck them in his scrapbook.
Yewdall also pictured Joe backstage at the Royal College of Art in November 1976, wearing a jacket with the self-customised slogan "Passion is a Fashion". The expression is one of many phrases and idioms that recur in his writings.
Money from the exhibition will be donated to the Strummerville charity, which was set up after the musician's death to provide rehearsal space and studio time for young musicians.
The Strummer legend lives on. At this summer's Glastonbury, his former musical contemporaries Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, Glen Matlock of The Sex Pistols and the punk/reggae DJ Don Letts were among those performing on the Leftfield stage in a night dedicated to Strummerville. McHarg says: "Joe left a big hole. Everyone has to pitch in, because it is going to take a lot of us to fill that."
Joe Strummer Past, Present & Future, London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Road, London W10 (020-8969 3247), 4 to 18 September. The 25th anniversary edition of 'London Calling' is released on 20 September on Sony Columbia
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Dido live, mo'
Confessions of a feelgood singer
Dido live, Brixton Academy, London
By Richard Liston
20 August 2004
If Dido hadstood on stage at the Brixton Academy and not uttered a word, the packed crowd would still have loved it. It was unnerving to see such devotion. But that is the enigma of Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, the singer who shot to fame on the back of being sampled in Eminem's single "Stan", and whose records sell and sell, especially in the US. You either get it or you don't.
I fall in the latter category. To me, she's just an ordinary Jo with a quirky voice and heart-tugging songs. At the Brixton Academy, though, the penny dropped. Dido's popularity, which, to judge from the audience, is driven by a large, hard-core female base, is founded on her ability to write simple songs dealing with everyday emotions that most of us identify with.
Dressed in jeans and a red top, Dido was every bit the anonymous girl on the bus, and she gave a no-frills performance that dazzled with its simplicity. The lights were just right, the sound-checks all checked out, and the five musicians didn't hit a dud note all night. Initially, she appeared apprehensive, but, buoyed by the enthusiastic crowd, she gave her all in "Here with Me", from the No Angel album, which was swiftly followed by "See You When You're 40", a song she confessed was a direct attack on someone close to her.
The confessional was the theme for the night, and no sooner had Dido finished putting the boot into an old mate than she girlishly told the crowd how "Life for Rent", the title song of her second album, was the most personal she'd ever written. There were more heart-to-heart interludes about the downside of being single, about being in love, about being lonely, about jealousy, about doing drugs, about having sex for the first time... Phew! Enough, Dido.
Yet the pathos was delivered endearingly - an aural reality show that stopped before going all the way. After threatening to lose herself in melancholy (possibly taking her nickname too literally) Dido cheered up, smiled and let her hair down. The audience lapped it up, cheering, screaming and singing along with their energised heroine.
When there were more confessions, you just had to go with them, especially when they had the wit of "Mary's in India", a song about slipping off with your best friend's boyfriend while said best friend is away. Can Dido be that spiteful? "If this song were true," she laughed, "I'd be a total bitch, but you know I'm not." Mmm, I wonder.
Unsurprisingly, "Thank You" brought the biggest cheer of the night, and by this time the ever-eager crowd seemed to be having the best day of their lives, swept along on a wave of Dido Inc feelgood pop. All that was really missing was Eminem.
Her three-song encore started with the latest single, "Sand in my Shoes", and, yes, she confessed that it was inspired by a holiday romance that went wrong, continued with "White Flag", a "personal" take on unrequited love, and ended with "Do You Have a Little Time?", with just Dido on keyboards. It was, like the evening, simple but effective.
Dido tours to 28 August
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
Dido live, Brixton Academy, London
By Richard Liston
20 August 2004
If Dido hadstood on stage at the Brixton Academy and not uttered a word, the packed crowd would still have loved it. It was unnerving to see such devotion. But that is the enigma of Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, the singer who shot to fame on the back of being sampled in Eminem's single "Stan", and whose records sell and sell, especially in the US. You either get it or you don't.
I fall in the latter category. To me, she's just an ordinary Jo with a quirky voice and heart-tugging songs. At the Brixton Academy, though, the penny dropped. Dido's popularity, which, to judge from the audience, is driven by a large, hard-core female base, is founded on her ability to write simple songs dealing with everyday emotions that most of us identify with.
Dressed in jeans and a red top, Dido was every bit the anonymous girl on the bus, and she gave a no-frills performance that dazzled with its simplicity. The lights were just right, the sound-checks all checked out, and the five musicians didn't hit a dud note all night. Initially, she appeared apprehensive, but, buoyed by the enthusiastic crowd, she gave her all in "Here with Me", from the No Angel album, which was swiftly followed by "See You When You're 40", a song she confessed was a direct attack on someone close to her.
The confessional was the theme for the night, and no sooner had Dido finished putting the boot into an old mate than she girlishly told the crowd how "Life for Rent", the title song of her second album, was the most personal she'd ever written. There were more heart-to-heart interludes about the downside of being single, about being in love, about being lonely, about jealousy, about doing drugs, about having sex for the first time... Phew! Enough, Dido.
Yet the pathos was delivered endearingly - an aural reality show that stopped before going all the way. After threatening to lose herself in melancholy (possibly taking her nickname too literally) Dido cheered up, smiled and let her hair down. The audience lapped it up, cheering, screaming and singing along with their energised heroine.
When there were more confessions, you just had to go with them, especially when they had the wit of "Mary's in India", a song about slipping off with your best friend's boyfriend while said best friend is away. Can Dido be that spiteful? "If this song were true," she laughed, "I'd be a total bitch, but you know I'm not." Mmm, I wonder.
Unsurprisingly, "Thank You" brought the biggest cheer of the night, and by this time the ever-eager crowd seemed to be having the best day of their lives, swept along on a wave of Dido Inc feelgood pop. All that was really missing was Eminem.
Her three-song encore started with the latest single, "Sand in my Shoes", and, yes, she confessed that it was inspired by a holiday romance that went wrong, continued with "White Flag", a "personal" take on unrequited love, and ended with "Do You Have a Little Time?", with just Dido on keyboards. It was, like the evening, simple but effective.
Dido tours to 28 August
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
mercredi, août 18, 2004
For those about to rock...
Downloading was supposed to mean the end of live music. But the gig scene is booming, and the bands who cut it on stage are cleaning up
By Claire Allfree
Recently, tickets for the Swedish band The Hives at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, north London, sold out in less than 60 seconds - which is less time than it takes to listen to one of the band's snappy punk songs, which come in at about three minutes each. The band last released a record in February 2002 - the single "Hate To Say I Told You So", from their UK debut album, Your New Favourite Band, both released on the indie label Poptones. Their new single, "Walk Idiot Walk", had received very little by way of record-label promotion or radio airplay before the gig. The rush for tickets was almost entirely down to The Hives's grassroots reputation as a great live band.
The Hives's gig isn't in quite the same league as Justin Timberlake's Justified tour, which stopped at London's Earl's Court at the end of last year and sold 17,000 tickets in eight minutes (300,000 tickets within an hour), making it the Mean Fiddler Group's fastest-ever selling live gig. Nonetheless, their ticket-shifting success represents a change in the public's relationship with pop music. These days, if you are an aspiring rock'n'roll group, being able to put on a great live show is as important, if not more so, than being able to sell a stack of records. Increasingly, the public are voting for their favourite bands with their feet. More people than ever before are going to live gigs - according to a poll conducted by Mintel, of the 66 per cent of the population who saw some form of live entertainment last year, almost half (37 per cent) saw live music, while 14 per cent saw a piece of theatre and 11 per cent saw live comedy.
By comparison, the record industry's declining fortunes are a familiar modern tale of woe (although album sales in 2004 are showing signs of slowing the rot of recent years). Could the conclusion be any more clear? Finally, it seems we're tired of having here today, gone tomorrow, one-hit wonders thrown at us by record executives who wouldn't know their Sergeant Pepper from their Lieutenant Pigeon, and who prefer their talent to be raised in the hothouse environment of reality TV than fuelled by the desire to make it on their own.
We, on the other hand, want bands like The Darkness, who were famously rejected for years by record companies as they plugged away in pubs in Suffolk, and who typify a new swagger in rock music that goes hand in hand with being able to cut it live - and which hasn't been seen in the UK since the Britpop shenanigans of the mid-1990s. Punters eager to stand in a sticky, sweaty fug, drinking bad beer and queueing for crappy lavatories, generated an awesome £330m in ticket sales in 2003. For years, the record industry has presumed that the public wants its music clean, spoon-fed, heavily promoted - an assumption that has been thrown into stark relief by the reality of how we actually want it - rough, spontaneous and authentic.
Steve Parker, the managing editor of Audience, the insider trade magazine for the live music industry, is wary of making too much of the sudden boom in live music, though. "It's a cyclical thing that happens every 10 to 15 years," he argues. "Disco bought its own surge in the 1970s and the New Romantics boosted the live circuit in the 1980s. Then everyone went clubbing in the 1990s and live gigs suffered. Now, dance music is on the rocks and everyone is back into guitars again."
This is true, and yet there are differences between the 1970s, when bands such as Pink Floyd and Genesis made their money by touring relentlessly, only occasionally popping into the studio to record a album, and the music scene of today. The new breed of band - one of whose most high-profile examples is Franz Ferdinand, who started out by creating their own live scene in a warehouse in their native Glasgow - has always put its live act first. The unsigned sector, meanwhile, is booming. "These days, being unsigned is actually becoming a virtue, a brand to attract people," says Parker. "We've recently launched a new section just to cover the thousands of unsigned bands fighting to get slots in bars and clubs."
It's not just new bands, either. Thanks to the collapse of the generation gap, and pop music's curious ability to regenerate by revisiting the past, the appeal of live music extends right across the board, with some of the most spectacular ticket sales going to hoary rockers who have been around for decades. AC/DC sold 4,000 tickets in four minutes on the internet for a gig last October. The Rolling Stones, who pioneered the concept of the big stadium tour with their 1989 Steel Wheels spectacular, comfortably got shot of corporate tickets at £600 a pop for their sold-out Forty Licks tour last year. Only a few weekends ago, the Red Hot Chili Peppers sold a staggering 85,000 tickets for each of their three outdoor gigs at Hyde Park. Hilariously, this sudden popularity in artists taking to the road produced an unexpected casualty in the form of Missy Elliott, who, according to a press release, was forced to cancel her recent Wembley gig partly because of "the unusual number of artists currently touring Europe, [which means] there are not enough adequate buses for Missy and her touring entourage."
And all these touring artists are generating a huge amount of money, which raises significant questions about whether the record deals of the future will be brokered by the traditional record companies or by promoters. EMI's legendary £80m deal with Robbie Williams, for example, includes a share of revenues from live performance, touring and merchandising - a canny move, given Williams's reputation as a terrific live performer. Meanwhile, Bob Angus, the head of Metropolis Music, one of the country's biggest concert promoters, points out that, while bands used to sell tickets on the back of albums, these days it is increasingly the other way round.
What is particularly striking about this sudden explosion of live music, however, is that it simply wasn't supposed to be like this. Predicted cultural trends for the way we were supposed to be living in the 21st century emphasised emotional and cultural detachment, thanks to the increasing encroachment of TV and the internet on our lives. And yes, thanks to the internet, the language of music is now dominated by the vocabulary of downloading, file-sharing, MP3 and the iPod. All these things have the effect of dissociating music, be it in the form of singles or random album tracks, from the identity of the band that made it in the first place, swapping the physical commodity of the CD, complete with artwork, for the virtual, anonymous world of the web.
And yet here we are - the British, of all people - positively embracing the sweaty, physical intimacy of the live concert, the sheer unrecordable reality of it all. Brands such as Carling, which now sponsors eight Academies across the country, have seized on this, in effect attempting, by way of association, to turn the gig into the aural equivalent of a football match. And we are loving it. The band who recently described their album as the menu and their concert as the meal couldn't, it seems, have been more spot on.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
By Claire Allfree
Recently, tickets for the Swedish band The Hives at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, north London, sold out in less than 60 seconds - which is less time than it takes to listen to one of the band's snappy punk songs, which come in at about three minutes each. The band last released a record in February 2002 - the single "Hate To Say I Told You So", from their UK debut album, Your New Favourite Band, both released on the indie label Poptones. Their new single, "Walk Idiot Walk", had received very little by way of record-label promotion or radio airplay before the gig. The rush for tickets was almost entirely down to The Hives's grassroots reputation as a great live band.
The Hives's gig isn't in quite the same league as Justin Timberlake's Justified tour, which stopped at London's Earl's Court at the end of last year and sold 17,000 tickets in eight minutes (300,000 tickets within an hour), making it the Mean Fiddler Group's fastest-ever selling live gig. Nonetheless, their ticket-shifting success represents a change in the public's relationship with pop music. These days, if you are an aspiring rock'n'roll group, being able to put on a great live show is as important, if not more so, than being able to sell a stack of records. Increasingly, the public are voting for their favourite bands with their feet. More people than ever before are going to live gigs - according to a poll conducted by Mintel, of the 66 per cent of the population who saw some form of live entertainment last year, almost half (37 per cent) saw live music, while 14 per cent saw a piece of theatre and 11 per cent saw live comedy.
By comparison, the record industry's declining fortunes are a familiar modern tale of woe (although album sales in 2004 are showing signs of slowing the rot of recent years). Could the conclusion be any more clear? Finally, it seems we're tired of having here today, gone tomorrow, one-hit wonders thrown at us by record executives who wouldn't know their Sergeant Pepper from their Lieutenant Pigeon, and who prefer their talent to be raised in the hothouse environment of reality TV than fuelled by the desire to make it on their own.
We, on the other hand, want bands like The Darkness, who were famously rejected for years by record companies as they plugged away in pubs in Suffolk, and who typify a new swagger in rock music that goes hand in hand with being able to cut it live - and which hasn't been seen in the UK since the Britpop shenanigans of the mid-1990s. Punters eager to stand in a sticky, sweaty fug, drinking bad beer and queueing for crappy lavatories, generated an awesome £330m in ticket sales in 2003. For years, the record industry has presumed that the public wants its music clean, spoon-fed, heavily promoted - an assumption that has been thrown into stark relief by the reality of how we actually want it - rough, spontaneous and authentic.
Steve Parker, the managing editor of Audience, the insider trade magazine for the live music industry, is wary of making too much of the sudden boom in live music, though. "It's a cyclical thing that happens every 10 to 15 years," he argues. "Disco bought its own surge in the 1970s and the New Romantics boosted the live circuit in the 1980s. Then everyone went clubbing in the 1990s and live gigs suffered. Now, dance music is on the rocks and everyone is back into guitars again."
This is true, and yet there are differences between the 1970s, when bands such as Pink Floyd and Genesis made their money by touring relentlessly, only occasionally popping into the studio to record a album, and the music scene of today. The new breed of band - one of whose most high-profile examples is Franz Ferdinand, who started out by creating their own live scene in a warehouse in their native Glasgow - has always put its live act first. The unsigned sector, meanwhile, is booming. "These days, being unsigned is actually becoming a virtue, a brand to attract people," says Parker. "We've recently launched a new section just to cover the thousands of unsigned bands fighting to get slots in bars and clubs."
It's not just new bands, either. Thanks to the collapse of the generation gap, and pop music's curious ability to regenerate by revisiting the past, the appeal of live music extends right across the board, with some of the most spectacular ticket sales going to hoary rockers who have been around for decades. AC/DC sold 4,000 tickets in four minutes on the internet for a gig last October. The Rolling Stones, who pioneered the concept of the big stadium tour with their 1989 Steel Wheels spectacular, comfortably got shot of corporate tickets at £600 a pop for their sold-out Forty Licks tour last year. Only a few weekends ago, the Red Hot Chili Peppers sold a staggering 85,000 tickets for each of their three outdoor gigs at Hyde Park. Hilariously, this sudden popularity in artists taking to the road produced an unexpected casualty in the form of Missy Elliott, who, according to a press release, was forced to cancel her recent Wembley gig partly because of "the unusual number of artists currently touring Europe, [which means] there are not enough adequate buses for Missy and her touring entourage."
And all these touring artists are generating a huge amount of money, which raises significant questions about whether the record deals of the future will be brokered by the traditional record companies or by promoters. EMI's legendary £80m deal with Robbie Williams, for example, includes a share of revenues from live performance, touring and merchandising - a canny move, given Williams's reputation as a terrific live performer. Meanwhile, Bob Angus, the head of Metropolis Music, one of the country's biggest concert promoters, points out that, while bands used to sell tickets on the back of albums, these days it is increasingly the other way round.
What is particularly striking about this sudden explosion of live music, however, is that it simply wasn't supposed to be like this. Predicted cultural trends for the way we were supposed to be living in the 21st century emphasised emotional and cultural detachment, thanks to the increasing encroachment of TV and the internet on our lives. And yes, thanks to the internet, the language of music is now dominated by the vocabulary of downloading, file-sharing, MP3 and the iPod. All these things have the effect of dissociating music, be it in the form of singles or random album tracks, from the identity of the band that made it in the first place, swapping the physical commodity of the CD, complete with artwork, for the virtual, anonymous world of the web.
And yet here we are - the British, of all people - positively embracing the sweaty, physical intimacy of the live concert, the sheer unrecordable reality of it all. Brands such as Carling, which now sponsors eight Academies across the country, have seized on this, in effect attempting, by way of association, to turn the gig into the aural equivalent of a football match. And we are loving it. The band who recently described their album as the menu and their concert as the meal couldn't, it seems, have been more spot on.
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
mardi, août 17, 2004
Iggy Rock...
Pop, Strokes Rock Garage
New York City fest offers old and new
BRIAN ORLOFF
Thousands of music fans of all ages and hair colors assembled Saturday on New York City's Randall's Island to celebrate rock & roll with one of its biggest cheerleaders: Steven Van Zant. Van Zant -- known as Little Steven when he plays with Bruce Springsteen -- created the satellite radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage two years ago, and his Underground Garage Festival was the embodiment of his fandom.
Hosted by Van Zant himself, the all-day concert (tickets were only $20) featured more than ten hours of music, celebrity guests and go-go dancing. And that was just onstage.
Concert-goers milled about Randall's Island which, thanks to dreary, wet weather, was more like a mud flat, soaking up the day's party-hearty atmosphere and catching sets by diverse, old-time acts like the Electric Prunes, bluesy legend Bo Diddley and the Pete Best Band. And while the theme of the afternoon was definitely celebratory, the concert was a real nostalgia trip.
Bruce Springsteen, clad in black wrap-around shades, introduced the Chesterfield Kings, a band often credited with re-energizing the garage-rock movement in the Eighties. The band zipped along through its ten-minute set and then cleared the stage. Early acts only performed two or three songs. Considering the high volume of performers, the show ran smoothly and bands transitioned with few delays resulting in a fast-paced and egalitarian show.
Mid-afternoon, Van Zant -- sporting a leopard-print bandana and a flowing purple shirt, unbuttoned halfway, of course -- took the stage to introduce some acts and to try to explain the garage-rock phenomenon. "People are always asking how you define 'garage,' and it's impossible," he said. "But that doesn't stop me from trying . . . Our garage world is very inclusive."
While the majority of the acts hailed from garage's Sixties heyday, younger groups like the Mooney Suzuki performed with a bristling velocity. Lead singer Sammy James, Jr. -- donning purple pants and a pink sash -- howled and stomped through "Primitive Condition," a song off the band's forthcoming album Alive and Amplified.
And while fluorescent-wig-wearing go-go dancers shimmied on platforms behind the band, the concert got its first needed dose of female energy with Detroit's the Paybacks, fronted by the scabrous-voiced, six-feet-tall Wendy Case, who wailed through a short set.
Nancy Sinatra was another prominent female on the bill. To some, her pop stylings might have seemed out of place. Van Zant explained in his introduction: "Attitudes add up to what garage has become . . . and in the Sixties there were two kinds of women. There were the independent and strong women . . . and on the other side there were sexy women. This is the first woman who combined both things."
Sinatra wasted no time dazzling the crowd, belting out favorites like "Lightning's Girl." Her band included a full brass section and Blondie drummer Clem Burke. Sinatra unveiled material from her self-titled album due in September, including the Morrissey-penned first single "Let Me Kiss You." Of course, Sinatra delivered the hit that all fans eagerly awaited, closing her seven-song set with the highly influential "These Boots Were Made for Walkin.'" Sinatra's commanding delivery was complimented by her brassy orchestrations. "It's great . . . every generation loves that song," she said backstage. "It has a life of its own, and I just sort of go along with it."
The concert was recorded on high-definition video and projected on five thinly paneled screens from the stage; and director Chris Columbus was documenting the festival. Camera crews also captured the audience and the gloomy weather conditions which, by mid-day, threatened to close down the show. In order to compensate, bands were asked to cut short their sets.
Danish duo the Raveonettes, comprising Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner, were affected by the weather. The two brought along backup players to flesh-out their glamorous sound but were only able to display their sweet harmonies on two songs.
The rain went away for an energetic set from the New York Dolls, dedicated to recently deceased bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane. Frontman David Johansen was his loveable feline self, decked out in a splashy, midriff-exposing hot-pink T-shirt. Johansen wailed away on harmonica and unveiled chestnuts like the set-opening "Looking for a Kiss" and rollicking closer "Personality Crisis," which he snarled with a punky force. Guitarist Sylvain Sylvain was the only other surviving original member who performed with the re-formed group.
New York City denizens the Strokes played next with a spirited nine-song set that found the group uncharacteristically enthused. Singer Julian Casablancas jumped into the crowd early on and addressed the audience in rambling but charming short declarations. But the band sounded tight performing songs from its latest album Room On Fire, including "I Can't Win" and the new single "Reptilia."
Crowd members withstood a constant drizzle, braving threats of severe weather from Hurricane Charley, to catch a festival-closing performance by garage-rock icon Iggy Pop and his band the Stooges.
And while it rained on and off, it was Pop who was the real hurricane: a feckless fusion of grit and sexuality. Dressed in skin-tight jeans, the shirtless Pop bounded onstage, launching immediately into a double whammy of "Loose" and "Down on the Street" from the hallmark 1970 album Fun House. He jumped on a pile of amplifiers, and gyrated and preened through a breathless set. The Stooges delivered a fierce pummeling on hits like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," matching Pop's energy, an energy that encapsulates the essence of rock & roll by any name.
New York City fest offers old and new
BRIAN ORLOFF
Thousands of music fans of all ages and hair colors assembled Saturday on New York City's Randall's Island to celebrate rock & roll with one of its biggest cheerleaders: Steven Van Zant. Van Zant -- known as Little Steven when he plays with Bruce Springsteen -- created the satellite radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage two years ago, and his Underground Garage Festival was the embodiment of his fandom.
Hosted by Van Zant himself, the all-day concert (tickets were only $20) featured more than ten hours of music, celebrity guests and go-go dancing. And that was just onstage.
Concert-goers milled about Randall's Island which, thanks to dreary, wet weather, was more like a mud flat, soaking up the day's party-hearty atmosphere and catching sets by diverse, old-time acts like the Electric Prunes, bluesy legend Bo Diddley and the Pete Best Band. And while the theme of the afternoon was definitely celebratory, the concert was a real nostalgia trip.
Bruce Springsteen, clad in black wrap-around shades, introduced the Chesterfield Kings, a band often credited with re-energizing the garage-rock movement in the Eighties. The band zipped along through its ten-minute set and then cleared the stage. Early acts only performed two or three songs. Considering the high volume of performers, the show ran smoothly and bands transitioned with few delays resulting in a fast-paced and egalitarian show.
Mid-afternoon, Van Zant -- sporting a leopard-print bandana and a flowing purple shirt, unbuttoned halfway, of course -- took the stage to introduce some acts and to try to explain the garage-rock phenomenon. "People are always asking how you define 'garage,' and it's impossible," he said. "But that doesn't stop me from trying . . . Our garage world is very inclusive."
While the majority of the acts hailed from garage's Sixties heyday, younger groups like the Mooney Suzuki performed with a bristling velocity. Lead singer Sammy James, Jr. -- donning purple pants and a pink sash -- howled and stomped through "Primitive Condition," a song off the band's forthcoming album Alive and Amplified.
And while fluorescent-wig-wearing go-go dancers shimmied on platforms behind the band, the concert got its first needed dose of female energy with Detroit's the Paybacks, fronted by the scabrous-voiced, six-feet-tall Wendy Case, who wailed through a short set.
Nancy Sinatra was another prominent female on the bill. To some, her pop stylings might have seemed out of place. Van Zant explained in his introduction: "Attitudes add up to what garage has become . . . and in the Sixties there were two kinds of women. There were the independent and strong women . . . and on the other side there were sexy women. This is the first woman who combined both things."
Sinatra wasted no time dazzling the crowd, belting out favorites like "Lightning's Girl." Her band included a full brass section and Blondie drummer Clem Burke. Sinatra unveiled material from her self-titled album due in September, including the Morrissey-penned first single "Let Me Kiss You." Of course, Sinatra delivered the hit that all fans eagerly awaited, closing her seven-song set with the highly influential "These Boots Were Made for Walkin.'" Sinatra's commanding delivery was complimented by her brassy orchestrations. "It's great . . . every generation loves that song," she said backstage. "It has a life of its own, and I just sort of go along with it."
The concert was recorded on high-definition video and projected on five thinly paneled screens from the stage; and director Chris Columbus was documenting the festival. Camera crews also captured the audience and the gloomy weather conditions which, by mid-day, threatened to close down the show. In order to compensate, bands were asked to cut short their sets.
Danish duo the Raveonettes, comprising Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner, were affected by the weather. The two brought along backup players to flesh-out their glamorous sound but were only able to display their sweet harmonies on two songs.
The rain went away for an energetic set from the New York Dolls, dedicated to recently deceased bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane. Frontman David Johansen was his loveable feline self, decked out in a splashy, midriff-exposing hot-pink T-shirt. Johansen wailed away on harmonica and unveiled chestnuts like the set-opening "Looking for a Kiss" and rollicking closer "Personality Crisis," which he snarled with a punky force. Guitarist Sylvain Sylvain was the only other surviving original member who performed with the re-formed group.
New York City denizens the Strokes played next with a spirited nine-song set that found the group uncharacteristically enthused. Singer Julian Casablancas jumped into the crowd early on and addressed the audience in rambling but charming short declarations. But the band sounded tight performing songs from its latest album Room On Fire, including "I Can't Win" and the new single "Reptilia."
Crowd members withstood a constant drizzle, braving threats of severe weather from Hurricane Charley, to catch a festival-closing performance by garage-rock icon Iggy Pop and his band the Stooges.
And while it rained on and off, it was Pop who was the real hurricane: a feckless fusion of grit and sexuality. Dressed in skin-tight jeans, the shirtless Pop bounded onstage, launching immediately into a double whammy of "Loose" and "Down on the Street" from the hallmark 1970 album Fun House. He jumped on a pile of amplifiers, and gyrated and preened through a breathless set. The Stooges delivered a fierce pummeling on hits like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," matching Pop's energy, an energy that encapsulates the essence of rock & roll by any name.
lundi, août 16, 2004
Dido live
Dido. Apollo, Manchester
David Peschek
Monday August 16, 2004. The Guardian
When Dido appears, she is virtually the mirror image of the women who have come to see her. Even now, 21m albums down the line, Dido still looks like she has just walked out of Top Shop. That's a surprise, because opener Stoned begins with such portent that for a second it seems she might emerge, Spinal Tap-style, from a huge fibreglass cocoon.
Perhaps there is an alternative emotional Richter scale on which these vaguely melancholy songs register as violent catharsis. Mostly they replicate a mid-paced shuffle, a post-everything melange of dance and world genres. Larded with ethnic percussion, they often seem as disconnected from the matter of the songs as Dido's vocal delivery. Her range is extremely limited: she can do breathy and she can do braying - horribly reminiscent of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. She finds it odd, she says, that Don't Leave Home has been used as a wedding song when it's actually "about addiction". But how could anyone tell?
This curious dislocation reaches a nadir in My Life. Singing "I'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself any more," she struts lazily around the stage, clapping her hands above her head and smiling blankly as the band brew up a percussive crescendo behind her for no obvious purpose other, than, perhaps, exercise.
Strange to see such detachment greeted with such fervour. Blankness so extreme, however, craves the projections of an audience, and the most moving moment tonight was when the crowd sang Thank You back at her. Dido can sing with subtlety, as she proves on Life for Rent, and she has one ace up her sleeve: the melodramatic and affecting White Flag. There's a sense, however, that even she doesn't know when she is actually good.
· At Brixton Academy, London SW9, from Tuesday to Thursday. Box office: 0870 771 2000.
David Peschek
Monday August 16, 2004. The Guardian
When Dido appears, she is virtually the mirror image of the women who have come to see her. Even now, 21m albums down the line, Dido still looks like she has just walked out of Top Shop. That's a surprise, because opener Stoned begins with such portent that for a second it seems she might emerge, Spinal Tap-style, from a huge fibreglass cocoon.
Perhaps there is an alternative emotional Richter scale on which these vaguely melancholy songs register as violent catharsis. Mostly they replicate a mid-paced shuffle, a post-everything melange of dance and world genres. Larded with ethnic percussion, they often seem as disconnected from the matter of the songs as Dido's vocal delivery. Her range is extremely limited: she can do breathy and she can do braying - horribly reminiscent of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. She finds it odd, she says, that Don't Leave Home has been used as a wedding song when it's actually "about addiction". But how could anyone tell?
This curious dislocation reaches a nadir in My Life. Singing "I'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself any more," she struts lazily around the stage, clapping her hands above her head and smiling blankly as the band brew up a percussive crescendo behind her for no obvious purpose other, than, perhaps, exercise.
Strange to see such detachment greeted with such fervour. Blankness so extreme, however, craves the projections of an audience, and the most moving moment tonight was when the crowd sang Thank You back at her. Dido can sing with subtlety, as she proves on Life for Rent, and she has one ace up her sleeve: the melodramatic and affecting White Flag. There's a sense, however, that even she doesn't know when she is actually good.
· At Brixton Academy, London SW9, from Tuesday to Thursday. Box office: 0870 771 2000.
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