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Somewhere across town this evening cheeky, chirpy Irish chappie Ronan Keating is getting ready to entertain a no doubt packed NIA with his tales of life being a bit like a rollercoaster. Actually I reckon (WARNING: Cheesy link ahead) life’s a bit more like tonight’s openers, who didn’t actually bother to announce who they were (I later discovered they were called Glasser). |
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The Interweb. You really have to be all over it (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Asbo, Hobo, GoGo blah blah blah) if you’re in a band these days don’t you? Well, you don’t have to be, but I can’t think of any band that’s deliberately (I presume it’s deliberate...either that or they can’t be arsed...which isn’t half as exciting) shunned the world wide web...until now that is. Meet Islet. Billed as a ‘No Wave’ group from Cardiff they seemingly don’t want to be part of the wwworld as we know it. Can’t blame ‘em really. A couple of chaps have set up a Islet fan site for them but that’s as much as you’re going to get... for now. |
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Isn’t it Summer yet? You know I really don’t mind a bit of Winter...log fires, hot toddys, newsreaders wetting themselves with excitement at all the chaos that a list dusting of snow seems to cause...but this one seems to be going on foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever. Enough I say. I’m taking a leaf out of that nice Mr Billy Bragg’s book and holding back my taxes until the Government puts a cap on minimum temperatures (not that I really pay taxes at the moment...being only semi-employed and all that). Perhaps our lovely PM, ‘Basher’ Brown, could bully the weather into getting warmer in between giving that Cameron fellow a well deserved ‘wedgie’? |
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If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to warm the cockles (and other body parts for that matter) on a cold, cold February evening it’s some quality electro pop...and it doesn’t get much better than Hot Chip. Creators of some of the catchiest electro classics of the past few years (step forward ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Ready for the Floor’) 2010 sees them celebrate their tenth anniversary (good grief... tempus fugit) with the release of their rather fine new album ‘One Life Stand’. |
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On the 40th anniversary of the original release of Black Sabbath’s debut album it’s a joy to find myself in a room above a pub in the centre of Birmingham just up the road from the site of the (not) infamous (enough) Henry’s Blues House. For 40 or so years ago, in a room not dissimilar to the one in which promoters The Sound of Confusion host monthly psychedelic gatherings, they key players in Sabbath, Zeppelin and Priest would be propping up the bar in a room above the Crown enjoying legendary acts of the time such as Dr Ross Harmonica Boss and Jimmy Fast Fingers Dawkins. |
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Shockwaves. Yeah. Hair gel! Yeah. Rock n’roll! Corporate whoring. Whoop! Yeah! I shouldn’t mock, after all music and sponsorship go back a long way but nowadays it’s just that little bit more IN YOUR FACE! I’m only jealous, I’ve never had the kind of hair that could be teased into silly shapes, although I do now sport a ridiculous moustache that benefits from a great wodge of hair wax to keep it under control (otherwise it runs riot you know...getting drunk...drawing on toilet walls...shouting abuse at Traffic Wardens...shocking...or SHOCKWAVING...eh? Eh? EHH? See, I’m getting the hang of this corporate sponsorship thingy now. I’ll expect 12 cases of hair gel by the morning). |
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Bonjour! Comment allez vous? Voici le...er...what’s review in French? Oh bugger. What’s that? Tonight’s headliners aren’t from France at all? Sacre bleu! I daresay the first band aren’t made from silver either. Kids today eh? Actually I didn’t get a chance to see what they were made of as they were replaced by Barnesy (perhaps someone had posted them all off to be melted down by one of those dodgy companies that offers cash for your ‘unwanted’ gold...‘postaltwat.net’ or ‘shouldibendoverwhileyou’reatitt.com...you know the sort of thing). |
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Is this really a sign of the times? It's early 2010 and Feeder is headlining Birmingham's O2 Academy 3, a venue with a maximum capacity of 250! Surely it wasn't that long ago when they were playing the main stages at some of the country's most prestigious festivals: Glastonbury, Download, Reading and Leeds as well as headlining their own much larger international tours. Perhaps this is a good indication of the life span of the modern music band? One minute you feature heavily on Radio 1's playlist, riding the crest of a wave, as it were. Then the next, you're scrabbling along trying to get back to those glory days when your brand new Jaguar had a CD player (player, player, player…) and you drank cider from a lemon (lemon, lemon, lemon…). |
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Crossing genres, cultures and generations The Imagined Village really shouldn’t work (the basic idea is to take a bunch of traditional folk tunes and reinterpret them for 21st century Britain). In fact it should come across as some awful mish mash of sounds, like two competing car radios (one playing Radio 4, the other 1 Extra) at a set of traffic lights. The fact that it does work says a great deal about the musical talents at the core of this project and the openness of everyone involved to really mess around with what ‘folk’ music means these days. In truth, although the first Imagined Village album (released in 2007) won ‘folk’ awards, this stuff is closer to ‘world’ music than anything else, given the strong Asian and Middle Eastern flavours running through some of the arrangements. Anyway, that’s the musical analysis over with (there’ll be questions at the end). |
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A number of things very quickly become apparent at a Jamie T gig. Firstly, he's got a loyal, passionate urban youth following, all of whom seem to know every word to every song. rust me that's a lot of lyrics. Led by their onstage conductor, they sing along with gay abandon, and shout, whoop and holler at all of the key points. LLOOOONNNDDDOOOONNN!! |
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