FEATURE: All Hail the PopMaster: The Iconic Ken Bruce at Seventy

FEATURE:

 

 

All Hail the PopMaster

PHOTO CREDIT: BBC 

The Iconic Ken Bruce at Seventy

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I have written about Ken Bruce before…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Ken Bruce with the late great Sir Terry Wogan

but, upon discovering he is seventy on Tuesday (2nd February), I wanted to salute a radio icon. I will bring in some Wikipedia before I get to me diving into the legendary PopMaster quiz. Make sure you tune into Bruce’s weekday BBC Radio 2 show from 09:30. I am not sure whether the station are planning anything big on Tuesday to mark Ken Bruce’s seventieth but, having been at the station for so long, there will be a wave of love for him! Here is some history one of the greatest broadcaster who has ever lived:

“Kenneth Robertson Bruce (born 2 February 1951) is a Scottish broadcaster who is best known for hosting his long-running weekday mid-morning show on BBC Radio 2 since 1986.

Bruce was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland. He attended Hutchesons' Boys' Grammar School, Glasgow, before training as a chartered accountant, Bruce's first job was washing cars. He began his broadcasting career with the Hospital Broadcasting Service in Glasgow.

Bruce became a staff announcer for BBC Radio 4 Scotland and after BBC Radio Scotland launched in November 1978, became one of the original presenters of Nightbeat alongside Iain Purdon. Charles Nove subsequently joined the presentation rota. He also presented a Saturday morning show.

In 1980, he took on the mid-morning slot and then, in 1983, he presented a daily afternoon entertainment show. He hosted his mid-morning show on the BBC World Service in the late 1980s.

 In January 1985, Bruce replaced Terry Wogan on the breakfast programme, being replaced himself by Derek Jameson in April 1986. Following Wogan's death in 2016, his tenure of the show became the oldest for a presenter still living. He then began his first stint on the mid-morning show which lasted until the end of March 1990, when he took over the late show until the end of that year. He then hosted the early show throughout 1991, and on 6 January 1992 he returned to the mid-morning slot,[4] where he remains today. As of 14 January 2019, Bruce follows Zoe Ball at 9:30 am and is followed by Jeremy Vine at 12 noon. On Thursday 1 August 2019 it was announced that his show had become the most popular radio programme in the UK, with 8.49m daily listeners, following a fall in the popularity of Zoe Ball's breakfast show”.

Go and buy the PopMaster book if you are a music fan and want a good quiz. Not to discount the rest of Ken Bruce’s illustrious career and great radio work, but I don’t feel that he would mind! Every weekday morning, millions stop what they are doing to tune into the national institution that is PopMaster (you can check out episodes on the podcast). If you do not know about the long-running quiz, then here is some more detail:

“PopMaster has run as a feature of Bruce's show since 16 February 1998. With questions set by music expert Phil Swern, it offers a DAB radio for successfully completing the 3 in 10 bonus round. If the listener fails, they are awarded a Bluetooth speaker (replacing the previous consolation prize of an mp3 player). An earlier consolation prize, a 'Space' radio, has been known to appear on eBay, to Bruce's amusement. The losing contestant is given a T-shirt with 'One Year Out' printed across the front (a catchphrase Bruce uses in the quiz when a contestant trying to place the year a song was in the charts is out by one year). This 'prize' replaced a CD wallet as of 27 February 2012.

 The public phone-in PopMaster quiz was suspended after airing on 18 July 2007. A celebrity version was quickly introduced on 20 July 2007, and continued until 18 January 2008. "3 in 10" was not played in the celebrity version and there was no tie-breaker in the event of a draw. It was rumoured that members of the public would be able to play again before Christmas 2007, however this did not happen. Following an announcement by Bruce on 7 January 2008, the normal format returned on 21 January 2008. The game returned with new dramatic, orchestral and guitar based jingles”.

I love Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show, and I think that PopMaster is merely the jewel in the weighty crown! He is so warm and funny that one cannot help but be charmed and in awe of the Scottish icon. I hope that he remains at the station for many more years to come - as there is such a huge amount of affection for him. I am going to finish off with a recent bit of news regarding Bruce supporting the charity, Autistica:

“We are thrilled to announce that BBC Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce is supporting our Radio 4 appeal this month. Listen out to hear Ken's story and reasons for supporting Autistica.

PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

Ken's son Murray is eighteen, he was diagnosed with autism aged three. Ken is keen to help others understand the unique contribution that people like his son can make to society with the right support. By presenting our appeal, he hopes that Radio 4 listeners can make more of a difference to every autistic person by supporting research.

"A gift of £30 would involve a family like mine in a research trial to test a new anxiety therapy to address fears of uncertainty. This research could lead to a new NHS service ensuring autistic people have access to better therapies and ultimately saving lives. Murray has proved to me that we should never limit our expectations of autistic people”. Ken Bruce”.

Ahead of his seventieth birthday on Tuesday, I wanted to do a small nod to a man who means so much to so many people (me included). His incredible show is a lifeline to many and, for serious music lovers, pitting out wits against PopMaster is an absolute weekday must! Ken Bruce is a legend of the airwaves who brings joy to millions. Let us all hope that he is in our radio lives…

FOR so many years more!

FEATURE: Bittersweet Symphony: Heading Back to the Nineties

FEATURE:

 

 

Bittersweet Symphony

Heading Back to the Nineties

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I am going to bring in a couple of…

playlists that celebrate the best of the 1990s. This is not related to anything but, as most of the current music news is quite down and dark, I thought I would throw a nostalgic glance back to the 1990s. I cover the decade quite a bit when it comes to assessing albums and highlighting great songs - but I think that the entire decade as a whole is one that has brought my huge nourishment and positivity at a very tough time. There is a downside to the nostalgia and realising that, alas, we cannot all go back to the ‘90s and live there is a safer bubble than we have at the moment! Although today’s music is amazing and varied, I think there is something inherently uplifting and exciting about the 1990s. Fearne Cotton hosts a Sounds of the 90s show that brings together some of the best of the decade. Whilst most of the songs are Pop, there is a variety where we get to reveal in the warm glow and brilliance of the decade. I think, if one wants to feel happier and get some energy back, you can search for various 1990s-themed playlists on streaming sites. Rather than it being purely escapist and a way of hiding from the situation we are all in, I have been remembering just how broad the ‘90s was.

I think most people associate the time with Pop and movements like Grunge. Apart from the known hits and big songs of the 1990s, there are some overlooked gems that you need to check out. I think that Pop music today is vastly different to what it was like in the 1990s. I feel modem Pop is less reliant on big choruses and energy; it is more complex and layered. I think modern Pop is great, but there is something wonderfully spirited and timeless about the Pop songs of the ‘90s. Aside from Grunge ruling up to about 1994, there was the might and rivalry that came with Britpop. In Britain, we had great Rock bands like Elastica and Sleeper; there were legendary bands in America like The Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer. It is almost impossible to get on tip of all the different scenes and movements that formed and grew throughout the 1990s. Hip-Hop started its dominance in the 1980s, but it was still a massive force in the 1990s with bands like Beastie Boys and Public Enemy releasing sensational, world-beating albums. I think there were so many different configurations and aspects to 1990s’ music. I want to quote from a udiscovermusic. article from 2019, where they discuss various notable highlights of the decade:

“Most female-fronted rock bands didn’t chart as well, but they did deal in a cultural currency that produced a vibrant feminist-rock scene. Hole drew attention to Love’s contemporaries, including Bikini Kill, Babes In Toyland, Bratmobile and, later, Sleater-Kinney. Then there was L7. All flying-V riffs, head-banging hair, and “screw you” lyrics, L7 (along with Mudhoney) helped pioneer grunge before grunge broke. And after it did, the group’s 1992 album, Bricks Are Heavy, won acclaim for skilfully toeing the line between the grunge, alternative and riot grrrl worlds.

Towards the decade’s end, a rise of feminism (and female spending power) in 90s music would trickle up the pop charts. This led to an explosion of multi-platinum singer-songwriters: Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Lisa Loeb, Paula Cole, Fiona Apple, Jewel and the lone woman of colour, Tracy Chapman. All of the above (less Morissette) also appeared on the inaugural Lilith Fair tour, McLachlan’s answer to Lollapalooza. It became the best-selling touring festival of 1997.

Meanwhile, the louder alt.rock scene assumed the space left by heavy metal. Industrial music’s Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, rap-rock’s Rage Against the Machine and Faith No More, the funk-centric Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus, as well as the transcendent rock of The Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction – all capitalised on the new thirst for angst. In this new environment, even a reissue of ‘Mother’, by the dystopian goth-metal beast Glenn Danzig, became a hit. Perry Farrell, Jane’s Addiction’s eccentric frontman, became a nexus for this phenomenon in 90s music when he created the then-quixotic Lollapalooza festival (its name a Webster dictionary deep cut meaning “extraordinarily impressive”) in the auspicious year of 1991.

After a decade of jock-versus-nerd narratives, being weird became cool, with grunge’s influence permeating into the aesthetics of fashion. Movies such as Cameron Crowe’s Seattle-centric Singles, Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites and Allan Moyle’s Empire Records jumped on board to celebrate the virtues of outsiders.

But Billboard’s new accounting actually had its greatest impact on R&B and hip-hop, revealing the two genres’ growing relationship with one another. The 90s kicked off with New Jack Swing in full effect, its most effective purveyors being Bell Biv DeVoe, Al B Sure, Keith Sweat and Boys II Men. As New Jack Swing waned, R&B embraced a soul-and-groove sound typified by Janet Jackson, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Usher, Toni Braxton and Mary J Blige.

But they had some competition. During the 90s, many rap acts were hitting not just the Hot 100 charts, but also Billboard’s R&B charts. This was helped by singers such as Lauryn Hill and TLC, who integrated hip-hop into their sounds. In particular, Mariah Carey’s 1995 collaboration with Ol’ Dirty Bastard on ‘Fantasy’ became a defining moment in this crossover period in 90s music.

Hip-hop had become so pervasive because it was so dynamic; its growth spurt precipitated an intriguing assortment of subgenres. Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill and OutKast were waxing intellectually on social issues. And Public Enemy got alternative music’s seal of approval with Chuck D’s cameo on Sonic Youth’s ‘Kool Thing’. Some rappers, such as Salt-N-Pepa, MC Hammer, Coolio, Will Smith and, later, Missy Elliot, focused on cutting anthemic jams primed for the pop charts. Others were grabbing the masses by the jugular”.

I would advise people to listen to an  NPR Music podcast, where we get a real insight into the highs and lows of the decade! I don’t think that everything released in the ‘90s was brilliant. There was some lame Pop and novelty hits that are best left where they were. Britpop sort of died out by 1997, and I think the most joyous time of the 1990s was between 1990-1995 – not to say it was all dark after that, but there was a notable change. Just look at polls from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and PASTE, and we get an insight into the sheer weight of brilliance and diversity that was present throughout the 1990s!

It is bittersweet being nostalgic about the ‘90s and realising that we cannot go back or escape there in any real way. That said, I think one can spend a few hours listening to the best music of the time without feeling too sad about its passing. There is such variegation and range, one can feel invigorated and comforted by so many wonderful sounds and artists. If you have resisted the Nineties or feel that other decades provide greater satisfaction, spend a bit of time immersed in all the great music that came through in the ‘90s. It is strange to think that the decade started thirty-one years! I was six when the 1990s began, and I can recall having my eyes and mind opened to a world of music that made such a huge impact! I think that, when it comes to modern-day influence, the 1990s can be heard widely. Pop artists today like Rina Sawayama and Dua Lipa have taken from various bits of the ‘90s for their most-recent albums. I can hear the decade a lot in Pop in general, but one need only to listen to a lot of the Hip-Hop and Rock music coming out to understand how important and influential the ‘90s is. It has been nice immersing my senses in the music of the best decade for music. It has given me a glow and a chance to revisit with childhood memories. That said, there is the slight pang of loss when the music stops; maybe remembering happy memories makes the stress of today seem a little more pronounced. Whilst too much nostalgia can be dangerous and a bad thing, I think that a pleasing dip into the calm waters of the 1990s can do a lot to…

 SOOTH the soul and lighten the load.

FEATURE: (Brief) Moments of Pleasure: Kate Bush on TikTok

FEATURE:

 

 

(Brief) Moments of Pleasure

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during a performance of Babooshka on the Dr. Hook television special 

Kate Bush on TikTok

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WHEN it comes to Kate Bush’s music…

 IMAGE CREDIT: TikTok

it is best enjoyed on its proper form: putting on a vinyl and letting it run from the beginning to the end. I know that vinyl sales are going up, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are buying Bush’s albums on vinyl more and playing them in full. I would like to think that is what is happening, though streaming services and the Internet means that people can get her songs in isolation and listen to snippets of them. I have heard of TikTok, but it is not a service that I use. In short (appropriately), TikTok is a video-sharing platform that is used to make a variety of short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education - the videos have a duration from three seconds to one minute. I am all for Bush’s music appearing as widely as possible – so that people can get hold of it and it reaches a larger audience. As you will see (from the videos I have included), there are people using Kate Bush songs in their short videos. Some would debate whether people hearing these songs leads to a discovery of her catalogue, but it is additional exposure (which is always good). NME investigates how a lot of younger listeners have found Bush’s work and are linking it to videos they have made:

“However, this is definitely not the case for every viral vintage tune. Take Kate Bush’s 1980 banger ‘Babooshka’, for example. 200,000 TikTok videos have featured the song in some form or other (including a trending cover for which actor and musician Tobee Paik adds metal guitar) and Twitter is flooded with Gen-Zers delighted at having discovered Kate’s discography. Even 18 Year-Old Tennessee-based TikTok fantatic Sydney Rose White (aka @rosebewhite on the app), whose video using the sound has accrued more than 344,000 likes, admits to NME that she had never “heard of her or listened to any of her stuff before”.

@itshannahowo

i leik my makeup today >:3 ##foryou

♬ Babooshka - Kate Bush

Kate Bush has quickly settled into her rightful place on so-called ‘WitchTok’, with ‘Babooshka’ soundtracking content about tarot cards, love potion making and gothic-inspired videos with dramatic outfit changes, not too dissimilar from her original music video. This is down to the success of TikTok’s personalised ‘For You’ page, which like any algorithm-driven success story reflects your own tastes back at you. Or, as TikTok’s Communications Lead Barney Hooper puts it to us, it’s “powered by a recommendation system that delivers content that is likely to be of interest to a particular user, based on a combination of factors”.

Naturally when this happens, the song’s popularity is quickly boosted by those desperate to prove that they listened to the track before it was TikTok approved. A quick search of “Kate Bush TikTok” on Twitter and you’re met with a wall of disgruntled fans fuming at the song’s revived mainstream popularity. They then take to TikTok to attempt to assert their superiority, and in turn only make it more viral.

Beyond the science of production, songs such as ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Starman’ were made in a time when music videos were a big deal. Songs were more likely to be written with a visual element in mind, making them far easier for TikTokkers to come up with trending concepts or use them to soundtrack scroll-stopping transitions. ‘The Leanover”s opening humming lends itself to an exaggerated satisfied smile as TikTokers lip-sync along to the track, casting themselves in the lead role of their own mini music videos”.

@illumiminaj

a concept: illumis natural hair is actually wavy/curly like his dads lol ##anime ##hxh ##illumi ##killua ##fyp ##hunterxhunter ##zoldyck ##foryou

♬ Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) - Kate Bush

Maybe using the same song for various videos can seem like overkill! Certainly, if you hear Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) on dozens of videos, then the impact can lessen! In an article from DAZED, we learn that sharing beloved songs can have a negative impact:

“In September, Idaho dad-of-two and skateboarder @420doggface208, aka Nathan Apodaca, drank cranberry juice while skateboarding on his morning commute to the soundtrack of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. The short clip became instant meme fodder, and got a nod from the band themselves. The song re-entered the charts for the first time and enjoyed an 88.7 per cent increase in streams. Fleetwood Mac’s frontwoman Stevie Nicks said she was ‘happy’ about the sudden second wind. Though they weren’t the bands original Gen X consumers, Millennial Mac lovers cling to the 00s indie archetype that this music taste once denoted and call them their own. Hypocriticial? Pot, Kettle? Who said that? Still, Millennial music fans were less than thrilled. “It was cool to like Fleetwood Mac until TikTok ruined it, like they do with every single thing they touch,” one exemplary tweet read.

Similar reactions followed with other major cultural reference points. Kate Bush – “not the kate bush reverb mixes on Tiktok. I truly cannot take it anymore.” Muse – “TikTok’s suddenly discovering muse. gen z this song is from TWO THOUSAND AND SIX”)”.

@mandaclody

##katebush ##houndsoflove ##1985

♬ Hounds Of Love - Kate Bush

In The Telegraph, they argued how artists like Kate Bush being added to TikTok is not a bad thing. If her catalogue is there, it means that more have access to it - and it hasn’t killed her albums or made them less valuable. I, personally, think that it good that Kate Bush’s music is on a new platform. It means that people who might not have discovered her will be adding her to their playlists and seeking out her music. There is nothing to say that people will just listen to Bush on streaming services and are not buying her albums. Even through her entire catalogue is not on TikTok, hearing various songs will get people invested and seeking out more of her stuff! There are a lot of fans who are a bit annoyed that these incredible tracks are either being used in videos that are a bit silly; Bush’s Babooshka seen as witch-like and strange casts in a very distinct and unfair light. Artists like David Bowie have been made available on TikTok, so that people can dip into his catalogue and use that music in their videos. There is an argument that modern music cannot breed innovative and risk-taking artists like Bush ands Bowie, as people are watching short videos and creating playlists – how often would a modern artist who is bold and experimental be popular on these formats? I do feel like we are seeing fewer artists who are true innovators and are making music that defies convention. Maybe that is a sign of the times in which we live. However, if young listeners ands artists get to hear Kate Bush’s music on sites like TikTok, maybe that will get them invested in her albums and, in turn, compel them to make music that pushes boundaries. On a personal level, I think Bush’s music enriches so many people. It is interesting to see how her work takes off on TikTok. I think we will see more and more songs and videos. It is a shame that there is not a link on TikTok to Bush’s albums so that one can hear a snippet of a song and then check out the album it is from. That is a minor quibble. I think that it is wonderful that people are discovering Kate Bush and getting these moments of pleasure , however brief…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

THEY may be.

FEATURE: Spotlight: The Lathums

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

The Lathums

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FORGIVE me if this is a bit scattershot…

but, when speaking about The Lathums, I want to bring in a few interviews that will jump information and chronology around. Some may say that the Wigan band are established and are not rising artists, but I think they are on the cusp of major success and are one of 2021’s bands to watch closely. I have been following their music for a while and feel they have the talent and originality to go a long way. They are sure to be festival headliners in a few years! Consisting of Alex Moore on vocals/rhythm guitar, Scott Concepcion on lead guitar, Johnny Cunliffe on bass guitar and Ryan Durrans on drums, they put out their E.P., Ghosts, on 31st October last year – appropriately in time so one could enjoy it on Hallowe’en. I love that E.P. and its opening track, I See Your Ghost, was one of my favourite from last year. I think that, rather than me keep it brief, I will take from a few interviews that provide us with some background and insight into one of the U.K.’s finest young bands. When they spoke with Far Out Magazine last year, we learned more about their background and a particular big break:

“Most college bands begin as an excuse for an extracurricular activity, one that usually leads to nowhere but only three years ago did The Lathums form and they’ve already played an arena show supporting Gerry Cinnamon and sold out thousands of tickets in their own right—but none of this feels overhyped. I fact, the band are exceedingly relaxed about the situation, confident that they’ve earned their position.

“We started with Lewis who was the first bassist in 2017,” drummer Ryan Durrans says about the group’s origin. “Then let’s say that he left, then we got another bassist in called Johnny, ‘Johnny One’ let’s call him and then he decided to not continue. Then we get bass man John in to fill the one and only spot to slap the bass. That was in like late 2018, we’d maybe been going a year,” Durrans added.

One significant breakthrough moment came when Tim Burgess of The Charlatans stumbled upon one of their songs last summer and, at the last minute, asked if they would play his stage at Kendal Calling. A showing sign at how fast the last twelve months have been and, one that hasn’t been lost on frontman Alex Moore. “I think it was the year before, Kendal was two years ago,” Moore said before being corrected by a bandmate that it was 2019 and sincerely adding, “Honestly, time is flying so quick like a good few years has just become one,” this is an indictment into how jam-packed their life has become since that moment.

The Lathums are a band who wants to stay away from being pigeon-holed or deemed as being the heir to The Verve—simply due to their shared birthplace—they want to be their own entity and live in their own lane, and a fast one at that. “I just feel like we’re so different to everybody and we’re not like anybody else. It’s not annoying but we’re not an indie band, we’re just a different entity. We are a band and a guitar band but I don’t think there’s been anything like us and I don’t think there ever will be anything like us,” Moore stated defiantly.

Moore understands that being four lads in a guitar band from Wigan is going to make people jump to conclusions about their sound before they’ve even listened to them and revealed that he, himself, “makes a judgement before making any research and then I find out later on that I actually like something,” he admitted”.

It is a shame that so much of the momentum that was built up late in 2019 and early in 2020 was cut short by the pandemic. There would have been this excitement in the camp – at the start of 2020 – that the year held great things and they would tour the country. Instead, they had a somewhat quieter 2020. In October, the band spoke with the BBC, and it seems that, although they could have been angry and upset, the break and downtime has afforded them some time to reflect:

“After finishing a sold-out tour in February, the Wigan group were supposed to be gigging with Blossoms and Weller, and building their buzz by taking their highly-strung indie poetry around the UK. "Just literally up and down the country just playing here, there and everywhere," Moore says.

It was meant to be non-stop. "Now it's non-start," quips guitarist Scott Concepcion.

Every artist has been in the same boat, of course, and The Lathums have managed to make some progress during the pandemic.

The enforced break from the road did allow the band to take stock, he says. "In a weird way, with how the world halted for a little bit, we had time to reflect and focus and see what we needed to do and have a bit of time to write. In fact a lot of time to write."

Although he says he has used his songwriting "to escape from it all" in recent months, the mood of the band - and the world - have crept in.

"Now that none of us can do anything at all - it's been taken away from us - it's thinking about what really matters in life and how we take things for granted. I wrote a tune about that actually.

What do we take for granted? "Just little things. Just a basic thing, like a hug, or meeting up with people, and talking and that”.

Go and check out The Lathums and their incredible music. I have put all the links at the bottom. Whilst last year was a bit of a bust, I think gigs will resume later this year; that will give the band a chance to get their material out there. Many will ask whether the band will follow Ghosts with an album this year. I guess the lads will want to gig before they bring out a new E.P. or album but, in lockdown, perhaps that has provided them with fresh impetus and inspiration. I want to end up by bringing in an NME interview. I have brought in the questions where they were asked about The Coral’s James Skelly producing Ghosts, and how they have handled a lack of gigs during the pandemic:

“In just two years, the jangly guitar outfit have amassed a huge following, signed to Island Records (U2, The Streets and Ariana Grande), packed out an American diner at Kendal Calling thanks to a last-minute call from Tim Burgess, supported Blossoms, sold out two headline tours in a matter of minutes and scored a Number One single in the vinyl charts with ‘All My Life’. Phew.

There’s shades of Arctic Monkeys in their rise and in the spine-tingling ‘All My Life’ (which has amassed over two million listens on Spotify), the tumbling Smiths-style anthem ‘Fight On’ and jangly single ‘The Great Escape’. But the fun is only just getting started…

Another indie legend, The Coral’s James Skelly came on board to produce your last EP. How have you found working with him?

Alex: “It felt like being on work experience really for musicians. It’s kind of like learning your trade. He’s dead good with us James as well because he’s kind of been there and done it. He’s already had this journey. He always says if ‘you need any guidance or advice or anything just give me a text’ and that gave us a lot of confidence. He knows that we’re screwed on and very on to the music. When we go in the studio, we know what songs we’ve got and how we’re gonna portray them and get them across and James soaks up that information.”

Scott: “Sometimes he tells us to tone it down a little bit because we go overboard sometimes. He just adds a bit of class.”

The pandemic has had a devastating impact on the live circuit this year. How have you coped with it?

Scott: “At first it was like a crushing blow because we had loads of gigs lined up but after we’d got over the initial bitterness of it all, we just realised that we could just go in the studio after lockdown had been lifted and record the tunes that we had. So silver linings.”

Alex: “Everyone is in the same position though aren’t they? We were very lucky because we had just signed our record deal and we could just sit in our rooms and write songs for weeks and weeks. There was a good momentum going for us before COVID but I don’t think it’s stopped to be honest. Everyone is just more raring to go. Obviously it’s a really horrible time for everybody but I feel like it’s put things into perspective, what we take for granted, even just going to a gig. I think it’ll make people realise when we come back, what’s actually important”.

If you have not heard of The Lathums or you have dipped into their music but not invested too much time, I would advise you to spend a few more moments with them. I love what they are putting out! They are smart, sharp, and can create hooks and choruses that lodge into the brain. The band are really tight, so every song has this incredible professionalism - but, happily, there is a bit of raggedness that is nice to hear! They are going to go a long way but, with a way to go until live music swings back, the band will be keen for as many people as possible to hear their work. Do go and do that and show The Lathums some support. The past year or so has been fairly low-key in terms of gigs but, when things open up again, I know that they will…

MAKE up for lost time.

_____________

Follow The Lathums

Official:

https://www.thelathums.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/thelathums/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TheLathums

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thelathums/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6PXYvMeTixxDzYAYugMlbg?si=64WclLqtQsSN5cimzUws8w

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwm2mdiUXApmL5bCxHtgJIA

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

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ALTHOUGH one cannot always agree with…

 PHOTO CREDIT: W. VanDerper/Def Jam

what Kanye West says and his political ruminations, one cannot fault the music from the man! He has created some of the best albums of the past couple of decades. I admire his creativity and innovation. He is definitely a Hip-Hop pioneer and, debatably, one of his finest moments came in the form of his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, of 2010. The album celebrated its tenth anniversary in November - and I think it is one that still reverberates and moves people today. With enormous songs like POWER, Monster, and All the Lights in the pack, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a classic, no doubt! More than that, the album is a complete work that is so full of ambition and different sounds. Some critics have likened the album to an artist’s palette and approach – a work that has different styles; much like we differentiate different artistic movements. I would advise people buying My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on vinyl, as it is well worth investment – and the vinyl is good value for an album that runs in at nearly seventy minutes! Rather than give a big background to the album and the sort of themes that inspired the album, I want to bring in a couple of reviews and a great article that looks back at My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ten years after its release. 2010 was a year where West was not exactly overly-popular with the media and the public. The album was conceived during West's self-imposed exile in Oahu, Hawaii, at Avex Honolulu Studio following a period of legal and public image controversy.

West took to the stage  after Taylor Swift was awarded Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards (claiming Beyoncé should have won the award and not Swift, I believe). He was horrified with the ensuing media response. Amid the widespread negative response to his behaviour, his scheduled tour with Lady Gaga to promote his previous album, 808s & Heartbreak, was cancelled. Maybe West felt that he needed to reinvent himself or immerse himself in work and deliver and album that would get his reputation back on peak and help him to win back some respect and affection. He definitely did that with the masterful My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy! I love the album and every track has its own skin and relevance. I am a big fan of sampling, and we get to hear so many different artists and older songs fused together superbly. Take Devil in a New Dress, which contains samples of Will You Love Me Tomorrow by Carole King and Gerry Goffin (performed by Smokey Robinson); Hell of a Life contains samples of She's My Baby, written by Sylvester Stewart (and performed by The Mojo Men) – it samples of Stud-Spider by Tony Joe White and portions of Iron Man, written by Terence Butler, Anthony Iommi, John Osbourne, and William Ward (performed by Black Sabbath)! In article from last year, High Snobiety reflected on the impact and importance of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:

“Prior to MBDTF, West had carved out a lane of nerdy blue-collar rap and DIY production. In fact, for a long time, his industry peers respected him more for his beats than his raps. This all changed with his 2004 debut album The College Dropout, which put the Chicago-raised rapper on the map with his quirky backpack raps. His subsequent albums, Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), and 808s & Heartbreak (2008), only solidified the certainty that Kanye was onto something great.

“And so what did we get? An album with so many great bars that it pleased hip-hop heads. An album with so many catchy hooks and melodies that it pleased the masses. An album with so much opulence in its production that it pleased producers, composers, and music snobs alike,” Cuchna tells us. “It's hard to make a case against the album. It's bulletproof. And Kanye's ability to actually pull an album like this off and achieve his goal (he did win back the public, generally speaking) speaks to his creative powers, and why he's a level above most working artists today.”

Speaking on the Dissect podcast, Cuchna boldly stated, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy elevated hip-hop into another stratosphere, and cemented Kanye West as one of the world's premier artistic visionaries [...] The irony of Twisted Fantasy's legacy is that while it's influence is often stated, it's rarely heard, as few (if any) have the imagination and skill required to replicate it. Hundreds of years from now, Twisted Fantasy will be among the finest artifacts of the 21st century."

In the ultimate realization of a troubled genius with a lot to get off his chest, MBDTF Kanye abandoned the stripped-down approach of 808s in favor of maximalist production, grandiose ideas, far-flung samples, and, most importantly, sincere storytelling. “What sometimes gets lost in all of Twisted Fantasy's decadence is the very vulnerable storyline that runs through the album, as Kanye examines fame under a microscope, trying to make sense of how everything he worked to achieve could suddenly be taken away”.

I am going to finish off soon, but I want to introduce a couple of reviews – just to show how critics have reacted to such a phenomenal album. This is what AllMusic wrote when they assessed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:

“As fatiguing as it is invigorating, as cold-blooded as it is heart-rending, as haphazardly splattered as it is meticulously sculpted, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an extraordinarily complex 70-minute set of songs. Listening to it, much like saying or typing its title, is a laborious process. In some ways, it's the culmination of Kanye West's first four albums, but it does not merely draw characteristics from each one of them. The 13 tracks, eight of which are between five and nine minutes in length, sometimes fuse them together simultaneously. Consequently, the sonic and emotional layers are often difficult to pry apart and enumerate. Nothing exemplifies its contrasting elements and maniacal extravagance as much as "All of the Lights." Rattling, raw, synthetic toms are embellished with brass, woodwinds, and strings. It’s a celebration of fame ("Fast cars, shooting stars") and a lament of its consequences ("Restraining order/Can't see my daughter"). Its making involved 42 people, including not one but two French horn players and over a dozen high-profile vocalists, only some of which are perceptible. At once, the song features one of the year's most rugged beats while supplying enough opulent detail to make Late Registration collaborator Jon Brion's head spin. "Blame Game" chills more than anything off 808s & Heartbreak.

Sullen solo-piano Aphex Twin plays beneath morose cello; with a chorus from John Legend, a dejected, embittered West -- whose voice toggles between naturally clear-sounding and ominously pitched-down as it pans back and forth -- tempers wistfully-written, maliciously-delivered lines like "Been a long time since I spoke to you in a bathroom, ripping you up, fuckin' and chokin' you" with untreated and distinctively pained confessions like "I can't love you this much." The contrast in "Devil in a New Dress," featuring Rick Ross, is of a different sort; a throwback soul production provided by the Smokey Robinson-sampling Bink, it's as gorgeous as any of West's own early work, yet it's marred by an aimless instrumental stretch, roughly 90 seconds in length, that involves some incongruent electric guitar flame-out. Even less explicable is the last third of the nine-minute "Runaway," when West blows into a device and comes out sounding something like a muffled, bristly version of Robert Fripp's guitar. The only thing that remains unchanged is West's lyrical accuracy; for every rhyme that stuns, there's one deserving of mockery from any given contestant off the The White Rapper Show. As the ego and ambition swells, so does the appeal, the repulsiveness, and -- most importantly -- the ingenuity. Whether loved or loathed, fully enjoyed or merely admired, this album should be regarded as a deeply fascinating accomplishment”.

If you have been wary of Kanye West in the past or are not sure about his music, I would definitely urge you to give My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy some time. One does not need to know about Hip-Hop or West’s career to appreciates what the album says. It is packed with so many great musicians and sounds that one needs to come back a few times before everything absorbs and is fully realised. I will end by bringing in a Pitchfork review from 2010:

“The haunted, Aphex Twin-sampling "Blame Game" bottoms out with a verse in which Kanye's voice is sped up, slowed down and stretched out. The effect is almost psychotic, suggesting three or four inner monologues fighting over smashed emotions. It's one of many moments on the record where West manipulates his vocals. Whether funneling some of his best-ever rhymes through a tinny, Strokes-like filter on "Gorgeous" or making himself wail like a dying cyborg in the final minutes of "Runaway", he uses studio wizardry to draw out his multitudes. Tellingly, though, he doesn't get the last word on the album. That distinction goes to the sobering tones of Gil Scott-Heron's 1970 spoken-word piece "Comment #1", a stark take on the American fable. "All I want is a good home and a wife and children and some food to feed them every night," says Scott-Heron, bringing the fantasy to a close.

On "POWER", Kanye raps, "My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts/ Reality is catching up with me, taking my inner child, I'm fighting for custody." The lines nail another commonality between the rapper and his hero. Like Michael, Kanye's behavior-- from the poorly planned outbursts to the musical brilliance-- is wide-eyed in a way that most 33 year olds have long left behind. That naivety is routinely battered on Twisted Fantasy, yet it survives, better for the wear. With his music and persona both marked by a flawed honesty, Kanye's man-myth dichotomy is at once modern and truly classic. "I can't be everybody's hero and villain, savior and sinner, Christian and anti Christ!" he wrote earlier this month. That may be true, but he's more willing than anyone else to try”.

One can argue that West was just as striking on his debut album, The College Dropout (2004), or its follow up, Late Registration (2005). I feel My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was him on another level! Go and listen to the album and, if you can, pick up the vinyl and experience one of the best releases of the 2010s – if not the very best! I think there are plans for West to release his tenth studio album, DONDA, some time this year - although there have been some delays and rumours that may mean we have to wait a while longer. Whilst we await that, investigate the staggering My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and…

IMMERSE yourself in its genius.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Great Techno Cuts

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: @nickxshotz/Unsplash 

Great Techno Cuts

___________

FOR this genre-specific Lockdown Playlist…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @bantersnaps/Unsplash

I am heading into Techno territory. I have picked some great tunes from across the Techno spectrum that can give you a boost and lift and, on the more ambient songs, relax and chill. It is a pain being inside and not being allowed out much but, as things will start to improve, I think we have something to look forward to this year. If you need some tracks to occupy some time and improve your mood, then have a listen to the songs before and I am sure they will do the trick! Even if you are not a big Techno fan, I think there are tracks in this playlist that will appeal to you and stay in the mind. Have a listen to a few newer Techno cuts in addition to…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @wildlittlethingsphoto/Unsplash

SOME real classics.

FEATURE: An Ocean of Potential: Will We Ever See the Expansion of Kate Bush’s Fish People Label?

FEATURE:

 

 

An Ocean of Potential

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton 

Will We Ever See the Expansion of Kate Bush’s Fish People Label?

___________

BECAUSE there has been…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

a slight redesign and fresh paint of coat added to Kate Bush’s official website, one sees the logo for her record label, Fish People, at the centre. I am not sure whether I have covered this before, but many artists set up their own record labels. There are a number of reasons for this. In many cases, they wants to have greater control of their career and the possibility of bringing other artists into their roster (and nurture their career). Many people may not realise that there is a Fish People record label that Bush runs and has released albums on. I will bring in an article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, which provides some useful background:

“Record label run by Kate Bush since 2011. It is not known why she chose this name.

The label's first release was Director's Cut (FPCD001 and FPLP001 in the UK), quickly followed by re-releases of The Dreaming (FPCD002), Hounds Of Love (FPCD003), The Sensual World (FPCD004), The Red Shoes (FPCD005) and Aerial (FPCD006). Later in 2011, Fish People released 50 Words For Snow (FPCD007 and FPLP007).

In 2012, Fish People released a 10" vinyl picture disc of Lake Tahoe for Record Store Day. The next year, a 10" vinyl picture disc of Running Up That Hill 2012 Remix was released.

In 2016, Fish People released the live album Before The Dawn. In 2018, the box sets called Remastered followed.

Kate Bush about Fish People

Why not? I thought it was a bit of fun. What's great is the reaction from some people. When I first suggested it I think a lot of people weren't sure if I was being serious, which I think is exactly the sort of reaction you want, really, isn't it? (...) I just thought it was a bit of fun, rather than a very lofty or serious name. (Interview with Ken Bruce, BBC Radio 2, 9 May 2011)”

I am fascinated by artists who establish their own label and release music on it. For Bush, I think there was this need for more autonomy and say regarding her music. Even though EMI, by the time she set up Fish People, were used to gaps between albums and the way she worked, I can see why she would not want any pressure or timetable. The working relationship was good between Bush and EMI but, without a friend or a close ally at the label by 2011, there was no real reason Bush would stick around. By having her own label, she answers to herself and can take time when it comes to putting out a new album – even though it has been nearly a decade since 50 Words for Snow arrived. Bush put out the Remastered series through Fish People, and I think having her albums re-released and mastered/mixed to a more specific personal specification was important. I wonder whether she will put out another greatest hits package. It has been a while since we have seen a compilation. I think a twenty-or-so-song ‘best of’ would be very welcomed.

I do think we will get at least one more studio album from Bush before retirement, but I think wonder whether there was expectation from EMI for her to release older material or work in a way that was not fitting or appealing. Maybe the reverse was true: she wanted to put out older albums before embarking on any new projects. There are recordings from the past that many would love to see out there. From the performances tapped during 1979’s The Tour of Life – which would be magnificent in a boxset if they could get a clean recording -, to some of the studio outtakes and demos that have not seen the light of day, I feel fans would jump at the chance to buy them! I have talked before about what is left in her archives and why some new releases of The Kick Inside (1978), Lionheart (1978), Never for Ever (1980), and The Dreaming (1982) with any outtakes and rare snippets would introduce her to a new audience and give us a fonder insight into her working process. Not only would it be intriguing to see whether Bush releases any non-studio albums through Fish People or looks back in the vaults…I wonder whether we will see any other artists signed. There are a lot of new acts who hold Bush as an idol. Rather than sign artists who sound like her, I think there are musicians whose music she could feed to a larger audience were they were signed to Fish People.

 IMAGE CREDIT: Fish People/Kate Bush

I am not suggesting that Bush would produce their albums because, whilst she is an exceptional producer, she has not really produced for other people. Maybe Bush does not listen to a lot of new music, though I think she has an exceptional ear and eclectic taste. A full cupboard of Fish People artists would be something special to see! I do think we will see a few more releases through Fish People. In addition to the odd studio album or two, I feel there will be some more remastering or retrospection. Bush has remained a little mysterious regarding her label and whether it would take on a bigger role. I feel we will see some movement and expansion in years to come which, invariable, brings us back to the long-asked question as to when, if at all, we will get another Kate Bush album. Maybe the pandemic and the restrictions inherent means Bush has not been able to record much – perhaps next year is more likely regarding the potential for new material. Almost a decade after Kate Bush’s official website relaunched and we saw the banner of ‘Fish People’ appear, I wonder whether the fish will grow legs and walk on the land…in the sense that it will be more than a vessel for Bush music. Perhaps we will get some news or movement from Bush through 2021 but, in a rough year, she will want to keep safe and low-key as possible. I am fascinated by Fish People: from the name and the logo, through to the hordes of artists who would kill to be in Bush’s stable, I am going to keep my eyes and ears peeled! Some might say that the label will stay modest and solely for the purposes of giving Bush more flexibility and control but, when it comes to her and what she might do next, you can…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Fish People/Kate Bush

NEVER rule it out!

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Thirty-Nine: John Martyn

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

PHOTO CREDIT: Estate Of Keith Morris/Redferns/Getty Images 

Part Thirty-Nine: John Martyn

___________

THE legendary John Martyn…

is one of those artists I am surprised there hasn’t been a biopic made about. He had such a fascinating musical career and personal life, it would translate very well to the screen. Although Martyn battled addiction and domestic issues through the 1970s and 1980s, what remains and shines brightest is his incredible songwriting. A sensational guitarist, singer and songwriting, the Surrey-born Martyn blurred lines between Folk, Jazz, Rock and Blues. If you need a starting place and guide to Martyn – who we sadly lost in 2009 at the age of sixty -, then I hope that my list and suggestions below provide you with…

SOME useful assistance.

_____________

The Four Essential Albums

 

Bless the Weather

Release Date: November 1971

Label: Island

Producers: John Martyn/John Wood

Standout Tracks: Go Easy/Walk on the Water/Let the Good Things Come

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=134512&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4vfbQM5t0jDXfZVpMjMg1N?si=PAiR4v4DSbK11MsDZksgTA

Review:

“Bless the Weather, the first release following two records with his wife Beverley, is a transitional effort for John Martyn. The Glasgow-born singer-songwriter's third solo album emphasizes a darker, smokier sound built around his increasingly jazzy vocals, plus sometimes aggressive, sometimes gentle acoustic guitar work, and Danny Thompson's double bass, which skirts in and out around Martyn's voice and guitar. It also contains the extended instrumental "Glistening Glyndebourne," which highlights his early experimentation with the Echoplex, a sound that would become a major part of his work in the coming years. Bless the Weather, with songs such as the title cut and "Head and Heart," stands as a fine representation of Martyn's early work” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Bless the Weather

Solid Air

Release Date: February 1973

Label: Island

Producers: John Martyn/John Wood

Standout Tracks: Solid Air/I'd Rather Be the Devil/ (Devil Got My Woman)Dreams by the Sea

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=60337&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0QD0LEYQDkrJrtVcuRBcVp?si=a4G7cL-hT-a09jzrOgBuZg

Review:

“Above all this was folk filtered through jazz. Take the inclusion of Tony Coe on sax throughout. His own slurred delivery was second to none (his was the sax on those Henry Mancini Pink Panther themes). Martyn, himself, was a fan of artists like Pharaoh Sanders, and it was this combined with the finest in British folk rock (most of Fairport Convention, including Richard Thompson, make an appearance here) that lifted Solid Air above previous efforts.

The album kicks off with Martyn's lament for close friend Nick Drake on the vibe and sax-assisted title track. On the way we get the bluegrass jauntiness of Over The Hill (with its famously positive reference to Martyn's favourite pastimes); the voguishly pastoral Don't Want To Know, the Echoplex frenzy of his version of Skip James' Rather be The Devil, and the eerily mournful Man In The Station (showing Martyn to be a master of the autobiographical soul-bearing that was to riddle his later album Grace And Danger). Of course the one track that most remember here is May You Never - his paean to brotherly love that was to be a staple of EVERY performance he's given since.

Yes, it's a classic with not a note out of place.. And ably assisted by John Wood's late night production it's now firmly esconced in the hearts of chillers, smokers and music lovers the world over. Everyone needs a copy” – BBC

Choice Cut: Go Down Easy

One World

Release Date: 4th November, 1977

Label: Island

Producer: Chris Blackwell

Standout Tracks: Smiling Stranger/One World/Couldn't Love You More

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=60345&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1G8gcNHZxeRUaqHVFyCADO?si=2EevjNLIQFinN3Zb-cYWJw

Review:

“After Sunday's Child, John Martyn took an extended break from studio recording. By late 1975, feeling he was close to going "completely round the bend," he had also stopped touring. To put some distance between himself and the pressures of the business and to recoup his creative energies, he went to Jamaica. There, after meeting dub producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, Martyn sat in on sessions by other artists and contributed to Burning Spear's Man in the Hills. Martyn returned to the U.K. reinvigorated and began recording One World in summer 1977. Produced by Island boss Chris Blackwell and featuring Dave Pegg, Morris Pert, John Stevens, Danny Thompson, and Steve Winwood, among others, One World combines the experimental tendencies of 1973's Inside Out and the more conventional song structures of Sunday's Child. While tracks like "Couldn't Love You More," "Smiling Stranger," and "Certain Surprise" display some continuity with the rootsy, jazzy folk-rock of Martyn's previous albums, this record has a stronger commercial feel than his earlier work, crossing over into pop territory. Especially memorable in that regard is the electrified swagger of "Big Muff," a number co-written by Perry that would become one of Martyn's live staples. But One World's understated explorations of mood are even more compelling; the experimental nature of dub -- of which Perry was a legendary exponent -- clearly resonated with Martyn. Since the early '70s, he had displayed a keen ear for sonic manipulation, using effects like Echoplex and a phase shifter to craft drifting, hypnotic textures. Here, the lazy title track and the synth-pulsing "Small Hours" exemplify Martyn's knack for mesmerizing, smoky grooves. Those looser, atmospheric numbers notwithstanding, most of One World signals the more slick pop direction John Martyn would take in the '80s starting with Grace & Danger (and with increasingly mixed results). [In 2005, Island released a Deluxe Edition of One World that included five live tracks and 10 alternate versions of songs from the initial release]” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Small Hours

Grace & Danger

Release Date: 13th October, 1980

Label: Island

Producer: Martin Levan

Standout Tracks: Grace and Danger/Sweet Little Mystery/Baby, Please Come Home

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=60348&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/05FPn66m4Ry59KRrKFCg3Q?si=2LhsjSVfSJ2moD6aABk6nA

Review:

“Highly personal and sometimes almost unbearably poignant, the album remains one of the most charged and resonant titles in John Martyn’s canon. Indeed, the record’s painfully intimate contents initially disturbed Chris Blackwell so much that, while the album was completed in October 1979, he held up its release and only agreed to issue it a full 12 months later, in October 1980.

The emotional turmoil, however, spurred Martyn on to new heights of creativity. Eschewing his trademark effects-laden acoustic guitar in favor of a heavier electric Gibson SG, he recorded Grace And Danger with a dextrous, sympathetic in-studio band including bassist John Giblin and Genesis drummer/solo star-in-waiting Phil Collins.

Together, the ensemble pieced together a raw, affecting, and frequently sublime selection of tracks whose moods reflected the maelstrom of emotions Martyn was then working through. There was a clutch of wracked, introspective ballads (the self-explanatory “Hurt In Your Heart”; the plaintive, resigned “Sweet Little Mystery”) but these were balanced out by the angry, sarcastic titular song, the bittersweet blue-eyed soul of “Our Love” and an unexpected, but brilliantly realized reworking of The Slickers’ 1971 reggae hit “Johnny Too Bad.”

Though its creator later admitted that writing Grace And Danger had been “very cathartic”, the album was warmly received by fans and critics alike, who collectively agreed that this fiery troubadour had somehow alchemized artistic gold from the depths of despair. The record marked a turning point in Martyn’s commercial fortunes too, with its more mainstream-inclined follow-up, 1981’s Glorious Fool, introducing him to the UK Top 30 for the very first time”  udiscovermusic.com

Choice Cut: Some People Are Crazy

The Underrated Gem

 

Glorious Fool

Release Date: September 1981

Label: WEA

Producer: Phil Collins

Standout Tracks: Amsterdam/Please Fall in Love With Me/Don't You Go

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=60354&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5jBDX1Ug1rka0y4mwjIbqs?si=zJ_j7KRQR1GrshrnsY6ObQ

Review:

“Here we come to Glorious Fool's most alarming flaw: the songs are simply second-rate. There is none of the emotional depth or commitment that marks Martyn's best work (Grace & Danger, Inside Out), none of the originality and passion with which he can make his romance credible and gripping. Couldn't Love You More, Hold On To My Heart and Pascanel are typical minor Martyn, the kind of pretty fripperies he's been churning out for years, while Amsterdam and Never Say Never are louder but no less limp, one all melodramatic bluster, the other tainted with a tetchy petulance that spills over into Pascanel and Didn't Do That. Please Fall In Love With Me is another extreme and 'I want to fall in love with the world/ I want the world to fall in love' the kind of line you might smuggle through once but which lies exposed in all its mindless, posey banality when you turn it into a closing chant and accompany it with ponderous and very self-important drums.

Don't You Go, rooted in the traditional folk ballad, closes the LP in quiet, moving fashion. A plea for peace, it's 'Fool's one glorious moment: as striking as the rest is bland, as convincing as the rest rings false.

Martyn may have curtailed the indulgence to which he has always been prone, in doing so he seems to have lost his main source of inspiration. The unruly maverick has become net, tidy and polite. There is no drive, no depth to Glorious Fool; no grace or danger, just ordinary upmarket competence.

Whatever happened to the glory of love?” – NME

Choice Cut: Hold on My Heart

The Final Album

 

Heaven and Earth

Release Date: 16th May, 2011

Label: Music on Vinyl

Producers: Jim Tullio/Garry Pollitt

Standout Tracks: Heel of the Hunt/Could've Told You Before I Met You/Willing to Work

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=594538&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3AHCuCvx6GQIyd8NStqetj?si=I6V4VXdOTRKBKKe0yb8YhQ

Review:

“The provisional title of his last release was Willing to Work. Whether this was ironic considering the length of time it took him or straightforward in regards to the effort he put into it is unclear. The title of the song by that name is an eight-plus minute rambling sonic excursion that ends up with a dog barking, and the band seemingly looking for direction. Martyn repeatedly riffs on the phrase “Willing to Work” as if it is a mantra that will lead him somewhere, but he appears to have lost his way. Still, the song has its charms. One has the feeling that if only he had lived long enough, Martyn could have turned it into something better and more complete.

The disc is now called Heaven and Earth and the song of that name is a much more beautiful and finished product. The over-seven-minute piece incorporates a gentle jazz piano and tenor sax that provide an emotional lift to the proceedings. Martyn passionately sings of “moving heaven and earth” as if it is simply a matter of spiritual will. He laughs gently as he vocalizes, as if he is being tickled by the feelings welling within him. Martyn’s glee makes one smile along with him.

As a whole, the studio album bears traces of roughness around the edges. Martyn’s voice in particular can be creaky, especially on such tunes as “Colours” and “Heel of the Hunt”. Other times Martyn can still rock out, especially on the funky “Stand Amazed”. The grit in his voice serves the bluesy vibe and lends an air of authenticity to his back porch musings. The Band’s Garth Hudson accompanies Martyn on a honking accordion on this track.

Martyn wrote all the songs but one, his friend Phil Collins’ “Can’t Turn Back the Years”. Collins sings backup on this melancholy look at how one cannot correct life’s mistakes, but just go on. This four-minute cut may be the shortest one on the album; however, the depth of feeling expressed gives it a feeling of weight. It’s as if Martyn and the now retired Collins are telling listeners that their careers may be over. They are not going to apologize for any missteps. They take ownership of the good and bad they have done.

Judging by Martyn’s last album, he has nothing to apologize for. The results may be shaggy--a feeling reinforced by the length of the songs--but he still has much to offer. Hopefully he is in heaven now,. He left this earth with more than he took with him. His music enriches” – Popmatters

Choice Cut: Heaven and Earth

The John Martyn Book

 

Small Hours: The Long Night of John Martyn

Author: Graeme Thomson

Publication Date: 9th July, 2020

Publisher: Omnibus Press

Review:

“Developing a highly personal musical language after adding amplification and a variety of effects to his guitar, he enjoyed the early patronage of two influential men: the record producer Joe Boyd, who soon left, and the boss of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, who gave him years of backing while making allowances for his waywardness. Many other admirers within the music business shied away, alienated by a nature that could switch from rogueish charm to outright threat in the time it took to drain a pint glass. “He was almost like a bomb that was going to go off,” the singer Claire Hamill, his lover in the 70s, says.

In pieces such as “Solid Air”, “Glistening Glyndebourne” and the extraordinary “Small Hours” (layering his guitar over the dawn sounds of the wind and the birds on the lake outside the Berkshire farm where he was recording), Martyn showed himself to be both an innovator and a poet. The looseness and spontaneity of jazz and country blues were perfectly blended with strong echoes of English pastoralism. Thomson correctly identifies his sublime 1974 recording of the traditional song “Spencer the Rover” as a pinnacle of his career, not least because its narrative of a rambling man dreaming of home and heart corresponded so exactly with the singer’s own fantasies. Efforts to turn him into a shiny rock star in the 80s and 90s were an insult to such work.

An encounter with Martyn in his final years gives the book a dramatic opening sequence. As well as displaying a love and understanding of his subject’s finest music, the author is clear-eyed about the regular bouts of “loud, stupid behaviour, intimidating and graceless”, the chaotic tours, the vast amounts of drink and drugs, the selfishness and the emotional cowardice. Yet amid the despairing shrugs of the surviving witnesses, including his abandoned partners and children, a love of the roaring boy shines through” – The Guardian

Order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Small-Hours-Long-Night-Martyn/dp/178760019X

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Twenty-Eight: Charli XCX

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Burak Cingi for The Line of Best Fit 

Part Twenty-Eight: Charli XCX

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LIKE most of my Modern Heroines features…

I am going to focus on the most-recent album from Charli XCX, how I’m feeling now, and introduce some reviews and interviews around the time of its release. Charli XCX (Charlotte Emma Aitchison) was born in Cambridge and raised in Start Hill, Essex. She began posting songs on Myspace in 2008 - which led to her discovery by a promoter who invited her to perform at warehouse raves and parties. In 2010. She signed a recording contract with Asylum Records, releasing a series of singles and mixtapes throughout 2011 and 2012. Not to ignore her first three albums – I shall combine songs from all of her albums in a playlist at the end -, but how i’m feeling now is such an important one. 2013’s True Romance was a promising debut that combined sounds of 1980s’ Pop and girl group spark; many of its songs – such as Stay Away, and You’re the One – are among Charli XCX’s very best. 2014’s Sucker had a bit more punch than her debut. The album sounds so fresh and magnificent! I really love 2019’s Charli, as it was more experimental, wide-ranging and ambitious than her first two albums. There is a great blend of styles and themes and, despite the fact the album was recorded at many different studios and has quite a few producers in the mix, it is Charli XCX’s songwriting and talent that shines. Charli is a consistent and almost flawless album that took her music to a new level.

Only eight months after Charli was released, we saw how i’m feeling now released into the world. On 6th April, 2020, Charli XCX announced through a public Zoom call with fans that she would be working on a new album in self-isolation. During the call, she said the album would be indicative of lockdown times: the fact she had all the technology at home to create an album and make the videos. The entire project was done in collaboration with her fans, where she used Zoom calls to share demos and text conversations with producers - and she asked fan for input on single releases, song ideas, and artwork. The album arrived on 15th May, 2020, and it is one of the very best of last year. I am not sure whether lockdown and the pandemic brought something out of Charli XCX that we had not seen before; a new layer of brilliance and innovation that was maybe not quite there before. As I said, I love all of her albums, though how i’m feeling now is her finest release yet! I want to bring in a couple of the reviews for the album. This is what CLASH wrote when they heard how i’m feeling now:

“Her humanoid vocals on ‘Detonate’ are reminiscent of Kate Bush’s ‘Deeper Understanding’ from her ‘Directors Cut’ album, and explore the romance of the robotic - alien yet strangely familiar. This track resonates hard though its lyrical vulnerability accompanied by lighter production. Its classic warped auto-tune is ever-present but dialled down to be an overall more accessible pop song. ‘Detonate’s’ tight lyricism contrasts with the repetitive lyrics of ‘7 years’, which feels rushed in places, “Oh yeah, it's really, really, really, really nice / And now I never, ever, ever think twice” leaving moments which fall flat.

 ‘party 4 u’ is a moment of respite amongst the brilliant chaos, allowing us to take a breath, while ‘c2.0’ (co-written by lawless Estonian rapper Tommy Cash) sounds like a laptop overheating and my hairdryer exploding all at once. The album peaks and troughs, the single tracks standing out while others can be glossed over more easily, yet throughout the abrasive jolting and glitching, one thing remains constant, a solid pop chorus with catchy melodies.

The album closes with 'visions': a brilliant illustration of A. G. Cook's genius all too reminiscent of leaving a sweaty club as the sun comes up. The heavy beats and sirens evoke a memory which usually I do not intend to remember, yet in lockdown circumstances, leaves me pining for it once again, and therefore wanting more of the album itself. As her opening line of the album states “I just wanna go real hard” accompanied by a sense of impending doom, I sigh and think to myself: me too Charli, me too.

‘how i’m feeling now’ is essentially a series of android love letters; to her relationship (and how it has grown throughout lockdown), to her fans (whom she has involved every step of the way), her friends and contributors, and to herself, as she has opened up about mental health during the lockdown, and the fear of how to continue once it is over, with lyrics pondering whether she is deserving of love. This directly contrasts with boasting her rarity as a ‘pink diamond’ in the first track.

Charli starts and ends with hard disorienting club bangers, leaving the middle of the album space to expose her tenderness and vulnerability while still retaining her futuristic, unpredictable sound and penchant for an irresistible pop hook”.

Certainly, how i’m feeling now is one of my favourite albums from the last few years. pink diamond, forever, and claws are an incredible trio of opening tracks. The fact that the album was created and released in such an unusual way could have dented its quality and impact. I think that the collaborative approach and the fact that Charli XCX was not moving between studios (and she delivered the album so soon after Charli) creates this urgency. That said, there are so many layers and nuances. You listen to the songs and they unravel over time; these wonder songs that go from pole to pole in terms of emotion. Charli XCX’s constant ability to come up with exceptional Pop hooks is evident on how i’m feeling now. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:

“If any pop star is uniquely equipped to be creative during hard times, it's Charli XCX. As her steady stream of singles, EPs, mixtapes, albums, and collaborations attest, being productive is her natural state of being. She's also remarkably connected to her fans and other artists through her social media platforms, and used this very 2020s version of fame to invite fans into her creative process. In the early days of sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, she vowed to create a brand-new album in just six weeks, using the tools she had at hand as well as the input of her fans and trusted producers like A. G. Cook and BJ Burton. In many ways, the humbly titled how i'm feeling now, with its lowercase spelling and lack of punctuation, captures the frozen-in-time yet fleeting feel of quarantine life as it returns to the fundamentals of her music.

This isn't an album of acoustic guitar ruminations -- if anything, it shows XCX is just as committed to making cutting-edge electronic pop music while holed up in her L.A. home as she was when she could work face-to-face with her creative team. Featuring production by 100 gecs' Dylan Brady, "claws" pits an innocent singsong melody against booming bass and clanking trap rhythms that sound like they might have been made by wind-up toys. She pushes the envelope even farther with the streaking, overtly futuristic "pink diamond" and "c2.0," a track whose rubbery tones and helium-laced vocals call to mind the work of her frequent collaborator SOPHIE. Aside from "party 4 u," which feels like a miniature of Charli's more introspective moments, how i'm feeling now's songwriting has a smaller scope than it did on her last album, but XCX makes up for that by packing in as many hooks and feelings as she can. Equally sweet and challenging, mischievous and heartfelt, "forever" is pure Charli XCX. When she sings about staying emotionally close "even when we're not together," she touches on connections that were even more treasured at the time of the album's release, when many people were forced to be alone and jobs, relationships, and lives were in flux. And though the album's songs aren't literally about living in quarantine, they're certainly relatable.

On the pensive Palmistry, Cook, and Mechatok-produced "i finally understand," XCX digs into the feelings, good and bad, that being truly intimate with someone -- and having time to reflect on a relationship -- engenders. It's a mood she expands on blissfully with "7 years" and with more ambivalence on "enemy," one of the album's prettiest and most fleshed-out songs. While it may not be the proper sequel to the ambitious Charli, how i'm feeling now's rawness and immediacy give it an appeal all its own. More than just an interesting social media experiment or a way to fend off quarantine boredom, it's an artistic challenge that's true to the very best parts of XCX's music”.

I am going to finish off with a couple of interviews from Charli XCX. I would advise people to read all of the Vulture interview with Charli XCX. Conducted shortly before the release of how i’m feeling now, there are a few selection that I wanted to bring in:

“Three weeks before How I’m Feeling Now’s scheduled release, Charli stress-cried about the album, but today’s she’s feeling good. Isolation suits her better than she’d expected. “Obviously, I wish this wasn’t the situation we’re all in,” she tells me. “But I’m quite enjoying what self-isolation is forcing me to do, which is to be really present in my space.” Earlier that morning, she hosted the second of her weekly Zoom conferences, where she fields questions from fans and conducts mini interviews with friends about staying sane in lockdown; today’s guests include Paris Hilton, decked out in giant heart-shaped sunglasses and a pink velour tracksuit. “What’s your specialty?” Charli asks when Paris tells her she’s been getting into cooking. “Sliving lasagna,” Paris replies in her signature sexbot drone. “Sliving is my new trademark. It’s the new ‘that’s hot.’ It means slaying and living.” (There’s a recipe.)”.

Which brings us to the heart of How I’m Feeling Now: Where previous albums offered odes to after-hours raves and fast cars, this time Charli’s drawing almost exclusively from her relationship, chronicling the ways in which it has intensified while the couple has been alone together. “Oh God, what year would it have been …” Charli muses when I ask how she and Huck first met. “2013? No, 2012,” says a man’s muffled voice in the background. “We don’t really know,” Charli says, laughing; regardless, she was on the last leg of tour with a band called St. Lucia, which Kwong happened to be managing at the time. After the final NYC show, everyone hung out at a bar next to the Bowery Ballroom. “That’s when we met, but what was funny was he was on a first date with somebody else that night, and I had a boyfriend at the time,” she remembers. “So we spent the next few years being really into each other from afar but having really bad timing.”

How I’m Feeling Now is as much about how it came together as it is the songs themselves, a collaborative snapshot of what’s sure to be a bizarre memory. For years, Charli’s records have made the case that the future is now, if you want it. But it’s a weird time to be a futurist. If the future is now, it isn’t exactly as exhilarating as her earlier songs, full of 4 a.m. joyrides and heavenly synth choirs, made it seem; these days, time is lost in the void of one’s phone, a woefully inadequate substitute for real human connection. “But I think being a human being, and part of why we’ve survived, is our ability to adapt,” Charli counters when I ask if this is our increasingly virtual future and if we can bear it. “If you had told me last year that in 2020, we’d all be separated from each other, isolated in our homes, only speaking by FaceTime, and there’s this thing called Zoom and everyone’s throwing parties on it, I’d be like, Whoa, that sounds futuristic. But it just feels like normality”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz

I am going to wrap up soon, but I just want to end with an interview from The Guardian. It is quite revealing looking at interviews with Charli XCX. Not just in terms of how her latest album came together, but how her career has progressed:

“A few weeks before lockdown, Aitchison had started therapy to unpick the roots of her workaholism: How I’m Feeling Now is her sixth full-length album in seven years. She had been enjoying “slowing down, and being still and present at home. But the fact that I decided to do the album shows I couldn’t continue like that. I’m always forward, forward, forward,” she says, with the intensity of a general directing troops. 

Of course, nobody becomes a pop star to slack off these days; it’s more important than ever to maintain a constant presence on Spotify playlists and social media. Still, the 1975 frontman Matt Healy – whose recordings with Aitchison have yet to see the light of day – tells me she is on another level. “She just wants to work all the time. I’m bad, but she’s worse.” Collaborating with her is like “taking psychedelics”, he says: there are “rushes of madness and excitement, but you are left feeling rewarded, thankful and reflective. Although still drained”.

Aitchison’s DIY ethos has been there since she started playing raves at 15. Her parents would drive her from their home in Bishop’s Stortford to Hackney warehouses, where she shrieked about dinosaur sex in a peroxide wig while they waited to drive her home. “Playing in those more underground environments, and being exposed to fashion and LGBTQ+ culture – that was the first time I felt truly inspired to my core,” she says. “It was like I’d opened Pandora’s box.” She was signed by Atlantic Records off the back of those shows, and her early releases revamped a gothic pop that had lain dormant since the 1980s (think Shakespears Sister and Depeche Mode). Prior to the pandemic, she had mooted a tour of her 2013 debut album, True Romance. “It was one of the first things I really got stuck into – a lot of experimentation and figuring things out as they went along,” she explains. “Kind of a similar time to now.”

These days, stardom no longer depends on mass exposure and mainstream success. Social media’s most vocal fans (especially queer pop fans) have crowned a class of cult acts who might once have been dismissed as flops: musicians fluent in pop’s aesthetic while not necessarily aspiring to its scale, such as Haim, Christine and the Queens, and Carly Rae Jepsen – all of whom have collaborated with Aitchison. Her most recent album, 2019’s Charli, spawned two hits, with Troye Sivan and Lizzo, and this time, mainstream success felt more meaningful. “When I was younger, I didn’t know who I was – I wanted to fit in with the music I was making and the way I looked,” she explains. “Now I don’t feel that, and I think it speaks volumesfor how the pop industry has changed.”

How I’m Feeling Now already has one important legacy. Aitchison says she has been surprised by how fast her label have moved to get it out, and plans to release two more albums this year. Next time around, if they stall, she’s got this ace in her pocket to remind them that anything is possible: “No, guys, remember when we did that album in six weeks? No rules – let’s go”.

I think that Charli XCX is one of the world’s very best artists and, as she seems to get stronger by the album, that makes for a very interesting future! I feel that the next year will be a struggle, as artists cannot really gig and get out there. Charli XCX has performed some virtual gigs, and she has been able to promote how i’m feeling now. I feel next year will be a massive one for her, in the sense she will tour internationally and, maybe, we will get another album. Her music has the power to stop you in your tracks and engross the senses! A definite icon of the future, go and check out her albums and see what I mean! I have ended with a playlist of her finest songs to date that proves that Charlotte Emma Aitchison is….

AN absolute sensation.

FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: Barenaked Ladies - One Week

FEATURE:

 

 

Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure

Barenaked Ladies - One Week

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I am heading back to the ‘90s…

for the latest instalment of Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure. There were some great one-hit wonder bands from that decade and, to me, one of the finest comes in the form of Barenaked Ladies. That may sound a bit harsh, but I know the band did have other successful tracks. One Week was such a hit and success that nothing they did since has the same sort of gravity and impact. That said, there are many who either dislike the track or feel that it is a novelty that should be seen as a guilty pleasure. Because the lyrics are a little ridiculous and random, I can understand why some feel it is a bit throwaway. I really love the originality of the lyrics and how singalong One Week is! Before I go on, I want to bring in the Wikipedia article relating to the Barenaked Ladies’ signature song:

“"One Week" is a song by the Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies that was released as the first single from their 1998 album, Stunt. It was written by Ed Robertson, who is featured on the lead vocal of the rapped verses. Steven Page sings lead on the song's chorus, while the two co-lead the prechoruses in harmony. The song is notable for its significant number of pop culture references, and it remains the band's best-known song in the United States. Coincidentally, when the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it remained in the top spot for one week.

"One Week" is the band's best-performing single on the charts in both the US and the UK, though it slightly under-performed several other singles in Canada. It was the band's only No. 1 single in the US on both the Hot 100 and the US Modern Rock Tracks (for five non-consecutive weeks). The song spent seven weeks at No. 3 on the Hot 100 Airplay and an additional four weeks at No. 2 behind the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris". The band has not equaled this level of US chart success since, though singles "It's All Been Done", from the same album, and "Pinch Me", the first single from their subsequent album Maroon, both broke the top 50 of the US Hot 100. Apple used the song at MacWorld 1999 for presenting Mac OS X Server on a wall of 50 iMacs.

In 1999, American parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a parody titled "Jerry Springer", a song about a man's strange obsession with The Jerry Springer Show, for his album Running with Scissors.

The song has been featured numerous times in other media, including the films Digimon: The Movie, American Pie, 10 Things I Hate About You, the band appear to perform it live in "College Kids", an early season 4 episode of The West Wing, the season 7 Oscar Special of On Cinema, a season 2 episode of Schooled, the video game Alvin and the Chipmunks, and in the video game Rock Band Blitz. The song also appears as a recurring element of the mashup album Mouth Moods by American musician Neil Cicierega”.

I am going to end by introducing an article from 2018 where we hear from Ed Robertson (who wrote One Week) of the band. After thirty years of One Week being in the world, it must have been interesting reflecting on a song that went to number-one in the U.S. and was a big smash around the world. Although other tracks from Barenaked Ladies’ 1998 album, Stunt - like It’s All Be Done –, are terrific and catchy, many associated the album with One Week – and they wrote the band off as a one-hit wonder. I think the album is really solid. Here is what AllMusic said in their review:

“By trying to mask their smart-ass humor in a big pop production, the Barenaked Ladies attempt to set themselves up for the big crossover that they nearly achieved with such past singles as "Be My Yoko Ono" and "Brian Wilson." Nothing on Stunt, the group's fourth studio album, is so clearly jokey (although "Alcohol" comes close), but they still rely on clever satire. That may irritate some listeners who would otherwise be won over by the group's increased musical skill. Never before has the band been able to pull off so many different styles, from jangly pop and alt-country to loungy bossa nova, so well. Musically, it could convince the doubters who have written off Barenaked Ladies as novelty pranksters, but the lyrics still will stand in the way of trad-rockers predisposed to this style of music. Of course, listeners who are a little less uptight will find Stunt to be a fine collegiate party record and one of the best albums the Barenaked Ladies have released”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson/PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

One of the most distinctive aspects of One Week is its lyrics. There are all sorts of unusual and random scenes thrown into the mix. When I was at high school and the song came out, many people in the playground tried to memorise the lyrics and sing it back as the band did! Even to this day, I am not really sure whether there is a meaning behind them or whether Ed Robertson was writing in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style. I want to quote from a Stereogum article – where we learn more about the background to One Week. Although all of the lyrics were raised and explained, I have chosen a couple of choice selections:

“The short and spritely “One Week” is full of non sequiturs, but it isn’t entirely nonsense. It begins on the chorus (sung by Steven Page) which describes a couple in a fight. The protagonist is too stubborn to apologize, but knows it’ll blow over like it always does. In between the jaunty refrains, though, are the reasons this song was always polarizing: a rapped series of jokey, rapid-fire pop culture and brand references that don’t relate to each other nor the narrative. Robertson, the band’s co-founder and current frontman, had been known to improvise raps during Barenaked Ladies concerts and created the verses as an intentionally silly freestyle.

Mid-‘90s media was steeped in self-reflexive humor and knowing meta gags. Seinfeld had Jerry and George landing a pilot for a TV show about nothing. Scream featured a character who rattled off horror film clichés. The timing was right for a hit that mentioned contemporary songwriters like Sting and Leann Rimes.

The following summer pop radio kept the random namedrops coming with LFO’s ridiculous “Summer Girls” (which referenced Michael J. Fox, Kevin Bacon, and Abercrombie & Fitch) and Blessid Union Of Souls’ “Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me)” (Jim Carrey, Cindy Crawford, “that guy who played in Fargo, I think his name is Steve”). Even New Radicals’ brilliant “You Get What You Give” seemed to shoehorn in mentions of Beck, Hanson, and Courtney Love for no reason. All these acts could now be considered pop history footnotes, but Barenaked Ladies didn’t exactly meet that fate.

STEREOGUM: How and when did “One Week” come into play. Had it been percolating for awhile?

ROBERTSON: Well, I had the basic structure of the song, the choruses, which is kind of this silly deconstruction of an argument between two people who actually really like each other. The kind of stubborn argument that drags out over a week. I had that, and I wanted to do some kind of rappy verses but they always sucked every time I tried to write them. It was finally Steve who said, “Why don’t you just freestyle it, like you do in every show? The freestyles you do off the top of your head are better than the stuff you’re trying to write.” I wasn’t very sophisticated at that time in terms of the whole home studio or recording equipment. So I set up a video camera and I freestyled like four verses and I edited those down into the two verses that became “One Week.” So our biggest single ever, our #1 single, was written in three-and-a-half minutes.

 STEREOGUM: I’ve seen some of those cut lyrics —  “Luke Skywalker gotta big hunch/Hey that’s my lunch/Yoda’s a really really old guy” — but is it fair to say the final recording is pretty close to what you laid out on that videotape?

ROBERTSON: Yeah.

STEREOGUM: And I take it you didn’t recognize it as a hit.

ROBERTSON: Well it’s such a weird song, right? I thought it would be a bonus track or a b-side. It was one of the last songs I submitted to the record company and when Sue Drew, who was our A&R person at the time, said, “We wanna lead with ‘One Week'” I actually thought she was joking. I thought she was making a dig at me, like this is the stupidest fucking song I ever heard. Which I would’ve agreed with. I labored over so many songs on that record, and tried to make them, you know, super deep and meaningful and soulful and tried to nail them emotionally, and then this totally ridiculous song that I improvised, that makes no sense at all, goes to #1.

STEREOGUM: You say it makes no sense at all. The chorus makes sense to me, but there’s debate online as to whether the verses relate to the narrative.

ROBERTSON: Absolutely not. It is a hodgepodge of pop culture references and inside jokes. I can tell you where every single line comes from and what it means, but they don’t relate to each other, and they don’t relate to the chorus.

IN THIS PHOTO: David Duchovny and Gilliam Anderson in a publicity shot for The X-Files 

STEREOGUM: Perhaps this is related: why when you’re watching X-Files are you “dans la maison”?

ROBERTSON: So The X-Files theme goes [hums X-Files theme]. We were X-Files maniacs and this was back in the day when there was no streaming, stuff wasn’t available, but we met someone at Fox and they gave us like a 3’x2’x2′ crate of VHS copies of The X-Files so as of ’98 we had every episode on VHS on the bus. So after the show we would get on the bus and we wouldn’t say, “Hey do you want to watch some X-Files?,” we wouldn’t say, “Hey ya wanna put something on the TV?” We’d go [to the tune of X-Files theme] “dans la maison la maison la maison…” Which was just singing The X-Files theme with the French for “are you in the house?” like, “are you ready to do this?”.

I have a lot of affection for One Week, yet there are some that dismiss the song as nonsensical/a mere novelty hit. Not only is One Week uplifting and silly enough to produce a smile; one can lose themselves in the lyrics and all the images and possibilities they project! It is a classic cut from the 1990s that is still on my playlist. If you have been a little cold towards the song or have not really given it a chance, then have a listen now and I know that it will put you in a better mood. The fact that we are still talking about One Week over thirty years since its release proves that…

IT is much more than a mere guilty pleasure!

FEATURE: Music Technology Breakthroughs: Part Six: GarageBand

FEATURE:

 

 

Music Technology Breakthroughs

Part Six: GarageBand

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AS I tend to do…

with this feature, I going to bring in some history regarding the music technology breakthrough I am focusing on - before going on to look at its legacy and importance. I want to quote heavily from Wikipedia, as it provides a nice history and background to the wonderful GarageBand:

“GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed and sold by Apple for macOS, and is part of the iLife software suite, along with iMovie and iDVD. Its music and podcast creation system enables users to create multiple tracks with pre-made MIDI keyboards, pre-made loops, an array of various instrumental effects, and voice recordings

GarageBand was developed by Apple under the direction of Dr. Gerhard Lengeling. Dr. Lengeling was formerly from the German company Emagic, makers of Logic Audio. Apple acquired Emagic in July 2002.

Steve Jobs announced the application in his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on January 6, 2004. Musician John Mayer assisted with its demonstration.[1] It is part of the iLife '04 package.

Apple announced GarageBand 2 at the 2005 Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005. It shipped, as announced, around January 22, 2005. Notable new features included the abilities to view and edit music in musical notation. It was also possible to record up to 8 tracks at once and to fix timing and pitch of recordings. Apple added automation of track pan position and the master pitch. Transposition of both audio and MIDI has been added by Apple along with the ability to import MIDI files. It is part of iLife '05.

GarageBand 3, announced at 2006's Macworld Conference & Expo, includes a 'podcast studio', including the ability to use more than 200 effects and jingles, and integration with iChat for remote interviews. It is part of iLife '06.

GarageBand 4, also known as GarageBand '08, is part of iLife '08. It incorporates the ability to record sections of a song separately, such as bridges, and chorus lines. Additionally, it provides support for the automation of tempos and instruments, the creation, and exportation of iPhone ringtones, and a "Magic GarageBand" feature which includes a virtual jam session with a complete 3D view of the Electric instruments.

GarageBand 5 is part of the iLife '09 package. It includes music instruction and allows the user to buy instructional videos by contemporary artists. It also contains new features for electric guitar players, including a dedicated 3D Electric Guitar Track containing a virtual stompbox pedalboard, and virtual amplifiers with spring reverb and tremolo. GarageBand 5 also includes a redesigned user interface as well as Project Templates.

GarageBand 6, also known as GarageBand '11, is part of the iLife '11 package, which Apple released on October 20, 2010. This version brings new features such as Flex Time, a tool to adjust the rhythm of a recording. It also includes the ability to match the tempo of one track with another instantly, additional guitar amps and stompboxes, 22 new lessons for guitar and piano, and "How Did I Play?", a tool to measure the accuracy and progress of a piano or guitar performance in a lesson.

Apple released GarageBand 10 along with OS X 10.9 Mavericks in October 2013. This version has lost Magic GarageBand and the podcast functionality.

Apple updated GarageBand 10 for Mac on March 20, 2014. Version 10.0.2 adds the ability to export tracks in MP3 format as well as a new drummer module, but removed support for podcasting; users with podcast files created in GarageBand 6 can continue to edit them using the older version.

GarageBand was updated to version 10.0.3 on October 16, 2014. This version included myriad bug fixes and several new features including a dedicated Bass Amp Designer, the introduction of global track effects and dynamic track resizing.

Apple released GarageBand 10.2 on June 5, 2017.

One can access GarageBand through Apple and, since its inception, it has been a go-to for many musicians. Whether recording basic tracks and demos or full recordings, its range of sounds and instruments provides a worlds of choice for artists. There is also a Lesson Store that was introduced for GarageBand '09 that allows users to see a lesson delivered by a music tutor in relation to various songs. I have been thinking about using GarageBand in a basic sense to get down some musical ideas as, even if you are not a skilled musician, you can create songs and collages.

I want to end by bringing in a couple of articles that look at the influence of GarageBand – where we hear from musicians and producers who feel it is a breakthrough and has changed their music. Red Bull wrote about GarageBand in 2019 on its fiftieth anniversary:

“Grimes famously recorded her first album for 4AD, 2012’s Visions, entirely on GarageBand. Rhianna’s hit Umbrella grew from the ‘Vintage Funk Kit 03’ GarageBand drum loop. Lana Del Rey has spoken about experimenting with the software early on in her career, and Björk has previously revealed she's used GarageBand for her DJ sets. Elsewhere, leftfield artists like Kelsey Lu and Julianna Barwick have also used the software in their sonic experimentations.

York-born songwriter and XL Recordings’ alum Lapsley makes warm, stripped-back electronic pop that’s rife with emotion. She released her debut album, Long Way Home, in 2016 and recalls using GarageBand on one of the first tracks she ever made, Station – the song which coincidentally kickstarted her career. She still uses the software as a tool. “If I’m trying to record something quickly or I’m feeling a bit bombarded with the number of plug-ins on Logic, I find GarageBand is a really good creative tool to just take it all away and try and figure stuff out,” she says. “It’s really important to be able to work with space and I think GarageBand enables you to have that space.”

 Lapsley credits GarageBand with “opening the doors to her career” – doors which she says are so often shut to artists like herself with no prior experience of or connections to the London-centric music industry. “Sometimes it can feel in this industry that only rich people can make it, as everything costs so much money… I would encourage anyone who is interested in music production to start with a simple programme like GarageBand and work their way up,” she says. “I got a record deal from using GarageBand, it’s basically given me a career.”

Varg, a Swedish producer who co-runs the Stockholm-based label Northern Electronics, is also drawn to the streamlined nature of GarageBand. “I just find GarageBand really easy to use,” he says. “I use it like I have used tape recorders in the past. I record beats on my iPad and export to GarageBand on my computer – it’s easy to do that mix and match thing. I find joy in the limitations that it brings you.”

For Varg, snobbery about production has the potential to kill creativity and render musicians unproductive. “Of course, I can see the point of Logic or other DAWs for having those advanced effects, but if you’re just recording, then GarageBand is great. It’s nice because what you see is what you get – it’s like MS Paint. Maybe you won’t be able to find that warp function that you’re looking for, but maybe you don’t need that at the time. But maybe you just need to record some music that’s really fucking good”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Carrie Brownstein/PHOTO CREDIT: Autumn de Wilde/Riverhead Books

I think that many musicians use more sophisticated software and tools to put together music in a D.I.Y. fashion but, as so many artists are isolated and can benefit from the convenience and options on GarageBand’s new release, I think we will see it impacting more on music through this year. The final article is from Pitchfork who, in 2015, collected testimony from various artists and producers who have been affected by GarageBand:

"I know a lot of 'real musicians' prefer more advanced programs like Pro Tools or Logic," says Frances McKee, 49, of Scottish alt-rockers the Vaselines, "but I'm a part-time punk." When McKee and her Vaselines partner Eugene Kelly started making music together in the late ‘80s, the two were inseparable during the creative process. But the two were rarely in the same room while working on their 2010 comeback album, Sex With an X; they began to collaborate by sharing GarageBand files over email—a process McKee describes as "black magic." The experience hooked McKee on GarageBand as a songwriting tool, or a digital four-track. "Up until then I hated using computers," she says. "But [GarageBand] changed everything."

Carrie Brownstein shares McKee's sentiment. Earlier this year, the Sleater-Kinney guitarist told The Wall Street Journal that GarageBand is a songwriting tool she wishes she had when she was younger. Through the years, the program has become the tech-averse musician's way of crossing a digital divide where Pro Tools certifications, gear-talk at Guitar Center, and the coded gender of technology often blocks their path.

IN THIS PHOTO: Emily Lazar/PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Wolffbrandt 

Until the advent of GarageBand and MySpace in the mid-2000s, female musicians were chained to an entire infrastructure designed by men, from recording, to distribution, to marketing. And while the "silent chuckle" Barwick refers to isn't explicitly by men, the fact is that the technical side of music is still largely a boys' club. "The feminist implication of GarageBand definitely encouraged a lot of my female friends to explore something that had previously seemed out of reach," says Dum Dum Girls' Dee Dee.

For Emily Lazar, the engineer behind Haim's Days Are Gone and Vampire Weekend's Modern Vampires of the City—as well as the first female mastering engineer to ever be nominated for a Record of the Year Grammy, for her work on Sia's "Chandelier"—the industry's quiet biases have always been more direct. "I could describe so many awful experiences," says Lazar, "but doing that would give the people that have behaved so offensively more attention than they deserve”.

I wanted to salute a technological and musical breakthrough that, like others, has not really dated. Like the iPod and vocoder, GarageBand has evolved and updated through the years. I think that it is invaluable and terrific for artists, producers and novices who either want to sketch out a song or just experiment and play around. Seventeen years after its release (the stable release, out 10.4.2 /, came out on 10th December, 2020), so many artists swear by the utility and practicality of GarageBand – something one might have imagined would be usurped or rendered old-fashioned in a modern technological age. I was keen to throw a salute to a musical tool that, for so many years, has been used and valued by people…

ALL around the world.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Girl on Fire: Alicia Keys at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

Girl on Fire: Alicia Keys at Forty

___________

LIKE I did with Dolly Parton regarding…

a Lockdown Playlist on her seventy-fifth birthday, I am going to bring in a lot of Wikipedia information regarding Alicia Keys ahead of her fortieth birthday on Monday (25th January). Keys is one of the finest artists we have, and I have been a fan of her music since her debut album, Songs in A Minor – which turns twenty in June (her seventh studio album, ALICIA, came out last year). If you are new to Alicia Keys, here is some helpful biography and background:

“Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American singer-songwriter. A classically-trained pianist, Keys began composing songs by age 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Columbia Records. After disputes with the label, she signed with Arista Records and later released her debut album, Songs in A Minor, with J Records in 2001. The album was critically and commercially successful, producing her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Fallin'" and selling over 16 million copies worldwide. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002.

Her second album, The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003), was also a critical and commercial success, spawning successful singles "You Don't Know My Name", "If I Ain't Got You", and "Diary", and selling eight million copies worldwide. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards. Her duet "My Boo" with Usher became her second number-one single in 2004. Keys released her first live album, Unplugged (2005), and became the first woman to have an MTV Unplugged album debut at number one. Her third album, As I Am (2007), produced the Hot 100 number-one single "No One", selling 7 million copies worldwide and earning an additional three Grammy Awards. In 2007, Keys made her film debut in the action-thriller film Smokin' Aces.

She, along with Jack White, recorded "Another Way to Die" (the title song to the 22nd official James Bond film, Quantum of Solace). Her fourth album, The Element of Freedom (2009), became her first chart-topping album in the UK, and sold 4 million copies worldwide. In 2009, Keys also collaborated with Jay Z on "Empire State of Mind", which became her fourth number-one single and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Girl on Fire (2012) was her fifth Billboard 200 topping album, spawning the successful title track, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. In 2013, VH1 Storytellers was released as her second live album. Her sixth studio album, Here (2016), became her seventh US R&B/Hip-Hop chart-topping album. Her seventh studio album, Alicia, was released on September 18, 2020.

Keys has received numerous accolades in her career, including 15 competitive Grammy Awards, 17 NAACP Image Awards, 12 ASCAP Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and National Music Publishers Association. She has sold over 50 million albums and 40 million singles worldwide and was named by Billboard the top R&B artist of the 2000s decade. She placed tenth on their list of Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years. VH1 included her on their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and 100 Greatest Women in Music lists, while Time has named her in their 100 list of most influential people in 2005 and 2017. Keys is also acclaimed for her humanitarian work, philanthropy and activism; she co-founded and serves as the Global Ambassador of the nonprofit HIV/AIDS-fighting organization Keep a Child Alive”.

To look ahead to Keys’ fortieth birthday tomorrow, I was keen to compile a playlist of her best songs. I have included Keys in my Modern Heroines feature and did a playlist then but, now, I have compiled a more expansive one. Here is a tribute and nod to…

AN incredible songwriter.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Neil Diamond at Eighty: His Standout Gems

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: Associated Press 

Neil Diamond at Eighty: His Standout Gems

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I am doing a few birthday…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin/Getty Images

Lockdown Playlists because, recently, there have been some big musical birthdays. Neil Diamond is eighty tomorrow (24th January), so I thought I would honour the great man. Diamond has sold more than one-hundred-million records worldwide – he is one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. In 2011, he was an honouree at the Kennedy Center Honors, and he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. If we’re truthful, I think we can all name a Neil Diamond classic! From Song Sung Blue, Sweet Caroline, I Am…I Said, America, to Kentucky Woman, there are plenty of jewels in his crown! Neil Diamond announced retirement from the stage because of Parkinson’s Disease but, in spite of this, he gave a memorable performance at the Keep Memory Alive Power of Love Gala at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on 7th March last year. Happy eightieth birthday to songwriting legend and a musician whose music was quite a big part of my childhood. If you are new to the work of Neil Diamond, then I hope you like a rundown of…

SOME of his best songs.

FEATURE: Second Spin: En Vogue – EV3

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

En Vogue – EV3

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I think I first heard En Vogue…

not long after their second studio album, Funky Divas, arrived in 1992. That is a classic of the time and it contained some of their biggest hits – including Free Your Mind, and My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It). That was the last album to feature the classic four-piece line-up of Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones. Robinson left the group in 1997, late into the recording of their third album, EV3 (she can be heard on songs like Don't Let Go (Love). There has been some personnel switching since then but, after such a strong second album, the loss of a member at a crucial stage was going to dent the strength and unity of future material. Despite some decidedly mixed reviews for EV3, I think it is better than its reputation suggests. Recorded after a lengthy break during which the band members became mothers or established solo careers, this album was En Vogue's first to feature a wide range of collaborators - including Babyface, David Foster, Diane Warren, Andrea Martin, Ivan Matias, and Organized Noize, along with regular contributors Foster & McElroy. I think singles such as Whatever, Don't Let Go (Love), and Too Gone, Too Long are some of the strongest songs En Vogue ever released; I also really like non-singles like Right Direction, and Let It Flow. Some noted that the subtraction of a member meant the vocals (when they were a trio) were not as strong. Others remarked how the songs were not as strong as on Funky Divas. I do think that EV3 misses the spark and consistency of Funky Divas, but there are some terrific songs on the album that get overlooked.

Despite a few weak tracks, the album as a whole is quite satisfying and warrants some new inspection. I think What a Difference a Day Makes, and Does Anybody Hear Me are tracks that should be played more on the radio – and one cannot say there is a notable sense of tension and damage having lost a member. EV3 had to follow a hugely successful album which sold over three-and-a-half-million copies. I think the hiatus and various life events affected the material a little. Cindy Herron and Maxine Jones went on maternity leave; Terry Ellis reteamed with regular En Vogue contributors Foster & McElroy to work on her solo album, Southern Gal. It is a pity that EV3 has gained some mixed reviews. This is what AllMusic noted in their review:

“The sound of En Vogue isn't greatly affected by the departure of Dawn Robinson for their third album, EV3, since the group's harmonies remain remarkably supple and soulful. Instead, the group are hurt by its selection of producers and songwriters. En Vogue have decided to work with Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy only occasionally on EV3, choosing to hire such professional songwriters and producers as Babyface, David Foster, Diane Warren and Ivan Matias, who arranged their hit single "Don't Let Go (Love)." At times, these pairings work: Babyface's "Whatever" is funkier than his previous work, and Matias brings a gospel-drenched sensibility to his songs. In the cases of Warren and Foster, they reshape En Vogue as an adult contemporary band, sapping the group of any of their energy or style. Still, there are enough strong moments scattered throughout the album to make it worth the wait”.

I think people should check out EV3. It is not the group’s finest album, yet there are some terrific singles and deeper cuts which are memorable and very solid. Entertainment Weekly reviewed the album in 1997 and remarked the following:

“For instance, while the lyrics to Babyface’s ”Whatever” depict a state of frustrated desire, they barely approach the eloquence of the song’s sound. As if the slow-simmering groove weren’t tease enough, the production keeps the lead vocals so compressed that they never quite come to a boil, a combination that leaves the track almost aching with desire — even if it leaves the singers in the background.

”Let It Flow” pushes that a little too far, placing so much emphasis on its funkified rhythm bed that the rest of the song is an afterthought. Not that there’s anything wrong with working a groove, but considering how baldly the backing tracks steal from the Slave classic ”Slide,” producers Foster and McElroy could have at least created a semi-catchy chorus. (Also, a composer’s credit for their source would have been nice.)

That’s not to say these women always come across as backup singers. ”Right Direction” owes more to its sassy lead vocals than to its blend of bottleneck guitar and Southern funk, while the singing in ”Sitting by Heaven’s Door” is so effortless and inspired that it seems more like an impromptu collaboration than a careful arrangement”.

Even though I have seen some positive reviews for EV3, most have been mixed. I think that, from the twelve tracks, maybe three are not up to the high standard of En Vogue. That makes for a pretty decent and listenable album! I would urge people to give it a try as, almost twenty-four after its release, I am still listening to the songs and discovering new things. I miss the glory days of the 1990s girl groups and the type of music that was being produced. It was a great era and, whilst Funky Divas was a classic, maybe EV3 suffered from some changes in the group and songwriting that was not quite as sharp as we found on Funky Divas. In spite of some lukewarm reviews, EV3 did do well commercially. In the United States, EV3 debuted at number-eight on both the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and the Billboard 200 in the issue dated – it sold approximately 76,500 copies in its first week of release; the album marked the band's highest debut on both charts as well as their biggest first week sales yet. On 26th August, 1997, EV3 was awarded Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), indicating sales in excess of one-million copies. That is a terrific achievement, and I can understand why the album did as well as it did! Give EV3 another spin, as it boasts great vocals and it has…

SOME terrific songs to be found.

FEATURE: Moving in So Many Ways: The Influence of the Late Lindsay Kemp on Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Moving in So Many Ways

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsay Kemp and Kate Bush during the filming of 1993’s The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari 

The Influence of the Late Lindsay Kemp on Kate Bush

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BACK in 2018…

many Kate Bush fans had to process the news that Lindsay Kemp died at the age of eighty. I am going to bring in some articles because, not only did Kemp transform Bush’s career and how she incorporated movement and theatre into her work, but he also made an impression on musicians like David Bowie. Kate Bush News reflected on the legacy and impact of Kemp on Bush’s music after his death in 2018:

“He taught me that you can express with your body – and when your body is awake so is your mind. He’d put you into emotional situations, some of them very heavy. Like he’d say, “right, you’re all going to become sailors drowning and there are waves curling up around you.” And everyone would just start screaming. Or maybe he’d turn you into a little piece of flame… (Kate Bush, 1978)

We were very sad to hear today of the passing of the great dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist, and choreographer, Lindsay Kemp. He was 80 years old and had been at his home in Livorno, Italy preparing for upcoming performances and writing his memoirs.

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsay Kemp and Kate Bush during the filming of 1993’s The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari 

When Kate reissued her album, The Red Shoes, in 2011 with a warm analogue remaster, she made sure to include a prominent new dedication on the sleeve-notes: “Special thanks to Lindsay Kemp, the most original artist ever, for being such an inspiration”. It was accompanied by a Guido Harari photograph of Lindsay in costume from the set of Kate’s film The Line, The Cross and The Curve, dancing manically on burning bones and grinning broadly, lost in the joy of the dance. For Kate Bush fans, Lindsay was one of those iconic reference points in Kate’s early story, like Gilmour, or East Wickham Farm or the KT Bush Band – her decision to attend his classes and learn how to extend her musical expression into movement and dance utterly changed the shape her career would take.

When Kate left school she had already mulled over the idea of dance but she couldn’t get accepted into a full-time ballet course as she didn’t have the qualifications. Famously, it was seeing Lindsay’s performance of ‘Flowers’ that convinced Kate to join his classes in 1976 at The Dance Centre in Covent Garden. Lindsay’s own website describes the celebrated show: “Kemp’s extremely free interpretation of Genet’s novel “Our Lady of the Flowers”, with himself playing the central role of Divine, a transvestite transcending gender in a world of criminals, whores and angels: prisons and sexual fantasies, Genet’s verbal violence and poetry transformed into music and gesture, silence and stillness. A dreamlike journey to destruction, through seduction, shock, laughter, poetry and total emotion.”

In recent interviews Lindsay humorously and affectionately recalled the teenage Kate Bush showing up at his classes.

“Kate turned up dressed very properly in her ballet tights and things and her hair scraped back looking very, very professional indeed, looking like a serious student, but as timid as hell! And of course she took a place at the back of the class. You know, I had to coax her forward, I mean she was extremely shy, extremely timid and the first thing I had to do was bring her out of herself, give her courage. I have to say, that once Kate actually started dancing, she was a WILD thing, I mean she was wild!”

Kate dedicated the opening song from her debut album, The Kick Inside, to Lindsay, much to his surprise and delight. The lyrics of ‘Moving’ describe the devastating effect Kate felt on seeing him in performance”.

Although he appeared in Kate Bush’s 1993 film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, he did not feature too heavily elsewhere. I think his influence is enormous, mind. It is hard to think where Kate Bush’s career and videos would have headed were it not for Lindsay Kemp and the way he opened Kate Bush’s eyes and mind to a new world. I definitely think that he brought confidence from her at a time when she would have been very shy and timid! The teenage Bush was hungry and eager to learn, but compare that to the artist we see in videos like Wuthering Heights, Babooshka, and Wow, and I think that Kemp’s teachings were very much responsible for the way Bush progressed and put this physicality into her videos! I want to bring in an article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, where Bush talked about Lindsay Kemp:

“I couldn't believe how strongly Lindsay communicates with people without even opening his mouth. It was incredible, he had the whole audience in his control, just with his little finger. And it was amazing. I'd never seen anything like it, I really hadn't. And I felt if it was possible to combine that strength of movement with the voice, then maybe it would work, and that's what I've tried to do. (Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4 (UK), 21 February 1979)

Once I'd left school I tried to get into a dance school full-time, but no one would accept me as I had no qualifications in ballet. I had almost given up the idea of using dance as an extension of my music, until I met Lindsay Kemp, and that really did change so many of my ideas. He was the first person to actually give me some lessons in movement. I realized there was so much potential with using movement in songs, and I wanted to get a basic technique in order to be able to express myself fully. Lindsay has his own style - it's more like mime - and although he studied in many ballet schools and is technically qualified as a dancer, his classes and style are much more to do with letting go what's inside and expressing that. It doesn't matter if you haven't perfect technique. (Electronics & Music Maker, 1982)

To call him a mime artist is like calling Mozart a pianist. He was very brave, very funny and above all, astonishingly inspirational. There was no-one quite like Lindsay. I was incredibly lucky to study with him, work with him and spend time with him. I loved him very much and will miss him dearly. Thank you, dear Lindsay. (Lindsay Kemp, performer and Bowie mentor, dies at 80. BBC News, 25 August 2018)”.

I think dance and Bush’s physical expression is so much a part of her songwriting, live performances and videos. Whilst other choreographers helped mould her, Lindsay Kemp, to me, remains the most important. Listen to the song, Moving, on The Kick Inside, where we get a debut-album Bush paying tribute in 1978 to someone who, even at that early stage, transformed her life immeasurably. Almost two years after his death, I have been thinking how that initial thread of Bush seeing Kemp’s performance of Flowers and attending his dance classes in London unravelled and have resonated right to this day. Many might not know about Lindsay Kemp in relation to Kate Bush but, when you think about it, his influence and importance…

IS huge and seismic.

FEATURE: The January Playlist: Vol. 4: You Will Forget

FEATURE:

 

 

The January Playlist

 IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish and ROSALÍA

Vol. 4: You Will Forget

__________

ONLY a few weeks into 2021…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Staves

and there has been this wave of great new songs and activity! Artists are coming out in force this year and, with new tracks from Billie Eilish/ROSALÍA, Goat Girl, Royal Blood, The Anchoress, The Staves, Weezer, Griff, Years & Years, and Django Django, it is a packed and varied selection! Throw into the mix The Lottery Winners (ft. Frank Turner), Rose Gray, Low Island, Sabrina Carpenter, Yard Act, Birdy and Tash Sultana, and one cannot complain with the power and weight of this week’s music! If you need some energy and motivation to get you through the weekend, then I think that this assortment of wonderful cuts should provide you with plenty of…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Royal Blood

SPARK and kick.

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

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 PHOTO CREDIT: Sara Jaye Weiss/Rex Shutterstock

Billie Eilish, ROSALÍA - Lo Vas A Olvidar

Goat Girl – Badibaba

The Staves – Devotion

Anna B Savage - Baby Grand

Royal Blood – Typhoons

The Anchoress - The Art of Losing

Weezer - All My Favorite Songs

Griff – Black Hole

Holly Macve - Be My Friend

Yard Act – Dark Days

Femi Kuti - As We Struggle Everyday

Years & Years – It’s a Sin

The Lottery Winners (ft. Frank Turner) - Start Again

Django Django - Free From Gravity

Novelist – Calm

Rose Gray – Easy

Sabrina Carpenter – Skin

Rhye – Safeword

Dylan Cartlidge - Molasses (Walk the Walk)

Maggie Lindemann - Love Songs (Visualizer)

Low Island – Feel Young Again

The Pale White - Confession Box

Winona Oak – Winter Rain

Finn Askew – Egotism

Anna Leone - Once

Birdy – Surrender

PHOTO CREDIT: @g.g.mcg/@patfoxart

Tash Sultana – Sweet & Dandy

Karen Harding, Shift K3Y - Morning

Will Joseph Cook – We Met on the Internet

Bow Anderson – Black Heart

PHOTO CREDIT: Cory Miller

Slayyyter – Troubled in Paradise

Cariss Auburn - Float

PHOTO CREDIT: Angela Ricciardi & Silken Weinberg

Deb Never - Someone Else

Natalie Taylor – For a Reason

Charli Adams (ft. Nightly) · Maybe Could Have Loved

Jónsi - Mold

Cosha (ft. Shygirl) - Lapdance from Asia

Samana - All One Breath

FEATURE: Spotlight: Cat Burns

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Cat Burns

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I have been a fan of Cat Burns’ music for a while now…

but, as she is being tipped by various sources for success in 2021, I think that it is time to put her in Spotlight. Her tracks, Fool in Love, and Go were among my favourite of last year. I love the soulfulness and richness of her voice and how Burns can produce these sumptuous and smooth vocals before raising the decibels and projecting so much power and urgency! One is helpless to resist the passion in her voice. Of all the newer artists coming through right now, I think I want an album from Cat Burns more than most. I am going to bring in a few interview with Burns from the last few years. She has definitely progressed as an artist since her earliest songs, but I think that immense quality and conviction was always there. Back in 2019, EUPHORIA. introduced an amazing teenage artists who, with one amazing E.P. under her belt, was primed for bigger things:

“At just 18 years old, Cat Burns is willing to put her real thoughts and feelings out there. She released her debut EP Adolescent at just 15 years old and was at number 11 on the iTunes singer/songwriter chart within 24 hours of its release. Hailing from Streatham, South London, Burns is ready to take the lessons she’s learned into the real world.

The emerging pop songstress deftly crafts conversational lyrics that cut right to the core of feelings that often get lost in miscommunication. The chill, vibey tracks juxtaposed against concise, blunt lyrics highlight what make Cat Burns an artist to watch. She smartly crafts songs where the meaning of her songs don’t disappear behind flowery metaphors; she means exactly what she says.

Cat Burns wisely navigates lyrics that are reflective of the impact that relationships can have on our perspectives. She’s garnered attention from the likes of Complex UK, Earmilk, and Hunger TV and has no intention of slowing down in the new year.

“So far I’ve released two singles, worked with some really cool producers, performed at many intimate venues, and I was also named MSG London’s up & coming artist of the month in October! This year I’ll be releasing lots of new music and hopefully get a support slot,” Cat tells us.

Watch this space”.

I am going to scatter in a few interviews as one can gleam quite a lot of different things about the amazing Cat Burns. Even though there is a lot of hype around Burns now – and I think 2021 will be her breakout year for her -, back in 2019 she was already getting noticed. I love this little snippet from London in Stereo, where they asked Burns a few quick-fire questions:

“The best venue I’ve played…

Definitely the Hammersmith Apollo when I was 11 for Britain’s Got Talent.

Earliest song you remember…

High School Musical – Breaking Free

Things that cheer me up…

Tv shows in particular Rick and Morty, any superhero film and seeing my friends for food or doing fun activities like mini golf or bowling!

If I could play a gig anywhere it would be…

Brixton 02 Academy

I think you should listen to…

This artist called Jvck James he’s amazing and doing something really amazing for UK R&B

If I could see anyone play live it would be…

Definitely Ariana Grande or Beyonce!”.

I think we may see that collaboration between Cat Burns and Ariana Grande happen very soon! It is clear that, with so much great music out there, Burns is capturing the wider attention. Cat Burns put out the E.P., Adolescence, in 2016; when she was being interviewed in 2019, she was preparing to launch her second E.P., Naïve. Featuring tracks like Sober, and Cheater, it is a phenomenal work! I want to bring in an interview from She Bops from 2019. Burns was asked about being a Black artist and young woman in the music industry:

 “If listeners could take away one message from your music, what would you want that to be?

Do what you want, and don’t do what you don’t want to do. My music isn’t aimed at any particular gender, but the songs that are coming out are definitely leaning towards empowering women.

Since you’ve brought up empowering women, what do you think about the representation of women in the music industry? Is there something you’d like to change?

I think the representation is okay, it needs to be better. There’s a concept that women aren’t allowed to speak for ourselves because if we do, then we aren’t nice. Men can do and say what they want, but women can’t. This needs to change.

What piece of advice would you give a young female musician looking to get into music?

I’d say make sure that you are sure that this is what you want/are meant to do. There are going to be many trials and tribulations, and you can get low. So, you need to have belief. Do many gigs, build contacts. It’s all about hard work, opportunities, and luck.

As a woman in the music industry, is there something that frustrates you about it?

It is difficult for me, especially as a black woman looking to go down the pop route because there are not many black British women doing that. And people are always surprised, and we get labelled as people who’d go into R&B or hip-hop”.

I am fascinated to see where Cat Burns goes this year and whether we will get an album. I don’t think another E.P. would be out of the question but, as we are not certain when artists can tour again, will see hold off on an album until things are a lot better? I want to bring in a final interview – this one from January of last year –, where we learn more about Burns:

“WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALISE THAT YOU WANTED TO PURSUE MUSIC FULL TIME?

I think I realised as soon as I joined the Brit School! I was 14 and after a few lessons and assemblies my dream didn’t seem that far out of reach anymore.

WHAT’S YOUR PROUDEST CAREER MOMENT SO FAR?

It was actually back in 2017 when I put on my own headline gig, all my friends and family showed up and were singing all the words. I really felt the love that night. It will always be special for me .

WHO DID YOU LISTEN TO GROWING UP?

I grew up listening to gospel, from Kirk Franklin to Jonathan McReynolds. I also grew up listening to Tori Kelly, Ed Sheeran & Stevie Wonder.

It is interesting that, in that interview, she was asked about what her dream collaboration would be - and she said Tori Kelly. It seems Burns is keen to work with a number of different artists, so it will be interesting to see how many collaborations happen in 2021. I shall leave things there. However, do go and check out Cat Burns’ incredible music on Spotify; follow her on social media and keep your eyes peeled. The exceptional artist/songwriter from South London is a graduate from the prestigious BRIT School. At sixteen, she was chosen as BBC Radio 1XTRA's Track of the Week - being described by Jamz Supernova as an exciting new artist delivering “Meaningful Pop, with an Urban Folk/Singer-Songwriter twist”. Since then, Burns has gone from strength to strength and I think she has the promise to be massive! This year will be a very exciting one for her so, if you have not discovered Cat Burns, then make sure you…

CORRECT that now!

_______________

Follow Cat Burns

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/catburns

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/catburns/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/catburnsmusic/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWI3Qg6UYZcC1dWzX1lL5dg

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WFDpw4u23uSpon4BHvFRn

FEATURE: More Than a Woman: Looking Back at Aaliyah’s Eponymous Album – and the Hope It Will Appear on Streaming Sites Soon

FEATURE:

 

 

More Than a Woman

IN THIS PHOTO: Aaliyah in 2000 

Looking Back at Aaliyah’s Eponymous Album – and the Hope It Will Appear on Streaming Sites Soon

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IT is hard to believe that the iconic…

Aaliyah died almost twenty years ago. On 25th August, 2001, she died in a plane crash having finished the filming for her final single, Rock the Boat. It was such a tragic accident and huge loss for the music industry. Aged only twenty-two, there is no telling how far she could have gone and what she would have achieved in the intervening years! In terms of her influence, I want to take from Wikipedia – as we discover just how far and wide her legacy and brilliance has spread:

“Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine R&B, pop and hip hop in the 1990s, "leaving an indelible imprint on the music industry as a whole." According to Billboard, she revolutionized R&B with her sultry mix of pop, soul and hip hop. In a 2001 review of her eponymous album, Rolling Stone professed that Aaliyah's impact on R&B and pop has been enormous. Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote Aaliyah ranks among the "elite" artists of the R&B genre, as she "played a major role in popularizing the stuttering, futuristic production style that consumed hip-hop and urban soul in the late 1990s." Critic Bruce Britt stated that by combining "schoolgirl charm with urban grit, Aaliyah helped define the teen-oriented sound that has resulted in contemporary pop phenom's like Brandy, Christina Aguilera and Destiny's Child".

Described as one of "R&B's most important artists" during the 1990s, her second studio album, One in a Million, became one of the most influential R&B albums of the decade. Music critic Simon Reynolds cited "Are You That Somebody?" as "the most radical pop single" of 1998. Kelefah Sanneh of The New York Times wrote that rather than being the song's focal point, Aaliyah "knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass line", and consequently "helped change the way popular music sounds; the twitchy, beat-driven songs of Destiny's Child owe a clear debt to 'Are You That Somebody'.” Sanneh asserted that by the time of her death in 2001, Aaliyah "had recorded some of the most innovative and influential pop songs of the last five years.” Music publication Popdust called Aaliyah an unlikely queen of the underground for her influence on the underground alternative music scene; the publication also mentioned that the forward-thinking music Aaliyah did with Timbaland and the experimental music being made by many underground alternative artists are somewhat cut from the same cloth. While compiling a list of artists that take cues from Aaliyah, MTV Hive mentioned that it's easy to spot her influence on underground movements like dubstep, strains of indie pop, and lo-fi R&B movements. Erika Ramirez, an associate editor of Billboard, said at the time of Aaliyah's career "there weren't many artists using the kind of soft vocals the ways she was using it, and now you see a lot of artists doing that and finding success," her reasoning for Aaliyah's continued influence on current artists. She argued that Aaliyah's second album One in a Million was "very much ahead of its time, with the bass and electro kind of R&B sounds that they produced", referring to collaborators Timbaland and Missy Elliott and that the sound, which "really stood out" at its time, was being replicated. With sales of 8.1 million albums in the United States and an estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide, Aaliyah earned the nicknames "Princess of R&B" and "Queen of Urban Pop", as she "proved she was a muse in her own right". Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone dubbed her as the "undisputed queen of the midtempo come-on". She has also been referred to as a pop and R&B icon for her impact and contributions to those respective genres”.

The main point of this feature was to both discuss the influence of Aaliyah and remember her almost twenty years after her death but, as her eponymous album was released on 7th July, 2001, many will be remembering it ahead of its twentieth anniversary. Her third studio album, it arrived five years after the brilliant One in a Million. I am glad that Aaliyah got to release another album before her death; she would have heard and seen how the Aaliyah album was received. Many may disagree, but I think Aaliyah is her strongest album. It is more confident than anything she put out before and, before I introduce a couple of positive reviews, I hope that Blackground, and Virgin America release the album on vinyl as an anniversary commemoration. One can get Aaliyah on vinyl, but copies can be extremely expensive - and I don’t think you can get a new copy on vinyl. It is such an important and stunning album, so it is a shame that it has such a limited release. One of the biggest losses is the fact Aaliyah is not on Spotify and other streaming services. One can find some of her music on streaming platforms; Aaliyah remains a notable absentee. Despite the fact that such an important artist has very little representation on streaming sites, there is a small glimmer of hope that she may be on there this year.

Back last August, there was an announcement that Aaliyah’s music may be more widely available in time:

“Loyal Aaliyah fans who’d hope to stream her music on Spotify, Google Play, or Apple Music have largely been out of luck since her untimely passing in 2001.

But it seems like our prayers have finally been answered, since the catalog of our beloved “babygirl” is finally coming to streaming services.

Her estate made the announcement via her posthumous Twitter account, “To our loyal fans: We are excited to announce that communication has commenced between the estate and various record labels about the status of Aaliyah’s music catalogue, as well as its availability on streaming platforms in the near future. Thank you for your continued love and support. More updates to come!”

While it’s not a guarantee that the music will be up and running anytime soon, it’s certainly a glimmer of hope for fans who want to keep the singer’s legacy alive.

Aaliyah released three hugely successful albums during her lifetime: 1994’s Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number, 1996’s One in a Million, and 2001’s Aaliyah. With the exception of her first album — which was recorded under Jive Records — Aaliyah’s music has been missing from streaming services, due to her uncle Barry Hankerson, who used to run the now-defunct label Blackground Records.

Keeping Aaliyah’s music off the biggest streaming services isn’t just a matter of legacy; it’s also a way to introduce a new generation to the music of the former pop star”.

2001 was such a tough year for many reasons, but I was especially moved by the death of Aaliyah. She had such promise and potential and, having released a career-best album just over a month before her death, that was such a blow. I think many of the album tracks are available on YouTube, so I would encourage people to listen to those songs and understand just how strong and phenomenal Aaliyah is as a body of work. I want to finish with a couple of reviews. Pitchfork looked back on the album in 2019 – where they made some interesting observations:

“Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, it’s easy enough to picture Aaliyah in heaven. The video for “Rock The Boat,” the 2001 single that would be her last, looks as if it were beamed down from one of the mythical seven heavens: gently lapping water, the flare of a bright sun, women dressed in all white. She seems peaceful, softer than in previous clips. In August, after wrapping her scenes in the Bahamas, Aaliyah boarded a flight home. The Cessna twin-engine crashed moments after takeoff, killing the singer and eight others. She was 22. In life, Aaliyah was often described by friends and collaborators as angelic; in her death, that image persists.

Just weeks earlier, she had released her third album, Aaliyah, a well-received collection of songs that mapped her personal growth during the five years since her second full-length, 1996’s One In A Million. During that hiatus, she’d taken an interest in acting, starring in a couple of films and lining up others, including two upcoming Matrix movies. But in between being on set during the day and in the studio at night, Aaliyah also had a lot to reckon with.

PHOTO CREDIT: Arnold Turner/WireImage 

Aaliyah took that many steps further. By the time she began working on the album in 1998, she had developed an interest in both the experimental and traditional, and her collaborators on the album—the Supafriends as well as producers signed to her family’s Blackground record label—were up to the task. She veers wildly, but cohesively, between the futuristic, triple-time experimentation of singles like “We Need A Resolution” and “More Than A Woman” and the throwback soul of “Never No More” and “I Care 4 U.” It was Aaliyah’s voice that strung it all together. Her falsetto had earned an edge, and her multi-part harmonies, arranged ingeniously, added grace and texture. Even Timbaland’s grating, awkward raps and ad-libs are softened.

…Aaliyah has been a reference for Solange, and others, elsewhere, too: The multiple-part harmonies that have become the younger Knowles’s signature were in fact once the signature of Aaliyah, most in focus on, Aaliyah. On what would have been Aaliyah’s 36th birthday, Frank Ocean shared his own take of the Isley Brothers’ “At Your Best,” which she’d first covered more than 20 years earlier, in 1994. She’d updated it with a spare, solemn almost-whisper, and Ocean’s version, which was eventually given a proper release on Endless, draws equally from Aaliyah’s falsetto as from the Isley Brothers’ original. There are traces of her influence elsewhere, too; the layered harmonies and gentle melodies of Beyoncé’s “I Miss You,” co-written by Ocean, could easily have been recorded first, albeit with more restraint and whimsy, by Aaliyah. Understandably, among the most common refrains about the singer was that she was ahead of her time”.

It is good that, nearly twenty years since Aaliyah died, her crowning achievement might get be available for streaming. I would love to hear vinyl release with extra tracks and memories from those who knew her and worked alongside her in the linear notes. In 2012, AllMusic tackled an incredible album:

“Aaliyah waited nearly five years to deliver her third album, but considering that she was essentially growing up -- it was the equivalent of spending time in college -- when she came back with an eponymous record in the summer of 2001, she came back strong. Aaliyah isn't just a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward, it's one of the strongest urban soul records of its time. Where such peers as Macy Gray and Jill Scott work too hard to establish their ties with classic soul, Aaliyah revels in the present, turning out a pan-cultural array of sounds, styles, and emotions. This sound is entirely unfamiliar -- part of the pleasure is how contemporary it sounds -- but she sounds just as comfortable within the sonicscapes of Timbaland as Missy Misdemeanor Elliott and, possibly, less self-conscious. Aaliyah never oversings, never oversells the songs -- this comes on easy and sultry, and there's a lot of substance here, in terms of the songwriting and the songs themselves. Urban albums rarely come any better than this, and there haven't been many records better than this in 2001, period”.

I miss Aaliyah terribly, but I was keen to celebrate her brilliance rather than mourn the fact that we lost her in 2001. More than a mere Pop artist, her impact and legacy extends across multiple genres and styles! She has inspired so many other musicians and, the more I listen to her work, the more I get this impression of a young woman blossoming, experimenting and challenging herself. I guess the tragedy is that we may have seen even bigger and better albums from her after 2001. Earlier this week, there was an update from Aaliyah’s estate regarding updates:

“To our loyal fans: We hear you and we see you,” a new note reads. “While we share your sentiments and desire to have Aaliyah’s music released, we must acknowledge that these matters are not within our control, and, unfortunately, take time. Our inability to share Aaliyah’s music and artistry with the world has been as difficult for us as it has been for all of you”.

As we remember Aaliyah twenty years after its release and the amazing person who gave it to us, it is very clear that we were all…

LUCKY we had her in the world.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

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IT is not often that I head back to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Barrie Wentzell

the 1960s when it comes to inspiration from Vinyl Corner so, for this edition, I have selected The Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Released in November 1968, It was the last album by the original quartet (Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Pete Quaife, Mick Avory - as bassist Quaife left the group in early-1969). It is amazing to think that The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society was not a success upon its release! Now, it considered one of the band’s essential albums but, back then, there was a bit of a mixed reaction. Maybe it was because the songs are not as raw and instant as the likes of You Really Got Me. That said, Something Else by the Kinks of 1967 sold poorly in the U.K. – it was released in January 1968 in the U.S. and it is another genius album. Listening back to The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and I cannot fathom why it was not a massive success as the songwriting is so rich and engaging! I think this was Ray Davies (the band’s lead songwriter) near his very peak. I would encourage people to buy the album on vinyl, as it is really food value; one of the finest albums from the late-1960s. Ray Davies did not write the songs to fit a theme as such, but a certain commonality develops in his lyrical interests of the time.

The main theme (of the album) concerns the passing of old-fashioned English traditions. Maybe the Englishness of the lyrics alienated U.S. listeners and meant that the album was not as successful there as it could have been. At the time of writing The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Davies was very isolated and in quite a dark place. Perhaps the lyrics reflect an escape or fantasy; a chance to immerse himself in something more idyllic or safe. I guess, in 1968, Rock was dominating and bands like The Rolling Stones were being favoured. That would have been the case for American audiences so, when presented with an album that was more pastoral and inventive, they were taken by surprise. Pitchfork highlighting that in their review of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society back in 2004:

“It takes a Village Green Preservation Society to love The Kinks.

The problem facing The Kinks when they released The Village Green Preservation Society in late November 1968 wasn't merely the competition-- Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin's debut, and the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet offered plenty-- but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. During the summer of 1968, stateside fans were hooked on a high-intensity diet that had them jonesing for aggressive, overstated fare like "Street Fighting Man" and "You Shook Me" and "Communication Breakdown". The disconnect between The Kinks and the rock world's rapidly narrowing palette could hardly have been more pronounced. Compare the Stones' bombastic, urban "Sympathy for the Devil" with understated work like "Village Green", bouncing along like a horse and buggy as Ray Davies paints the landscape: "Out in the country, far from all the soot and noise of the city..."

Critics praised the album, the public ignored it, and Davies-- surveying the scene-- asserted that it wasn't created for public consumption. Intentions aside, The Kinks simply moved on, leaving small knots of fans to pledge secret allegiance to Village Green. However, as years passed and the weather changed, its following grew, and finally, one day, the verdict reversed and the album was touted as a masterpiece. Ironically, it might have happened sooner had the band not been so prolific up through the late 80s.

Intricately sketched and brimming with unusual arrangements, The Village Green Preservation Society was the first clear look at an iconoclastic, imaginative and sometimes brilliant artist as he came into his own. Audiences used to sizing up work on a scale created for rock gods and counter-culture icons were forced to consider this album as a piece of conceptual art. The Lennon-McCartney/Jagger-Richards duos towered over and shaped the sensibilities of a vast army; Davies explored a deeply personal world that confounded fans even as it provoked their curiosity”.

I really love The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and I feel Davies’ songwriting was among the very best in the world. One listens to the songs from that album nearly fifty-three years later and they do resonate and strike a chord. Maybe it is because of what is happening in the country at the moment and how people would like to get back to a bygone time…you can put on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and it provokes emotions.

I want to bring in one more review before wrapping things up. This is what AllMusic wrote when they tackled The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society:

“Ray Davies' sentimental, nostalgic streak emerged on Something Else, but it developed into a manifesto on The Village Green Preservation Society, a concept album lamenting the passing of old-fashioned English traditions. As the opening title song says, the Kinks -- meaning Ray himself, in this case -- were for preserving "draught beer and virginity," and throughout the rest of the album, he creates a series of stories, sketches, and characters about a picturesque England that never really was. It's a lovely, gentle album, evoking a small British country town, and drawing the listener into its lazy rhythms and sensibilities. Although there is an undercurrent of regret running throughout the album, Davies' fondness for the past is warm, making the album feel like a sweet, hazy dream. And considering the subdued performances and the detailed instrumentations, it's not surprising that the record feels more like a Ray Davies solo project than a Kinks album. The bluesy shuffle of "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" is the closest the album comes to rock & roll, and Dave Davies' cameo on the menacing "Wicked Annabella" comes as surprise, since the album is so calm. But calm doesn't mean tame or bland -- there are endless layers of musical and lyrical innovation on The Village Green Preservation Society, and its defiantly British sensibilities became the foundation of generations of British guitar pop”.

Go and listen to The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and, if you can, buy the album on vinyl. It is a classic album from one of the greatest bands we have ever seen. Even though the album did not get the acclaim it deserved back in 1968/1969, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society has been featured in lists of the finest albums ever. At such a stressful and strange time, spin this magnificent album and…

EXPLORE its wonderful world.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Times Like These: The Post-Inauguration Mix

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: The United States of America’s President-elect, Joe Biden/PHOTO CREDIT: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Times Like These: The Post-Inauguration Mix

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AFTER the world saw…

the inauguration of the forty-sixth President of the United States, Joe Biden, yesterday, I was inspired to put together a special Lockdown Playlist. Not only are there songs from artists who played at his inauguration (including Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, New Radicals, and Katy Perry) or in his honour (Foo Fighters, and Bruce Springsteen among them), but there are some songs themed around some of the policies he is bringing in – in the sense he is reversing a lot of the mistakes outgoing President Donald Trump made (among others, Biden moved to reinstate the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement). Some tracks point towards hope and a more positive direction, whilst others are original recordings of songs some artists performed yesterday at the inauguration/a salute to Joe Biden. Here is a mixture of songs that welcomes in a President that has the popularity and ability to lead America…

IN the right direction.