FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Tracks from the Incredible Film Scores of 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

 PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio

Tracks from the Incredible Film Scores of 2023

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I occasionally talk about film scores …

 PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Engel/Pexels

and great modern composers. It is something that you do not find in too many music blogs and websites. Rather than focus purely on music coming from the industry, there definitely should be more crossover into and consideration of film scores. They can be as majestic and memorable as any album. So much variety and scope. There have been some incredible scores recorded and released this year. I have a few favourites that I will include here. I am going to spotlight a couple of tracks from each. From the dramatic to the beautiful, there are some real treats here! If you concentrate on film scores or consider them part of the background, I hope that these amazing scores from films released this year changes your mind. Put this playlist on, turn the volume, and lose yourself…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lizie Concepción/Pexels

IN this magical mix.

FEATURE: A Loaded Question: Can Music Help End America’s Disturbing Obsession with Guns?

FEATURE:

 

 

A Loaded Question

PHOTO CREDIT: Kindel Media/Pexels

Can Music Help End America’s Disturbing Obsession with Guns?

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ONE of the world’s impossible problems to solve…

PHOTO CREDIT: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

might be gun control in the U.S. There is a gun issue in many nations, yet with the size of the population, the sheer number of people who own firearms across the country, coupled with the number of fatalities each year, America is leading a very unsettling race! Those with guns often see it as protection. The fact that everyone has the right to bear arms and protect themselves. That Constitutional right that seems irreversible and prehistoric. Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center presented some very worrying and alarming statistics when it came to guns-related injuries and deaths:

“More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths – a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population – remained below the levels of earlier decades.

Here’s a closer look at gun deaths in the United States, based on a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the CDC, the FBI and other sources. You can also read key public opinion findings about U.S. gun violence and gun policy.

How many people die from gun-related injuries in the U.S. each year?

In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were accidental, those that involved law enforcement and those whose circumstances could not be determined. The total excludes deaths in which gunshot injuries played a contributing, but not principal, role. (CDC fatality statistics are based on information contained in official death certificates, which identify a single cause of death.) 

What share of U.S. gun deaths are murders and what share are suicides?

Though they tend to get less public attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (26,328), while 43% were murders (20,958), according to the CDC. The remaining gun deaths that year were accidental (549), involved law enforcement (537) or had undetermined circumstances (458).

What share of all murders and suicides in the U.S. involve a gun?

About eight-in-ten U.S. murders in 2021 – 20,958 out of 26,031, or 81% – involved a firearm. That marked the highest percentage since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records. More than half of all suicides in 2021 – 26,328 out of 48,183, or 55% – also involved a gun, the highest percentage since 2001.

How has the number of U.S. gun deaths changed over time?

The record 48,830 total gun deaths in 2021 reflect a 23% increase since 2019, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Gun murders, in particular, have climbed sharply during the pandemic, increasing 45% between 2019 and 2021, while the number of gun suicides rose 10% during that span.

The overall increase in U.S. gun deaths since the beginning of the pandemic includes an especially stark rise in such fatalities among children and teens under the age of 18. Gun deaths among children and teens rose 50% in just two years, from 1,732 in 2019 to 2,590 in 2021. 

How has the rate of U.S. gun deaths changed over time?

While 2021 saw the highest total number of gun deaths in the U.S., this statistic does not take into account the nation’s growing population. On a per capita basis, there were 14.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2021 – the highest rate since the early 1990s, but still well below the peak of 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 1974.

The gun murder rate in the U.S. remains below its peak level despite rising sharply during the pandemic. There were 6.7 gun murders per 100,000 people in 2021, below the 7.2 recorded in 1974.

The gun suicide rate, on the other hand, is now on par with its historical peak. There were 7.5 gun suicides per 100,000 people in 2021, statistically similar to the 7.7 measured in 1977. (One caveat when considering the 1970s figures: In the CDC’s database, gun murders and gun suicides between 1968 and 1978 are classified as those caused by firearms and explosives. In subsequent years, they are classified as deaths involving firearms only.)

 Which states have the highest and lowest gun death rates in the U.S.?

The rate of gun fatalities varies widely from state to state. In 2021, the states with the highest total rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (33.9 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (29.1), New Mexico (27.8), Alabama (26.4) and Wyoming (26.1). The states with the lowest total rates included Massachusetts (3.4), Hawaii (4.8), New Jersey (5.2), New York (5.4) and Rhode Island (5.6)

The results are somewhat different when looking at gun murder and gun suicide rates separately. The places with the highest gun murder rates in 2021 included the District of Columbia (22.3 per 100,000 people), Mississippi (21.2), Louisiana (18.4), Alabama (13.9) and New Mexico (11.7). Those with the lowest gun murder rates included Massachusetts (1.5), Idaho (1.5), Hawaii (1.6), Utah (2.1) and Iowa (2.2). Rate estimates are not available for Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont or Wyoming.

The states with the highest gun suicide rates in 2021 included Wyoming (22.8 per 100,000 people), Montana (21.1), Alaska (19.9), New Mexico (13.9) and Oklahoma (13.7). The states with the lowest gun suicide rates were Massachusetts (1.7), New Jersey (1.9), New York (2.0), Hawaii (2.8) and Connecticut (2.9). Rate estimates are not available for the District of Columbia”.

It seems hardly a week goes by without the news reporting on a mass shooting or murder via firearm. This idea that people need to protect themselves. Even feeling that, if nobody else had guns, then they would still feel vulnerable. It is a horrible mindset that means we are seeing so many needless deaths each year. I am going to expand about music and how it can at least send messages out regarding gun violence and bringing it to an end (or nearer than it has been for many decades). The Guardian recently reported how a group of artists have formed a coalition against gun violence. It has come to a time when politicians are still unable to come to an agreement. A nation divided over an issue that should be simple to eradicate. So many unwilling to change the laws on gun ownership. It must be terrifying and infuriating living in the U.S. and feeling unsafe:

“Billie Eilish, Peter Gabriel, Sheryl Crow and a host of other artists have joined forces for a new coalition against gun violence.

Artist for Action to Prevent Gun Violence is a new “non-political” organisation aimed at inspiring Americans to act together through volunteering and ultimately voting to eliminate the epidemic that has already killed over 37,000 people in the US this year alone. Early estimates suggest that it could be the deadliest year yet.

“As a community of artists, we need to band together to make common sense change,” Eilish said in a statement. Gabriel added: “This needs to stop. So many needless deaths. So much suffering. It just needs a little common sense.”

Other artists also involved include Sheryl Crow, Nile Rodgers, Rufus Wainwright, Bootsy Collins, Sofi Tukker and The Pixies.

The official launch will roll out with a series of live events, kicking off with Bush and special guests in New York on 22 September.

IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish performing at Leeds Festival in 2023/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Baker/Getty Images for ABA

“As a father, I am staggered by the gun violence in America, and as a musician, I am fortunate enough to be able to take a stand against it,” Bush’s Gavin Rossdale said. “This is a human rights crisis out of control. There have been more than 400 mass shootings in the US in 2023 – from stores to football games to parades to schools. Every person, especially children, deserves the right to be and feel safe.”

It is led by Mark Barden, a musician and father of one of the 26 children murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. “After my son Daniel was murdered at Sandy Hook elementary school, I put my career as a professional guitarist on hold to devote myself to preventing gun violence,” Barden said. “Please join me and hundreds of other artists, musicians, actors, athletes and people like you to finally end this senseless violence.”

December will also see the release of a film, executive produced by Crow, which tells Barden’s story.

Eilish has often shown support for improved gun control, releasing a statement on Instagram in 2019 asking her followers to support gun safety non-profit Everytown”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Chuck D in London in 2017/PHOTO CREDIT: David Levene/The Guardian 

Music has an amazing power and influence. Popular artists have this platform whether they can reach millions of people. I hope that the new coalition gets social media support and more artists join. I will finish with the power of songs and whether music can lead to social and political change. Gun violence is an issue that also affects music. Rap and Hip-Hop especially. In another article from The Guardian, Public Enemy’s Chuck D talked about his new graphic novel and the madness of U.S. gun culture:

“And he interprets everything, from the raw pain of mass shootings to climate change, to the war in Ukraine to the Black Lives Matter movement.

It’s the “Disunited State of America” he decries in one of the images.

Some themes are depicted in portraits and feature prominent people such as Salman Rushdie, Jay-Z, even the Pope.

Urban backdrops sketched in black and white lines capture an apocalyptic-looking America, from the Bronx in New York to Jackson, Mississippi.

“People are confused and angry,” he says. “Only last week a black woman was shot down because she was shoplifting. She was just shoplifting! And it was the police!” he bawls.

As a rapper, gun violence is the issue that impacts Chuck D the most. “Too many rappers have been lost to shootings,” he says, recalling his friend Jam Master Jay in 2002 and Young Dolph in 2021. At least 75% of hip-hop deaths have been from guns, he says. “It’s a sickness and an epidemic that has permeated and come out through the music.”

He acknowledges the inevitability that hip-hop is cast as a sort of musical pariah whenever there is a shooting involving a rapper.

“That’s the danger,” he says.

Guns and hip-hop, guns and God, they are complicated, divisive subjects in America, he suggests, but that’s also the reason he’s tackling them in the new book”.

Music and the messages artists put out can be incredibly influential and powerful. Able to be political and inspire minds, can artists get America out of its centuries-long obsession with guns?! I found an article from earlier this year from The New York Times, where Ketch Secor, a founding member and the lead singer of Old Crow Medicine Show (and a Grammy-winning musician who lives in Nashville), wrote why Country music can lead the U.S. out of its quagmire and division:

“They say we love our guns down South, and it’s true they are part of the pageantry of our beloved Southland, in tune with the equally nostalgic heartstrings we pull for mother, God, freedom and country. Country music plays a central role in forming the South’s gun mythology, from songs like “Big Iron” to “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Seven nights a week in Nashville, you can hear any number of country upstarts remind the tourists in the honky-tonk bars on Lower Broad that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno “just to watch him die.”

But all the parents in Nashville, including me, know what they were doing shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, March 27. When shots rang out inside Nashville’s Covenant School and three adults and three children were murdered, the tragedy exposed the deep hypocrisy of a musical genre at once so beholden to Christian principles and yet so unwilling to stand for peace. The 377th school shooting since Columbine happened on a Christian campus in Nashville and, as a musician, writer and historian, I now believe that country music has a unique opportunity to shepherd conservative Southerners, a demographic essential to the passage of any meaningful legislation, to the table to negotiate gun reform. 

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Zisiga Mukulu/The New York Times; photographs by alxpin/Getty Images and The New York Public Library

My band, Old Crow Medicine Show, which first struck up a tune in Nashville 25 years ago and was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2013, has always played a fringe role on the country scene. Though we lean left politically, our signature song, “Wagon Wheel,” has become a mainstream anthem for audiences that consistently lean right. When I hear it blasting from a pickup truck, I often spy an N.R.A. sticker on the bumper. In my experience, country stars tend toward centrism. The right-wing groups we most often encounter are not our bandmates but our audiences.

What the South needs now is an anti-assault-weapons movement driven by voices from the center, by interdenominational faith leaders, by students — Nashville is called the Athens of the South because it is teeming with scholars at its many colleges — and by country singers who are tired of bending to the whims of fearmongers and who are ready to speak from their platforms to an impressionable audience.

Conservative musicians are always vocal when it comes to the culture wars, but stars with moderate views tend not to weigh in publicly. The motive is genuine: We don’t want to offend anyone. But in times as dire as these, silence is complicity. It’s time for country music makers to use their platforms to speak candidly to their conservative audiences. Our outrage needs to move from the green room to center stage.

Now that the tragedy of school gun violence has come to Nashville, our city is poised to help lead the nation toward effective regulations such as red-flag and safe-storage laws, a ban on military-grade weapons, stricter background checks and the repeal of permitless carry laws.

Exactly one week after the shooting at Covenant School, the students of Episcopal School of Nashville — a school I helped found eight years ago on the Judeo-Christian principles of peace, inclusivity and love — walked out of their classrooms, joining a longstanding tradition of peaceful demonstration in our city.

The street that runs past the Ryman Auditorium, the historic home of the Grand Ole Opry, was recently renamed Rep. John Lewis Way, after the civil rights leader who was arrested for the first time while protesting in Nashville. Many architects of the civil rights movement, such as James Lawson and Diane Nash, were active in this city, where the political climate made it more palatable than places further south. What might have gotten you lynched in Alabama or firebombed in Mississippi felt somehow safer in Nashville, a city of church spires and universities.

Nashville remains a bellwether city where right and left can conjoin, where musicians and artists test the boundaries of the South’s social strictures and where Christianity of both deeply evangelical and progressive varieties flourishes”.

With every shocking statistic regarding gun violence across America, the more important it is to highlight the problem and tackle it. There will always be that struggle between the Democrats and Republicans and their stance on gun ownership. Music can be a bigger and more unified force that could help to raise awareness of the problems and devastating impact of gun violence. Spreading messages as to why gun ownership in the U.S. needs to be limited. That we cannot see shockingly high figures of gun-related injuries and death year in year out. I think that, if the music industry joined together and there was this massive protest and musical decrying of gun ownership and the wake people up to the realities of gun violence, then that could help change things. Maybe we will never see a day when all gun violence ends and there is no gun ownership – though a big difference can be made. Many artists have protested in recent years, so there is this real desire from the community for change and peace. So often, gun violence impacts innocent people. There is this struggle between those who feel owning a gun is a right – so they can protect themselves – and those who feel guns breed more violence than they prevent. The staggeringly high number of gun-related deaths should open people’s eyes. And yet, year in year out, these go into the void. I think music can play a big role. Whether Country music, modern Pop icons or legends of the past, this shared desired to severely limit gun ownership and the deaths it causes could become a reality…

IN our lifetime.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Welsh Music Prize 2023: The Shortlist

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

The Welsh Music Prize 2023: The Shortlist

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I think certain award shows and ceremonies…

get acclaim and lots of media attention. That is all good, yet there are those that never quite get the spotlight and exposure from the mainstream. When it comes to musical countries that produce such excellent, unique and original music, you need not look much further than Wales. One of my favourite times of year is seeing the shortlist announced from the Welsh Music Prize. Every year offers up a banquet and bonanza of incredible albums. At a time when Welsh music is still not emphasised and spotlighted much by national stations and the music media, this year’s rich crop of entrants should help to redress that! In fact – and taking away nothing from the superb Mercury Prize -, so many award ceremonies are focused on London. Albums and artists from the capital scoop most of the accolades. Instead, with the Welsh Music Prize, you can feel and hear something genuinely brilliant and enduring without having to crown your eyes to London. Of this year’s selected fifteen albums, legends such as John Cale stand alongside Sister Wives. I know who I think will win this year, though you can never predict – so strong and diverse is the shortlist! Cath Holland writing for the good folk at God Is in the TV gives us all the news and nominated artists that we need to look out for. Ahead of Sian Eleri hosting the ceremony on 10th October, we have some time to listen to the shortlisted fifteen albums and revel in the brilliance of Welsh music:

“The 15-strong Welsh Music Prize shortlist was revealed by Adam Walton on BBC Radio Wales this weekend. The annual award is a celebration of releases over the past year, and seeks to highlight and increase the profile of Welsh music both in the country itself and across the globe.

The finalists offer much to choose from – cinematic nostalgic indie psych-pop via YNYS – shortlisted for our very own Neutron Prize last month – and gothic folklore feminism courtesy of Sister Wives; Minas‘s is a firey debut, boisterous psychedelic ensemble CVC‘s record suitably boisterous, we enjoy classy songwriting by Dafydd Owain, and classic indie pop from Hyll exploring growth into adulthood. Electronic duo Overmono make the list, as does triple Welsh harpist Cerys Hafana, and a deeply personal release from H Hawkline, plus beautiful delicacies shared by Ivan Moult. The legendary John Cale is in there, rapper Mace the Great as bracing as ever, Rogue Jones making a witty and warm return, Stella Donnelly is both biting and moving and Sŵnami entertain with highly melodic indie.

 Founded in 2011 and supported by Creative Wales, the prize is open to albums of all genres and past winners have included Kelly Lee Owens, Boy Azooga, Deyah, Gruff Rhys, Gwenno, Meilyr Jones and more. Last year’s award was given to Bato Mato by Adwaith who are the first artists to win the Welsh Music Prize twice, the band’s debut album Melyn taking home the gong in 2019.

The shortlisted albums have been whittled down from a longlist of 140 albums by the Welsh Music Prize jurors. The judges – Dave Acton (Larynx Entertainment), Huw Baines (The Guardian / NME / Kerrang), Tegwen Bruce Deans (music journalist), Mirain Iwerydd (BBC Radio Cymru), Nest Jenkins (ITV Cymru Wales Backstage), Eddy Temple Morris (Virgin Radio) now have the task of choosing one of the nominated albums for the coveted prize.

Winners will be announced at this years’ ceremony on 10 October at Wales Millennium Centre, presented by BBC Radio 1 presenter Sian Eleri. The event will welcome a live public audience as part of Llais, Cardiff’s flagship international arts festival which takes place 10– 15 October. This year the Welsh Music Prize will open Llais for the second year, and include performances by shortlisted performers Cerys Hafana, Mace the Great and Minas. Triskel Award winners Talulah, Dom & Lloyd and Half Happy who receive up to £5,000 worth of support each to assist their careers with advice and expert sessions from Help Musicians, will also play on the might along with PPL Momentum recipient Hana Lili.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sian Eleri

Welsh Music Prize co-founder, Huw Stephens said: “This year’s shortlist is another great collection of albums from Wales. The Welsh Music Prize is a globally recognised award and an important part of Wales’ music calendar, and this year’s line up at the Welsh Music Prize promises to make it a very special night.”

The Welsh Music Prize 2023 finalists are:

Cerys Hafana – Edyf (Cerys Hafana / Self Released)

CVC – Get Real (CVC Recordings)

Dafydd Owain – Uwch Dros Y Pysgod (Recordiau I KA CHING)

H Hawkline – Milk For Flowers (Heavenly Recordings)

Hyll – Sŵn O’r Stafell Arall (Recordiau JigCal Records)

Ivan Moult – Songs From Severn Grove (Bubblewrap Records)

John Cale – Mercy (Domino Recording Co Ltd.)

Mace The Great – SplottWorld (SplottWorld Ent.)

Minas – All My Love Has Failed Me (Libertino Records)

Overmono – Good Lies (XL Recordings)

Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (Libertino Records)

Sister Wives – Y Gawres (Libertino Records)

Stella Donnelly – Flood (Secretly Canadian)

Sŵnami – Sŵnamii (Recordiau Côsh Records)

YNYS – Ynys (Libertino Records)”.

Just before wrapping up, I have some more details about which of the fifteen nominated artists will be performing on the day on 10th October. If you want to grab tickets to see the Welsh Music Prize ceremony then al that information is below. You can also keep track of all the updates and news by following the Welsh Music Prize on social media:

“The Judges for Welsh Music Prize 2023 are:

Dave Acton (Larynx Entertainment)

Huw Baines (The Guardian / NME / Kerrang)

Tegwen Bruce Deans (music journalist)

Mirain Iwerydd (BBC Radio Cymru)

Nest Jenkins (ITV Cymru Wales Backstage)

Eddy Temple Morris (Virgin Radio)

IN THIS PHOTO: Sister Wives

Recipients of the Triskel Awards (with Help Musicians) are:

Half Happy

Dom & Lloyd

Talulah 

Live performances for WMP ’23 are:

Cerys Hafana (WMP ‘23 nominee)

Mace the Great (WMP ‘23 nominee)

Minas (WMP ‘23 nominee)

Talulah (Triskel Award Winner)

Dom & Lloyd (Triskel Award Winner)

Half Happy (Triskel Award Winner)

Hana Lili (PPL Momentum recipient)

Tickets for the event can be purchased here: https://www.wmc.org.uk/en/llais/events/welsh-music-prize

For more information about the Welsh Music Prize go to www.wmp.cymru or follow @welshmusicprize #WMP2023”.

Go and check out those fifteen albums before the ceremony takes place. I wanted to end this feature by picking two tracks from each of the shortlisted albums for this year’s Welsh Music Prize. You will see and hear so much music diversity. All of these artists need to be in your regular rotation. Once you hear this playlist, do yourself and a favour and listen in full to all of the albums from…

FIFTEEN Welsh Music Prize warriors.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road at Fifty: ‘Yellow’ Songs

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The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Minh Ngọc/Pexels

Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road at Fifty: ‘Yellow’ Songs

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ON 5th October, 1973…

Elton John released his seventh studio album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Perhaps one of his best-known and admired, its title song is a classic. I was going to write a full anniversary feature about the album, but I feel conflicted. On the one hand, it is a brilliant album that ranks alongside the best of the 1970s. Recently, as actor Kevin Spacey was acquitted on charges of sexual assault. Elton John gave evidence in his defence and enjoyed dinner with him. It does seem like a legendary artist siding with an actor who is not actually innocent of the charges. A powerful man in Hollywood, I doubt that Spacey got away with a lot of horrible stuff. For that reason, it doesn’t feel right giving too much oxygen to an artist and album that once would have been celebrated. Not that Elton John is no longer worthy of focus. His music is timeless and important, though I think he has sullied his reputation and good name by siding with Spacey. That said, I did want to mark Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’s fiftieth anniversary. More as a jumping-off point than the subject of a dedicated feature. Instead, below are songs featuring the word/colour yellow. Below are some ‘yellow’ songs (and one different from a similar playlist I made in 2021) that make for…

A diverse and interesting playlist.

FEATURE: Groovelines: St. Vincent – Digital Witness

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

St. Vincent – Digital Witness

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IT is time to focus once more…

on the brilliant St. Vincent (Annie Clark). One of my favourite songs from her turns ten next year. I remember when Digital Witness came out in 2014. It was the second single from her acclaimed and wonderful eponymous album of 2014. Following the release of Birth in Reverse in December 2013, that song made it to the B-side of Digital Witness (on the Triangular 7" release). A chart success in the U.K. and U.S. – though it deserved to go top ten in both but did not -, St. Vincent is a wonderfully strong and interesting album. Digital Witness is arguably one of the most urgent and catchy songs from the album. St. Vincent could have put that song up top and lead with this gem. Instead, it appears as track number five – between Huey Newton and I Prefer Your Love. I think it is a smart move putting it in the middle of the album, as you the tracks are brilliant sequenced to create maximum impact and longevity. The album, as a result, linger long in the mind. Produced by John Congleton, and with a stunning video shot in Madrid and directed by Chino Moya, I recall watching it when it came out and being mesmerised by the colours and storyline. It is a wonderful piece of work that is one of the best videos of the 2010s in my view. I wanted to dig into the song for another reason. On 28th September, the incomparable Annie Clark celebrates her birthday. I was keen to salute her by spending time with one of her most adored and finest tracks. Digital Witness is a jewel from one of the music world’s most incredible and original songwriters.

With lyrics that  deal with dependence on social media, it is a song that was very relevant back in 2014. I think it has taken on new and stronger meaning nine years later. Perhaps more of a warning back then, Digital Witness sounds like this prescient anthem from the past. Because of that, Digital Witness will never sound dated or lose any of its impact and gravitas! I am going to come to a feature about the song in a minute. If you have not heard the St. Vincent album, then you really should. Her latest album, 2021’s Daddy's Home is among her best. I wonder whether we will be teased new music from St. Vincent very soon. That would be awesome. Referencing Wikipedia, here are a selection of critical takeaways for the sublime and emphatic Digital Witness:

"Digital Witness" received positive attention from music critics. Cady Drell, in a review for Rolling Stone, gave the song 3.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "the sound of an art-pop weirdo throwing a curveball by playing it delightfully straight". Heather Phares, in an Allmusic review of St. Vincent, cited "Digital Witness" as an example of Clark's "razor-sharp wit". The track is designated as an Allmusic "pick". It placed 14th on The Village Voice's 2014 Pazz & Jop critics' poll”.

There was a lot of excitement and buzz around Digital Witness upon its release. I will finish with a couple of track reviews. I want to move on to an article from American Songwriter. They asked what the song was about. Is it really about social media?!

“Released as a single in the first week of 2014, “Digital Witness” was written by Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent as a commentary on the impact of social media on our present lives. It was triggered, she said, by the new widespread dependence of people on the instant judgment of “a million digital eyes, validating our experience.”

It was the second single from her fourth album, St. Vincent. She performed it on “Saturday Night Live” on May 17, 2014, the last show of their 39th season.

The record was produced and engineered by John Congleton. Annie plays the guitars and bass, Homer Steinweiss of the Dap-Kings is on drums, and percussionist McKenzie Smith of Midlake plays percussion.

The only other musician on the track is the late great sax player Ralph Carney, who died in 2017. Famous for playing sax and more with Tom Waits, he also played with The Black Keys (Patrick Carney is his nephew), Elvis Costello, on many of Hal Willner’s great tribute albums.

That raw resonance of the horns on this track comes from his self-contained horn section, anchored by the dark reedy timbre of his big, low baritone sax, a sound Waits also peppered throughout many of his own records.

The horns play a percussive part on the track, which Annie knew was needed. “I knew the groove needed to be paramount,” she said. “I wanted to make a party record you could play at a funeral.”

“Digital Witness“

By St. Vincent

Get back, to your seat

Get back, gnashing teeth

Ooh, I want all of your mind

People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah

People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah

Digital witnesses, what’s the point of even sleeping?

If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me

What’s the point of doing anything?

This is no time for confessing

I want all of your mind

People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah

People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah

Digital witnesses, what’s the point of even sleeping?

If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me

Watch me jump right off the London Bridge

This is no time for confessing

People turn the TV on and throw it out the window, yeah

Get back to your stare

I care, but I don’t care

Oh oh, I, I want all of your mind

Give me all of your mind

I want all of your mind

Give me all of it

Digital witnesses, what’s the point of even sleeping?

If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me

What’s the point of doing anything?

What’s the point of even sleeping?

So I stopped sleeping, yeah I stopped sleeping

Won’t somebody sell me back to me?”

There was a lot of media intrigue around Digital Witness when it came out. Various sources trying to understand and picture the lyrics before the video came out. This is what The Guardian noted about St. Vincent’s horn-blast, propulsive single in 2014:

“St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has described her self-titled fourth album – her first since 2012's well-received collaboration with David Byrne, Love This Giant – as "a party record you could play at a funeral." On December's brilliantly unhinged Birth In Reverse – the first song to emerge from the album - this sense of upbeat melancholy is also infused with a comical sense of the mundane, Clark detailing her morning routine of taking the rubbish out and masturbating. Yesterday a new song emerged in the shape of the squelchy Digital Witness, lead by its horn-augmented hook "What's the point of doing anything?" That's not to say that it's a 'woe is me' boreathon, however – Clark's innate feel for the oddly unsettling ripples through the song's myriad different sections, including a bit midway through where it all goes a bit Prince. While there isn't a video for the song as yet, you can listen to it while staring at the holding image which is definitely moving, isn't it? It's not just me going mad?”.

In January, 2014, Pitchfork shared their thoughts about a song that is as widely played as any other St. Vincent cut. Digital Witness has definitely endured and taken on this impressive legacy. An instantly recognisable thing of wonder from the dazzling and genius St. Vincent:

“St. Vincent and David Byrne’s Love This Giant, a labored-over if uneven album, had a track called "I Should Watch TV”. Naturally, the the song was ironic, with Byrne half-embracing, half-disdaining the “weird things” the “common people” share over a track like the music from five TV Guide Channel segments at once. “Digital Witness”, the second track from Annie Clark’s upcoming fourth album, has more than a little in common with that song, both in sound—it’s built on a funky beat (the album’s percussion roster includes the Dap-Kings’ Homer Steinweiss) and squelchy, synth-boosted brass riff, like the Bee Gees through an old Sound Blaster card —and in message.

The title’s suggestive of a number of things—a bout of testifying, a bit of FOMO-pop?—and Clark has fun with the ambiguities, calling, “Get back to your seats!” before she races through blithe, tweet-sized exhortations on viral culture, surveillance (in an odd bit of synchronicity, Digital Witness is an actual surveillance brand), mindshare, and oversharing. It’s as celebratory as it’s cautionary, relentlessly likable (and Like-able) even as it’s acerbic”.

I guess the whole of the St. Vincent album was embracing a digital age. More from the minds and mouths of robots and machines than something totally organic. That said, songs like Digital Witness sound inorganic whilst also being quite machine-led and with a technological strut. This amazing song is one of my favourites from the 2010s. It is ten next year, so I wanted to mark that. Annie Clark celebrates her birthday on 28th September, so that was all I needed to get down to spotlighting…

A wonderful piece of music.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Hannah Peel – Fir Wave

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Hannah Peel – Fir Wave

_________

WITHOUT doubt…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Marley

one of 2021’s finest and most immersive albums, Hannah Peel’s Fir Waves is one that everyone should revisit. Peel played the album in full earlier in the year. It will tour the U.K. and Ireland later this month. Such an amazing album, I would love to hear more of the tracks played across radio stations. The spectacular Craigavon-born artist, producer and composer is one of our finest talents (someone who has been appearing at some big festivals this year). Among the most remarkable and consistently brilliant composers of her generation, Fir Wave arrived a decade after her debut album, The Broken Wave. Quite a musical journey we have seen from Peel. Fir Wave boasts and augments some of Hannah Peel’s finest production too. I raved about her 2022 soundtrack for the T.V. series, The Midwich Cuckoos. This incredible score was nominated for both the Ivor Novello Award and Music Producer's Guild Award. Fir Wave was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2021 – and was one that deserved to win -, in the process winning a slew of magnificent reviews. Because Hannah Peel is such a prolific, interesting and inspiring composer and producer, I wanted to spend some time with the astonishing Fir Wave. I will, as I tend to with these features, end with some positive reviews – ample proof and ammunition for you checking out Fir Wave! I have a lot to cover off through interviews and reviews. Before that, and if you are new to the wonder of Fir Wave and the awe-inspiring Hannah Peel, Rough Trade provide some more details:

“The new album, a sonic shimmer of textures and pulses that switches between raw atmospheric edges and environments, arrives with a fascinating history. As Peel explains, “The specialist library label KPM, gave me permission to reinterpret the original music of the celebrated 1972 KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, the music of Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop.” This process of re-generation and finding fresh inspiration in pioneering, experimental electronics from the early 1970s is at the core of the album. Peel has made connections and new patterns that mirror the Earth’s ecological cycles through music.

Peel explains, “I’m drawn to the patterns around us and the cycles in life that will keep on evolving and transforming forever. Fir Wave is defined by its continuous environmental changes and there are so many connections to those patterns echoed in electronic music - it’s always an organic discovery of old and new.” As Delia Derbyshire revealed in 2000 to BBC sound engineer, journalist and academic Jo Hutton: “I like new things that don’t seem new . . . as though they’ve always been there.” Known more recently for curating and presenting on BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks, the Northern Irish Emmy-nominated composer and producer’s work is ambitious and forward-looking, adapting and re-inventing new genres and hybrid musical forms”.

I am going to continue with an interview from Bandcamp. Hannah Peel discussed her respect and admiration of the music of synth pioneer, Delia Derbyshire. An innovator and pioneer that has influenced so many composers and artists, Fir Wave is an album that you would definitely see Delia Derbyshire giving her seal of approval to:

“The music of synth pioneer Delia Derbyshire has always been present in Hannah Peel’s life. As a child, she watched Doctor Who and was amazed by “all those noises,” but it wasn’t until she was in her mid-20s that she began to look into Derbyshire’s work more closely. Ten years later, she’s been given the opportunity to rework the sounds of Derbyshire’s 1972 work KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, an album of electronic library sounds for film and TV crafted in the BBC’s now-renowned Radiophonic Workshop.

The result is Fir Wave, an album that moves in circles between techno rhythms and contemplative ambience with richly layered synths. Fir Wave was originally intended as a library record, and it took Peel a while to get over her reverence of the source material. “You’re normally making music because it’s come from you, so the energy is sometimes missing because you don’t know what you’re saying,” she says. “With this, the energy was held in because I was just too afraid to approach it. I wanted to honor the sounds but also take it to a futuristic place. It’s not the type of album that you can remix and remake.”

Her admiration for the Electrosonic producers (Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson, and Don Harper) is palpable; when describing how they made their otherworldly sounds acoustically, she reaches to flick a metal lampshade with her finger: “Stuff like that! It’s a really magical technique, it feels quite precious.” These organic sounds are still present throughout Fir Wave, though filtered through Peel’s sensibilities, from the crinkly tape loops that open up “Wind Shadow” and the floating, pulsing ambience of “Carbon Cycle,” to the gentle transition between tightly ascending guitar motifs and a two-note bassline on “Reaction Diffusion.”

While creating the album, Peel discovered some unexpected parallels between Derbyshire’s life and her own. “I read about her growing up in Coventry and hearing WWII bombs and air raids, and those sounds played a massive part in her life. I grew up in Northern Ireland, and there was a bomb on my sixth birthday down the street. There were always police and people around. You get used to sirens going off and being in a troubled state of mind, and I definitely think the sounds of that have stayed with me as they did for her,” Peel says. Finding similarities between herself and her icon allowed her a way into crafting the album. She did this by rendering the original sounds as samples so that she could create her own instruments from them and play around with them more easily: “Then it felt like I was regenerating something new from old.”

Though she made the album two years ago, lockdown gave her the opportunity to reflect on her compositions: “I had a chance to actually sit with it and look at it as an album, and not dismiss it,” she says. Having been releasing music under the radar for nearly a decade, Peel feels an affinity with the early women synth pioneers who operated outside of mainstream recognition for most of their lives. “There’s that strong independence that these women had, formed by having no other choice but to work around the industry,” she says. “They made their music, and when the industry wasn’t working for them, they had to leave and set up their own thing, even if they weren’t getting recognition. That beautiful, gorgeous spirit of keeping going and keeping to your own true self is really inspiring,” she says.

Peel has never released on a major record label and before her first release in 2010 was working as a session musician. Starting out as a singer-songwriter, she has since gravitated towards making instrumental music. “I really miss singing. Maybe I’ll go back to it, but creatively right now, there’s just too much to talk about and it feels like it’s too much to put words onto,” she says. This often conflicts with her soundtrack work—she’s previously composed for the documentary film Game of Thrones: The Last Watch which earned her an Emmy nomination, and she has work coming up on a new Netflix documentary. “You really have to switch your head, like the left and right sides of your brain. But I love both sides, and I don’t think I could do just one or the other,” she says”.

I am going to come onto an amazing interview with Music Radar. I have sourced quite a lot of this interview, as Hannah Peel is so compelling to hear (or read in this case) when she discusses music, her processes and influences. I have been a fan of hers for years, though I feel Fir Wave might be her best work to date. Someone who gets stronger and more astonishing with every work she releases:

“From the otherworldy voices of opener Wind Shadow, through the hypnotic beats and synths of Emergence In Nature all the way through to the ethereal splendour of album closer, Reaction Diffusion, Peel has crafted a spell-binding electronic gem.

Given access to use original recordings from BBC Radiophonic Workshop legend Delia Derbyshire as DNA for the project, Fir Wave, allowed Peel to respectfully re-interpret the source-material, building digital instruments from it to then launch it into bristling electronic realms Derbyshire would be proud of.

Fir Wave is a high watermark in Hannah Peel’s already impressive musical CV, which includes an Emmy nomination for her soundtrack to Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, along with musical collaborations with artists including John Foxx, Paul Weller, Erland Cooper and Simon Tong (as The Magnetic North).

Fir Wave exists in a space where electronic music of the past, present and future collides perfectly. Little wonder we was so excited to catch up with Hannah and find out more about Delia, DAWs and discovering more tactile ways of sculpting sound.

Fir Wave seems to be getting universally excellent reviews. That must be pleasing?

“I’m so blown away, actually because sometimes you make a record that you work so intensely on and my records usually have so many moving parts with, like, 30 brass players or the like. This one was just so simple, and it was just nice to be able to make the record and put it out as it’s self-released. Yeah, the fact that people are picking it up and talking about it is just beautiful.”

It’s quite something to be given free access to Delia Derbyshire’s catalogue. Did you have the project in mind and then ask for the archives?

“EMI Productions, which own the rights now, just came to me and asked if I was interested in making a library record for them: ‘here’s your starting point!’. I guess because I’d never done a library before that, I did have some reservations. But they quickly dissipate when you take out the feeling of having to do something that you’ve never done before - and that you’ll be using material that’s very precious to a lot of people.

"So yeah, I mean, once I kind of decided how I was going to do it, it became very easy. But yeah, there was a lot of trepidation about it to begin with.”

What a treat to be allowed to immerse yourself in that source material for a while...

“I know. I think about it and go ‘my God, that’s insane.’ Some of it wasn’t ever intended for an audience or to be released. And in some ways that’s better, because then I don’t have the pressure of putting this out and people expecting massive things with it because of it being Delia Derbyshire.

"I had time to live with the main body of it for the last two and a half years. And then I revisited it and mixed it all again last year so I got a bit more perspective on it and it felt like it was the right time to do it.”

The album has got a strange, lockdown quality to it, very hypnotic. How did you approach what bits of Delia’s you would work with?

“I mean, if you’ve heard the original record then it’s pretty bonkers so it’s hard to configure how to assess what bits to work with. I didn’t get the stems so I just had the audio as it was released, so I just chose tiny fragments of things that I thought really resonated with me. Like, there were these kind of bubbling synth sounds.

"When I decided that I was going to make my own instruments from those sounds in Kontakt to use with a MIDI keyboard, you know, choosing the right kind of texture, or sound was important because you can’t necessarily use all of them as a chord or anything like that.

"That was important so I chose specific ones, maybe like five or six, that I made instruments out of that were like ‘Delia Fire’ and ‘Delia Earth’. Then the rest were ones that couldn’t be taken out of context and replayed; ones that needed to be as they are on the record.

I love the more organic sounds where you don’t quite know what they are or where they’re from… almost like part of your psychology.

"So yeah, choosing them was quite hard because sometimes they do overlap in the original records so I had to be pretty specific but that can also be the fun part.”

Is curation of sounds becoming an important skill for electronic musicians to have?

“It’s not just about you handling the machines. It’s about curating and treating them like they’re part of an orchestra. They are part of a fabric in life, almost.

"You know, I love the more organic sounds where you don’t quite know what they are or where they’re from… almost like part of your psychology.”

There’s a real sense of respect to the original music that emanates from Fir Wave… very much not a result of banging out a few presets!

“You’ve got to be though, haven’t you? And that’s really good to hear because I didn’t want to be disrespectful at all.

"You know, I love modular stuff and analogue sounds… it’s just kind of woven into my being, I guess, from a young age, and the folk singing with my dad and stuff like that has definitely got an organic feel to it.

" One of the important things that I found was the ethos of the original record. It has industrial, scientific, almost futuristic element to it. When I was looking at the track titles there’s also a celestial element that’s very beautiful.

"So when I was thinking about what I wanted this one to be, it was very much about how we are right now. I didn’t want it to be like an eco warrior record at all, it just felt, with lockdown and everything, that I really needed to refocus and think about nature, and the sounds that play within nature. Like the inside of a tree and how that sounds like a synthesizer.”

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A post shared by Hannah Peel 🎛 (@hannahpeelmusic)

So, was Kontakt your main weapon of choice for transforming all your collated source material into something more musical?

“Yeah, that was the easiest way to do it. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve really got into Kontakt because of making my own sounds and using that in various scores.

"The Deceived score that I did used sounds from my house inside of the score so I sampled crystal cut-glass, doors and crazy bells that they have in the house and made those into soundscapes to be part of the underbelly of the TV show.

"So, I’ve used it for a while but it’s only in the last few years I’ve found the beauty in it rather than it just being another instrument. ”

It’s a very powerful sound-sculpting tool…

“Yes and it just makes it unique to you and makes it fun. Sometimes when you write music so much, you need something to keep you a bit more interested and keep you excited. There’s something really nice about sampling something and then transforming it into music.”

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A post shared by Hannah Peel 🎛 (@hannahpeelmusic)

Having followed your work over the past few years, it strikes us that you’re someone who enjoys finding the ghosts in the machines. Is that a conscious thing you do?

“Completely. My first proper experiences of synths were with Benge because I shared a studio with him and also played with John Foxx. His collection of synths when he was based in London was amazing  but, you know, lots of them didn’t quite work, so my early experiences were of having to manipulate the ones that weren’t working properly and create something out of it.

“So, it was always about the things that had gone wrong, or were a little wonky and, like you said, the ghosts in them. One of the first synths that I bought was a Juno-60, which, when you turned it on had this ghostly choir sound without even hitting any of the presets… just constantly pulsing. So yeah, I guess I’ve always come from that angle of like, the nuances and the kind of secret side of it. All totally fuelled by Benge!”

You could certainly do a lot worse than having Benge, John Foxx and Stephen Mallinder as your guides!

“He’s unreal! I think I used that studio time really well but I still don’t feel I used Benge’s time quite as well. Like, I just wish I had said, ‘can you teach me this, this and this and this’.

"Way back, when I was first talking about releasing records, I wanted to just set up my own little label and do it that way and Mal was like, 'why?' I said, 'I don’t know other than for my own pleasure', which is the reason My Own Pleasure then became the name of the label. So, they’ve definitely been an influence.”

 To have access to such an amazing collection of synths and hardware blows the mind but there is also a slight (albeit nice) dilemma that when you have no restrictions, what do you use?

“I do really miss having the freedom to use all those machines. Occasionally I’d sneak in and borrow something to experiment with then put it back for the morning [laughs]. Benge knew I was doing it but he didn’t mind.”

Did you have any favourite bits and pieces from your time at Benge’s?

“God, there are so many. This is random and probably not very productive but the Simmons Clap Trap, which I thought was incredible. He has loads and loads of drum machines and I really loved the TR-808, which was always fun to use. He has an original LinnDrum. I liked the Korg MonoPoly synth as well as the Solina String Ensemble machine. I think probably the 808 was my favourite though as it was the first drum machine I took to”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pål Hansen for The Observer

Let’s move onto a couple of the many glowing reviews for the 2021 gem that is Fir Wave. Award-nominated and hugely successful, I do think that this sublime album needs to get more exposure and airplay today. Loud and Quiet awarded Fir Wave 8/10. I have revisited Fir Wave recently and it remains this spellbinding and thoroughly fascinating work that I discover new layers from a couple of years after its release:

“Listen to enough of Hannah Peel and it won’t take long for ripples of Delia Derbyshire to interfere with the transmission. Familiar to many for her charmed folk in The Magnetic North, her more recent solo ventures are recognised for their electronic currents, reinterpreting genre and pairing unlikely musical forms. 

Like Derbyshire, whose residency inside the BBC’s hallowed Radiophonic Workshop helped pioneer an influential blueprint for British electronic music, Peel’s appetite for unearthly, space-age frequencies has long been subject to comparison. A courageous, classically trained multi-instrumentalist and composer, Peel’s acclaimed 2017 album Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia launched a colliery brass band into orbit and piloted an analogue-inspired space odyssey resembling of Derbyshire’s own passage through the cosmos.

Now with feet firmly back on the ground, it seems fitting that her new album continues to fantasize over both her and Derbyshire’s shared sensibilities, for the first-time paying homage to the late composer and the immortal gravity of her work. Courtesy of KPM’s specialist library of archival music, Fir Wave recycles a fascinating history of electronic music by repurposing retired sounds into cutting-edge new models.

Drawn to the circular pattern of Earth’s ecological cycles, by generating and resampling her own digital instruments, Peel injects new life into the experimental sounds of the early 1970s. As tectonic shivers pulsate and shift between Fir Wave’s transforming environments, fragments extracted from Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop are barely recognisable behind Peel’s fantasia production style. More powerful than lyrics, each track communicates its own panorama. Rolling landscapes spill uncontrollably from ‘Patterned Formation’ and the aptly-titled ‘Ecovocative’, with each sprawling terrain trailing beyond the horizons of human comprehension. Standalone single ‘Emergence In Nature’ dips into Jon Hopkins’ skittering and off-kilter electronica; it’s a rare moment of clarity for an album that, at times, sounds as unfathomable as life itself”.

CLASH also gave Fir Wave a decent and massively respectful 8/10 for Fir Wave. I think that everyone needs to listen to this album. Go and buy it on vinyl. Experience it on its true form and lose yourself in this captivating music:

“There’s so much to unpack in Hannah Peel’s work, that pulling upon one thread can lead to entire worlds falling out of her sonic cupboard. New album ‘Fir Wave’ is a case in point – dipping into the past (the work of Delia Derbyshire and library crucible KPM are honoured), there’s also a carefree wandering into the future, a sense of grappling with the unknown.

Cross-referencing everything from the Earth’s ecological cycles to Japanese art, this array of detail shouldn’t distract from the sheer sonic beauty Hannah Peel conjures on her new album. ‘Wind Shadow’ is a synth balm, while the more propulsive, techno-edged ‘Emergence In Nature’ retains its organic sheen amid its percussive pirouettes.

‘Patterned Formation’ dips into early 70s synth incarnations, recalling at times Brian Eno’s early solo work. ‘Carbon Cycle’ meanwhile finds Hannah Peel relishing in fragmented elements of degraded sound, applying an orchestral swoop to her arcane digitalism.

A record that feels exquisitely unified, ‘Fir Wave’ is a tightly bound song cycle. Each mood is distinct, but Hannah Peel is able to let them overlap, resulting in rich and evocative elements of nuance. The pun-tastic ‘Ecovocative’ for example radiates in a beatific glow, something that contrast with the sparsity which opens the adjacent title track; nothing is permanent in her world, but equally nothing is ever truly discarded.

Ending with the gossamer undulations of synthetic sound that ripple through ‘Reaction Diffusion’, we’re put in mind of those early Kraftwerk experiments, or even Harmonia’s recordings. A piece in which contrary states are allowed to communicate, the pulsating bedrock of ‘Reaction Diffusion’ underpins hazy layers of sound that glow with a metallic sheen. It’s beautiful and immersive, but also foreboding; a piece whose majesty is attached to no small degree of mystery.

Having won international acclaim for her work on Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch documentary, Hannah Peel has responded by moving inwards, by finessing and doubling down on the instincts that drive her. ‘Fir Wave’ is a subtle triumph, a record whose innate beauty dissipates to reveal complex aesthetic machinery, while never fully revealing its secrets.

8/10”.

I have been thinking about Fir Wave – and Hannah Peel’s music – a bit lately. A composer and producer I have enormous respect for, I cannot wait to hear her next moves. Fir Wave is an album that I truly love. In fact, its most-streamed track, Emergence in Nature, is one of my favourite pieces of music of the past decade. Hannah Peel takes it on tour from 22nd September. Some very lucky people will get to see this amazing music in the flesh! If that is not recommendation enough, take time to listen to Fir Wave in full and…

WITNESS something truly wonderous.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky – Liv On

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky – Liv On

_________

THERE are a few reasons why I wanted to…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Newton-John/PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Nutt via The Sydney Morning Herald

urge people to buy and spin Liv On from the trio of Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky. All three of these artists’ birthdays fall in September. Beth Nielsen Chapman was sixty-five on 15th September; Amy Sky is sixty-three on 24th September. It has been over a year since we lost the iconic Olivia Newton-John. We mark her seventy-fifth birthday on 26th September. It will be a bittersweet day. We can discuss her music and legacy, though there is that sadness that she is no longer with us. The album these three amazing artists combined to create, Liv On, was released on 7th October, 2016. It was given some positive press in 2016. It reached number one on the UK Country Albums chart. I am intrigued by the female trio supergroup. In the same year as Liv On came out, Neko Case, k.d. lang and Laura Veirs released case/lang/veirs. A magnificent and rich album where each artist had moments in the spotlight and there were these incredible harmonies between them, you can feel some of that influence on boygenius. I feel there are similarities between case/lang/view and boygenius. The lowercase name for one. I see Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker matching with Neko Case, k.d. lang and Laura Veirs. Maybe, as boygenius’ the record is one of this year’s best, they will pair up with case/lang/veirs sometime soon. I would love to see them all share a stage! In some ways, there is also similarities between case/lang/veirs and the mighty Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky – who, so far as I know, only intended this to be the only album between them, hence no band name – though case/lang/veirs remains the only album from that magnificent trio; boygenius will produce several more albums.

It would be great to see this album on vinyl. You can buy it on C.D., but I am not sure whether there will be a vinyl issue soon. With Olivia Newton-John smiling in the middle of the album cover (and it is up to people to decide which order they put the three names, as I have seen it written several different ways), it is sad that she cannot reunite with Beth Nielson Chapman and Amy Sky! If some say the songs on Liv On are saccharine and a bit predictable, I feel the album warrants more love and consideration. It is a terrific set of tracks from three artists who blend together perfectly. There were not many reviews for Liv On. That is a shame. Although The Scotsman started off a little critically in their review, this is what they observed about Liv On:

“Chapman’s superior songcraft significantly upped the average, however, while beautifully configured, inventively varied vocal arrangements, sparsely backed with guitar, piano and bass – or often a cappella – were an unexpected treat.

Also contributing above and beyond was an outstanding first-half performance from the John McCusker Band, featuring the Bellshill-born fiddler with his crack team of accordionist Andy Cutting, Innes White on guitar/mandolin, and Toby Shaer on flute, whistles and fiddle. Melodiously lush, radiantly arrayed instrumentals, from brilliantly headlong reels to exquisitely poised slow airs, alternated with captivating turns from guest singers Heidi Talbot and Adam Holmes, whose contrasting yet complementary voices further enriched a joyously rewarding set”.

I will get to a live review from The Guardian relating to a live show of Liv On by Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky. Maverick talked to Newton-John and Nielsen Chapman about their exciting and incredible album with Amy Sky. I would encourage anyone who has not heard Liv On give it a listen:

“Olivia Newton-John and Beth Nielsen Chapman tell Kieran Kennedy about their new album with Amy Sky.

Not since Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt united on Trio 30 years ago have three voices harmonised as beautifully and movingly as they do on Olivia Newton-John’s collaboration with Beth Nielsen Chapman and Amy Sky, Liv On. What makes the new album all the more powerful is that every song was crafted by the threesome to bring hope, comfort and healing to those suffering bereavement, battling illness or enduring trauma and grief of any kind.

It’s an album that comes from the heart, because all three of the singers have had their share of loss or life-threatening illness, and each knows the special power of music to heal the soul.

“The album was really inspired by the loss of my sister three years ago,” says Olivia, who enjoyed a string of country hits in the 1970s, before teaming up with John Travolta for the iconic musical Grease and going on to score poppier hits, such as Physical, in the 1980s.

“I wrote a song about her as a way to help me heal from the experience because she died pretty quickly and shockingly,” the Australian songstress continues. “I asked Amy if she would help me finish the song, because we had worked together before on my album Grace And Gratitude.

“Amy had just recently lost her mother, and we were talking about the fact that there is very little music for people going through loss and grief. I had the idea of doing an album about it, and we asked Beth if she’d join us, because I thought it would be a great sound with the three of us.”

“Olivia called me and it sounded like a perfect fit for me,” says Beth, who has written seven number-one songs, including the Faith Hill smash This Kiss, and Willie Nelson’s Nothing I Can Do About It Now.

“I’ve written songs about coming through grief over the course of my career,” continues the singer-songwriter who is also well known for her song Sand And Water – a favourite of Elton John’s – which she wrote following the loss of her first husband to cancer in 1994.

“Most of the things that happen to me, I sort of write my way out of it. So I was already dialled in on that.”

Beth and Olivia have been close friends since Olivia helped Beth through her treatment and recovery from breast cancer in 2000 – an experience that Olivia herself had been through eight years before.

“I met Olivia through Annie Roboff, with whom I wrote This Kiss,” Beth remembers. “I didn’t know her well, but when I was diagnosed, Olivia called me and she was incredible. She totally came by my side. She put me in touch with her doctor and helped me get some questions answered very quickly. She checked in on me, she was incredibly supportive and we became friends through that, immediately.”

Raising Awareness

Although Beth didn’t know the Canadian singer-songwriter Amy Sky very well before they began writing the songs for Liv On, the project was a bonding experience for the three women Beth now calls “my girl tribe!”

“It was wonderful. We got together a few times over the course of a year and would spend two or three days at a time writing, sharing our stories and eating snacks – that was a big part of the process!

A lot of our personal emotions went into the songs and we worked very hard on them.” Beth adds: “There’s not a lot of uptempo songs. We felt that when you’re broken up over losing somebody, or in some sort of grief, whether it’s a divorce or some terrible thing in your life, you want something gentle and soothing.

“We wanted it to be comforting, and melodic, so you’d be drawn back and want to hear it again.” The album’s title song was inspired by an awareness-raising campaign by the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, which the superstar had raised funds to build in 2008.

“They were using a poster on which they’d highlighted some of the letters of her name to spell Liv On,” Beth explains. “Olivia said, ‘I think that would be a great song title,’ and I said, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s a fantastic song title.’ So we wrote that with the intention of helping to promote the hospital, and we’ve also made a video for the song to help the hospital.”

“We’re encouraging people to share their stories online, of living on,” Olivia says of the video. “To encourage someone else who’s going through some kind of loss, whether it’s a loved one or even a pet. And to show you how to cry the tears that you cry and then live on and be grateful for the day. Because the song’s really about life and how lucky we are. That’s how I feel.” The first song on the album is an expression of empathy: My Heart Goes Out To You.

Poignant Words

Beth recalls how the song came about. “We were having breakfast one day when Amy got a text from a friend of hers, and her friend’s baby had died. We just thought, Aw, there’s zero words to take someone out of that depth of sorrow. And I think it was Olivia who said, ‘The only thing you can really say is my heart goes out to you.’ “We got up from the breakfast table, went to the piano and wrote that song in about 15 minutes.”

“Sometimes when people lose somebody, other people don’t know what to say,” Olivia comments. “They don’t have the right words. So this song says it for you. You can give them the album, and the song can express it for you.”

As well as the newly written songs, the trio sing a moving vocal arrangement of Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep, the well-known poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye which is often read at funerals. They’ve called their version Immortality.

The three also cut new versions of Olivia’s Grace And Gratitude; I Will Take Care Of You, which was a Top 10 hit on Canada’s Adult Contemporary chart for Sky; and also Beth’s Sand And Water. “I always thought that song was absolutely stunning,” Olivia opines.

“I was a little nervous about redoing it,” Beth admits. “That song’s been a big part of my career for 20 years and when something’s not broke, you don’t want to fix it. But the harmonies came out so lovely.

“In fact, I was just inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame, and Olivia and Amy flew to Nashville and did an absolutely exquisite version of it. I wasn’t allowed to sing. I just had to receive. But they did Sand And Water and my son played guitar and sang the third part, and it blew everybody away.”

Olivia discovered the healing power of music after successful treatment for breast cancer in 1992. As she recovered, she poured her feelings into the album Gaia: One Woman’s Journey, which was the first disc on which she wrote all the material.

“It just came to me,” she recalls. “I kept waking up in the night with these songs in my head. I’d finished my chemotherapy and I’d gone to Australia to heal, and these songs just kept coming to me. I’d have to get up at three o’clock in the morning and write them down.

“Music is a great way of expressing your feelings,” Olivia continues. “In three minutes, you can express your feelings about something and it will help you heal. It has with me.”

Beth agrees, and urges anyone going through grief or trauma to try a creative activity. “It doesn’t have to be grand. It could be sitting at your kitchen table playing with Play Doh while you’re going through chemo. There’s a healing device within us that works through creativity,” Beth states. “Whether it’s writing in a journal, painting a picture, arranging flowers or baking bread, anything that brings something beautiful into the world, or something poignant or something with an emotional quality, is healing.”

Stone Free

The first single from Liv On is also the first song that the trio wrote for the project, the uplifting and slightly funky Stone In My Pocket.

“It’s about the fact that when you first go through loss, it feels like you’re carrying a boulder around with you,” says Olivia.

“Then, as time goes on, some days it feels like a boulder, some days it feels like a pebble in your pocket. You carry it around with you, but you can cope with it.”

“Radio likes stuff with tempo,” says Beth. But the beat to Stone In My Pocket also emphasises the fact that, despite being aimed at those in pain, Liv On is actually far from being a miserable listen. It’s warm, life-affirming and designed by its very nature to make you feel better.

“The album came about as a way of healing ourselves,” says Olivia, at the close of our conversation, “and it seems like it’s healing other people, which is wonderful”.

There were a string of live dates for Liv On. Three amazing and legendary artists combining to perform songs that tackle difficult subjects and grief with tenderness, passion and, as The Guardian reveal, a lack of schmaltz. They caught the trio performing at Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow in 2016:

“The death of her older sister from brain cancer in 2013 was the starting point for Olivia Newton-John’s new album Liv On, the latest chapter in an acting and musical career that spans five decades. A collaboration with Canadian singer Amy Sky and Nashville veteran Beth Nielsen Chapman, Liv On tackles challenging topics – coping with the loss of a loved one, the importance of end-of-life-care and the often unpredictable process of healing – with a bracing directness. In this instance, grief is the word.

Flanked by Sky and Chapman at the Celtic Connections folk festival in only their second live concert together, Newton-John expertly channels her palpable film-star charisma to create an atmosphere where such emotional and potentially distressing issues can become something cathartic and even celebratory. A musical sparseness – the trio’s harmonised voices are variously accompanied only by an acoustic guitar and a piano – also helps safeguard against a descent into schmaltz.

All three are consummate performers in their own right. Sky put Maya Angelou’s inspirational Phenomenal Woman to music more than a decade before Beyoncé incorporated it into her stage shows, and she delivers a heartfelt rendition here. Chapman appealingly revisits This Kiss, the curveball country-pop smash she wrote for Faith Hill. But perhaps the warmest response is for Newton-John’s 1974 hit I Honestly Love You. After a slightly incongruous Pharrell cover, Newton-John welcomes Phil Cunningham, a Celtic Connections fixture, to the stage to add some plaintive whistle to their finale, Immortality. Despite the heartbreaking subject matter, Cunningham looks delighted to be the crowd’s Danny Zuko proxy”.

I think Liv On is a strong album in its own right and warrants another spin. I was particularly interested, as we sadly lost Olivia Newton-John last year. As the British-Australian icon would have turned seventy-five on 26th September, I am shining a spotlight on an underrated album. It makes me realise how awfully and very much…

THIS incredible human is missed.

FEATURE: Congratulations: Traveling Wilburys’ Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Congratulations

Traveling Wilburys’ Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 at Thirty-Five

_________

AS I have remarked before…

this particular album is one very special to me. The debut album from Traveling Wilburys turns thirty-five on 18th October. The ultimate supergroup, they comprised Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lyyne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The band followed Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 with – and not that funnily – Vol. 3 in 1990. Sadly, by this point, Roy Orbison had died. In fact, he died in December 1988. To mark a huge anniversary for a wonderful album from the greatest ever supergroup, I am going to bring in some articles and reviews. You might think that uniting five very different and successful artists all experiencing different fortunes in their careers by 1988 would be a disaster. Arguably, none would experience the same creative brilliance they displayed in the 1970s. Dylan’s solo career was not at its best and most memorable. George Harrison was not producing the sort of genius he did in the 1970s. Same could be said of Jeff Lynne and ELO. I guess Tom Petty and Roy Orbison were also not at their peak. That said, when they got together on Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 they harmonised perfectly and created an album that could rank alongside each of their respective various solo works. No egos or songs excluding other band members, there is this perfect unity, brotherhood and respect that runs right throughout the album. If George Harrison and Jeff Lynne were producers and sort of heading things up, that did not mean they dictated what needed to happen and were rigid. It seemed like the writing process was pretty collaborative. As such, various songs might be identifiable in terms of one being Dylan-esque or very George Harrison-sounding…thought that is not to say they wrote the song on their own. I think that the best songs are when you get all five singing together. Maybe it is a harmony in the chorus or a song like Dirty World – where the members all get various lines. It is magical to hear this album thirty-five years after its release and still be fascinated and touched. I don’t think it is a very '80s-sounding album. Reaching sixteen in the U.K., Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 got to number three in the U.S.

Even though he did not have much to do with the writing of the debut album, the secret weapon in the group was Roy Orbison. One reason why the 1990 follow-up was not as carefree and commanding was because of the lack of that incredible voice! It is a tragedy that Orbison died so soon after the album came out. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 is one of my favourite albums ever. It holds so many important memories. I want to start by looking at a feature from Billboard. In 2018, for the thirtieth anniversary, Mo Austin discusses the album. This sort of ‘happy accident’ that was a massive commercial and critical success story. I want to also note that each member of the band gave themselves a ‘Wilbury’ nickname. Nelson (George Harrison), Otis (Jeff Lynne), Charlie T. Wilbury Jr. (Tom Petty), Lefty (Roy Orbison) and Lucky (Bob Dylan) were in career-best form through this 1988 masterpiece:

“A happy accident” was how Mo Ostin described the formation of the Traveling Wilburys, the beloved supergroup comprised of Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan whose debut LP The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was released 30 years ago (and comes out in a special edition on Nov. 2).

“Warner Bros. Records’ International Department had asked that George Harrison come up with a B-side for ‘This Is Love,’ a single from his Cloud Nine album. At the time it was customary to couple an A-side with a never-before-heard track, giving it extra sales value,” the Warner Bros. chairman emeritus wrote in the liner notes of 2007’s The Traveling Wilburys Collection box set. “Cloud Nine was just out. George, along with cowriter Jeff Lynne and their friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, had been hanging out in Dylan’s studio. I suppose George figured that as long as his pals were on hand, why not use them to knock off this flipside?”

Two days later, Harrison presented Ostin with “Handle With Care,” a song that combined the personalities of all five men in the room into a jangly slice of classic rock heaven that immediately won over both himself and A&R head Lenny Waronker.

“Our reaction was immediate,” Ostin wrote. “This was a song we knew could not be wasted on some B-side…The guys had really nailed it. Lenny and I stumbled over each other’s words asking, ‘Can’t we somehow turn this into an album?'”

And that’s precisely what they did when the five friends reconvened at Eurythmic Dave Stewart’s home studio in Los Angeles to begin putting together songs for a proper LP, where they hunkered down for a little under two weeks. Each musician took up a moniker in the grand tradition of the Quiet Beatle’s usage of such quirky pseudonyms as L’Angelo Misterioso, Hari Georgeson and Jai Raj Harisein when moonlighting on friends’ albums in the Fab days. For this endeavor, they chose to christen themselves the Wilburys, named after the pet name Harrison and Lynne gave their studio equipment, and gave themselves all fake first names. Dylan was Lucky Wilbury, Orbison was Lefty Wilbury, Petty was Charlie T. Wilbury Jr., Lynne was Otis Wilbury and Harrison was Nelson Wilbury. They even came up with a whole folklore behind the brotherly bond, originally inscribed on the inside sleeve of the original LP, written by a one Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket from the “University of Krakatoa (East of Java).”

“A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became,” the legend stated. “And the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.”

There was a sixth Wilbury as well, Harrison’s longtime drummer Jim Keltner, who was just as visible in the group’s promotional material and music videos as the main quintet. He was given the handle “Buster Sidebury,” and arrived at Stewart’s compound to begin recording Vol. 1, quickly realizing just how loose the sessions were going to be.

“I had already quit drinking and smoking and all that stuff by then,” he recalls. “But George and Jeff would be drinking beers and getting a little silly. And they were laughing a lot. I’ve made a lot of my friends laugh over the years by listening to them being sober. My dad always used to say, when he was in the army, how the limeys would always have a screwy sense of humor. But once you got to know George especially, he was so into Monty Python and all those British comedies. And he had all those records and would play them for me, and I finally started getting the hang of it. But that night they were so silly talking about traveling Willoughbys, and just knocking themselves out with laughter. I’m listening to them and telling them, ‘Jesus, how could you think this is funny?’ I was just enjoying the fact they were having a good time.”

In fact, Keltner found himself succumbing to the revelry while the Wilburys were coming up with the music for the Lynne-led rockabilly cut “Rattled,” as dutifully showcased in the 24-minute documentary The True History of The Traveling Wilburys, when he began playing out a rhythm on the house refrigerator.

“I was in the fridge at a time when Jeff and George were hanging out in the kitchen,” he explains. “I went in to get something to drink, and I was doing an overdub at the time and had my split sticks on me, which are like these wooden brushes. So I had them in my hand while I was looking for something to drink and probably screwing around with them — I like tapping on stuff when I have sticks in my hand. And I think I was scraping the wooden brushes against the fridge, and somebody made a comment about how I should play that on the track. So I got real serious about it, and started moving eggs around and tamales and whatever they had in there to tune it a little bit and Jeff loved it and said, ‘Put a mic on it.’ Jeff knows how to get a feel out of anything.

The sessions for the first Wilburys album also gave Keltner the rare opportunity to hang out with Dylan — whom he had toured with throughout his Born Again period — in a more relaxed atmosphere. It was a vibe that would provide the levity of such Dylan-led numbers as “Dirty World,” “Congratulations” and “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” in ways you didn’t experience on his proper albums.

“You don’t get to have that personal time with Bob very often,” he asserts. “Because it was the Wilburys, I had a ball with him. He’s so fucking funny when he’s on his own and relaxed. I had so much fun listening to him talk about various things. He’s a very funny guy, and people don’t know that side of him. The thing I enjoyed the most about working on Vol. 1 was getting Bob to talk. I was very close with George and Tom I had known since he was literally a kid. So it was normal for me being around those guys. And Jeff was a very shy guy who didn’t talk much anyway. But Bob was the one; some people were intimidated by Bob and being around him. They didn’t want to talk much because they didn’t want to sound stupid around him. But I knew Bob a lot better than that, and just getting him to open up and talk was so much fun. I had a camera on me and I remember he grabbed my camera a few times and started shooting things. I actually have footage of that somewhere; I wish I had marked it all.”

The sessions proved to be bittersweet, however, as it would be the last time they enjoyed the company of Orbison, who died at 52 after going into cardiac arrest on Dec. 6, 1988, a little over a month-and-a-half following the release of Vol. 1. For Keltner, who also played drums on Orbison’s posthumous twenty-second LP Mystery Girl, one of his final chats with the rockabilly legend proved to unfortunately be all too telltale that his days were numbered”.

I want to round off with a couple of reviews. This is what Rolling Stone wrote for their 1988 review of a stunning album. I don’t think any supergroup has released an album as consistent and strong as Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1:

“This is the best record of its kind ever made. Then again, it’s also the only record of its kind ever made. A low-key masterpiece, Volume One marks the auspicious debut of the Traveling Wilburys – Lucky Wilbury (a.k.a. Bob Dylan), Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison), Lefty Wilbury (Roy Orbison), Otis Wilbury (Jeff Lynne) and Charlie T. Jr. (Tom Petty) – one of the few rock supergroups actually deserving to be called either super or a group.

With tongue placed firmly in cheek, the author of the album’s liner notes (which are credited to Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, Faculty of Sleeve Notes, University of Krakatoa, East of Java, but sound suspiciously like Michael Palin, who is thanked elsewhere in the notes) explains the band’s origins thusly: “The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still for ever, began to go for short walks – not the ‘traveling’ as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back.”

In reality, this record came out of a dinner conversation in Los Angeles this spring between Petty, Orbison, Lynne and Harrison. (Former ELO leader Lynne, who was behind the boards for Harrison’s comeback album, Cloud Nine, was producing tracks for upcoming albums by both Orbison and Petty.) Harrison mentioned that he needed to record a new song for the B side of a European single and suggested they all pitch in and cut a number together. Harrison also suggested having Bob Dylan join in, and the next day they all wrote and recorded “Handle with Care” (now the album’s first single). When Harrison played the track for Warner Bros., both the company and the group realized it was too good for a throwaway track and decided the Wilburys should keep recording.

And it’s a good thing they did, because for all its off-the-cuff sense of fun, Volume One is an unexpected treat that leaves one hungry for Volume Two. Produced by Harrison and Lynne, the album has a wonderfully warm sound that is both high-tech and rootsy. Recorded at the home studios of Harrison, Dylan and Wilbury family friend Dave Stewart, Volume One has little in common with most recorded “supersessions,” which tend to be less than the sum of their parts; rather, it recalls the inspired mix-and-match musical fellowship found in the best moments of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame jam sessions.

Coming on the heels of Cloud Nine, Volume One is further proof of Harrison’s complete return to form. Throughout, Harrison not only sounds great, he also sounds happy, thrilled to be playing once again with a witty, wonderful band – albeit one with a rather unorthodox lineup: five lead-singing rhythm guitarists. (The Wilburys’ fellow travelers on Volume One include Jim Keltner on drums, Jim Horn on saxophone, Ray Cooper on percussion and Ian Wallace on tom-toms.)

But Harrison isn’t the only rock great who seems revived on Volume One. Never one for overdoing things in the studio, Bob Dylan is well matched to the Wilburys’ informal, fast-paced schedule – they wrote and recorded a song a day. And as on his recent stripped-down tour, Dylan sounds extraordinary, singing with the expert phrasing and wit of his best work. (Unsurprisingly, his tracks sound less collaborative than the others.) On “Dirty World” and “Congratulations,” his voice is loose and relaxed, free of the mannered whining that has marred some of his recent recorded work. Best of all is “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” a convincing little rocker that playfully parodies Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics. Littered with references to stolen cars, mansions on the hill, Jersey lines and a certain Thunder Road, the song comes off as Dylan’s wonderfully bitchy way of asserting who’s really the Boss.

Totally boss is the best way to describe two other Wilbury gems, “Not Alone Any More” and the closing “End of the Line.” The former is a gorgeous pop ballad on which Roy Orbison – assisted by some wonderful backing vocals from Harrison and Lynne – hurts as good as he ever has. It proves that Orbison has lost none of his tremendous vocal prowess, and makes one eager to hear Orbison’s upcoming solo album. “End of the Line” – which features vocal turns by all the Wilburys save Dylan – is a movingly upbeat ride-off-into-the-sunset song for these middle-aged rock & roll cowboys: “Maybe somewhere down the road a ways/You’ll think of me and wonder where I am these days/Maybe down the road when somebody plays/’Purple Haze.'”

Petty acquits himself well on “End of the Line” and “Last Night”; he and Orbison share lead on the latter song, a shuffling tale of good love gone bad. Jeff Lynne shines a little of his own electric light on “Rattled,” a romantic, retro-sounding rockabilly number reminiscent of some of the tracks he produced for Dave Edmunds a few years back.

According to Wilbury legend, all the Traveling Wilburys have different mothers but the same father. Yet none of the Wilburys knows the current whereabouts of Charlie T. Wilbury Sr. Chances are, though, that wherever the big guy is, he’s proud”.

I shall around things off now. Classic Rock Review penned their thoughts about Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 in 2013. Looking back twenty-five after the album was released, they give us a good insight into the creation of the album and why it still hits people all of these years later:

“Super Groups” were comonplace during the seventies and eighties, often causing much hype which was rarely surpassed by the music itself. But in the case of the Traveling Wilburys, by far the most “super” of any super group, the resulting music was downright brilliant. Their debut Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 displays an incredible array of three decades of pop and rock elements wrapped in concise tunes penned and performed by some of the biggest legends in the business. The group and album were not initially planned and came together through a serendipitous series of coincidences and the fantastic music they produced together easily makes Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 Classic Rock Review’s Album of the Year for 1988.

It all started in Los Angeles in Spring 1988 when George Harrison was looking to record B-side material for a vinyl 12-inch European single. Jeff Lynne, who co-produced Harrison’s most recent album Cloud Nine was also in Los Angeles at the time. Lynne was producing some music for Roy Orbison as well as the debut solo album, Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. Lynne was able to enlist both artists to help out Harrison, who was in a huge hurry to record his material. The final piece of the Traveling Wilbury puzzle was Bob Dylan, who had built a home studio in nearby Malibu and agreed to let the makeshift group record the very next day. On that day, the legendary musicians wrote and recorded the song “Handle with Care” in about five hours. The experience was so positive that all five agreed to form a group and reconvened a month later to record the other nine tracks on what would become Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Here the magic continued as the group wrote and recorded on acoustic guitars. With a limited amount of time before Dylan headed out on a scheduled tour, the five singers in the group often took turns at songs until Harrison (as group arbiter) selected the best “lead” voice for each part. The final phase was Harrison and Lynne returning to England for final overdubs and production. Here Harrison added some electric and lead guitars, Lynne added keyboards and bass, Jim Keltner was brought in on drums.

Although it is generally agreed that Harrison was the group’s leader, they did work hard to maintain a collective image and even set up fictional names for each member masquerading as the “Wilbury” brothers – Nelson (Harrison), Otis (Lynne), Lucky (Dylan), Lefty (Orbison), and Charlie T. Jr. (Petty) with Keltner given the humorous “outsider” name “Buster Sidebury”. All group members also got songwriting credits on the album, although the publishing credits were disbursed according to the actual songwriter. The Wilbury name originated from Harrison and Lynne previously working together as a pseudonym for slight recording errors (“we’ll bury ’em in the mix”).

The ringing guitars of “Handle with Care”, the original Wilbury song, starts things off. Harrison, the primary composer, delivers deliberate vocalizing during the verses which gives way to Orbison’s smooth crooning during the choruses. Dylan and Petty deliver a chanting post-chorus and two instances of Harrison’s classic guitar along with a short Dylan harmonica lead make the song a true classic in just about every way. Within its brief three and a half minutes the song is dotted with decades of rock history, making this the perfect track to introduce the album. While not every song on the album wraps itself so well as “Handle with Care”, there is not a truly weak moment on the album.

On “Dirty World” Dylan’s rough lead vocals are complimented by smooth backing vocals and a bright acoustic arrangement. The song also contains some horns and an interesting arrangement all around. This song was a particularly enjoyable one for the band to record as each member took a turn singing in the “round” during the extended outro. Jeff Lynne’s “Rattled” is pure rockabilly led by Orbinson on vocals, almost like a lost early Elvis song. Lynne’s bass and Harrison’s lead guitar shine musically and the actual “rattle” in the song is drummer Keltner tapping the refrigerator grill with his drum sticks.

“Last Night” contains Caribbean elements with some percussion and horns and Petty singing during verse and Orbinson during the bridges. The whimsical, storytelling song has a great aura and feel throughout. Petty did the core composing with each group member contributing to the songwriting approach. The verses has an upbeat folk/Latin feel with the bridge being a bit more dramatic. The first side completes with “Not Alone Any More”, a vocal centerpiece for Orbison. His vocals smoothly lead a modern version of early sixties rock and Lynne’s keyboards add more decoration than any other song on the first side. If “Not Alone Anymore” is in the clouds, the second side opener “Congratulations” is right down at ground level. This tavern style ballad with Dylan on lead vocals sounds much like his late 70s / early 80s era material, with blues-like reverences to broken relationships, and includes a very short but great lead guitar by Harrison right at the end.

The up-tempo “Heading for the Light” is a quintessential Harrison/Lynne production, with the former Beatle composing and singing and the former ELO front man providing the lush production and orchestration. The song contains great picked guitar fills as well as a saxophone solo by Jim Horn. “Margarita” may be the oddest song on the album but is still a great sonic pleasure. It begins with a programmed eighties synth line then the long intro slowly works its way into a Latin acoustic section topped by horns, lead guitar, and rich vocal harmonies. It is not until a minute and a half in that Petty’s lead vocals come in for a single verse then the song works its ways through various short sections towards an encapsulated synth ending. This spontaneous composition with free-association lyrics showed with a group of this talent could do on the spot.

“Tweeter and the Monkey Man” is Bob Dylan channeling Bruce Springsteen and coming out with what may have been one of the best Springsteen songs ever (even though he had nothing to do with it). This extended song with the traditional Dylan style of oodles of verses and a theatrical chorus includes several references to Springsteen songs throughout and is in Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey. It may have been Dylan’s delayed response to the press repeatedly coining Bruce “the next Dylan”. No matter what the case, the result is an excellent tune with lyrics rich enough to base a book or movie.

The most perfect album closer to any album – ever, “End of the Line” contains a Johnny Cash-like train rhythm beneathe deeply philosophical lyrics, delivered in a light and upbeat fashion. Harrison, Lynne, Orbinson, and Harrison again provide the lead vocals during the chorus hooks while Petty does the intervening verses. The song revisits the classic music themes of survival and return with the universal message that, in the big picture, it all ends someday. The feeling of band unity is also strongest here with the folksy pop/rock chords and great harmonies. The music video for “End of the Line” was filmed after Roy Orbison’s death in December 1988, mere weeks after the album’s release, and paid tasteful respect with a shot of a guitar sitting in a rocking chair during the verse which Orbison sang.

Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 sold over two million copies within its first six months, a figure which made this album a higher seller than any of Bob Dylan’s albums to that date. The album was critically favored and won a Grammy award in 1990. The surviving members of the group reconvened for a second album, which fell far short of capturing the magic of this debut and a long-planned tour by the group never materialized, although members continued to collaborate on each other’s albums for years to come. The incredible magic that came together in 1988 is yet to repeated anywhere in the rock universe”.

On 18th October, the sensational debut album from Traveling Wilburys turns thirty-five. I remember this from childhood and being hooked on songs like End of the Line, Tweeter and the Monkey Man, and Handle with Care. If you have not heard the album, then I would thoroughly recommend that you check it out! I don’t know if there is a celebration planned for its thirty-fifth anniversary. Its two surviving member, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne, will no doubt recall a very special time in their lives. If you think supergroups are overrated, pointless or driven by ego, then listen to Traveling Wilburys Vol 1. It is an album that is carefree, full of gold and made by a group of friends really enjoying each other’s company! For that reason alone, this is an album that will be picked up and enjoyed…

BY many generations to come.

FEATURE: Burning, Man: How Sustainable Will Music Festivals Be Considering the Climate Emergency?

FEATURE:

 

 

Burning, Man

PHOTO CREDIT: Arthur Ogleznev/Pexels

How Sustainable Will Music Festivals Be Considering the Climate Emergency?

_________

WE are in a position…

 IN THIS PHOTO: A festival-goer walks their bike through the mud near the exit at Burning Man in Nevada/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Hughes/USA TODAY NETWORK/Reuters

where we have to ask some very urgency and heavy questions when it comes to festivals. Relating to climate change and the impact it is having on festivals around the world, you wonder how secure their future is long-term. The pandemic meant that most festivals were not running for a couple of years. We have seen the worst of one pandemic but, at a moment when new vaccines are being discussed and a different strain of COVID-19 is rearing its head in the U.K., will we soon find ourselves in another pandemic?! One where we may have to go into lockdown and see festivals cancelled next year. That would be heartbreaking. The popular U.S. festival, Burning Man, faced weather peril and descended into chaos. The annual festival is held out in the Neveda desert. It is a week-long large-scale desert campout which focuses on on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance”. Heavy rain and mud has never been an issue considering the geographical location of the festival. Shockingly, as you can see here, weather really played its part. Climate change and global warning made itself felt at one festival. Look around the globe and the fact that heavy winds and rain have scuppered some festivals and delayed set times at others, this will only get more extreme! The Australian website The Age reacted to what happened at Burning Man and asked if this is the end of music festivals:

“Outdoor music festivals have traditionally conjured images of sprawling fields peppered with tents, glitter-coated patrons and lines of dubious-smelling portable toilets. But today’s music festivals are as likely to be known for something more sinister: extreme weather of the kind that led to 70,000 Burning Man attendees trapped on site for days just this week.

Since 2013, about 41 Australian music festivals have been disrupted by bushfires, floods, lightning storms, wind or extreme heat. The vast majority of these disruptions occurred in the last three years, with over 20 festivals being relocated, postponed or cancelled due to dangerous weather fuelled by climate change. The biggest of these was Splendour in the Grass in 2022, which had its first day cancelled following heavy rain and floods.

Music industry figures have been forced to confront a vital question. If the level of disruption continues at this rate, how much longer can outdoor music festivals continue, and what do they need to change to survive?

Though weather has always been a consideration when planning large outdoor events, Tara Medina, co-founder of Strawberry Fields – a music festival in Tocumwal, NSW that was cancelled because of La Niña-related flooding last year – says climate change has made extreme weather more frequent, severe and unpredictable.

“The weather for our first four or five events was reasonably consistent,” Medina says. “The variance was: you’re either going to get 20mm of rain, and it’ll be colder, or it’s going to be 35 degrees and hot. The extremes for us now are: it’s going to be 42 degrees and a catastrophic bushfire day, or it’s going to be seven metres underwater. The sweet spots are getting more and more rare.”

Other popular festivals such as Yours and Owls in Wollongong, The Grass is Greener in Canberra and Geelong and Splendour In The Grass in the Northern Rivers were either partially or entirely cancelled shortly before the events were due to begin last year – a period that was supposed to mark the festival circuit’s glorious comeback after its COVID-induced hiatus”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Wendy Wei/Pexels

In the U.K., there is always rain at festivals. It becomes almost expected during the summer and early autumn months that there will be a washout at some point. Instead, we have been seeing extreme temperatures. The trouble with climate change is we are not sure how the extreme weather will impact festivals in the future. I feel most will have to adapt when it comes to weather-proofing. If they are held in massive fields, heavy downpours, storms, and even extreme heat is going to impact that. All festivals need to address and react to climate change by next year. How they can ready themselves for extreme weather and what happened at Burning Man. Many artists are trying to have carbon-neutral sets and travel as little as possible. The huge number of vehicles at festivals means there is pollution. At the mercy of the weather gods, I do fear even here in the U.K., where we have seen record autumn temperature but do not get the sort of devastating weather other countries see, we might have to prepare for the worst. I don’t think all festivals will be endangered. It is clear that some changes will be needed. In the hot weather, it may not be possible to produce enough water to keep everyone hydrated. There do need to be more water points,. shade and changes to set times and lengths if people are standing in high temperatures for hours. When it comes to rain, ensuring that vehicles are not stranded and there is safe haven and shelter, all festivals need to consider these things. It may cost a lot of money though, as we have to accept that global warming will impact festivals negatively, Burning Man is this perfect example of expect the unexpected.

 IN THIS PHOTO: A shot of this year’s rain-ravaged Burning Man festival/PHOTO CREDIT: Tara Saylor

It must be a huge concern for all music festivals around the world when they hear of cancellations and damage because of the weather. The amount of money they lose if they need to cancel or delay the festivities is massive. Carbon-neutral festivals so exist, yet they can be very expensive. Festivals at the moment are not doing enough to adapt to climate change and make themselves greener. I guess small festivals and fewer days will mean less damage and risk. There will be more reliance on more modest festivals that cost less and will lose less if they are hampered by the weather. From the U.S. to Australia to the U.K., festivals also need to know how many people will show up. Putting tickets on sale earlier so exact numbers can be tabulated and then they can adapt accordingly is important. Maybe, as The Age outline in their feature, online festivals and harnessing technology could be a way of moving some festivals online. It is a shame, as festivals are about community and togetherness outside. If more drainage and fortified areas to shield people against the rain may become less effective as things get worse, there do need to be discussion and action plans from all festival to ensure they can continue – and do so safely and without too much cost and disruption. I don’t think we will see a day when all festivals are cancelled, though we will see more being delayed or heavily affected by weather. Burning Man was lashed by Storm Betty. Tiree in Scotland was hit by heavy rain; a Metal festival in Germany also saw rain creating mud and disruption; even last year, strong winds claimed a life and injured many more at a Spanish festival.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels

If festivals are not quite ready for all possibilities climate change might lead to when it comes to unpredictable weather, there are those adapting and trying to do things so that they are ready for the worst. Earlier this year, The Guardian outlined how the costs of protecting festivals against wildfires and extreme rain is a real problem. Is it the case that the Government need to make a cash injection to ensure that there is funding for festivals so that they continue year on year without needing to scale back and cancel? It is a very precarious and scary time:

“Standon Calling, a 17,000-capacity festival in Hertfordshire, has felt the force of extreme weather in recent years. In 2021, the team were preparing for a dry weekend and performances by Primal Scream and Craig David. “Forecasts weren’t suggesting we were going to get freak weather,” recalls founder Alex Trenchard. “Then we had double the average rainfall for July fall in around three and a half hours. It was extraordinary.”

The downpour left almost a third of the site flooded, with bosses forced to cancel the event on the final day. The evacuation was complicated as local access roads had been closed and some attenders had to leave their cars and belongings behind.

The following year, they dug flood irrigation trenches across the site – only to face a heatwave. “You’re now preparing for something that, even in the realms of extreme, is at the extreme end,” Trenchard says.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels

Unpredictable weather has been part of preplanning and risk assessment for UK music festivals for decades. The difference now is, bosses can’t look at past patterns to model their plans.

“Throughout the world, and in the UK, we’re seeing unprecedented weather events,” says Ric Robins from the Met Office, who has spent 40 years following British weather and works with events to disseminate weather warnings. “We’re going to have to make plans for weather events that we haven’t seen yet, but are now plausible,” he adds.

That will be difficult, because most festival sites are under construction by the time they receive accurate data. “It’s around five to seven days [before the event] when the forecast settles down into something you can plan for,” explains Robins. As a result, festival organisers – under scrutiny from local authorities, emergency services and insurance companies – must now prepare in advance for multiple extreme weather scenarios.

Jane Healy is responsible for the water and sanitation provisions at festivals such as Glastonbury and Boomtown, a 60,000-capacity festival in Hampshire where, in August 2022, temperatures peaked around 40C. She recalls there was concern about localised drought. To protect festivalgoers’ welfare, the team were trucking in tankers of extra water, trying to keep it cool enough to drink and using it to dampen down dust.

PHOTO CREDIT: Zeyneb Alishova/Pexels

“When you haven’t planned for extreme weather, it’s easy to fall back on the old ways,” she says. For example, shipping in plastic bottles of water. “Quick options, like anything in life, aren’t normally the most sustainable. You’ve got to have your contingencies, even if you don’t use them.”

These types of weather events mean festivals are scaling up plans every summer. More than half a million people attend Festival Republic’s events each year, such as Reading and Leeds, Wireless and Download. Last year, the organisers saw the damage caused to homes and villages by wildfires and adapted their plans.

“We increased fire crew teams and fire appliances,” says group managing director Melvin Benn. “Instead of our fire teams being central, we created hubs so response times would be shorter.” Real-time monitoring is key. “We contract a satellite weather service, which costs an awful lot of money. It gives us literally minute-by-minute anticipation. I’ve used this technology to keep shows going.”

All this necessary adaptation comes at a time of budgeting strain for the festival sector. “Issues of climate change affecting festivals aren’t happening on their own,” says Trenchard. “It’s alongside other factors, such as cancellation insurance. The premiums are rising year-on-year because insurers are having to pay out on weather-related claims.” Already this year, record rainfall has meant Laneway festival in Auckland was called off.

The positive news, though, is that festivals are increasingly engaged when it comes to their contribution to global heating. “Ten or 15 years ago, there was a handful of people championing this stuff,” says John Rostron of the Association of Independent Festivals, which represents 105 events with a combined audience of 1.3m music fans. “Now, it’s very much a guiding star. Every aspect of a festival can engage in considering the climate and sustainability: whether that’s how you travel there or the energy driving the power or water usage on site”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: A satellite image courtesy of Maxar Technology shows an overview of the traffic jam of people leaving Burning Man/PHOTO CREDIT: Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Tech/AFP/Getty Images

I want to bring in a feature from Pitchfork. Published this week, they discussed a new reality for festivals at a time when climate change is having a marked and devastating consequence. Given the fact that outdoor events can only have so much protection and shelter, is it possible to work festivals around extreme weather? It seems like an impossible and tough situation for festival organisers around the world:

“Scientists agree that global warming is triggering increasingly unstable and unpredictable weather around the globe. And that has left festival organizers scrambling to grapple with their new normal. Such events can be deadly: Last summer, high winds killed one and injured 40 when a stage and other structures came down at the Medusa festival in Valencia, Spain. But even small incidents can put a festival’s entire future at risk. After Australia’s Splendour in the Grass festival flooded its campground locale last year, some local government officials called for organizers to find a new location.

We Out Here, a fledgling festival in the UK countryside, had a close call in 2019, its very first year. While stages were going up in advance of opening day, high winds forced the closure of multiple events in the region. “That was scary,” says We Out Here’s Joe Barnett. “We had fences going over, structures being blown. Had we been a week earlier, our inaugural year of the festival would have been canceled, and I’m not entirely sure that you survive that.”

Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival changed its dates from September to November, to be closer to the beginning of the dry season, and is shifting to an outdoor space within Jinja, a town on the shore of Lake Victoria, at the source of the Nile. “Global warming is dramatically affecting different parts of the world in different ways,” says Arlen Dilsizian, co-founder of Nyege Nyege. In the 12 years he’s lived in the country, the Greek-Armenian musicologist has seen Uganda’s wet and dry seasons become increasingly erratic. Last year, a month of rain leading up to the festival turned access roads into mud pits, exacerbating the already difficult logistics of the site’s remote forest location. “If it rains, we’re much better prepared now, and everyone can rush off to their hotel,” adds Dilsizian.

IMAGE CREDIT: Marina Kozak

With social media, there’s more public-facing accountability when adverse weather hits and organizers are unprepared (see: Fyre Festival). “You’re not going to be able to handle every weather situation perfectly,” Nelson acknowledges. “But having the best plan in place and proving that you did your due diligence—that’s becoming even more important. We do have changing climate conditions, and not all people might acknowledge that. But it’s certainly becoming more extreme in certain areas of the globe, and that’s affecting how people should mitigate risks around large-scale events.”

More needs to be done to address those risks, agree organizers and experts. Nelson suggests more general communication around emergency action plans to both attendees and staff. Joe Barnett, of We Out Here, sees the burden of responsibility as two-fold for event organizers: First, they must adjust to the new reality of extreme weather through increased infrastructure. (“One of the reasons I’m excited about working on a new festival site in Dorset is that we have some really good ground in terms of drainage, and we have a landlord who’s open to us investing in road networks on the site,” he adds.) And secondly, they should use their platform to educate. “I don’t think festivals just have a responsibility to reduce their negative impact,” Barnett says. “They have an active responsibility to discuss the impact of climate change and to encourage their customers to be conscious of it.”

Open’er’s (Mikolaj) Ziółkowski agrees, citing Billie Eilish’s solar-powered stage at Lollapalooza as an example of positive messaging. “You and I believe in climate change, but so many people are saying everything is fine,” he says. “We’ve got the perfect tool to talk to new generations.” At the same time, Ziółkowski adds, part of the nature of festivals is, well, being close to nature. “As humans, we have to be outside. Sometimes we will get wet.”

Although we are not at a point of no return when it comes to trying to act and ensure that global temperatures do not rise too high and lead to a bleak future for the planet, we are stumbling into that. The new reality is that the sort of record temperatures we have seen in the U.K. and the storms witnessed around the world will not only become regular: things will get worse and it will lead to a lot of deaths and damage of the land. Festivals are not necessarily essential. They are crucial for the music industry, so the music industry does need to come up with something – action plans and changes when it comes to how they are run, their carbon footprint, and how they are going to survive long-term. Not to dampen the brilliant festivals we have seen this year, but the recent drenching of Burning Man via a storm that left people stranded and in peril…this should be the wake-up call not only music festivals should heed and take to heart – it is something governments around the world need to acknowledge and act upon. It is a huge tragedy when music festivals are cancelled or impacted by the weather. We need to do all we can to ensure that these magnificent festivals survive; those that are…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Brian Cross performing at Medusa Festival in Cullera, Spain on 10th August, 2019/PHOTO CREDIT: Pablo Gallardo/Getty Images

SO crucial to so many!

FEATURE Time After Time: Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Time After Time

Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual at Forty

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THE summer and autumn of 1983…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

were a fascinating and exciting one for Pop. Two incredible women, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, released their debut albums then. Madonna’s eponymous album came out in July. On 14th October, Cyndi Lauper released She’s So Unusual. I am going to get to some features about the album. Even though the thirtieth anniversary reissue was released in 2014 – I can never understand why that was -, there is another reissue coming out in seems for the fortieth. It is one of those classics that every home should have. Before getting to the features and reviews, Wikipedia give us some background to Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 debut, in addition to the huge impact She’s So Unusual has had:

“In 1978, Lauper formed the band Blue Angel. The band soon signed a recording contract with Polydor Records; however, their debut album, Blue Angel, was a commercial failure. The band parted ways after firing their manager, who sued Lauper for $80,000 and forced her into bankruptcy Lauper went on to sing in many New York night clubs, and caught the eye of David Wolff, who became her manager and subsequently got her signed to Portrait Records.

Six singles were released from the album, with "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" becoming a worldwide hit and her first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. "Time After Time" became her first number-one hit on the chart and experienced similar success worldwide. Lauper found success with the next two singles as well, with both "She Bop" and "All Through the Night" peaking in the top five. This makes Lauper the first female singer to have four top five singles on the Hot 100 from one album. She's So Unusual was promoted by the Fun Tour throughout 1983 and 1984.

The album is primarily new wave-based, with many of the songs being influenced by synthpop and pop rock. Upon its release, the album received positive reviews from music critics, who noted Lauper's unique vocals. Lauper earned several awards and accolades for the album, including two Grammy Awards at the 27th Grammy Awards, one of which was for Best New Artist. She's So Unusual peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 chart and stayed in the chart's top forty for 65 weeks. It has sold over 6 million copies in the United States and 25 million copies worldwide. This makes it Lauper's best-selling album to date and one of the best-selling albums of the 1980s. In 2003, She's So Unusual was ranked at number 494 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and it subsequently placed at number 184 in a 2020 reboot of the list.[ In 2019, the album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Before concentrating on features from 2014 that looked at the thirtieth anniversary celebration of She’s So Unusual, Classic Pop took us inside a fantastic debut from an iconic artist. Forty years later, She’s So Unusual sounds fresh and relevant. I think that it is one of those albums that people will be discovering for decades to come. A timeless classic:

“By the time Cyndi Lauper achieved her breakthrough in 1983 with the feelgood anthem Girls Just Want To Have Fun, no one was more in need of the chance to let down her flame-red hair than Cyndi herself, whose tumultuous trip to the top had been littered with a catalogue of catastrophes which would have deterred lesser artists from pursuing their dream.

Having been discovered by manager Steve Massarsky in 1978 fronting new wave/rockabilly group Blue Angel, Cyndi, a mesmerising day-glow diva with a four-octave vocal range, turned down a series of solo record deal offers in favour of pursuing success with the band. After just one unsuccessful album, the band fired Massarsky as their manager. He sued them for $80,000, forcing them to break-up and Cyndi to file for bankruptcy. Her run of bad luck continued when she suffered an inverted cyst on her vocal cord, causing her to lose her voice and face the devastating possibility that her singing career was over before it had even started.

After recovering from surgery, Cyndi was forced to work a series of jobs waitressing and in stores during the day while singing in bars at night. It was whilst she was performing in a New York bar that David Wolff offered to act as her manager. With nothing to lose, Cyndi agreed and, within weeks, was fielding offers from various labels. She chose Epic as: “they didn’t already have a female solo star”.

Epic paired Cyndi with producer Rick Chertoff, who suggested she worked with The Hooters, a rock/reggae/ska band he had recently produced. Finding that their sound was something she felt she could use as a foundation for her own, Cyndi headed to their Philadelphia studio to begin working on her album. Once in the studio, Lauper had a very clear idea of how she wanted her record to sound but was dismayed to find that her ideas weren’t welcomed and she was presented with songs she didn’t want to sing.

When boundaries were established and the band realised that Cyndi knew what she was talking about, a mutual respect developed and the sessions proceeded smoothly. Within the first two weeks, All Through The Night, When You Were Mine and Money Changes Everything were all completed and provided a basis for the remainder of the album. With half of the album finished and happy with the tracks they had laid down, Cyndi relented and finally agreed to record Robert Hazard’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun, a song Rick Chertoff had persistently asked her to record for the album.

Among the songs Cyndi wrote were She Bop, the tongue-in-cheek ode to masturbation, and the timeless ballad Time After Time, two diverse songs that showed her not only to be a great songwriter but also a versatile one. The label were so taken with the latter that they wanted to release it as the first single, but Cyndi refused, wanting a fun, upbeat song to launch the record, feeling it was more representative of the album as a body of work.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun was released in September 1983 to a muted reception. With little initial radio or MTV airplay, Cyndi’s manager Dave came up with a plan to publicise her in the unlikely arena of the World Wrestling Federation – a hugely successful show in which Cyndi would appear in sketches in return for them showing her video. The move proved hugely successful: wrestler Captain Lou starred in Cyndi’s videos (he played her father in Girls…), Cyndi was invited on to top-rated talk shows, radio and MTV began playing it more and it eventually became a huge hit, reaching No.2 in the US, repeating the success around the world, including the UK in the following months”.

Let’s ends with some celebration and spotlighting of the thirtieth anniversary release of She’s So Unusual from 2014. Pop Matters noted how the album has some amazing covers. Even though Cyndi Lauper co-wrote some of the album’s best tracks, anthems such as Girls Just Want to Have Fun were written earlier – in this case, Robert Hazard wrote it earlier in 1983. Cyndi Lauper had this ability to interpret songs and make them hers:

“A lot of people tend to forget that She’s So Unusual is one hell of a covers album.

At the start of the ’80s, the post-disco comedown that America was experiencing was leading to a bit of an identity crisis in the realm of pop music. New Wave hits by Blondie were coming through radio dials, Hall & Oates were just warming up, and flashy singles from Soft Cell, Olivia Newton-John, and Kim Carnes were all doing boffo business. However, despite the commercial and cultural success of some of these tracks, nothing was really defining the era as of yet. Pop and rock were mingling on the charts with surprising ease, but artists like Tommy Tutone and Juice Newton were only adding color to the mix: The sound of the ’80s had yet to be defined, and in the latter half of 1983, two very strong, independent women wound up releasing their debuts within months of each other, and invariably wound up providing the pop music zeitgeist many people had been waiting for.

Those ladies, of course, were Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

Madonna’s self-titled debut came out that July, and although her initial singles fared well on Billboard’s dance charts, her straightforward, remarkably-appealing dance pop hadn’t yet had a chance to break through to a wider audience. Meanwhile, after numerous setbacks for her band Blue Angel (and numerous financial and vocal difficulties on top of that), a young New Yorker named Cyndi Lauper was prepping her full-length solo debut. Her album, She’s So Unusual, unleashed its lead single, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, on September 6th, 1983. The following day, Madonna released “Holiday”, her breakout chart entry. Both songs went on to be huge hits, and as the years rolled on, these women wound up defining not just the 80s, but the very template for female pop stars for decades to follow.

Thus, looking back on the release of Lauper’s debut album some three decades down the line in the form of a “30th Anniversary Celebration“, some would be surprised to learn that, in fact, half the album is made up of covers. Georgia cult rockers The Brains had their signature song “Money Changes Everything” picked as She’s So Unusual‘s opening salvo, while folk artist Jules Shear’s “All Through the Night” got a plumb role on Side B, and New Wave songwriter Robert Hazard saw his quirky one-off “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” transformed into a earth-shattering, Grammy-nominated chart topper. Toss in a cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine”, and you have an album that doesn’t plays more as a personal mixtape than an album proper, but the mish-mash of styles — which is what the 80s were very much about — is what by-and-large gave Lauper’s solo album such a unique identity.

However, some 30 years down the line, certain parts of She’s So Unusual haven’t aged particularly well, and despite all the additional ephemera included here, there are still some problematic songs that continue to rub shoulders with tracks that have come nothing less than generational touchstones.

Take, for example, the controversial Top Five hit “She Bop”, a wry ode to female masturbation that also opened She’s So Unusual‘s flip-side. The gritty guitar and by-then-numbers synth roll that anchor the track’s hook feels tied down to then-trendy New Wave songwriting tropes, and feels far more dated than it does timeless, pop music’s equivalent to empty calories. “I’ll Kiss You”, similarly, has verses that are as jam-packed with more squiggly synth effects than you can shine a strobe-light at, but it’s barely saved by a strong, rubbery chorus, low bass voices anchoring Lauper’s Betty Boop squeak, which makes her empowering take-charge anthem all the more potent.

Yet even with those songs showing their age in sometimes painful ways (and “Yeah Yeah” truly feeling like a song that was tacked on to the end ‘cos no one could determine whether it was a B-side or album track), there are still more than enough highlights on She’s So Unusual to make it worthy of its iconic status. “Time After Time” continues its quiet campaign to be known as the single best song Lauper has ever written (its development chronicled in Jancee Dunn’s press-release-ready liner notes, which paints Lauper’s story with rainbow pastels and shies away from any real grit), and the reggae-affected guitar crunch of “Witness” is basically the blueprint for every No Doubt song ever written. Her full-bodied take on Prince’s “When You Were Mine”, meanwhile, is done in such a way that it feels like a tune Lauper herself has written, as her occasionally-sung, occasionally-conversational vocals show a true sense of ownership over the material”.

I want to end with a review. SLANT had their say on this remarkable and influential album. Even though they feel that Lauper peaked at the start of her career, that takes nothing away from the brilliance of the 1983 release – and it is subjective as to whether she released anything as good as She’s So Unusual after that:

“Cyndi Lauper suffers from a severe case of what we here at Slant like to call A.P.T.S.A.B.R.O.E. (translation: Artist Peaks Too Soon And Becomes Relic Of Era). Lauper’s debut, She’s So Unusual, was an expertly-produced collection of songs that, while undeniably time-stamped, were well-crafted and durable. Each of Lauper’s subsequent efforts paled in the shadow of its predecessor, but the fact that her career waned doesn’t make She’s So Unusual any less of a pop classic. Half of the album consisted of cover songs, but these weren’t just “covers.” Each song was a unique arrangement that reflected a then-new pop-cult personality and voice. Lauper’s more accessible rendition of underground New Wave band the Brains’s “Money Changes Everything” took on new meaning in Reagan-era 1984, while the bisexual overtones of a lyrically-in-tact, synth-driven subversion of Prince’s “When You Were Mine” is difficult to ignore: “I never was the kind to make a fuss/When he was there/Sleepin’ in between the two of us.” Two other covers, a poppy redo of Jules Shear’s eccentric “All Through the Night” and the reggae-hued anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” emerged as two of the greatest pop masterpieces of the ’80s. It’s not until the ageless ballad “Time After Time” that Lauper makes her first songwriting contribution. With its simple keyboard-synth chords, bright, jangly guitars, clock-ticking percussion, and elastic bassline, the song is the album’s finest moment, if not Lauper’s greatest moment period. Her voice is deeper than on the chirpy Betty Boop-inspired one-two punch of “He’s So Unusual” and “Yeah Yeah,” the solemnity of her performance starkly contrasting her provocative, tongue-in-cheek ode to masturbation “She Bop.” It’s this rare balance of camp and candor that set Lauper apart from her contemporaries and continues to retain her place in the pop pantheon”.

On 14th October, the brilliant She’s So Unusual turns forty. If you have not heard the album before then make sure that you do! It contains classics like Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Time After Time, and lesser-heard greats such as Witness and I’ll Kiss You. Such a solid and extraordinary introduction from a legend. One hopes that she gets inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame soon, as she missed out this year. One cannot deny that the brilliant She’s So Unusual was one of the greatest releases of 1983 – in a particularly strong year for Pop music. It remains a classic…

TO this day.

FEATURE: Mammy's Hero: Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Three

FEATURE:

 

 

Mammy's Hero

Kate Bush’s Army Dreamers at Forty-Three

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I didn’t write about this song…

 IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from the Army Dreamers video shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

when marking the forty-third anniversary of Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever. Army Dreamers, the third and final single from the album, was released on 22nd September, 1980. I thought I would wait until now to mark the anniversary on its own. Army Dreamers is a song about a mother grieving her son who is killed on military manoeuvres. The mother wrestles with a sense of guilt and anger. The fact that someone so young could have been anything, he has had his life wasted for no reason. Somewhere between an anti-war song and how a mother deals with the death of a young son, this was one of the first signs of Bush becoming more politically engaged when it came to the music. I have mentioned this when writing about the song before (this article is also worth checking out) – so I will not go over the same ground. Before moving on, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia sourced interview sections where Kate Bush discussed Army Dreamers and its background:

“The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action - it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream. (Week-long diary, Flexipop, 1980)

No, it's not personal. It's just a mother grieving and observing the waste. A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have [??? Line missing!] whatever. But he's nothing to do, no way to express himself. So he joins the army. He's trapped. So many die, often in accidents. I'm not slagging off the army, because it's good for certain people. But there are a lot of people in it who shouldn't be. (Derek Jewell, 'How To Write Songs And Influence People'. Sunday Times (UK), 5 October 1980)

The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me. (Kris Needs, 'Fire In The Bush'. ZigZag (UK), 1980)”.

There are a few reasons why I wanted to focus on Army Dreamers. It is coming up for its forty-third anniversary. In 1980, at the start of that new decade, Kate Bush was starting to distant herself from her earlier sound. As a producer, she was making broader and more ambitious music. In terms of themes and music, we hear something new in Army Dreamers. Previous Never for Ever singles, Breathing and Babooshka also concerned relationships and heartache. Breathing is about a foetus who is inside the womb whilst nuclear warfare has hit. It is about an actual being who wants to live against a backdrop of apocalypse and destruction. Babooshka is about deceit between a man and wife. Feeling he is being unfaithful; she creates this alias and tricks him. Traps him in the web. Bush was still writing about love and human relations, but in a much more adventurous and complicated way. Army Dreamers is one of her most devastating songs. The Irish accent and sense of bounce in the vocal pairs with a lyric saying what this boy could have been. All the things he could be are now not possible. If she didn’t explicitly say it was a protest song, there was a sense of Kate Bush looking out at the wider world and giving these big themes something quite intimate. By making them quite personal and relatable, they are more effecting and shocking than a general song about war and its futility. I also wanted to look at other aspects of the track.

It only got to number sixteen when it was released. Even if Babooshka was a comparative success, Army Dreamers did not climb as high as it deserves. Maybe people were adjusting to Bush talking about things like war. A song less commercial than others. In fact, nearly all of Bush’s songs that are more political have not charted that high. I like the fact that Army Dreamers has a family feel. Bush recorded with a range of other musicians but, on Army Dreamers, there are artists who performed on her debut album, alongside her brother Paddy (who also was on The Kick Inside). Brian Bath, Paddy Bush and Alan Murphy are on backing vocals. Brian Bath is on acoustic guitar, Paddy Bush on mandolin. There is quite a tight band who make the song dreamlike and haunted at the same time. Another reason I wanted to highlight Army Dreamers is the fact that its video, directed by ‘Keef’ (Keith McMillan), ranks alongside her best and most enduring. It is cinematic and, like Breathing, there is this real sense of tension and read. There are nice touches in the video. Little musical Easter eggs. Bush and several soldiers in the video (two of whom, Bush included, have ‘KT8’ or ‘KTB’ stencilled on the butt of their rifles  (KTB was a monogram used by Bush early in her career) make their way through chaos and explosions. At the end, Bush blows up. It is a video you really have to watch, as my words cannot do it justice! Also, as she revealed to Profiles in Rock in 1980, this is a rare example of a video that she is completely satisfied with:

“For me that's the closest that I've got to a little bit of film. And it was very pleasing for me to watch the ideas I'd thought of actually working beautifully. Watching it on the screen. It really was a treat, that one. I think that's the first time ever with anything I've done I can actually sit back and say "I liked that". That's the only thing. Everything else I can sit there going "Oh look at that, that's out of place". So I'm very pleased with that one, artistically”.

On 22nd September, it will be forty-three years since the incredible Army Dreamers was released. This ‘mammy's hero’, carried back from war rather than being able to live the rest of his life, is a vision and sentiment that really hits hard. Bush, with her unique way of phrasing and using the English language, created something extremely moving and hard-hitting in 1980. Because of that, forty-three years after the fact, we need to honour Army Dreamers and show our respects to…

MAMMY’S hero.

FEATURE: Stepping Out of the Page… Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Four

FEATURE:

 

 

Stepping Out of the Page…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for The Sensual World’s single cover/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Four

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PERHAPS the standout track from Kate Bush’s…

The Sensual World is its gorgeous title track. The lead single from the album, it was released on 18th September, 1989, where it reached twelve in the U.K. Even though the album got to number two, a number twelve singles chart placing is pretty impressive. Maybe there was that momentum following 1985’s Hounds of Love. A certain expectation and desire Bush had released material post-1985, yet this was the first taste of a new album (I would encourage people to see this video of Bush discussing working with the Trio Bulgarka). Different to anything she had released to that point, The Sensual World remains one of her most enduring and popular songs. This is one of these singles with an interesting track record. Bush would re-record the song and re-title it Flower of the Mountain for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Bush was inspired to write The Sensual World after hearing actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses. Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. Bush often found influence from T.V., film and literature. Rather than rehash features I have written before about The Sensual World, I will approach It from a different angle. Before then, a bit of history and personal insight from Kate Bush. Ulysses was published in 1922. Bush believed the book was out of public domain – in the sense she could lift parts of the book and use it in the song. It would be almost ninety years after the book was published until Bush got permission from the James Joyce estate to use text from the book – an agonising twenty-two years after The Sensual World was released. Bush approached director Jimmy Murakami – who directed her 2005 single, King of the Mountain (from Aerial) - to shoot a video. He was dubious, as  felt James Joyce's grandson Stephen James Joyce had the rights to the book. Bush could have been in for quite an unpleasant lawsuit had she not checked!

It is a shame that, like songs, there are tight laws and restrictions as to what you can use without permission. It seems especially hard when it comes to using text from literature in a song. I think that Ulysses had fallen into the public domain by 2011 anyone, though Bush asked the estate and they granted her permission anyway. Perhaps an irrelevant gesture, at least she was gifted license to rework The Sensual World with text from Ulysses. I think I always prefer the ‘original’. Bush evoking the spirit of Molly Bloom in one of her most charged and sensual songs. I am going to move on in a second. I want to return to a source that I have used in previous features about The Sensual World. This is what Kate Buh said about the 1989 title track in various interviews:

“Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality. Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. (...) In the original piece, it's just 'Yes' - a very interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: 'Ooh wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite the words, I was trapped. How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I'd said I'd never write. I have to think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)

The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world - the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual - you know... the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand - the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that's an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I'm sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (...) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary - such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysses by James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn't get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time - probably about a year - and they wouldn't let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that's why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. (Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

There's a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, 'The Sensual World'. Uh, you've probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of 'Ulysses', and uh, I just couldn't believe how the whole thing came together, it was so... It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted - they just fitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, 'Yes! Yes!'. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, 'No! No!' That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can't tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn't allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn't think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um... kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same - same rhythm and sounds. And, um, eventually, through rewriting the words we also changed the piece of music that now happens in the choruses, so if they hadn't obstructed the song, it would have been a very different song. So, to look at it positively, although it was very difficult, in the end, I think it was, it was probably worth all the trouble. Thank you very much. (Kate Bush Con, 1990)”.

I love the poetry of the lyrics. Bush has always been a tremendous and original lyricist. On The Sensual World, it is almost like she is writing classical literature or an epic love poem! Consider lines like these: “To where the water and the earth caress/And the down of a peach says mmh, yes/Do I look for those millionaires/Like a Machiavellian girl would/When I could wear a sunset? Mmh, yes”. I wanted to explore literature and whether songwriters derive inspiration more from real life and their own experiences, compared to fiction and other areas of the arts. I know there are songs that have been writing about books or inspired by them, though you do not hear it often. Especially in a modern mainstream. Kate Bush, as an undeniable mainstream artists in 1989, was so different to contemporaries like Madonna, Prince or even David Bowie. At a time when all of these artists were having mixed fortunes – Madonna was ruling the Pop world -, Bush was creating music like nobody else. Few of her peers had the same originality and daring when it came to finding inspiration. Of course, The Sensual World album had plenty of personal perspective. It was one of Bush’s most personal albums. Yet, as songs such as Heads We’re Dancing and Deeper Understanding show, she was still pulling inspiration from areas that other songwriters were definitely not. I do like the fact that The Sensual World, influenced by a book from an Irish author, fared well in Ireland. The single actually reached number six there! Among her ‘Irish’ oeuvre – Bush was half-Irish (her mother was born there) -, The Sensual World is among her most affecting and accomplished (heart also Jig of Life and Night of the Swallow). With gorgeous uillean pipe work from Davy Spillane, some bouzouki: from Donal Lunny, and fiddler from John Sheahan (Sheahan and Lunny (who was a player on The Dreaming’s Night of the Swallow) feature on Hounds of Love’s Jig of Life), the track is given this romance, sense of the wild and free. I digress…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for The Sensual World (album)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

A shame Bush didn’t perform The Sensual World as part of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn! Her literary and poetic lyrics, coupled with her stunning vocal performance and incredible production makes this song one of her very best. At a time ()1989) when so many artists were staying away from the obvious/personal and talking about deeper things, Kate Bush still stood out. If some criticised her songs for not tackling the wider world and focusing on ‘important issues’, Her gift has been writing these songs that are extraordinarily original and different. She has always been concerned by political events and fascinated by people - but she never saw herself as a Pop artist or someone who was Punk or fitted into those scenes. I actually think that Bush’s songs are more enduring than others who were recording in the 1970s and 1980s. Her lyrics rarely sound dated. I do wonder why literature did not play a bigger part in the music of the past. It doesn’t really come into modern music. As you can feel in Kate Bush songs like The Sensual World and Get Out of My House (the 1982 song was inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining), there is something stirring and striking bringing the written word to music. Translating and interpreting great literature. I think I have discussed Bush and literature before. When thinking about the upcoming thirty-fourth anniversary of The Sensual World’s majestic title cut, I consider Ulysses and what a fantastic starting point that was. In the same way as Bush was influenced by Wuthering Heights via T.V. show and read the novel later, The Sensual World had that same impact. The power of hearing and seeing the book on screen then compelled her to write a song about it – and, in the process, engage with the original source material.

I may need to do a Kate Bush playlist that features songs of hers inspired by literature, film and T.V. Such a beautiful and captivating song, I am not sure any songwriter – even Kate Bush – could have summoned a song as gorgeous and vivid if she pulled from her own life. The power of Joyce’s words seeped into Bush’s lyrics. Such incredible songwriting. The opening verse is so rich with imagery: “Then I'd taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth/Going deep South, go down, mmh, yes/Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies/Off of Howth Head and into the flesh, mmh, yes”. Lines in the chorus – “Stepping out of the page into the sensual world/Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world” – seems to be about Bush’s relationship with the song. Taking that feeling and world of Ulysess and Molly Bloom and making it more real and physical. I am going to wrap up soon. The video for The Sensual World – co-directed by Bush alongside Peter Richardson – shows her dancing through a forest. Almost Bush translating the Ulysses text through a song and then reimagining it in a different visual light. An updated or alternative take on the novel; perhaps an impression of Ulysses. It is really interesting. I did not know this (and thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia) that “Musically, one of the main hooks in the chorus of The Sensual World was inspired by a traditional Macedonian piece of music called 'Nevestinsko Oro' ('Bride's Dance'). A recording of this piece of music was sent to Kate by Jan Libbenga”. On 18th September, it will be thirty-four years since Kate Bush released the title track of her sixth studio album. Signalling a new direction and era (she turned thirty in 1988), this remarkable song not only feels like a novel or poem as it is sung. I think it actually encourages people to read Ulysses and discover that origin. Songwriters who can lead people to great literature or film should be commended – and Bush did that a lot through her career. Because Bush could not use words from Ulyesses, she took Molly Bloom out of the book and into the real world. And, when you see Bush’s words, that a beautiful world…

THAT is.

FEATURE: A Similar Point of View: Celebrating Pet Shop Boys’ Acclaimed Very at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

A Similar Point of View

Celebrating Pet Shop Boys’ Acclaimed Very at Thirty

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AN extraordinary album…

from the Pet Shop Boys turns thirty on 27th September. Very is among the most celebrated and revered album from, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. Ahead of that big anniversary, I am going to spend some time with a truly wonderful album. Containing some of the duo’s best-known songs – such as I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing and Liberation -, it is one that is loved by diehard fans and the more casual alike. It is perhaps the final track, a cover of Village People’s Go West, that a lot of people know Very for. I want to come to a review for the album. Arriving almost three years after Pet Shop Boys’ previous studio album, Behaviour, Very showcases and highlights a change of dynamic and pace from their other work. Very moves between Electronic Pop to richly instrumented Dance arrangements. A brave and important album from Pet Shop Boys, it arrived at a time when Neil Tennant revealed his long-rumoured homosexuality. At a time when there was perhaps stigma if an artist came out as gay, you feel like Very is not just a coming out album. It is one that inspired so many fans around the world. It has personal important, yet it is emotionally affecting to the extent that it resonates with everyone who hears it. I want to start out with a Classic Pop feature from 2021. They discussed the making of a stunning album from Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe:

“It is called Very,” said Neil Tennant, “because it is very Pet Shop Boys: It’s very up, it’s very hi-energy, it’s very romantic, it’s very sad, it’s very pop,it’s very danceable, and some of it is very funny…”

Pet Shop Boys’ hits compilation, Discography, wasn’t the end after all. After the duo traded the dancefloor for the melancholic, deeply personal reflections of Behaviour, a return to pop was, perhaps, inevitable. Behaviour left many fans profoundly moved – uniting spirits crushed by the AIDS epidemic – but it hadn’t matched its predecessors in terms of success.

“Behaviour was slaggedoff at the time for not being a dance album,” Tennant relayed to Chris Heath. “We were feeling a little insecure, maybe. Anyway, we decided to do a mega dance-pop album.”

Recording was a three-tier process. Basic tracks were laid down in Lowe’s home studio in Hertfordshire, with Pete Gleadall helping on programming. Further sessions took place at Trevor Horn’s Sarm West studios, before Stephen Hague got involved, with a final mix completed at RAK studios.

While Ace Of Base, UB40 and the omnipresent pop-grunge of The Spin Doctors’ Two Princes fought it out for UK No. 1, PSB stretched out. With the help of designer David Fielding they created an entirely new realm, built of surreal costumes and fantastical imagery.

One episode of TOTP found a pointy-hatted Neil in orange jumpsuit, miming opening single Can You Forgive Her? atop a giant high chair, while Chris frolicked with dancers next to a giant egg. Add Daniel Weil’s injection-moulded, bright orange Lego-like CD case, and PSB’s distinctly ‘Up’ manifesto was realised.

This album would be a turning point; in place of Behaviour’s discreet and seductive habitat, the Boys returned to Hague’s instinctive nous for pop, adopted neon-brite computer games as visual impetus, and hawked an engaging collection of micro-dramas over a renewed joy for the floor.

The Fairlight stabs and forceful programming of that blast-off opening single gave impetus to what was one of the duo’s boldest melodies for some time. A potent tale of “youthful follies and changing teams”, it added weight to suggestions that this was PSB’s ‘coming out’ album.

I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing was EDM pop perfection; soft synths and lush orchestration atop thumping kick and snare. A protagonist who feels like taking all his clothes off and dancing to the Rite Of Spring pressed the reset button for an open-palmed freedom.

Liberation dropped all disguises entirely; as Tennant professes his uncontrollable love, we’re escorted up into pearly clouds of symphonic electronica.

The story unfolds as A Different Point Of View suggests discord amongst our lovers, whilst the theme continues into Dreaming Of The Queen, this time reframed within a dream of doleful acceptance – that there are “no more lovers left alive”.

Its stark imagery of the AIDs crisis combined fear, vulnerability, and comfort into one sobering sentiment. As its central character stands naked amongst royalty signing autographs to the sound of the onlookers’ laughter, the compass is wildly spinning out of control.

Full Eurobeat mode follows with the autobiographical Yesterday, When I Was Mad, the cause of the homeless is given weight via The Theatre’s driving beats, while One And One Make Five returns us to that hesitant central love story.

The tempo drops for To Speak Is A Sin, the album’s sombre anomaly, while the pixelated Young Offender approaches an age-gap affair.

Jubilant backing in break-up song One In A Million – initially intended for Take That – frames our lover’s cocksure rejection. The duo’s iconic cover of Go West wraps up what to many fans is the duo’s crowning moment.

Very is the one and only Pet Shop Boys’ album to make UK No. 1. In an era when AIDs was upending lives left, right and centre, here was a hopeful, celebratory, masterstroke.

Very Rare

Once again leading the crowd in terms of innovative formats, the Pets decided that the wealth of floor-friendly (largely) instrumental material that they had banked during the Very sessions would be best served up as a bonus disc added to a special limited edition of the album.

While largely forgotten and now somewhat hard to find, Relentless is a curio of the PSB catalogue, for sure, but its euphoric, house-bound vistas display an integral part of their songwriting palette.

An initial run of the album entitled Very Relentless featured this bountiful companion disc that compiled six (almost) voice-less treasures in one place – My Head Is Spinning, Forever In Love, KDX 125, We Came From Outer Space, The Man Who Has Everything and One Thing Leads To Another.

At just over half an hour, Relentless contrasts the unapologetically bright pop of Very with equally unapologetic synthpop dance that ranges from house to trance and techno. We love it, but for many it’s one reserved for the true Petheads.”

Acclaimed by critics because Very mixed the best elements from previous albums, there is directness, plenty of upbeat moments, plus raw and direct emotion. It is among the Pet Shop Boys’ most consistent albums. I want to focus on one review in a bit. Because Very is such an important album – and one that went to number one in the U.K. and twenty in the U.S. (on the Billboard chart) -, so I want to lift straight from Wikipedia and their collation of reviews for a magnificent album that was among 1993’s best. If many associate Pet Shop Boys with the '80s, assuming their regency and reign was exclusively in that decade, you would do well to listen to the magnificent Very:

“Writing for NME, David Quantick deemed Very "brilliant from start to finish" and "as moving and moved as any other Pet Shop Boys album, just more obviously so", noting a shift from the "melancholy" of Behaviour towards "a sense of, gulp, happiness." In Select, Stuart Maconie speculated that the album's "more lively" musical direction may have been motivated by the "muted" reception to Behaviour, and commented that "Very's beauty lies in the formidable yet effortless plate-spinning trick that lets gorgeous and vibrant pop tunes co-exist with rich, strange and complex conceits." David Bennun of Melody Maker noted that, after the "muted" and "distressingly grown up" sound on Behaviour, Very contains "track after track, dizzy with strings and brass, of the purest, most intelligent and, cruicially, poppiest pop". Mat Snow of Q, meanwhile, wrote that Very confirms the Pet Shop Boys as "a group so tightly focused on its strengths to the exclusion of any meaningful experiment that it drives a coach and horses through the First Commandment of Pop, namely 'Thou Shalt Explore a New Direction on Every Album'."

Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot opined that "Very qualifies as terrific pop on the strength of its music alone", and that "as its gay worldview unfolds—unapologetic yet unassuming, humorous yet touching, political yet personal—Very takes on the dimensions of a classic.” J. D. Considine, reviewing Very for Rolling Stone, highlighted the social commentary and "mixed emotions" in its songs, concluding that "it's that sort of depth that makes Very worth hearing again and again." Entertainment Weekly's Greg Sandow considered the album "very understated musically" but also "very deeply felt", while The Village Voice's Robert Christgau found that Tennant's lyrics showed a newfound romantic sincerity: "Convinced cornballs may still find his emotions attenuated, but I say the production values suit the tumult in his heart and the melodies the sweetness in his soul”. Less impressed was Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times, who said that Very "is listenable and danceable, but overall it sounds as if their creativity has petered out—they're recycling these days rather than creating."

In the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Tom Hull noted that Very was released to more uniformly positive reviews from critics than Behaviour, which he attributed to its more uptempo sound and "unusually direct" love songs, "with most making more sense gay than not." AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated in retrospect that "Very is one of their very best records, expertly weaving between the tongue-in-cheek humor of 'I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing,' the quietly shocking 'Can You Forgive Her?,' and the bizarrely moving cover of the Village People's 'Go West”.

I will finish off by dropping in Rolling Stone’s examination of Very. They were looking back on the album in 2000. I think they make some interesting observations and have written a review that gets to the heart and core of Very. It is definitely one of my favourite Pet Shops Boys albums:

“Could there be a more perfect marriage of pop sensibilities than the Pet Shop Boys covering a Village People hit? You wouldn't think so. Yet the version of "Go West" that closes Very is hardly the campy romp casual fans might have expected. In fact, there's something ineffably sad about this remake. Because where Victor Willis' vocal on the original infused its lyrics about a gay promised land with a sense of manifest destiny, Neil Tennant's wan tenor only underscores the fragility of that '70s club-land dream. So instead of visions of San Francisco decadence, what we're left with is a sad nostalgia.

But that's very typical of Very. It isn't simply that there's more to these songs than sly wit and catchy choruses (although there are plenty of both); this time around, the Boys appear to have a few axes to grind. Some are obvious enough, like the spiteful satire of musicpress vipers and record-biz sycophants in "Yesterday, When I Was Mad." Or "The Theater," which describes how the well-dressed crowds on their way to the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber hit blithely ignore the street kids crowding the sidewalks of London's East End ("We're the bums you step over as you leave the theatre," spits Tennant's chorus).

Others, though, require a fair amount of interpretation. Take "Dreaming of the Queen," for example. On the surface, it's about a dream in which Tennant takes tea with Queen Elizabeth and Princess Di and ends up realizing that he's forgotten to put on any clothes. But beneath that surface drollery is a touching elegy to the toll AIDS has taken, leaving us trapped in a world where love has died because "there are no more lovers left alive/No one has surprised."

That's not to say that Very is all seriousness and no fun – these are the Pet Shop Boys, after all. But as fun as it is to wade into the tuneful exuberance of pop fare like "One in a Million" or "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing," there are deeper pleasures to be had in the mixed emotions conveyed in "To Speak Is a Sin" and "Can You Forgive Her?" And it's that sort of depth that makes Very worth hearing again and again. (RS 670)”.

On 27th September, it will be thirty years since Very arrived in the world. You can buy Very on vinyl. I am not sure there is an anniversary releasing coming. As you find on the Pet Shop Boys’ website: “The 1993 album ‘Very’ was a number one record for Pet Shop Boys in the UK, and has to date sold in excess of five million copies worldwide. It contains 5 singles, including their cover of ‘Go West’ – a number 2 hit for PSB – and lead single ‘Can You Forgive Her?’. The album is also the first to be produced almost entirely by Pet Shop Boys themselves - with additional programming and production courtesy of Pete Gleadall and Stephen Hague”. There are some great articles out there that go deep with Very. If all that is not reason enough to listen to and celebrate Very, then I don’t know…

WHAT is.

FEATURE: Inflections and Corrections: Learning New Things About Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Inflections and Corrections

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Learning New Things About Kate Bush

_________

I guess…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs The Wedding List at the Prince’s Trust Rock Gala, on 21st July, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

no matter how much of a fan you are of an artist, you can never know everything! It is always amazing how there are these details and things that come to light all these years later. For me, Kate Bush is someone who I have think I have a pretty good handle on when it comes to her career. Certainty, when it comes to the basics, I know them for sure. When digging deeper, I always try not to assume that I know everything. When I post out features and thoughts, often I will find someone adds a detail or drops in a line that reveals something new about Kate Bush. A fact or piece of trivia that I was not aware of. Maybe it is something to do with The Tour of Life in 1979 and a particular set. Stuff that I did not pick up when researching for the numerous features about it. It is always edifying to get that new knowledge, but it also gives me respect for those Kate Bush fans who dig even deeper than I do. I wanted really to talk about how it is good to know more about your favourite artist, yet you can never know everything. Maybe tipping into obsessiveness, the beauty of finding out new sides makes that fandom richer and more nuanced. An artist who is an open book, yet has been read in full holds littler mystery and allure I feel. This all got started when I saw this article below. There is a lot of great detail and information there. One thing struck me that I thought I knew but had miscalculated. Maybe not the happiest Kate Bush memory, but I always thought that her relationship with Del Palmer – her engineer and long-term musician friend – ended around about 1992 or 1993. In fact, there are a few websites that state this. Around the time The Red Shoes was coming together – and her mother Hannah died (1992) -, it was another blow to her.

In fact, she married Danny McIntosh (who appeared on The Red Shoes and albums since) in 1992. A breakup then in the late-1980s/early-1990s. It is not a big thing, though that one small detail has this domino/butterfly effect. It makes me think differently about the album itself and how The Red Shoes resonates. I go back to 1989’s The Sensual World and the fact there were definitely strain there. How various songs are now cast in a fresh light. Bush and Palmer are on great terms - though it would have been devastating seeing a fifteen-year or so relationship end, even if it was not thew most fractious and bitter one. It goes to show that, even if I consider myself to be some sort of expert, there are areas and bits that she assume and then have corrected. It adds to my knowledge base. It also means I have new impetus to write about the period between 1988 and, say, 1993, and the fact that there are new angles and dynamics that influenced me thinking of Kate Bush and her songs. As I said, one can never know all there is about an artist. Something I thought was fact and was indisputable, actually, was not (and I was a few years out). I pick up new things about Kate Bush each week. It surprises me that there is this dedicated and passionate fanbase who knows so much! Perhaps not surprising given the power and importance of Kate Bush’s music. I study and write about Kate Bush, partly as I want to highlight a piece of work or side of her career that is worth putting out there. I also do it because I am researching and finding out more about the music queen.

Rather than me dwelling on my association with Kate Bush and, actually, how many people have different dates/details about the same event, all this makes me wonder whether the whole story can ever be known. Bush has always be very private, so something like a relationship breakup would not be made public and subject to tabloid scrutiny. Similarly, dates of single releases and even albums can vary depending on the type of source. I guess, until a definitive volume comes out that takes Kate Bush’s life from childhood to now – and expands on the biographies that are out already – then we can never really have that complete understanding. Even so, I still learn a tonne when I read books about her. I know Leah Kardos is currently working with the 33 1/3 book series and is covering Hounds of Love (1985). Making this accessible book about her masterpiece is going to be picked up by a whole new generation. I have just written a series of features about Hounds of Love, revolving around its approaching thirty-eighth anniversary on 16th September. I am pretty sure about that album, date, though there are a couple of her albums where the dates vary - depending on whether you go to her official website or Discogs etc. There needs to be a database where one can type any album in and get an exact date of its release (depending on the country you are in). It can be frustrating when you want to get down a fact – whether it is an album date, a detail about a photograph, something biographical or whatever – and there are all these different opinions (or none at all).

Having some mystery is good and should be commended, though an artist as beloved as Kate Bush has this fervent and dedicated fanbase. It is never wanting to know about things too intrusive. Merely, some of the things that are not in interviews or commonly known. That Del Palmer date correction threw me a bit – as I thought I had that figured! -, though, even as someone who writes about her extremely regularly, you can never be 100% about everything! Newer fans are teaching me things; I am giving some new insight to people who have been fans much longer than me. Whilst it may seem cool to be a know-all or the ultimate authority when it comes to an artist, there is much greater pleasure knowing that you do not know everything. Every time someone brings me a new Kate Bush nugget or I have to revise my thoughts and assumed facts, it makes me a better fan. It does renew that demand and real gap for an authoritative Kate Bush documentary. Maybe, in the same Mark Lewishon is dedicating a lot of his life to The Beatles and meticulously writing about their career from the start to the end, it would take less time to write about Kate Bush’s. I would definitely be fascinating owning a tome that goes that deep with details and dates! Regardless of possibilities and dreams, there is that lovely little joy (or embarrassment sometimes!) of realising something new about Kate Bush – or being put straight about something. The sort of interactions where we reveal new things and discuss Kate Bush makes us more enriched and connected. Hearing from someone who offers me a fresh take, gives me new information and creates this curiosity makes me truly appreciate the wonder of Kate Bush and…

THIS woman’s work.

FEATURE: Madonna’s Celebration Tour: Looking Back at the Iconic Blond Ambition World Tour, 1990

FEATURE:

 

 

Madonna’s Celebration Tour

PHOTO CREDIT: Frans Schellekens/Redferns

Looking Back at the Iconic Blond Ambition World Tour, 1990

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I may do another Madonna feature…

ahead of her Celebration Tour kicking off next month. After delays - caused by illness and hospitalisation -, the extravaganza kicks off. She will be in London on Saturday, 14th October to  begin one of the most anticipated tours in recent history. In many ways, Madonna has transformed the nature of Pop tours. If you think about all the modern artists now who put on these big and thematic sets. Incredible mixes of dance, theatre and cinema, so much of that can be traced back to Madonna. I wanted to use this particular feature to look at a Madonna tour that transformed the face of Pop instantly. Over thirty years after it was completed, it remains one of the most important tours in history. It ran between 13th April to 5th August, 1990. I want to mention Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour, as there is a similar situation now to what there was in 1990. Now, Madonna has so many eyes on her. We know that she will deliver a phenomenal production. There is always controversy around. I will come to 1990’s case. Now, there is constant talk about her looks and age. ‘Controversy’ seems to be centred around her looks and plastic surgery. At the age of sixty-five, Madonna is still getting so much disrespect from the press! What has also remained is how defiant and strong Madonna is. She didn’t let the press get to her thirty-three years ago. That is especially the case now! Maybe it won’t be to the same scale as the  Blond Ambition World Tour.

There are some articles I want to source regarding that tour and its impact. To round up, I will look ahead to Madonna in a similar situation as she was in 1990. In that sense she is embarking on a tour that has already – for different reasons – gained controversy and negative publicity. She is also going to take Pop to a new level. In 1990 she was in her early-thirties and already the Queen of Pop. Now, with artists like Charli XCX, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and so many following her example, the OG is heading back to the stage. The Guardian looked back at the Blond Ambition World Tour thirty years later (in 2020):

“In Toronto, Madonna simulated masturbation on a velvet bed under the watchful eye of the Canadian police, who threatened her with arrest if her show went ahead. In Italy, unions called for a general strike if Madonna performed, and Pope John Paul II declared her concert “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”. The Blond Ambition tour, which turned 30 years old last month, remains among the most controversial tours of all time.

It seems bizarre now that so much fuss was made over a little fake frotting and a few gyrating nuns. But this was 1990, when Kylie Minogue was still performing in straw hats, Bananarama were deemed dangerous and the gossip pages raged over Annie Lennox singing Would I Lie to You in a bra. Into this age of relative wholesomeness landed Blond Ambition Madonna, on a mission to combine fashion, rock, Broadway theatricality and performance art, to “be provocative” and “break useless taboos”. Mission accomplished. Jean Paul Gaultier’s famous conical corset has been described as a “Freudian nightmare”, a generation of teenagers asked their parents what S&M stood for, and the coy suggestiveness of the live pop spectacle was blown wide open.

PHOTO CREDIT: Michel Linssen/Redferns

The themed set-pieces – religion, German expressionism, art deco, Madge’s rubbish new movie Dick Tracy – set a new bar for confrontational theatricality that only greater shock tactics could ever challenge. Marilyn Manson’s onstage Bible shredding is straight out of the “Madonna 90” guidebook, and with her firework bras, stage blood and copious dry-humping, Lady Gaga looks as if she was conceived at a Blond Ambition gig. But the key taboo Madonna broke that summer was that of feminine sexuality as strength rather than titillation, as something owned by the artist not cashed in by the svengalis. That’s what gave us SexKylie, “zig-a-zig-AH!”, Wrecking Ball-era Miley and Nicki Minaj’s bottom-obsessed Anaconda. It’s one of the reasons female artists feel comfortable singing about sex and desire today.

Sex sells, though, and more sex sells more. Over the decades, overt sexuality became the expected – nay, contractual – pop norm. Attention-grabbing boundaries were pushed to their limits, and artists were pressured to play this new, ever raunchier game. Enter Billie Eilish, defiantly covered, mocking the uber-sexualised expectations of modern pop with a film of her stripping off beneath blackened water: “If I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me?” she intones, shaming the bodyshamers and staring out the monetisable male gaze. By asserting ownership of her body she is not re-establishing any old taboos, she’s breaking the oldest one of all – subservience. Her image, her body, her art, her rules. Which was Madonna’s point all along”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

In 2020, thirty years after that iconic tour, many were looking back at the impact it has had on culture. When Madonna heads on her Celebration Tour, it is not rekindling our glories or trying to achieve a new benchmark in Pop presentation and the spectacular. Instead, I think that the sort of impact and buzz that 1990 tour had will be repeated in 2023. There is so much attention – whether positive or negative – about the Queen of Pop mounting a new tour, some forty years after her debut album came out. In fact, her most famous song from the 1983 Madonna album, Holiday, is forty on 7th September. It is a timely moment to think back at her early work and how she evolved from this interesting and promising Pop artist to someone who would soon be straddling the planet. Billboard had their say on the mighty and unstoppable Blond Ambition World Tour:

“Madonna asked Jean-Paul Gaultier to create more than 60 costumes for the tour, an amount which the haute couture designer admits took 350 aspirins to get through. Luckily, all this headache-inducing work paid off. The Frenchman’s conical bra creation, which was later sold at auction for $52,000, became one of the defining fashion statements of the decade. And items such as the polka-dotted blouse, clip-on ponytail and mic headset all became a part of the chart-topper’s style legacy, too.

Unsurprisingly, Madonna was just as fastidious when it came to the tour’s choreography. “Wimps and wannabes need not apply” read the call out seeking “fierce male dancers” for the tour. Led by Vincent Paterson, the chosen army of six were put through boot camp-like rehearsals in preparation for a tour that spanned 57 dates, five months and three continents. And with its large hydraulic platform and multiple elaborate sets, Blond Ambition’s staging essentially cost the same as the GDP of a small country. Simply no one else could compete, not even the King to Madonna’s Queen of Pop. A few years prior, Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour had impressed many with its slick moves and dazzling lights – even the BBC’s cult hero John Peel hailed it as a “performance of matchless virtuosity.” But Madge’s elaborative high-concept, five-act production left it for dust.

PHOTO CREDIT: Frans Schellekens/Redferns

Blond Ambition didn’t give fans a single opportunity to get bored or head for the bar. Every four minutes there was something new to digest. Take the opening ‘Metropolis’ section, inspired by the expressionist sci-fi of Fritz Lang, for example. Madonna simulates sex in that bra while performing “Express Yourself,” straddles a chair during “Open Your Heart” and belts out “Causing a Commotion” while playfully wrestling her two backing vocalists to the ground. And this was just the first quarter of an hour.

As you’d expect from an artist whose Pepsi commercial had been yanked amidst calls of blasphemy, the second ‘Religious’ section was even more attention-grabbing. Wildly rubbing her crotch in a red velvet bed, Madonna left little to the imagination on a sensual reworking of “Like a Virgin.” And on “Like a Prayer,” the track whose provocative video had caused the soft drink giants to bail, the star and her crew are kitted out as nuns and priests.

Of course, much of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation of Italy didn’t appreciate this type of cosplay. A second date at the Stadio Flaminio was called off after none other than Pope John Paul II implored citizens to boycott “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity.”

The controversial blend of religion and erotica also incurred the wrath of the Toronto police force, particularly the “lewd and obscene” display of “Like a Virgin.” But despite the threat of arrest, Madonna and her management team refused to bow down to authority. The star even referenced the furor during her second show at the city’s SkyDome, asking the crowd “Do you think that I’m a bad girl?… I hope so.”

Madonna famously described Toronto as a fascist state in Truth or Dare, the illuminating backstage documentary which further boosted Blond Ambition’s pop cultural cachet. Who can forget the scene where the star pretends to gag after Kevin Costner – then the biggest movie star in the world – summarizes 105 minutes of sense-assaulting, boundary-pushing entertainment as “neat”?

Thankfully, the sell-out crowds reacted to the tour with a little more enthusiasm, even the Dick Tracy section featuring several numbers that would have been unfamiliar at the time. The comic book adaptation, which co-starred Madonna as femme fatale Breathless Mahoney, hit the big screen half-way through Blond Ambition’s run. And the ever-astute star attempted to guide fans towards the cinema with a high-kicking third act dedicated to the trench coat-wearing detective.

But for sheer entertainment value, the ‘Art Deco’ segment is tough to beat. Sporting a pink bathrobe and curlers while seated under a beauty parlor hair dryer, Madonna performed the whole of “Material Girl” in a comical Noo-Yawk accent before throwing fake dollar bills into the crowd. “Cherish” saw the star take up the harp accompanied by (what else?) a troupe of dancing mermen. And following a West Side Story-inspired routine for arguably her finest pure pop moment, “Into the Groove,” she wrapped things up with a faithful recreation of the iconic “Vogue” video.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna on stage during the Blond Ambition Tour at Wembley Stadium, London on 20th July, 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Still/Redferns

By the time each and every crew member bids an on-stage farewell during the Bob Fosse-meets-A Clockwork Orange encore of “Keep it Together,” it’s clear that you’ve just witnessed a spectacle of ground-breaking proportions. As dancer Luis Camacho said, Madonna “wanted to give the audience an experience, rather than them just going to a concert. She set the stage for concert shows and experiences that followed.” The tour even impressed Grammy voters, who were notoriously slow to recognize Madonna’s greatness. The video of the tour won the 1991 award for best music video, long form — Madonna’s very first Grammy Award.

Sure enough, no longer were audiences content to watch their pop idol simply play the hits. Elaborate production values and strong narrative arcs soon became just as integral to the superstar tour as the music itself. You only have to look at Michael Jackson’s Dangerous shows, complete with catapult stunts and ghoulish illusions, two years later to recognize the immediate impact Blond Ambition had. And it has continued to inspire pop’s A-listers ever since. Without Blond Ambition, it’s unlikely we’d have the gravity-defying acrobatics of P!nk, the candy-colored razzmatazz of Katy Perry or the formidable conceptual journeys of Beyoncé. And it goes without saying that its footprints were all over the various balls staged by Lady Gaga.

Madonna herself has refused to rest on her laurels, going even bigger and bolder on the likes of 1993’s The Girlie Show, 2004’s Re-Invention and 2008’s Sticky and Sweet. But nothing has ever changed the game quite like her extremely blond and incredibly ambitious 1990 world tour”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

As many artists in the past thirty years have been inspired by the Blond Ambition World Tour, the artist they look up to and admire is back on the road with, I’d say, her most important tour since then. Madonna will play the big hits. There will be a lot of set changes and different costumes. There are going to be similar aspects to the Blond Ambition World Tour - though I feel technology and its possibilities will make it an even bigger and more interactive experience. Given the fact Madonna has released so many albums since 1990 means that there is a broader setlist there. I am not sure what she has planned for her set. She almost limitless possibilities in terms of its scope! I think there will be political moments. An artist who always speaks out and highlights atrocities and corruption, there will be a calling out of politicians and the evils of the modern world. L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ celebration and inclusiveness. Provocative moments that shows she has lost none of her spark and edge! It is going to be a relief to see her on stage after she was so close to death fairly recently. With a tour that extends into next year, it will be tiring and demanding. What it will be is a chance for fans who followed her way back – and may have been there to see her in 1990 at the Blond Ambition World Tour – and new listeners. A cross-generation celebration of a Pop icon. If you think that she put on this amazing and hugely influential tour just over thirty years ago, I think that she will rewrite and redefine the rules in October. It will be a chance for Madonna to prove why there is nobody in music…

WHO can match her.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Childish Gambino – This Is America

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Childish Gambino – This Is America

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I wanted to do another Groovelines…

as a huge song, This Is America, turned five back in May. It was recorded by Childish Gambino. The alias of Donald Glover, I also wanted to celebrate his upcoming fortieth birthday (on 25th September). One of his defining songs and this extraordinary moment, it is a song that was relevant back in 2018. It still holds a lot of weight and has this raw and unsettling power. Written alongside Ludwig Göransson and Jeffery Lamar Williams (Young Thug), its video, directed by Hiro Murai, created quite a storm. It is visceral and beautiful. One of the best and most striking videos in recent memory. A track that tackles racism and brutality against the Black community, it was released five years after the #BlackLivesMatter movement started; a couple of years since the murder of George Floyd. Maybe prescient in that sense, it shows that, sadly, the messages through the song – about police brutality and violence against the Black community – never goes away. I am going to come to some reaction and reception of this immensely moving song. Few songs of the past ten years have had multiple features written about them. Such as the sense of controversy and attention it acquired, it has been subjected to scrutiny, praise and critique. I want to bring a bit from several articles, just to give you a sense of how people reacted to This Is America in 2018. In many ways, not a lot has changed regarding laws and the prejudice and violence against the Black community in the U.S. Rolling Stone wrote about This Is America in the context of it being timely and a big political statement. This nightmare and lesson that we cannot afford to look away from or forget:

“Like several other notable works of black American art in recent years, “This Is America” is about absorption. Onscreen and in real life, the black body gets exposed to so much terror and injustice and keeps going. How does the black body endure, and in what ways or spaces is it allowed to live out its emotions? Beyoncé’s Lemonade used the body as a diary of past pains and potentially redemptive experiences. Get Out showed us the price of a body that is literally inhabited by the constant white gaze. Lena Waithe’s The Chi on Showtime has reminded us of how often black people – particularly children – are asked to absorb the dangers of America and still required to be happy. Black Panther is about a hero who has the ability to absorb the violent energy thrown at him and reflect it back.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hiro Murai

But this is America, and while there are no superheroes here, Glover’s video calls back to the long history of black folks coming up with ways to barter our physical existence for a slice of the pie. It’s meant trafficking in our pain to get paid even a little, a dynamic steeped into our conjoined history with America. Throughout the video, he acts out a familiar tightrope walk for many hip-hop artists who have found success through revisiting painful experiences. “Get your money, black man” is sage advice that has been passed on through generations. Glover keeps dancing as he talks about the relationship between materialism, blackness, consumption and exploitation.

“This Is America” reflects the desire to use every one of our available platforms to punch at America’s conscience. So we keep recycling our trauma into art, which mainstream America then consumes and judges on the same scale as black entertainers’ less burdened white peers. That tension has been at the heart of countless pop-culture flashpoints: Kendrick Lamar losing the 2014 Best Rap Album Grammy to Macklemore; Lemonade losing 2017’s Album of the Year Grammy to Adele’s 25; the dramatic Oscars finish between Moonlight and La La Land in 2017. It bears repeating that blackness rarely gets the liberty of being free from its circumstances, while the rest of America gets to sit back and be entertained by us. Glover forces us to look at exactly who we are as a result.

With Get Out’s Sunken Place, Jordan Peele gave a name to the desperate, gasping, hellish depths that surround Black America – a place that so many of us are trying to escape while others seem to dive and wallow in it. There’s an echo of this image in “This Is America,” which closes with Glover running frantically in the dark with indistinct people in close pursuit. After a breathtaking four minutes of violence, somehow this moment is the most terrifying of all. Why are they trying to capture him: for causing so much destruction, or for revealing the truth about our country? As the mob closes in on him, the thought occurs that his captors plan to return Glover to his scripted role in a culture where the black entertainer isn’t a mirror, but a toy. This is America. Shut up and dance”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hiro Murai

Let us take a brief pause to look at some of the reaction to the song and the accolades it received. Wikipedia collated some of the takeaways from reviews of this immense song. It is one that, when I first heard it, shook me to my core! It is such a stingily direct and vital song. This Is America remains this warning and caution. I don’t think we can ever afford to overlook what it is trying to say:

“The music video received widespread critical acclaim. Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic described the initial reaction on Twitter as "a gushing river of well-deserved praise" and the video as "the most talked-about music video of recent memory." Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone commented that the video "is a surreal, visceral statement about gun violence in America". Pitchfork awarded the song the distinction of "Best New Track". Billboard critics ranked it 10th among the "greatest music videos of the 21st century." Mahita Gajanan of Time quoted music history professor Guthrie Ramsey at the University of Pennsylvania:

He's talking about the contradictions of trying to get money, the idea of being a black man in America. It comes out of two different sound worlds. Part of the brilliance of the presentation is that you go from this happy major mode of choral singing that we associate with South African choral singing, and then after the first gunshot it moves right into the trap sound.

Will Gompertz, arts editor of the BBC, asserted that "This Is America" was a "powerful and poignant allegorical portrait of 21st Century America, which warrants a place among the canonical depictions of the USA from Grant Wood's American Gothic to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, from Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware to America the Beautiful by Norman Lewis".

In December 2018, Billboard ranked "This Is America" as the 6th best song of the year.

The music video won the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage Award for Best Cinematography in a Music Video, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Music Video at the 61st Grammy Awards”.

Because the video is so powerful, a lot of the reaction and analyses was of that - rather than solely the lyrics. Of course, the lyrics are key. Yet it is that visual representation that brings the song vividly to life. There are features like this that analyse the key scenes and what they mean. The visceral nature of the video did divide people. Some wondered what its messages were and what it was trying to sell us. That is what Vanity Fair asked in May 2018:

“Glover’s obviously got the upper hand on insight, however. His incongruously cheerful performance is the sharpest thing here, a compendium of arch, knowing references to everything from Jim Crow to Internet dance trends that kept Rap Genius users busy for the entire weekend. Maybe the slickest reference of all is to the Pied Piper: Glover dances a group of pre-teens in magnet-school uniforms clear of the surrounding violence like a siren-song distraction from the homework of everyday terror—which, in a way, is what he is.

I don’t know that this video (which was directed by Hiro Murai, who has also helmed much of Glover’s FX show Atlanta) changes that, really. But Glover executes it fascinatingly enough that it immediately sparked a flurry of responses online: some raves, others to the tune of “I wish he hadn’t.” A prominent complaint harped on the insistent use of images depicting violence against black people. In a world oversaturated with real images of real black death, maybe the bar is higher for deploying those images in fiction. Isn’t the shooting of that church choir, for example, a nod to the Charleston massacre? It’s a painful sight. Is it worth it?

PHOTO CREDIT: Hiro Murai

To be honest, my immediate response to the video was to wonder since when has Donald Glover been a furry beefcake who could dance—how’d we all miss that? I appreciate the more serious readings, like the angle that the violence and entertainment here are side-by-side spectacles, ordinary and co-extent, just as they are in everyday life; a quick scroll through Twitter, past mass shootings and Marvel movie trailers, confirms as much. I take that to be an incomplete read on Glover’s point, however. His constant foregrounding of his own googly-eyed gyrations distracts from the surrounding violence, but it also, I later realized, distracts from the fact that we barely even see that violence. We don’t home in on the chaos, really, save for when Glover picks up the gun himself.

That should feel self-effacing. Instead, in Glover’s hands, it feels a little insincere. I’ve often struggled to make sense of where Glover really stands on things—of whether the political statements in his art are expressions of genuine fury or Glover just playing around with political rage like it’s a costume he can slip on and off when convenient; I must have missed the point at which Glover transitioned from apolitical black nerd to bona fide political artist. A recent profile in The New Yorker didn’t exactly clarify the timeline, but it did give us a lot to chew on, to that end. Glover is quoted likening himself to Jesus (he may have been stoned) and claiming to pick up new styles and skills (like making a TV show) strategically. Jordan Peele is quoted claiming that Glover’s show Atlanta provides “the catharsis of, ‘Finally, some elevated black shit.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Hiro Murai

“Elevated black shit”—I still don’t know what that is or why it’s categorically admirable. But the phrase came to mind while watching “This Is America” for the first time. The video somehow feels too convenient, too neat a gloss on whatever ideas it thinks it has. Its ambition, I sense, is to seem provocative enough that whether or not Glover actually means what he says here is ultimately secondary to the fact that he sells it well.

And that he does: it’s a bravura performance. But what’s he selling? I’m wary of any claim that “We” are distracted from black violence, because who’s “we,” really? Every other day of the week, America’s complaint is that the blacks doth protest too much. If not for the fact that it’s profitable to tell blacks that we should stick to sports, quit the protests, worry more about black-on-black violence, and be thankful for Obama’s eight years, people like Tomi Lahren wouldn’t be able to pay their rent. Is this not a sign that black anger and awareness are widespread and persistent, that blacks are not distracted—that we are, in fact, too keyed-in for America’s comfort? “This Is America” is predicated on a misdiagnosis. America, writ large, has not been unconsciously deterred from paying attention to the spectacle of racial injustice. It knows it’s there: it just doesn’t care to do anything about it.

It’s equal parts intriguing and tedious that Glover should feel the need to diagnose us, however. “This Is America” openly appeals to an America that loves to be told about itself, which is a strategy in itself—I am overjoyed, truly, for every white person on Twitter who “gets it.” They ought to: the video is tilted toward a liberal pop-culture intelligentsia so in love with getting spanked by black truth-tellers that even an artist such as Glover—who as recently as that New Yorker profile reminded us that he prefers to be excluded from the expectations of “woke” art—is answering the call to put us all in our place”.

One more feature before I wrap things up. Creative Review reacted to the massive impact the song’s video had. This Is America stormed YouTube and it really got people talking. I can’t remember how people reacted to the song before the video came out. It is clear that the video articulated something that was very moving and unforgettable:

“Racking up almost 50 million views in under five days, Childish Gambino’s This Is America has struck a chord with audiences all over the world. Here, Rob Turner examines the many political and cultural layers that lie within the hit video.

“You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out,” Gil Scott-Heron warned America, back in 1970. “You will not be able to skip out for beer during commercials, because the revolution will not be televised.”

Maybe not, but it’s currently storming the internet. In just five days, Childish Gambino’s latest video – This Is America – has racked up almost 50 million views. And that’s not counting all the memes and GIFs, the viral shots of the Georgia rapper throwing crazy shapes on a warehouse dancefloor, smoking a blunt on a car roof, and emptying an automatic rifle into a gospel choir.

But is this America? Where are the MAGA caps, pitchforks, and burning torches? The director of this new nightmare, Hiro Murai, keeps the white supremacists, and the bloodthirsty police force, at the periphery, out of focus and rushing past the camera eye. Most strikingly of all, Gambino himself becomes a stand-in for one of the angriest young men to emerge from the cauldron of 21st-century racism: raising his weapon, he turns into Dylann Roof, who murdered nine churchgoers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015.

Why turn the lens away from the perpetrators of violence? Again and again, from the Rodney King beating to the Eric Garner murder, cameras have been central in exposing (if not prosecuting) hate in America. Here, though, the fascists are off the hook, and we find a row of apathetic kids, lounging on a balcony and following the revolution on their phones, as the warped voice of Young Thug drifts into the mix, flaunting his web presence: “America, I just checked my following list, / And you mothafuckas owe me…”

A few bars earlier, Gambino anticipates Thug’s studied narcissism. “This is a celly,” he raps, “that’s a tool, my Kodak.” Even if you miss the shout-out to yet another Southern MC (Kodak Black), this is a tight cluster of images. We are reminded that a camera-phone can be used for something other than Instagram: it can become a tool for exposing murder. But there’s another thread lurking here. The camera can also be (wilfully) mistaken for a tool – a handgun – as it was earlier this year, when Sacramento police fatally shot Stephon Clark, a young black man who was ‘armed’ with what turned out to be an iPhone.

These flickering parallel lives, as the device used to unveil police violence turns into the excuse for a curbside execution, capture the sick juxtapositions of being black in Trump’s America. Throughout the video, Sherrie Silver’s choreography thumbs through the book of African and African American dance history, placing Blocboy’s trap moves alongside the distinctive popping of South African gwara gwara. Gambino’s shirtless body becomes a dense intertextual sign, throwing allusions in all directions as he glides through a blank warehouse space. It’s a sexy and infectious sight, and you can see the GIFs sprouting every second.

Elsewhere, though, Silver leads Gambino into more frightening territory, lifting the jolting wobble and the boggling eyes of the minstrel cakewalk. Already, the film has been dissected by an army of YouTube analysts, with freezeframes of Gambino set alongside grotesque cartoons from the Jim Crow South, blurring the rapper with a caricature from the Wilson era. The black performer is destablised, yet again, by all these commentaries, as he is read (and re-read) in relation to both authentic self-expression and white pastiche.

Oddly enough, this is an increasingly common gesture in contemporary hip hop, with the phantoms of minstrelsy and racial passing looming in a number of videos in the last 12 months, from Jay-Z’s appropriation of Sambo cartoons in The Story of OJ (dir. Mark Romanek), to Tyler the Creator’s grisly surgical adoption of white-face in Who Dat Boy (dir. Wolf Haley). Jordan Peele’s Get Out was the multiplex apotheosis of this trend, offering the most horrific commentary on American racism since the closing shot of Night of the Living Dead.

As a short film, This Is America is sharp as hell, and it holds its own alongside a spate of violent fantasies imagining life after Obama. As an MC, though, Gambino still seems a little unsure of himself. A taste for irony has shaped his work ever since the early mixtapes, back in the late 2000s. Even the alias turned out to be a joke: it was what popped out when he typed his real name into an online Wu-Tang Name Generator. This new cut feels closer to a warped commentary on Atlanta trap than a sincere engagement with it, reducing guests like Quavo and 21 Savage to parodic ad-libs (“skrrt skrrt!”).

For some, this is the sound of trap music growing up, as Gambino shows the stars how to get woke. For others, it’s an inauthentic carbon copy of the real sounds of Atlanta, borrowing the triplet flows and distinctive beats of the sub-genre and gobbling up their bandwidth with an indelible video. Perhaps it’s both: an unresolved tension between sincerity and salesmanship hovers over the track. As Young Thug puts it, in the mysterious refrain that closes the film: “You just a black man in this world / You just a barcode…”.

Donald Glover is forty on 25th September. I wanted to use this opportunity to highlight his Childish Gambino moniker. This Is America was top ten in the U.K. and went to number one in the U.S. You hear it played now and then. I feel it will always be teaching people. Lest we ever forget the song’s lines and those indelible images in the video! I don’t think there have been too many protest songs. Concerning violence in ghettos and brutality against the Black community, it also concerns never-ending gun violence and the carnage it brings. Even though there is a black mark against the song in that This Is America, with many pointing out the similarities to American Pharaoh by Jase Harley, it takes nothing away from Childish Gambino’s gem. It opened eyes and provoked conversation. In such a stressed ands fractured time, we need a lot more songs…

LIKE this.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Gemma Rogers

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Gemma Rogers

_________

WE definitely need to hear more…

from Gemma Rogers. An artist who, in interviews, seems to articulate about the Government what many of us feel right now, she is someone whose music has this real power and resonance. I am going to get to a great 2022 she did with CLASH. There are not that many new interviews with her. I hope that more websites and music magazines get behind Gemma Rogers and support what she does. A London-based artist that everyone needs to get involved with, New World Order is her latest track. It is fabulous and compelling! I want to bring in a review for it. First, Right Chord Music asked what the sound of a revolution would be. At a time when more artists should be discussing something deeper, many still focus on the personal:

“What is the soundtrack of the revolution? Is it stirring patriotic songs, people waving flags a la Les Mis? Is it crashing guitars and sneering resistance to the establishment, as we see in punk? Or is it dreamy indie-pop with a ska edge? That’s the interpretation Gemma Rogers has gone for, anyway, and it’s no less valid for it.

Gemma Rogers is a London-based indie pop artist – eagle-eyed readers may remember her critically acclaimed LP ‘No Place Like Home’ and the EP ‘The Great Escape’. She’s going from strength to strength, with radio plays and festival slots aplenty, and now this latest release.

‘New World Order’ is a deceptively light-hearted ode to dystopia and revolution with wry lyrics and a ska influence.

Rogers’ lyrics combine the mundane with the apocalyptic, opening the song with ‘New day’s dawning, Grandpa’s snoring, last night’s embers on tv’. They range between apathy – ‘turn the pages, nothing changes’ – despair – ‘doctor doctor help me please’ – and some sort of nihilistic hope as the chorus welcomes us ‘to the new world order’. But delivered in casually sweet vocals and playful melodies, it retains a dreamy, breezy spirit and doesn’t get heavy.

The instrumentation centres around a skanking guitar, lending the ska influence, and laid-back beats. A moody bass keeps things chugging, alongside synths that swoop and chime and give the track personality. Fans of Lily Allen-style Brit pop will enjoy this, along with any fans of revolutionary lyrics or ska. There’s even a pleasingly nightmarish music video, that flickers through warping images of everything from bread to butterflies. The new world order is definitely memorable”.

I am relatively new to the music of Gemma Rogers. She is someone I am compelled to know more about. Whether she considers herself to be ‘upcoming’ or ‘rising’, or whether she is an established artist, it is clear her fanbase will grow. She had a hectic 2022. This year has been a busy one too. Joy Zine reflect on this in their review of New World Order:

“It’s fair to say that, of late, London-based singer, Gemma Rogers is having a busy time. After a phenomenally hectic 2022 (including the release of her EP, ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ – joyfully covered by Joyzine back in January), 2023 sees Gemma currently touring the UK (including a set at Glastonbury and opening for Paolo Ntini), alongside releasing a new single on July 17th called ‘New World Order’ (available to listen on YouTube from July 21st). According to the official press release, the song covers ‘three and a half minutes of social observation as a sunshine ska tip of the hat to all of London’s political music legends’. Sounds intriguing! We asked Gemma to elaborate further.

Gemma: ‘I wrote it while living as a guardian in a massive, old, dilapidated launderette. Twelve of us lived there and we spent lockdown together. Everyone had a Covid hangover’.

Joyzine: ‘How did some of the lyrics come together?

Gemma: ‘The lyrics came before the music. “Grandpa snoring”  means being stuck at home with nothing to do. The “New World Order” refers to a tangible shift in the rules imposed on us by the powers that be. “Voiceless people screaming out”. Bizarrely in a world of unlimited communication, politics feels ever less influenced by the people it’s obligated to serve. “I think about the lies. Who’s telling them?”. There’s a lot of paranoia in the song as there was in the world during lockdown. Do you really know everyone you know, sort of thing. I revisited the lyrics and updated a few of them in view of current legislations “Protests shutdown.”’.

So, onward to the review. We begin with a soft ska rhythm, accompanied by a cool, dreamy synth intro. It’s not long before Gemma’s trademark vocals kick in and her lyrics flow effortlessly with the music. In some ways, this reminds me of listening to Madness, The Specials, Ian Dury, et al, back in the day, when they engaged in delivering inspiring social commentaries upon the world, as they saw it happening around them. Gemma provides exactly that same edge with her words in a contemporary setting. This is music to make you think. Music that asks you to open your eyes and become aware of life going on around you, both locally and globally. Welcome food for the voracious mind and soul.

In terms of musicality, everything is tight and very structured. Production levels are spot on and Gemma’s fabulous vocals are easily heard/understood, helping to express her inner thoughts and feelings with cognitive punchiness.

As Gemma so eloquently puts it, ‘…the difficulties many (not all) of us face with the rising cost of living. As with all the songs, ‘New World Order’ is about trying to make sense of the shape-shifting world we live in’”.

The Great Escape EP came out earlier in the year. Since coming through last year with the first tastes of her incredible music, a lot of ears and eyes have been turning her way. Ear Milk shared their thoughts regarding the magnificent E.P. from earlier in the year. A pretty great way of starting 2023, Rogers has not taken her foot off of the gas:

“Following up on her 2022 debut LP No Place Like Home, Gemma Rogers brings the same sweet and visually telling songwriting on The Great Escape. With only two new songs, accompanied by two remixes of last year's “Tailspin”, Rogers brings forth a short, yet deeply riveting listening experience that not only acts as a conceptual sequel to No Place Like Home but is a warm welcome to new listeners such as myself.

Straight from the jump, Rogers’s creative writing and fluidity with imagery are on full display with the title track. A little bit of surf rock, a little bit of an early alternative groove riddled in the chorus, “The Great Escape” is a whimsical and fun tune that paints the mental image of escaping to the sea while not succumbing to a corny sentiment.

“Ship of Fools” is the moment where the EP really shines. It's where Rogers's musicality meets her talent for writing metaphors. This is the moment where she perfectly encapsulates the spirit of searching for fulfillment; the need for something better, and the sense of positivity.

There's a bountiful energy present throughout the E.P. and despite its four-track run, Rogers demonstrates an open mind to intermix surf rock grooves with themes of escapism, utilizing the ocean and a ship as a clear concept. While No Place Like Home sees Rogers focus on finding the comfort of home in familiar territory, The Great Escape uses the same colorful rifts and chorus to search for something greater”.

Let’s take things back a minute. To 2022. In her biggest spotlight to that point, CLASH spoke with Gemma Rogers about her L.P., No Place Like Home. She discussed motherhood, and why the Tories were screwing over the country. As I say: this is someone who we all need to get behind. Somebody who is speaking for the masses:

“It’s a shitshow. A mockery. A conveyor belt of jokers,” spits Gemma Rogers. The former spoken-word artist has had a busy year giving birth to a daughter and dropping one of the most intriguing punk-pop albums of the century so far. And in the finest punk tradition, she’s also hopping mad about the UK’s dire political situation.

“We don’t need austerity, we need to tax the rich,” Gemma says, warming to her theme. “The only good news, politically, is that there’s no more room for apathy. The Tories have royally fucked us – think about child poverty, fuel prices, the rising cost of living. Normally I can’t be bothered to talk about politics – the songs do that for themselves – but right now you can’t not talk about it. It’s a worrying time.”

Never fear though, Gemma Rogers’ new LP – ’No Place Like Home’ – isn’t all bleak rants about Westminster shenanigans. You’ve likely heard dancey single ‘My Idea Of Fun’, her cheeky ska-inflected paean to rum drinking in the afternoon.

“That was written before a lot of the rest of the tracks,” she tells us. “Before my little girl came along, when day drinking was still a thing. A lot has happened since then! Sometimes I mourn the grot-bag pubs. Meeting randoms, spending my wages on cheap spirits, and kissing the wrong people.”

Championed by 6Music’s Steve Lamacq – who asked Gemma to sit in for him on his New Music Fix show recently – she adores fellow current artists Yard Act and Deadletter. “I’m also super impressed with AGAAMA. I watched her perform with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra the other day on BBC4. Amazing! I asked her to open up my show at Dead Wax in Birmingham and she said yes! I’m well chuffed.”

Gemma rails against the dumbing-down of social media with great style and verve on brilliant album opener ’Stop’. But she isn’t averse to using technology to help with her creative process.

“I write my lyrics, themes, and ideas into Googledocs,” she reveals. “I’ve found it’s the easiest way of sharing ideas.”

Most tracks were recorded at the studio of collaborator Sean Genockey. “Each track required a different style and approach. I think you can hear that.”

“Creativity is a lawless place.”

The tour is going well, despite a bumpy start. “We had to miss Rough Trade in Nottingham because of a bad car crash en route. Then I lost my voice about an hour before I was due on stage at Bedford Esquires. The crowd were amazing though. I think we just about snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Turns out my Barry White-does-punk impersonation was down to a chest infection”.

Gemma Rogers is a really interesting artist who has been championed by the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music. Keep your eyes peeled to see what comes next. There are a few tour dates coming before the end of the year. I know she will have a busy diary next year. Someone who is gaining big traction and is releasing terrific music, I think that she is an artist that…

EVERYONE will get something from.

_____________

Follow Gemma Rogers

Official:

https://www.gemmarogersmusic.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/gemma_rogers_music_

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/whichgemrogers

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6goPkIzuF1ytQUOjm80uDn

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@gemmarogersmusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/gemmarogersmusic

FEATURE: Red Flag, White Flag: Whilst Women Are Speaking About Their Experiences of Sexual Assault, Is the Music Industry Doing Enough?

FEATURE:

 

 

Red Flag, White Flag

PHOTO CREDIT: Freepik

Whilst Women Are Speaking About Their Experiences of Sexual Assault, Is the Music Industry Doing Enough?

_________

IT may be an impossible…

 PHOTO CREDIT: wayhomestudio/Freepik

feat to achieve, but I wonder whether the music industry will ever be an one where women feel protected, safe and free. I have written about this before. It is not an exaggeration to say that every week there is a case of a man in the music industry being accused of sexual assault or harassment. I realise this is not exclusive to the music industry. If Hollywood had a #MeToo movement that helped unify the industry and saw many predators and culpable men in Hollywood brought to justice, there is still a way to go. It spread to other areas of society. The landscape is changing in that respect. I don’t think anything like that reached the music industry. Whether historic allegations or current, it is pointless people trying to ignore or underplay something horrible running through music. It is bad enough that many women feel unsafe at gigs and festivals. Fearful of being assaulted or abused. As we are still a long way from all festivals and venues being these spaces where women can feel very safe, we also have to read stories of male artists and those in the industry highlighted for all the wrong reasons. I know, as many men might argue, it is not all men. I know full well that not every single man in the music industry is suspect and abuser1 I also know that deflecting with such trite and stupid remarks almost defends the men who are culpable.

PHOTO CREDIT: mikky k/Pexels

Why try and rationalise something like this?! Stories like this and this are not rare. Sadly, as Rolling Stone highlighted last week (as many other sources have covered), Anti-Flag’s Justin Sane has been accused of multiple counts of rape and sexual assault:

“IF THERE WAS one punk group that positioned itself as a leader of a movement for inclusivity, radical change, and allyship in the early 2000s, it was Anti-Flag.

Co-founded by Justin Geever, a.k.a. Justin Sane, in Pittsburgh in 1993, members flitted in and out until the group solidified in 1999. Anti-Flag would go on to draw legions of devoted fans for their progressive messaging and political activism, including anti-war causes and animal-rights advocacy.

Geever served as the face, voice, and outward idealism of the group for decades. The band was proud to declare itself a safe space for people of all walks of life, especially women, and became vocal supporters of survivors of violent crime after the murder of a band member’s sister. That idealism would also become a central tenet to some of Geever’s lyrics. “This is what a feminist looks like!” he sings on 2005’s “Feminism Is for Everybody,” followed immediately by “This is what a feminist sounds like!”

Knowing what the band meant to so many, Kristina Sarhadi was sickened by the burden that she could shatter fans’ entire faith in the group. The New York holistic therapist and health coach had been a die-hard fan until a fall 2010 night with Geever. “It’s been this internal battle for me for over a decade,” Sarhadi tells Rolling Stone. “I truly believed his persona, and what [the band] were always consistently, persistently singing and talking about. I didn’t want to be the one to take that away from anyone else.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Chelsea Lauren/WireImage (digitially alteredf by Rolling Stone)

But in mid-July, Sarhadi appeared on a podcast to accuse the 50-year-old of violent sexual assault. Although Sarhadi did not name Geever directly, all details pointed to him. (Sarhadi confirmed to Rolling Stone that Geever was the subject of the allegation.) Hours later, Anti-Flag wiped its social media presence — including band members’ personal pages — and released a short statement. “Announcement,” read the post. “Anti-Flag has disbanded.”

Despite upcoming shows in Europe, the group broke up immediately. Instead of acknowledging the accusation, though, the band offered no denial or further explanation. The assault claim contradicted everything Anti-Flag and Geever claimed to stand for. Now, when faced with their own reckoning, there was only silence.

A week later, Geever categorically denied the allegation. “I have never engaged in a sexual relationship that was not consensual, nor have I ever been approached by a woman after a sexual encounter and been told I had in any way acted without her consent or violated her in any way,” he wrote.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kristina Sarhadi in 2023/PHOTO CREDIT: Kristina Sarhadi

The other members — Patrick Bollinger, a.k.a. Pat Thetic, Chris Head, and Chris Barker, a.k.a. Chris No. 2 — released a statement alongside Geever, saying they were “shaken” and “heartbroken” by the accusation, adding it has always been their “core tenet” to believe survivors. “Therefore, we felt the only immediate option was to disband,” they wrote. “While we believe this is extremely serious, in the last 30 years we have never seen Justin be violent or aggressive toward women.”

Sarhadi’s claim, however, is echoed by an additional 12 women who spoke to Rolling Stone about their alleged encounters with Geever, going back to the 1990s and as recently as 2020. These allegations include predatory behavior, sexual assault, and statutory rape, including sexual relations with a 12-year-old when Geever was a teenager. (Geever did not reply to multiple requests for comment after Rolling Stone sent him a detailed list of allegations for this article.)

“He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” says Jenn, who met Geever as a 16-year-old in 1997. (Rolling Stone is identifying Jenn by her first name.) “He came across as super supportive. He was like, ‘Yeah, we need more girls in punk rock,’ and ‘Get out there!’ He played the part of lifting women up, but at the same time, he was holding them down, literally”.

 “Sarhadi’s claim, however, is echoed by an additional 12 women who spoke to Rolling Stone about their alleged encounters with Geever, going back to the 1990s and as recently as 2020”

The more stories like this that come to light, the more angering it becomes. The more sympathy you feel for women and whether we will ever reach a point where action is taken. In individual cases like this, legal action can be taken. When you look through the years and the number of sexual assault and harassment cases reported, they may be discussed and counted. Beyond that, what happens?!  Whether relating to the music industry alone or wider afield, there are shocking and sobering statistics that show that the surge in sexual assault cases is being met with anger and disgust. How much are governments doing to raise awareness and ensure we do not have to see this sort of thing year in year out?! It may seem too big an issue to quickly resolve. Although we are seeing stories of men in music accused or sexual violence and abuse, the outcome varies. Maybe it will result in conviction though, too often, it is merely they are dropped by their label but can walk free. I don’t think there has been any music-targeted campaign or movement where charities, artists, those in the industry and far beyond get involved and put in place something solid, progressive and proactive. At the moment, so many women are fighting to have their voices heard. Great organisations – as I have said in previous features – are out there aiming to keep women safe and informing gig-goers about keeping safe and intervening if they see a case of sexual harassment or assault.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dids/Pexels

This is all very valuable, yet we are still seeing too many stories that show that there is work to be done! Sadly, we have reached a point where extreme stories and artists being called out is not surprising. With every story that breaks revealing sexual assault and abuse in the industry, it needs to be met with action and promises from the industry at large. The big question would be what needs to be done? What can be done? Of course, the problem around making sure all women feel safe is a massive undertaking. It will not be something that can be achieved right away. There does need to be that collective recognition of a huge and unflinching issue that is affecting many women. It has reached a point where we are hearing and seeing too many reports of men in music accused or sexual assault. The music industry is obviously concerned and wants to ensure that women are safe and we do not have to process another disturbing story regarding a musician or music industry figure. By there not being a definitive movement, campaign or pledge wider afield to take such an ongoing and devastating issue, it seems like waving a white flag. Letting women or charities try to tackle it alone. Alongside a zero tolerance approach from labels and venues regarding dropping those accused – rather than cancelling; that is a different thing and something a bit more complex – and taking swift action, there needs to be something more concrete and all-encompassing. We cannot keep seeing news of sexual assault and harassment taking place in the music industry…

 PHOTO CREDIT: wayhomestudio/Pexels

WITHOUT huge action being taken.

FEATURE: Where They’re Meant To Be: Following Ezra Collective’s Mercury Prize Victory, Why a New Spotlight Needs to Be Shone on British Jazz

FEATURE:

 

 

Where They’re Meant To Be

IN THIS PHOTO: Ezra Collective

Following Ezra Collective’s Mercury Prize Victory, Why a New Spotlight Needs to Be Shone on British Jazz

_________

THERE was nothing to criticise…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Ezra Collective collect their Mercury Prize at the Eventim Apollo on 7th September, 2023, joyfully overseen by host Lauren Laverne/PHOTO CREDIT: JM Enternational/Getty Images

the Mercury Prize about this year. That seems harsh but, in past years, there have been accusations that the ceremony is too focused on London artists. I think that is still true - and something that needs to be addressed -, but there has been a certain air of predictability in the past. The artists you feel were going to win have. That is not a bad thing, though the element of awarding the ‘underdog’ or artist more deserving of that exposure. Every year, there seems to be this limiting of Jazz and Folk. You may get one artist/album from each genre but, by and large, other genres are in the spotlight - artists seen as more ‘accessible’ or mainstream. This year, when Ezra Collective’s second studio album, Where I’m Meant to Be, was listed among the dozen shortlisted albums this year, many thought they would not win. Bookies gave long odds. There is always cries that it is tokenism having one Jazz or Folk artist. An also-ran that shows that, whilst the Mercury Prize is diverse in who it nominates, it offers very few surprises in terms of Jazz and Folk. When Ezra Collective (perhaps unexpectedly) won yesterday night, they started by thanking God. I am an atheist and know that it is their raw talent that led to the win, though there is something almost divine and preordained working to create that moment last night. The whole audience at the Eventim Apollo were rapturous. The group were on their knees in shock and joy! A band who will lead more eyes the way of British Jazz and its huge importance. The first time in a long time that the Mercury Prize has gone to an unexpected winner, yet one that thoroughly deserved to win. I am not sure whether this will lead to a bit of an evolution and revolution when it comes to them and the public taking Jazz more seriously. Definitely, future years will see the awards push away from the more mainstream and predictable artists and more to the vital outskirts. I still think that the London-centric thing is a big problem that means artists anywhere north of London seem to struggle and come away empty-handed – when was the last time we saw an artist not born or based in London win…?!

 PHOTO CREDIT: chevanon via Freepik

I hope that there are a lot of features written about British Jazz right now. How it is among the most vibrant, eclectic and important music being made. Many people still have this image of Jazz: quite stuffy, stiff and boring, that is not the case at the moment! Jazz is vibrant, all-embracing and inclusive. Whether it is Ezra Collective and the importance and wonder of their instrumentation, or a Jazz vocalist who can articulate and resonate like nobody else, we need to get out of that mindset that Jazz is periphery, inessential or, when it comes to award shows, there to make up the numbers! Ezra Collective proved that things are going to change! The Guardian reacted to Ezra Collective winning the Mercury Prize (the first Jazz act to do so) – and a long-overdue acknowledgement of the golden age of British Jazz:

“A slight sense of disbelief attended the announcement that Ezra Collective’s Where I’m Meant to Be had been awarded the 2023 Mercury prize. You could hear it in the audience’s reaction – the cheer was underpinned by a sort of delighted gasp – and you could certainly see it in the band’s: they literally collapsed in a heap on the floor by their table. Their acceptance speech began with a thank you to God: “If a jazz band winning the Mercury prize doesn’t make you believe in God, nothing will.”

You could see why. The joke about the Mercury prize’s tokenism when it comes to jazz and folk music has been running for almost as long as the prize itself. Virtually every year, a solitary artist from those fields gets nominated and invariably goes away empty-handed. It’s been mocked as a patronising pat on the head, but you seldom hear the artists themselves grumbling: mainstream exposure for jazz and folk is scanty at best and sales figures are seldom huge, making the publicity surrounding the prize and any resulting bump in sales more important than you suspect it is for, say, Arctic Monkeys.

This year, however, felt slightly different. As evidenced by the performances at the ceremony itself, it was a strong field, but there was a sense that Dublin quartet Lankum might actually be in with a chance – their intense, experimental approach to traditional Irish music is suffused with influences from deep in the musical left-field and has attracted both blanket critical acclaim and an audience that one suspects don’t usually spend much time with trad arr tunes.

And the reception Ezra Collective’s reading of Victory Dance was afforded seemed noticeably different from the polite applause that usually greets the jazz nominee on the night: it got a spontaneous standing ovation. You could see why: it was joyous and funky and party-starting, as good an advertisement for seeing them live as can be imagined.

You can also see why Where I’m Meant To Be won. It stirs together Afro-Cuban rhythms and post-bop with rap – both Sampa the Great and 2022 Mercury nominee Kojey Radical are among the guests – dub, funk and dance music and transforms Sun Ra’s Love In Outer Space into slick jazz-inflected soul with a vocal by the singer Nao, another former Mercury nominee. It’s an album where the influence of spiritual jazz coexists with Afrobeat; it successfully captures the band’s live energy, its kinetic power never dipping despite its 70-minute running time. It’s approachable and celebratory without in any way seeming lightweight or drifting too far from the band’s roots: an album that people who don’t normally consider themselves jazz fans might fall for, but still resolutely a jazz album.

There are times when you wonder aloud at what the point of the Mercury prize is: when it feels like a meaningless addendum to mainstream success, when it appears to be simply telling people something they already knew. A jazz album winning may well prove an aberration, and things may go back to business as usual next year, but if their victory means that Where I’m Meant To Be finds a wider audience than it has thus far then the 2023 Mercury prize has done a good thing, and made itself seem worthwhile in the process”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Glasgow-born Jazz sensation Georgia Cécile

Look wider afield for articles and spotlighting, there is precious little about the richness of British Jazz righty now. Aside from a new wave of talent coming through, established artists like Georgia Cécile, Nubya Garcia, The Comet Is Coming (who splice other genres with Jazz to create a distinct sound), and Jasmine Myra, there are so many brilliant young Jazz artists coming through in the U.K. I think, like other genes, it is hard to classify what is ‘Jazz’ and whether it is R&B, Soul or Pop. That is why it is bemusing that Jazz is still viewed by many to be old-fashioned, immobile and rather studied. Like you have to endure the music rather than enjoy it. Get lost inside it. Artists are keeping Jazz ethos and sensibilities at the heart of their music but, consider musicians like Emma-Jean Thackray, and how versatile they are. Rather than distilling Jazz, it is a more experimental and broad. There is still Jazz music that conforms people’s ideas. Even so, if you call it pure Jazz or something else, it is clear that the music being produced around the world in the genre is magnificent. Here, we have so many incredible artists to watch. Camille Munn is someone who combines Jazz with Neo-Soul and R&B. I like the fact that many artists are pairing Jazz with the soulfulness, smoothness and sensuality of R&B. On the other side of the spectrum, you have something more electric like Ezra Collective. Whereas genres celebrated and prioritised such as Pop is seen as homogenous and quite robotic/samey at the moment, there now needs to be new focus on Jazz coming out of Britain. The opposite of modern Pop: uplifting, spiritual, political, celebratory, people-uniting and real. Music that you can almost physically feel getting into your soul and coursing through your veins!

Celebratory and infectious, their incredible musicianship and connection is at the heart of everything Ezra Collective and their British contemporaries do. I think that their Mercury Prize win will inspire so many Jazz artists. Nubiyan Twist and Jazz drummer Moses Boyd are award-nominated, spectacular Jazz artists. Adding something cooler to the Jazz melting pot, Blue Lab Beats are well worth listening out for. Check out Yakul’s Jazz-infused sounds. Poppy Ajudha, whilst perhaps not primarily a Jazz artist, mixes Soul and R&B, her melodious are reminiscent of classic Jazz. Kamaal Williams is at the forefront of experimental British Jazz. I don’t think that you can be a purist when it comes to Jazz. Whether integrated with other genres to create a new sound, or nodding back to classic Jazz artists, there is this vibrancy and richness running through British Jazz. Even if a lot is focused in London, there are plenty of great British Jazz artists coming from outside the capital. I guess there is an allure and the fanbase in the capital that proves so attractive to musicians. It is not only clubs like Ronnie Scott’s that are staging these artists. Ezra Collective  are playing all kinds of venues. Even before they won the Mercury Prize last night, they had this incredible core of fans. Beloved and huge respected, this will take them to the next level! The collective have gigs in Australia very soon. This is pretty impressive! It is also further proof that Jazz in Britain translates beyond pure genre labels and cliches. It travels and impacts geographically. That demand from fans right across the world. We do need to get out of this insulting and incorrect assumption Jazz is boring, too quirky, magical or too weird or unengaging to integrate into the mainstream and deserve wider respect!

If you prefer instrumental Jazz other vocals, there are groups and artists who give you a lot of choice. From mixing African rhythms, drums, a swirl of brass and infectious jubilance through to more intense percussion and a nod to legends like Miles Davis, all the way along to something soothing and blue, there is something out there for you. Plenty of wonderful Jazz vocalists who are writing stunning original songs and adding their stamp onto standards. This colour chart and cocktail menu of British Jazz is expanding and evolving by the year. Offering Jazz fans and new converts so much to enjoy. Music that is far less disposable and uninspired than the mainstream’s best and most celebrated. If we once viewed a Jazz album’s inclusion on the Mercury shortlist as box-ticking – and that album is given poor odds – where they would never win, an historic and much-warranted win for Ezra Collective will spread way beyond the Mercury Prize. It will make people reassess Jazz and explore it more. Seeing this band of brothers and sisters. An affirmative and enormously skilled group of musicians take Jazz to new places is going to reverberate around the music world! It also means that there will be long-overdue light and discussion about British Jazz. About the artists we have in our midst who are keeping Jazz fresh, alive and moving, to the new crop on the fringes who are making interesting moves. Among the most soul-enriching, important and soul and heart-lifting music around, Jazz is no longer a punchline or byword for in-accessibility. British Jazz has been mesmeric for decades now - although I feel things are visibility changing now. More exposure beyond stations like Jazz FM (a superb station). With stations like BBC Radio 6 Music championing acts like Ezra Collective and Nubya Garcia, progress is being made. It is high time that we all celebrated and bowed our heads in thanks and praise to British Jazz’s…

KINGS and queens.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Eight: Hello World: The Musical and Cultural Landscape in 1985

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Eight

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush promoting Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Hello World: The Musical and Cultural Landscape in 1985

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SHE is practically a household name….

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outake from the Hounds of Love album cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

in America this year. That was not always the case. Even if Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming, got a foothold and some impact in the U.S. in 1982 to 1983, it was not a massive success. Hounds of Love changed things. As this is the final feature I am writing about Hounds of Love ahead of its thirty-eighth anniversary on 16th September, there are a few different elements I want to include. I will return to the subject of how Hounds of Love broke Kate Bush into America. I have written about this before I know - so I will not repeat that feature. Instead, as 1985 globally was a massive year for music and music events, that is something to frame around Hounds of Love. If some view 1986 as the worst year in music because of the prolificacy of drum machines and the fact a lot of records sounded the same, 1985 must go down as one of the best! Bush released Hounds of Love on 16th September. It was halfway through the ninth month of an extraordinary year. In terms of the biggest music event, 13th July was when Live Aid happened. A benefit concert held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia; it raised $127 million for famine relief in Africa. A few weeks after that huge event, Bush released the first single from Hounds of Love, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). In British politics, under Margaret Thatcher, the country faced drives for privatisation, and the need for better bank regulation. Among the classic and celebrated films of 1985 was The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, and Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Artists like Huey Lewis and the News, Dire Straits, and Whitney Houston were ruling the charts.

A lot was happening and changing in 1985. In terms of the major artists on the scene, legends and established icons like Prince and Michael Jackson were on top of the world. Few could compete with the rise of Madonna. She released her second album, Like a Virgin, in 1984. Kate Bush actually took it off the top of the U.K. chart in 1985. It was a time when Bush began to crack America and created a masterpiece at the same time as a Pop queen – who was no doubt influenced by Bush – was beginning to get some serious attention. Madonna was on her way to becoming thew most important artist on the planet. A magnificent year for music, near-career-best albums from Tears for Fears (Songs from the Big Chair), The Smiths (Meat Is Murder), Dire Straights (Brothers in Arms), Tom Waits (Rain Dogs), Prefab Sprout (Steve McQueen), and Eurythmics (Be Yourself Tonight) sat alongside Hounds of Love. Although there is debate as to which album from 1985 is the best, you can see where Hounds of Love lands in articles by NME, Udiscovermusic., Rolling Stone, and SLANT. Although there was a tonne of terrific music out there, and artists like Madonna were at the centre of popular culture, Hounds of Love seems to surpass everything! Maybe because the album was both of its time and unique. If the singles on the first side fitted within the aesthetic of the mid-’80s, The Ninth Wave – the album’s second side – was very much outside of that. That dichotomy and variation intrigued fans. Bush had definitely hit her stride, perhaps inspired by music and culture from the U.K., U.S., and around the world.

Prior to getting to how Hounds of Love gave Kate Bush a real footing in America, The Ringer wrote a fascinating feature in 2019. At a time when Netflix’s Stranger Things took us back to the mid-‘80s, they looked at the music of the time. There was one-named megastars, a thriving underground, and a new British invasion. Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love came into a world where music was solidifying legends and making new heroes:

“The Stalwarts

There were a lot of winners in 1985 but none bigger than Wham! and Madonna. Both placed two songs in the year’s top 10 and both ultimately ended up with four in the top 100. More importantly, their success was a recognition of generational voices establishing a permanent beachhead in our consciousness. The deep blue Wham! classic “Careless Whisper” was both the year’s highest-charting single and the first full-fledged evidence of George Michael’s gestating excellence.

Madonna’s top-10 doublet “Like a Virgin” and “Crazy for You” perfectly encapsulated the come-hither mastery of her early persona, while hinting at the deeply layered subversion that would ultimately characterize her most celebrated work.

After Purple Rain and his world-historic 1984, it was something of a quiet year for Prince, but even a quiet year in the midst of his prime yielded the unforgettable likes of “Raspberry Beret.” Here were three mega-talents (with apologies to Andrew Ridgeley) all under the age of 28, all primed to carry the industry forward as trendsetters and hit-makers for years to come.

The Upstarts

By 1985, a grassroots movement composed of independent artists and record labels throughout the country had resulted in a thriving American underground of art-rock, punk, and hardcore music. Labels like Los Angeles’s SST, Minneapolis’s Twin/Tone, and the mega-indie I.R.S. had demonstrated proof of concept, moving tens of thousands of units by bands like Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, and R.E.M. (eagle-eyed viewers may have noted the Murmur poster in the bedroom of Stranger Things’ Jonathan Byers). Taken together, they created the contours of what would become known by the unfortunate appellation “college rock,” and which would eventually become the equally sub-optimal “alternative.” Genre categories aside, the indies filled the pipeline with new artists whose talents deepened the best elements of the rock tradition.

Paul Westerberg’s down-and-out take on lower-middle-class escapist rock was a close cousin to Bruce Springsteen, while Hüsker Dü’s high-energy bedlam and inescapable songcraft owed everything to early Beatles and Byrds. R.E.M. was a ready-made hit machine whose mercurial cleverness and raft of outré influences provided just enough misterioso to mask what was, at base, a wonderfully pop veneer. These bands ultimately succeeded commercially to greater or lesser degrees, but the important point is that they all made for good bets within the industry in that moment. In today’s consensus-driven, sales-starved, risk-averse market, it is fair to wonder whether any of them—or any number of their similarly gifted underground contemporaries—would be provided with the opportunity for exposure to a mass audience today”.

With all of this going on, it is a surprise that Bush had a chance to promote. I would be too distracted by everything happening! Hounds of Love reached thirty in America, number one here…and it was also a significant chart success around the world. As you can see on the Wikipedia page for the album, there was some ecstatic and almost breathless reviews! An album so accomplished, dramatic and instantly classic, Bush produced something instantly relatable yet timeless. Mixing synthesisers and ‘80s sounds with her incredible production and the lush and genre-crossing instruments used on the tracks, this was a rich, nuanced and diverse album that has not dated or lost any of its edge – unlike other albums from that time! Perhaps of what was happening with other artists in 1985, there was this new awareness and appreciation for Kate Bush in the U.S. As GRAMMY write, this was a breakthrough year for Bush. She would continue that great run of acceptance and commercial victory on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993):

“America, on the other hand, was a little more wary of this incredibly precocious enigma whose literate blend of art-pop, prog-rock and folk often needed its own CliffsNotes. Although second single "The Man with the Child In His Eyes" briefly graced the lower reaches of the US Hot 100, audiences weren’t convinced enough to pick up its parent album. And by her mid-20s she’d essentially been consigned to the status of minor one-hit wonder.

By this point, even Bush’s homeland appeared to have cooled toward her increasingly complex singular vision: 1982’s self-produced The Dreaming, once self-described as the "she’s gone mad" record, sold barely a fraction of its three predecessors and the NME would later run a slightly embarrassing piece asking "Where Are They Now?"

Whereas many of her peers would have panickingly roped in a hit-making team to restore their former commercial glories, Bush doubled down on the D.I.Y. approach for album number five. She built a 48-track studio at the 17th century Kent farmhouse she shared with musician partner Del Palmer. She further utilized the Fairlight CMI, the beast of a synthesizer that she’d first dabbled with on 1980's Never For Ever. And she reportedly presented EMI with the finished product before execs had even heard a single note. This was unarguably Bush at her most autonomous, her most liberated, her purest.

You perhaps might not have expected Hounds of Love, therefore, to reverse her chart fortunes on either side of the Atlantic. Even more so considering its ambitious two-suite concept, with the titular radio-friendlier first soon giving way to a nightmarish tale of survival dubbed "The Ninth Wave." However, the record not only returned Bush to the top of the U.K. charts, it also peaked at a then-career high of No.30 in the States, spawning a bona fide hit single in the process.

Bush had to fight tooth and nail to launch Hounds of Love with "Running Up That Hill" instead of the much-preferred "Cloudbusting." However, she did make a rare concession to her label. The battle of the sexes had originally been titled "A Deal with God" before EMI bosses convinced the singer that its religious connotations would scare off the bible belt. It was the first of several signs that Bush wanted as many people to hear the fruits of her labor as possible.

Indeed, Bush has since garnered a reputation for being so reclusive she makes Howard Hughes look like a social butterfly. But in the fall of 1985 you couldn’t turn on late-night cable TV without hearing her softly spoken English tones answering a variety of inane questions about her anything-but-inane career: she has to work overtime to hide her disdain during this particularly awkward interview on USA Network’s Night Flight.

There were also several radio appearances and, even more remarkably, a signing session at Greenwich Village’s Tower Records store. Yet it was Bush’s embracing of the music video that truly helped her connect with U.S. audiences beyond the fringes of the art-rock scene

By the time the promo for fourth single "The Big Sky," a self-directed blend of cosplay, sci-fi imagery and flamboyant stage performance, dropped, MTV was a fully signed-up member of the Bush fan club. They even went on to gift her consecutive Best Female Video nominations at the VMAs.

The critical response, in general, had been much kinder, too. Indeed, while Rolling Stone dismissed Hounds of Love as an album that both “dazzles and bores,” the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times were far more complimentary, with the latter describing it as "a dark and dreamy masterpiece”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of Hounds of Love in 1985 at Tower Records in New York City

We can see where Hounds of Love fitted into music in 1985. I am going to quote from tat Wikipedia page. If the response from U.S. critics was a little mixed, the consumers there were more attuned and wise! Some felt the lack of boundaries. There were insulting opinions that found Hounds of Love boring. That lack of boundaries and the wide-ranging nature of the album was childish and quite immature, some said. There was snobbish attitude from a lot of the U.S. press. I wonder how many of those reviews are still alive – not many I hope! – who had to eat their words and were embarrassed all these years later when it is seen as one of the greatest albums ever! The kinder U.S. press applauded the visions and ambitions and found it a shame that there was more love for her music in the U.S. than over there. The U.K. press, familiar with and used to the distinct Kate Bush sound, saw Hounds of Love for what it is: a masterpiece of scope and substance; Kate Bush at her peak as a producer:

“Hounds of Love was met with widespread critical acclaim. In the UK, most reviews of the album at the time of its release were overwhelmingly positive. In a five-star review, Sounds called Hounds of Love "dramatic, moving and wildly, unashamedly, beautifully romantic", before going on to state, "If I were allowed to swear, I'd say that Hounds of Love is f***ing brilliant, but me mum won't let me". Record Mirror also gave the album five stars, stating that it "recaptures the ground Kate lost with her last album" and concluding, "A howling success? I think so." NME said, "Hounds of Love is definitely weird. It's not an album for the suicidal or mums and dads. The violence of The Dreaming has turned into despair, confusion and fear – primarily of love, a subject that remains central to Bush's songwriting." The review then went on to scorn the idea that by signing to EMI Records as a teenager, Bush had allowed herself to be moulded in their corporate image, suggesting that on the contrary, it had enabled her to use the system for her own devices: "Our Kate's a genius, the rarest solo artist this country's ever produced. She makes sceptics dance to her tune. The company's daughter has truly screwed the system and produced the best album of the year doing it." Melody Maker was more reserved, saying, "Here she has learned you can have control without sacrificing passion and it's the heavyweight rhythm department aided and abetted by some overly fussy arrangements that get the better of her". It was particularly disappointed by The Ninth Wave suite on the second side of the record, feeling that "she makes huge demands on her listener and the theme is too confused and the execution too laborious and stilted to carry real weight as a complete entity”.

There is going to be a reissue of the magnificent and faultless Hounds of Love. It is the first time one of her studio albums has received this special treatment. A more expansive release that, maybe, will bring together magnificent B-sides like Under the Ivy (a great ‘lost’ classic from Bush):

“Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds Of Love will be reissued on CD and vinyl later this year, it has been announced.

The album spawned the hit single ‘Running Up That Hill’ which reached number three back in 1985 and then hit number one in the UK last year thanks to its inclusion in Netflix’s Stranger Things. The album spawned three other top 40 UK singles in ‘Cloudbusting’, ‘Hounds of Love’ and ‘The Big Sky’.

Side 2 is home to the conceptual The Ninth Wave which was performed live on stage in its entirety during Kate’s Hammersmith Odeon residency in 2014 and, from Kate’s back catalogue, only the 1986 hits compilation The Whole Story has sold more copies in the UK than Hounds Of Love.

Hounds Of Love remains the only Kate Bush studio album that has been expanded into any kind of ‘deluxe’ edition when in 1997 EMI issued a new CD edition as part of its Centenary celebrations with a modest six extra tracks”.

The legacy and importance of Hounds of Love is huge. It made Bush an icon and this cool and respected artist from one who was seen as weird and inaccessible to many. Couple that with the fact that there is nothing but wonder and brilliance through the album. Maybe, because Hounds of Love was like nothing in 1985 (maybe Tears for Fears were the closest British comparison?!), critics were not prepared by what came! It seems baffling now that there was ay reservation. Seen by most critics and fans as Bush’s magnum opus, Hounds of Love continues to find success and new listeners to this day. Because Stranger Things used Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in an episode, that meant the song and album got a new wave of sales and streams. A 2021 feature I have referenced before from DJ Mag discusses the impact and legacy of this masterpiece:

“Hounds Of Love’ is quite the opposite of many early electronic music records, where the electronics were designed to draw attention to their new glittery selves and show off the world of machine possibilities. On ‘Hounds Of Love’, everything is subsumed into the music. For Bush, the Fairlight was a new “tool” for writing and arranging, as she explained to Option magazine in 1990, “like the difference between writing a song on a piano or on a guitar.”

The use of the word ‘tool’ is critical: The Fairlight was important for what it did, not what it was. And what it did was to open up Bush’s world to a new range of sonic possibility, as she explained to Option like a proto-Matthew Herbert: “With a Fairlight, you’ve got everything: a tremendous range of things,” she said. “It completely opened me up to sounds and textures and I could experiment with these in a way I could never have done without it.”

What is perhaps most striking about ‘Hounds Of Love’ is that, rather than settling down into a new electronic habit, Bush used her new digital equipment in a number of different ways, depending on the song’s demands. ‘Running Up That Hill,’ the album’s gorgeous opening song, uses a subtly propulsive, rolling tom pattern on the LinnDrum (the work of Bush’s collaborator and then romantic partner Del Palmer) that lays alongside cello samples from the Fairlight, which Bush manipulated to create both the main riff and backing strings.

Music Radar called this one of the 40 greatest synth sounds of all time in April 2021 and it is hard to disagree, the synth both tender and idiosyncratic, while slightly lost in the ether, the perfect accompaniment to the song’s gorgeously dreamy melody. It’s a remarkable achievement that on a song that features one of Bush’s strongest vocal melodies, the synth line is equally iconic, a vital component in one of Kate Bush’s biggest hits. The well-named ‘Under Ice’ has another brilliant synth sound, its chilling tone strangely reminiscent of the glacial eskibeat tones that grime pioneer Wiley would favor two decades later.

The influence of Kate Bush on electronic musicians is there for everyone to see. Rave producers loved to sample Bush’s idiosyncratic melodics, and there is a whole generation of British ravers who will be forever unable to think of ‘Cloudbusting’ without imagining chart-troubling rave duo Utah Saints, who swiped its chorus for their UK hit ‘Something Good’.

Björk, Big Boi and Aphex Twin are some of Bush’s most high-profile musical fans — Big Boi once called her “my favorite artist of all time” — while pretty much anyone who was anyone in British music attended her live residency in London in 2014.

One could think of Kate Bush’s major influence on electronic music, though, as something almost subliminal. You would be hard pressed to name many records that sound like ‘Hounds Of Love’, because recreating the sound at the time would have needed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, while today the relentless advance of electronic music technology means that the sounds of the LinnDrum and Fairlight have been replaced with newer gear. Besides, who has the talent to come up with a ‘Hounds Of Love’?

For those of us who grew up on the music of Kate Bush, her music was a subtle but important introduction to the power of electronic music, those synths and samples snuck in under layers of glowing pop melody and mainstream radio finesse, like a kind of avant-garde smuggling operation. For a generation of music fans, Kate Bush got electronic music settled deep under our skin, at a time when house music was only just starting to emerge from Chicago and techno was but a twinkle in Detroit’s eye, an innovative wolf in pop sheep’s clothing, twice as deadly and several times more elegant”.

On 16th September, thirty-eight years after its release, fans new and old will celebrate and play Hounds of Love. I wanted to talk about 1985 and the cultural and music world the album arrived in. With major political events and a huge fundraiser in the form of Live Aid happening simultaneously, it must have been a strange time to release an album! Not that it would get overshadowed, but maybe the artists who performed at the event would see renewed interest and sales – maybe burying Hounds of Love slightly. In the U.S., there was awareness of Kate Bush and shoots of green leaves in terms of sustainability. Hounds of Love may have left some critics (or cu*ts) there cold, but the music buyers – many of whom would have been teens or in their twenties – ensured that this classic would not be overlooked. Bush travelled to the U.S., where she did signings and promotional interviews – some of which were quite arduous and strained (interviewers not doing their homework!). She has recently discussed the renewed interest in Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) . Without doubt, Hounds of Love is seen as one of the all-time greats. I wonder if Bush or any of her fans had an inkling of what was going to be unleashed into the world…

ON 16th September, 1985.