Monsters Of Folk - the indie supergroup comprised of M. Ward, Conor Oberst and My Morning Jacket's Jim James, reunited over the weekend for their first performance together in nearly six years.
They appeared during M. Ward's set opening for Brian Wilson at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday [July 9], r...
Monsters Of Folk – the indie supergroup comprised of M. Ward, Conor Oberst and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, reunited over the weekend for their first performance together in nearly six years.
They appeared during M. Ward’s set opening for Brian Wilson at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday [July 9], reports Consequence Of Sound. Mike Mogis, the band’s fourth member, was absent.
The group hadn’t performed together onstage since their 2010 tour in support of their lone 2009 LP, but during Ward’s set they performed three tracks: Monsters of Folk’s “Whole Lotta Losin’” plus Ward’s own “Vincent O’Brien” and “To Save Me“.
Think of the New Orleans sound and you’ll probably think of musical pandemonium. The ecstatic holler of Dixieland, the discordant clatter of ragtime piano, the chaotic squall of the marching band, right up to the “dirty south” hip-hop of the Cash Money and No Limit labels.
One of New Orleans...
Think of the New Orleans sound and you’ll probably think of musical pandemonium. The ecstatic holler of Dixieland, the discordant clatter of ragtime piano, the chaotic squall of the marching band, right up to the “dirty south” hip-hop of the Cash Money and No Limit labels.
One of New Orleans’ most famous sons, Allen Toussaint, who died last November, aged 77, could certainly cut rough, producing raucous, chart-topping dancefloor fillers, from Ernie K Doe’s 1961 single “Mother-In-Law” to Labelle’s 1975 “Lady Marmalade”, via all those killer Meters grooves that have been sampled to death by hip-hop DJs.
His solo albums, however, paint a much more genteel vision of Crescent City. All the signature components are there – the “Spanish-tinged” habanera pulse, the twin-fisted stride piano acrobatics, the influence of whorehouse pianists such as Professor Longhair, Dr John, James Booker, Fats Domino and Jelly Roll Morton. But there’s a daintiness in the way Toussaint refracts these influences, like a parlour pianist creating a low-volume, gently bubbling pandemonium.
Six of the 14 tracks on this posthumous album are piano solos, recorded at his own home studio in New Orleans, all of which illustrate how Toussaint masterfully irons out the kinks and the dissonances from the city’s music. On a version of Professor Longhair’s “Take Me To The Mardi Gras” – a song best known to British listeners as the theme to A Bit Of Fry & Laurie – he turns Professor Longhair’s chaotic original into a quizzical, spacious jazz miniature, all open chords and modal improvisations. While improvising around “Big Chief”, another N’Awlins boogie-woogie classic, he artfully segues into Chopin’s Prelude in C minor (the same chords that Barry Manilow used as the basis for “Could It Be Magic”). Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag” is turned into a wonderfully jaunty Pink Panther prowl. Tellingly, he also includes a piano piece by a fascinating 19th-century composer called Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a Jewish Creole pianist from Louisiana whose quirky, romantic solos prefigured New Orleans jazz by half a century.
The jazz songbook provides the backbone of American Tunes, with standards that Toussaint tackles in his wonderfully dainty way. Earl Hines’ “Rosetta” – an uptempo piece of jump jive in the hands of Nat King Cole or Django Reinhardt – is taken at half speed and turned into a dainty ballad. Bill Evans’ “Waltz For Debby” is Toussaint-ized to the point that it’s not actually a waltz at all, but a stately boogie-woogie in 4/4. “Confessin’ That I Love You”, is a played quite straight, with a few Thelonious Monk-ish blue notes and quirky gaps in the melody.
The standards also give room for the guests. Bill Frisell’s guitar wobbles deliciously on a few tracks, in particular Billy Strayhorn’s “Lotus Blossom”, while Duke Ellington’s “Rocks In My Bed” features Rhiannon Giddens doing her best Cotton Club howl.
If there’s one thing missing from this album, it’s Toussaint’s yawning, slyly soulful voice. When it finally crops up on the titular final track, “American Tune” – over Greg Leisz’s acoustic guitar – it’s like the arrival of an old friend to a party. Over Bach’s hymnal melody and Paul Simon’s lyrics of weariness and struggle, Toussaint sounds like he’s singing his life story. “Still, tomorrow’s gonna be another working day/And I’m trying to get some rest”, he sighs, wearily, turning the song into the Civil Rights anthem that it was always destined to be.
The story has it that Allen Toussaint’s best known song, “Southern Nights” – a US chart-topper for Glenn Campbell in 1977 – was inspired when his friend Van Dyke Parks visited him in the studio in 1975 to help fix Toussaint’s writers’ block. “Consider that you were going to die in two weeks,” VDP suggested. “If you knew that, what would you think you would like to have done?” It’s fitting that Van Dyke Parks turned up only weeks before Toussaint’s shock death last year to collaborate on an instrumental version of “Southern Nights”, turning the song into a piano duet, overlaying glissandos, classical flourishes and oriental-sounding harmonies over the top of Toussaint’s wistful, dream-like meditation on rural Louisiana. It’s the perfect instrumental eulogy for one of America’s true musical greats.
Johnny Marr joined The Last Shadow Puppets on stage at Manchester's Castlefield Bowl, where he played "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me", from The Smiths' 1987 album, Strangeways, Here We Come.
You can watch footage below.
Meanwhile, Marr's former bandmate Mike Joyce was also at the gig ...
Johnny Marr joined The Last Shadow Puppets on stage at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl, where he played “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me“, from The Smiths‘ 1987 album, Strangeways, Here We Come.
You can watch footage below.
Meanwhile, Marr’s former bandmate Mike Joyce was also at the gig and wrote on Facebook: “So I’m at The Last Shadow Puppets gig tonight and Johnny Marr walks on and they play, ‘Last Night I Dreamt…’
“The guy next to me says, “Seen the guy on the right with black hair? That’s Johnny Marr, the guitarist from The Smiths and this is a Smiths song they’re playing”. I didn’t say owt, I just couldn’t.”
Marr also performed a cover of The Fall’s “Totally Wired” with The Last Shadow Puppets.
PJ Harvey will play 17 headline dates across Europe later this year, including two shows at London’s Brixton Academy in October, followed by Glasgow, Manchester and Wolverhampton.
Harvey has played a number of festivals - including London’s Field Day and Glastonbury Festival - in support of he...
PJ Harvey will play 17 headline dates across Europe later this year, including two shows at London’s Brixton Academy in October, followed by Glasgow, Manchester and Wolverhampton.
Harvey has played a number of festivals – including London’s Field Day and Glastonbury Festival – in support of her The Hope Six Demolition Project album.
The tour has been directed by theatre director Ian Rickson, dressed by Ann Demeulemeester, with lighting by Adam Silverman and set design by multi-media artist Jeremy Herbert. Harvey is joined by long-time collaborators John Parish, Mick Harvey and Jean-Marc Butty, and friends Alain Johannes, Terry Edwards, James Johnston, Kenrick Rowe, Alessandro Stefana and Enrico Gabrielli.
The full list of live dates, including two festivals, is:
Oct 10 Falconer, Copenhagen, Denmark
Oct 12 Tower Hall, Warsaw, Poland
Oct 13 Forum Karlin Hall, Prague, Czech Republic
Oct 15 Palladium, Cologne, Germany
Oct 16 HMH, Amsterdam, Holland
Oct 18 Rockhal, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Oct 19 Forest National, Brussles, Belgium
Oct 21 Zenith, Paris, France
Oct 23 Alcatraz, Milan, Italy
Oct 24 Obihall, Florence, Italy
Oct 25 Hallenstadion Club, Zurich, Switzerland
Oct 27 Coliseum, Lisbon, Portugal
Oct 28 Bime Festival, Bilbao, Spain
Oct 30 Brixton Academy, London, UK
Oct 31 Brixton Academy, London, UK
Nov 2 SECC, Glasgow, UK
Nov 3 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, UK
Nov 4 Starworks Warehouse, Wolverhampton, UK
Nov 6 Iceland Airwaves Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland
Tickets for London on sale Wednesday 13 July at 9am BST. Tickets for Glasgow, Manchester and Wolverhampton on sale Friday 15 July at 9am BST. For information visit www.pjharvey.net
David Gilmour performed two shows at the Pompeii Amphitheatre in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, marking the first time he has played there in 45 years.
Gilmour, who had previously played at the amphitheatre for the 1971 film Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii, played songs from his current album, Rattle Tha...
David Gilmour performed two shows at the Pompeii Amphitheatre in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, marking the first time he has played there in 45 years.
Gilmour, who had previously played at the amphitheatre for the 1971 film Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii, played songs from his current album, Rattle That Lock, as well as a number of Pink Floyd classics.
Among them were “One Of These Days“, the only song that was also performed at the 1971 show, “The Great Gig In The Sky” – sung in three-part harmony by backing vocalists Louise Marshall, Lucy Jules and Bryan Chambers – and “Wish You Were Here“, whose new arrangment featured a honky-tonk solo from keyboardist Chuck Leavell.
Gilmour – who has been made an honorary citizen of Pompeii – said of the shows “It’s a magical place and coming back and seeing the stage and the arena was quite overwhelming. It’s a place of ghosts… in a friendly way.”
David Gilmour Live In Pompeii setlist
1st Set
5am
Rattle That Lock
Faces Of Stone
What Do You Want From Me
The Blue
Great Gig In The Sky
A Boat Lies Waiting
Wish You Were Here
Money
In Any Tongue
High Hopes
2nd Set
One Of These Days
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Fat Old Sun
Coming Back To Life
On An Island
The Girl In The Yellow Dress
Today
Sorrow
Run Like Hell
It is nine days after at least some of the people of Britain choose to leave Europe. Uncertainty is rife, domestic as well as international politics appear to have entered a grotesque post-factual phase, and musical respite would be hugely welcome. On the face of it, a rapper who observes, deep into...
It is nine days after at least some of the people of Britain choose to leave Europe. Uncertainty is rife, domestic as well as international politics appear to have entered a grotesque post-factual phase, and musical respite would be hugely welcome. On the face of it, a rapper who observes, deep into “These Walls”, that “race wars happening”, might not be the most obvious escapist choice. Kendrick Lamar, after all, has spent the past few years assiduously documenting the iniquities suffered by impoverished, marginalised communities in America. In the wake of a horrific spike in the number of racist incidents reported in the UK, it seems possible that his set in London’s Hyde Park will feel more like a fractionally-adjusted news report than a holiday from reality.
In truth, Lamar is far too complex and potent a performer to be understood in such reductive terms. For an hour, he packs great tranches of learning, wit, politics and rage into the smallprint of his raps, then delivers them in dense and vivid narrative skrees. These are the texts which helped place To Pimp A Butterfly in the upper echelons of 2015’s myriad Album Of The Year polls, not least the one in Uncut. They are not, however, the only weapons in his armoury. Like so many black radical performers before him – Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, for a start (and he deserves to be judged in that company) – Lamar understands that hurt can be combined with showmanship and musical nuance, and that the resulting blend can have great empowering and celebratory potential.
For those who remain sceptical about contemporary hip-hop’s place in an epic musical continuum, Lamar’s set also offers a timely corrective. When his band The Wesley Theory arrive on stage in the late afternoon (they are the notional support act on this Barclaycard British Summer Time bill, just beneath Florence & The Machine), they begin with a limber jazz-funk instrumental that sounds as if it could’ve been a Crusaders offcut. In fact, subsequent research reveals it to be a discreet version of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Can’t Hide Love”.
Lamar himself arrives a couple of minutes later, nonchalant in a Boy London sweat and ripped jeans. When he reaches the centre of the stage and drops his mic into its stand, the band stop playing with uncanny precision. Now, he pauses to stare coolly and silently at the crowd for what seems an audaciously long time, and immediately the session’s ground rules are established: control and command.
The band might not include the marquee jazz musicians like Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper and Ambrose Akinmusire who invigorated so much of To Pimp A Butterfly; one of them, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, is preparing to play his own set on the other side of the festival site. Nevertheless, The Wesley Theory can kick up a fearsome avant cacophony on the opening “For Free”, a suitably freestyle backing for Lamar’s poetics, at this point equal parts Gil Scott-Heron and Ken Nordine. Sheet metal guitar blasts also add rabble-rousing punctuation to some of the selections from 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City like “Backseat Freestyle” and “M.A.A.D City” itself, the song’s two distinct parts played separately, and in reverse order.
They are most comfortable, though, with the deceptively lugubrious, roomy grooves that allow most space for Lamar’s verbal pyrotechnics. Sometimes – on the outstanding “These Walls” and “Money Trees” – these provide a considered, historically resonant update on the lope of G-funk. While other songs are mashed and abbreviated to pack in as much action as possible into a tight festival set, Lamar lets “These Walls” and “Money Trees” run in full, allowing his words to linger a little more poignantly.
Given an extra ten or 15 minutes, you’d hope he would go into more abstracted territory, into the sort of strung-out meditations that surfaced on this year’s valuable set of offcuts, Untitled Unmastered. But for the most part, modernism is delivered in a similar fashion to how Lamar delivers his political insights; in overwhelming torrents. By the end and “Alright”, the filigree jazz funk has been diced into martial surges, and Lamar is exhorting the crowd to jump with him, and turning a song of hope and doubt into one of triumphal consolation. He exits briskly, as the refrain of Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigga Is A Star” reverberates around Hyde Park.
Although his music is more conventionally rooted in jazz, and predominantly instrumental, Kamasi Washington’s set taps into a similar spirit. “Our love, our beauty, our genius/Our work, our triumph, our glory,” Patrice Quinn sings on “The Rhythm Changes”, but the song’s momentum shifts live, from the languid supper club hit on Washington’s 2015 blockbuster The Epic, into something driven by two drummers hammering breakbeats, creating a much more forceful piece of music with explicit affinities to hip-hop. This is very much the vibe throughout Washington’s ecstatic 45 minutes, as “Change Of The Guard” and “Askim” are reborn in intense new forms. The former is especially supercharged, transformed into a call-to-arms that operates somewhere between peak Funkadelic and Archie Shepp’s impassioned Attica Blues. There’s a sense that Washington’s infectious energy has caught one of those rare moments when jazz – helped of course by the efforts of Lamar – can occupy a place adjacent to the mainstream; or at least the open-minded European festival circuit, for one rewarding summer, in spite of everything.
Kendrick Lamar, meanwhile, heads straight back to the States. Two days later, he plays a July 4 barbecue at the White House, and President Obama applauds Lamar and his fellow performer Janelle Monae for being “amazing artists… but they’re also very conscious about their responsibilities and obligations.” It is unclear whether “Institutionalized” – “If I was the president I’d pay my mama’s rent… Lay in the White House and get high” – is performed. By the end of the week, the climate of violence towards black people in America has escalated to what feels like new and awful heights, and a former congressman briefly tweets, “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.” This, if it really needed spelling out any more explicitly, is the world which Lamar has to navigate, and to somehow reconcile with his superstar privileges. As he articulates on “Hood Politics”: “While my loved ones was fighting a continuous war back in the city/I was entering a new one.”
This week's default morning Zen music has very much been this Hailu Mergia reissue, but plenty more new things that'll hopefully be of interest, including a great session from Itasca to download (RIYL Jessica Pratt, Meg Baird, Rosali etc), and footage of one of the highlights of Kendrick Lamar's sto...
This week’s default morning Zen music has very much been this Hailu Mergia reissue, but plenty more new things that’ll hopefully be of interest, including a great session from Itasca to download (RIYL Jessica Pratt, Meg Baird, Rosali etc), and footage of one of the highlights of Kendrick Lamar’s storming London show last Saturday. I really should get on with writing about that, actually…
Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey
1 Hailu Mergia & Dahlak Band – Wede Harer Guzo (Awesome Tapes From Africa)
2 Kendrick Lamar – These Walls (Live At Hyde Park)
3 Earth Wind And Fire – Can’t Hide Love (Columbia)
Pixies have announced details of a new studio album, Head Carrier.
The album will be released on September 30 via Pixiesmusic/Play It Again Sam.
You can hear a track from the album, "Um Chagga Lagga", below.
https://soundcloud.com/pixiesmusic/um-chagga-lagga-1/s-YeGiY
Head Carrier has been produ...
Pixies have announced details of a new studio album, Head Carrier.
The album will be released on September 30 via Pixiesmusic/Play It Again Sam.
You can hear a track from the album, “Um Chagga Lagga“, below.
Head Carrier has been produced by Tom Dalgety (Killing Joke, Royal Blood) and the band recorded at London’s Rak Studios; the sleeve features original artwork by the band’s longtime art director, Vaughan Oliver.
A special limited edition deluxe box set of Head Carrier will be available exclusively through Pixiesmusic.com, and will include the CD, the album on heavy-weight/180 gram black vinyl, and a 24-page, oversized booklet with the song’s lyrics and Oliver’s artwork.
Also available only through the band’s website is a special bundle that includes the deluxe box set, special t-shirt, and a special screen printed 12 “x 12” record sleeve-sized poster of Oliver’s album artwork.
All songs were written by the Pixies apart from “All I Think About Now”, which was written by Black Francis and Paz Lenchantin.
The tracklisting for Head Carrier is:
Head Carrier
Classic Masher
Baal’s Back
Might As Well Be Gone
Oona
Talent
Tenement Song
Bel Esprit
All I Think About Now
Um Chagga Lagga
Plaster Of Paris
All The Saints
The band have also confirmed the following European dates:
NOVEMBER 15: Stadthalle, Vienna, Austria
16: HWS Arena, Poznan, Poland
17: Forum Karlin Hall, Prague, Czech Republic
18: Auditorium Stravinski, Montreux, Switzerland
20: Sant Jordi Club, Barcelona, Spain
21: Coliseum, Porto, Portugal
23: Zenith, Paris, France
25: Lotto, Antwerp, Belgium
27: HMH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In 1972, Leon Russell invited the filmmaker Les Blank to visit his recording studio compound in Oklahoma. The musician was on a roll at the time. He had graduated from Delaney & Bonnie And Friends to play a key role in Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen touring band, while his own solo caree...
In 1972, Leon Russell invited the filmmaker Les Blank to visit his recording studio compound in Oklahoma. The musician was on a roll at the time. He had graduated from Delaney & Bonnie And Friends to play a key role in Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen touring band, while his own solo career had taken off with “A Song For You”. Now based in his native Tulsa, Russell and his producer Denny Cordell commissioned Blank to make a film about him. Meanwhile, Blank had recently completed location filming on Dry Wood and Hot Pepper, two documentaries about the life and music of the Creole communities in Louisiana’s Cajun country, when he accepted Russell’s offer. Over a period of two years, Blank and his assistant Maureen Gosling filmed Russell, taking up residence in one of Pappy Reeves Floating Motel Cabins on the Grand Lake Of The Cherokees, not far from Russell’s studio.
A Poem Is A Naked Person is a rich mix of portraiture, social scenes, nature photography and ethnomusicology. His camera holds on shots of water snakes and alligators moving through the lake’s waters, or the retired Oklahoman couple who have come into Russell’s employ. During footage of Willie Nelson performing “Good Hearted Woman”, Blank seems as intent filming the locals at the Floore Country Store Dine Dance as he is framing tight close ups of Nelson’s sweat-drenched face. In a perfect meshing of music and anthropology, he shoots Russell talking to an old boy about the beliefs of the local Quapaw Indians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7jcBs4BBU
Blank had previously made shorts on Dizzie Gillespie and Lightnin’ Hopkins – musicians of a different discipline to those depicted here. There is plenty of woolly rock talk – “Everything was not what it was supposed to be in the first place,” drawls a stoned-sounding Bill Mullins. There is plenty of horseplay in hotel rooms, paddling pools and other locations. Elsewhere, texture is provided by artist Jim Franklin scooping up baby scorpions from an empty swimming pool, a catfishing expedition and footage of a baby chick being fed to a boa-constrictor as a metaphor for American consumerism. There is live performance, too – splendid, hand-held film of the charismatic Russell leading his band through good time rock’n’soul, in the studio in with local musicians or jamming with Neil Young’s producer David Briggs on a wonky version of “Lady Madonna”.
Russell blocked the release of Blank’s film. It is only due to the perseverance of his son, Harrod, that Russell has finally granted permission. Les Blank died in 2013 with a strong body of documentary films behind him – including the legendary Burden Of Dreams, about Werner Herzog’s filming of Fitzcarraldo. A Poem Is A Naked Person, meanwhile, is a brilliant, free flowing depiction of a time, a place and the people who inhabit it. At one point, Russell appears to break the fourth wall and address the viewer directly. “Are you loaded now?”
When Michael Gira announced that he was reforming his ’80s group Swans in 2010, it was reasonable to be sceptical. In their early life, Swans had pretty much become a byword for violent extremity in the rock’n’roll idiom: a band loud enough to make an audience want to flee the venue, and cruel...
When Michael Gira announced that he was reforming his ’80s group Swans in 2010, it was reasonable to be sceptical. In their early life, Swans had pretty much become a byword for violent extremity in the rock’n’roll idiom: a band loud enough to make an audience want to flee the venue, and cruel enough to bolt the doors so they couldn’t. Throughout the two decades of their first incarnation, Swans underwent a mellowing, and come the turn of the millennium, Gira had transitioned into a cowboy-hatted patriarch, recording quietly intense folk music under the name Angels Of Light and playing patron to young musicians including Devendra Banhart and Akron/Family.
With Gira nearing his seventh decade, what could a reformed Swans offer to contemporary music? The answer turned out to be: plenty. A powerful cast of players – including guitarist Norman Westberg and percussionist Thor Harris – paired with Gira’s insatiable, spirited performances, ensured the output of Swans Mark II turned out to be both deeper and wider than the music they made in their first incarnation. This was particularly evident in the live arena, where shows stretched out to three hours, familiar songs sprouted new improvisatory segments, and in the white heat of the stage, new ones blazed into life.
If Swans at times seemed unstoppable, the arrival of The Glowing Man puts pay to that. This is to be the last Swans LP under the current lineup, with the band due to dissolve at the close of the forthcoming tour (Gira will continue recording and touring as Swans, but with a revolving cast of collaborators). Clocking in at two hours, The Glowing Man is every bit as gigantic as the two albums preceding it, 2012’s The Seer and 2014’s To Be Kind. But it has a slightly transitory feel; a half-step back from those monolithic builds and whiplash grooves, gesturing towards something more contemplative and… well, “softer” feels the wrong word, but certainly weathered by the journey.
The presence of country and gospel in Swans’ music has long been noted, but just as key is the influence of New York downtown composers like La Monte Young and Glenn Branca, whose numinous, droning music aimed to capture feelings of transcendence or obliteration. The first two tracks, “Cloud Of Forgetting” and “Cloud Of Unknowing”, clock in at 13 and 25 minutes, respectively, and are not so much songs as vast, arid landscapes – salt flats of sound. Gira himself calls them “prayers”, and they certainly have that feel. The former drifts in on clouds of sobbing lap steel and dulcimer, Gira bellowing like a man supplicant beneath an uncaring sky: “Surrender! Surrender! Take us! Take us!” The album’s title track, meanwhile, is bigger still. Having grown out of a live improvisation around To Be Kind’s “Bring The Sun”, it stretches out to an immense 29 minutes, veering from twinkling orchestral lulls to a malevolent Neu!-meets-Stooges churn.
Several moments on The Glowing Man feel like a reflection on Swans’ past exploits. A fidgety mantra titled “The World Looks Red/The World Looks Black” finds Gira reviving some of his earliest lyrics, borrowed by Thurston Moore for Sonic Youth’s “The World Is Red” on their 1983 debut, Confusion Is Sex. Other tracks feel like farewells, or gesture to a moving on: “People Like Us” is a sea-shanty set adrift on a blasted landscape of methane-belching seas and clouds the colour of rust; while a closing, climactic march titled “Finally, Peace” strikes an almost valedictory tone.
Speaking about Swans in recent times, Gira tends not to talk about pain and cruelty, but love and tenderness. There is compassion, of sorts, in “Frankie M”. Described by Gira as “a best wish for a wounded soul”, it builds from a clamour of voices and beaten cymbal into a eerie strut, over which Gira reels off a litany of banned substances – heroin, opium, methedrine, MDMA – over cascading female voices. Then there is “When Will I Return?”: a song penned by Gira for his wife Jennifer to sing, its harrowing lyric deals with her attempted kidnapping some years before, and she sings it with a tremble in her voice that is clearly genuine. It is a song that leads you to reflect on Gira’s unusual muse. If Swans are the sound of love, it is not a love everyone will recognise as such.
The Glowing Man arrives amid some drama. In February, Larkin Grimm, a former signee to Gira’s Young God Records, accused him of having raped her in 2008. Gira first described the incident as “a slanderous lie”, later as “a consensual romantic moment that fortunately was not consummated” (a former bandmate of Grimm’s has accused her of fabricating accusations of sexual harassment, but the truth of the matter remains opaque). Under this cloud, Swans set off on an 18-month tour that will end with their own scheduled self-destruction. Where next for Michael Gira is unclear, but he’s made a 35-year career out of staring down death. It seems improbable he would stop now.
Q&A
Michael Gira
The reactivation of Swans has clearly been artistically fulfilling for you. Why break up the band?
I love working with these guys – they’re my friends, and we’ve come to know each other’s scent quite well. However, I think it’s reached its apex, and all the things we could discover in one another are played out. It’s necessary for me, if I’m going to continue the name Swans, to shake things up. I basically don’t want a band any more, and the responsibility that that entails. I don’t know what the future route entails. I have some vague colours in my mind, but I don’t know what I’m going to pursue stylistically. I’m looking forward to being utterly adrift.
What is the story behind “When Will I Return”?
I wrote those for my wife to sing. Seven years ago, before I met her, she was walking down a street in New Orleans late at night. A fellow jumped out of some bushes and attempted to abduct her – his car was waiting there, the door open. Being who she is, she fought vigorously. And he beat the shit out of her. But eventually people came, and he fled, and she was hospitalised. I guess there was a person at large with an MO that matched this fellow, who was a serial killer. She had that whole thing where her life flashed in front of her eyes, and she just said: I’m not letting this happen. These things have a lasting effect – it’s altered her brain chemistry, her psyche forever. So this is a tribute, a prayer, saying how much I respect and appreciate her courage and strength.
A couple of things happening on Thursday (July 7). First is the arrival of our History Of Rock volume for 1977. It's the one with The Clash on the cover, and you can order a History Of Rock 1977 from our online shop now.
The second thing is the beginning of an auspicious new event on the calendar: ...
A couple of things happening on Thursday (July 7). First is the arrival of our History Of Rock volume for 1977. It’s the one with The Clash on the cover, and you can order a History Of Rock 1977 from our online shop now.
The second thing is the beginning of an auspicious new event on the calendar: The Syd Arthur Festival, which runs from July 7 until August 3; the dates when Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee died ten years ago. The organisers – Julian Cope, Dorian Cope and Avalon Cope – promise the “ultimate psychic rock’n’roll festival”. “No pricey tickets, no camping like sardines in some infernal swamp,” they write. “For those who choose to engage in these proceedings, they may do so from their own home, favourite areas, but most specifically from within their own minds.”
A great idea, I think, and one which you can find out more about by visiting www.sydarthurfestival.com. Get ready for July 16: “Today, let’s search out Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga dancing to the 13th Floor Elevators’ ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and join them.”
In the meantime, here’s the intro to that aforementioned new History Of Rock 1977, courtesy of John Robinson…
“Welcome to 1977. After the widely-publicized stirrings of the Sex Pistols at the close of 1976, punk rock has now become more than a media sensation. It is a widespread discussion, talked about in political, and increasingly even in musical terms. Bands like the Clash, Stranglers and Sex Pistols are even releasing albums.
“Mick Jagger has checked out the bands in New York and listened to the singles (‘Chelsea, “Right To Work” – that one’s awful’). Keith Moon makes a riotous trip to The Vortex club, to confront punk rock head on. Robert Plant, who has seen the Damned at the Roxy, is unconcerned. ‘The dinosaurs,’ he memorably says, ‘are still dancing…’
“Still, they are a little on the defensive side. Plant seems anxious to downplay punk’s youth, claiming Rat Scabies and Johnny Rotten are older than they look. They’re not – indeed Plant himself is only 28 – but generationally-speaking he may as well be a cabinet minister. He is professionally expert and enormously wealthy, but in this changed musical economy, this only contributes to his irrelevance.
“His discomfort is not soothed by the press. Punk doesn’t only politicize youth and revolutionize how records are made, it also effects change in music papers, which become bolder in layout, more irreverent in tone. Features by staff writers like Tony Parsons contain important interviews with bands like our cover stars The Clash – but these only support the main thrust of his communiqué.
“This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which follows each turn of the rock revolution. Whether in sleazy dive or huge arena, passionate and increasingly stylish contemporary reporters were there to chronicle events. This publication reaps the benefits of their understanding for the reader decades later, one year at a time. Missed one? You can find History Of Rock back issues here (Worth mentioning that we’ve finally got copies of the first issue, History Of Rock 1965, back in stock if you’re missing that one).
“In the pages of our 13th edition, dedicated to 1977 and on sale in the UK this Thursday, you will find verbatim articles from frontline staffers, filed from the thick of the action, wherever it may be. In court with Keith Richards. Looking at the Westway with the Clash. Being called a wanker with Keith Moon.
“It is Moon, in fact, who best articulates the anxieties of his generation of musician in 1977 when he reveals to a young punk in the Vortex a simple biographical fact.
When Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death at Altamont Speedway on December 9, 1969, the story goes that the '60s died too, the hippie dream dissolving into a less idealistic, more individualistic era. The echoes of the decade, however, could be felt long after the six had been replaced by the seven,...
When Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death at Altamont Speedway on December 9, 1969, the story goes that the ’60s died too, the hippie dream dissolving into a less idealistic, more individualistic era. The echoes of the decade, however, could be felt long after the six had been replaced by the seven, and it’s the frame of this ‘long ’60s’ – a period which historian Arthur Marwick defines as lasting until 1974 – that Quintessence fit within.
Formed in fashionable Ladbroke Grove in 1969, this international six-piece played extended, improvisatory compositions highlighted by lengthy guitar solos, flute, sitar and communal, Indian-inspired chanting. They took on Eastern names to match their philosophies, with Australian flautist and founder Ronald Rothfield becoming Raja Ram, for example, and American bassist Richard Vaughan known as Shambhu Babaji. Far from a niche, underground concern, however, Quintessence quickly signed to Island after a major-label bidding war, and soon appeared frequently in the music weeklies, and even live on BBC2 and in Nicolas Roeg’s Glastonbury Fayre. Across five studio albums, ranging from 1969’s In Blissful Company to 1972’s Indweller, they journeyed into their own groovy mysticism, lyrically paying as much heed to St Pancras and Ladbroke Grove as to Mount Kailash and various deities.
Despite their popularity at the time, they have since slipped under the radar in recent years, being denied the resurgence of, say, The Incredible String Band, or even the credibility of weirder Eastern-inspired acts like The Third Ear Band. Spirits From Another Time attempts to rectify this, with two CDs of outtakes and alternative recordings from the vaults, many forgotten by their creators and in need of reconstruction; two cuts here even feature new guitar and vocals from Dave ‘Maha Dev’ Codling and Phil ‘Shiva’ Jones.
The results are impressive, though Quintessence were clearly at their best when they abandoned their scenester pretensions and Jones’ slightly hammy vocals, and instead launched into relaxed improvisation. Disc One’s 12-minute take of “Epitaph For Tomorrow” is stunning, a steady, subtle groove over which lead guitarist Allan Mostert is free to slowly unwind his subtle soloing, his instrument increasingly affected by echo and wah-wah effects; “Body” similarly embarks on some swinging guitar improvisation, while opener “Notting Hill Gate” moves from exhortations of meditation and “getting it straight” into peals of echoed flute and buzzing sitar. What’s most striking is the restrained, almost ambient manner of their sound, presumably aimed straight at enlightenment rather than hedonism.
If Quintessence’s music is at times too time-stamped, and lyrics like “celestial wine filling you with divinity” too gauche for the cynical decades that came after, perhaps now, with the continuing resurgence of new age music and renewed appreciation for the likes of the Grateful Dead, is the right time again to appreciate these overlooked cosmic adventurers.
An online archive of Prince’s official websites that spans over two decades has launched.
The Prince Online Museum comprises 12 of Prince’s websites, beginning with an early CD-ROM version called Prince Interactive in 1994 up to 3rdEyeGirl.com - his final website.
“We launch with 12 of Princ...
An online archive of Prince’s official websites that spans over two decades has launched.
The Prince Online Museum comprises 12 of Prince’s websites, beginning with an early CD-ROM version called Prince Interactive in 1994 up to 3rdEyeGirl.com – his final website.
“We launch with 12 of Prince’s most popular sites, but over 20 years online, Prince launched nearly 20 different websites, maintained a dozen different social media presences, participated in countless online chats and directly connected with fans around the world,” Sam Jennings, director of the museum, told Billboard.
The archive demonstrates Prince’s evolving web presence. By 2001, he launched a site, NPG Music Club, that allowed fans to purchase and stream his music online.
In 2006, Prince won a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award and the NPG Music Club won a Webby Award for best celebrity/fan site.
“This Museum is an archive of that work and a reminder of everything he accomplished as an independent artist with the support of his vibrant and dedicated online community,” Jennings said of the initiative.
Queen's Greatest Hits tops the list of the UK's biggest-selling albums of all-time.
To mark 60 years of the official album chart, OfficialCharts.com has unveiled the 60 biggest-selling albums in the chart's history.
Queen’s 1981 Greatest Hits collection has an unassailable lead of 6.1 million co...
Queen’s Greatest Hits tops the list of the UK’s biggest-selling albums of all-time.
To mark 60 years of the official album chart, OfficialCharts.com has unveiled the 60 biggest-selling albums in the chart’s history.
Queen’s 1981 Greatest Hits collection has an unassailable lead of 6.1 million copies sold. Queen’s Greatest Hits II also makes it into the Top 10 at Number 10 with almost 4 million albums sold.
“What a great bit of news to wake up to!” Brian May told OfficialCharts.com. “The most popular album? Well, I always thought the band showed promise, but this is beyond our boyhood dreams!”
May’s bandmate Roger Taylor added, “Incredible… marvellous… humbling… thank you… I feel good!”
Meanwhile ABBA – Gold: Greatest Hits is the UK’s second biggest-selling album of all-time – nearly 5.2 million copies have been shifted since its release in 1992.
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is at No 3, also is also the only other release in history to break the five million UK sales barrier (5.1 million).
The Top 10 best selling albums in the UK of all time are:
1 Queen – Greatest Hits
2 ABBA – Gold – Greatest Hits
3 The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
4 Adele – 21
5 Oasis – (What’s The Story) Morning Glory
6 Michael Jackson – Thriller
7 Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon
8 Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms
9 Michael Jackson – Bad
10 Queen – Greatest Hits II
Disco had sashayed well past its sell-by date by the time Grace Jones’ third album Muse arrived in September 1979. The final instalment in her high-gloss New York trilogy, Muse, like Portfolio and Fame before it, portrayed Jones as the decadent diva still swanning around Studio 54, but no amount o...
Disco had sashayed well past its sell-by date by the time Grace Jones’ third album Muse arrived in September 1979. The final instalment in her high-gloss New York trilogy, Muse, like Portfolio and Fame before it, portrayed Jones as the decadent diva still swanning around Studio 54, but no amount of sumptuous Tom Moulton production could disguise the fact that disco had already faded from fashion. Punk and its mutant offspring had wiped off the glitter and a backlash was underway, its mooted US flashpoint the infamous ‘disco demolition night’ at Comiskey Park, the home of the Chicago White Sox, in July ’79. There, thousands of disenfranchised rock fans turned up to a baseball game and stormed the pitch to smash and burn Village People and Bee-Gees records – an isolated, brainless event that quickly made headlines.
Record sales also fell with disco’s decline in the States, down 11 per cent year-on-year from 1978. “I thought we were in a bit of trouble after the third album. It didn’t sell very well,” notes Chris Blackwell, Jones’ Island Records boss, in the singer’s memoirs, published last year. His solution was to invite Jones – pregnant with her son Paolo – to his Compass Point studio complex on the tiny island of Nassau in the Bahamas in a bid to push her in a new direction that would draw attention to her irresistible force and gender-bending qualities, an idea that seemed quite natural at the time but with hindsight proved both prescient and radical. On the cusp of the 1980s, this new decade needed a striking star with a modern, uncompromising sound. Jones, familiar yet unknowable, might fit the bill.
As part of his plan, he and fellow producer Alex Sadkin, who manned the mixing desk, had assembled a crack squad of session musicians who, under Blackwell’s guidance, would interpret recent cult hits and compose new material for Jones. Factory Records’ funk outfit A Certain Ratio were in the running to be the backing band, but it soon became clear that Blackwell’s team of players, dubbed the Compass Point All Stars, had developed extraordinary chemistry when the tape began to roll. Impressed by recent Island signings Black Uhuru, Blackwell recruited bassist Sly Dunbar and drummer Robbie Shakespeare, the backbone of countless dub and reggae grooves, who could claim to be the finest rhythm section in the world. Alongside percussionist Uzziah ‘Sticky’ Thompson and guitarists Mikey Chung and long-time Marianne Faithfull cohort Barry Reynolds, suave Parisian keyboardist Wally Badarou brought European flair to the mix. The group had never played together but gelled almost instantly, producing in these sessions enough material for Warm Leatherette and its more admired successor Nightclubbing.
Warm Leatherette is often considered a rehearsal for Nightclubbing but in some ways it’s the most radical of the pair, because it unveiled to a shocked audience the new-look Jones, presented on the sleeve in stark black and white as a kind of sinister Pierrot by her partner Jean-Paul Goude. Shaded from the Caribbean sunshine, the projected mood is cold, hard and cynical after the gaiety of the disco years. This post-punk menace is all over the music, too, epitomised by Blackwell’s calculated choice of “Warm Leatherette” by The Normal as the first song to be covered. The grubby DIY electro of Mute boss Daniel Miller’s fetishised hymn to JG Ballard’s Crash is a world away from the designer luxe Jones was accustomed to, yet out of this collision between neurotic European new-wave and unflappable Jamaican groove she emerges a changed woman: the diva as Terminator.
She dominates The Pretenders’ “Private Life” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is The Drug”, extending and dubbing-out Chrissie Hynde’s song to make it her own. “When I first heard Grace’s version I thought, ‘Now that’s how it’s supposed to sound’,” Hynde said, no doubt pleased this also became Jones’ first UK hit. Renditions of The Marvelettes’ “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”, written by Smokey Robinson, and Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” illustrate the breadth of the material covered, while of the original songs, Barry Reynolds’ “Bullshit” has a certain insouciance. Having waded through the numerous 12-inch mixes and alternative versions stacked up on CD2 – all previously released – a dub mix of this synth-heavy cut would be a treat. The key tracks on this disc are the three echo-chamber dub versions of her freaky cover of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control”, which should have been on the album in the first place. Nor should the irony of that title go amiss, because after Warm Leatherette Grace Jones was very much in charge.
Q&A
Wally Badarou, Compass Point All Stars keyboard player
How easily did you all gel as a band for Warm Leatherette?
I suppose when we all realised we were not in for the regular assignment – ie reggae musicians doing reggae, and pop/rock musicians doing pop/rock – we felt there was a challenge to be won, to gain mutual respect and not to disappoint those who had faith in our ability. Chris Blackwell’s enormous charisma was key. He dreamed of the project, got us together, and let us go with no verbal explanation of what he was looking for. I guess he was as surprised as we were because he wouldn’t tire of telling us how the end results far exceeded his expectations. Things were not clear until we did “Private Life”: then and only then, the ever-growing mutual respect helped everything gel.
Had you met Grace before embarking on these sessions?
No, we met in Nassau. She came down to the studio with Chris and it was the first time I saw those two. I was busy setting up the keyboards, so I don’t recall having been formally introduced either to Chris or Grace. By the time Sly’s drums were ready, Chris played the “Warm Leatherette” cassette and we started working out arrangements – no further conversation.
What made the Compass Point Allstars special?
Chris Blackwell’s spirit, period. Without much explanation, he managed to get the best out of each of us. Then the bass and drums’ fantastic drive could meet the rock guitars and the sophisticated keys in a very special way: powerful and sober, thanks to Alex Sadkin’s philosophy of making everything sound pristine from the word go. Things never got overproduced, because it all sounded like it was mixed before we ever finished the overdubs.
INTERVIEW: PIERS MARTIN
Speaking Uncut in 2002, Kris Kristofferson recalled his experiences shooting Heaven’s Gate for Cimino. “It was a wonderful opportunity to work with a good guy,” he told Damien Love. “A guy who really represented America in the whole scheme of things. And a wonderful canvas. Unfortunately, it...
Speaking Uncut in 2002, Kris Kristofferson recalled his experiences shooting Heaven’s Gate for Cimino. “It was a wonderful opportunity to work with a good guy,” he told Damien Love. “A guy who really represented America in the whole scheme of things. And a wonderful canvas. Unfortunately, it was done in. And Michael was collateral damage.”
The calamity of 1980’s Heaven’s Gate never quite left Cimino, who died on Saturday aged 77. The film – a majestic reconstruction of the Johnson County Wars – famously brought down United Artists as the director’s meticulous attention to detail slowly pushed the budget from $12 million to $38 million; it is also often cited/blamed as bringing to a halt the golden era of New Hollywood. Cimino’s subsequent career was littered with dead ends and false starts. After Heaven’s Gate, he directed four films – The Year Of The Dragon, The Sicilian, The Desperate Hours and The Sunchasers – but claimed he had written over 50 unproduced screenplays.
“You can’t look back,” Cimino told Vanity Fair in 2010. “I don’t believe in defeat. Everybody has bumps, but as Count Basie said, ‘It’s not how you handle the hills, it’s how you handle the valleys.”
In 2001, I received a phone call from Cimino. His debut novel, Big Jane, was coming out soon and I’d been trying to arrange an interview with him for several months. Although at the time he didn’t have a publicist, a contact in America offered to pass on to Cimino a letter I wrote outlining what we would like to talk about in an interview. The trail seemed to go dead; but one evening, just as I was about to leave the office for the day, my phone rang. On the other end, a man with a distinctive New York accent who introduced himself as Michael Cimino. He was unfailingly courteous – he insisted on calling me “Mr Bonner” throughout our conversation – and said he would be delighted to do an interview, but in exchange for a cheque for $1,000 that he would donate to an order of Carmelite nuns based in Mexico. For convenience’s sake, it would be best if I made the cheque payable to CASH.
We didn’t pay Cimino the money, but that didn’t stop him from talking to me for over an hour – off the record, unfortunately. It was essentially a one-sided conversation, where Cimino touched on everything from the on-set cocaine consumption of an actor during the filming of The Deer Hunter to a moving reverie on the achievements of the late John Casale. He also talked about Heaven’s Gate, which was then beginning to enjoy rehabilitation.
The great moments in Cimino’s filmography really are very good. The screenplays for Silent Running and Magnum Force, his directorial debut Thunderbolt And Lightfoot and then The Deer Hunter found Cimino incrementally building on his talent; but Heaven’s Gate was a marvellous leap forward – grand, distinctive, passionate.
Here’s Kristofferson on working with Cimino on Heaven’s Gate, from Uncut’s June 2002 issue.
“Chris Walken told me he would trust Michael implicitly, so that’s the way I went at it. Just do whatever this artist is trying to get done. Michael would tell me exactly what he wanted. He would go through the different motions, actually act it out: how I would wake up hungover, down to the point of hitting my head, where to do it. I’d never seen anybody do 53 takes I hadn’t messed up myself. But I did it without question; to the point sometimes I depressed myself. There’s a part of you that’s gotta feel, ‘Well, I’m just not good enough.’ Y’know. But, in general, I just figured it was his creative eye, and I trusted it.”
“The story looked so much like the America I saw around me, when Reagan was taking power. The people who were fighting in Johnson County Wars are still fighting there are guys who still really believe cattle are more important than people, y’know. And they, unfortunately, are the guys with all the guns and money and political power right now.”
“I didn’t feel the pressure around the movie – mainly because I was working all the time. The people who probably felt the pressures were guys like John Hurt, who didn’t have to do anything for months except hang around the bar at his hotel. And it really got crazy, I guess. But it was all in the name of art. I think Heaven’s Gate is waiting to be rediscovered, just like I think they’re eventually going to tell the truth about the Kennedy assassination – but I wouldn’t look forward to it being tomorrow. It’s more of a European film than what’s going on for American film right now. But someday, somebody will address the fact that it was about America and it’s relevant. Nobody did that back when they assassinated it. They just talked about Michael’s arrogance and bloated expenses.”
June 1970. A rejuvenated Elvis Presley arrives at RCA Studio B in Nashville wearing a flamboyant black cape and carrying a lion’s head walking stick. His business, though, is to reconnect with the long-lost roots of his music; to create a remarkable album, Elvis Country. “I was wondering,” he ...
The musicians came home in the small hours of June 8, many stunned by what had transpired. “It was like you’d just played four quarters of football and you won,” says Putnam. “Everyone’s gone, and you’re sitting alone in your car, and can you get home without hitting a tree? It was exhilarating exhaustion.”
The evening of June 8, they went back to RCA Studio B. It was as if the previous night’s session hadn’t happened. The five songs they recorded – “There Goes My Everything”, “If I Were You”, “Only Believe”, “Sylvia” and “Patch It Up” – were the usual hotch-potch of mid-tempo ballads and love songs. They had completed 35 master-takes in five nights. Presley left Nashville shortly after. On August 10, he began what Colonel Tom Parker dubbed ‘The Elvis Presley Summer Festival’: a month-long residency at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, filmed as Elvis: That’s The Way It Is, another triumph.
At some point during his tenure in Vegas, the decision was taken to release a country album drawn from the Nashville sessions. On September 22, Elvis returned to RCA Studio B. Four new songs were added to the 35 they’d cut back in June. Only two of those – Anne Murray’s recent hit “Snowbird” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” – made the LP. But, as David Briggs recalls, the mood had gone: “James Burton wasn’t on that session, and we got Eddie Hinton, which was my idea as he was a great rock’n’roll player. But when Elvis came in and had all these sorta corny songs like ‘Snowbird’, it’s hard to make them anything that’s groovy.”
Presley lacked enthusiasm for the material. Even before they began “Whole Lotta Shakin’…” he told his band, “We’ve been doing it too long already.” However, David Briggs remembers that their fierce, authoritative take of “Whole Lotta Shakin’…” would come to mean a great deal to Elvis later: “This was just before he died, in ’77, when we were supposed to be recording an LP with just piano in Graceland. He used to like to listen to that up in his bedroom when I was with him. He played ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’…’ every day, ’cos he liked what Jerry Carrigan played on the drums. He wore me out, he must have played it 50 times. ‘Listen to this, listen to this!’ ‘I was there! I was there!’ We were just playing around on songs like that… we’d just go, ‘Jesus Christ!’ and start jamming. It was a way of getting away from all that stuff he didn’t like, the stack of bad songs that the Colonel had always agreed to do for somebody.”
Elvis Country was released on January 2, 1971, with the evocative subtitle, ‘I’m 10,000 Years Old’. It reached No 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 – the highest place an Elvis album would reach until his death in 1977. In his review for Rolling Stone, future Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick considered it among Presley’s best “since he first recorded for Sun almost 17 years ago… music that, while undeniably country, puts him in touch more directly with the soul singer.”
The surfeit of recorded songs would be spread through a further two albums, That’s The Way It Is and Love Letters From Elvis. “Mostly it was just, ‘everybody goes wild’,” remembers David Briggs. “It was like a big gang-bang there. The engineers were lazy, some of them, and they were too busy dancing in the control room rather than working on the EQ. It’s probably 10 per cent of what it could have been. And that’s Elvis – that’s the part that sounds great.”
Briggs also contends that 1970 was a pivotal year for Presley, both in the studio and during his ever-expanding Vegas residency. “A lot of that stuff is when it started going bad. Maybe being so constricted in Memphis, when he did that great album, wore him out. Maybe he just didn’t like to cut that way. Whereas before he’d sing softer, more in control and didn’t sing hardly any bad notes, that was the start of his going down with his vocals. Singing in Vegas could have been a big part of it – that brassy, hard singing above the orchestra.”
“It was a shared frustration with the band, that it went too fast and they could have done better,” counters Ernst Mikael Jorgensen. “But Elvis never cared for perfection, if the thing had the feel.” Elvis’ exhilarated vocal outbursts on Elvis Country set the template for the unchecked soul of his best ’70s singing, and the bombast of the worst. “He was in better shape to pull it off as a vocalist in 1970,” Briggs concedes. “It was more special working with him than anybody else.”
Back in Bonn, James Burton turns over the sleeve of Elvis Country and runs a finger along the tracklisting, before letting it rest on the title, “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago”. “If you go through all the generations of this guy’s music in his life,” he says, “he might well have been born 10,000 years ago. It was a natural, exciting thing, playing behind that voice. Playing all the hot licks, all at once.”
The drum kit used on The Beatles' recording of "Love Me Do" is up for auction for a starting price of £113,300 [$150,000].
The kit was played by one time Beatles drummer Andy White, who briefly sat in for Ringo Starr during the recording of the track. White was asked to re-record the hit with Star...
The drum kit used on The Beatles‘ recording of “Love Me Do” is up for auction for a starting price of £113,300 [$150,000].
The kit was played by one time Beatles drummer Andy White, who briefly sat in for Ringo Starr during the recording of the track. White was asked to re-record the hit with Starr on tambourine.
“This is a piece of rock history and there is only one drum kit that was there that day that this first track was laid down, the track that launched the Beatles,” explained auction house manager Michael Kirk to Reuters.
The Beatles drum set includes a letter of authenticity from White’s widow, Thea.
The lawyer who sued Led Zeppelin in the recent "Stairway to Heaven" plagiarism case, has been reportedly suspended from practising law.
Francis Malofiy's behavior as an attorney has been the subject of repeated judicial scrutiny, records The Hollywood Reporter, and will serve a suspension of three ...
The lawyer who sued Led Zeppelin in the recent “Stairway to Heaven” plagiarism case, has been reportedly suspended from practising law.
Francis Malofiy‘s behavior as an attorney has been the subject of repeated judicial scrutiny, records The Hollywood Reporter, and will serve a suspension of three months and one day for violation of “various rules of conduct” during a copyright infringement lawsuit surrounding Usher’s song “Bad Girls”.
During the six-day “Stairway To Heaven” trial, Malofiy racked up more than a hundred sustained objections and multiple admonishments from Judge R. Gary Klausner.
After the jury ruled in Led Zeppelin’s favor, Malifoy said he lost on a technicality and hinted at an appeal.
The suspension only applies to the state of Pennsylvania, where the Usher trial was held, but could also affect Malofiy’s work in California.
Bruce Springsteen has recorded a new introduction to the audiobook edition of Ron Kovic's anti-war memoir, Born On The Fourth Of July.
In the foreword, Springsteen reveals how he first discovered the book in 1978 – two years after its original publication. By coincidence, he met and befriended Ko...
Bruce Springsteen has recorded a new introduction to the audiobook edition of Ron Kovic’s anti-war memoir, Born On The Fourth Of July.
In the foreword, Springsteen reveals how he first discovered the book in 1978 – two years after its original publication. By coincidence, he met and befriended Kovic who brought Springsteen to a veterans’ centre in Venice, California. The experience inspired Springsteen to stage a concert to benefit the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and the Mental Health Association in Los Angeles in 1981.
Springsteen’s foreward features on a new audiobook edition of the book, which will be released on July 4 to mark the book’s 40th anniversary. It also features the narration of voice actor Holter Graham.
