Bag O Singles

Written by: David Harrison

July 24, 2008 · Filed Under Releases, Review · Comment 

CDs build up on the kitchen table until I can find a time to ignore all those people who pay me to work. In a desperate attempt to find something new and exciting for Beef Warehouse’s set at Latitude here are the kitchen table files.

Nelson – You Can’t Stop
Saw these guys at the ICA last week. I was wondering why these good looking posers weren’t hounded out of town. Upon realising it was a French band I understood why the pint size poser was cool. On the strength of that bought the single: BORING indie stabby schmindie. Try again Nelson, there were really good tracks there, alas this isn’t one of them.

The Shortwave Set – Now Til ‘69
For some reason I assume the Shortwave set are to be Indie and ignore the bleeder first time round. Then a rare glance at the accompanying blurb reads ‘produced by DangerMouse’, ‘Swirling Psychedelic’. Ooh pops in the player.

Not psychedelic, not swirling, not produced with any particular quirk some bleeps in the background. Oh bugger pass me the Peter Bjorn and John album and lets slot this track in there as another album filler.

Get Well Soon – If This Hat Is Missing – I Have Gone Hunting
This record is built with the right amount of British cynical humour that is proper for a band. The vocalists are a pleasant surprise giving us a ‘Shoot Baby, Shoot Baby’ in the background. The cavelike growl (as in Nick not Man) of the vocals are hard to hear. It isn’t breaking moulds but it isn’t exactly ruining them either, that was a rubbish on the shelf kind of comment.

Wired Desire – Barely Illegal
What do we think of bands trying to invoke the great god classic hard rock? Airbourne do quite well although when AC/DC turn up next year not sure anyone will remember. Nobody dare mentions The Darkness and their flash in the pan. Def Leppard hasn’t always been the stadium tour they are doing with Whitesnake. The Datsuns where the darlings of a month way back in 02. Then you have these cats Wired Desire. First Track: GnRish Second Track to Third Track AC/DC in short it is barely credible.

The Levellers – Before the End
Thursday at Glastonbury I must have been asked 20 times if I was going to see the Levellers. Maybe only in mediawank London we don’t care about the Levellers and are we totally wrong? Yes. Before the End is a beautifully tender track. Very Touching.. In fact it seems to be a love song. If you didn’t like the Levellers before you probably still won’t but are you sure it is because of them?

Solange – I Decided
Sweet saccharin pop this isn’t aimed at me I can sense… The jinky Jangly piano is almost madness like with a disco stomp underneath. Pharrel Williams written apparently, she is a Knowles it is all top level US pop family at work, made for writhing around on MTV. X factor vocals that sometimes feel a bit tuned sit over the top of by no means classic pop song. Not offensive but not much of anything, will probably sell in its millions.

The Music – The Spike
Remember watching The Music at Homelands a few years on the trot wondering what the fuss was about. Years on their dance rock seems as stoic as it did then. Haven’t they been listening to music in the last few years? That Justice album, the intensity of the Unkle album. I have a funny feeling they didn’t. If anyone wants below par nineties sounding indie dance crossover you can have it.

Bloc Party - Mecury
By far the record of the week. Love the intro bit weird and easy to mix, when the tune kicks in it is almost keyless, this is a good thing. Bit of a move from previous stuff, but then that is ace as well as can’t say got Bloc Party. This went down a stormer at Latitude last week. Turning right everywhere The Music track goes wrong, this is the indie rock dance crossover for 2008 and definately not Indie landfill.

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Taking Stock of Glastonbury

Written by: David Harrison

June 29, 2008 · Filed Under Allegedly, Live, Review · Comment 

Jack Penates and friends rubbishLets take stock of the 5 days in that Beavis’ guys field this week:

Found

  • Some new friends
  • One orange torch
  • One big smelly but well fitting coat
  • A Tent (there were a few available)
  • Someone called Shuan gave me £60 to buy/steal my megaphone then buggered off without it.
  • Someone gave me £50 for helping them up on stage

Lost or Stolen

  • One Bakerlight Handset that had been rewired as a headphone for mixing made by my missus she is very very angry about it.
  • One Mini-KP Kaospad a bunch of leeds and rechargeable batteries
  • Maybe a very tasty bunch of CD’s (not sure yet, a bit too scared to look)
  • One hat with horns like the devil or a cow
  • One set of oversize shades I bought on holiday
  • Dignity on Dancefloor

This is the reason why I didn’t want to go - it costs so much to go to Glastonbury, both personally and financially. In time effort, hard cash, and your best party kit that gets stolen. I always end up losing out. If you found the retro phone handset/kaospad or CD’s, please get in touch will give you hard cash.

TOP ACTS

  • Manu Chao
    Where have you been all my life, we wanted ‘Bongo Bong’ though.
  • Black Mountain
    Ah someone booked a rock band! Aces! Call out the beardo’s! Loved the end of their set - “We are going to play one more’. Cue enchanting 15 minute pink floydesque physcadelica. With some very pacey stage managers.
  • Neil Diamond
    What happened to ‘Girl You’ll be a Woman Soon’? Or ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’? We don’t care about the god songs on the new album. May I also suggest learning the name of where you are: “hellooo Glastonberry”.
  • The Banjo Circus
    The smallest Banjo Circus in the world ever! Made me believe I can do acrobatics. And remind me why redheads are the boss.
  • Trash City
    The random trance of trash city – imagine finding a flaming mad max baddie headquarters at 4am full of crazy midlanders. Could of done with some Lionel Richie though throw a random smack in the middle of it. Nice to meet a 60 year old raver though.
  • Newton Faulkner
    Until recently thought that white guys in dreads only should be allowed to a) sell falafels b) do the lighting rigging, I will now add c) Sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to a billion teenage girls with a load of acoustic guitar gimmicks to that list

TOP GRIPES

  1. Glastonbury is full of bullshit and double standards: it’s like getting out of a prison to get in, messages of peace love tidy up and happiness. But all the punters leave it like a dump - disgusting.
  2. Music seems to be painfully music-industry indie-based, not that much experimental music on the main stages. Doesn’t really support the genuine alternative scene in that respect. Feels like a marketing exercise in the same people making the big bucks and getting the exposure.
  3. The big band areas of burger bars and gurning idiots that really need a mirror put in their faces.
  4. Now combine 1 to 3 and you have Jack Penate and friends - (allegedly - legal Ed). They were camped near us. They were rude, self-important on coke (seemingly) and some other camper spotted a lovely crackpipe. They left their camp really dirty and didn’t tidy up anything. Probably got paid a relative fortune and treated everyone around them and the farm with total disrespect. This is the mindset of possibly every fouth camp that didn’t tidy up, got wankered, took drugs and then left everything in a field. Spoilt twats deserved a kicking and offered them it too. Not surprising they snuck off in the morning, one of them even walked off while in his tent so ashamed on his comedown.

Maybe it is time to call it a Day – the Message isn’t working

It is more of an issue now then a spare ticket being sold here and there, of course it is reflection of a wider throwaway culture. But in the build up to Glastonbury I think the touting talk/Jay Z talk/Tent Peg talk all come back to one thing. Respect for everyone on site and that disposable culture can’t be maintained. I would find it hard to justify putting on the festival if I owned it. Why not just have a smaller more sustainable festival?

You can’t organise it and then have some very token gestures on charity donations. There was a sign somewhere that said ‘not just a marketing gimmick’ - but I think Glastonbury’s green credentials are the biggest marketing green gimmick of all time.

How about not having 200,000 burn rubber, fire, petrol, use plane miles, and have endless lines of cars coming to a field? Surely that would be the most effective manner to ‘all do our little bit’, or ‘be kind to the farm’. Maybe I am being grouchy and I have had a lot of great times at Glastonbury, but with every year it seems more hypocritical even having the festival on at all.

So if you have to have another one - this is a festival with almost 200k people every year, about a quarter of them working. So cooking food, sucking poo, performing on stage, making a Wickerman…it seems possibly a third are just there to get ‘tarded up on drugs, steal shit, and then leave it all behind when they pop off back to suburbia. Maybe the festival needs to become a tad more militant?

If everyone was involved, then would they respect what you do more? How about Burning Man’s theme, lets ban money on site, let’s take away the bars, let’s take away the burger vans, let’s take away the headliners and the expensive hitters. Let’s all get involved, get up there on a Wednesday and make some reason to barter for food/drink/entertainment. Let’s ban petrol generators and electricity on site. Let’s all get involved to make it work. Let’s have a production train or two taking the kit off and on site. Let’s make the BBC take down their glittery production. “Get into the festival or don’t turn up” should apply from top to bottom.

Whatever happens, something has to change as the state of the site was unacceptable to do it like this again.

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Love Music Hate Racism

Written by: admin

May 1, 2008 · Filed Under Live, Review · Comment 

Most of us here at Music Towers are like the Wicked Witch of the West – the prospect of going out in the rain makes us curl up and melt. So when the weathermen predicted dark clouds over London last Sunday, step forward our new guy, Tom Gibbons, for the Love Music Hate Racism Carnival:

Despite a stinking hangover, yours truly dragged his arse to Victoria Park in London on Sunday, to check out the 30th Anniversary of Rock Against Racism – an Anti-Nazi League ‘music festival’ which has renamed itself Love Music Hate Racism.

Upon entering the regal gates we were aurally assaulted by some ANL activists with megaphones, and handed a year’s supply of roach material, cleverly disguised as ‘Vote For Me’ flyers. On May 1st, Londoners will elect both the Mayor of London and the 25 members of the London Assembly, and what better way for ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone to finish off his campaign than with a rally….err….music festival.

It seems that a large proportion of London was camped just outside the entrance to the festival, drinking their cheap booze and such, and after negotiating our way through the midday mayhem we found a friend covered in mud, grinning like a mad man. He’d just been ejected for doing a running ninja slide under the gate, armed with enough booze and drugs to knock-out a small elephant. Surely that’s par the course for a music festival? For an Anti-Nazi League music festival in London, the security were going about their business in an ironically fascist manner. After some full-cavity searches were done with, it was over to the main stage for some music. Except Ken was talking – we were his “brothers and sisters” – and he only just stopped short of “I have a dream……”

When the music did arrive the acts on the main stage didn’t last long. It was one or two numbers and on with the next, and no-one in the crowd had a clue who was playing. So we bought a programme, which gave you a nicely illustrated line-up…but no stage times. Most performances - particularly from The View - were lacklustre and there was a less atmosphere than the aroma of one of Neil Armstrong’s farts trapped inside his spacesuit – mainly down to the bizarre and short performance arrangements, which were interspersed with political sound-bites from Ken and co. Just as the procession of politicos was becoming tedious, it started to rain.

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