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ALBUMS
Out went the staid and the bland to be followed by experimentation, innovation and psychedelica. A new era in music had arrived. The psychedelic sixties was a happening and this CD is the soundtrack of bands going on a musical journey to the outer limits and beyond. The fact that most people on this side of the pond would be unfamiliar with most of the acts on this low-priced 27 track compilation is irrelevant. 40 years on and the influence of bands like The Electric Prunes, The Seeds, Thirteen Floor Elevators and The Mojo Men can be heard in a lot of today’s Irish and English indie scene. Nuggets is an absolute gem, containing some stone-cold classics from a golden age in music.
Like all good albums, In Towers & Clouds, gets better with each listen, although tracks like Stop + Remember and Don’t You Ever are instant hits to anyone with a clean pair of eardrums. One aspect of this album that really stands out is the strong vocal performances. It benefits from having the band swap around vocal duties and together with the rich harmonies on display lends a real fluidity and freshness to proceedings. In Tower & Clouds is up there with The Kooks Inside In, Inside Out as one of the finest debuts of 2006.
Kasabian combine rock and dance music with more than a hint of psychedelia in a way that hasn’t been done well in a long time. The opening two tracks– Empire and Shoot the Runner– are the best on the album. Combining driving drumbeats, Zepplin style guitars and balls out vocals to make two cracking, rock and roll, good time, party songs. The album slows down a bit from there and gets more psychedelic and trippy. Still good, though a couple more tracks like the first two would’ve made it a classic. No matter how good their albums are, this is a band that really excels live. They must be one of the best bands I’ve seen live recently, frontman Tom Meighan’s stage presence is only electric and the band’s energy and love of music comes across in an explosion of everything live music should be. Fun!
Their follow-up is laced with more of the same. This is real good-fun pop music, except with a dark undercurrent in the lyrics. Full of cynical wit and references to love and death which is surprising considering their image is so glam and glitzy. Singer Jake Shears has suffered the deaths of family and friends and they have made a record “to cheer up ourselves. and the world.” You can hear their influences all over the album and Jake’s falsetto voice is reminiscent of the Bee Gees and really suits their up-tempo 70s disco era style of music. Other influences that keep popping up range from Elton John to Blondie to Leo Sawyer on the fabulous first single I don’t feel like dancing. Definitely one to get– if only to put on an have a bop to before going out on a Saturday night
PAUL SIMON
In 1957 (yes, that long ago!) Simon had his first chart hit as half of the duo Tom and Jerry with Art Garfunkel with ‘Hey Schoolgirl’ when they were both only 16 years old. Simon spent the following years travelling England. It wasn’t until 1965 and the folk rock trend of that year that he had his next hit. ‘The Sound of Silence’ went to number one as half of the duo Simon and Garfunkel, bursting them onto the scene. With haunting melodies (Garfunkel has the voice of an angel) catchy rhythms and simple but genius lyrics, Simon has a way of describing things, though sometimes on the manic depressive side, that leaves me in awe at how he can say so much with so few words. Over the next five years they followed up with such timeless classics as ‘Mrs Robinson’, ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. After Simon and Garfunkel split acrimoniously in 1970, Simon re-launched his solo career with the self titled album ‘Paul Simon’. Though not as successful as his work with Garfunkel it paved the way for his solo career with the top ten single ‘Mother And Child Reunion’. He followed up with two albums ‘There Goes Rhymin Simon’ and ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’, which included the number one hit ‘50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’. Over the following few years Simon went on to release a greatest hits album which contained the beautiful hit ‘Slip slidin’ away’ and co-wrote and starred in the film ‘One Trick Pony’. Simon’s biggest solo success was with the release of his ‘Graceland’ album in 1986, which incorporated South African rhythms with his own inimitable songwriting style, containing the hits ‘You can call me Al’ and the title track ‘Graceland’. This features one of my favourite lyrics of all time– ‘They say losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart’, simple but brilliant! He followed that up with ‘Rhythm Of The Saints’ in 1990, which was based in the Brazilian musical style. In 1993 Simon and Garfunkel toured together again covering his solo work as well as their own in the live show. His next album ‘You’re The One’ (2000) received a Grammy nomination for album of the year and most recently he has toured with Garfunkel again on the ‘Old Friends’ tour and just released another solo album called ‘Surprise’. Phew… some people just can’t fade into obscurity, can they? He is playing the Point Theatre in November. Make sure you catch him. It could be the last time.
JOHN PEEL REMEMBERED
It formed part of a month-long celebration of his contribution to his lifelong love, music. During this month, a series of events, gigs and recordings are taking place to mark Peel’s huge importance and influence on the independent music scene. Following his passing in October 2004, a lot of bands were quick to pay their respects as well as their dues to John. Many like Jarvis Cocker, P.J Harvey and Blur’s Damon Albarn admitted they largely owed their careers to the contribution John Peel made to them. It says so much of the irreplaceable qualities of the man that two years after his death, his late night show on BBC radio has been replaced by three different programmes and his non-musical programme on Radio Four, ‘Home Truths’, has now been scrapped in his absence. The ‘John Peel Day’ on Oct 12 has become an annual fixture on the BBC Radio One calendar. In Ireland too, Tom Dunne on Today FM got in the act with a special week of shows featuring bands that John helped championing the cause off. Derry’s Undertones were one band that John Peel loved. He went as far to pay for one of their early recordings, when the band was too broke to travel to London for the show’s legendary sessions. ‘Teenage Kicks’, was one of John’s favourite tracks of all time and even made an appearance, at his request, at his funeral service. Still today, Peel’s presence is still hugely missed. It is safe to say that no other broadcaster gave as much time to emerging bands as he did. For all the years he was with the BBC, he received at least a dozen padded envelopes every day, each one containing the hopes, dreams and recording of aspiring, unsigned new bands. He would do his best to listen to each one, then apologize profusely on air to all the bands he didn’t have time to hear. He would joke that he would probably meet his Maker while he was travelling in a car listening to a recording of a new band, all the time rummaging round the glove compartment for the band track listings and not noticing he was driving the car very quickly into the back on a large truck in front of him! I used to listen to John Peel’s show on BBC Radio One late at night from the early 80’s onwards. In the days before digital, the sound would ebb and flow but what would come across crystal clear was the genuine affection of the man for his music. People always associate Peel with indie music but his tastes were much more varied and eclectic. ‘Bhundi Boys’ from Zimbabwe were one of his all-time favourite bands and on any given show you were likely to hear hard-core Belgium house music, followed by death metal from Norway, before returning to his latest find: three skinny white boys with guitars from Doncaster. A key characteristic and perhaps the defining quality of John Peel as a broadcaster was the sound of his voice. He had a great voice for radio, distinctive, warm and with a sincerity singularly lacking in other DJs. He was also a very witty man, with a sense of humour as idiosyncratic as the music he played. In essence, he was a man difficult to dislike, and few if anybody at all, had a bad word to say about him. It was these qualities that drew so many people to John Peel and the reason he won so many awards and accolades as a broadcaster. ‘Faithless’ said God is a DJ. Maybe that’s true, but in heaven John Peel is manning the decks.
FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS
November December |
Back to the Front
Page
Nuggets Various Compilation
In Towers & Clouds The Immediate
Kasabian Empire
Scissors Sisters Ta-dah
There aren’t many artists that have managed to stay relevant and keep producing good music for nearly half a century… Paul Simon is one!
Earlier this year, Britain’s Radio One recorded the second anniversary of the death of one of its longest serving DJs with a special broadcast of John Peel’s final show.
October