Category Archives: Live!

Gig reviews

Malawi Mouse Boys
27
Jul

Malawi Mouse Boys – Boogaloo, Highgate

Thursday 25th July

Musical influences between the First and the Third World go in both directions. For every whiteboy English R&B band of the sixties lifting old blues tunes from the Mississippi delta there’s an Indian band doing playback covers of The Beatles.

See me a Paul “Oh No, Hide The Rhythms, Quick” Simon scouring South Africa to rejuvenate his career and I’ll raise you Biggie Tembo of the Bhundu Boys covering “Hotel California” with passion, love and a complete absence of irony.

Music is music, all musicians are influenced by what they hear and in a shrinking global community the Malawi Mouse Boys are prime examples of this.

The name is not some cute gang moniker, referring to the day-job the guys in the band have held since they were boys. They sell mouse kebabs on sticks to passers-by at the side of the road, mice being something of a delicacy in Malawi.

 

Last year they recorded an album produced by Ian Brennan (Tinariwen), recorded mostly outdoors in Malawi.

The album is wonderful, music that relies purely on passion and emotion to carry it through. It’s basically an African gospel album with a stripped-back sound and straight-up Christian lyrics which both hark back to a previous age. The musical palette also encompasses loping old-school reggae rhythms and  some unexpected, and welcome bluegrass notes. It does get a little but samey towards the end on first listen, but stick with it – the beautiful vocal interplay improves on repeated plays.

Tonight is their first ever gig in the UK as they prepare for an appearance at this weekend’s WOMAD festival.

Jaw dropping. Four guys from Malawi on their first day abroad, let alone in LDN. They’ve been shopping in Camden Market and  have bought Wonderstuff merchandise. I know Kenny Rogers and the Eagles are huge in Africa but Miles Hunt and the boys? Weird …

Legend has it that there were only twelve people at the first British gig by  Zimbabwe’s Bhundu Boys circa 1987.  Social media and the release of the debut album last year mean the Mouse Boys have a much larger audience for their foreign debut. The Boogaloo is pretty much packed. An enthusiastic, encouraging crowd is here.

Instrumentation – two guitars, one home-made. But it’s the voices that grab the attention. They begin their first gig away from their home country with an accapella number, a clear, confident statement of intent.

Lead singer Zondiwe Kachingwe has a sweet voice reminiscent of Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops but it’s the vocal interplay between all four band members takes the music to another place.

Four strong, beautiful voices singing close harmonies with that incredibly “up” quality you hear in the likes of Toots And The Maytals,  and the Beach Boys – and, it has to be said, driven by religious belief.

The devil has the best tunes? Nah. Theres a subject I need to return to some time…

Public Service Broadcasting
3
Mar

Great Torrington, North Devon. Friday March 1st, 2013.

In 1646 the decisive battle of the south-western campaign of the First English Civil War was fought here. It marked the end of all Royalist resistance in the West Country.

Since then, very little has happened. Until this evening. Tonight, Great Torrington finds itself once again on the map as it plays host to a performance by Public Service Broadcasting.

Public Service Broadcasting are a London-based electronic musical ensemble comprising J Willgoose, Esq on guitars, computer loops and keyboards and drummer Wrigglesworth.

Currently performing a number of installations at venues up and down the country that are, until now of course, “off the beaten track” , so to speak.

Each musical item served up for our delectation this evening is accompanied by black-and-white video footage, each a veritable montage from Britain’s past – but this is no simple exercise in nostalgia.

Far from it.

For in an age where all respect for authority has been lost, some would say rightfully, where are the young to find moral guidance?

Public Service Broadcasting have concluded, as have many of us, that this can and must come from an examination of Britain’s past – and they do this in a very clever way, by superimposing images and voices from the past over the dance beats that young people find so compelling.

Three examples of this are provided below.

The spirit of the Blitz is commemorated with the defiant “London Can Take It”. Sinister air-raid sirens sound over the familiar English church bells as a comforting voice ensures us all will be well.

Next we have “Spitfire” – a truly inspirational tribute to the aircraft that won the Battle Of Britain.

And finally, one of the ensemble’s newer pieces, “Signal 30”, a stark warning to be safe when behind the wheel of a car, which is more timely today than it has ever been.

All these numbers and many others are performed this evening with elan, éclat and – always – with gravitas and dignity.

Mr Willgoose and his trusty drummer do not deign to engage in futile exchanges with the occasional yahoo who dares to “heckle” them. Instead, these fellows are made to look pretty silly by electronic means – more I shall not say, as this is all part of the show.

It is my fervent hope that every man, woman and child reading these words should soon attend a performance from Public Service Broadcasting.

They are currently engaged in travelling the length and breadth of this sceptred isle, so, as our American cousins might have it, they will most certainly be coming to a town near you soon.

Furthermore, the ensemble’s debut long playing record will be released on May 6th, 2013, and should be available from HMV and Woolworth’s, as well as from your local independent record shops.

In conclusion, may I thank Messrs Willgoose and Wrigglesworth for such an enlightening evening and assure them on behalf of all present that their stated aims to Inform, Educate and Entertain have been met – indeed, exceeded.

God Save The King.

Public Service Broadcasting website

Dutch Uncles. New Favourite Band.
19
Jan

Dutch Uncles – Rise Records, Bristol – Tuesday 15th January 2013

With HMV going into administration this week, the importance of places like Rise Records in Bristol cannot be overestimated.

On two floors in the trendy student area of Clifton, it has now undergone a refurbishment in which the ground floor is now a coffee shop, with the excellent music stock now limited to the first floor.

I won’t go into full details but just as an example, their Rockabilly section, as well as including the 50s and 60s classics, also includes The Cramps, who usually get incorrectly lumped in with Goth.

These guys know what they’re doing.

The other crucial addition is a space at the back of the coffee shop that turns into a music venue with a capacity of maybe 200.

This seems to be an excellent template for how independent record shops can survive in the current climate, and more power to them. They’ve announced loads more similar events – if you’re in the Bristol area check ’em out –  Rise Records in Bristol and support your local indie record shop

Much like the Metropolitan Police back in the day counting people on demonstrations, I’m not great at estimating the size of crowds but there seem to be around 150 people here digging the magnificent sounds of the first buzz band of 2013, Dutch Uncles.

They’ve been around for a few years, putting out a couple of albums and building a bit of a following and some airplay. In an era where bands come into the public eye far too quickly, before they’re the finished article, this is a fine old-fashioned way of doing things, very much in keeping with the band’s stated love for 70s Prog and King Crimson in particular. Bands were allowed to develop in those days.

This is one of a few in-store gigs the band is doing to promote it. The deal is, you buy the album on CD or vinyl and you get a download code and two tickets to an in-store. Being as how I’m very old, I went for the Gold Vinyl option at £13, and to be honest I’d have paid that for one gig ticket so it’s a bargain.

I haven’t been to an instore gig for a while, and they can be hit and miss depending on whether the band sees it as a contractual engagement they’d rather not do or a proper gig. Dutch Uncles are firmly in the latter category.

They play for a good hour, tight, organised, effective. There is even room for some serious freaky dancing from lead singer / pianist Duncan Wallis. I need to see what he does on a big stage, dude’s got moves! Imagine Martin Fry of ABC without such an industrial consumption of pies.

They start off with a couple of hits from previous LP “Cadenza” before playing the bulk of the brand spanking new “Out Of Touch In The Wild”.
There are a lot of complex songs on OOTITW, but all are played with panache and brio. The singles “Fester” and “Flexxin” get the biggest cheers, having been featured on Radio One, or so I’m told.

The band wear their prog and art-rock influences proudly, but these songs are so much better, catchier and more danceable than anything King Crimson or Talking Heads ever came up with.

There are bits that remind me of Van der Graaf Generator, Japan, Neu!, Grammatics and XTC. As influences go, you can’t get much better than that for my money.

Often, particularly with complex songs, the trap for a band when playing live is to lose the subtleties and speed up too much. Dutch Uncles, on their third album, do neither of these things. Indeed, the songs are given new depths and meanings in a gig context – I’d love to hear a live album from them some time.

Meantime, I’d recommend the album to anybody with ears.

Dutch Uncles website

 

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO – 1962 Part Four
30
Dec

December 30th, 2012

This is my interpretation of what might have appeared in John Peel’s Listeners’ Festive Fifty in 1962, had he been working for the BBC at that time.

We’ve reached numbers 20-11.

20. THE TOKENS – The Lion Sleeps Tonight

One of those songs everybody knows thanks to The Lion King.

Originally written and recorded in 1939 by South African singer Solomon Linda, it is said to be about Shaka Zulu, the Zulu king who resisted the European settlers in the nineteenth century. Much like King Arthur, he is said to be sleeping until his country’s hour of greatest need.

There were countless versions of the song both before and after The Tokens took it to Number One in the US charts – the Karl Denver Trio had a good go at it. I first heard it performed by Miriam Makeba on one of my Dad’s
LPs, so that’s always going to be the definitive version for me.

Tight Fit were to take it to Number One in the UK in the early eighties, but we can, I think, draw a veil over that.

19. THE SHADOWS – Wonderful Land

In pop histories of the sixties, the Shadows are (ahem) overshadowed by the group from Liverpool that came along just after they did. But in the early sixties they were massive. This record stayed at Number One in the UK for eight weeks, longer than any other record in the entire sixties, although I suppose you could argue that just proved what little competition they had.

This is a majestic, atmospheric record that lives in your head a long time after the final fade-out. Hank Marvin’s trademark guitar sound is perfectly matched with the orchestral sweeps.

18. THE RIVINGTONS – Papa Oom Mow Mow

The Rivingtons had previously been known as the Sharps, and had hits both in their own right and backing Duane Eddy. This was their first hit after the name change and can lay claim to being the first garage record, certainly the first HIT garage record.

17. BOB DYLAN – Song To Woody

Dylan in wistful mode as he sings a living tribute to his hero Woody Guthrie, who he met in 1961 when the folk legend was in hospital in New Jersey.

Also namechecked here are Guthrie collaborator Cisco Houston and bluesmen Leadbelly, and Sonny Terry. It’s a clear indication of Dylan’s intention to acknowledge his influences, but also to move on and forge his own musical identity.

16. DUANE EDDY – The Ballad Of Paladin

Duane Eddy put his own unique spin on the closing theme to the Western TV Series “Have Gun – Will Travel” which starred Richard Boone. Originally a standard Western ballad, Eddy takes it by the scruff of the neck, cranks up the volume on the guitar and sets it to a proto-Ennio Morricone orchestral backing.

15. MARY WELLS – Operator

Mary sounds like she’s trying to imitate the vocal delivery of song composer Smokey Robinson here. Chugs along in a decent enough groove, but an odd choice for the imaginary listeners to make in 1962. There were far odder choices made by Peel’s real listeners in the eighties though. A clue as to this song’s unexpectedly high placing can perhaps be gleaned from the theory that the song was hyped into the upper reaches of this chart by Post Office workers.

14. MARVIN GAYE – Hitch-Hike

This song’s high placing is perhaps due to the fact that it was released very close to the Festive Fifty deadline in mid-December, and so would have been fresh in Peel’s listeners’minds.

Not perhaps as soulful or meaningful as much of his work, it nevertheless has a joy that is undeniable.

Co-written by Clarence Paul (who also wrote and produced the Little Stevie Wonder tracks listed elsewhere in this chart)

13. ISLEY BROTHERS – Twist And Shout

Their first big hit since “Shout” almost three years earlier. The song’s writer, Bert Russell, had seen Phil Spector produce a dismal version of the song by the Top Notes the previous year, and was keen to show Spector how the record should have sounded.

The result was two and half minutes of snap and energy, coming as close as possible to capturing the energy of a live performance.

Both “Shout” and “Twist And Shout” would later be covered by British artists to great effect.

12. HOWIE CASEY AND THE SENIORS – I Ain’t Mad At You

B-side to Twist At The Top. Unusually for British beat groups, they featured a black lead singer, Derry Wilkie, who actually gets a separate credit on the record as you can see from the Youtube vid.

The fact that the band started as Derry And The Seniors and ended up taking the name of the sax player tells you something about the relative business nous of the two men.

Often airbrushed out of Merseybeat history, they were in fact the first Liverpool band to play in Hamburg, paving the way for Rory Storm and The Hurricanes and others.

11. DUANE EDDY – The Avenger

Shamefully low chart position. Didn’t even make the Hot 100 in the States and failed to trouble the scorers in the UK. Snuck out in early 1962 while Eddy was in the process of changing record labels. Interesting to note exactly how much artists were at the mercy of the whims of the record company back then. Nowadays, he would have released it on a download from his website and his rabid fans would all have bought it direct.

Back at 8pm for the Top Ten. Place your bets on the Number One …

Goodnight Lenin, Good Night
1
Nov

Dry The River / Arcane Roots / Goodnight Lenin – Komedia, Bath

Wednesday 31st October 2012

There’s a great film called Goodbye Lenin! set in Berlin in which a loyal Communist Party worker falls into a coma. By the time she’s woken up ten years later, Communism has been dismantled along with the Berlin Wall. Her family, aghast at what effect this terrible news may have on her, take the only logical route open to them.

They pretend the Communists are still in power. They get all the old traditional East German tinned food brands in, and get an old Moskvitch car, and play videos of East German television to her so she doesn’t have to go through the potentially fatal stress of realising how much things have changed.

The opening band tonight, Goodnight Lenin, take their name from this film, and this is entirely appropriate for a band who wear their folky, early 70s hearts on their cheesecloth sleeves.

If the late great Sandy Denny had merely fallen into a coma after her fall in the seventies, and then come round now, she would recognise Goodnight Lenin as the inheritors of the seventies folk-rock trail, blazed by Denny’s band Fairport Convention. Come to think of it, you could also tell her truthfully  that Fairport were still going.

This is in no way a criticism – Goodnight Lenin are great. Funny how bands that take their cue from the sixties are regarded as cooler than bands who do the same with the early seventies – it ain’t necessarily so.

The evil forces that surround Bath, its one-way systems and its Stepford Wives vibe are powerful enough at the best of times, but tonight is Hallowe’en and it is particularly difficult to find a parking space.

So I miss the first half of Goodnight Lenin’s set, but see enough to download the new single 

Definitely a band to watch – they’re on tour all over the place in their own right in November.

The second band on is Arcane Roots of which I have to say

Then its Dry The River time. I was really looking forward to seeing this band, and there are so many things to love about them. The violin flourishes. The astonishing harmonies – ragged, discordant yet rich, reminiscent of The Byrds or even The Band. The bass player mops his hairy brow with a towl and makes a joke about the Turin shroud which goes down about as well as Donald Trump’s daughter bringing Chris Rock home. It’s Bath, mate. Its weird.

There’s this nagging doubt in my head though that they really really want to be Stadium, and they’ve decided the best way to do it is to do That Rocking Out ending that landfill indie bands like Kasabian and White Lies do. On every song.

Guys – enough. This is not where your strengths lie. After the fourth or fifth one droned on for an age, it became clear this was akin to the end of a football match where a team is winning 4-3, we are playing stoppage time and they are keeping the ball close to the corner flag to wind down the clock. It mars every song they do it on, which is a damn shame cos the songs are all good.

A word about the acoustics at the Komedia. Superb. From the balcony you often get distortion but not this evening. Well done, sound-man. Or woman.

And this is demonstrated beautifully by Dry The River’s fabulous encore, which instantly wipes out any cock-rocking that may have occurred earlier.

They seem genuinely surprised and made up that they’ve been called back for an encore, and they do something brave and different. They descend into what would be the mosh pit in a livelier town, and play a beautifully balanced acoustic song – hell, its practically a cappella. Once the crowd shushes up, and once the air conditioning is turned down, its a magical moment. I wish they’d do more of the quieter stuff.

Excellent evening. I walk back to the car past hordes of freezing, sodden students dressed as monks, butchers and nurses. There is a group of about 20 girls in slutty costumes and umbrellas belting out Oasis’s Wonderwall. Hey, maybe Bath has a soul after all.