Live: Bob Dylan @ The Camden Roundhouse, 26 April 2009
Written by: Dene Mullen
Maths was never my strongest point, but I’ve been doing some arithmetic lately. Bob Dylan began his recording career 47 years ago, in 1962, and since then he has released 33 studio albums. According to my calculations, this gives him 363 songs to choose from when playing live. And that is not counting the huge cannon of B-sides and other rarities that have spewed forth from one of rock’s greatest minds in the intervening years.
With this in mind, it was unreasonable for anyone except the most steadfast Dylanophile to expect to be familiar with every song performed at the Roundhouse on Sunday night. It’s fair to say some of the numbers he offered, such as ‘Po Boy’, ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’ and ‘Million Miles’, while decent songs, would not get the nod on many fans’ ultimate Dylan playlist.
As an artist who has performed thousands of shows over the years, it would also be easy to believe Dylan was simply going through the motions. This wasn’t the case though; he seemed to be enjoying himself, with the occasional harmonica flourish or impromptu organ wig-out matching the flair of his choice of headwear: a brilliant white boater. That familiar, thin-lipped semi-smile even snaked across his ripened features sporadically throughout the evening.
Unfortunately, that the Roundhouse’s intimate nature afforded me the opportunity to get close enough to one of music’s true legends to observe such minutiae was one of the highlights initially. Now firmly in his twilight years, David Bowie’s description of Dylan having “a voice like sand and glue” has never been more accurate. In fact, it’s more like cement laced with rocks. While this adds a certain gravitas to his latter-day positioning as an ultra-grizzled classic rock star, it also makes for a frustrating live experience.
This is nothing new for Dylan veterans; his style of delivery has veered closer to a throaty spoken word for a number of years now, yet it does make it difficult for the more casual Dylan fan to decipher lyrics, sometimes even songs. Indeed, it was not until he was almost halfway through ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’, one of my favourite tracks from Blonde on Blonde, that I realised what it was.
It was also apparent on a laboured and disappointing version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, which had been twisted and turned in every possible direction, leaving it almost unrecognisable.
With ten of his 18-song set coming from his last three albums, it was something of a surprise that he didn’t venture a single track from his newest release, Together Through Life. His recent creative upturn has coincided with Dylan returning to the music of his own youth, namely blues and pre-pop, and this blueprint was followed admirably by his band, all dressed from head to toe in black.
The man himself made no concession to pleasantries, positioning himself behind a keyboard for practically the entire evening and providing not even the merest hint of between song chitchat for his nonetheless captivated audience to hang on.
With 90 minutes down, a selection of songs either too new to register genuine delight or too mangled by Dylan’s voice and arrangements had passed. Then it happened. The jaunty organ intro took flight and immediately the mood inside The Roundhouse transformed. Solemn faces melted into smiles and regimented foot tapping became, in some cases, arms swayed aloft. The magic of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ engulfed us all and didn’t release us from its gorgeous, familiar embrace for almost five minutes.
It was one of the most inclusive concert experiences of my life. Genuine delight, almost tangible, swarmed this small pocket of Camden. That He followed it up in the encore with All Along The Watchtower only added to the glee, Dylan was God once again.
All of a sudden it all seemed worthwhile and the realisation that just one song could do this to an audience summed up the Bob Dylan live experience. We make this pilgrimage with the hope we will witness something spectacular, something unexpected, something classic. Experienced Dylan watchers know we are often disappointed and he certainly alienated the casual fan a number of years ago. It is also a great shame not to be able to decipher some of the greatest lyrics ever written but the aura is still there. Almost 400 songs and half a century later, witnessing Bob Dylan play live, particularly at such close quarters, remains one of music’s quintessential experiences.
In conversation: Alec Empire on Shivers, Patrick Wolf, and Financial Meltdown
Written by: Hugh Platt
When I first interviewed Alec Empire, over a sterile exchange of emails, I mentioned that I was glad of the arms’ length distance - no-one wants to find out that a musical hero, once off the pedestal we make for them, turns out to be a bit of a cock. So it was with some trepidation that I found myself sat next to my phone, awaiting a call from the man himself to discuss his new mini-album, Shivers, and the career-spanning ambitions of his forthcoming The Past-The Present-The Future tour.
I needn’t have worred though. As an interviewee, Empire isn’t what you’d expect. He is neither the ice-cold Teutonic electro-pioneer as his recent stage manner would suggest, not the perma-snarled noise warrior that carved Digital Hardcore out of the dripping wounds of the music industry during the 1990s. Over the phone, he chuckles as he dissects - at no short length - every question we can think to throw at him. After over 15 years of pushing the musical envelope in directions it was never meant to go, Empire can barely contain the enthusiasm in his voice as he describes his current projects, or the derision for corruption and - not once do we not think that he still means it.
So here, unabridged, is Music Towers’ most recent conversation with in Alec Empire.
The new mini-album, Shivers - why release it, when you’ve got a full-length album coming out later in the year?
“The idea was to release tracks that didn’t or wouldn’t really fit so much on the album. One of the themes for the tour is this past, present and future theme. We’re going to play a lot of stuff from older records, and also very new material that nobody’s heard yet. While in past years we’re always touring an album or something, maybe through two or three singles, so we really want to approach the show in a totally new way. That’s why we compiled Shivers a bit in that direction. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but its very different kinds of material. ‘Control Drug’ is a bit like the direction of the Digital Hardcore sound, but it’s not really DHR like used to sound, but it’s a song that in a way taps into that area. The last track, which is the German word for “dead”, ‘Tot’, this goes back to way when I started, it has its roots in when I started making electronic music. I did a lot of acid house and electro records. I approached this track with that kind of mindset.
“Shivers is a collection of very different kinds of pieces, which kind of describes my history in a way, but I didn’t just want to repeat myself and just do something that I’d already done before [chuckles]. I think some people might get a little confused with that approach, but on an album I couldn’t have really done stuff like that. So this was really the idea to get something out and stuff that people can’t really predict. I think at the moment there seems to be some confusion - some people think I’m doing like goth-industrial rock or something, other people think I’m doing breakcore, and totally different people might think I’m doing…ambient stuff [laughs]. I don’t know. It’s very strange. I think people have to get used to the idea that you can’t really put me into just one category of something.”
You’ve mentioned the tracks on Shivers wouldn’t fit on the new record, and that the new material is going to be a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven. What can we expect from the new record?
“First of all I have to say, even though if I’ve said it was a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven record, for a lot of people they might find it’s a…huge step [laughs] forward, because basically what I did for this record, and because I’m already in the middle of making it, its kinda like almost an insane approach [laughs] - not insane for me, but for other people, that’s why I have to laugh a little bit.
Watch the video to ‘On Fire’ by Alec Empire
“I really went back to a lot of really German themes, Nibelung, and the Wagner-type of themes. I wanted to make a record which was completely disconnected from pop music or rock music as we maybe know it from the last century. I think of lot of music that’s been made today is so connected to that one recipe of song writing, and the way records sound, and I was just getting so bored with it. Some stuff is synthesiser pieces which maybe ended up fitting more into a film or something, as it’s very epic and very big sounding stuff, which I was just getting into. In Berlin there was a lot of that minimal techno sound around for years, and everybody was trying to simplify music more and more to make it maybe have a wider appeal, but I was just getting really bored with it.
“One thing that we tried - and we’re going to do it over the summer again - there’s outside of Berlin there’s an old bunker from the war, and we went in and recorded some stuff there. It had a really strange and weird vibe. I just want the next album to be more, not just a collection of a bunch tracks or something, but to be one piece that works…almost like, y’know, Intelligence & Sacrifice? It was always seen as one piece of work, rather than as a selection of tracks, and this is kind of like the mindset that I’m approaching the new record with. But that doesn’t describe the sound of it. At the moment I’m into very precise and more cleaner sounds, which also have a lot of punch of course, and energy. But I think most of the noisy stuff I’ve done…in my opinion, bands like Justice, even they even include digital distortion sounds now, so to me, I don’t really want to go too much into that field anymore.”
You mentioned disconnecting yourself from traditional song writing - how do you do that in a culture such as ours in which music is so ingrained?
“It really starts with the way in your mind…I think that’s why maybe the link to The Golden Foretaste of Heaven this record, as at that time I was really getting into these Russian synthesisers, and I was playing for the first time in St Petersburg and Moscow. That brought back a lot of memories from when as a child when I visited East Germany for example, where it was just such a difference in the way music was perceived. Maybe the most famous record would’ve been maybe a Beatles song collection, for a lot of people in the GDR. They were just looking at pop music or rock music in a completely different way.
“Because I grew up in Berlin, I was stuck in the middle of both of these two worlds, and over the past maybe 10 years or so the West has taken over so much of most of the Eastern Europe countries. With something like film scores, everything non-Western is very interesting for me. When somebody maybe does an electronic soundtrack in Los Angeles, for me is very predictable as I know almost what it’s going to sound like. While if someone from Japan or something scores a really weird film,even if they would use some of the same instruments, they would just have a different way of looking at music.
“The next very important step of course is to not even want to please anybody. At the moment I hate that atmosphere in the music industry where everyone is so scared of not selling records, or of not selling out shows, and things like that. People’s sense of themselves is almost being taken out of the music-making process, when it’s just about ‘how many people can I please with one thing’, or always looking to please the majority. For me, art and music, that’s not what they’re about. It’s almost at the peak of trying to make profits from music, while at the same time with the digital age and everyone just taking the music, it’s an important moment where we stand now.
“For myself, I’ve just made the decision, “okay, I can make music that does stuff for me”. Not just in the sense that I like the music, but that it challenges me too. And if that is commercial or if it’s not commercial, I can’t really make that decision”. The music scene is a reflection of stuff like Wall Street even, with the MySpace boards and everybody’s trying to fake their profiles, and make it appear on Last.fm like they have thousands of listeners. I just think, why even fake this appearance? For me, if I listen to music and only ten other people in the world understand it, that’s okay. Why do we have to always think about accepted by the majority? This plays a lot into writing music, how I approach music at the moment.”
Watch the video to ‘Too Dead For Me’ by Atari Teenage Riot
Do you not feel that an established experimental artist, you’ll always have a safety net of dedicated fans that will follow you regardless?
“Hopefully. The weird thing is that’s the feedback I keep getting. Even much later…sometimes we get emails, or people talk to me after shows, and they tell me that they now understand the record that I made ten years ago. They were angry - “why doesn’t this sound like Atari Teenage Riot…it’s so weird…is he taking the piss?” - but then they’ve said they see the structure and precision and the skill, if you want to call it that, much later. It’s almost like a language. It’s the same with books - you read a book when you’re sixteen, and then maybe read it again ten years later and understand it a whole lot more, and interpret it in a different way. I think with music it works like this as well, at least with my music.
“But I also know fans who hate that, and want me to make the same stuff over and over. One reason why I put this track, ‘Shivers’, on the EP was really to piss these hardcore genre-fans off! There’s some journalists over here [in Germany] once said to me [sneering] “I think the day you write a piano ballad, that’s the day which you should stop making music”. Of course, the next thing I put out, I put a long piano track on it! Of course it didn’t sound like a normal piano ballad - it was mainly in the sort of approach how maybe Cluster would have done it - but I feel really challenged when people try to tell me what I should do. And for myself - can I do it? I work a lot with piano when I write scores for films.
“It was the same when people in techno were telling me you can’t use guitars. And right now, it’s almost as if electronic music cannot live without guitar sounds, with that whole indie-dance thing. I think it’s very stupid to judge music or musicians in that way. We always try to go against that. I think it’s fun to see if you can pull it off. Of course, you also get a lot of shit for that [laughs] from these people who just don’t want to question you again. Some fans they would rather prefer that you always do the same thing so they don’t have to think about it again. With my audience, people like that fact, that it’s not always the same. I think that’s very different to other musicians somehow.”
Do you still feel like an underground artist?
“It’s very strange - I feel very connected to that way of thinking. I don’t see music in this sort of hierarchy, like this “person is more famous, that person is less famous” - to me it really only matters what it does at that point. I know musicians who are amazing but nobody knows their music almost. To me, that’s equal to something which is really successful at the moment. I really don’t think that matters for me.
“Of course if somebody says to me, ‘hey, what do you think about that project?’ or “do you want to get involved in that?”, very often I would say ‘yes’ to things where other people wouldn’t expect me to jump on to. I produced one track with Patrick Wolf that is not out yet, which is called ‘Together’, that is very melodic and very pop almost. Some people will think “why would he do that stuff?” Maybe that’s the underground mentality I grew up with all the time, when I started making records and playing shows. For me, to network with other musicians in very important. It’s not just a thing about thinking about combining forces to sell more records, or something like that, for me it’s really personal almost. When I meet younger DJs, they don’t have that mindset at all, but from the 90, you couldn’t survive without that way of thinking, of a connected world of other sound systems in other cities. You just had to be connected in that way, whereas at the moment a lot of people think “I’m gonna make money, I’m gonna get it from music industry. Make my money, take it out, then leave”. Which is very strange for me to witness that, but then I don’t really have to deal with that.”
You mentioned Patrick Wolf - it’s a strange collaboration, and a lot of people were shocked when it was announced you’d be working with him. How did that come about?
“Somehow he had come to an Atari Teenage Riot show years ago, which I then of course forgot. Years later, when we talked about it, about certain things that happened at the hsow, I remembered: “that was you?”. He had given me some music already back then.
“He played a show in Berlin, I think about two or three years ago, when The Magic Position came out. I got this message from Universal Records, which put out the record over here, and they were like “we have this artist who really likes you, and you music, do you want to come down to the show?” It was a bit strange, because as at the same time and in the same place, on another stage, Jon Spencer and Suicide were playing, so I was in the place anyway. I thought it was really boring that show there. It wasn’t the musicians fault - it was some kind of weird theatre kind of place, where the music just sounded kind of flat in my opinion. So I was going to see this other thing, and I was really blown away by the performance that he did. In this packed place, It was so alive. For me, the contrast couldn’t have been bigger, wider, compared to this other stuff which for me was the obvious show to go to.”
Watch the video to ‘Vulture’ by Patrick Wolf
“I saw Patrick without even knowing the music. I knew some of the early EP stuff that he had done, kind of programmed beats, almost like Warp or something, intellectual fucked-up programming. He would play strings on top of it and stuff like that. But the show that I’d seen was completely different, full of energy. And we talked about it, ‘yeah we should really do stuff’, and then it took quite some time - a year or something - for anything to happen. I sent him a track, and I didn’t hear back…. Then he came over to Berlin and we spent quite some time in The Hellish Vortex Studios over here. I think it was a really good collaboration as I think he wanted to push his sound into a new direction, and I think the whole Berlin thing was good. The way we approached a lot of the other material he was working on is that….there’s this kind of myth about Berlin, with Eno, Bowie, old synths and big reverbs and stuff…in a way it feels out of that tradition somehow. I don’t know why that is, but it’s maybe because that’s the Berlin I grew up in at the end of the 80s, middle of the 80s, where that kind of sound was really still around and important for people. The Patrick Wolf tracks, all the stuff that we’ve done are like very different from each other. ‘Vultures’ is more like a harder electro track that he really loved, but there’s also a track called ‘Battle’ which sounds maybe like what most people would expect from it, very hard guitars and very hard beats. It could’ve been an Alec Empire track, just with different vocals and I think that’s great.”
Talking about Past-Present-Future Tour - what made you decide to re-incorporate ATR material into the set?
“I really wanted to avoid that all the time. To me, it would’ve been…I just couldn’t. I felt with the Atari Teenage Riot songs, when Carl Crack died, and the way the whole thing ended, I didn’t really feel that I wanted to go back to that at that time. I think now, one reason, to be honest, the political situation made the decision for me. The past maybe six months, or even longer, I feel so angry about just about the banks and all that stuff. For me, I haven’t looked closely enough at the British situation, but the way people react in Germany it’s like…are they walking zombies? It seems like so many people don’t want to see where their problem is. A lot of these songs that we’ve written with Atari Teenage Riot describe it so well, what has been going on with the Iraq war, and they way the financial world is tied in with all that. To me it was “why don’t we play some of these songs?” I don’t even need to re-write new stuff, because we’ve had it.
“Also, what I quite liked about the idea was we have to re-work that stuff to see if it works now. The songs won’t sound so different that you can’t recognise them anymore, but it certain stuff had to be updated. I felt also distanced enough, it was the tenth anniversary of the May Riots, when we played the streets of Berlin, and it really made me think back about what has changed, how do people react to the political situation, and somehow I thought I can’t ignore this.”
Watch Atari Teenage Riot perform at the Berlin May Day Riots in 1999
“For example, a record like The Golden Foretaste of Heaven I would not have done this year, because it just not felt like it. I think the weird thing is that a lot of people at my shows now don’t really know Atari Teenage Riot so well. That’s the feedback I’m getting most of the time. People go ‘you played in this another band?” as they were just too young when it happened. Most people maybe when I started years ago, they started with Intelligence & Sacrifice. It’s kind of strange. We’ll see what the reaction will be, but we’re looking forward to doing stuff like that again.”
On the last tour, the vast majority of the set was the lighter, Golden Foretaste material. How do you marry the harder stuff up with your newer electro sound when playing live?
“I always remember when we once did a 3CD compilation called The Geist of Alec Empire, which was almost like a ‘Best Of’ from all Mille Plateaux albums I did in the 90s. I remember when we compiled it we were like ‘can we even do this? This might not even fit’. The weird thing is, when we compiled it, it made perfect sense. I find that very often with my music that even if one record feels to be so different from another one - maybe if you were to play them next to each other and you don’t know the context, it would be weird - but in a live situation, these things are much more linked together than most people would think.
“To give you an example, we played a show in Spain last month, and tracks like ‘New Man’ and ‘The Ride’ and harder stuff, completely was working very well next to each other. I think sometimes it’s much easier than some people think. And it wouldn’t like “now they’re going in one direction, then they’re going off like this”, it’s because there’s this signature on all of these tracks. I haven’t found this to be a problem so far to be honest.”
Watch the video to ‘The Ride’ by Alec Empire
On the subject of film scores, do you ever have difficulty in writing to someone else’s specifications, as opposed to following your own creative path?
How do you translate that into the performance of playing the instruments and stuff, it’s very complex. But I don’t find that a problem at all. I think its fun most of the time. I really like doing it. You can actually do stuff in films that you could never do in tracks that are supposed to be set to the radio or something. You can score a scene in a film which is very dramatic and very intense, something that even a more mainstream kind of crowd would think that it’s an exciting scene, while if [the score] would be played on daytime radio, they would all turn off the station. Maybe, that’s a theory. Sometimes the people run these things think maybe people are too stupid to be challenged, but I think films, even mainstream cinema, you can do stuff like this.
People thought with The Fast And The Furious when this Atari Teenage Riot song appears in this one scene…when we put [‘Speed’] out, most people were going ‘oh this is so crazy!’, ten years later it appears in a Hollywood film [chuckles]. Maybe it’s also got something to do with the way the images go with the music…but I really love doing stuff like that.”
So when is the full-length album out?
“We’re trying to really wrap it up as soon as possible. If we didn’t do the tour [laughs] then I’d say I’d finish it at the end of May (which is still the plan…), but the idea is to put it out the end of August, maybe early September. At the moment there’s no delay or anything, as most of the stuff is done.”
Apart from the upcoming shows, the album, subsequent tour…what’s on the agenda?
“There’s a lot of stuff! At some point Big Pink wants to come over to record more stuff here in Berlin. There is such a hype right now over them, they are always so busy that we’re always trying to figure out a date where we can all make it. [laughs]
“One project I really have to start working on, which might happen in Spring 2010 - but we really have to do all the work for it this year - is a theatre piece about Mozart. It’s going to be showing in Berlin. I don’t know if you know of the French performance artist, Costas, he’s slightly older than me, and performs very outrageous kinds of performances. There’s a very interesting screenplay that an author gave to us, which is basically a very confrontational story…you can’t really prove it, but there are certain signs that Mozart was abused as a child…so I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but a lot of people look at Mozart as a composer in that neurotic way, and you can’t really mention any negative sides, and it’s almost as if the bourgeoisie has completely absorbed that composer and that theatre piece is going to be insane. I’m doing the music for it and it’s going to be a really exciting project.
“Over here at the moment all the tabloids are so angry….there’s this film coming out, Chaostage - Days of Chaos - it this German punk film, and it’s starting this month I over 40 cinemas over here. There’s a very controversial scene where a cop gets shot. Now the government want to index the film already. Bild-Zeitung, it’s kind of the equivalent of The Sun in England, ran this really large article about how this kind of film should be shut down and stuff like that. I think at the moment it’s an exciting time as with certain statements people feel so provoked, they react in such an extreme way, it really feels almost like something is changing. People are so busy keeping things down, and to be active against so many ideas even, stuff like that. I’m working all the time.”
The new mini-album from Alec Empire, Shivers, is out on Eat Your Heart Out Records on May 8. Empire is also touring the UK before its release.
Alec Empire May 2009 tourdates
01 London Camden Underworld
02 Manchester Satan’s Hollow
03 Glasgow Ivory Blacks
05 Norwich The Waterfront
Hippy f**ks don’t care about your stocks, rent out your house buy a tent and join in.
Written by: David Harrison
In the last couple of weeks almost everyone one we know has/is about to launch something. Last year live music overtook recorded music for the first time and in a celebration of defiance against bankers/manufacturing/housing crisis let us share with you the wonders of our friends new projects in this years live calendar. If you can go along and support them, in return they will support you.
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The first man of France has just launched his 2009 Worldwide Festival and revealing his first artists that have been confirmed. This year’s Worldwide Festival down in Sete taking place between 2nd and 5th July. Laurent Garnier live feat ScanX + live band, Gilles Peterson, Diplo, Soil & Pimp Sessions Live, Todd Terje, Mocky live, Stereotyp’s Ku Bo Project, Sebastien Schuller live, LeFtO, The BPM. Many more are expected to join the party in the next few weeks. The full line-up will be announced towards the end of March.
www.worldwidefestival.com
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Sonisphere Festival has just announced a balls to the gravel lineup of heavy metal: Metallica, NIN, Mastodon, The Sword, Anthrax. Taking place throughout July and August in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Spain and putting the Knebworth’s first proper camping festival into the UK. What has this got to do with the price of fish? They have me doing the print artwork and words click here to have a look.
www.sonispherefestival.com
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The better half has got involved with a Norwegian festival which is continuing the theme of lets-not-fuck-around by just adding Slipknot to the lineup. What ‘trend’ predictor said that 2009 was about poppy sassy electro acts??? I ask you.
www.hovefestival.com
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Music Towers mate Gwen has launched the Europavox Festival, we got involved with these cats a few years back. They are bringing music and people from every country in Europe to explore each others contemporary sounds and possibly sexual preferences. It takes place in a lovely little town called Claremont Ferrand at the End of May with Bloc Party, I’m From Barcelona, Vitalic.
www.europavox.com
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Another buddie Marie is currently running the London Word Festival its second year of embracing the beauty of the word. With live performances from Phil Jupitus, Robin Ince, Bishi and yours truly - I will be doing doing a live version of my I Should Draw More blog this coming Sunday at the Vibe bar. Come and tell me what to draw!
www.londonwordfestival.com
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Also Beef Warehouse are currently scouring the slums of India for the countries finest tent maker as we are working on a new tent for festivals. Think of a festival within in a festival 2 parts fun, 1 part market. The working title is Beefy Melons Vintage Temple of Love and Gratitude. The idea to spread well being and love through festivals and encourage you to do good things, like dance with your dick out.
www.beefwarehouse.net
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Last but by no means least. Leon and his robin-hood-like merry gang have just put the finishing touches to their webmagazine all about festivals. They have gone for the all encompassing online fancy mag thing. I was asked to write an article about working for festivals and how to blag… Now that would be giving away secrets wouldn’t it? Read it here.
My Festival Feeling
Review: What happened last Friday 13th
Written by: David Harrison
I am four pints and in, and Todd are delivering great Melvinseque riff laden performance which ranty screamy lyrics from an out of control fella that gets down off the stage and joins the audience. Breaking the fourth wall of a gig he is throwing his preppy frame into the audience. People move back and i find myself at the front. He hurls himself about at the crowd, attempting to bring people down his long microphone lead caught underfoot. About three metres from me a bundle of people are on the floor. Reports say there is broken glasses and people being hit by microphones. He bashes really hard into me and being a big fella that is used to the mosh I stay upright.
It seems like that isn’t enough for our Singer of Todd who is actively attacking the audience. I don’t know what happens next but I wake up in the dressing room with him apologising to me profusely. According to the Drowned in Sound message boards It seems in the melee he had clothes-lined me and then in turned jumped down like the missing scene from the Wrestler, this either knocked me out or concussed me so I can’t remember it.
I wake in the dressing room I can’t see shit, did he brain me properly? My arm hurts like hell, everyone is fussing. A short guy in glasses is having a go at me for making a fuss and I demand he make me a roll up. Looking over at my arm I realise that.
A) My nice new expensive glasses have had a lens knocked out
b) My arm is hanging horribly wrong.
Assuming it wrongly it must be dislocated I call up the infamous Dr Tom. ‘Dr Tom, I think my arm is dislocated what should I do’. I enrol the whining short guy to my home-made surgery
‘You ready this is going to hurt’ Dr Tom says through the phone.
‘Get your helper to pull the arm down as far as it will go, then out and in theory it should pop back in’
Yank, scream, ouch, it flops back down in the same place, with only an increased pain.
‘Any other tips’ I ask Dr Tom on the end of the phone
‘Call an ambulance’
In the background Todd are still playing albeit without the Lead Singer who is getting increasingly agitated by the damage he has created. I tell him to go out on stage and don’t worry about me… ‘Finish the Set’ I demand, he refuses.
‘ I feel sick’ Todd’s singer says, whether it is because he is drunk or upset by the big hairy sasquatch screaming in pain that he caused. I am finding looking through one clean lens terribly difficult I shut my right eye.
‘Give me a roll up’ I demand somewhat unfairly from the short guy through my one eye.
Short guy gives me a roll up and Todd’s singer pukes over the side of the chair. The band carry on playing to an Audience that is slightly relieved that the speaker stack didn’t fall on their head.
At this point the manager of the venue and some security pile in the door. Put out those cigarettes… Oh yeah this 2009 smoking is forbid in venues. We put them out and I ask them to send somebody to look for my glasses lens and they ask whether I will need an ambulance, which they kindly order. They comment on the glass covered floor, It seems Todd’s Singer caused an awful lot of smashed pints as well, and almost knocked over a speaker stack.
Todd’s singer stops puking.
The big burly security guard sits me outside, and the preppy Todd character sits down and starts talking to me. I say this would be a perfect time for an interview, so start asking him questions about how why what and when, none of which the answers I can remember but took my mind off my limp and painful arm, he talks about himself a bit. I remember why I am rubbish interviewer, I couldn’t ever care less about what an artist has to say about their outlook on life. I just often like their guitar licks.
A hero barman turns up with my glasses lens and I enrol some random blonde lady that is passing by to pop them back in. Sitting in the back of the Ambulance alone, I realised it was Friday 13th. The ambulance driver continues to go along the idea of that my arm is dislocated, so queue another 20 minutes of trying to pop back in the unpoppable. Lordy this hurts, but what can you do but laugh, it helps to be on laughing gas at the time.
A month on and it is Friday 13th again. I am about to leave the house, enrolled into a boys night out to to go see The Watchman. It is weeks on and I am anything but laughing, Todd’s lead Singer has caused a lot of pain for his little show and I haven’t heard site nor hair of him or the band. People tell me I should pay attention to those TV ads that say ‘Had an Accident that wasn’t your fault’.
That same week a friend got hit by a HGV and I was in too much pain to make the trip to her funeral, I have since had a pretty invasive operation, been tanked up on morphine codine for weeks. Sometimes I wake feeling the skin around my 15 skin staples tightening in, feels like 15 little blades slicing me up. It is bloody weeks of torture, now afraid of infection I am on antibiotics combined with the painkillers. Suppose I have lost weight, I know there are a lot worse injuries and death out there and I count myself lucky, I really do. But can’t help wonder why I have been given this daily burden for a bands live performance.
Bangkok Rock: Jumpin’ Johnny Flash
Written by: Dene Mullen
The condensation runs down my bottle of beer, soaking the mat below. Despite the tricks that my eyes and ears are playing on me, my mind is still lucid enough to reassure me that I am not in the late 80s, watching a proponent of perhaps the most ridiculed musical ‘movement’ of all time.
No, it’s 2009 and I’m sat in the upstairs room of a huge pub in balmy Bangkok, along with about 10 other people, witnessing one of the most unbelievable performances of my life.
Anyone who has been to Thailand’s capital will tell you that, no matter how noble your intentions upon arrival – sticking solely to cultural wonders such as the Royal Palace and the magnificent reclining Buddha – eventually it will get you. And we’re not talking about an attack of Bangkok Belly after sampling the delights of the innumerable street vendors here either. No, what will lure you in, against your better judgement, is the infamous Khao San Road.
At times it resembles a particularly gratuitous street scene from one of those god-awful ‘documentaries’ that were so popular in the late 90s, sporting titles like ‘Mad Reps Get Fucked in Faliraki’. Yet at the same time, it has an unabashed sleaze and slight sense of danger, making it strangely thrilling to behold. While the natural warmth and exuberance of the locals only adds to the allure of the place.
After ignoring the advances of yet another helpful tuk-tuk driver who enquires whether I’d be interested in seeing a ‘ping-pong show, boss?’ (complete with finger-flicking-out-of-inner-cheek ‘pop’ sound) I continue my march toward a pub called ‘The Place’ which promises ‘Rock Show Tonight!’ on a billboard outside. Perching on a ludicrously high stool, I order a couple of Chang beers and try my best to get comfortable in time for the show. What greets me is beyond my wildest imagination.
There are four male members of the band I later find out are called Roadkill, and a female vocalist who totters onto the stage occasionally to provide harmonies. They are all Thai and the lead singer is perhaps the most outrageous human being I’ve ever seen.
Lunchtime on the Khao San Road:
His hair akin to the infamous Colombian footballer, Carlos Valderrama, and a personal stylist who seemingly has Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet DVD on a constant loop. I would also estimate he weighs roughly nine stone. When he addresses the audience, his English is pretty much perfect but has a strange pseudo-American twang to it. He says his name is ‘Johnny Flash’ and I barely stifle a laugh as the opening chords crash out of the sound system. Immediately, he is off; bouncing around like an ADHD-sufferer on the pop for the very first time.
In sharp contrast to the madman with the mic, Roadkill’s bassist is the kind of man who makes you feel relaxed just by looking at him. Baring an uncanny resemblance to Chief Bromden, the huge native-American in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his hunched frame hardly moves with the music but his nimble fretwork is what drives the music here.
Similar to Red Hot Chili Peppers in that respect, there is also something of the Kiedis in Flash’s rockstar moves. They are all clichéd beyond belief: the attempted aerial splits, the mic stand pushdown, even something resembling a Jagger strut but when he actually sings, his shoulders become scrunched up around his neck and he holds the mic with both hands.
They perform songs with names and lyrics so outrageous they almost transcend into genius, their self-titled paean to a lover who “wore me out, like roadkill” being a particular highlight. In amongst the senseless rock there are one or two softer moments, although they are as contrived as Aerosmith’s Armageddon theme tune, with lines like “I’ll run through the night, to hold you tight”.
It is clear this is Flash’s band and he is, obviously, meant to be the main event. Songcraft thrown unashamedly out of the window - along with taste - it is nevertheless hard not to feel something approaching admiration for a man who performs like he is headlining Glastonbury when he is, in fact, commanding the attention of five northern lads with ‘comedy’ nicknames on the back of their t-shirts, a couple more interested in getting to know the insides of each other’s mouths than watching the band, and two twentysomething blokes who had tans months before they even arrived in Thailand and are both the proud cultivators of those half-spiky, half-swipy haircuts so popular in the nightclubs of Essex.
Our man takes on Khao San Road after dark:
Aside from this beguiling cross-section of humanity there’s just me, and four bar staff. Not exactly Wembley Stadium. Yet this doesn’t stop Johnny Flash from expending roughly enough energy to power a small country for a week or so.
With ten songs down, Flash’s knife-on-glass screeches are punctuating a chorus which consists solely of the words “come and get me”. He begins swirling like a particularly lightweight helicopter before falling theatrically to the ground just as his drummer pulls up one stroke shy of demolishing one of his toms.
As someone who has spent far too much of his time watching jumped-up little pricks strut around tiny stages in London, dripping with cocksure attitude despite playing to a similarly small audience, Johnny Flash is somewhat refreshing. Unlike the school-night rock-flops of London town, this is clearly a guy who acts like he does because it comes naturally, not because he thinks it is what’s expected of him. His appeal is certainly kitsch in its most lavishly affected form, but Flash is intensely likable. I’m not advocating a return to the dark days of hair metal, but as I drain the last drops of beer from the bottle and leap to the floor from my stool, I can’t help but wonder whether the London scenesters would benefit from toning down the swagger and turning up the ‘flash’.
Interview: From laundromat to Morrissey
Written by: Sarah Holt
Los Angeles is a strange place. One minute you’re washing your smalls at the Laundromat, an hour later you’re interviewing Morrissey.
Local radio station Indie 103.1FM announced that the former Smiths icon was holding a rare TV conference ahead of his residency at the Hollywood Palladium.
A chance for Music Towers to infiltrate?
So, I sped down Sunset Boulevard; charmed the doorman, courtesy of my finest Leicester accent, and next thing I knew it was my turn to quiz Morrissey.
Morrissey had returned to Los Angeles for an unprecedented 10-day residency at the Hollywood Palladium. He would be the last artist to play there before the venue closes for much-needed renovations.
Dressed in a crisp, navy suit and Morrissey t-shirt, the man himself, backed by his band, showcased five songs – Let Me Kiss You, Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before, and new compositions All You Need is Me, That’s How People Grow Old and One Day Goodbye Will be Farewell.
The trademark poise, exaggerated swishes and arched eyebrows were all in place, so was he still enjoying touring? Because, um, sometimes Mr Morrissey it’s hard to tell with you.
“Deliriously happy,” Morrissey dead-pans back.
“I don’t ever call this, being on stage, performing. To me it’s quite natural.
“Performance is fake and it’s difficult for me to think of this as a show. Off stage, maybe that’s when I’m performing.”
Hmmmm. Not an easy one this.
Morrissey, now in the midst of a 177-leg tour, left LA to relocate to Rome last year, but the city still holds him in its thrall and vice versa.
At his opening show that evening, the audience scream at the intro of every song – maybe even before the first bar of The Smiths’ Death of A Disco Dancer.
They chant his name and there are gifts too, a handmade manga comic, and flowers, of course.
What is it about Los Angeles that raises a smile from the Pope of Mope?
“I still love it here,” says Morrissey. “It’s crazy, it’s insane but other aspects are more (pause) gratifying.
“I find it visually beautiful, I like the brightness and it’s glamorous. That’s what I needed.
“I thought I would last a year here but then the years flipped by.
“I’ve stayed in Italy for a long time but everything I possess is still in this city.”
In a world away from the dark Manchester streets of the 1980s that spawned The Smiths, Morrissey and his music are idolised by LA’s huge Latino community.
At his show, they out-numbered us aging indie kids by 10-1 – at least. Just so as you know, a film on the subject, Is It Really So Strange, explores the bridge that Mozzer has unwittingly provided across two cultures, brilliantly.
On the subject of his fervent LA fanbase Morrissey coyly says: “Well I’ve heard they love me, but I don’t jump to conclusions.
“But I can’t answer why I have such a big Latino following here. They like singers who are impassioned, they like crooners.
“I’m outside the mainstream, and the mainstream never let me in. When you write and create it’s important to be yourself and that’s what I always try to do.”
Time is up, and with that, he gives me another scrutinizing stare with his blue eyes, turns on the heels of his Italian shoes and whisks away into the sunshine of Sunset Boulevard.
http://www.myspace.com/morrissey
Posts are on hold for a while
Written by: admin
Sorry about updates slowing to a snails pace. A few things have slowed us down like MCPS wanting a fee for telling you about youtube clips. Earning money instead of kudos
… And going to see bands that break us into little bits when we dance.
Normal service will resume.
Thanks
MT
Warner Brothers: More Daffy Duck then Bugs Bunny
Written by: Mary Whitehouse
A friend lucky enough to be in Warner records the other week. Their band was being made an offer and telling them what Warner Records could do for them. Now Warner Records has had some of my favourite acts over the years: Mr Bungle, Mastdodon, Even Red hot Chili Peppers weren’t always f**king bilious. Having Bugs Bunny behind you can open a lot of doors.
But in this case, I would love to site a moment of delusional hyperbole. So back into the room with Warner Brothers: Daffy Duck and chums wheeled out a recent case study to prove to these youngsters that they were so on the ball. They told a case study on how they ‘broke’ Seasick Steve…
Christ on a bike with a bad tummy! Man alive… I wish I was there at that moment.
Was this the same Seasick that had worked his arse off playing every festival to rapturous audiences before they signed him? Was this the same Steve that already been booked for TWO Jules Holland News Eve Specials before pen was put to paper? Was this the same Steve of a Seasick nature that had already sold over 60,000 records in the UK on the independent label Bronzerat? Finally was this the same Warner hit squad that broke a guy that had already won Best Newcomer at the Mojo Awards the previous year before they had ever met him?
You do have to worry for a Major Label that uses somebody else’s work as their flagship case study to new artists.
Something For The Weekend: Secret Wars London Semi-Finals
Written by: Hugh Platt
Okay, okay - we know it’s only Tuesday, put we thought you could do with an early heads-up for the Secret Wars Semi Finals, taking place in London town this weekend. Imagine two street artists going head-to-head while everyone goes seven shades of apeshit-crazy to kickass music, and you’ve pretty much got it.
Our good friend, Session, is going to be manning the decks on this one, so you’ve got no excuse not to have a good time. Also: a credit-crunch busting £2 entry fee. If we weren’t going to be lost on a boat adrift outside Helsinki this weekend (no, really), then we’d be there like a shot.
Check out their official website for more details.
Feature: 60 years of 45s
Written by: David Harrison
A knock on the door and my loyal postman gives me a small square package, I know what this is. Killing a finger in the process in the excitement to get it open, a as new copy of Nightrain by Guns n Roses on 7inch.
Recently me and the other half (pictured) were in an antique store and found an old classy looking radiogram for £40, we took it home and fixed it up. Suddenly we had this classic sounding turntable and stereo for the price of round of drinks in a poncy bar.
In the run up to Christmas: skint like the rest of the country looking for something that would mean a bit more for presents. Thought I would check out Alan’s Records in East Finchley. An ‘Alanadins’ cave of vinyl if you will. If you want ANYTHING, it is likely he can find it, get it, or has it in some garage somewhere.
And not a computer or search box in sight.
Now each weekend is become punctuated with a trip into the record shop. Playing music has become more valuable. Found afternoons to ourselves sitting around with our little seven inchs examining them, looking to see who produced it, looking what year and when. Best of all they are cheaper then Itunes.
It gets more fun with one of those Numark portable turntables. Ok so I can’t fit my whole f**king record collection in my pocket. But I don’t want to! I want some morsels to be savoured one tasty morsel at a time, not spray painted all over every where I walk or at the back of a bus. Somebody spent a lot of time recording this song, we should pay time and respect listening to it.
So new years eve we are outside a pub with the Numark, a collection of cheese and classics on 7inch. We only had 45’s so we had to listen to a few more then once. Serving some illicit mount gay rum. I have another look in the Birdcage, ok the DJ is playing some non-descript 12 inch dance remixes. Oooh this might be hard.
I ask to play a half hour of cheese? He says maybe, I whip out the 7inch, 7inch vs a 12inch. 7inch in this case is showing dedication to the cheese. Straight Cheesy Flush beats 12“ Full House we are in.
You should of seen the people on tables singing Jennifer Rushes Power of Love. This would not of happened if I turned up with a poxy Ipod an adapter.
The most beautiful moment was requests,
‘Do you have ? Soandso by whatever’
‘No I have 45 songs, that is it, you will hear them all’
‘Well how about?’
NO, I have nothing but 45 songs, there is no search option, there is no interactive universal lets all be DJs about this. There are fourty five 45’s and that is it. When they are done I will go, get up then and play something if you want?
The ipod or mp3 collection is something that sits in the background when you are working. But the enjoyment of music is a pastime in itself, not something you have in the background to pass time.
Bill Drummond at a performance of the 17 tells us, the first time he went home with Strawberry Fields and listened to it again and again. Looking at the light in the vinyl, wondering how each sound was made and how this tune came to be. It was a day before he even realised it had a B-side. How he has been searching for that elusive moment ever since.
Now not saying you will have the same epiphany of putting a 7inch bit of vinyl on a funny oversized disc. Not saying it is practical or efficient. But if an ipod has all the convenience of a city Smartcar. Indulging in 7 inches is like driving a nice classic Morgan at the weekend…
…but without the need for garage, or any mechnical skills, or a driving licence, or Jeremy Clarkson telling you about it.
Lazy Hack: Pithy Links of the Day
Written by: David Harrison
We get so many links every day to check out, and write about. Got me thinking.
Why don’t I just attempt post them all up everyday with a pithy one liner, from paying about 10 seconds attention to each one.
So here is a selection of what PRs tells me is cool today.
This is a cool animation on turntables
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=to99C-0cLGE
Secretly Canadian just signed these Psych rock guys from Johannesburg
http://www.myspace.com/blkjks
Adam Freeland has done an Obama mix
http://www.myspace.com/adamfreelandmusic
This is terrible, Indie / Rock / something
http://www.myspace.com/thexcerts
Prodigy are back – This time it is ..erm… like the first time.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVTKOoy1uk
Groove amarda’s new album sound better after a bottle of bacardi
http://www.groovearmada.com/
This is a bit naff
http://www.myspace.com/butcherboymusic
Get Physical relase Music to Die too… great playlist.
Erik Satie - 1. Gymnopédie – selected by DJ T.
Rob Gallagher – Little One – selected by Gilles Peterson.
Photek – Modus Operandi – selected by Storm.
The Stranglers – Golden Brown – selected by DJ Hell.
Cerrone – Supernature – selected by Kevin Saunderson.
Radiohead – Sit Down Stand Up – selected by Laurent Garnier.
Chloé – Paradise – selected by Chloé.
The Beach Boys – ‘Til I Die – selected by David Holmes.
Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is? – selected by Ewan Pearson.
Inti Illimani - Caramba, Yo Soy Dueno del Baron – selected by Ricardo Villalobos.
Link – Amenity – selected by Richie Hawtin.
Pharoah Sanders – Astral Travelling – selected by Francois K.
Brian Eno – An Ending (Ascent) – selected by Coldcut.
The Music Towers 2008 Almanac: Better Late Than Never
Written by: Hugh Platt
Well, here it is - the Music Towers 2008 Almanac. It was a crazy-ass year and no mistake. We appreciate we’re late with this one, so we’re gonna keep it brief.
It’s been a terrible year for most of the Music Industry. Well, the ‘industry’ half of things at any rate. Distributors have closed down, there’s virtually nowhere on the high street to buy records from anymore, and everyone is wringing their hands and being depressed. But this is supposed to be us looking back on the GOOD stuff - the ‘Music’ half of that Music Industry equation. Let’s get to it.
By far the best discovery of 2008 has been Turbowolf. It’s to my eternal shame that I haven’t written more about them - since stumbling onto them quite by accident at Stag & Dagger, I’ve seen them a half-dozen times (each time = AMAZING) and even got them to sit still long enough for us to film a long-lost video interview with them, but for a variety of stupid reasons this has never made it into print. The Bristol four-piece make the kind of electronic punk-rock party music that makes your head swim and your balls drop.
Anyway, fuck the self-recrimination, all you need to know is that Turbowolf are the best goddamn band you never saw in 2008. They’re hitting SxSW and Canadian Music Week later in the year, so even you guys on the other side of the Atlantic will get a chance to catch these Bristol mentalists. Get involved!
There’s been plenty of other rock’n'roll highlights - anyone who came to any of the Beef Warehouse parties knows what I’m talking about. The year ended with a highlight with our Christmas shindig, but Leeds Festival, once again, was the Party Of The Year. Not only did we get to spend the day watching Cancer Bats, Rage Against The Machine and getting our heads sewn up from the time some C**T gashed our head open during Queens Of The Stone Age (check our review of the weekend here) but we then got to party all night on a giant £40K soundsystem. It didn’t matter than the rain had reduced the site to one giant mud-bath, we had ‘em dancing till dawn every bloody night/day. Check out our review here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
There were some great albums too - I’m sure you’ve had your fill of Top 10’s by this stage, and don’t need to be told AGAIN how good certain records are. You might’ve missed them but ‘American Demo’ by The Indelicates and ‘This Gift’ by Sons And Daughters. The record that was on the stereo the most though was ‘Hail Destroyer’ by Cancer Bats, and I never even got round to reviewing that one. Ho hum.
Gig-wise, those cheeky Cancer Bats made our year with a sweatbox performance at the Kingston Peel. Close rivals were The Bronx at KCLSU, KISS at Download Festival, and, again, the mighty Turbowolf at pretty much every show we saw them at.
See? I managed to get through this without mentioning Guns ‘N Roses once. Oh. Go and listen to Turbowolf and I guaran-damn-tee you’ll start to feel better again.
Metronomy on a world tour - fancy that!
Written by: David Harrison
Joseph Mount and his merry men, who the world knows as Metronomy, seemed to have blagged themmselve a world tour. Blimey! Look at that. I guess the UK has spent all its money so there’s no point sticking around here.
Here’s an interview with Metronomy we did years ago. And down below is a tune, an oldy but a goody - You Could Easily Have Me. It nevers to get us shaking our cakes on the dancefloor. Also: the video makes us strangely aroused.
Yes, we will be seeking professional help. Just as soon as you international readers go and get yourselves some tickets for these shows. Check our the official Metronomy website for more details. GO ON THEN, CLICK IT.
6.1.09 O-East - Tokyo, Japan
7.1.09 Club Quattro - Nagoya, Japan
9.1.09 King Arms Tavern - Auckland, New Zealand
10.1.09 Bar Bodega - Wellington, New Zealand
15.1.09 Popfrenzy Night @ Sydney Festival’s Becks Bar - Sydney, Australia
16.1.09 Empire Hotel - Brisbane, Australia
17.1.09 Revolver, Upstairs - Melbourne, Australia
19.1.09 Standard Hotel (DJ SET) - Hollywood
20.1.09 Wasted Space - Las Vegas
21.1.09 El Rey - Los Angeles
22.1.09 Popscene - San Francisco
23.1.09 Holocene - Portland
24.1.09 Biltmore - Vancouver
25.1.09 Chop Suey - Seattle
28.1.09 Pink Bar - San Diego
29.1.09 Pomono - Glass House
30.1.09 Salon Cuervo - Mexico City
31.1.09 Escenica – Monterrey
[amtap amazon:asin=B0017LI8FK]
Zavvi goes into administration
Written by: Hugh Platt
Well, as predicted, Zavvi, the UK’s largest high street music retailer, has gone into administration today. The death knell came when the collapse of Woolworths took distributors EUK down with it - without it, Zavvi found themselves unable to re-stock, and the current financial climate was just too severe for them to survive.
The downside is, of course, that now HMV are the only major player when it comes to high street music retail. Sure, there are still a smattering of independent stores (all of whom will be struggling) and supermarkets (just don’t expect to see anything other than the most MOR of the mainstream on their shelves), but as far as the high street goes, HMV is all we’ve got. Regardless of your views on the players in the retail game, this can only be further bad news for the music industry.
Well, I doubt that’s going to be any consolation to the 3500 Zavvi staff who found out they’re going to be made redundant on Christmas Eve. That’s got to make for a merry bloody Christmas.
Reasons Not to be Christmassy: The State of the UK Record Industry
Written by: David Harrison
Bah-chuffing-Humbug. I my mind, Christmas isn’t a time of merriment, it’s a time to reflect on how this year was a bit crappier than last year, and how next year already looks like it’s going to be bloody awful.
Christmas TV these days seems to kick off with a teenager saying
“I have been through so much to be here’
If I hear one more, I will have to start burning effigies of Simon Cowell in Trafalgar Square. This year I was unfortunate enough to watch about 8 episodes of the blimmin’ X-Factor. No longer content with being an X-Men spin off, they ditched all the original characters (The Beast, Angel, Marvel Girl, Cyclops) for a bunch of sniveling cretins.
It is an endless guilt trip of how they will commit suicide/murder a puppy/murder the rest of their family if they don’t get to put out a flaccid Christmas single before fading into annonimity again. Maybe with these reality TV shows they should just skip the singing and dancing and have a crying competition.
For the fifth year on the trot, an X-Factor contestant has done a smaltzy cover and bagged the Xmas number one. Simon Cowell has single handedly ruined Christmas. Again.
Christmas in musicland is also ruined by the annual realisation that the industry is smaller, more disparate, more desperate then ever before. As my tax return deadline comes into view, I notice the shrinking of clients budgets in glorious excel spreadsheet technicolour.
While Alexandra Burke cries ‘Halleujah’, I’m taking stock of 2008 and am finding it a miserable experience. Some of the major players are struggling to exist, with the infrastructure of the UK recording industry crumbling faster than Zimbabwe’s economy. It seems like we’re approaching the tipping point.
The UK’s largest independent distributor, Pinnacle, and previously largest-cheesy-pop-that-goes-in-Tesco’s distributor, EUK, are both in administration. Past giants in retail are now minnows, with Woolworths, the biggest retailer of music of the 90s, twitching in its death throes. This time last year we had Fopp and Virgin Megastores, but now there is just a struggling Zavvi and a loss-posting HMV. It’s got to the point where the music industry can’t sell enough records to support a single high street chain.
My local high street has more Sushi bars than stores where I can listen to or buy music. The last 8 years have trained a whole generation that music is something to be had for free. Electronics outfit, Maplin’s, sell a terrabyte hard drive for £70. Who needs Peer 2 Peer? Just pop round this afternoon and take ALL THE MUSIC THAT WAS EVER RECORDED on one hard drive.
The recent industry conferences in London all seemed to be called things like ‘We are all really feckked - does anyone have any ideas?’ or ‘Can we get someone a bit famous to charm an MP, maybe that will help?’. Nobody did have any ideas, but the MP was a bit charmed by it all, so maybe there is hope. Although the sea will rise before there is a music tax included in the license fee.
Oh, but the live scene is booming you say? In 2008, the live scene reached the apex of a ten year boom; from here on in it is down down down, so grab a decent bobsleigh. In the last 12 months the UK has been lucky to have a pretty strong pound, $2.1 to £1 this time last year, to just $1.4 to £1 now. This means that those dollars you pay Kings of Leon for their umpteenth miserable festival appearance might just double.
Most of the profits from the last few years has been shipped out of the UK in the form of giants Live Nation or AEG. And I can’t remember the last time a live events company put any money into developing acts, as instead they’re saving all those pennies for gut-busting deals with Madonna or Jay Z. As our money goes stateside by way of those colossal artist fees and share dividends, UK acts, and in turn those medium-sized shows, dry up. Big tickets get more expensive, and control in in fewer and fewer hands. Across the board, old hands get let go as younger, cheaper, and easier to shag command staff get hired.
With the country approaching two million unemployed, I think punters’ casual spending on a round of £4-a-pint beers might be replaced with a renewed vigour of smuggling in some booze. People will start skipping behemoths like Glastonbury, as it is rubbish and a bit samey anyway. We spent most of the festival at the campsite watching people trying to do handstands.
The long and the short of it is that during a time when more than ever before, more music is being created, listened to, carried, watched and moshed to, never has it been more impossible to make a living from it.
Which, unfortunately, was what I did up until up until now. Bah Humbug.
More reasons to be Christmassy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Did you come to the big Music Towers ‘Oh Christmas!’ party last night? It was amazing. The police turned up. There was blood everywhere. People danced till they hurt, and everyone who could get sexy, got sexy. Jon Bon Jonas and Death & Glory stole the night with a sing-a-long ‘Love Hurricane’, and John Doran of The Quietus and our faves, Beef Warehouse, kept the tunes spinning till late, late doors. If you missed it, then you are an idiot.
But hey, the real reason I’m bothering you this evening is to let you know of the recession-busting sale going on at Xtra Mile Recordings. They’re knocking a shocking 20% - TWENTY BLOODY PERCENT - off some of their records till December 18. Included in this sweet little Xmas shopping shortcut are Million Dead, Lights Action, Reuben, Jonah Matranga and Frank Turner. That’s him in the picture up there. He’s got a new single out, ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ which those of you with magic radio boxes might’ve heard aready. We tupping love it here at Music Towers.
Watch the video for ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ by Frank Turner:
Frank Turner is also touring the fuck out of 2009 - he’s all over the place alternately with The Levellers, The Gaslight Anthem, and Anti-Flag. You ought to buy some ticket - BEAT THE RECESSION!
Something For The Weekend: The Tunics
Written by: Hugh Platt
Music Towers got mugged after getting off a nightbus once. We were coming back from DJ’ing at some shindig or another, and had a big box of weird records with us. We got off at our usual stop in North London, and a pair of goodofrnothing thundercunts threatened us with knives. EL BASTARDOS. We later found a lot of our lost recrods in a nearby hedge. Apparently our collection of Shellac records wasn’t what the little oiks were looking for. Perhaps they expected more macho chav music?
Anyway, we’re not looking for sympathy, we’re bringing it up as it meant that ‘The Cost Of Living’ by The Tunics struck a chord with us. The Croydon 3-piece are releasing it as a single on Monday through Manta Ray Music, and we thought it was a perfectly good track for our Something For The Weekend selection.
Watch the official video to ‘The Cost Of Living’:
The band’s debut album gets a full release on January 2nd. Worth picking up when you’re off credit crunching those January sales, we think.
[amtap amazon:asin=B001A4MNCI]
VIDEO: Joe Gideon and the Shark - ‘Daughter of a Loony’
Written by: David Harrison
Bronzerat Records seem to be really drudging up the best in sleazey lo-fi rock’n'roll right now. They’cw just finished this ace video for Joe Gideon and the Sharks’ track, ‘Daughter of a Loony (DOL)‘. This is the kind of song that makes me want to put a band together, rustle up a video, then just put it out into the world for one man and his dog to look at.
Joe Gideon and the Shark - ‘DOL’
[amtap amazon:asin=B001N140OM]
Office Parties: OUT. Rock’n'roll parties: IN
Written by: Hugh Platt
We love Christmas here at Music Towers. We’re running a video advent calender at the moment up there in the video box - go on, look up and to your right a little bit. Every five days we’re going to collect them all so you can catch any that you’ve missed. Think of it as an early Xmas present.
Speaking of which, Christmas is also the time for parties. We’ve all been to office parties before, and I think we can all agree that they suck harder than an elephant given a bowling ball-sized gobstopper. You get drunk with people you wouldn’t normally socialise with even at the barrell of a gun, eat some stale crisps, get off with that girl from accounts, and pass out on the bus home and are late for work the next day becasue you woke up at the bus station in Ealing with a hangover that rates alongside Hurricane Katrina in the damage-stakes.
Well, we here at Music Towers want to put a stop to Bad Christmas Parties. So much so that we’re throwing one of our own. On December 11 - next week, calendar fans - alongside our friends Beef Warehouse (that’s them there in the picture up at the top) and BigSexyLand, we’ll be throwing a FREE party over at new venue, South Of The Border. It’s right in the heart of Shoreditch, mere minutes walk from Liverpool St Station and Old Street tube. If you’re going to be about next Thursday, drop us an email to david at musictowers dot com to RSVP!
I have a band, a myspace page, now what?
Written by: David Harrison
So you have written some bitchin’ songs, made a MySpace page, and maybe even bought a domain name. You’ve had a few local gigs – but what now? Well, it’s going to cost you a bit of money, and a lot of time.
1. Organise your mailing – even if it is just one from your Outlook Express. Allow people to get on it. You can use a lot of third-party solutions such as Yahoo Groups / Wufoo / Icontact Zookoda - whatever service you feel is suitable for your costs or project.
2. Don’t over-plug your projects - people get very bored if just signed up to you out of politeness. Ask them to add you to their Safe List, as otherwise you’ll end up in the SPAM box.
3. Make your own webpage that isn’t MySpace – you don’t know how?
4. Use blogger.com and post news regularly. Link to friends’ websites, and ask nicely if they will link to you in return. If you feel the need, let a few free tracks to get out.
5. If Blogger does not ‘do’ enough for you – use Drupal and an automatic install of it on Machine Networks for £3.50 a month. Sony use Drupal for their artist websites, and The Onion use it for their very popular news site. Wordpress and Joomla are other alternative free content management systems to consider, this page is a Wordpress page.
6. Install Google Analytics on your page – this will let you find out why, when, and how people use your website. It sounds fancy is actually easy-peasy, and will help you in the long run.
7. Find some relevant music blogs, and/or aspiring writing people to review your work. To your face, usually everyone will tell you they like your work. If they have to put their opinion into words with their name in the byline, they may not be so inclined to be gracious.
8. Everybody still loves it? The record is still the best thing the world hasn’t heard? Excellent.
9. Are you sure? If you push your band before you are ready, you can garner black marks next to your name for years, as people remember “oh, that band from ages ago? They suck!”. Oh, still cool you are? Let’s go then.
Don’t hate the Media; become the Media
9. Channel 4 Slash music / Bebo / Trig / Moblog / Sellaband / Slice The Pie / YouTube / Yahoo 360 / Upcoming / Last.Fm / www.scoutr.co.uk / musicnation.com / Facebook….
There are a million social and music networks out there. None will make you famous, but they all can contribute to awareness about, and drive traffic to, your precious project.
Make sure they all link to each other (that’s how Search Engines work). Ideally, if you can use RSS feeds from your Blogger/Drupal page to do that it will save you updating them manually.
10. Post any cool articles about yourselves onto Digg / Shoutwire / Technorati / Del.icio.us or similar.
11. Register with the http://music.podshow.com/ Get any airplay? Blogs say nice things? Quote them on your website. Tell all the Podcasts where they can buy your stuff.
12. Get a mate to write a review on Playlouder.com / DazedDigital / Bizot.ch or similar contributed editorial websites.
13. Register your tracks on www.Last.Fm. Play them a few times. Make sure your friends that use Last FM have copies and play them a few times. If you have a budget you can force a 1000 plays on people for a £100.
14. If you have got this far, then you seem to be taking this whole thing seriously. Well done
15. Sign up for My MCPS/PRS / myPPL / www.catcouk.com / and go get yourself some ISRC numbers (congratulations, you just made yourself a record label). Make sure that these ISRC numbers are in all your records and the outlets that sell send them on, as that is how the charts are made.
16. Want more info about making a label? Check here: http://www.bemuso.com
17. Set up and Indiestore page – put a couple of tracks up for sale, and throw one in for free. Make sure your Myspace / Indiestore / Homepage all have relevant links to each other.
The Dark Arts of Distribution
18. Okay, this is all very well, but we want to see our releases on iTunes and on Amazon. These companies do aggregated distribution for independent artists, and it will cost you a bit more. If you were Radiohead, you could cut a deal…but you aren’t as famous as them, so you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way:
www.dittomusic.com
http://www.emubands.com/
http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.cdbaby.com/
19. Okay, you want your releases in local record shops. Ask them about stocking them on a sale and return basis. Keep an Excel spreadsheet of your distribution.
20. Don’t understand Excel? Find a manager that does, and love him for it. Offer to pay him and hope he says ‘no’.
21. HMV: you want our releases in HMV round the country… erm I must confess I don’t know how to do that.
Some of the distributors that feed into them are: Vital:Pias / Pinnacle / Cargo.
Call them up, ask them questions, and prepare to be ignored.
I know from previous experience, when I have said we are expecting to sell 2000 copies of a release, they still don’t get back to me. It is tough for them. It’s only if you can guarantee you are going to flog 20k records, ask them for an advance.
22. By now your marvellous Record is stocked with main online retailers. Logged with MCPS / PRS / your performances are on PPL. Everything is in place.
23. Read this Radio Play guide: http://www.tomrobinson.com/writing/radioplay.htm and do what Tom Robinson says.
24. Make some printed CDRs in see-through sleeves, with very simple details of the tunes with the release date on it. These are good for promotions. If you want to sell to the public you will have to get some nice ones made (don’t use the Impact font or I will send assasins to kill you).
. Send it to radio stations, hand-picked and hand-written like that Tom Robinson said.
26. If you can’t come up with a suitably controversial publicity stunt, how about calling up the radio and requesting your own track, that you know they have as you sent it in? Just don’t tell them that you’re in the band.
27. Press: there’s a lot to be said about understated presentation. Club together with some like minded bands and pretend you have a press company. Copy the format of this Duffy Press Release (Congratulations you have a Press Company - charge for it!). Politely nudge and convince writers that they like they are onto a winner if they cover this band, and offer to do some interviews.
Find the review writers of magazines, email them and ask for a contact address to send them a promo. Then send on your CDs. Be subtle and charming.
28. Web Traffic: use digg / shoutwire / blogs / if you have a show make sure you are linked too. Get the blogs that cover you to link to you. Ask the indie music sites if they take advertising? Might only cost you £30 here and there.
They say that money is the live show
29. Can’t get gigs? Book your own shows you will make/lose more money if they work that way. Makes sure you can make them more of an experience and get known for good parties, rather then be on that 8:00pm 20-minute slot where you’ll be playing to the barstaff and that guy sweeping up.
Use wegottickets.com to sell tickets they are independent ticket agent.
There are always ailing pubs that want a few people in.
DON’T label things as showcases – it is very pretentious.
DO build a scene without exploiting your friends.
DON’T stick stickers in the toilet there is an ancient curse that it means your band is sh**t.
30. Approach some promoters of new band nights, and arrange to have a few gigs here and there. Send the listings to Gigs@PAentertainment.com and/or clubs@paentertainment.com . The promoter should be doing this, but they might not. This is the universal organisation that flogs gig listings to the newspaper websites.
31. If you have made a CD or T-shirts. TAKE THEM TO THE GIG AND SELL THEM. Chances are you will make more money from them then the show.
32. But you want to get some good support slots?
For that you need an agent, but they aren’t going to be convinced until they think there is a load of money and success behind it. Generally all agents will only take on a project if a label or significant press is behind it.
Find a band that you would suit a support, and find out who is their agent is, and approach someone in their company, asking if they have any slots to fill - local or otherwise. You will only get £50 though, even if it is at Wembley – but you will sell merch.
X-Ray | Coda | Helter Skelter | Itb | Primary | The Agency | CAA | William Morris will probably cover most bands between them.
33. Try and get on festival bills…it doesn’t have to be Glastonbury or Reading, these days there are a million and one smaller festivals around and they need bands to fill their stages. Approach promoters in advance (not just when it starts to get sunny and you fancy playing outside) – they often book 9 months in advance.
Publishing
34. Registering with the PRS and PPL is the grounding for this. All your monies from Radio Play, TV, Films, etc, around the world will be fed through these guys. If you are not registered, you won’t got anything. It’s that simple.
35. Take PRS forms with when you perform, and send them off yourself. If you know any DJs, get them to include some of your tracks in their PRS playlists.
36. Sync: Now is the time to exploit the family and friends. Use yourcontacts. Anyone work in advertising / TV / Films? Send them copies of CDs, with a concise biog of your press and radio play. Don’t harass them, but do find out if they listened to it.
Now this is possibly the most important one. If you can get your tune on a big advert, you could expect anywhere from £20-60 grand. That is bigger then most record deals you are likely to get.
37. Are you now saying something like “I can’t believe that we did all that and haven’t had any sort of break yet!”
Or maybe “No label is interested / No publishing company got in touch / No magazine ever covered us / No Agent ever replied / we never sold any downloads” or similar?
38. Maybe you are just not good enough. If you did all that, then you should have a press company and a small record label by now and have learnt how to make search-friendly websites from scratch. Maybe your skills weren’t meant for the stage?
39. Maybe your sound isn’t in fashion (it happens)? It took Pulp ten years to get a record deal. Work out how much you are prepared to put into this project, in both time and money, before calling it day.
This list isn’t complete
40. “You left out a lot information about Merchandise / Publishing / Tour supports / Branding / Compilations / Video Promotions / Web Animation….” Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes I get the idea - this list is a work-in-progress, and I have tried to write about things I have done.
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