In one of the worst lyrics I've ever heard, John Lennon states, "a working class hero is something to be". I guess, but so is a lollipop lady, a rapist or an Iberian ribbed newt. He may as well have said, "a noun is a word that repesents a person, concept or thing". Anyway, here's an unrelated review.
THE WILD MERCURY SOUND/ DANCE A LA PLAGE/ LEWIS WATSON, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 24/2/12
Daisy Rodgers is doing something special. Every month their events, centred round the more accessible end of indie rock, are not only well-constructed and friendly, but encourage packed houses that must make musicians, customers and other promoters happy, surprised and murderously envious respectively. Tonight’s gig is no exception, a cohesive, amiable concert with a spectacular turnout, marred only by the typical Jericho curse of ceaselessly yabbering punters drowning out the quieter acts. So, we push to the front of the newly painted venue (now with the added vibe of a 1970s mental hospital), to hear Lewis Watson.
This young singer has apparently achieved over two million hits on YouTube. We admit to finding this slightly mystifying, but then again, we don’t quite see the attraction of Charlie’s finger appetite either. Lewis certainly has a very strong voice, with an impressive ability to phrase lines mellifluously, adding a little portamento at emotive moments. It’s a likable set, and impressively a Paolo Nutini cover fits snugly next to his own songs; on the down side, of course this means his songs sound like Paolo Nutini’s. Watson has a very significant talent, and we look forward to seeing him develop, but at the moment his music sounds too much like a Starbuck’s playlist to truly excite us. It’s early days, we could well be eating our words in no time.
Unlike Lewis, Dance A La Plage sound as though they’re fully developed already, with a supremely confident and veruca sock tight set of bouncy disco indie. This is a band that has clearly identified its sound, and worked hard to hone it in the live arena, with the strident vocals, the rubberised bass and the guitar-to-the-chin twiddles all inch perfect. Pity that it does exactly nothing for us, being not exactly bad, but aridly, sterilely forgettable. When the singer introduces an untitled track with the slip, “This one doesn’t have a song yet”, we conclude that old Freud knew a thing or two. Dance A La Plage clearly hit the spot for a number of people, but to us they’ll forever exist in the long dark Regional Battle Of The Bands Heat of the soul. Fair’s fair, they’d probably walk it.
A fizzing burst of guitar noise introduces The Wild Mercury Sound’s set, and whilst it’s hardly Merzbow, it sounds like pure energy after a polite evening. They play a full-blooded set mixing blues rock tall tales with emotive stadium paeans, and manage to pull off the all too rare trick of sounding enormous without simply turning the volume to the top, and this control allows the excellent, lightly yearning vocals space to soar. Perhaps the young, fresh-faced lads are a little clean cut to make this sort of emotional music work, and sometimes you want less Doogie Howser and more Howlin’ Wolf, but it’s nothing a decade or so of hard living and bad loving won’t cure. A rousing end to a decent night.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Reinventing The Peel
This is the first time I've ever reviewed a piece of theatre. I think it probably shows. And this was mostly a man playing records, God knows what I'd do if faced with Two Gentlemen Of Verona.
JOHN PEEL’S SHED – JOHN OSBOURNE (North Wall)
We first heard “politics” by Girls At Our Best in 1995. Mark Radcliffe opened his Radio One night-time show with that and Wire’s “Our Swimmer” one summer night, we’re pretty certain. We recall it vividly because Radcliffe’s graveyard slot show used to keep us sane when we worked nights in a document archivist’s warehouse. This is relevant because, not only is john Osbourne’s one man show partly about the power of radio to lift the soul whilst doing mindless, poorly paid work, but also “Politics” is the song that’s playing as the North Wall’s house lights go down.
And, yes, frankly any stage show that starts with the performer sitting amongst a carpet of vinyl, spinning tunes whilst the audience files in, and sharing little facts on a vintage overhead projector, is already a hit with us. All these records came from a large box of vinyl Osbourne won in a competition to write a slogan for the John Peel show (including a tantalising LP by Oizone, a punk Boyzone tribute), but anyone dreading – or even hoping for - a Peel-obsessed troglodyte’s celebration of obscure U-Roy versions, or Hefner B-sides, couldn’t be more wrong. Despite the title, this excellent show is less about the great Mr Ravenscroft himself, and more about the importance of radio to people’s lives, and how this cherished medium is rarely discussed or celebrated.
John Peel’s Shed only has a few proper jokes (and one of those was cribbed from Terry Wogan), yet the audience is constantly somewhere between a warm smile and a hearty guffaw, because Osbourne’s delivery is so natural and unaffected: it’s not a slick, predictable comic monologue, it’s more like a cheery chat with someone on a long train journey who unexpectedly shares most of your views. When he stumbles over his words, or fluffs Jo Whiley’s name at a pivotal moment in the script, it only endears him to us more. The only downside of the show is that you want to join in the conversation, and spin a platter of your own.
Osbourne is at his best when he’s passionate about his subjects. His wide-eyed joy at describing Resonance FM’s Me & My Floor, a show in which a child mikes his house carpet for half an hour a day, makes it sound like the greatest piece of conceptual radio ever created. Similarly, Tommy Boyd is someone we have cast into the awkward dustbin of childhood TV memories, along with Gaz Topp and Kate Copstick, and yet Osbourne is such an admirer he’s dubbed Boyd “the Peel of talk”, for his Human Zoo show on TalkSport. You can also feel his disappointment and anger when he discusses second rate, homogenous culture, a trap commercial radio falls into at a depressing rate (although Radio One is far from immune). It made us think of the aftermath of Peel’s death, and the way it was handled by the BBC. Celebrating Peel’s work doesn’t just mean playing “Teenage Kicks” and The White Stripes every ten minutes, and mentioning – but, of course, not broadcasting – The Fall and Captain Beefheart, it means keeping an open mind and a curious set of ears, and ignoring bullshit on every side. For all Osbourne’s celebration of radio, we were reminded that there’s still no substitute for John Peel on national radio, and for anything like his unpretentious inquisitiveness you have to explore Resonance, or perhaps Norwich’s Future FM, where Osbourne broadcast shows exploring the Peel box (download at www.johnpeelsshed.com).
What was the slogan that won Osbourne this vinyl treasure trove? “Records you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them”. It’s actually quite sad that this isn’t the rubric of all music broadcasting, but this wonderful show staves off bland corporate gloss for one more night. Highly recommended.
JOHN PEEL’S SHED – JOHN OSBOURNE (North Wall)
We first heard “politics” by Girls At Our Best in 1995. Mark Radcliffe opened his Radio One night-time show with that and Wire’s “Our Swimmer” one summer night, we’re pretty certain. We recall it vividly because Radcliffe’s graveyard slot show used to keep us sane when we worked nights in a document archivist’s warehouse. This is relevant because, not only is john Osbourne’s one man show partly about the power of radio to lift the soul whilst doing mindless, poorly paid work, but also “Politics” is the song that’s playing as the North Wall’s house lights go down.
And, yes, frankly any stage show that starts with the performer sitting amongst a carpet of vinyl, spinning tunes whilst the audience files in, and sharing little facts on a vintage overhead projector, is already a hit with us. All these records came from a large box of vinyl Osbourne won in a competition to write a slogan for the John Peel show (including a tantalising LP by Oizone, a punk Boyzone tribute), but anyone dreading – or even hoping for - a Peel-obsessed troglodyte’s celebration of obscure U-Roy versions, or Hefner B-sides, couldn’t be more wrong. Despite the title, this excellent show is less about the great Mr Ravenscroft himself, and more about the importance of radio to people’s lives, and how this cherished medium is rarely discussed or celebrated.
John Peel’s Shed only has a few proper jokes (and one of those was cribbed from Terry Wogan), yet the audience is constantly somewhere between a warm smile and a hearty guffaw, because Osbourne’s delivery is so natural and unaffected: it’s not a slick, predictable comic monologue, it’s more like a cheery chat with someone on a long train journey who unexpectedly shares most of your views. When he stumbles over his words, or fluffs Jo Whiley’s name at a pivotal moment in the script, it only endears him to us more. The only downside of the show is that you want to join in the conversation, and spin a platter of your own.
Osbourne is at his best when he’s passionate about his subjects. His wide-eyed joy at describing Resonance FM’s Me & My Floor, a show in which a child mikes his house carpet for half an hour a day, makes it sound like the greatest piece of conceptual radio ever created. Similarly, Tommy Boyd is someone we have cast into the awkward dustbin of childhood TV memories, along with Gaz Topp and Kate Copstick, and yet Osbourne is such an admirer he’s dubbed Boyd “the Peel of talk”, for his Human Zoo show on TalkSport. You can also feel his disappointment and anger when he discusses second rate, homogenous culture, a trap commercial radio falls into at a depressing rate (although Radio One is far from immune). It made us think of the aftermath of Peel’s death, and the way it was handled by the BBC. Celebrating Peel’s work doesn’t just mean playing “Teenage Kicks” and The White Stripes every ten minutes, and mentioning – but, of course, not broadcasting – The Fall and Captain Beefheart, it means keeping an open mind and a curious set of ears, and ignoring bullshit on every side. For all Osbourne’s celebration of radio, we were reminded that there’s still no substitute for John Peel on national radio, and for anything like his unpretentious inquisitiveness you have to explore Resonance, or perhaps Norwich’s Future FM, where Osbourne broadcast shows exploring the Peel box (download at www.johnpeelsshed.com).
What was the slogan that won Osbourne this vinyl treasure trove? “Records you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them”. It’s actually quite sad that this isn’t the rubric of all music broadcasting, but this wonderful show staves off bland corporate gloss for one more night. Highly recommended.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Basement, How Low Can You Go?
Speaking of Big Bang Theory, as we were, it reminded me of Friends. Not the jokes, just the architecture. Do all apartment buildings in America have a large flat on the left of the staircase, and a smaller one on the right? Seems an odd design. Also, can people weho make their money as waiters, physics researchers, occasional actors, cooks, and so on really afford these lopsided apartments?
And why do they both loook like a set from Space Hulk from the corridor, huge grey reinforced doors and dingy corridors? They look lovely from the inside.
Hmmm....
THE CELLAR FAMILY – FLAB EP (Download)
“I am an anarchist”.
Punk is about the antisocial, whether it’s Johnny Rotten’s heroic, neo-Romantic reactionary stance, painting himself as a twisted urchin version of Milton’s Satan, or your bog standard punk tearaway, using rebellion as an excuse to get smashed and not wash (and the hippies already had that down, ironically). The Cellar Family, comfortably one of the best acts to emerge from Oxford in the past two years, have a far more interesting take. On this EP, from the awkward Thomas the Tubercular Tank Engine chuffing of the opening, to the closing greasy feedback 17 minutes later, the tone is not antisocial, but asocial.
Like Seven’s reverse-Buddhist villain John Doe, or a slightly deranged Nazi scientist, the narrative voice of a Cellar Family song balances visceral disgust with a rigorously dispassionate eye: it’s no coincidence that the EP is bookended by tracks called “Oestrogen” and “Testosterone”. This is not a love song, it’s a bloody biology lesson. Possibly extremely bloody. In a gallery of sociopathic rogues, “My Love Is Everlasting” may well tell of a deranged serial rapist-murderer (whatever, it certainly won’t be on Julio Iglesias’ setlist any time soon), and “Secret Admirer” is a stalker’s paean, crooning “nobody watches you more than I do”, along with a dubious celebration of “child-bearing hips”, which can’t help but bring to mind P J Harvey. Alternating between moments of dark comedy and harrowing viscerality, The Cellar Family has found a new way of embodying punk’s antagonistic stance.
Likewise, the music has more going on than might be immediately obvious in a bludgeoning punk racket. The drums are frantic yet tight, tumbling through the songs like Karl Burns on the early Fall recordings, and the way that Jamie Harris’ guitar slurs and bends the rhythms remind us unexpectedly of Graham Coxon on later Blur albums. This record shows how many more ideas TCF have beyond the punk template. “My Love Is Everlasting” is a spiky update of The Blue Orchids’ spindly groove, whereas “What Did I Ever Do To You?” is a wash of reverse reverb vocals, sub-aquatic bass and misty drums that sounds an awful lot like Pram, until the dyspeptic burst of the chorus rears its head briefly. Whilst Mclusky is still an obvious reference point, The Cellar Family have developed enough to offer a lyrical grimace and musical inventiveness all their own, and have possibly made one of Oxford’s records of the year in the process.
And why do they both loook like a set from Space Hulk from the corridor, huge grey reinforced doors and dingy corridors? They look lovely from the inside.
Hmmm....
THE CELLAR FAMILY – FLAB EP (Download)
“I am an anarchist”.
Punk is about the antisocial, whether it’s Johnny Rotten’s heroic, neo-Romantic reactionary stance, painting himself as a twisted urchin version of Milton’s Satan, or your bog standard punk tearaway, using rebellion as an excuse to get smashed and not wash (and the hippies already had that down, ironically). The Cellar Family, comfortably one of the best acts to emerge from Oxford in the past two years, have a far more interesting take. On this EP, from the awkward Thomas the Tubercular Tank Engine chuffing of the opening, to the closing greasy feedback 17 minutes later, the tone is not antisocial, but asocial.
Like Seven’s reverse-Buddhist villain John Doe, or a slightly deranged Nazi scientist, the narrative voice of a Cellar Family song balances visceral disgust with a rigorously dispassionate eye: it’s no coincidence that the EP is bookended by tracks called “Oestrogen” and “Testosterone”. This is not a love song, it’s a bloody biology lesson. Possibly extremely bloody. In a gallery of sociopathic rogues, “My Love Is Everlasting” may well tell of a deranged serial rapist-murderer (whatever, it certainly won’t be on Julio Iglesias’ setlist any time soon), and “Secret Admirer” is a stalker’s paean, crooning “nobody watches you more than I do”, along with a dubious celebration of “child-bearing hips”, which can’t help but bring to mind P J Harvey. Alternating between moments of dark comedy and harrowing viscerality, The Cellar Family has found a new way of embodying punk’s antagonistic stance.
Likewise, the music has more going on than might be immediately obvious in a bludgeoning punk racket. The drums are frantic yet tight, tumbling through the songs like Karl Burns on the early Fall recordings, and the way that Jamie Harris’ guitar slurs and bends the rhythms remind us unexpectedly of Graham Coxon on later Blur albums. This record shows how many more ideas TCF have beyond the punk template. “My Love Is Everlasting” is a spiky update of The Blue Orchids’ spindly groove, whereas “What Did I Ever Do To You?” is a wash of reverse reverb vocals, sub-aquatic bass and misty drums that sounds an awful lot like Pram, until the dyspeptic burst of the chorus rears its head briefly. Whilst Mclusky is still an obvious reference point, The Cellar Family have developed enough to offer a lyrical grimace and musical inventiveness all their own, and have possibly made one of Oxford’s records of the year in the process.
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