Miscellaneous - November 2010

  by Admin

published: 11 / 11 / 2010

intro

Hello and welcome to the November edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Part of the thrill, the excitement and certainly the fear of putting on a gig is you are never quite sure what is going to happen, whether everything is going to turn out as you might have hoped, or whether

Hello and welcome to the November edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Part of the thrill, the excitement and certainly the fear of putting on a gig is you are never quite sure what is going to happen, whether everything is going to turn out as you might have hoped, or whether for better or worse something else is going to ensue. Pennyblackmusic’s previous gig at the Half Moon in Herne Hill, London, as we documented at the time, definitely fell into the latter category, descending into chaos when our main act of the night split apart literally at the seams and there was an on-stage row which ended with half of the band walking off. Our recent gig in November didn’t go 100% according to plan either. Musicians are such an unpredictable breed that gigs to be honest rarely ever do. There was, however, just drama rather than melodrama, and the evening ended on an upbeat note with strong sets from all four of the bands involved - Altai Rockets who were playing just their second gig; singer-songwriter Adam Donen who had brought an eight-piece mini-orchestra with him; instrumental septet the Monroe Transfer and American consortium the Willard Grant Conspiracy, who were playing as a duo and starting a month long European tour with the Half Moon date. In our Features section, Mark Rowland describes the night, which many of those present thought was the best one that we had ever run. Sarah Johnson meanwhile, having shot seven hours of footage, has made a short twenty minute film of the evening, which features interviews with and footage of all the bands in action and other interviews with some of the other people involved including myself and promoter Dominic Simpson. It chronicles what an evening like this involves from before the doors open to afterwards when everyone else has gone home. The film will hopefully go on-line on approximately the 22nd November on both YouTube and Vimeo and we will also have links on the front page of the site. Our lead interview this month is with the former front man with the much acclaimed guitar band Little Man Tate, Jon Windle. When Little Man Tate broke up this year after playing a farewell gig in their native Sheffield, Windle announced that he was retiring from music, but has now returned with a new album, ‘Step Out the Man’. He talks to Denzil Watson about why he has decided to return to making music. Our other main interviews this month are with the influential singer-songwriter Janis Ian who, back for a second interview with us, talks about her latest musical releases and other writing projects; former Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman; Stereolab vocalist Laetitia Sadier who chats about her debut solo album, ‘The Trip’, and Alan McGee who speaks about ‘Upside Down’, a new film about his label, Creation Records. There are interviews too with Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson; singer-songwriter and FireHouse guitarist Bill Leverty; post-punks Wire; Glasgow-based electro pop act A Band Called Quinn; young London-based singer-songwriter Alex Lipinski and psychedelic/shoegazing act One Unique Signal. In our Profiles section there is a two part interview with Bruce Iglauer, the Chicago-based owner of Alligator Records, which started in 1971 and is now the world’s largest contemporary blues label, and also an obituary of Slits vocalist and Pennyblackmusic interviewee, Ari Up. In our Live Reviews section, there are new reviews of shows by the Psychedelic Furs, Suede, Hallogallo, Carl Barat, Swans, Badly Drawn Boy, We Are The Ocean, Blood Ceremony, Xiu Xiu, Josephine Oniyama, 3 Daft Monkeys, Nick Lowe, Ty Segall, James Blackshaw and the Screening. As well as Mark’s report of the Bands Night, our Regular Features section features a new poem from Spencer Robertshaw in his ‘Evidently Spencertown’ poetry series, the in-part ironic ‘Cheerful Things’. In ‘Gimme Indie Rock’, in which he looks for the best in alternative music, Jamie Rowland examines cult musician Terry Reid, while in ‘Soundtrack of Our Lives’, in which our writers describe the personal impact of music in their lives, Tara McEvoy writes about the Cure. In his ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ column Ben Howarth tells of reacting against Britpop in his teens and moving down the dangerous path of extreme heavy metal, while Jeff Thiessen in ‘This Metal Sky’ put together a compilation mix of the notoriously temperamental Brian Jonestown Massacre’s seventeen best songs. In our ‘Re: View’ section, in which our writers examine albums from the past, there are articles on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1980 comeback album, ‘Double Fantasy'; Yardbirds member Jim McCarty’s 2009 album, ‘Sitting on Top of the World’, and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Joe Kennedy’s 2007 debut album, ‘Van Cortlandt Park’. Our Website of the Month is ‘Tribute City’, a website about and for tribute bands. There are also 32 album and single reviews. We ran another 24 reviews on our reviews only up-date at the beginning of November Thank you to Carl Bookstein, Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Dan Cressey, Dixie Ernill, r. fisher, Tony Gaughan, Tommy Gunnarson, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Tara McEvoy, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Anthony Strutt, Jeff Thiessen. Helen Tipping, Lisa Torem ,Paul Waller and Denzil Watson, all of whom contributed articles to this edition or to the reviews up-date. Thank you to Sarah Johnson for the film and to Neil Bailey who contributed photographs to the articles on Swans and 3 Daft Monkeys. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks at Pennyblackmusic HQ. We will be back with a reviews up-date in late November and then in mid December with our last edition of the year. We hope then to be running interviews with Jim McCarty, the Stooges’ James Williamson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Phil Wilson, Chubby Checker, Darren Posyer, Nick Garrie, Engineers, Mitchell Museum, Phil Melia from the Pete Best Band, Luke Doucet and Lance Lopez. We also hope to have interviews Rocket Girl label boss Vinita Joshi and music journalists Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis. There will also be the usual range of profiles, features, live reviews, and more album and single reviews. Thank you as always for reading John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk