Musings on the byways of popular culture
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26/01/2020
Parklife, Definitely Maybe and His ‘n’ Hers played from 25th anniversary vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.
Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.
3-5pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.
Arise, Sir Rodders (before the ref’s count reaches ten)
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29/12/2019
Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise?, A Secret Wish, Slave to the Rhythm and Welcome to the Pleasuredome played from first pressing vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.
Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.
3-5pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.
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Our 8-y-o 42″ Panasonic plasma went bang on Christmas day as Mrs F changed channel as Call The Midwife started. If I can’t repair it (probably an open-circuit power supply capacitor, but who knows what else it took out), I’ll need to buy a new one.
Requirements: not massive (42″ or a bit bigger, but not huge), Freeview HD built in, 1080 resolution is fine (we have a Blu-ray player), at least 3 (ideally 4 or more) HDMI inputs, wired Ethernet and iPlayer built in, optical or coaxial audio output for connecting to the hi-fi, half-decent sound for when it isn’t, USB playback would be nice, value (budget in the hundreds not thousands – we watch no more than an hour a day), easy to use for the non-technical lady of the house.
We spread ourselves out so OLED is probably better than LCD for wide viewing angle.
I don’t keep up with TV, so don’t really know what’s best value. Any recommendations?
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It’s a quiet week at the news desk, so here’s an article explaining the music reissues market.
And a picture of Maria Carey, who seems to have forgotten to put on her undies.
20/12/2019
Solo set from from the excellent Paul Goodwin. Hammered-dulcimer driven dream pop from Tape Runs Out. Prog-folk from Ember Rev. Me on sound. Free entry. Man in the Moon, Norfolk Street, Cambridge
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Free the Carnaby Street one.
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Venue:
Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
Date: 07/12/2019
Hopes were high for this. Even navigating my way into central Nottingham in the dark didn’t put me off.
The Rescue Rooms is round the back of Rock City (which was hosting a sold-out show by Elvana – think Dread Zepplin doing the songs of Kurt Cobain), entered through the bar, across a patio/courtyard and though a door into a room not hugely bigger than the Cambridge Portland Arms but with a full-size stage and a massive PA system. Gig curfew of 10:15pm (so the nightclub could begin) meant early (6:30pm) doors.
Support act Sink Ya Teeth made one of my favourite albums of 2018. Their short but sweet set of bass-driven electro-pop included all the hits: Petrol Blue, first single If You See Me, Substitutes, Complicated, Control, a couple of new ones from forthcoming album, Two, including new single The Hot House. They came on at 7:30pm prompt, and were off again half an hour later.
ACR came on a little after 8:30pm. First track was an instrumental with guitarist/trumpeter Martin on drums and drummer Donald on bongos. Then a segue from the Bootsy intro into Do The Du (this is on » Continue Reading.
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Avoiding the obvious ‘Well, it didn’t work’ punchline, reading this article made me think “blimey, drinking in the morning should ring alarm bells.”
As someone who has had no more than a dozen drinks in the last decade, it would be easy for me to be pious. Ellie Goulding, like her music or not, seemed to be fairly sensible, keeps fit and has run marathons.
I am very sober and very dull. I doubt alcohol would change the latter.
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I’m off to see ACR at the Rescue Rooms on Saturday.
Despite my best man going to university in Nottingham, I can’t remember much. It’s 20 years since I last went.
I’ll be arriving mid-afternoon, doors are 6:30pm. Can the hive mind of the AW recommend record shops, cafes, etc? I’m now teetotal so pubs are no use.
I remember a nice cafe in a big church somewhere near the lace market.
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2015 Russian Synchronised Skating Team dance to ‘The Joke’ by the Fall
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What does it sound like?:
Recorded during 2008 in one 8-hour-long session in a Cambridge studio, the debut (and only) long-player from this Briticana band.
Lead singer Sam’s lyrics were always worth hearing, for wry humour verging on laugh-out-load quips. Guitar and pedal-steel player David (editor of Guitar Buyer magazine) always had just the right solo or phrase, always underplayed. Keyboard & mandolin player Paul always understated. Bassist Tom 1 and drummer Tom 2 made up up the rhythm section.
The Wilderness Years (“I lost the flat in Ladbrooke Grove, stuffed the pension up my nose”) features a chiming REM-alike electric guitar and Hammond organ. Jaunty two-chord-shuffle two-minute-long Older Women (“Although their brown hair may be streaked with grey, older women are OK”) has a lilting pedal-steel backing. Ancient History (“that’s You and Me”) rocks out with electric guitar over a barrel-house piano. Hard To Love (“It’s hard to love a theme bar full of city types”) is almost stocatto with lovely C&W duelling guitar solos from Sam and David. The Birds (“I’m a Swallow, or maybe I’m a Swift/You’re a Swallow too, or maybe you’re a spit”) is a bass-driven funk workout starting on a bottom B » Continue Reading.
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fentonsteve on interviewing A Certain Ratio
I was offered the chance to interview A Certain Ratio when I go to see them play in Nottingham next weekend. Trouble is, I’m not going to get there early enough to conduct an afternoon interview, and I want to catch support band Sink Ya Teeth. So, after racking my brain for questions (which, it turns out, is really quite hard), and crowd-sourcing a few more from the likes of DocVolume, we did it by email.
I played the inquisitive nerdy uber-fan. Guitarist Martin Moscrop (in the hat) and drummer Donald Johnson (in the middle) provided the answers.
Going back right to the start, what was working with Martin Hannett like? Hooky’s and Stephen Morris book suggests he was hard work. Did he make Donald do each drum part separately? Did he try to freeze you out of the control room during mixing? Did someone at the studio really zero the desk and ruin his mix of To Each?
Martin: Everything that needs to has been said about Martin Hannett’s working practices. He liked to instil an element of confusion into the young musicians he was working with and create an atmosphere of tension » Continue Reading.
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The Friends Again album, Tapped and Unwrapped, expanded and remastered by Paul McGeechan using the original production masters. Out on Friday.
Friends Again: Trapped And Unwrapped, 2CD CollectionFriends Again
The Associates first post-split album, Perhaps, out 31st Jan 2020. No mention of mastering, but includes the magnificent 12″ version of Those First Impressions on CD for the first time.
The Associates: Perhaps, 2CD Expanded Digipak CollectionAssociates (The)
Series 5 features an AW-friendly lineup.
Karine Polwart (inc. Inge, naturally), The Pearlfishers, Arcade (Heidi Talbot & Adam Holmes), Idlewild. Tom Walker coming up next weekend (my Edinburgh friends were at the recording and loved it).
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This BBC Radio 4 podcast came out for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
By crikey it’s good – real-life story with a mixture of witness interviews and drama-style soundtrack & production. Even my 14-y-o was hooked.
10 x 15-min podcasts from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sj2pt/episodes/downloads
2 x 57-min omnibus episodes (without the 1-min recap and 1-min theme music of each 15-min podcast episode) from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000nfh/episodes/player
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/Od4dL9Lip2/tunnel_29#group-The-Tunnel-G2b3yK8oV2
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15/11/2019
Since I recorded prog-folk seven-piece Tape Runs Out at the Mill over the Easter holidays they have signed to a local label (Kuang Grade Recordings) and recorded three EPs in the Anglia Ruskin University music department studio.
The first of these EPs has been mastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road studios and came out (streaming services and pay-what-you-like on BandCamp) on Friday. CDs to follow shortly.
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This bloke took middling young metal band The Hunna from a village fete (where I first saw them) to the Reading Festival main stage in two years. It might be an interesting read, if I could get past his “big I am” ego, as a document of the end days of the old music industry.
“My name is Carl Hitchborn and I’m an entrepreneur from the UK. I’ve built various businesses from scratch including running my family bakery business. Feeling like I was unable to make the progress I wanted to make and being a typical entrepreneur, I sought a new challenge. I wanted to find a way to become global and with no prior knowledge, decided that I would attempt to make it in the music industry.”
https://www.thebakersays.com/zerotorecordbreakerbundle?r_done=1
paging @sitheref2409
In the first of the three-part series “Playing Well” Chris Hawkins has an intimate conversation with the band mates of Scott Hutchison, who took his own life in May 2018.
In conversation with Scott’s brother Grant, drummer in Frightened Rabbit, and guitarist Andy Monaghan, Chris discovers more about the anxious child who reframed his family nickname as a band name – and how he channeled a rare lyrical talent, determination and energy into the creation of one of Scotland’s most important and influential rock bands.
Charting the rise of the band and Scott’s intense, occasionally hilarious approach to live performance, Grant frankly addresses the pressures his brother faced – and the structural pressures faced by anyone in the music industry. Charting the exhausting aftermath of suicide, Grant talks about defining Scott as a songwriter, in the hope that the existence of works which appear to presage his death don’t create a misleading impression of Scott’s life.
It’s a moving portrait of a fascinating artist, and an attempt to reclaim Scott’s musical legacy from the inaccurate assumption that the combination of musical celebrity and mental illness can only end in tragedy.
Details of organisations offering information » Continue Reading.
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09/12/2019
“The one-man venn diagram intersection of maths, pop and comedy returns. In the follow-up to his award-winning debut BORN TO SUM (Best Stand-up, Swindon Fringe 2018) he once again casts a mathematical eye across popular culture and wonders whether there is a place for all this pedantry in a world seemingly going to hell in a handcart. Expect songs, mathematics, fiendish wordplay and weapons-grade pedantry. If the devil is in the detail, he is Lucifer.
Kyle is an award-winning musical comedian and science communicator (winner, Famelab UK 2016) who takes a borderline perverse enjoyment in using any platform possible to preach the good word of mathematics. He has performed musical/comedy maths shows at various events, such as Cheltenham & Manchester Science festivals, Blue Dot, Green Man, Camp Bestival, London Science Museum, Edinburgh Fringe & various other festivals. He is a regular contributor to Radio 4’s flagship numbers show ‘More or Less’ and the Today programme’s puzzle of the day.”
I have been a fan of Kyle D Evans for over 12 years, since his days in the bands The Dawn Chorus and The Retrospective Soundtrack Players. He’s worked with Frank Turner, Chris T-T and Ben Marwood. Kyle has recorded » Continue Reading.
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24/11/2019
Purple Rain, Parade and Sign o’ the Times played from first pressing vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.
Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.
3-5pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.
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He’s finished his model railway set.
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This is an extract from an Op-Ed article in the current issue – that’s the December 2019 issue – of a hi-fi magazine (print edition available in your hi-fi shop) entitled “Who’d have thought Liam Gallagher would have trumped Noel?”.
It is written by a regular contributor and the magazine pays someone to be an editor. Can you spot the mistake?
“But..but..but. It’s Liam Gallagher who has just scored his second No 1 album in a feat that he has – in typical understated fashion quoted as ‘biblical’ – with his album ‘Why Me? Why Not’. It fended off competition from rock group Keane who were widely tipped to come out top in the sales charts.
‘Why Me? Why Not’ has already sold more than 68,000 copies including 17,000 on vinyl. That makes it the fastest-selling vinyl album of 2019 and perhaps gives us another example of the continuing vinyl revival as most of those buyers will be drawn from the younger age group.
Very few people – including myself – would have predicted such an outcome when Oasis split all those years ago. And I suspect Liam is enjoying lording it over his brother Noel over those sales » Continue Reading.
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The internet: bringing together lovers specialist interest hardware.
I present the Pro-ject VC-S Mk. II record cleaner.
(I am considering buying one s/h).
In other news: he’s got the same record player as me.
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Browsing the HMV.com pre-orders section, I spotted this:-
The 20th* anniversary of White Ladder is released on Feb 14th, which will make a nice present for someone. If Mrs F is reading this**, hint, hint.
White double vinyl (for the first time), double CD (or quadruple vinyl) for the box including B-sides, demos and a book.
(*) 22nd anniversary if you bought it directly from him at a gig in Dingwalls, as I did. (**) she isn’t.
