Another "Flavio saw it first" post! :)

Paul Weller - CD/DVD set incoming

Paul Weller's next release is called Find The Torch, Burn The Plans, it's a 'CD/DVD Deluxe Album' and its out on November 29th on Island Records

What is it? Well, according to the label, it's a 'lavishly packaged and highly covetable DVD and CD package' mixing a 26-track live set culled from Weller's Royal Albert Hall shows, an all-new film and a music disc of his Radio 2 gig earlier this year.

The DVD movie part, directed by Julien Temple, is actually titled Find The torch, Burn The Plans and is described as 'a remarkable 50 minute portrait of one of the world's greatest musicians at the peak of his powers'. Make of that what you will.

The whole thing is packaged in a hard back book style, with exclusive images, a new interview and a 'collectable set of 5 cardboard prints' housed in a slip case attached to the back cover.


Tracklistings:

DVD disc
Live at the Royal Albert Hall

1. Andromeda
2. From the Floorboards Up
3. 7&3 Is The Strikers Name
4. Into Tomorrow
5. Aim High
6. Moonshine
7. Up The Dosage
8. Strange Town
9. Wake up the Nation
10. Shout To The Top!
11. Trees
12. You Do Something To Me
13. One Bright Star
14. Wild Wood
15. The Eton Rifles with guest Kelly Jones
16. That's Entertainment with guest Kelly Jones
17. Fast Cars/Slow Traffic
18. Come On
19. Why Walk When You Can Run
20. All On A Misty Morning
21. Light Nights
22. Butterfly Collector
23. Find The Torch, Burn The Plans
24. Art School
25. Scrape Away
26. Pieces Of A Dream

"Find The Torch, Burn The Plans" A Film by Julien Temple

+ 7&3 Is The Strikers Name promo video directed by Lawrence Watson

CD disc
Live At The Royal Albert Hall
Andromeda
From The Floorboards Up
7&3 Is The Strikers Name
Into Tomorrow
Aim High
Moonshine
Up The Dosage
Trees
Wild Wood
The Eton Rifles (with Kelly Jones)
That's Entertainment (with Kelly Jones)
Fast Car/Slow Traffic
In Concert at the BBC Theatre
Start!
Sea Spray
Strange Town
Broken Stones
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) (with Lauren Pritchard)
No Tears To Cry (with Richard Hawley)

(Capt's gem:) The Riverboat Song - Steve Cradock, Andy Crofts, Andy Bennett, Mani - Br...

Sound Affects Deluxe and the last standing shop! And the Weller stuff has another taste!

OK guys now taking orders for these two fine releases if anyone should care to make use of your archaic and humble local record emporium. Usual stuff, please send full name, first line of address and items required including quantity back to me at afne04343@blueyonder.co.uk New customers contact me for details on how to register

1 THE JAM - SOUND AFFECTS DELUXE EDITION 2CD set £12.99

“I still feel it was our best record. There are loads of other things I like, but as an overall body work, I thought it was great. To me, it still sounds fresh.”

Paul Weller – August 2010
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Tellingly, when Weller came to record 2010’s Wake Up The Nation, it was Sound Affects that his collaborator and producer Simon Dine held up as a model. “He referenced it right at the start,” says Weller. “That was the sort of sound he imagined we should be going for: hard, metallic, quite stripped-down… jagged.”

Sound Affects was originally released in November 1980 at a time when The Jam was considered the biggest band in Britain. The album followed the band’s first number one single – Going Underground and features the group’s second UK number one single, Start! – a track built around almost exact copies of the bass-line and guitar solos from The Beatles’ Taxman (at the time Weller considered the album a cross between Off the Wall and Revolver!).

It includes many of the band’s classic songs - That’s Entertainment (written in a caravan in Selsey, after the pub), never released as a single in UK, the German import was a UK hit (subsequently covered by Morrissey), the political Man in the Corner Shop, Pretty Green (now inspiration for Liam Gallagher’s clothing range!), the pure-pop of Boy About Town and Dream Time.

It’s regarded by critics and fans (as well as Weller) as their most adventurous and experimental collection of material, drawing musical influences from the ‘post-punk’ groups of the late-70s - Wire, Gang Of Four and Joy Division as well as neo-psychedelic touches from The Beatles and The Zombies etc.

The distinctive cover art is a pastiche of the artwork used on various BBC sound effects records of the 1970s, incorporating ‘pop-art’ imagery.

• 30th anniversary 2-disc, ‘Deluxe’ edition of the classic Jam album.

• Digitally re-mastered – 22 bonus tracks, demos, b-sides and alternative versions.

• 24-page booklet with extensive new sleevenotes by Guardian writer John Harris, a brand new interview with Paul Weller, rare photos and period memorabilia.

• The bonus material includes 8 previously unreleased tracks – demos of Pretty Green and Start!, alternate versions of Set The House Ablaze and Monday and a cover of Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, and two instrumental demos.

• Paul Weller still plays several songs from Sound Affects in his current live set - Pretty Green, Man in the Corner Shop, That’s Entertainment and Start!,

Reflex OUR last standing shop!

Double Breasted Updates.

Issue 8 on sale now, contact us for ordering details. The Pretty Things are playing in Glasgow on October 16 at ABC2, Sauchiehall Street and organised by Eyes Wide Open and Regular Music. The aftershow is at Adlib, Hope Street with EWO and Divine DJs spinning some tunes. Support comes from The Thanes and Teaspoon and tickets are on sale now from O2ABC Box Office and Tickets Scotland. and Our second alldayer: A Little Mixed Up 2 is happening on 27 November also at ABC2, with fantastic performances guaranteed from DC Fontana, The Universal, The Laynes, Berry Tweed & The Chasers, The Privates, Them Beatles and Button Up. The aftershow party - Little Mixed Up Late Show @ The Admiral has a special reunion gig from The Shadowland, plus Double Breasted, Melting Pot and Starla DJs playing classic mod and 60s tunes until 3am. Tickets also on sale from O2 ABC Box Office, Ticketweb and Tickets Scotland. Admission to the aftershow is strictly first come first served and owing to the limited capacity it's recommended that folks wanting to be there should arrive early. A lower admission to the aftershow will be on offer to those attending the alldayer. Enjoy your music. The Double Breasted Team

Paul Weller Timmy Mallett Interview 1983 (Thanx a lot Dean)

(Probably the band Flock of seagulls was in the other room...)

The Untouchable and Ultimate Mod, Steve Marriott (Part Three)

Zin Bang ! The Small Faces. 1965 ; Terence Stamp and Kit Lambert (Well known Ace Faces themselves) have transformed the Who in Mod icons. It has to be said, Mods except Georgie Fame and Clapton Suits have not their own bands. All of them, Moody Blues and Manfred Mann are more or less Beatnik actually. The Small Faces are the first gang -gang means same clothes, like the Colors of the greasers and the Hell’s Angels. Marriott has one and only rival yet… Rod Stewart. His life’s nightmare. Rod will steal him his haircut and his life’s love, Sue Oliver. Rod Stewart will also nick his band. Rod Stewart Will kiss the Queen’s hand when Steve will be back very low, up there, in those unthinkable awful eighties…

But in 1965, The Live Aid’s nightmare is very very far, everything is innocence and Prince of Wales. And shirts Have more buttons than the French Singer Antoine could ever denounce.

First Small Faces LP is a pure phantasm. Everything is here. Rare covers like this “You Need Love” than Led Zeppelin will nick for “whole Lotta love” . Robert Plant was one of those who followed Steve and his Faces from show to show, nice puppy in love who’s gonna copy the original master as much as he could. What’s the matter baby de Timi Yuro or that incredible cover of Shake and their first own songs, Come on Children, E to D, Whatcha gonna do about it and that sleeve to make the girls scream! Stones and Pretty Thing have bad boys look, they look dangerous and don’t smile. The Faces look at the camera and every girl’s heart beats! Steve Marriott is just too beautiful! Too perfect. It will be hiw own drama and his loss but he doesn’t know it yet. Obsessed by Booker T and the MGS, Steve created a band with one guitar only and with a Hammond Organ. He fired the useless Jimmy Winston (hired because he had a truck and a place to rehearse) , he met Ian McLagan… Plonk brought Kenny Jones , they’re ready!

So they signed for Don Arden, the terrible Don Arden. At that time, you have two kinds of managers. Gays fascinated by those young gods in Sta Prest, like Epstein or Stigwood and Mafiosi. For his drama, Marriott has chosen the second kind of… Don arden signed them for lifetime or almost… For 20 £ a week and an unlimited access to Carnaby’s street. An open account in those clothes’ shops? Who could resist? Certainly not the Small Faces who were not even 18! Several world hits later and never ending tours, money didn’t ring for them. But the Faces don’t care at all… Two or three years. Only two or three tiny years but more important than all the sad centuries who’s gonna happen till 1980 to the end of the world. London, the world from 1965 to 1968 is pure eternity. On these elysian fields, The Small Faces slides easily, they’re just magicians. A few months… Time for Don Arden to make them record “Sha la la la lee” written by Mort Shuman. Their first N°1… they will hate for ever. It will even irritate the original mods. And they will take a revenge with Hey Girl ( English style, by Ronnie Bird in France) and the absolute All or nothing. Faces will be then on any cover, Rave’s and Hit-parader. They’re not like the others, a kind of Beatles playing Stones music? They even created with the Who and the Kinks the alphabet of the future heavy rock. A bit of all that things but the fame and greatness of the Small Faces is still to come…Mod is yet a memory. A kind of secret folklore than ready steady go told the world… a true ethic than the Brighton beach’s fighters popularized. Those fighters will become skinheads. The world who’s going to born is not important to them. They will keep the mod’s style of the early sixties, haircuts and collars and it will be a new classicism, Loafers, Shetlands, Clarks, Crombie, Harrington’s. It will be their alphabet with the Ska and vintage rhythm and blues… The other will become psychedelic mods. Danton collars, lace jabots, moustaches… (To be continued)

Closure threat to 100 Club | News (MikeE)

Closure threat to 100 Club | News

ITS stage has seen the West End debuts of Oasis, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks, while Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Paul Weller can still sometimes be glimpsed in the audience.

Yet the 100 Club in Oxford Street - described by Aerosmith's Joe Perry as "the finest rock'n'roll club in the world" - could close within a few months because of soaring overheads unless it can find a buyer. Its rates bill has hit £4,000 a month and landlord Lazari Investments now charges rent, with VAT, of £166,000 a year.

The cellar club's owner, Jeff Horton, said: "It makes me so angry. The Government, Westminster council and even some of the commercial landlords say they want to help small businesses, they say they want to preserve London's uniqueness, they want to help multi-cultural venues.

"Yet we're all that and all these organisations have all dumped on us from a great height." His father started running the venue in 1964, but it opened in 1942 as a jazz club.

Mr Horton sees few alternatives to closure after Lazari raised the rent by 45 per cent. "In 1985, when I took over, the rent was barely £11,000 In the US the rents are frozen at certain venues that have a bit of heritage. Here it's a total free-for-all."

He added: "What the 100 Club needs is a buyer or major sponsor to step forward. Barring that, we're closing at Christmas despite being as popular as ever. It really is insane."

Ray Davies with...Metallica, 2009. Madison Square Garden, MikeE info.

See my Friends, the "new" Ray Davies LP.

Ray Davies has revealed details of his upcoming collaboration album, which features the likes of Metallica, Mumford and Sons and Pixies' Black Francis.

Entitled 'See My Friends', the 14-track LP will also see the likes of Bruce Springsteen, who recorded a version of The Kinks' 'Better Things', and Bon Jovi who worked with Davies on 'Celluloid Heroes'.

The tracklisting for 'See My Friends' is as follows:

'Better Things (Featuring Bruce Springsteen)'
'Celluloid Heroes (Featuring Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora)'
'Days/This Time Tomorrow (Featuring Mumford & Sons)'
'Long Way From Home (Featuring Lucinda Williams & The 88)'
'You Really Got Me (Featuring Metallica)'
'Lola (Featuring Paloma Faith)'
'Waterloo Sunset (Featuring Jackson Browne)'
'Til the End Of The Day (Featuring Alex Chilton & The 88)'
'Dead End Street (Featuring Amy Macdonald)'
'See My Friends (Featuring Spoon)'
'This Is Where I Belong (Featuring Black Francis)'
'David Watts (Featuring The 88)'
'Tired Of Waiting (Featuring Gary Lightbody)'
'All Day And All Of The Night/Destroyer (Featuring Billy Corgan)'

Reups by requests : Manchester 1982.

Apollo 82.

Paul Weller on Bowie's LP "Low" (Saturday Times). A Brigthon wiz info.

I got into Bowie around the same time that most people of my age did which was around the time of the Ziggy Stardust album, when I was about 15, 16. That was one of those albums that one of your pals bought and was passed around from mate to mate. Then I backtracked and bought Hunky Dory and Man Who Sold The World. In fact, I bought them all up until Lodger. It was an incredible run of albums that were all groundbreaking. Low is my all time favourite. I liked Bowie but wasn’t a big Bowie freak like all my friends at school but I loved the song writing and the fact that he did his own thing. As far as for leading things and inventing new style and musical genres you have to put him up there with the Beatles. I also like his Mod phase, there’s a great song he made around 1965/66 called Can’t Help Thinking About Me, which is kind of Who sounding but in terms of lyrics and subject matter is really advanced and then there’s London Boys, which I also really like. I like some of the whimsical Anthony Newley period although Laughing Gnome is not a favourite.

By the time, Station to Station came out I was into a different thing. I was into rock bands and the Mod stuff, but I still went to the local disco in Woking and would see all my mates from when we were skinheads or suede heads in the early-1970s wearing the plastic sandals, the peg trousers and the Hawaiian and bowling shirts with the wedge haircuts. They danced to Philly stuff but you’d also hear TVC 15 and Young Americans amongst it all. Our drummer played Station to Station endlessly on the tour bus in those days and I still love Wild is the Wind – the vocal is superb. Stay is another great song. It is a great album.

The Untouchable and Ultimate Mod, Steve Marriott (Translation part 2).

(So Steve is back in London, penniless) He collected Chartbusters and live at the Fillmore has been a worldwide success…Suddenly he had to steal empty and returnable bottles to pay the ciggies… Soon he also had to eat his little horse, Petite Visage (Small Face in French). He could afford the horse when it was happy times, times of the Marriott’s wigs sold in Carnaby Street and times of the Sue Oliver romance.

Uniform was still compulsory when the sixties began. Young Stephen Marriott was full of promises as an actor after his first steps on stage in “Oliver”, inspired by Dickens. His parents were absolutely happy, east end people. The salt of the earth actually, simple, austere. His father was a pub musician.

Grey Mohair, Paisley lining, trousers’ crease with soap (Wet soap in the trousers crease before iron it), another mod secret. 7 inches slits, buttons covered with cloth, and ticket pocket. A NICE suit! Steve Marriott went to school with that suit! With that dream suit. Of course, he’s been sent off, no discussion…immediate sanction! Without any shilly-shallying. So the head master told him… “So what? You know it could only last for one single day! So what’s the point?” Stephen Marriott answered: “A day? Yes, but what a day.”! And so he quit the school and never came back. The year before, he burn it, to let the people know who he was!

But School… Marriott is only 16, he’s already a young talented actor in theater or cinema, it’s enough to pay the suits and the singles. Steve has a real purpose in life: preach the mod words! The black music alphabet, the rhythm and blues. He idolizes Inez and Charlie Foxx, Brook Benton and the other ones. He released a single yet, Imaginary love, which testifies his deep love for Buddy Holly like all the members of his generation. He worked on the original soundtrack of Oliver Twist. With the Frantics. And he begins to tour with the Moments. And he has a secret to share. He is a Mod.

Mod is only an underground culture at that time. Can’t hear black music but at the merry go round’s carnival. Or in a few night clubs which open and evolve in Soho like The Flamingo. There’s also the Coffee shops. The last cool thing is to drink some cappuccinos full of chocolate. It looks like Italia. It looks like freedom. A few name began to be heard, the first mod’s heroes. Georgie Fame gets an unanimous vote, Ronnie Scott, the jazzman who’s dressed like his idols et got the eponymous club, John Stephen or Cecil Gee the first tailors. Mod is cult born of the coll jazz which is also fed by the European elegance, Italian or French, as it can be seen on cinemas’ screen. In the “Nouvelle Vague” movie as an example? Some mods, who don’t speak French, walk around with French newspapers France Soir under an arm, and other mods try to speak like Jean Paul Belmondo. We are in 1962/63 maybe. At that time, wearing white trousers or pink shirt was still an incredible challenge.

But the times are changing. Military obligation has been suppressed. There’s no unemployed people. At the BBC, the “That was the week that was” broadcast is open to all that new energy. War, hard times, privations, it’s still in everyone’s mind. It was only 15 years ago. Adults are still in that era, for life. And in 1963, there’s that massive earthquake suddenly. Completely unexpected in a way. Beatles triumph. Buddy Holly and the Marvelettes. Beatles have many things to share with the mods but actually, in 1963, mods don’t like the Beatles. Like soon, and for the same reason, they won’t like the Rolling Stones… These young people give to everyone the sacred language, and give to everyone the wonderful secrets of Arthur Alexander or of the Cookies.

At last the Beatles give some fresh air to the movement. Mods were in the shadow, a secret army. They became really quick the center of the world, under the full spotlights. The Swinging London and its miracle was very close. Suddenly, it’s Ready Steady Go! Broadcast, British beat invasion. From nowhere and everywhere, thousands of gifted students are hatching and opening…Steve Marriott is a bit younger than the young Ray Davies, Burdon, Winwood, Clapton, Jimmy Page or Jones. Two or three years… An eternity. There’s no time to lose. He creates the Moments, and tour with them for a while, they’ll even try to nick Kinks “You really got me” to have a massive success in the USA. No way. And then, he’ll meet his alter ego, Ronnie Plonk Lane, The Small Faces…

The Untouchable and Ultimate Mod, Steve Marriott, rough translation, part one.

(I know it's not perfect and I'd like to be a better and faster translator, Patrick Eudeline has his own style, a very nice style, so it's not very easy to read in French. So I sweat a lot to translate it! Some words are weird, as in the french version...)

He was the ultimate mod with the Small Faces, heavy rock eulogist with Humble Pie, Marriott is the epitome of the swinging London. Patrick Eudeline tells us the story of his unlucky and deceased role model... It probably happened in “The Bubble” or the “Malibu Club”. The nightclub was cool in the mid seventies, not so far from the Contrescarpe. Humble pie was there in the end, after His Olympia opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd. I hated those Yankees, perfect rednecks but I would have missed humble pie for nothing in the whole world. Even if, I didn’t like Humble Pie neither, well, not really, but “inside” there was Steve Marriott…

So the Bubble. I sat very near Steve Marriott, a few meters and of his roadies, perfect lads, dangerous et keen for a fight. He was there, with something in the eyes which has no name, something terrible which never went out. Actually, Marriott was becoming schizophrenic and no one knew it. More and more often, Melvin came to haunt him. Melvin the bald Wrestler. A Hate ball who only thought to destroy. Himself and the others. Doc’s, suedehead, braces, nothing left of the fantastic and numinous Small Faces cover boy. A hazy mod aura… Skinhead tour actually. The Melvin cockney vibe had won already. Even if it was, that night, his first appearance…

Everybody said at this time than Humble Pie couldn’t split up, then they were racketed by the Mafia, via Dee Anthony, their manager, than the band was completely exhausted by never ending tour, than they stood up still using huge quantity of cocaine and the amazing and supernatural energy of Steve Marriott. On his table, Marriott was drawing unbelievable coke lines he was sniffing frenetically between two Southern Comfort glassfull…He was ready to break everything in the night club. Battle with the Lynyrd Skynyrd roadies. Melvin Loved the taste of blood in the very early morning.

He looked like his band, what his band became. The Rhythm and Blues repertoire, which was his life, I don’t need no doctor, Walked on gilded splinters, The Pie was given from now on some amazing versions, inhuman, stiff, scummy, 20 minutes horse rides. On the fast Lane… It was hard rock epitome, Marriott, the best singer of his generation was only screaming. But with the Pie, like Grand Funk, they had a very big success. For the second time of his life, Marriott was reaching the top of the world’s roof…

But his band, his life, was a jail, was hell. Soon, he’ll break it, leave America and his managers like a thief. He will be back in London, penniless… To be continued…