2013/04/29
James Skelly new single, Co Written with Paul Weller.
You've Got It All, co-written with Paul Weller, will be available digitally
through Skeleton Key Records on Monday May 6th and features the B-Side
Love Will Find You.
The single is taken from his forthcoming debut solo album, Love Undercover,
which will be released on June 3rd.
The 11-track self-produced album was recorded in the autumn of 2012 at Parr
St studios in Liverpool and the first taster from the record, Do It Again, was
made available as a free download from jamesskellyandtheintenders.com
For more info check out The MUZU.TV Blog.
2013/04/28
Absolute Beginner: Matthew E White, Brilliant LP...Try it.
Mixing Soul, Jazz, Pop, Angel Voices, subtile drums and brilliant arrangements... A fantastic tip from the Claaps' House!
2013/04/27
David Walker's answer to the Guardian.
A recent broadsheet article (in The Guardian specifically) claims mod bands today aren’t very good. But do they actually exist? Or is it a case of mods finding bands that suit their musical tastes?
Seems an odd thing for The Guardian to take on, but the state of the mod band was just what was in their sights this week. Apparently, there’s a new breed of mods, but the bands catering for them are a bit rubbish. That was the general gist. But what actually is a ‘mod band’?
The mod scene has never been completely band-driven in its history. In the ’60s, there were plenty of bands, but bands that filled a gap in the market, often playing their own take on soul 45s in cellar bars. Obviously they appealed to mods. On top of that, there were bands made up of mods, which was hardly a surprise in the early to mod-60s. But ultimately, the likes of The Action and The Small Faces were still bands – great bands that were taken up by mods on their merits.
Of course, The Who were famously styled as a mod band and Townshend himself was always a self-confessed mod. However, they had something else on their side that took them much further than a haircut and a pop art t-shirt. They had ability, talent and dedication, as well as the foresight to see beyond the mod phenomena. That’s why they became one of the biggest bands in the world. TBC HERE.
There's a new breed of mods in the UK: it's just a pity their music is no good (The Guardian)
Mods rule! Whether it's Sir Wiggo modelling his spring/summer collection for Fred Perry, Miles Kane headlining the NME tour, or Martin Freemanstill on our screens fighting off the evil dragon Smaug (obviously a metaphor for some dirty greaser), representatives of Britain's most enduring subculture have never been so prominent.
With the O2's British Music Experience now using the mods' RAF roundel, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the movement – which started with late-50s Londoners adopting the Italian suits they saw on Blue Note jazz sleeves, and adopting the scooter as a neat way of nipping through Soho after hours – was in danger of being blunted by the mainstream. Yet visit clubs from Glasgow's Friday Street to Brighton's Mod For It, or look at YouTube footage of recent scooter runs and you'll see a new generation of cappuccino kids. March even saw 16 clubs join forces to raise £50,000 for Teenage Cancer Trust, promoting a new breed of mod bands called things like the Swagger and the Brassic. There's only one problem: they're rubbish.
2013/04/26
2013/04/25
James Skelly (The Coral) First solo LP with the Intenders. You've got it all, next single, has been written with Paul Weller.
James Skelly & The Intenders have announced details of the debut album Love Undercover, released via Skeleton Key Records on Monday June 3rd 2013.
Produced by James & Ian Skelly and featuring all members of The Coral, the album was recorded in the autumn of 2012 at Parr Street studios in Liverpool.
James explains more about the band "The name is about letting people know it's not just me and an acoustic guitar," Skelly says. "I had the songs, but it became a proper group thing very quickly with everyone involved having a big input. It's that Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers idea."
Do It Again is the first taster of the album and available now as a free download via the official website -- www.jamesskellyandtheintenders.com
2013/04/24
2013/04/22
2013/04/21
[INTERVIEW] HEAVYSOULBRUTHA!!!! (French AND English version, PDF to dl on the original website)
[INTERVIEW] HEAVYSOULBRUTHA
HeavySoulBrutha est ce genre de type qui bosse dans sa piaule comme un acharné. Ou plutôt comme un amoureux fou de musique. Et pas n’importe laquelle, puisqu’il s’agit essentiellement de Soul, comme son pseudo le laisse penser. Il balance ses mix online, gratos, et réjouit le coeur et les oreilles de milliers d’auditeurs partout dans le monde – magie d’Internet. Rencontre avec un frère.
When you're a Mod, you have to stay classy in any circumstances...
... Even when you're getting mad and want to throw your bike away...Bradley did it cool. ;)
2013/04/20
What Nick Drake Taught Me About Art And Love (NPR)
was in Seattle's Frye Art Museum that I first found endless love with a work of art. My mother often took us there to look at the landscapes and portraits bequeathed by the culturally aspirational owner of a local meatpacking plant. The canvas that fascinated me was one of the sentimental painter William Bougeureau's many little shepherdesses, chaste yet Lolita-like figures that signified Victorian innocence. My sad shoeless girl, all alone in a vast, rocky landscape, seemed to know the unspoken yearning my middle school melancholia. Her beauty was austere and aloof, but through a trick of perspective, her eyes seemed to follow me. I felt that she had a secret that was unspeakable, but also magically mine. TBC Here.
2013/04/19
Happy RSD! ;) Will be back soon...
Paul Weller has announced plans to play a special show on Record Store Day at London's Rough Trade East. Weller will take the stage at 8pm on Saturday, April 20 and play a 30 minute set, backed by Pete O’Hanlon and Josh McClorey from The Strypes on bass and guitar and Miles Kane's drummer Jay Sharrock.
Weller will also release a double a-side single of new material - Flame-Out! And The Olde Original - for Record Store Day.
From 8am Tuesday 16th April, there will be 250 wristbands only available from Rough Trade East to give away on first come, first served basis. This wristband will guarantee them entry to Paul Weller's performance only.
2013/04/11
Les infos de Stef: Nouvel Album de Sharon Jones en Septembre.
Trois ans après "I
Learned the Hard Way", son plus gros succès à ce jour, la Soul Sister
N°1 Sharon Jones prépare un retour en force avec ses Dap Kings: le
nouvel album vient d'être mixé, après avoir été enregistré dans les deux
studios du label Daptone Records (celui, historique, à Brooklyn, et le
nouvel équipement californien de Gabe Roth, un des boss du label). Lire aussi l'interview que Neal Sugarman, co-fondateur de Daptone Records avait donné à "Sud Ouest", à l'occasion des 10 ans du label.
2013/04/10
Iron and Wine new LP, Complete streaming.
No one's ever been voted Least Likely To Lead An
11-Piece Band, but if such an honor had been bestowed 12 years ago, Sam Beam
would've been a frontrunner. A shy, prolifically bearded academic, Beam started
out making whisper-quiet bedroom recordings — just his voice and an acoustic
guitar, issuing bleakly poignant songs about troubled lives and worried minds.
But ever since his 2001 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle,
Beam has piled on accouterments gradually, as he's slowly and subtly built his
sound into something lavish and even orchestral in scope.
Recording
and touring as Iron and Wine, Beam
now presides over arrangements springy and three-dimensional enough to
accommodate a horn section — and yet he still finds a way to wrap his agreeably
soft voice around thematically weighty material. For all its rich, Technicolor
brightness, Iron and Wine's new Ghost on Ghost retains the capacity to burrow
knowingly into bleak Wisconsin winters ("Winter Prayers") with an
acute understanding of loneliness and alienation. Even amid cheery oohs and
ahhs, "The Desert Babbler" finds Beam warning wearily,
"California's gonna kill you soon."
2013/04/09
Foxton's LP Review (Courtesy of The Mighty Captain Stax)
Bruce Foxton has always lived in the shadow of the Jam or, more specifically, Paul
Weller, his former friend and bandmate who left him in the lurch when he split up the
punk trio at the height of their powers in 1982. Foxton released a solo album called Touch
Sensitive in 1983, but had trouble gaining traction on his own, so he headed on out to Stiff
Little Fingers, where he stayed for 15 years. After a Jam reunion looked like an
impossibility when Weller made a smashing comeback in the '90s, Foxton assembled the
tribute band From the Jam with drummer Rick Buckler, a move that upset Weller and
made frosty relations even chillier. But life is messy. In 2009, Foxton lost his wife Pat to
cancer, and Weller lost his father, two life-changing events that sparked a reconciliation
between the bandmates, leading to Foxton appearing on Paul's 2010 album Wake Up the
Nation and in 2012, Back in the Room, Bruce's first album in nearly 30 years, and one that
features Weller on several songs. Often, it sounds as if Weller is all over Back in the Room,
which is partially due to the striking vocal similarities of Foxton's lead singer Russell
Hastings -- he was the frontman in From the Jam -- but also in how Bruce has designed the
album as something similar to Paul's '90s work. Sure, there's an element of latter-day Jam
here -- the Tamla/Motown bounce of "Reflection" could have fit onto The Gift -- but this is
muscular trad rock -- Beatles hooks as played by Humble Pie, taking a brief respite from
the heavy soul to indulge in pastoral folk. It may be familiar but it's executed sharply;
Foxton and his band seem invigorated by playing new material and those new songs are
solid, holding their own next to Weller's late-'90s work.
Shuggie Otis "new" LPs. (Scott S' recommendation), Complete Streaming here.
Shuggie Otis has long been adjacent to worldwide stardom. His late father, the R&B legend Johnny Otis, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The younger Otis' most ardent fans consider his brief late-'60s and early-'70s recording career to have produced works on par with those of Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. His best-known song, 1971's "Strawberry Letter 23," was covered by The Brothers Johnson, whose 1977 smash was in turn sampled heavily in the 2001 OutKastgem "Ms. Jackson." That, in turn, helped spark modern-day interest in Otis, whose 1974 cult classic Inspiration Information was reissued on David Byrne's Luaka Bop label back in 2001, in the wake of renewed interest in "Strawberry Letter 23."
That's Otis' lot: It seems as if everyone who loves him is famous and successful — present company excluded — and yet he remains something of a footnote. A fussy and reclusive enigma, Otis still performs occasionally, but most of his work in the last three-plus decades has remained unreleased and subject to endless tinkering.
Of course, tinkering endlessly has been Otis' stock in trade from the beginning: The nine-songInspiration Information, which is being reissued in a deluxe two-disc package on April 16, took three years to record, in part because Otis insisted on playing and singing every part himself. But the work itself — a sublime mix of psychedelia, blues, pop and soul — possesses a dreamy quality that's intoxicating and untethered to any era.
For those who first heard Inspiration Inspiration as part of the Luaka Bop reissue, the new set may be a little jarring; that 2001 version came packaged with four songs from Otis' 1971 albumFreedom Flight, including "Strawberry Letter 23," and this version doesn't. But it does feature four solid new bonus tracks, not to mention an entire additional 69-minute album called Wings of Love, which samples a cross-section of Otis' unreleased recordings between 1975 and 2000.
Given that that quarter-century includes the entire 1980s, a good batch of Wings of Love lacks the timeless quality of Inspiration Inspiration; synthesizers pop up frequently in songs that vary in quality from worthy of Otis' greatest work all the way down to merely okay. But, even at its most uneven, the second disc serves as an essential extension of an uncompromising, iconoclastic career that warrants — even demands — further examination.
2013/04/06
2013/04/05
Muddy Waters; 100 th birthday.
McKinley Morganfield, Muddy’s real name, was born to a Mississippi sharecropper, reportedly in the town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi. His mother died when he was only three years old, and he moved to the outskirts of Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Stovall’s Plantation. He was given the nickname “Muddy” because of his penchant for playing in the mud as a child. Like so many from the Delta, Muddy grew up sharecropping himself, tending to cotton fields for hardly a dollar per week. In the fields, he learned the long standing tradition of call-and-response singing. Influenced strongly by the Blues giant Son House, who lived nearby, Muddy began to play the guitar at 17. He quickly picked up the delta style and mastered the bottleneck slide, which would help to define his electric style later in life. It didn’t take long for him to start playing parties & jukes with his friend Sunnyland Sims, who would later play a pivotal role in Muddy’s bullet-train to fame. In 1941, while looking for the Delta legend Robert Johnson, (who had already been dead for 3 years), famed folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Muddy for the first time in his life. Mud later equated this experience to hearing himself for the first time. He was recorded again by Lomax in 1943, and that year, inspired by his recordings, he boarded a train from Clarksdale, to Chicago, Illinois to play his guitar.
2013/04/04
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