Photo above depicts ‘The Rolling Stones’, Gram Parsons and Anita Pallenberg at Villa Nellcote, France, 1971. One of a series of evocative shots taken by photographer Dominique Tarle. Photograph: Dominique TarleExile on Main Street is being reissued, in deluxe packaging – with 10 new bonus tracks.
“Mick needs to know what he’s going to do tomorrow,” says Richards, his voice slurring into a laugh. “Me, I’m just happy to wake up and see who’s hanging around. Mick’s rock, I’m roll.”
Another wonderful quote :
Without a trace of irony, Watts adds, “Keith’s a very bohemian and eccentric person, he really is.”
…. no shit dick tracy ! … and talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous ”
Others experienced more mundane but no less pressing problems. Both Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman missed home and some of their own creature comforts. “I hated leaving England,” Wyman reminisces. “You had to import Bird’s custard, Branston pickle and piccalilli… you had to buy PG Tips and then deal with the French milk.”
As you may already know The Decemberists have been on fire lately, and their 2009 album The Hazards of Love is an eclectic and amazing piece of work that bears repeated listening. It just came in at the top of Sound & Vision Magazine’s Best of 2009 list, and deservedly so. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is the announcement that went up on their website last week, to wit:
We’re also pleased as punch to introduce Black Prairie, a side project featuring Decemberists Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, and Nate Query plus local Portland musicians Annalisa Tornfelt and Jon Neufeld. This eclectic bluegrass-but-not-really group will make its live debut at Noise Pop in San Francisco next month. Their record, Feast of the Hunters’ Moon, will be released later this spring. Black Prairie’s website will be launched soon. In the meantime you can follow them on Twitter or visit them on Facebook.
Pretty impressed with the new offering from Diane Birch. Her first album, Bible Belt is a tour de force of piano and soul. (As much as we all deride Starbucks as a McDonald-esque manifestation of American mass produced culture run amok, they have been doing a pretty good job of selecting and promoting new musical artists.)
Let me begin this brief review with the comment that my shmaltz tolerance level is pretty high, so I happen to be one of those who thinks some glam-pop is pretty cool. I am, for instance, a huge Queen fan. I actually like David Bowie and the Scissor Sisters. If you’re not a fan of the sugary wonderland of campy pop, move along, there’s nothing to see here.
I mention Queen not simply because on Mika’s first CD, Life in Cartoon Motion, one of the tracks (Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)) so expressly evokes Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls, but also because Mika Pennington, Mika’s lead singer, may very well be the illegitimate offspring of Freddie Mercury, RIP.
Not to cast aspersions on the morals of Mama Pennington, but I can’t help wondering if she was, perhaps, a Queen groupie who got entangled with the singer. After all, Crazy Little Thing Called Love came out that year.
For your consideration:
15 seconds of Freddie:
15 seconds of Mika:
I rest my case.
Rolling Stone panned the first CD, “Life in Cartoon Motion” with this pithy commentary:
On his debut, the Lebanese-born Brit (Mika Penniman) serves up huge, ultraflamboyant razzle-dazzle, often transmitted through pounded piano or his ear-damaging falsetto. Songs like the U.K. hit “Grace Kelly” are plenty catchy, but they pack enough schmaltz and club-you-over-the-head sonics to make Scissor Sisters seem like Joan Freakin’ Baez.
But let’s talk about the new CD. It is, as I said, a conundrum. It has many songs with excellent lyrics, and many songs with catchy melodies. Unfortunately, the overlap between the two is low. As a musician, it is extraordinarily frustrating to listen to. But still, there are moments of genius, when Mika’s disingenuous and playful lyrics ride the wave of their ridiculously catchy hooks.
The lyrics to Toy Boy, the story of a young man’s doll, cast off and relegated to life as a voodoo poppet, had me laughing out loud:
But your mama thought there was somethin’ wrong
Didn’t want you sleeping with a boy too long
It’s a serious thing in a grown-up world
Maybe you’d be better with a Barbie girl
You were that I adored-ya
But you left me in Georgia
Toys are not sentimental
How could I be for rental?
She’s the meanest hag that has ever been
Pulled out my insides with an old safety pin
I’m the sorest sight, now I feel like trash
Clothes are made of rags and they don’t even match
So she dressed me up as the man she loved
Then threw me in a box when she had had enough
Now the light of day I no longer see
She stuck her voodoo pins where my eyes used to be
Accidentally tragic
Victim of her black magic
Had a boy once who loved me
Now he’s so afraid of me
I would say that if you eliminated 4 or 5 of the very worst train wrecks, the resulting album would be one of the top five CDs – and the shortest – released this year. So it is definitely worth a listen, even if you have to cover your ears and go “La la la” during a few of the songs.
Rolling Stone gave this CD a brief review that included the comment, “Producer Greg Wells is an enabler; Mika needs an editor.“ I disagree; the producer is at fault here as well. Technically the album is amazing: production values are very high, the recording pristine, the sound stage awe inspiring. It is artistic direction and – as noted – editing – that is so sorely lacking. I mean, the best song on the album is the shortest one! Come on.
So my review winds up being ambivalent. I am firmly in both camps. I strongly recommend the album, but only if you have a high pain threshold, because it’s going to hurt.
Lest the site devolve into a Tree fanzine, I would like to mention that I am simply overjoyed with the Subdudes’ new album “Flower Petals”. It’s a little bit of a departure for them, a themed album focused on a soldier who has just died. A little less tambourine, but still New Orleans heart and soul all the way – murder, deceit and redemption.
Duane Allman likes them, as he mentions in his interview with Tahoe.com:
Q — What new music do you like?
A — New. Hmmm. Well, I just got turned on to these guys called the Subdudes. I just got their first album that came out in ’94. Man, they are kick ass. They’ve got three other ones they’ve put out and I’ve never really heard of them, but this girl that I know I was over to her house. I heard it and said “Man, what is that?”
If you like what you hear, you can order the CD by visiting thesubdudesstore.com. The band receives a significant percentage from the sale of CDs via this site — as opposed to virtually nothing from sales via Amazon.com, iTunes, Wal-Mart, etc.
I think I have played this album about 50 times since I first heard it. It is brilliantly Steven Wilson. NO point after such a long time of listening to go into a detailed review of it – just go listen … and the two offerings below are DIFFERENT.
It is an album of continual changes and switches. If you know Wilson – you know that he is part of many different bands – and in various ways – all of them come through at different times on this tour de force.
Sonic Audioscapes and ‘In your face’ walls of sound give way in a split second to a lonely voice – he is spectacular.
He utilizes the almost trademarked scratchy vinyl and definitely little things appear that you know you have heard before – but bottom line – this boy keeps delivering the goods.
Porcupine Tree are happy to announce the forthcoming release of their tenth studio album “The Incident”. The record is set to be released via Roadrunner Records worldwide on 21st September, as a double CD.
The centre-piece is the title track, which takes up the whole of the first disc. The 55-minute work is described as “a slightly surreal song cycle about beginnings and endings and the sense that ‘after this, things will never be the same again’.”
The self-produced album is completed by four standalone compositions that developed out of band writing sessions last December – Flicker, Bonnie The Cat, Black Dahlia, and Remember Me Lover feature on a separate EP length disc to stress their independence from the song cycle.
Video footage of the band in the studio working on The Incident, as well as audio previews, will be available online soon. The band will tour extensively to promote the album from mid September onwards.
Alabama 3 are a band I am in the process of discovering – not sure who exactly put me on to them
[UPDATE, as a message from Mr T - thankyou sir]
“That will have been me then…..I saw them do a blinding gig last year. You should also be listening to the ‘fleet foxes’, ‘Seasick steve’, The killers new album.’day and age’ and although i know you are not a fan…ac/dc – ‘black ice’.”
Stephen x
I hadn’t listened to them until today. Good stuff. So I looked around a little at their web site … interesting. Thought you might be interested in this small item – kind of goes back to this debate on JGM – which in turn references this article
From Their Web Site :
MANIFESTO
Let’s talk business. Let’s talk about the MUSIC business, and let’s talk about DEATH.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the DEATH of the CD, the DEATH of record shops, the DEATH of record companies (hurrah!), while the record companies themselves have been talking about the DEATH of MUSIC (by which they mean the DEATH of profit margins). Anybody who remembers Peter and the Test Tube Babies- you know who you are- will call to mind that mordant slogan: ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’. And anybody who remembers our screamingly camp and fiercely intelligent friend Jeff, God rest his soul, will remember the patch on his leather jacket which said ‘ Home Fucking is Killing Prostitution’.
Digital downloads and file – sharing have made shiny pieces of plastic virtually redundant; prices for CD’s have been slashed by 50% and the companies are still hemorrhaging money. Groucho Marx historically said ‘ he who controls the means of production controls pop music’ but the technology for pressing, playing, recording and distributing music is now within reach of anyone with a PC and a broadband connection. The average asbo-dodger from Chiswick now has the technology now to record and disseminate an album with all the production values of Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight from his bedroom. Which begs the question ‘What exactly are record companies for?’.
Previously, these loan sharks justified their racket on their purchase over the hardware of manufacture and distribution, but, like the mercurial policeman in Terminator three, the machine has gone soft, melted through their fingers, and stabbed them in the arse. Late, and unfashionable gatecrashers at the digital party, Sony et al have been desperately trying to pimp and police the shadowy domain of Cyberspace. They might as well try to set up a Neighborhood Watch scheme in Narnia.
Now we have a hoo – ha over Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen and Kate Nash going supernova from their bedrooms, the entire apparatus of the Industry replaced by a webcam, a Myspace page and a couple of guitars. On closer examination, however, we find that these cyber -anarchists have had considerable promotional assistance from their labels. The spectacle of democracy has once again been carefully stage – managed; The devil’s best trick was convincing people he didn’t exist.
What is to be Done? Is it possible to circumvent the Industry, and short-circuit the Machine? We’re going to find out…
Mika’s new CD, 
Recent Comments