Puscifer - The Mission (M is for Milla Mix)

 #Puscifer #Maynard James Keenan #art rock #experimental rock #electronic #industrial #progressive rock #eclectic #music video

When you think of prog metal giants Tool, the word ‘comedy’ probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But the way frontman Maynard James Keenan sees it, it’s essential not only to that band, but to just about every band he’s ever had a hand in – most notably his solo-project-turned- full-band, Puscifer. “It’s always been the case,” he contests. “It just so happens that Puscifer embodies more of that up-front than the other projects – though, [1996 Tool single] Stinkfist... come on!” Puscifer started life as a gag, a punch-line to a joke that only Maynard fully appreciated. The band’s first public ‘appearance’ was on November 3, 1995, when they popped up on the first episode of the Bob Odenkirk and David Cross comedy sketch show, Mr. Show. In a rockumentary-style skit, a wig-and-trucker-hat-sporting Maynard appears as ‘Ronnie Dobbs’, frontman of the hardcore punk group Puscifer (which also featured Tool guitarist Adam Jones). At that point, ‘Puscifer’ existed only as the vehicle for comedy sketches and was more a workshop of ideas than an actual musical project.
“The name ‘Puscifer’ came up even before we did Mr. Show, when I was working with [comedian] Laura Milligan in a comedy club in Los Angeles,” Maynard explains. “Puscifer was one of the fake bands we’d get to play at shows. There were lots of little things happening behind the scenes long before the first full-length – we even printed t-shirts and stuff. Puscifer didn’t really fully realise itself as a project until I started working on the Underworld soundtrack with Danny Lohner.”
A sometime live member of Nine Inch Nails, Danny had collaborated with Maynard on A Perfect Circle’s debut album, Mer De Noms, as well as the ultimately unrealised supergroup Tapeworm. The pair had become a closely knit creative force, Maynard even inviting Danny to help develop ideas for the long-mooted Puscifer project. In turn, when Danny was appointed as the musical supervisor on the 2003 vampire/werewolf action film Underworld, he suggested the pair finally release a fully fledged Puscifer song. The finished product, Rev 22:20, was Puscifer’s first ‘official’ release, but it still took another four years for the band to release a debut album. “Part of the reason it took so long to record a debut album was logistics,” Maynard admits. “These days, you can go onto a bunch of AI programmes, give them a bunch of lyrical and visual prompts, and within five minutes you’ve got the whole thing done while sitting in your underwear drinking coffee. When I was trying to do Puscifer as an independent band, you didn’t really have things like Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro or even iMovie, so everything took budget and I didn’t have a budget.”
Puscifer’s development reached a major turning point when Maynard began working with engineer Mat Mitchell on A Perfect Circle’s 2004 release, eMOTIVe. Recognising that he had again found a kindred creative spirit, Maynard enlisted Mat to help him realise his vision for Puscifer. One of the first songs they worked on became Vagina Mine, based around a riff Maynard had been tinkering with for “a fuck of a long time”. “We worked really well together, complementing each other in strange ways,” Maynard says. “I came up with the riff to Vagina Mine back when I was living in Grand Rapids, pre-Tool. It was an acoustic riff, but when I tried to explain it, [the people I showed it to] couldn’t wrap their heads around it. I just kept shelving it, but I showed it to Mat and he was like, ‘Let’s record it!’ It all spiralled out from there.” With Mat’s help, Puscifer’s sound truly began to take shape. While A Perfect Circle had largely inhabited the same alt metal/prog crossover sphere that he had become famous for with Tool, Maynard knew this new project was going to be something entirely different.
“Trying to reinvent yourself is not an easy task when you have a lot of pressure from an existing, successful thing,” he admits. “With Puscifer, it was hard to find a way to still be ourselves and bring something unique to the table while trying to also force yourself into another box. We really turned on our creative juices to find our way through that minefield and, for the end product, I’d point to the likes of Tom Waits and Kraftwerk. If they had a baby, that bastard child would be Puscifer. There are weird analogue, acoustic instruments mixed with synths and drums.” Over the next three years, Maynard and Mat worked together on Puscifer’s debut album, recording bits in the brief windows of downtime the pair had while Maynard juggled the massive success of both Tool and A Perfect Circle. Maynard freely admits he has no idea how many different sessions and recordings it took to finally pull together Puscifer’s debut album, “V” Is For Vagina.
“It’s hard to track when you’re almost 60 and used a lot of aluminium deodorant back in the day!” he offers with a chuckle. “It literally ended up being a Frankenstein creation, because we were forced to record it in hotel rooms and various studios on our days off, in boiler rooms and dressing rooms. On the original Vagina Mine track there were some tom hits and snare hits that were recorded in a big arena somewhere, alongside acoustic guitar we’d recorded in a closet, and keyboard stuff Mat brought from I don’t even know where. He could have done it at Starbucks for all I know!”
As the songs came together, humour remained a key element, Maynard creating a cast of colourful characters who would crop up in Puscifer song lyrics, music videos and recorded skits online. “Some successful bands get caught in that trap of being afraid to go off brand”, says Maynard. “AC/DC is one of my favourite bands, but you will never catch them dead going off brand. With Puscifer, there’s no such thing – just go.” The approach was undoubtedly bizarre, but became more prevalent in subsequent years as emerging bands constructed their own fictional narratives to great success. Which raises the question: did Puscifer pave the way for Ghost?
“Somebody always has to be first, but I don’t think there’s one person that specifically invented it and then everyone else followed,” Maynard says dismissively. “The ideas of having characters associated with your music was where music was always heading. Our exposure to Canadian sketch comedy show Kids In The Hall, Second City and other things like Monty Python while we were kids all seeped into our subconscious, and shows like Saturday Night Live helped cement this connection between music and comedy. We connected those dots and those characters just started coming out. I’d love to take credit for that... So in fact, starting over, yeah, we did that!”
Released on October 30, 2007, “V” Is For Vagina marked the moment Puscifer officially graduated from Maynard’s gag group into a fully realised creative enterprise. Along the way they had been a comedy country-punk group, subjects of short films and even a clothing line (consisting mostly of novelty t-shirts). The next logical step was to play shows. In February 2009, they hosted a multi-night residency at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, mixing comedy skits and live performances of their songs.
“We were scratching our heads and going, ‘How the fuck do we do this?’ because we had all this movement onstage and all these modified sets,” Maynard recalls. “I still remember the butterflies, because I was so used to just going out and singing my songs, but there was all this improv dialogue and that was nerve-racking. Some of it fell 100% flat, but other bits were fucking awesome.”
Puscifer’s debut album peaked at No.25 on the Billboard 200 in the US and, by autumn 2009, Maynard was ready to take the project properly on the road. There, they picked up the final ingredient to turn Puscifer into a fully-fledged band, British singer-songwriter Carina Round. Carina initially joined as a live member, but soon became a key creative force at the heart of Puscifer – and remains so today. Much like Mat Mitchell before her, Carina’s first contribution was helping them re-interpret Vagina Mine for live performances.
“We didn’t want to be one of those bands that wrote a great song that would sound awful live and be too afraid to actually change it,” Maynard explains. “If you have all three of myself, Mat and Carina working on a song, even if we go off in wildly different directions, you have a frame of reference for what those three people can do. Nine times out of 10 Carina’s decisions are going to be smarter than mine, and the same goes for Mat. Combine that with the insanity that my brain goes through with those two people, and those three creative forces are more than the sum of their parts.”
But with Maynard having so much experience playing characters, who would he like to play in a film of his life? “I keep getting calls from Brad Pitt, but I keep muting him. Ha!”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/puscifer-story-behind-the-first-album

 

 

Haight-Ashbury - She's So Groovy '86

 #Haight-Ashbury #psychedelic rock #psychedelic folk #folk rock #acid folk #neo-psychedelia #flower power #retro-San Francisco sound #sunshine pop #Scottish #music video

Choosing such a loaded name is willful. Scottish trio Haight-Ashbury are going to be identified with psychedelic-era San Francisco whatever they do. Should they wish to extend their musical wings, diversions into drum and bass or metal aren’t going to be easily accommodated. It's just as well then that Haight-Ashbury are top-drawer practitioners of a terrifically attractive dark psychedelia. Their second album (released under the name Haight-Ashbury 2, but they still trade as Haight-Ashbury too) opens with hand percussion, a jangling sitar and a keening, modal vocal line. Rhythm is Mo Tucker simple and repetition hypnotises. The raw production emphasises Haight-Ashbury’s edginess. As does a leaning towards the moodiness of Mazzy Star and their obvious familiarity with The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Incredible String Band. This version of the psychedelic dream will make flowers wilt. Second track “Sophomore” describes giving the kiss of life. Haight-Ashbury are singing of those around them being close to death. Quoting Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the jangling and tuneful “Everything is Possible” brings some levity. There’s some hope for peace and love. This extraordinary album hasn't quite come from the blue. Theartsdesk saw Haight-Ashbury at the end of last year at France’s Trans Musicales festival and summed them up as “folk harmonies with a raga guitar and shoegazing dissonance”. The Ashburys does nothing to alter that, but it does confirm that Haight-Ashbury are very special.  From: https://theartsdesk.com/node/35096/view

Of course Haight-Ashbury aren’t actually from San Francisco, but it’d be more than reasonable to assume that their second album opener, ‘Maastricht - A Treaty’, was recorded live amongst the longhairs in Golden Gate Park. Lifting the patchouli oil-drenched essence of far-out musical Hair, the song unfolds as a somewhat directionless exposition of tremulous sitar while, just in the corner of your vision, a kaftan-clad Dennis Hopper does the Watusi with George Harrison. If this whole album were similarly stoned and meandering, we might take umbrage; but mercifully it’s a one-off. In fact, as a lesson in vivid scene setting, it works a treat.
Coming from Scotland rather than California, Haight-Ashbury are Kirsty Reid, Jennifer Thompson and Kirsty’s brother Scott on drums. Haight-Ashbury 2: The Ashburys follows the trio’s 2010 debut, and though it might be heavily indebted to counter-cultural, tie-dyed grooves, this isn’t just a spun-out, swinging 60s tribute from some half-baked merry pranksters. ‘Sophomore’ brings to mind those other harmonising hippies of the moment, Haim; but like those So-Cal sisters, it adds a healthy, brusque dose of a gutsy power-pop into the bargain. Tough like Pat Benatar but heartfelt and absorbed with female experience like Stevie Nicks, its heavy guitars and heavenly vocals also recall graceful grunge virtuosos The Breeders and Veruca Salt. It is, quite frankly, a blinder of a song. These Glaswegians don’t spend the whole record stateside stargazing though. They skip the same, lavender-studded path as Smoke Fairies on the eerie 2nd Hand Rose, looking to British folk of the 1970s, of Fairport Convention, with ring-a-roses, Wicker Man vocals and a stomping glam-goth breakdown.  From: https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/25pn/

The Vespers - Lawdy

 #The Vespers #folk #Americana #roots music #contemporary folk #bluegrass #music video

Here’s another great song from Nashville’s own The Vespers, a remarkable group we’ve been celebrating for years here. Written by Phoebe Cryar, this is “Lawdy.” The Vespers are two sisters (Callie and Phoebe Cryar), and two brothers (Bruno and Taylor Jones). The sisters are the daughters of Christian artist Morgan Cryar, most famous for his rendition of “Pray in the USA.” All four are multi-instrumentalists, covering upright and electric bass, guitar, banjo, drums, mandolin, ukulele, accordion and more. The Vespers was the sister’s duo at first; they named their group The Vespers after Phoebe found this word for evening prayer and Callie liked it, because she felt it easy to remember. They sing, as the saying goes, as only siblings can sing. Siblings who are great harmony singers, that is. Their two voices in perfect visceral harmony is the engine of this group. But it needed more, and when they met the musical Jones brothers at a campfire jam, they found the missing parts of their band, and they expanded to be four. “Lawdy” has recently had a new surge of new attention after being featured in the TV show “Longmire.” It is from their second album The Fourth Wall, released in 2012. The title of the album, they said, refers to the invisible fourth wall which separates the performers and the audience; it’s a wall they aim to tear down.  From: https://americansongwriter.com/todays-favorite-newly-discovered-song-lawdy-by-the-vespers/

Like their alt-folk and bluegrass brethren, Crooked Still, Red Molly, Blame Sally and the late, lamented Nickel Creek, The Vespers are adept at conveying back porch harmony with deep-rooted humility and soaring spirituality. They may be young - the two brothers and two sisters who make up the quartet are barely out of their teens (and one is only 19!) - but the reverence for tradition and home-grown sensibilities echoes consistently through every one of these rootsy homilies. Indeed, the melodies come across like Sunday morning hymns, songs that combine gospel fervor with a supple delivery.
Given the fact that "The Fourth Wall" is only the quartet's second album and, like their first release, 2010's "Tell Your Mama," also an independent effort, their competence - and confidence - is all the more impressive. The title is taken from theatrical jargon that delineates the unseen divide through which an audience observes the performers on stage, an appropriate handle that also connects to the album's easy embrace. Songs such as Better Now, Got No Friends and Will You Love Me convey wistful folk finesse...all plucking banjo, willowy harmonies, breezy tempos and down-home designs. But it's their deeper reverence that envelopes these tracks, particularly their mournful cover of Son House's Grinnin’ in Your Face (the sole cover), Lawdy and the album's lovely hymn-like closer Winter.
Youth and contemplation oftentimes make odd bedfellows, but these earnest shuffles and hushed laments manage to infuse celebration with solemnity and make that mix sound effortlessly enticing in the process. Two albums on, the Vespers have demonstrated their ability to tap into a timeless thread and garner contemporary appeal. In so doing, they emulate a neo-gothic imprint that might have been etched in Appalachia. "The Fourth Wall" is something truly special.  From: https://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/cdreview.asp?xid=4868

White Denim - Pretty Green

 #White Denim #garage rock #indie rock #psychedelic rock #progressive punk #blues rock #experimental #music video 

The Austin, Texas, rock band White Denim flavors its basic rock 'n' roll with a potpourri of other styles, but that's kind of logical, since their origins came out of a virtual collision of bands. White Denim, whose sound has included tinges of punk-funk, psychedelic, country, heavy metal, and Latin jazz, became a band in a sort of ad hoc, almost accidental, manner back in 2005. The band Parque Torch, with singer/guitarist James Petralli and drummer Josh Block, was playing on a bill with another band, Peach Train, which included bassist Steve Terebecki. By the end of that night, Terebecki had joined Block and Petralli and the threesome evolved into another band. White Denim was releasing its own EPs by 2007, and combined a couple of those EPs for "Workout Holiday," their debut album, which, oddly enough, was only released in the United Kingdom. It was late 2008 before the band re-worked some of those tunes and added some more for "Exposion," which became their U.S. album debut. Their latest record is the group's seventh, and their music has always been noted for the different directions it takes, often record-by-record, or even cut-by-cut.
"Well, Parque Torch was James' original trio, which was cool and had no bass," explained Terebecki, from his Austin home, when we caught up with him last week, before the current tour started. "That band was a real in-you-face, riffy punk rock band, sort of like early Replacements. But of course Josh was a drummer with a real jazz background, so they played some really interesting music. Peach Train was the band I was in, sort of the band Makeup, a power trio with a lot of wah-wah used on the guitar, but basically noisy rock 'n' roll." "I was really excited to get a chance to play with Josh," Terebecki added. "I come from Virginia originally, and I had moved to Austin fairly recently then. I had played with some really accomplished drummers in Virginia, but Josh was the first really good drummer I had heard here in Texas. We began trying to build a sound of our own, and all this time later, we're still refining it."
No matter what stylistic permutations White Denim might take over the years, it seems that a basic rock 'n' roll feel, a 1950-60s garage band sound, ends up being their foundation. "I think basic rock 'n' roll is definitely at the root of it all, because it's all born from what we like to play onstage," said Terebecki. "Our live shows tend to be louder and more upbeat than our records anyway. We've all never been fans of performers who get up there and play all laid-back on stage. We have done a lot of experimenting with different things with our recordings, but live, in concert, we are always louder and nastier. We like to do what feels good in the moment."  From: https://www.patriotledger.com/story/entertainment/local/2018/10/04/expect-mix-musical-styles-from/9706010007/

Stonefield - In The Eve

 #Stonefield #psychedelic rock #stoner rock #hard rock #heavy psych #melodic metal #Australian #music video

The Findlay sisters Amy, Hannah, Sarah and Holly are the quadruple dose of stoner rock we’ve come to know as Stonefield. Laced with mind-bending, psychedelic riffs, the Aussie band’s tunes will fling you back in time – not surprising, considering they grew up on the likes of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. The siblings have come a long way since commandeering their parents’ farm shed in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges for rehearsals. As teenagers, they won a contest held by radio station Triple J for unsigned artists, shining a national spotlight on their music. Then, after a gig in Perth, Stonefield were approached by a scout for Glastonbury Festival, leading to their sensational performance at the 2011 show which culminated in an incendiary cover of Led Zep’s Whole Lotta Love. Between then and now, the band have released an EP, three studio albums, and are on the cusp of another full-length. Titled Bent, the upcoming project will be released via King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s independent label, Flightless, just like 2018’s Far From Earth. If the new album’s lead single Sleep is any indication, it looks like we’re in for another glorious sludgefest.

What was your musical upbringing like?

We all have quite similar tastes in music and grew up listening to the music that our parents had brought us up on, which was a lot of Frank Zappa, Zeppelin and Hendrix. During our high school years, we all got into slightly different stuff but we’ve always had a common love of rock music.

You all grew up in a small town. Did that make music an escape for you?

I don’t think it was necessarily an escape but it definitely gave us something to do, which I guess is probably part of the reason we stuck with it. There were fewer distractions and not much else to do.

What’s the songwriting process like for Stonefield? You seem to put out albums at a fast pace – As Above, So Below in 2017 and Far From Earth in 2018.

We have a habit of writing a whole heap of songs and ditching them before getting to a point where we’re happy to put them on an album. We generally jam on a little riff or idea that someone has and the song is created from there. Once we’ve written and ditched a few songs, we all eventually get an idea of the album we want to create and it becomes a lot easier from there.

Bent was recorded by Joey Walker and Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. What was it like for you to work with two guitarists on the album?

Recording with Stu and Joe was a completely different experience to anything we’d done before. They stood back completely and let us make the decisions without influencing us too much. It was refreshing working with people who had faith in what we do and enabled us to achieve exactly what we wanted to without second-guessing ourselves.

We read that the album was recorded in between tours over five days. How did that affect the process and the atmosphere of the sessions?

It helped us to achieve a much more “live-sounding” album that wasn’t over-produced or overly thought about. All the songs still felt fresh and exciting to play which made it a very enjoyable process.

Amy has said that Sleep is about the experience of floating in the “in between”, but many fans see that song title and think of the band, Sleep. Is it an homage, and was it intentional?

It wasn’t intentional at all, however, we are fans of Sleep so we don’t mind the association! It came purely from the storyline of the song.

This is going to be Stonefield’s fourth album. Has what you wanted out of a music career changed since you embarked on this about a decade ago?

I don’t think what we wanted out of a career has changed but I think the way we wanted to achieve it and how we go about it has changed. We have learnt so much and have so much more belief in our knowledge and decisions that we are able to navigate things much better these days.

In terms of guitar tone, did you know what you wanted for this album?

Nope! Generally when recording an album, whoever we’re working with tends to get deep into experimenting with different amps and sounds, but a lot of the time we end up going with something very similar to my live setup. For Bent, I went in knowing what works and how we wanted the album to represent our live sound, so I didn’t spend too much time messing around.

Last April you guys were in Los Angeles for what you called a “residency”. How long were you there for, and what was it like?

We were there for a month. It was quite a different experience being in the one spot for so long as we’re generally in a different city every night, but it was a lot of fun. We had amazing bands play with us each week so it was cool discovering so much new music.

From: https://guitar.com/features/interviews/stonefield-from-farm-shed-to-glastonbury/

Virgin Black - Lamenting Kiss

 #Virgin Black #gothic metal #doom metal #avant-garde metal #symphonic metal #Australian #music video

When I first heard the band name 'Virgin Black' come up in conversation I thought this had to be some sort of gothic metal band with all band members wearing long dresses and corpse paint on their face. An average metal band that 16-year old high school 'metal experts' listen to nowadays (no offense meant to anyone). And in a way these preconceptions were actually right!Virgin Black is indeed a band that could partially be categorized as a gothic metal outfit. Yet that banner would not do enough justification to this bunch of talented musicians, for they go beyond the boundaries of conventional gothic metal.
There's this new wave of progressive artists who seem to incorporate classical music into their compositions; think of the likes of Epica, Nightwish and most noticeably Swedish prog metal outfit Therion, but Virgin Black surpasses each and every one of them. Yes, all of them share that longing for operatic vocals, yet Virgin Black's music is not about the bombastic nature of songs. These five Australians make music without reaching out to conventional metal. It's not all about heavy metal riffs or pompous drumming. No, Virgin Black seem to enjoy minimalist moments as well; some segments are pure classical or operatic pieces of music, whereas other moments are pure acoustic brilliance!
Come to think of it, perhaps 'doom metal' would be a more appropriate tag for this branch of music. The dramatic vocals, either operatic or normal singing in low key, don't make the happiest of conditions to listen to music, but they do somehow manage to charm the listener. To give you an idea of what to expect: lead vocalist Rowan London's voice is a sort of compromise of those trademark high-pitched prog metal vocalists and low-key opera vocalists, whereas bass player Ian Miller's additional vocals are pure black metal in origin, i.e. he growls. Yet, his growling is not at all bothersome, mainly because most of the time when he sings, you hear London backing him up with his low and dynamic voice or visa versa.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=14692

Renaissance - BBC Sight & Sound In Concert 1977

Part 1

 Part 2

 #Renaissance #Annie Haslam #progressive rock #British progressive rock #symphonic prog #classical #orchestral #1970s #live music video

Repertoire Records has previously dug out the De Lane Studios and Academy of Music concerts of Renaissance for official release. In comparison, this 'Live at the BBC Sight & Sound' package includes material that fans are well acquainted with. It draws from the previous BBC Sessions CD and adds, as the main attraction, video of the concert performed by Renaissance at the Hippodrome, London in 1977 as part of the Sight & Sound in Concert series.
I was excited as this was the only color footage taken from a live performance given by the band in the 70s. And it is a beautifully shot concert, way ahead of all of the band's DVDs including the recent ones in that aspect, covering the band from a whole variety of angles. However, when I saw the nervous look on Annie Haslam's face in the first close up shot in the concert as they perform Carpet of the Sun, I began to have misgivings. After a somewhat glaring misstep (hard to be too harsh when somebody's got a voice like that) towards the end of that song, her confidence seems to drop even more and she wears a kind of anxious and downcast look through the rest of the show, for the most part. The wide variety of giggles and grins sported by her in shows over the years attest to how unusual it is for her to be that aloof while performing. I didn't mind the show on the whole but I was also not overwhelmed and just said to myself that you can't have it all. Maybe best quality audio and video had to come at the (slight) expense of musical quality and show(woman)ship.
So I decided to play the audio CD version of the concert, just to see if the audio was better on it as compared to the DVD (it was). And I began to get a different impression of the concert, indeed of Annie's singing. On video, she looks tentative, perhaps weighed down by her perfectionist streak and perhaps also battling a throat that was protesting the workload she had imposed on it. But, on audio, I heard beautiful, confident and expressive renditions, as always. Yes, with those little missteps hither and thither, but it is much harder to notice when the sheer quality of her vocal delivery overwhelms you.
Turns out the Sight & Sound concert is another fine example of Annie's quiet resilience. Perhaps she may have been embattled by inner demons and may have completely abdicated the role of frontperson for this show to the more composed Jon Camp but she was still striving to give her best song after song and did not disappoint the eager fans who had turned up to watch the show. I could finally put in perspective the enthusiastic cheering from the crowd after every song. No, it is not that they were forgiving. It is that she and the band as such had truly mounted a wonderful show, in spite of the somewhat scripted quality these Sight & Sound shows have compared to less high profile performances by Renaissance (or other bands). My pick would be Ocean Gypsy but don't miss John Tout's wonderful piano work on Mother Russia. There are some fine, subtle variations in there that he's sneaked in unobtrusively without altering the spirit of the composition.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=54564

 
Renaissance's history actually begins in 1969, when - after the breakup of the Yardbirds and a short stint as the acoustic group Together - drummer Jim McCarty and guitarist/vocalist Keith Relf were joined by classically-trained pianist John Hawken who had earlier played with The Nashville Teens, bassist Louis Cennamo and Keith's sister, vocalist Jane Relf. Actually, the original lineup started falling apart prior to the second album's completion, giving rise to personnel and style changes over the next year before reaching a stable lineup. McCarty hated to fly and left the band in 1970 when they were about to embark on a European tour; Keith Relf and Louis Cennamo left shortly after to pursue a heavier style, eventually forming Armageddon. Jane Relf quit after the tour completed in the fall of 1970 and was replaced by American female vocalist, Binky Cullom from late October to December 1970. John Hawken, dissatisfied with the new vocalist among other reasons, left to join Spooky Tooth and was replaced by keyboard player John Tout around the same time. Hawken later joined The Strawbs in 1973-1974 Louis Cennamo left to join Colosseum and played on the Daughter Of Time album.
Annie Haslam, a brilliant young singer with formal classical vocal training, a beautiful five-octave range and a vivacious personality, answered the Melody Maker advert and got an audition with the band where she met founding members Keith Relf and Jim McCarty. The lineup of Annie Haslam, John Tout, Terry Crowe, Neil Korner, Terry Slade and Michael Dunford toured Europe extensively leading to further personal and acoustic transitions. Danny McCullough, Frank Farrell and John Wetton each took their turn at bass during the period. Keith Relf and Jim McCarty were still very much involved in the direction of the band behind the scenes and while Relf eventually became disinterested, McCarty remained involved until 1973.
Renaissance are in important band in progressive rock - one which far outranks the bands actual sales in the peak years or their fame at the time. The band seemlessly blended classical, rock and folk in a symphonic progressive style that is almost at the center of this genre's description. Anne Haslam was one of the first females to front a progressive rock band and in many ways serves as the reference point for both a style of music and a description for other female vocalists in the progressive genre. Starting with the band's 2nd release with Haslam, Prologue, and running though 1975's Scheherazade and including large portions of the albums released surrounding this period, Renaissance delivered some of the most respected and fresh progressive rock in the classic period of the 70's.  Their live release from Carnegie Hall is one of the cleanest performances and records among the 'live' collections of the era.  Songs such as Ocean Gypsy, Ashes are Burning, Mother Russia and Scheherazade are often cited as classics of the genre.
Starting in the late 70's and early 80's, as the influence of directed radio grew, the band found it hard to get noticed and slowly migrated to a more conventional pop/rock sound leading to the bands effective closing the door by the mid-1980's. Meanwhile, in 1977, original members Jane Relf, Jim McCarty, Louis Cennamo, and John Hawken would go on to form a band and record under the name Illusion. Haslam has gone on to record a number of solo works of varying styles including progressive ones, and the band have reformed in various combinations in the years following including a kind of 'renaissance' (pun intended) in the 2000's with new music and live performances to the delight of new and long time fans.  From: https://www.proggnosis.com/Artist/247

 

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Runaway Girls

 #Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats #heavy metal #stoner rock #doom metal #heavy psych #hard rock #occult rock #music video

There are a plethora of bands nowadays that tackle the aesthetics that call back to a heritage classic rock band’s heyday. Greta Van Fleet’s Josh Kiszka howls just like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Ghost taps into the theatrics of Kiss and Alice Cooper. While these are bands that are dominating the mainstream music consciousness, there is one band that has resided in the underground for over ten years that haunts back to the grim sound of metal at its earliest point of formation in the late ’60s/early ’70s: Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats. Hailing from Birmingham, England, Uncle Acid is the brainchild of Kevin Starrs, who has ultimately taken on the moniker of the band’s name with a revolving door of band members (The Deadbeats). The fruits of their labor emerged 40 years to the day of Black Sabbath’s debut, Friday the 13th in February 2010, with their debut album Volume 1. Recorded with a nonexistent budget, no knowledge of conventional recording techniques, and a lack of distribution network or audience marks the bearing of a true DIY effort. With this record, the roots of their sound lie in the heavy psych vein with some tasteful ’70s-tinged guitar leads, Jon Lord-esque organ runs, and vocal melodies that are accessible.
If I were to sell Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats to an old soul, they would feel right at home with this band. There is an obvious Black Sabbath similarity with their crunchy Iommic riffs, but with a heightened sense of doom and fuzz. As heavy as they are, they are unbelievably melodic to the point where they can be deemed “poppy” in some respects. Kevin Starrs’ vocals are a hybrid of Ozzy Osbourne, John Lennon, and Neil Young. With added distortion and tasteful harmonies, they create this eerie element that perfectly compliments the doomy riffs.
For anyone interested in horror and the occult, the lyrics and album concepts can easily attract them. The grim nature of the subject matters they delve into goes hand in hand with the heaviness of the music. While Uncle Acid’s sound has evolved to work in more elements to provide some light and shade, outsiders could go as far as to say that when you hear one song, you’ve listened to them all. It can sometimes come across as an AC/DC situation; it may all sound the same, but the style suits them well, and they do a damn good job at executing it. Besides, occult doom bands are always welcome in the ever-broad musical climate of today.  From: https://vwmusicrocks.com/are-uncle-acid-the-deadbeats-a-modern-day-black-sabbath/

My Little White Rabbit - The Key

 #My Little White Rabbit #psychedelic rock #garage rock #psychedelic pop rock #German #music video

Psychedelic rock became the soundtrack of the wider cultural exploration of the hippie movement. Considering it was widely dismissed at the time as merely another momentary fad, and erroneously presumed to be pretty much dead in the water by the middle of 1968, the influence of psychedelic rock runs long and deep, and because of its links to the hippie movement many bands having psychedelic elements get a modern hippie imprint all over their image, just like Hamburg’s My Little White Rabbit. Starting out in 2014 when the band members met up at a dry river bed in the Mojave Desert, My Little White Rabbit bring the hippie movement into the 2010s, both musically and visually.

Q: A lot has happened since you started. Today My Little White Rabbit are five members but you started out in 2014 just as a three-piece.

Rike: Yes, we’ve had some changes in the band. It wasn’t that clear who was and who wasn’t a band member because of how much time people had, so we played with different people. That’s why there was just the three of us on band pictures.

Jan: It was also a question of style, we needed some time to find our own identity. In the beginning we made kind of different music compared to what we do now. We just started by putting all our ideas together to see what direction to take it and some people weren’t that super interested in that. Not that it was a huge thing but some people left the band. But the three of us still wanted to be in this band and liked whatever direction we went, and decided that we’re the core of the band because we support the direction and the style of it. With that we had to find people who were as experimental as us.

About your debut album that just came out; does it relate to your EP from 2015 or is it something completely new?

Rike: It was released on the June 7th. We really wanted it to be released in March but as usual you need to deal with the label and other stuff. There are still some songs from the EP on the album because we released the EP ourselves without a label. That’s why the cover design is similar to the EP, to get a kind of fluid transition.

Jan: It’s kind of easy with the whole design thing. We stayed with our designer because we always like his stuff. The collages, the weird stuff, we all find that it fits very well with our music. Why change the design as long as we all like it? He always comes up with new ideas on designs.

Rike: He is great with implementing our weird and unprofessional ideas (laughs), a great man!

Jan: And for the album it’s great because we also want to show our fans how varied we are and that we have old songs we’re very proud of. Of course the old songs don’t sound like our new but that is how it has to be.

In 2014 someone people claimed that you played “absurdo pop” and I just had to laugh a bit about it. Let’s say your style now is lots of sixties psychedelic guitars and that people compare or describe you as hippies.

Rike: Someone started with this old hippie thing and it has followed us ever since. But we really aren’t that kind of hippies who dance around naked on meadows. I have nothing against people who like to do that (laughs), but we’re not really a one-genre band. Everything is moving around the psychedelic frame, sometimes more blues, sometimes more guitars, and some songs which are more psychedelic pop.

Lasse: It’s always difficult with the terminology because everybody has their own opinion about it. Is it more an aspect of life or is it a direction of music? In the late sixties it was rather a kind of collective name. There was everything you would imagine in terms of music and people who were different compared to what was normal, that’s why they came up with terms like “weltmusik”. Everything not like what’s the usual stuff belongs to “weltmusik”.

Jan: But if you use “hippie” as somebody who wants to be without social limitations and relate that to our music, I would say we are hippies because we want to make our music just as we feel and like. If it means freedom and self-expression, I can deal with it.

Rike: That’s exactly what we want to represent. You don’t have to follow certain rules just because you want to belong to one style.

Jan: A modern phenomenon in revival rock bands is that they get on stage in what looks like uniforms. Old leather boots, beards, slim shirts and all that stuff. The whole image has to fit the style, not just the music. That’s something we don’t want to do. It is important that everyone of us still stays an individual, that’s how our music comes to life.

You said you like to listen to music on your own. Which era is your favorite that you would love to live in?

Lasse: Awesome question! You always think about the sixties because there were bands like the Beatles. But I would say today anyway because there has been so much fun stuff happening after the sixties and we would have missed all of it then.  

Jan: I would say the same. If you’ve asked me a few years ago I would also have said the sixties, to see Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix play live, which would have been really cool. But it’s actually awesome today. I listen to very much new and interesting music on Spotify; it’s insane how many new artists I’ve found there just in the past four to five years. I’m in there every day. It would have been great to be a bit younger today and listen to all that stuff without thinking “I already know it” and be more open to it; being twenty years younger and skip the nineties would have been great (laugh). For music listeners it’s really great to be able to listen to music wherever you are. Maybe not for the bands.

Rike: Back then it was kind a hard to find new music. When I was like fifteen I always watched VIVA2 or MTV to find new music and to stay up to date. That was the channel we had and you wrote it down and got the record at the store or just listened to it there. It would have been great to have the channels we have today back then. Very easy access and a wide range of new bands and stuff.

Lasse: But it was more mystic back then. You were not able to listen to new bands every day, and you didn’t get to know what Uriah Heep had for breakfast (laughs). If I talk to my parents how they consumed music when they were young it’s really interesting. We were at Jethro Tull last Friday which was really awesome, and I asked them how they listened to that music back then and they were like “Somebody had the record or you had to go to a club and just hope the DJ would play it”.

Jan: You dealt with music differently. You bought an album and if you found it really awesome you sat with your CD player and listened to it over and over again. Today, I mostly listen to music when I’m on the road, back then I sat in front of my stereo and listened to one album like five hundred times because I was so thrilled about it. Not playing video games, not meeting up with friends, only listening to music. A complete spare time activity. Today it is more on the side. I’m still into it but I also have more time to listen to new music.

Lasse: That’s what every musician says. Music is available around the clock and you can listen to music everywhere.

Positive and negative, two sides as usual. Rike, one last question for you. You started your career in the classical field?

Rike: I started to play piano as a kid, at the age of six. At nine I started with violin and I played lots of the classical stuff until the end of my teenage years - years I don’t regret at all. At some point I started to play guitar because I wanted to do something new without having to take lessons. After the whole classical stuff it was important for me to do something without knowing exactly what I was doing, just have an open mind. It’s really good, both sides are really good. And classic music isn’t always just something you need to think about when doing.

Lasse: But you have to read notes (laugh).

What about singing? Did you start that as well as a kid or did it come later?

Rike: I’ve had singing lessons but really late. I sang in a choir as a kid and somebody said I had to get some singing lessons, but I didn’t want to sing the way people told me to. In the end I got lessons and tried out much stuff, but really late, ironically.

But you are good anyway.

Lasse: Well, yes. (laugh)

From: https://www.messedmag.com/2019/06/12/hamburg-crib-sessions-7-my-little-white-rabbit-interviewed/

Sparklehorse - Dog Door

 #Sparklehorse #alternative/indie rock #alternative country rock #lo-fi #slowcore #psychedelic rock #animated music video #stop-motion #Quay brothers

Although its name suggests the presence of a full band, Sparklehorse was essentially the work of singer/songwriter Mark Linkous, an alumnus of the mid-'80s indie band the Dancing Hoods. A tenure in the Johnson Family (later known as Salt Chuck Mary) followed, as did stints sweeping chimneys and painting houses. He began working as Sparklehorse in 1995, honing his spooky, lo-fi roots pop in the studio located on his farm in Bremo Bluff, VA. After a demo made its way to the offices of Capitol Records, Linkous signed to the label and issued Sparklehorse's acclaimed debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, scoring an alternative radio hit with the single "Someday I Will Treat You Good."
In early 1996, after a Sparklehorse concert in London, Linkous nearly died when he passed out after mixing Valium with prescription antidepressants. He spent 14 hours unconscious on his hotel's bathroom floor, his legs pinned under the rest of his body, and the prolonged loss of blood circulation nearly left him crippled. Many months and countless surgeries later, he was quite literally back on his feet, and his recovery provided inspiration for 1998's Good Morning Spider. Linkous then collaborated with PJ Harvey and the Cardigans' Nina Persson on 2001's radiant It's a Wonderful Life. In between that album and 2006's Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (which featured contributions from Tom Waits and Danger Mouse), Linkous contributed songs to the soundtrack of the film Laurel Canyon and produced Daniel Johnston's 2003 album, Fear Yourself.
The next Sparklehorse project was truly an ambitious one: a multimedia sound and art gallery done in conjunction with Danger Mouse and filmmaker David Lynch called Dark Night of the Soul. The project featured several singers, including James Mercer, Gruff Rhys, Jason Lytle, Julian Casablancas, Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chesnutt, Scott Spillane, and David Lynch, whose photographs made up the 100-page accompanying book. Although slated to appear on the Capitol label in 2009, Dark Night of the Soul ended up dry docked by a legal dispute between EMI and Danger Mouse. Dark Night of the Soul was left marooned as an adjunct hostage in a complicated legal entanglement. Copies leaked out in different configurations, but it became apparent that Dark Night of the Soul's legitimate release was in serious jeopardy. Cutting his losses, Linkous instead turned his attention to a collaborative project with laptop artist Christian Fennesz. The two had previously recorded music together in 2007, and excerpts from those sessions were packaged together, forming the 2009 release In the Fishtank. As of early 2010, Linkous had moved to Hayesville, NC, and was reportedly nearing completion of a new Sparklehorse album. On March 6 of that year he was visiting friends in Knoxville, TN, when he committed suicide at age 47 by shooting himself in the chest with a rifle.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sparklehorse-mn0000008549/biography

Well she's as mean as a needle
Don't get too close to the heater
She's like a mean shop keeper
Who got an extra gun
She about 6'4" and she's a wrecking ball
Now go ahead and kiss her
She brought the bad weather with her
She got you coming through the dog door
She got you coming through the dog door

Now pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered
You ought to walk away
Well you can't but you ought to
Climb the rickety stairs
She got the long black hair
But don't sit there
Electricity chair
She got you coming through the dog door
She got you coming through the dog door

Pitchfork
Crowbar
Claw hammer
Hot tar

She's got ruin in her name
But she can make it rain
She's a small town jail
And she's starving in the belly of a whale
She got me coming through the dog door
She got me coming through the dog door

Pitchfork (Pitchfork)
Crowbar (Crowbar)
Clawhammer (Clawhammer)
Hot tar (Hot tar)

Light in Babylon - Baderech El Hayam

 #Light in Babylon #Michal Elia Kamal #world music #Mediterranean folk #ethno folk #Turkish folk #Middle Eastern folk #music video

The Ingathering: What’s the band’s story, did you get started playing on the streets?

Michal Elia Kamal: We started playing on one specific street, called İstiklal Avenue [İstiklal Caddesi, or Independence Avenue], not everywhere.

Specifically just that one street in Istanbul?

Yes, İstiklal Avenue, it is a very special place. We started around 11 years ago in Istanbul on İstiklal Avenue, which is in the city center near Taksim Square. It’s very specific and a very special place. That was in 2009, almost 2010, and that moment was also a very good time in Turkey, culturally. Istanbul was chosen to be the cultural capital of Europe, and that period was like a golden time. It is not like that anymore, by the way, but then it was a place with a really big potential for musicians, and artists in general. İstiklal Avenue is a huge avenue with no cars. There are more than two million people passing through there every day. It is very crowded, very touristy, and it was like an artists’ avenue. You had bands playing there—even half-organized—proper bands brought their equipment and put on concerts. You had a puppet show. It looked like a festival. It was not an organized festival, but it was like that every day. It was so intense.

Is that where you met Metehan Çifçi (Mete)?

I wanted to learn music, and I wanted to start my own project. I traveled in India, worked a bit in Europe, and decided I was going to dedicate my life to music. I had even already looked at music schools in Israel. But I looked around, and many of my friends studied music in Israel. I saw them struggling, actually. They are really high-level musicians. They put a lot of money and effort and study into it, and I didn’t see them achieving what they deserved. That changed my mind a bit, and I thought that maybe music school was not the place for me.
I continued to travel. I passed through Turkey almost by chance. It was just before I was about to go back to Israel to figure out what I was going to do, and I just discovered Istanbul. I discovered it not only in a musical way, because it was also a place that’s attractive to me in a much more personal way, too. I arrived in Istanbul, and I started to feel my heart beat. I arrived at İstiklal Street, and I asked my friend — I was with a Turkish friend — I said, “Is this like a holiday or Independence Day or something?” And she told me, in this heavy accent, “No, this is Taksim, baby.” Something was happening there. That was normal, every day. I saw all the musicians, everybody was playing, and I realized that this was the place for me.
I had met Julien, and together we were thinking about building up a project. I knew I could find musicians in Istanbul. Julien said, “There’s İstiklal Street, let’s play there a little and see how it goes. Maximum, it doesn’t work.” We rented a small room in a neighborhood nearby. We earned a little money. Then he said, “There’s this one santur player. I saw him play solo on İstiklal Street. He’s very shy. He doesn’t speak English. But he’s really, really good. We need to find him.” Every day, we went to İstiklal Street, and finally, we found him. We approached him — I had my own songs already that I wrote — and we said, “Can we play?” He said, “Yes,” and I think that moment was when we played our first song as a band. We didn’t know Turkish. He didn’t know English. But it was like, bam. At that moment, something was created. A crowd started to form, and that was the very first moment, 11 years ago. It was like this magical moment, like the spark was there, and all the rest is history. We played one song, a second song, and 10,000 songs since then.

You had instant chemistry.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s happened to me before or after like that. I don’t know what it is in Mete. He’s Turkish, but today he’s family, after all we’ve been through.

What language do you speak with him?

At first, we spoke with our hands, plus a little English, and a little Turkish. Now he’s learned English. I taught him English, and he speaks English like an Israeli [laughs]. We’ve also learned Turkish. Nowadays, we speak English and a bit of Turkish. But in the beginning, we started from scratch. It started from music, which is the main thing. I think it’s what’s beyond language that makes the connection. Even Julien, he’s from France — today he is my husband — I am Israeli, Persian, and Jewish. But the three of us, we say we are dreamers, and that’s what we had in common. We had this culture of dreamers. We decided to go out from our comfort zones, and achieve some inner dream or inner wish, and to take that risk. Choosing music as a lifestyle is a risk. Playing in the streets is a risk. It is not conventional. That was the first thing that brought us together. It was very clear. You didn’t even need to explain it in any language. It was something that was very clear for the three of us, and that’s why it worked.

You said you’re Persian, do you speak Farsi, too?

I understand Farsi, but I don’t speak it that well because I grew up in Israel. I was born and grew up in Tel Aviv. My parents spoke Farsi at home, but I didn’t speak it. People who came to Israel from Iran had to leave something behind. They realized that they were not going back there. That was also something my parents realized. They ran away from Iran so I would have a better future and have a normal life. I am very grateful for that. I have singer friends in Iran, and it is not a place I want to be. I think my parents made a decision to sacrifice something so I would be able to integrate better in Israel — that my first language would be Hebrew and that my first identity would be Israeli.

But did you hear Iranian music around the house?

Yes. You need to sacrifice something, but there are some things you cannot take out. I grew up in a Persian home, with the huge carpets, Persian music, and only Persian food. I think that is why I found myself, eventually, in Istanbul, because it is like a bridge for me. It’s my personal bridge between Iran and Israel. When you grow up in Israel and come from an Iranian family, you grow up in a sort of conflict. My parents told me about a world that doesn’t exist anymore, because it’s the Iran from before the revolution, and today Iran is something else. I also think my parents were conflicted. They came from Iran, but at the same time they are Jewish and Israeli.
That conflict for me is not only between being Israeli and Iranian, but it is also a conflict between east and west. I grew up in Ramat Aviv, which is a very good neighborhood in Tel Aviv and very Ashkenazi. I was the only Mizrahi in my class in my school. I was always very different, and I grew up in a very Mizrahi and Iranian home. On one hand, I enjoyed the privilege of growing up in modern society, in Israel, where women are more empowered, for example. It gave me confidence as a women in this world, and all the benefits you get that come from the west, including the education. But on the other hand, I still have the rich culture from home — the colors and the smells and the music and the warmth and all this stuff they brought from Iran.
I think that is also a conflict you find in Istanbul — between east and west — and sometimes, it’s not always a conflict. It isn’t always a negative thing. It’s a positive thing. It’s a mix. It’s something that is always there, the question of identity, and it is something I speak about a lot in my music. However, after 10 years of meeting people from all over the world and making music and having fans from many religions and cultures and countries — including countries I can not even enter — I am learning more and more about the common things we do have. Maybe it sounds like a cliché, but east, west, Jewish, Muslim, Christian — we all have a choice. Every individual chooses, and takes responsibility for his own choices. It doesn’t matter what his background is. In every language, we feel love, or anger, it is something we all have, and we have a choice, to either choose the positive side or to chose the negative side. That is something that I found in many people, and I find it again and again at every concert.
About the question about identity, that is getting blurrier with time. Not blurry — it is always inside me — but it is becoming less important. For me, Mete is not a Turkish guy from a Muslim country, to me, he’s family. His religion or his background isn’t relevant, because you have a different kind of connection with the person. He’s a human being. But why is that connection possible? Because he made a choice similar to my choice. And then you spread that to a big amount of people and fans.  From: https://theingathering.substack.com/p/light-in-babylon-and-the-universality

The Dead South - OurVinyl Sessions / Paste Studio NYC

 

 OurVinyl Sessions

 

 

 

Paste Studio NYC

 

 #The Dead South #folk #bluegrass #roots music #contemporary folk #acoustic #live music video

 

The Dead South, the four piece from Regina, Saskatchewan, whose high energy take on bluegrass has won them deserved plaudits, are back on the road. When last in London two years ago they played to a packed out Brixton Academy. This time it was the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a majestic old theatre on four levels, where The Dead South’s dedicated fans again turned out in force for what felt like a homecoming. The standing room seethed while those above gave the balconies a good shake as all participated in what felt at times like a kind of revival meeting. That sense of cult, in a nice way, was intensified by the many fans who matched the band’s sparse pioneer look of big hat, white shirt, black trousers and braces. These folks looked as if they’d come in from a day in the fields rather than the Central Line to Shepherd’s Bush. They came looking for togetherness and a show of furious intensity. They were not disappointed.
The Dead South have had a few line-up changes but are now back to the quartet who formed the band a decade ago. Traditional bluegrass has branched out into alt-bluegrass, jamgrass and all manner of derivations as many outstanding bands have taken bluegrass in new directions. Where The Dead South have carved their own furrow is in the sheer simplicity of their style that drives in part from their punk roots. Acoustic guitar, mandolin, cello and, of course, banjo, with a kick drum for rhythm is all they need. They look the part with a deep sense of darkness about their lyrics that in some cases come across as almost a pastiche on traditional bluegrass. Whether that is the intention or not (in some songs it probably is), the show is blistering. All four put every ounce of their musical ingenuity and sheer energy into their performance. The stage setup is similarly stark. What look like four stained glass windows are spaced out along the back of the stage with corresponding low light from the storm lanterns in front of each of the four mic stands. The absence of any drum kit, keys or amplification turned the stage into a kind of dark secret meeting place, which in a way, it was.
House lights off and the rendezvous with these mysterious players from Saskatchewan was underway. A menacing banjo abruptly stopped for a tantalising few seconds as frontman Nate Hilts rasped, “My baby wants a diamond ring” in a voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in a vat of whiskey for years. On guitar, Hilts duelled with Colton Crawford’s banjo as mandolinist Scott Pringle and cellist Danny Kenyon harmonised on the chorus. The Dead South were back.
“Hello, we’re The Dead South” announced Hilts politely, if slightly unnecessarily. He was among friends. Thus began a setlist played mainly at ferocious pace, punctuated with precipitous drops of speed, that spanned the Dead South’s three studio albums. A newcomer, if there were any, might have felt rather overwhelmed by the sheer pace as songs could seem to blend into each other. For others, a Dead South show is the perfect way to let off a bit of steam and after a two year furlough, why not? But live, The Dead South convey the incredibly skilled musicianship as they recount the stories, usually bleak, that make their albums so compelling.  From: https://americana-uk.com/live-review-the-dead-south-shepherds-bush-empire-london-18th-march-2022

Bluegrass Situation: “Diamond Ring” doesn’t end well for one of the characters, which is common in bluegrass. What story were you trying to tell in this song?

Nate Hilts: It’s a story of a man who’s trying to appease his partner. She finds that a diamond ring would make her happy and so he is going to do whatever he can to make sure that he gets that diamond ring for her. And it turns out to be a tragic ending, of course. Just like all of the songs I write. [Laughs]

Did you know it would end so gruesome?

NH: You know what, no! But when you’re doing a video it’s like, yeah, we need a body count!

Videos have been a crucial part of your career. Do you find that that’s been a good way to be introduced to new fans?

Colton Crawford: Yeah, I think so. We had our first big splash with the “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company” video. So I think a lot of our fans discover us through YouTube. I think like our songs work well with music videos, too. They’re cinematic and “soundtrack-y.” We’re definitely inspired by film soundtracks and Tarantino and Spaghetti Westerns.

Are there filmmakers that inspire you or that really resonate with you?

CC: Clint Eastwood for sure. Tarantino for sure. Even those old B horror films, Wes Craven and that kind of stuff.

NH: You could give us an array of movies and we’ll find stuff that we like about it. Who did Drive?

CC: That was Nicholas Winding Refn. That movie is all about the atmosphere. I think our songs are kind of like that too.

Was there a certain encounter that triggered you to write “Blue Trash”?

CC: Lyrically, yes. [Laughs]. This one was a lot of fun for me because the verses and the chorus are the same banjo part. It’s just the choruses are played in halftime with that shuffle feel, but it’s the same thing. I do a couple of different bends and stuff like that. I came up with that slow part first and wanted to “Scruggs-ify” that slow part, so it was a lot of fun.

NH: But lyrically that song was triggered by listening to a purist group on Bluegrass Junction that was dismissing bands like us, who aren’t quite pure. You know, we stem from bluegrass, but we do our own thing with it. And this song we heard was basically telling us to go away.

CC: “Blue Trash” is sort of like a cheeky love letter to bluegrass. It’s a bit of a response to that.

NH: It’s not a hateful or hurtful response. It’s more like, you know what, we’re here and we love bluegrass music.

So what’s your response when someone’s like, “Well, they don’t play bluegrass…”?

NH: “Yes, you’re absolutely right, but what do you want us to do?” We’re not saying that we’re playing bluegrass. We love bluegrass. The reason that this band was started was bluegrass. And here’s what we do with bluegrass. We take our parts of it. Colton on the banjo, he’s playing better than half the folks you hear on Bluegrass Junction, and it’s fantastic that we can have those elements, but we’re not claiming to be the best, or to be stealing it. We’re just trying to be a part of the community and play music.

Tell me about what you mean when you say the band started because of bluegrass.

NH: Oh, when I first met Colton, I was listening to a lot of Old Crow Medicine Show and Trampled By Turtles and listening to some older bluegrass. Colton had just got a banjo, started playing.

CC: Steve Martin was the first actual banjo player that I listened to. Actually there were indie bands that I was into in high school and university, like Modest Mouse — their one record Good News For People Who Love Bad News, there’s a lot of banjo on that. I always just loved the sound of it. And then I discovered that Steve Martin was a world class picker. I was always a metal guitarist. So there was actually a lot of crossover. I just love that fast picking style. Growing up, my guitar lessons were all classical fingerstyle guitar, but then I played in metal bands in high school. So the banjo is like the perfect middle ground between an acoustic fingerstyle guitar and metal guitar.

Colton, did you take some time off?

CC: I did, yeah. When we first started the band, we just hit the ground running with the touring and we were making no money. So we’d be on the road for a month and a half to two months at a time in a minivan, playing every single day. I’ve always had this tough time sleeping, but I had a year of really, really bad insomnia. I think the worst part about insomnia is that you’d think at a certain point you get so exhausted that your body would just pass out and you’d have a great sleep. But the thing with insomnia is the more tired you get, the less likely you are to sleep. It’s the worst, it’s just hell. I went through a year of that and I just said, OK, I’ve got to step away from this. And of course, like two weeks after I left, “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company” got posted to Reddit and everything started to blow up. But I was still really good friends with Nate, kept in touch with the guys all the time, always figured that’d be part of writing the next record regardless. And then I got some help and figured it out a little bit. Then sort of approaching it a couple of years later, I just said, you know, I want to take another swing. Thankfully these guys, they could’ve told me to fuck off, but they didn’t. So I’m grateful for that.

NH: Yeah, Colton wouldn’t even look me in the eyes when he sat down with me. He was doing a lot of this [looking down] “I’ve been thinking…” and just staring at the table and I’m like, “What’s he going to say? What’s coming?”

CC: I had no idea how you guys were going to react at all.

NH: He said, “Hey, we should go for a beer, I want to talk about something.” I was like, “I think he’s going to come back.” [Laughs]. In our minds I was like, he’s probably never coming back because we travel a lot and that was a big, big part of it. So what do you do? Unless we stop traveling as much as we focus just on writing or something.

CC: It’s not realistic.

NH: Yeah, for what we do, besides YouTube content, the way that we’re able to function so well is by touring.

CC: Yeah. Our main product is our live show. I love our records but definitely our show is what we do.

Tell me about when you’re off stage. What is your dynamic like?

CC: It’s pretty much just like this. Just hanging out and everyone gets along pretty well for the most part, which is really nice. We’ve been a band for almost seven years now and we still like being around each other, so that’s good. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. We always say we’re friends first, a band second, and a business third, so we try and keep that in mind.

What do you hope people will take away from that experience of seeing you guys play live?

CC: I think most people show up for a really, really good time, and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re not a political band. We don’t really have any kind of message. I think our main focus with the live show is just fun. It’s a weird thing because it’s almost frowned upon in the arts. You know, [the perception is that] if something’s fun, it can’t really be true art. We don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think there’s enough fun these days. Everything’s so serious all the time, so we just want people to come and enjoy themselves and have some fun. It stands out when a band’s having fun, because there’s a lot of serious songwriting and sadness out there.

NH: We write tragically, but a lot of times we have humorous spins on stuff, or the song sounds super cheery but it’s actually quite sad. But we still have fun with it. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.

From: https://thebluegrasssituation.com/read/the-dead-south-have-a-message-for-bluegrass-purists/ 

 

 

Kristeen Young - Catland

 #Kristeen Young #alternative rock #piano rock #avant-garde #prog punk #operatic punk #multi-genre #no-genre #music video

Holy crap, where did THIS thing come from? I’ve heard some Kristeen Young stuff before and thought it was unusual and compelling, but this record - whoa, mama! It’s full-on ass-kicking weirdness of the kind I used to revel in at the turn of the millennium. Young has been compared to Kate Bush before (her tendency to favor the higher registers, her unconventional delivery), but she also reminds me of a couple of Scandinavian singers such as Sofia Hardig and an artist whose name escapes me. Point is, there is a focused, melodious quality to Ms Young’s voice that you hear at times, but she is making the case here for high-stakes sonic melodrama. Young is a wild thing, untamed and sometimes scary. She takes a risk in virtually every song, and it’s breathtaking. You don’t hear stuff like this very often. And despite the title, Live at the Witch’s Tit, this is NOT a live album. It’s Young’s eighth studio album and, although Tony Visconti is listed as co-producer and he has worked with Young for many years, this album was largely recorded just after David Bowie’s death; Kristeen has said Tony was not around that much. Bowie’s passing and the release of Blackstar affected his availability during the sessions. Guitars growl, the bass lumbers around not necessarily keeping it linear, and Young herself stalks these soundscapes like an utterly fearless musical predator. It’s really quite glorious.
In “You Might Be Ted, But I’m Sylvia,” a title that invites discourse, Young carefully balances some emotive, disciplined singing with a series of loud, boisterous piano octaves. At the one-minute mark, a ferocious sound emerges that sounds at first like it could be an attacking animal, but no, it’s an ominous synth sound distorted to resemble a primitive electric guitar, that bites instead. It’ll take a piece right outta ya if you aren’t prepared. “There’s a chance he might disappear,” the singer tells us, before intoning the song’s title, powerfully, preceded and followed by a hypnotically dissonant piano interval banged over and over, taking you prisoner. You CANNOT remain indifferent to the sound slicing into your ears here. You’ll either find it enthralling, as I did, or you’ll run away with your tail between your legs. “Why Am I a Feelmate” turns up the electronica, and takes things into territory occupied by the Knife (I’d be real surprised if Young was not familiar with Karin Dreijer). The vocal is spooky, partially distorted, and the music seems to celebrate chaos. And yet, Young’s control over this boundary-bashing sound is remarkable. I honestly feel rather inadequate to describe it. It’s thoroughly modern and thoroughly uninterested in anything but its own path. You can follow, yes, but you better stay a few steps behind, or something vicious may chomp into you. “Catland” begins with a child’s voice wanting to coax a sound out of a “kitty cat,” but you just KNOW that kind of cuteness will be short-lived. It is. The song quickly turns into a crazed rocker with tempo and chord changes that the likes of Zappa might have admired. There is no attempt to please the audience here at all, unless you are, like me, in the audience that adores flat-out weird music. The word “challenging” was meant for discs like this.  From: http://zacharymule.com/wp/?p=4370

Steely Dan - Show Biz Kids - The Midnight Special 1973

 #Steely Dan #jazz rock #pop rock #album rock #classic rock #The Midnight Special #music video

Earlier this month, rare footage of Steely Dan playing Reelin' In The Years and Do It Again on The Midnight Special appeared on the show's official YouTube channel. The footage came from a show broadcast in February 1973, but the band returned to the show in August the same year and played three more songs. They revisited Reelin' in the Years and added My Old School, alongside a sensational Show Biz Kids, and the latter is the latest video to make its way online. And it is sensational. Donald Fagen, famously nervous about singing live, shows absolutely no sign of being so. Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter plays Rick Derringer's original slide guitar part with an exuberance bordering on maniacal. And the two backing singers, Gloria 'Porky' Granola and Jenny 'Bucky' Soule, have more fun with the famous "You go to Lost Wages, Lost Wages," lines than you can possibly imagine. Impressively, it appears that the band refused to self-censor the "You know they don't give a fuck about anybody else" line – later used as the basis for the song The Man Don't Give a Fuck by Welsh psychedelia enthusiasts Super Furry Animals – forcing the show's producers to punch in a brief moment of family-friendly silence during the edit.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/news/steely-dan-show-biz-kids-the-midnight-special

This is a song which disparages a certain class of L.A. residents - wealthy offspring of entertainment moguls - show biz kids who don’t give a fuck about anybody else. Steely Dan were New Yorkers who had relocated to L.A. for work. Later they moved back to NYC but at this point much of their lyrical content outlined their dissatisfaction with many of the sleazier things about the West Coast. They kept writing about it even after they returned to the East Coast, for example in 1980’s “Babylon Sisters” from ‘Gaucho’, and also 2000’s “West of Hollywood” from ‘Two Against Nature’.  From: https://genius.com/Steely-dan-show-biz-kids-lyrics

"Show Biz Kids" was such an utterly bizarre choice for the first single from Countdown to Ecstasy that one has to assume that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker chose it deliberately as a veiled affront to ABC Records and anyone who expected "Do It Again" redux. Although the song features a stellar slide guitar solo (by guest Rick Derringer instead of group members Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, the first example of the studio musician ethos that would soon become Steely Dan's stock in trade) and a funky piano-led groove, "Show Biz Kids" is eccentrically structured, without a bridge or middle eight, giving it an endless, plodding quality that suits the bitter lyrics about cliquishness and hedonism in the group's adopted hometown of Los Angeles. It also seems unlikely that a song whose payoff line is "Show business kids making movies 'bout themselves/You know they don't give a fuck about anybody else" was likely to top the charts in 1973. Incidentally, that repetitive chant of the female backing vocalists is "You go to Lost Wages," a Rat Pack-era joke name for Vegas.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/song/show-biz-kids-mt0000372379

Savannah Pope - Creature

 #Savannah Pope #art rock #hard rock #progressive rock #glam rock #singer-songwriter #ex-SpaceCream #music video

Rock singer-songwriter Savannah Pope, formerly the lead vocalist of SpaceCream, is proud to announce the release of her new video and single, “Creature.” “Creature” is an explosive, operatic, and hard-rocking song featuring lyrics brimming with both moxie and self-deprecation. Boasting soaring, gorgeous vocals, the song’s melodies cross over to metal while retaining a bona fide glitter rock vibe. Savannah made the video for “Creature” by blending original footage with sophisticated original motion graphics. It took her an entire year to create, frame by frame, and the resulting imagery is beautiful and disturbing.
Savannah makes incendiary, soulful rock music. Her songs boast stunning lyricism and vocal power. Her stage presence is larger than life, and should be experienced firsthand by any music lover. Influenced by such luminaries as David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Lou Reed, Queen, Joni Mitchell, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Heart, her music blends classic rock elements with a unique modern sensibility.
Savannah has been a fixture in the Los Angeles music scene for over five years. Until one year ago, she was the vocalist and leader of glam rock band SpaceCream, which released the acclaimed album Pterodactyl Sky in 2016. As lead singer for SpaceCream, she played LA Fashion Week and opened for national artists such as Jesse Hughes (Eagles of Death Metal), Nick Oliveri (Queens of the Stone Age), and VOLTO (Danny Carey of Tool). SpaceCream won the Battle for Vans Warped Tour at House of Blues Hollywood, and played numerous live shows at storied venues like the Viper Room and the Troubadour.
Born in LA, Savannah’s background story is definitely different from the average musician’s. Savannah was an angsty, precocious, and unique kid who wound up at a boarding school for wayward teens when she was 14 years old. “I was sent away because I was extremely depressed and wild, and running away all the time,” she reveals. “My parents never knew where I was. I fought them on everything, and they were scared for me.” During her two years there, a friend taught Savannah some chords on the guitar, and she started writing songs.
After graduating high school, Savannah traveled extensively. “I went to Ecuador with some very intense hippies and we lived off the land. We climbed volcanoes, and one guy actually got hit by lightning. No joke. We also stayed with Quechua natives in the jungle for a hot minute. As it turns out, I am entirely unremarkable in the art of being one with nature. I mostly got eaten alive by insects and resembled a leper.” Savannah then went to college, dropped out, stopped by Harlem for a while, spent a year painting/being a wild thing in Barcelona, and eventually landed back in Los Angeles, where her journey began. She fell in love with performing by accident, when she wandered onstage during some friends’ open mic and got an incredible response. And she’s been hooked ever since.
Perhaps the best way to immerse oneself in Savannah’s world is to see her onstage. She utilizes her live performances to present a new brand of art rock steeped in glam and prog; an unpaired blend of riveting musicianship, garish style, and theatricality.  From: https://music.allaccess.com/an-interview-with-the-rock-singer-songwriter-savannah-pope-on-her-newest-music-and-more/