Alabama Shakes - Gimme All Your Love

 #Alabama Shakes #blues rock #roots rock #soul #R&B #Southern rock #punk blues #psychedelic soul

Alabama Shakes were an American roots rock quartet that achieved commercial and critical success with a genre-defying sound and electrifying live performances. The group’s principal members were lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, bass player Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and guitarist Heath Fogg). Frontwoman Howard began writing songs as a young teen and taught herself how to play guitar. She was soon joined by Cockrell, a high-school classmate, and the pair experimented with a variety of styles that ranged from American roots to the music of David Bowie. Johnson, a drummer who worked at a music store in the duo’s hometown of Athens, Alabama, brought a punk beat to Howard and Cockrell’s evolving sound. The trio began circulating a rough demo tape, and it caught the attention of Fogg, another Athens-based musician, who was already established in his own band, Tuco’s Pistol. Fogg asked Howard, Cockrell, and Johnson to open for his band, and the trio agreed, on the condition that Fogg perform with them. He consented, and the success of that performance eventually led to Fogg’s joining the band full-time. In 2009 the group christened themselves the Shakes, and in May of that year they began a relentless touring schedule. While playing as much of their own material as time would allow, they punctuated their live shows with crowd-pleasing cover songs. Independent music tastemaker Justin Gage posted their song “You Ain’t Alone” on his Aquarium Drunkard music blog, and the band’s profile skyrocketed virtually overnight. They soon found themselves opening for fellow Alabama natives the Drive-By Truckers and performing in Nashville at the Third Man Records store belonging to Jack White. Renaming themselves Alabama Shakes, the group released a self-titled EP in September 2011 and continued to draw critical praise for their live shows, which were anchored by Howard’s arresting stage presence.  From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Alabama-Shakes

Alice Glass - Suffer and Swallow

 #Alice Glass #electronic #goth #industrial #electropunk #avant-pop #ex-Crystal castles #animated music video

Alice Glass’s Los Angeles home is a picture of gothic splendour. Her kitchen resembles a graveyard of dead flowers; she is annoyed that her living black lilies never droop when she is looking. There is a fake Goya on the way down to her basement studio, where skulls surround the drums. A spider crawls out of the toilet roll when I use her bathroom. It is probably not part of the decor. Glass is less macabre: there is a tattoo of Bambi on her thigh. She loved the royal wedding. Her voice only rises above its perpetual whisper when she calls to her cats, Mr Peanut and Fuzzy, the alpha who dominates her pit bulls, Jacob and Shadow. She apologises for the boxes that entomb the sofa, merch from her recent debut solo tour. She had polled fans on Twitter to ask which song she should play from the back catalogue of her former band, the anarchic electro-punk duo Crystal Castles, which she quit in October 2014. Ultimately, she decided to play the material to which she still felt connected – “where I’m feeling worthless and hopeless”, she says. It took time in rehearsals to shake off their negative associations.
It was not until allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein that Glass (born Margaret Osborn) was emboldened to go public with detailed allegations of abuse against her ex-bandmate, Ethan Kath (real name Claudio Palmieri). She felt it was her responsibility, “especially after I had been told he had done similar things to at least one other woman”. Glass had previously alluded to her experience when she released her debut solo single, Stillbirth, in July 2015: “You don’t own me any more,” she shrieked over music that she likened to “being eaten by fire ants”. The song allowed her to speak covertly at a time when she was scared of going outside in case she was served with a lawsuit, she says, claiming that Kath started making legal threats in response to her tweeting stats about domestic abuse fatalities shortly after she announced her departure from the band. Glass says she received cease-and-desist letters from the same firm that represented Bill Cosby, which quoted her tweets and intimated that Glass was making these statements to benefit her career. But seeing other women speaking out about abuse last October was like watching “someone jumping off a cliff”, she says. “If someone goes first, it lets you know that you’re safe. It really put things into perspective. If it wasn’t for them, I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to speak out.”  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/15/alice-glass-on-leaving-crystal-castles-the-cruelty-never-ceases-to-amaze-me

Two Minutes To Late Night - David Bowie's Station to Station Cover

 #Two Minutes To Late Night #bedroom covers #heavy metal #David Bowie cover #music video

During the past year, the virtual jam — wherein a group of artists each claim their own corner of a 16:9 YouTube screen to rock out in isolation, together — has become as ubiquitous as Zoom conference calls, online schooling, and any other pandemic-era activity. Pearl Jam did it for Covid relief. The Rolling Stones did it for Global Citizen. Metallica did it very quietly. But few virtual jams have been as relentlessly creative and consistently surprising — not to mention flat-out awesome — as the ones featured in metal-themed talk show Two Minutes to Late Night’s long-running Bedroom Covers series.
Want to see Primus bass master Les Claypool, Tool drummer Danny Carey, Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher, and Coheed and Cambria vocalist Claudio Sanchez, all avowed Rush fanatics, take on the beloved Canadian power trio’s 1975 classic, “Anthem”? Or Sleigh Bells vocalist Alexis Krauss lead a motley crew of artists through a metal-ized medley of Nineties Eurodance hits like Vengaboys’ “We Like to Party!” and Haddaway’s “What Is Love”? How about septuagenarian E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg slamming the skins on a furious cover of the Misfits’ hardcore punk rager “Earth A.D.,” alongside members of My Chemical Romance, Hatebreed, and Dillinger Escape Plan? Two Minutes to Late Night’s YouTube channel is the one and only place where these twisted musical fever dreams regularly become reality. As for the corpse-painted, suit-and-tie–wearing dude rocking out on guitar in his Brooklyn shoebox of an apartment in one corner of most of the clips? That’s Two Minutes to Late Night host Jordan Olds, a.k.a. “Gwarsenio Hall,” who’s also the co-creator, along with Drew Kaufman, of the whole endeavor. “We didn’t invent the cover song, or even the isolated performance,” Olds acknowledges to Rolling Stone. “But the way we do our covers and performances, I don’t think anybody else could do it quite the same.”
To be sure, Two Minutes to Late Night, which, true to its Iron Maiden–referencing name, first launched as a sort of mock headbanger-friendly version of Late Night With Conan O’Brien (“the most irreverent and the silliest of all the late night shows,” Olds says), is unlike anything else in the digital universe. Taping on the stage at Brooklyn heavy-music haven Saint Vitus Bar during the venue’s off hours, Olds and Kaufman, with the former hosting and the latter heading up cameras and production, released one eight-episode season that combined well-worn late-night tropes (Olds interviewing guests from behind a desk; a house band comprised of proggy power trio Mutoid Man) with some good old metal-style irreverence. The pilot episode alone featured a short in which Dillinger Escape Plan shredder Ben Weinman auditioned for the guitar slot in a female R&B act; a Name That Tune–esque game titled Squeal of Fortune; and on-the-scene reporting from outside Glenn Danzig’s house (“I’ve been standing here for six hours and I haven’t seen Danzig once — he may be on tour; he may be using the back door… we’ll never know”).
Season One of Two Minutes to Late Night wrapped in 2019, and not too long after — pre-pandemic, mind you — Olds and Kaufman came up with the idea of producing branded virtual jams. “The best part of the show to me was always the finale, where the guests would perform a cover song with us,” Olds says. “And so we finished the first season, but to be honest, it was hard to get a lot of guests in that format, because, for example, Chelsea Wolfe had wanted to be on the show for years, but to make that happen, it was like, ‘Well, are you free on this Tuesday and from 7 to 11 and in New York and not playing your own show?’ ” Doing virtual jams, he continues, “was a way to make some of these covers happen without having to figure out all the scheduling.”
The first Bedroom Cover, which filmed in January 2020 but premiered two months later, as schools and workplaces around the country were starting to go remote, saw Olds joined by members of Mutoid Man, Khemmis, and Thou for a thrashy version of “Dare to Be Stupid,” from the patron saint of music parodists, “Weird Al” Yankovic. “We thought it would be really funny for the first one out of the gate to be a really aggressive cover of a Weird Al song, given that he is, of course, one of our biggest inspirations,” Olds says. From there, things only got weirder: a sludge-metal version of Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years”; a stoner-goth take on Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” with Dillinger Escape Plan, Mutoid Man, and, on vocals (finally!) Chelsea Wolfe; and a ripping run-through of AC/DC’s “Riff Raff” with members of Clutch, Cave In, and Converge superimposed on plenty of ridiculous Australian imagery (an Outback Steakhouse; koala bears; Crocodile Dundee).
The Bedroom Covers initially served two purposes: to provide an outlet for Olds and Kaufman to continue producing new original content even as the world went into lockdown, and also to offer a bit of financial assistance to artists who, virtually overnight, watched their income dissipate as gigs were canceled and entire tours scrapped. “We still had our Patreon going, which was helping to fund regular Two Minutes content,” Olds says. “But then we started seeing our friends in bands and crews posting about how sad and distressed they were — they were coming off the road and they weren’t sure what they were going to do for money, and in some cases they had upcoming medical surgeries that they weren’t sure how they were going to pay for because they don’t have regular health insurance. Their entire way of life had been taken away. So we immediately shifted the Patreon from funding the Two Minutes to Late Night show to funding the Bedroom Covers, and we split the money from each video between the musicians and the audio mixers and everyone involved.”
From: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/two-minutes-to-late-night-bedroom-covers-interview-max-weinberg-1164120/

Pom Poko - Crazy Energy Night

 #Pom Poko #art rock #post-punk #noise rock #indie rock #avant-pop #pop punk #Norwegian #animated music video

Norway's freewheeling Pom Poko combine their jazz school training and experimental leanings into equally sugary and explosive music. Inspired by math rock, post-punk, West African music, and weird pop bands such as Deerhoof, the group introduced their loose-limbed, playful style on 2019's Birthday, then emphasized the contrast between their meticulous compositions and chaotic performances on 2021's bracing Cheater. Named after a film by Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli, Pom Poko consists of Ragnhild Fangel Jamtveit (vocals), Martin Miguel Almagro Tonne (guitar), Ola Djupvik (drums), and Jonas Krøvel (bass). Tonne, Djupvik, and Krøvel met while studying at the Trondheim Music Conservatory and initially aspired to be a noise punk trio. However, when they were asked to perform at a literary festival in 2016, they added Jamtveit on vocals and quickly wrote a set of sugary pop/punk songs with unexpected twists.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4RkC3KmYWnr6PM1FM5Shwz

There is a sense of miraculous deconstruction in the work of Norwegian foursome Pom Poko – a drive to pull down the support structures of their influences and create something slathered in both art-punk ferocity and a welcome assortment of wickedly colorful pop impulses. It all feels so prickly and slightly out of phase with everything around it, possessing an endearingly boundless perspective on how to combine certain sounds for full impact while also knowing when all that should simply be torn down in favor of something without any recognizable parts. Similar in feel to the genre-hopping of Deerhoof or Xiu Xiu, the zigzagging branches of Pom Poko’s music are unconcerned with specific genres or the limitations they can present.
Their 2019 debut Birthday was built from outbursts of burly pop noise and lonesome lyrics, setting a stage both emotionally forceful and sweetly combustible. A product of the band’s tightly-wound instrumental expertise and singer Ragnhild Fangel’s insightful narratives, it was a taut and expressive collection of songs, filled with punk-lite eruptions of sustained energy and art-rock elasticity. This feeling of cheerful adaptation has carried over to their second record Cheater, and the band has further pushed onto the fringes of their collective inspirations. They embrace this ruptured pop chaos and expect their audience to do the same.  From: https://beatsperminute.com/album-review-pom-poko-cheater/

Humble Pie - Black Coffee

 #Humble Pie #Steve Marriott #blues rock #hard rock #British blues rock #boogie rock #1970s #The Old Grey Whistle Test #music video

In 1973, Humble Pie performed “Black Coffee” during a broadcast on the British TV program, The Old Grey Whistle Test. The cover was off the band’s double album, Eat It (released the same year). Frontman Steve Marriott, a vocal power-house, switched up the lyrics a bit, but the feeling of the song remained. It was alive, it was allegorical, and it was as hot as a fresh cup of morning brew. Guitarist Clem Clempson, was at Marriott’s side and kept spot-on rhythm.
Humble Pie was joined by another group that nearly out-shined the intense vocals of Marriott - and that’s almost impossible. Marriott had introduced the dynamic of adding a group within the group to provide a counter-weight to his spearheading vocals. The British singer had formed Humble Pie in the late 1960s, after fronting the Small Faces where he helped make mainstream the approach to rock singing that still resonates today. Marriott wanted to deepen the connection between rock and blues and often included soul singers instead of pop back up singers. For the “Black Coffee” performance he invited the extraordinarily talented Blackberries. The trio consisted of Venetta Fields (former Ikette), Clydie King (Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street), and Shirlie Matthews. The Blackberries were an almost permanent fixture in Humble Pie at that point and encapsulated the entire sound of the band’s vision.
The original “Black Coffee” song is about overcoming oppression. Marriott’s version is about his devotion to musical inspirations in the black community. He acknowledges his foreignness to the original Ike & Tina track but also delivers a vocal performance that establishes his understanding of the soul and blues genres. The Blackberries add to the blues testimony most certainly, and Marriott’s  version of “Black Coffee” was perfectly framed for the rock/blues crossover.
From: https://societyofrock.com/humble-pies-black-coffee-is-served-hot-in-this-1973-performance/

 
Humble Pie was a British rock music band from 1969-82, best known for it’s hard-rocking recordings and concert performances during their peak period on A&M records from 1970-1975. The band initially consisted in 1969 of Steve Marriott (formerly of Small Faces; lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Peter Frampton (from The Herd; lead guitar), Greg Ridley (from Spooky Tooth; bass) and Jerry Shirley (from The Apostolic Intervention; drums). The joining of all these fairly known players resulted in Humble Pie being considered a bit of a “supergroup”. Worried about great expectations, the group began working together in secret at Marriott's cottage in Moreton, Essex. Signed to Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records, their debut single "Natural Born Boogie" was rushed out in 1969 and was a UK hit; it was quickly followed by the album As Safe As Yesterday Is, praised as a progressive album in the vein of Small Faces. Their second album Town and Country was also released in 1969 and featured a more acoustic sound. Humble Pie concerts at this time featured an acoustic set followed by an electric set, an approach that would become popular decades later. 1970 saw the financial collapse of Immediate, a switch to A&M Records, and a change in band management. The albums Humble Pie and Rock On, both released that year, alternated between progressive rock and boogie rock excess. A concert at the Fillmore East in NYC was captured on Perfomance: Rockin' The Fillmore (1971); it is considered one of the best live rock albums of its era, with Marriott, Frampton, and the rest of the group in fine form. The loud-quiet-loud epic "I Don't Need No Doctor" was an FM radio hit in the United States, propelling the album to the group's biggest commercial success yet.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Humble+Pie/+wiki

The Pentangle - House Carpenter

 #Pentangle #John Renbourn #Bert Jansch #Jacqui McShee #folk #British folk #folk blues #jazz folk #progressive folk #British folk rock #1960s

By pulling together folk, jazz and blues into evocative, melodic albums, Pentangle were ahead of the curve in the late 1960s. An early "supergroup", they set the scene for more celebrated artists. Long before singer-songwriters – from Van Morrison to Carole King to Joni Mitchell – discovered the joys of mellifluous bass and jazzy drums, double bassist Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox added a startling perspective to the folk club frontline of guitars and vocals, contributing gravitas and spirit to Jacqui McShee's traditional songs of lost love and abandonment. Guitarists John Renbourn and Bert Jansch were accomplished musical storytellers, who occasionally spiked the brew with sitar and banjo.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/03/pentangle-review-royal-festival-hall

Were Pentangle a folk group, a folk-rock group, or something that resists classification? They could hardly be called a rock & roll act; they didn't use electric instruments often, and were built around two virtuoso guitarists, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who were already well-established on the folk circuit before the group formed. Yet their hunger for eclectic experimentation fit into the milieu of late-'60s progressive rock and psychedelia well, and much of their audience came from the rock and pop worlds, rather than the folk crowd. With Jacqui McShee on vocals and a rhythm section of Danny Thompson (bass) and Terry Cox (drums), the group mastered a breathtaking repertoire that encompassed traditional ballads, blues, jazz, pop, and re-workings of rock oldies, often blending different genres in the same piece. Their prodigious individual talents perhaps ensured a brief lifespan, but at their peak they melded their distinct and immense skills to egg each other on to heights they couldn't have achieved on their own, in the manner of great rock combos like the Beatles and Buffalo Springfield.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pentangle-mn0000838559/biography

Foghat - Terraplane Blues

 #Foghat #blues rock #hard rock #boogie rock #ex-Savoy Brown #1970s

Originally from England, Foghat certainly made an impression in the U.S. Known for incorporating the sound of slide guitar into their rock music, Foghat formed in 1971 in London after founding members Dave Peverett, Tony Stevens and Roger Earl left their previous English blues rock band, Savoy Brown. Rod Price brought in the group’s signature slide guitar after he left Black Cat Bones.
The band’s name originated from a word that Peverett and his brother John made up during a Scrabble-like game they were playing as children. Though legend has it that “Foghat” is a riff off the curse word, “fuck,” Peverett put those rumors to rest when he shared that it was actually a “nonsense word” he and his brother created. When playing with Chris Youlden when he joined Savoy Brown, Peverett said Youlden wanted to change his name to Luther Foghat. But just after recording their self-titled debut album, which was released in 1972, the band needed a name. That’s when Peverett went into the memory bank and pitched ‘Foghat.’
“When we did the first album, we had it all ready to go, the artwork was done. We didn’t like the name we had at that time, which was Brandywine, which sounded like a Kingston trio kind of band,” Peverett said, noting that the name reminded him of a folk band. “I came up with the little drawing of the guy with this hat and everybody said ‘at least we’ve got a logo, we’ll go with the Foghat.’ And that was it.” The back cover of Foghat features Peverett’s sketch drawing of a cartoon man’s face with his tongue sticking out with fog pouring out of his hat. “Peverett used this new word to create Junior Foghat, an imaginary childhood playmate who became an alter ego and therefore the genesis of the ‘Lonesome Dave’ persona that he was to employ as a performer.”
From: https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-band-name-foghat/

"Terraplane Blues" is a blues song recorded in 1936 in San Antonio, Texas, by bluesman Robert Johnson. Vocalion issued it as Johnson's first 78 rpm record, backed with "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", in March 1937. The song became a moderate regional hit, selling up to 10,000 copies. Johnson used the car model Terraplane as a metaphor for sex. In the lyrical narrative, the car will not start and Johnson suspects that his girlfriend let another man drive it when he was gone. In describing the various mechanical problems with his Terraplane, Johnson creates a setting of thinly veiled sexual innuendo.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraplane_Blues