Miscellaneous - October 2007

  by Admin

published: 13 / 10 / 2007

intro

Hello and welcome to the October edition of the Pennyblackmusic magazine.It has taken over a year of planning, but in late October we will be launching our own radio station. Our station manager Maarten Schiethart has for many years worked as a DJ in his

Hello and welcome to the October edition of the Pennyblackmusic magazine. It has taken over a year of planning. but in late October we will be launching our own radio station. Our station manager Maarten Schiethart, who has for many years worked as a DJ in his native city of Nimijen in the Netherlands, and has done all the hard work of assembling the radio station so that it ready to go on-line, will be putting on air several shows a month. I meanwhile will be doing a monthly show entitled Editor on the Edge in which I will be playing a mixture of old and new songs. Over the forthcoming months we hope to add other shows from other writers and Pennyblackmusic staff. It has also been a packed month for the magazine. Our lead interview this month is with the 60's singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan. Bunyan began her recording career in 1965 with the Jagger/Richard penned ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, but when her Joe Boyd-produced debut album, 'Just Another Diamond Day', sold poorly upon its release in 1970 dropped out of the music industry. 'Just Another Diamond Day' has since then gained a cult status, with performers such as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom citing it as a influence. When it was finally re-released in 2000 it was revered by many critics as a classic. Bunyan released a follow-up album, 'Lookaftering', 35 years after the release of 'Just Another Diamond Day' on the Fat Cat label in 2005. She speaks to Malcolm Carter about both albums, the four decades she spent away, and 'Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind', a new double CD of early lost recordings, that will come out, again on Fat Cat, at the end of October. There are interviews too this month with Guy Chadwick from the much acclaimed late 80's Creation band House of Love who recently played a series of 'Don't Look Back' shows and have just had their first EP and self-titled debut CD re-released on the Renascent label ; ex-Swans frontman, Young God record label owner and experimental artist Michael Gira, and the politically conscious and hard touring indie guitar band Brakes. In a two part interview, both parts of which we are running consecutively, we speak to Godfathers guitarist Kris Dollimore about his years performing with the explosive London new wave punk band, playing subsequently with both the Damned and Del Amitri and his recently released solo album, '02/01/1978'. There are interviews too with 80's electro-acoustic/dance outfit the Woodentops and the London-based ensemble Piano Magic who have just released their seventh album, 'Part Monster'. In our profiles section we are running articles on the new Joy Division biopic 'Control' ; Marc Bolan who had had three of his singles re-released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of his death ; former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr who has 'Photograph', a new compilation of his solo recordings, out ; and hardcore punks the Casualties who have just had released a DVD of a live show in their home city of New York. There are gig reviews of live shows by Sonic Youth, Reuben, the Animal Collective, the Veils, Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, iLiKETRAiNS, Johan Matranga, Regina Spektor, the New Pornographers, Dartz, Lisa Lindley-Jones, John Mayer, Emma Pollock and Akron/Family In our features section it is Adrian Huggins' turn to undertake the 'Soundtrack of Our Lives' column. He writes about ten of the songs that have meant the most to him, while Ben Howarth in his regular 'Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll 'column applauds under rated music programming. There are Photoscapes as well from photographer Katie Anderson of recent Maximo Park and Johnny Truant shows. In our 'Re : View' section, in which our writers look back at albums from the past, Olga Sladeckova examines Primal Scream's 'Vanishing Point', while our Website of the Month is Zum, a San Francisco-based website, record label and on-line record shop. There are also 32 album and single reviews. In our previous up-date in the middle of September we added another 24 reviews. We have a new writer this month. Peter Allison is a Nottingham-based music fan and contributed four reviews to the mid-month up-date. Thank you to Peter. Thank you also Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Daniel Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Russell Ferguson, Tommy Gunnarsson, Alex Halls, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Sarah Johnson, Geraint Jones,Jonjo McNeill, Sarah Maybank, Chris O’ Toole, Paul Raven, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Olga Sladeckova, Anthony Strutt, and Helen Tipping, all of whom have contributed articles and reviews to either this edition or the mid-month July reviews up-date.Thank you too to Katie Anderson for the Maximo Park and Johnny Truant Photoscapes, and who also contributed the photos that accompanied the Reuben article. Special thanks to Richard Banks at Pennyblackmusic HQ and Maarten Schiethart for all his work on the radio station. We will be back in mid October with another albums and singles reviews up-date, and then in early October with a full up-date. We hope to be running interviews then with former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, ex-Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, the Alabama 3, ex-Hefner frontman Darren Hayman, Oceansize, Pram, the Departure, Reverend and the Makers, the Records, Friends, 999, Shy Child, Vinny Peculiar and 60's filmmaker and documentary maker Tony Palmer. There will be more in the 'Profiles'. We will also have another 'Re : View', another 'Website of the Month' and more features, live reviews and album and single reviews. Thank you as always for reading. John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk