Miscellaneous - June 2009

  by Admin

published: 8 / 6 / 2009

intro

Hello and welcome to the June edition of the Pennyblackmusic magazine. Our lead interview this month is with the American songwriter, Janis Ian. One of the original protest singers, Ian had her first hit at the age of 15 in 1967 with 'Society's Child'. The

Hello and welcome to the June edition of the Pennyblackmusic magazine. Our lead interview this month is with the American songwriter, Janis Ian. One of the original protest singers, Ian had her first hit at the age of 15 in 1967 with 'Society's Child'. The winner of numerous awards including several Grammys, she has released more than twenty five albums. In conversation with Lisa Torem, she speaks about her forty years of making music, her more recent career as both a journalist and writer, and her continued regular touring. Our other main interviews this month are with Slowdive and Mojave 3 frontman Neil Halstead, who speaks to Anthony Strutt about his second solo album, 'Oh, Mighty Engine !' ; Scottish rockers Idlewild whose singer Roddy Woomble chats to Ben Howarth about his band's forthcoming fan-sponsored new alabum, and Bella Union boss and ex-Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde who talks to Olga Sladeckova about his label and and his new band, Snowbird. There are new interviews too as well with New York experimenal folk collective Akron/Family ; 60s band Herman's Hermits ; Northern Irish pop punk trio In Case of Fire ; rising hardcore group Rolo Tomassi ; Edinburgh-based post-punks Isa and the Filthy Tongues ; bedroom act Banjo or Freakout ? and London-based singer-songwriter Tallulah Rendell. In our Profiles section, we have articles on reissues from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ; former Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips and 80s psychedelic drone act Loop. The are also features on new DVDs from Calexico and Widespread Panic. Our Live reviews section has reviews of a recent All Tomorrow's Parties weekend, the Hungry Pigeon and Slam Dunk festivals, and gigs from Deerhunter, Future of the Left, Maximo Park, Akron/Family, the Figgs and Jeniferver. In our Features section we have a new column. Jeff Thiessen will be applying the theory that all new music that we listen to, whether good and bad, is personal and had direct links with our own life. In the first in the series, which is called 'This Metal Sky', he writes about listening to New Zealand alt. country band Steve Abel and the Chrysalids' new album, 'Flax Happy', for the first time just after being fired. Also in the Features section Peter Allison, in the 'Soundtrack of Our Lives' column, writes about discovering the Fun Lovin' Criminals debut album, 'Come Find Yourself', at the time of the Britpop sensation. Ben Howarth in his regular 'Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll' column looks at Spotify, a new downloading site from which albums can be downloaded for free and it has been claimed that it will make CDs redundant, and asks if the phenomenon lives up to the hype. There is a Photoscape from Neil Bailey photographed at a recent Future of the Left gig and we also have a competition in which we are giving away three copies of the soundtrack to the recent 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' film. In our Re :View section, in which we look back at albums from the past there are articles on the Grateful Dead's 1970 album, 'American Beauty', Leonard Cohen's 1972 record, 'Songs of Love and Hate' and shoegazing band the Drop Nineteens 1992 debut album, 'Delaware'. Our Website of the Month is the Unsigned Band review, a website that is dedicated to promoting and helping unsigned bands. We also have 32 new reviews. In our previous reviews up-date in May we also put on-line another 28 reviews. We have a new writer this month, Carl Bookstein. Carl is a Detroit-based music fan and writer. He has contributed the Grateful Dead Re : View and album reviews on Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Lovetones. Thank you to Carl. Thank you too also to Peter Allison, Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Dixie Ernill, Tommy Gunnarsson, Sophie Hall, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Sarah Johnson, Sarah Maybank, Anthony Middleton, Chris O' Toole, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Olga Sladeckova, Anthony Strutt, Jeff Thiessen, Helen Tipping and Lisa Torem, all of whom contributed articles to this edition or the mid-month edition. Special thanks to Neil Bailey for his photographic work and our webmaster Richard Banks at Pennyblackmusic HQ. Please check out the new pod cast of our long-term writers, Mark Rowland, Ben Howarth and Sarah Johnson, which they are using it as a forum to debate about new music. For copyright reasons, they are only allowed to play thirty seconds from any one song, but that has proved enough for Mark, Ben and Sarah to get involved in some very lively and funny conversation about some of the acts that we have been writing about elsewhere on the site. They have just recently put on-line their third and longest pod to date with special guest Jamie Rowland. We will be back in mid June with another mid-month reviews up-date and then in early July with another more extensive edition of the magazine with interviews, features, live reviews and more album and single reviews. We hope to be running then interviews with The Fun Lovin' Criminals, Metric, Wavves, Johnny Winter, Ghost of a Thousand, the Leisure Society, the Thermals, the Good and the Bad, the Lovetones, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Remedy and author Mark Hodkinson and to have the usual range of profiles, features and live, album and single reviews Thanks as always for reading. John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk