Miscellaneous - February 2010

  by Admin

published: 31 / 1 / 2010

intro

Hello and welcome to the February edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine, and our first edition of the New Year after our Christmas break.Our lead interview for this month is with Viv Albertine, the former guitarist with the 70’s female punk act

Hello and welcome to the February edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine, and our first edition of the New Year after our Christmas break. Our lead interview for this month is with Viv Albertine, the former guitarist with the 70’s female punk act, the Slits. After an absence which has extended since the Slits’ break-up in 1981, she has recently returned to making music. In interview with Pennyblackmusic, she spoke to us about her years with the often controversial Slits, her first new EP in nearly thirty years, and why she has returned to music now. Our other main interviews for this month are with glam rock/punk star Wednesday 13, who speaks in what our second interview with him about his new project Gunfire 76; musician, poet and writer Martin Newell and much acclaimed Boston-based singer-songwriter, Eileen Rose. There are interviews as well with Johnny Winter guitarist and solo artist Paul Nelson; 80’s indie pop act the Brilliant Corners, who have just had two of their albums and an EP reissued on the Cherry Red label; rising Illinois classic rockers Waterstreet; Dutch electro punk pioneer Grendel; New York-based singer-songwriter and protest artist Andrew Vladeck and Parisian indie rock act Yeti Lane. In our Profiles section, we have articles on Woody Guthrie, comedy rock act Flight of the Conchords, and cow punks Jason and the Scorchers who are back after an absence of over a decade with a new album, ‘Halycon Times’. In the second part of his occasional series on the Beatles, Anthony Strutt writes about the years 1964-1965 and the albums, ‘A Hard Day’s Night, ‘Beatles for Sale’, ‘Help’ and ‘Rubber Soul’. In our Live Reviews section, there are reviews of shows by Dinosaur Jr, John Sebastian and David Grisman, Future of the Left, Henry Rollins, Diamond el Fonzbrook and the Dead Baby Parade, Gunfire 76, Stephen Fretwell, Grendel and Julian Plenti. There are also reviews of ‘Way to Blue’, a Nick Drake tribute which featured artists such as Vashti Bunyan, Robyn Hitchcock, Teddy Thompson and Krystle Warren, and a three part article on ‘Reverence 2’, a London-based three night shoegazing festival which saw headline slots from Chapterhouse, Swervedriver and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. In our Features section, r. fisher for the ‘Soundtrack of our Lives’ column, in which our writers describe the personal impact of music on their lives, tells of his stern Baptist upbringing and in the early 60s discovering Bob Dylan and rock music. Spencer Robertshaw provides ’I Want to Be Your Rock ‘n’ Roll’, the latest poem in his ‘Evidently Spencertown’series, while Lisa Torem in her ‘Rock Salt Row’ column debates with Mark Rowland about hope in songwriting. In ‘This Metal Sky’ Jeff Thiessen argues against the Strokes’ 2001 debut ‘Is This It?’, which appeared on many polls for Album of the Decade, while in ‘Hitting the Right Note’ Jon Rogers looks at the short list for the Brit Awards 2010. In ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Ben Howarth examines what the impact will be of the UK government’s Digital Economy Bill, while for our ‘Photoscapes’ series Anna Gudaniec has provided photos of Scottish singer-songwriter Malcolm Middleton at a show at the Borderline in London. In our Re: View section, in which our writers look back at albums from the past, there are articles on REM’s 1992 album ‘Automatic for the People’, glam rock band the Rats’ long unavailable 1976 record ‘Second Long Player’, and indie rock band the Lucy Show’s 1985 album ‘...undone’ . Fiona Hutchings has taken over the Website of the Month column, and for her first feature there writes about ‘Noizemakesenemies’, a British-based webzine and forum for music. There are also 32 album and single reviews. As always, this magazine is is put together through the hard work and contributions of many talented people. Thank you to Peter Allison, Carl Bookstein, Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Dan Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Russell Ferguson, r.fisher, Tommy Gunnarson, Benjamin Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Sarah Johnson, Sarah Maybank, Anthony Middleton, Chris O’ Toole, Spencer Robertshaw, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Anthony Strutt, Helen Tipping, and Lisa Torem, all of whom contributed articles to this edition. Thank you too to guest writer Rik Bell who contributed the Diamond el Fonsbrook and the Dead Baby Parade review. Thank you also to our current photographers, Anna Gudaniec for the Malcolm Middleton ’Photoscapes', and Alan Taylor-Shearer who contributed photographs for the Gunfire 76 interview and live review, and also the Diamond el Fonsbrook and the Dead Baby Parade live review. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks at Pennyblackmusic HQ. We will be back in early January with a reviews up-date and then at the beginning of March with a full edition. We hope then to be running interviews with Roseanne Cash, Hanoi Rocks’ Mike Monroe, Lou Barlow, Xiu Xiu, Ulrich Schnauss, of Arrowe Hill, the Len Price 3, Nick Gerrie, Last Harbour, the Pony Collaboration, the Rebel, Paperplain and Circus of Horrors and and the usual range of features, live reviews, profiles and more album and single reviews. Thank you as always for reading. John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk