Miscellaneous - December 2010

  by Admin

published: 4 / 12 / 2010

intro

Hello and welcome to the December edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. It has been an exciting year at Pennyblackmusic. We have run over

Hello and welcome to the December edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. It has been an exciting year at Pennyblackmusic. We have run over the course of 2010 headline interviews with Viv Albertine, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), the Radio Dept., John Cooper Clarke, Freebass, Eric Burdon, the Posies, the Primitives, former Little Man Tate front man Jon Windle, and are finishing the year on a high with an interview with Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty. Amongst the other over a hundred interviews we have run over the course of the last year, some of the highlights have included Martin Newell, Eileen Rose, Ulrich Schnauss, Shakespears Sister, Jethro Tull, Yeasayer, Jim Kerr, Heaven 17, Chuck Prophet, Peter Murphy, Mary Gauthier, Tender Trap, the Dillinger Escape Plan, Darren Hayman, Fish, OMD, Supertramp, Alan McGee, Janis Ian and Elektra label boss Jac Holzman. There have been approximately 140 live reviews and over 650 album and single reviews. Our regular columnists, Ben Howarth with ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Jon Rogers with ‘Hitting the Right Note’, Spencer Robertshaw with 'Evidently specnertown', Jeff Thiessen with ‘This Metal Sky’ and Lisa Torem with ‘Rock Salt Row’, have all maintained their columns, while Jamie Rowland has kicked into life a new series, ‘Gimme Indie Rock’. Fiona Hutchings has taken over the ‘Website of the Month’ and has not just given it a fresh coat of paint, but a vibrancy to a column, which while always worthy, had at the end of ten years become tired and stale. We have also introduced four fantastic new writers, Paul Waller, Tony Gaughan, Tara McEvoy and Richard Lewis, the latter of whom joined us this month and provided the Depeche Mode live DVD review. There have been some lows as well. We have had some off and on technical problems this year, which have now been largely sorted, and our Bands Night in March was memorable, but yet not necessarily for the right reasons, culminating in an on-stage row and bust-up from our main act. Our next Bands Night in November, which featured sets from the Willard Grant Conspiracy, the Monroe Transfer, Adam Donen, and Altai Rockets, was in contrast a triumphant occasion and one of the best gigs we have ever done. Our writer Sarah Johnson has filmed and made it a half an hour documentary about it. If you haven’t seen Sarah’s film, which is called ‘Such is Rock and Roll’, yet, do please have a look. It’s a very funny and entertaining half an hour which captures the drama of these occasions. Its You Tube links can be found on the front page and also on the right hand tool bar of each article page. At this time of the month I usually describe and list all the recent additions to the site, but this month in what is a double edition, as all the items on the main page of the site except for three articles are new (See if you can spot them"), it is perhaps better for once to let things simply speak for themselves. This magazine is put together through the continued enthusiasm of many people. As well as all the people above, thank you as well to the rest of our 2010 writing team of Peter Allison, Carl Bookstein, Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Dan Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Russell Ferguson, r.fisher, Tommy Gunnarson, Adrian Huggins, Chris Jones Sarah Maybank, Anthony Middleton, Sarah Mwangi, Chris O’ Toole, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Kelly Smith, Anthony Strutt, Helen Tipping and Denzil Watson. Thank you also to our current photographers, Neil Bailey, Anna Gudaniec, Alan Shearer-Taylor and Matt Williams. Extra thanks to Ben Howarth and Jamie Rowland who run our Facebook and Twitter pages and also to our promoter and Bands Nights’ organiser Dominic Simpson. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks for all his tireless and endless work behind the scenes and without whom all of this each motnh wouldn't be possible. We are going to taking a break over Christmas and New Year, but will be back in early January with a reviews up-date and then towards the end of the month with a full edition of new interviews, features, live reviews and profiles. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our of readers and visitors and thank you as always for reading John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk