Miscellaneous - Rydell and the 16 Year Old Amateur Music Journalist

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 20 / 3 / 2011

intro

In our 'Soundtrack of Our Lives' column, Ben Howarth writes of ten years of writing of Pennyblackmusic, and an early interview with forgotten emo group, Rydell

This is the second time that I have written something for this column. John, Clarkson, our editor, had asked me to write something for it on both occasion, and I accepted willingly. My enthusiasm for bands and records has been a big part of my life and my identity since I was in primary school, and I thought on both occasions that I’d find something to write about with little difficulty. But the problem is that, while music is the soundtrack to a lot of my life, it tends to have been the part where I’ve been sat in my room playing records. I don’t really think you want to read an article about that. For inspiration, I went back and read through some of the other columns that people have written for the site. It’s interesting reading them – some of these people I’ve met and know well, while others I know as names on paper. Some have obviously found music pivotal to their development as a person. Others have used certain music as props at difficult moments in their life. One Pennyblackmusic writer was even willing to admit in print that they lost their virginity while listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain. I began writing for Pennyblackmusic when I was 16, and I’m 26 now. Not old, I hope, but certainly a lot older. I think during that time my relationship with music has changed quite a bit. I can look back through the archives and see evidence of tastes and enthusiasms that I can’t understand now. Although when I was 14/15, my friends and I toyed around with the idea of being in a band, I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to be famous. I’d sung in a church choir since I was 8, and carried on doing so until I moved to London. I was a pretty good singer, actually, if no child prodigy. But whenever I was asked to sing a solo, I got irrationally nervous. The shaking always spoilt what had sounded quite good in rehearsal. I knew then that’d I’d never want to take to the stage with a rock band. But, I’d wanted to write about music for several years before I actually did. In 1999, I started to find that I liked the songs from bands operating a long way from the daytime Radio One playlist. A year later, my family decided it was time to take that digital leap and hook up to the internet. I found this website, which in those days before Amazon’s iron grip tightened, was a good way to find records not available in Maidstone town centre. Soon, I’d tentatively enquired about writing reviews for the site’s magazine myself. Within a year, I’d written reviews and interviewed bands on the phone, by email and even in person. This definitely helped me – it gave me a taste for writing as a pleasurable activity in itself that hasn’t gone away. Speaking to bands made me much more confident. The ‘extra-curricular’ element certainly added some character to my personal statement when I was applying to university. Yet, around the time I actually did start writing about music was the time that I knew it would only be a hobby. Surprisingly good GCSE results came at the same time as I started writing for the site – and given how little work I’d bothered to put into revising, that was a much bigger boost to my confidence. Doing well in school made me think that I could go to a good university, and assured me that things would probably turn out alright as I got older. By this time, I’d realised that I’d want (and should have a decent chance of getting) a more secure job than being a professional music journalist. So, the ‘experience’ wasn’t the reason I enjoyed writing for the site (and if it was, I probably wouldn’t still be doing it). What I got was lots of new music. Excellent bands that I would never have heard of otherwise, that I can still listen to over and over again. Amateur is an abused term. I’m an amateur music journalist – I get sent CDs to review sometimes and I’ve been able to see bands play for free, but nobody has ever paid me to write about a band. The word amateur actually derives from the Latin for ‘to love’, and that’s what it means to me: doing something for the sheer pleasure of it. In 2001, I interviewed a band called Rydell. Like many of the bands I’ve interviewed, before and since, their music career is notable only for the sheer scale by which they failed to hit the mark of commercial success. Except that their debut album ‘Per Ardua Ad Astra’ stands the test of time. It still sounds great to my ears – a strange mix of gruff vocals grasping for a tune, chiming guitars and frantic drumming. It turns out that Dave, the guitarist and Milo, the singer, had been almost single-handedly keeping alive the emo/hardcore scene in the UK, running an online shop which would soon turn into a label. The 'NME' have written it out of history now (look 2001 up in the encyclopedia of rock, and all you will see is the Strokes and the White Stripes). But back then, before My Chemical Romance’s ubiquity and charmless pretension made ‘emo’ an abusive term, there were some who saw it as the future. Hundred Reasons, who cited Bluetip and Sense Field where others talked about the Ramones, had been signed to a major label and others would follow. In America, Jimmy Eat World became a household name and Blink 182 formed an emo-offshoot. It turned out that for at least a decade there had been bands slogging around the small town pubs and clubs of the UK playing this music, never getting a footing in the mainstream. They’d started their own labels, shops and began inviting counterparts from the American underground over to play with them. The problem with underground music scenes is that they often retreat into themselves. There is no room for anyone to take risks, lest the small but determined audience go off them, and bands start sounding too alike. It happened to the US Hardcore scene and it happened to emo too (even if the phrase returned with a vengeance a few years later). Rydell turned up to the interview with a bag full of records by other bands, which they cheerfully handed to me. Most of them I’d never heard of. Many turned out to be very good, although Rydell themselves remained my favourite. During the interview, Dave was astonished that I’d never heard Chamberlain. He insisted that I hear ‘Fate’s Got A Driver’. A door had opened. Chamberlain had already broken up by the time I began listening to them (although they have in fact tentatively begun playing shows again in America). They formed as teenagers, playing thrashy punk rock. Later in their brief career, to the consternation of their fans, they began playing a brand of Springsteen/Dylan influenced rock. On their final album, 'Exit 263', they were essentially an alt-country band. The last track from that album, ‘Masterpiece’, a tender and emotive love song, remains a favourite of mine, and is also loved by my brother, my dad and my mum. Chamberlain may not have been as unlucky as Rydell (whose career effectively ended when their 2001 US tour was cancelled due to the 9/11 bombings), but many devoted music fans will draw a blank if you mention them to anyone. So imagine the surprise of a devoted Chamberlain fan who ran a music shop in Chatham when my dad mentioned that the record he had been playing in the shop sounded like them. Soon my dad found that records were being kept back for him when he came to the store. One of these was ‘Burn The Maps’ by the Frames. Well known in Ireland, the Frames (lead by former-busker-turned-Commitment Glen Hansard) had not made much headway in the UK. But imagine what Snow Patrol would sound like with a violinist, biting guitars and a songwriter looking to please only himself. I saw the band play live, and still find it hard to describe why it was so good. The Frames seemed to bring the whole crowd along with them, it felt special and indefinable. Isn’t that true of all the best concerts? Hansard soon formed a partnership with Czech pianist Marketa Irglova and won an Oscar for his bin the film Once. Because I interviewed Rydell, who liked Chamerlain, who were liked by a man in a shop who happened to meet my dad, I was lucky enough to see him play an astonishing show in a tiny venue before he got famous. In the same year that I interviewed Rydell, I also did the first of two interviews with a charming Australian songwriter, Jason Sweeney, who recorded as Simpatico. From there, it was suggested that I should interview his label boss, Jimmy Tassos, who ran Matinee. To do this, I needed to brush up on his other bands. This is how I found the Lucksmiths. The Lucksmiths combined delicate indie-pop with intricate rhymes and shameless puns. In a better, saner world, they’d be very famous. But, if I hadn’t bumbed into them by chance, I doubt I’d have heard of them at all. The same applies to the Willard Grant Conspiracy, who are a long-term favourite of this magazine’s editor. John was quick to introduce me to their music when I began writing for the site (I think I sent him a tape recording of Low playing live on John Peel in return). I love their records, especially the string-drenched 'Pilgrim’s Road'. But it’s in a live setting when you really have to see them. The third time I saw them was the best. Coming just after my tenth anniversary of writing for this site, one of the bands who had defined that decade headlined a show that some of my fellow writers organised. It was full and the WGC were great. There are loads more I could mention. Heard of Idiot Son? They don’t play live often any more, and even when they did, they didn’t often. But ‘Lummox’, their only album, is great - a bit of the Smiths, quite a lot of Prefab Sprout and maybe some Blue Nile as well. Or what about the Beauty Shop? They are the missing link between Nirvana and Uncle Tupelo, but the key point is that the songs are great. Sounds Like Violence once got a five star review in 'Kerrang!', but never translated success in Sweden into sustained approval here. It didn’t stop them making some exhilarating records. Lorna make sweeping, widescreen pop from their home in Nottingham, while their friends Coastal do roughly the same thing from their home in Utah. Why didn’t more people buy the second, excellent Airport Girl album? I could go on, and on. I do, incidentely, like some famous bands as well. I’ve been lucky enough to interview Jason Pierce of Spiritualized, Idlewild, Gomez, Fugazi, Shack, Sons and Daughters and the National. But, the soundtrack to my life, or at least the past decade, has come from the pleasure at finding hidden treasures, often by mere chance. I’ll be playing those records as often as I can for many years to come.