Miscellaneous - September 2011

  by Admin

published: 14 / 9 / 2011

intro

Hello and welcome to the September edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. We are concluding the year by presenting two of our Bands’ Nights, the first in London on October 29th and the second in Manchester on

Hello and welcome to the September edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. We are concluding the year by presenting two of our Bands’ Nights, the first in London on October 29th and the second in Manchester on November 19th. The Bands’ Night in London will take place at our regular venue of the Half Moon in Herne Hill, and will be co-headlined by Morton Valence, a self-described “urban country” outfit, and Madam, the much acclaimed project of singer-songwriter Sukie Smith. Also on the Half Moon bill are the Doomed Bird of Providence, whose turbulent sound has drawn them comparisons with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and ambient act Rome Pays Off, the new band of Mark Beazley who was previously in Rothko. Tickets can be bought in advance from We Got Tickets for £5 at http://www.wegottickets.com/event/129643 and also on the door on the night at £6. You can also read more about the Half Moon gig at http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article.aspx?id=6082 We can also now announce the bill for the Manchester gig, which will be the first Pennyblackmusic Bands’ Night outside London and which will take place at Gullivers in Oldham Street. Our main act will be the Experimental Pop Band, the current group of Davey Woodward, whose previous band the Brilliant Corners were one of the most influential indie pop bands of the 1980s. They will be travelling up from Bristol for the occasion, and Davey will also be supporting himself by playing a solo set. There will also be on the bill another two acts, a local folk pop act Becca and the Broken Biscuits who will be playing as a two-piece including a cellist, and Brilliant Mind, an indie pop band from Newcastle. Tickets will soon be available from We Got Tickets at the advance price of £6 and again on the night at £8. Our lead interview this month is with Gary Numan, one of the groundbreaking and seminal figures of the electronic movement. He speaks to Andy Cassidy about his new album ‘Dead Son Rising’, its difficult inception and his career which is now five decades long. Our other main interviews this month are with much acclaimed singer-songwriter and “cult artist’s cult artist” Jackie Leven; veteran guitarist, session musician and producer Chris Spedding; dream pop band Drugstore, who have recently returned with ‘Affinity’, their first studio album in a decade, and Japanese punks Shonen Knife. There are also interviews with solo artist and former Wings guitarist Henry McCullough; singer-songwriter and poet Adam Donen about his second solo album, ‘Vampires’ and acclaimed folk artist Megan Henwood, who has recently released her debut album, ‘Making Waves’. Our other new interviews this month with classic rock/Americana act Edgehill Avenue; guitarist Mat Flint about his underrated former shoegazing band Revolver and present act Deep Cut; Nashville-based bluegrass band Mountain Heart, and Sheffield indie group RepoMen, who have just released ‘Occasional Sensations: A Retrospective Long Player’, a compilation album from their three decades together. In our Profiles section there is an obituary of the songwriter Jerry Leiber; a comment from Mark Rowland, Jon Rogers and myself about some of the reasons for the decline and fall of the ‘NME’; a profile on singer-songwriter Reg Meuross who has released two albums during the last year, and a review of Selecter front woman Pauline’s Black’s new autobiography, ‘Black By Design’. As the festival season comes to an end, we have in our Live section reviews of the Limetree, Endorse It in Dorset, Indietracks and Hop Farm festivals and also At the Edge of the Peaks, a one day festival organised in Holmfirth in Yorkshire by David Gedge from the Wedding Present. There are also reviews of shows from My Morning Jacket, Sarabeth Tucek, Royal Baths, Chuck Prophet, Joana and the Wolf and singer-songwriter turned comic Rosie Wilby. In our Regular Features section Jamie Rowland in ‘Gimme Indie Rock’ provides a guide to creating the perfect compilation CD. There is a poem, ‘Always There’, on love in its many forms from our poet Spencer Robertshaw in the latest in his ‘Evidently Spencertown’ poetry column, while Ben Howarth in ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ asks whether Laura Marling’s third album, ‘A Creature Don’t Know’, has the potential to become a classic. We also have Photoscapes from Indietracks, the Truck Festival and a recent Liverpool show featuring the Rialto Burns, Fonetics and Gospel. In our Re: View section, in which our writers look back at classic albums from the past, Richard Lewis examines the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ film, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ which has just been released in a tenth anniversary edition. Our Website of the Month is Swede Mason, which matches vintage TV and cinema footage with side splittingly hilarious songs. There are also thirty two new album and single reviews. We ran a further twenty reviews in our reviews only up-date at the end of August. We have both a new writer and new photographer this month. Tom Fogarty is a London-based journalist and music fan and provided the Joana and the Wolf review, while Steve McDermott, who provided the Truck Festival photographs, is from Wales. Thank you to Tom and Steve. Thank you also to Carl Bookstein, Finn Cargill, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Andy Cassidy, Daniel Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Richard Lewis, Sarah Maybank, Spencer Robertshaw, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland Maarten Schiethart, Anthony Strutt, Jeff Thiessen, Helen Tipping and Lisa Torem, all of whom contributed articles to this edition of the August reviews up-date. Thank you too to our regular photographers Neil Bailey for the Endorse It In Dorset and Indietracks festival photos and Marie Hazelwood for the Rialto Burns shoot. Thank you to special guest photographer John Ritchie for the photos that accompany the Sarabeth Tucek live review. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks. We will be back in late September with another albums and singles reviews up-date and then in October with another new edition. We hope to be running interviews then with the Go Betweens’ Robert Forster, Peter Asher, Danny and the Champions of the World, the Wild Swans, Stealing Sheep, the Ventures, ? and the Mysterians, Gagarin, the Doomed Bird of Providence, Lisa Hannigan, Becca and the Broken Biscuits, Rome Pays Off, Brilliant Mind and Limbo. Thank you as always for reading, John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk