Miscellaneous - October 2011

  by Admin

published: 4 / 10 / 2011

intro

Hello and welcome to the October edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. When R.E.M. announced on the 21st September that they were breaking up after thirty one years together, it met with a mixed reaction amongst our writers. There

Hello and welcome to the October edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. When R.E.M. announced on the 21st September that they were breaking up after thirty one years together, it met with a mixed reaction amongst our writers. There were some who were sorry and felt a genuine sense of loss; others who felt that the Athens, Georgia band had long since run out of steam and others too who believed that had they done little in the first place to earn the adulation they had received. Like the best of groups, R.E.M. while perhaps stodgy in their latter years, had by breaking up gone out in a wave of a controversy. We have collected together comments from several of our writers on the split in an article entitled ‘The Demise of R.E.M.’ in the Profiles section. We don’t expect you to agree with all of them. We don’t agree with each other on this occasion. Also in our Profiles section Andrew Carver examines the career of late 1960's and early 1970's West Coast act Spirit, who have had recently had two albums of previously lost material, 'The Original Potato Album' and 'Tales from the Westside', released. There are also reviews there of new books on the Beach Boys and Felt, and a James Brown concert film DVD, which was filmed in Georgia on the late Godfather of Soul's 70th birthday. We have also expanded our Features section with two new columns this month. In the first of these, ‘Room 101’, Mark Rowland, after both the R.E.M. break up and the 20th anniversary reissue of Nirvana’s second ‘Nevermind’ album, asks if it is better for bands to burn out quickly or to fade away slowly. Andy Cassidy in the second of our new columns will be looking alphabetically at a different subject in music each month. He begins with the letter 'A' and the Doors' final album 'An American Prayer', which was recorded in 1978, seven years after Jim Morrison's death. Amongst our other Features Jon Rogers provides a list of tips and rules for being in a band in 'Hitting the Right Note', and we have a new poem, 'Window Shopping', from Spencer Robertshaw in his 'Evidently Spencertown' series about the UK riots. There is possibly my own favourite Photoscape ever with previously unseen photos from Marie Hazelwood of former Little Flames front woman and now solo artist Eva Petersen in her native Liverpool. Ben Howarth in 'Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll' looks at a political battle involving former Undertones front man Feargal Sharkey which has ensued after the government recently proposed making changes with regards to filesharing to the Digital Economy Act of 2010. In our interview section, Dixie Ernill in his first lead interview for Pennyblackmusic speaks to former Go-Betweens member Robert Forster about his debut book, a collection of music writing ‘The 10 Rules of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, and his relationship with his late bandmate and songwriting partner, Grant McLennan. Our other main interviews this month are with 60's songwriter Peter Asher about his long career as both a musician (Peter and Gordon) and a producer (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, the Webb Brothers); Paul Simpson from Liverpool band the Wild Swans about his band's first album in 22 years, 'The Coldest Winter For a Hundred Years'; acclaimed Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan and I'm Kingfisher, the new project of Swedish anti-folk artist Thomas Denver Jonssson, who has just released his debut album, 'Arctic', under that name. There are interviews also with Paul McCartney guitarist and solo artist Brian Ray; Gagarin, the electronic soundscape project of South London percussionist and musician Graham Dowdall, who has worked with both Nico and Pere Ubu; much loved 60's band Question Mark and the Mysterians; singer-songwriter and daughter of Richard and Linda Thompson, Kami Thompson and Swedish band Limbo, whose music combines folk, pop and rock. We have interviews as well with macabre alternative rockers the Doomed Bird of Providence, and ex-Rothko main man Mark Beazley's new ambient group Rome Pays Off who will be playing the Pennyblackmusic Bands' Night at the Half Moon in Herne Hill on the 29th October, and also interviews with Mancurian folk pop outfit Becca and The Broken Biscuits and young Newcastle indie pop group Brilliant Mind who will be playing our other Bands Night at Gullivers in Manchester on November 19th. In our Live section there are reviews of gigs from Ian Hunter, Laki Mera, BettySoo and Doug Cox, Wagons, I Like Trains, Kill It Kid, Airship and Nights Beats, and also the Guinness Oyster Fest, a weekend festival in Chicago. In our Re: View series, in which we look back at albums from the past, there are articles on female post punks the Raincoats' 1981 second album, 'Odyshape'; the twentieth anniversary of Nirvana's 1991 second album 'Nevermind', and seminal electronic group the Art of Noise's 1984 debut album, 'Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?' Our Website of the Month is the website for the British Association for Music Therapy, the professional association of music therapists. We are running 32 new album and single reviews this month. In our previous reviews up-date at the end of September we ran another twenty reviews. Thank you also to Peter Allison, Carl Bookstein, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Andy Cassidy, Daniel Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Tom Fogarty, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Richard Lewis, Sarah Mwangi, Spencer Robertshaw, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Anthony Strutt, Jeff Thiessen, Lisa Torem, Paul Waller and Denzil Watson, all of whom contributed articles to this edition of the August reviews up-date. Thank you too to Marie Hazelwood for the Eva Petersen photos and Steve McDemott for the Kill It Kid photos and article. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks. We will be back in late October with another albums and singles reviews up-date and then in November with another new edition. We hope to be running interviews then with the Magazine's Howard Devoto, Darlene Love, the Pirates, Dweezil Zappa, Thrum, Stealing Sheep, the Ventures, The Good the Bad, Ronnie Montrose, the Cathode Ray and Luke Fenlon. Thank you as always for reading, John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk