Miscellaneous - December 2011

  by Admin

published: 11 / 12 / 2011

intro

Hello and welcome to the December edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. We have had a very busy year at Pennyblackmusic. Over the course of this year we have run headline interviews with former

Hello and welcome to the December edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. We have had a very busy year at Pennyblackmusic. Over the course of this year we have run headline interviews with former Propaganda front woman and solo artist Claudia Brucken, Donovan, the Kinks, the Meat Puppets, the Cowboy Junkies, the Akron/Family, Roy Harper, Gary Numan, the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster and Nitin Sawhney. Of the over a hundred other interviews that we have put online, some of the highlights have included Iron and Wine, Dave Brubeck, Blancmange, the Undertones, the Zombies, James Grant of Love and Money, the Blue Aeroplanes, the Webb Sisters, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, X, Ladytron, John Hiatt, Chris Spedding, Shonen Knife, Lisa Hannigan, the Wild Swans, Dweezil Zappa, Magazine, Darlene Love and the late Jackie Leven. There have been over 120 live reviews and 570 album and single reviews. Our regular columnists, Ben Howarth with ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Jon Rogers with ‘Hitting the Right Note’, Jamie Rowland with ‘Gimme Indie Rock’, Jeff Thiessen with ‘This Metal Sky’ and Spencer Robertshaw with his poetry column ‘Evidently Spencertown’, have all mouthed off long and hard. There has also been the introduction of two new columns, Mark Rowland’s ‘Rock 101’ and Andy Cassidy’s ‘A-Z of Music’. We have developed the amount of own photography that we publish at Pennyblackmusic this year, and our regular photographers, Neil Bailey, Andrew Carver, Alan Taylor-Shearer, Denzil Watson and Matt Williams, have had their numbers expanded by Marie Hazelwood, Steve McDermott, John Ritchie and from this edition Darren Aston. There have been two successful Bands’ Nights in London, both of which were organised by our writer Dominic Simpson. The first in March saw sets from former Jack front man Anthony Reynolds (in his first ever London solo gig), Nick Garrie, the Hall of Mirrors and Alex Monk, and the second in October featured Morton Valence, Madam, the Doomed Bird of Providence and Rome Pays Off. We also went North to Manchester in November for our first ever Bands’ Night, which - another excellent evening – was organised by our writer Dixie Ernill and the bill for which consisted of the Experimental Pop Band, Brilliant Mind, Becca and the Broken Biscuits and Davey Woodward. We are closing this year with our annual Writers and Photographers’ Albums of the Year poll, which is now in its twelfth year. Twenty of our writers and photographers have provided polls of up to ten of their favourite albums and one gig of the year. What is always entertaining and interesting about this poll is how much it corresponds with that of other magazines and webzines and then how much it deviates, and the 2012 poll has done both. The Fleet Foxes, PJ Harvey, the Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead and Kate Bush did well as they have done on most other polls, but so also on the Pennyblackmusic poll have the Akron/Family, Austra, King Mob and Astrid Williamson. Several of the acts that we have actively promoted at Pennyblackmusic over the course of the year – Darren Hayman, the Rialto Burns Duncan Maitland, Bruce Cockburn and an assortment of Bands Night’ acts – also appear, but then so too more surprisingly does Beyonce. Amongst the live shows the stadium fillers –Paul McCartney, the Cure, Roger Waters-have won out, but Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Lisa Hannigan and Love and Money also feature as well. In most editions I tend to describe and list all the recent additions to the site, but, in what is becoming a tradition for this time of year, I think it is perhaps best to let things for better or worse to speak for themselves. All I need to point out is that we have put up nine interviews this month and beyond that everything else on the magazine home page – features, live reviews, album and single reviews and so on – is new. This magazine is put together through the support and continued enthusiasm of many people. As well as all the people above, thank you as well to the rest of our 2011 writing team of Peter Allison, Carl Bookstein, Aaron Brown, Finn Cargill, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Dan Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Tom Fogerty, Tony Gaughan Tommy Gunnarson, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Sarah Johnson, Richard Lewis, Sarah Maybank, Sarah Mwangi, Chris O’ Toole, Maarten Schiethart, Kelly Smith, Anthony Strutt, Helen Tipping, Lisa Torem, Cila Warncke and Denzil Watson. Extra thanks to Ben Howarth and Jamie Rowland who run our Facebook and Twitter pages and also to our promoter and Bands Nights’ organisers Dominic Simpson and Dixie Ernill. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks for all his tireless and endless work behind the scenes and without whom all of this each month 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. Thank you as always for reading, John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk