Miscellaneous - August 2012

  by Admin

published: 17 / 8 / 2012

intro

Hello and welcome to the August edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Our lead interview this month is with the 90’s chart-topping band the Wonder Stuff. Their front man Miles Hunt talks

Hello and welcome to the August edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Our lead interview this month is with the 90’s chart-topping band the Wonder Stuff. Their front man Miles Hunt talks to long term fan Paul Waller about their current ‘From the Midlands with Love’ covers project; forthcoming new album; their years at the top and the acrimony which lead to the break-up of the original line-up of the band. The Wonder Stuff have a lot in common with two of the other acts amongst our other main interviews in that they all have had a long absence from the music scene. While it has been a relatively small in comparison seven years since the Wonder Stuff recorded their last album, electronic duo Blancmange were away for twenty-three years before returning with their fourth studio album ‘Blanc Burn’ last year. In our second interview with them, front man Neil Arthur speaks about their new just released double CD, ‘The Very Best of Blancmange’, which is the first Blancmange compilation to involve input from the band. Manchester new wave band the Distractions have been gone for even longer still, and release their second album, ‘The End of the Pier’, at the end of the month thirty two years on from their much acclaimed debut album, ‘Nobody’s Perfect’. Guitarist Steve Perrin talks to Malcolm Carter about ‘The End of the Pier’. Our other main interviews this month are with singer-songwriter-turned filmmaker Cosmo Jarvis, who chats about his low budget film ‘The Naughty Room’, which is about to be shown on BBC4, and rising abrasive rock band the Arrows of Love whose debut album is out towards the end of the year. We are publishing another ten interviews as well this month. These include, amongst others, London-based alternative rock band Piano Magic about their blackly hilarious eighth album, ‘Life Has Not Finished With Me Yet’; Liverpool psychedelic act the Wicked Whispers; anarchic Lancashire duo and husband-and-wife the Lovely Eggs; underrated 70’s punk act the Outsiders, which was the first band of the Sound’s Adrian Borland (and whose drummer Adrian Janes gives his first ever full interview); one man alt-blues band Funke and the Two-Tone Baby, and James Houston, the organiser of the extraordinary North Yorkshire festival Galtres Festival. In our ‘Profiles’ section there is a tribute to late Deep Purple organist Jon Lord from Nick Dent-Robinson. Lisa Torem writes about meeting personally Ringo Starr, and there is a feature on the Blues Band, whose first three early 80’s albums have just been reissued. In our ‘Live’ section there are reviews of the latest Ottawa Bluesfest, Indietracks and Hevy Fest festivals, as well as of shows by Further, the Zombies, Frankie Valli and Curtis Stigers. We have also got no less than eight ‘Photoscapes’. In our ‘Regular Features’ section Ben Howarth writes about Dinosaur Jr's third album, 'I Bet on Sky', which is due out in September; Mark Rowland reflects on the 1960s in ‘Rock 101’ and Jon Rogers in ‘Hitting the Right Note’ praises the Olympic’s opening ceremony, but is less charitable about its closing debacle. In our ‘Re:View’ section Lisa Torem looks back on Carly Simon’s 1985 allbum, ‘Spoiled Girl’, while our Website of the Month is 'The Daily Waffle' which describes itself as "a blogging network with something for everyone". We are running 32 new album and singles reviews this month. We ran a further 17 reviews in our album and singles only update at the end of August. It is also worth noting that we have run more internal photos than we have ever before this month. Approximately ninety of the 150 plus photos that we have run this month come from our photographic team of Darren Aston, Neil Bailey, Andrew Carver, Amy Rawlinson, Paul Waller and one-woman army Marie Hazelwood. Thank you to all of them. Thank you also (and in some cases again) to Carl Bookstein, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Andy Cassidy, Dan Cressey, Nick Dent-Robinson, Dixie Ernill, Tom Fogarty, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Fiona Hutchings, Richard Lewis, Spencer Robertshaw, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Anthony Strutt, Jeff Thiessen, Helen Tipping, Lisa Torem and Paul Waller, all of whom contributed articles to this edition or the mid-month update. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks for all his hard work. We will be doing an album and singles reviews only update in mid August and then will be doing our next big monthly up-date with interviews, features, live reviews and more album and single reviews at the beginning of September. We hope then to run interviews with Calexico, World Party, Big Star, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Chris Olley, Eugene McGuinness, Rotifer, Dave Harding (Richmond Fontaine), Dan Winehouse and Occultation Recordings. Thank you as always for reading Pennyblackmusic, John Clarkson, Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk