Miscellaneous - June 2014

  by Admin

published: 6 / 6 / 2014

Article

Hello and welcome to the June edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. After a very successful Bands Night at The Lexington in London on the 31st May and a great eight act bill at The River in Glasgow on the 7th June, we move on to The Ruby Lounge in Manchester on Saturday 5th July for what is the third and last in our series of summer concerts. In what will be a night of indiepop, our headlining act is the Bristol-based C86 band the Brilliant Corners, who released four albums and a string of classic singles including ‘Delilah’, ‘Teenage’ and ‘Why Do You Have to Go Out With Him When You Could Go Out With Me?’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band, who are fronted by the charismatic Davy Woodward, arguably one of Britain’s finest singer-songwriters, got back together last year after a two decades absence for one year only, and the Pennyblackmusic show will be both their penultimate show and only Northern gig before they part company again. Also on the bill are the Haywains, another Bristol-based indiepop band of the same era who reformed last year for their 25th anniversary, and rising Manchester-based group Horsebeach whose eponymous debut album is due out in July. We will have pieces about all three gigs in our July edition, and also photos from each of them from our in-house photographers Darren Aston, Dave Goodwin, Bill Gray and Marie Hazelwood. For this month’s edition, Dixie Ernill, who has organised the Manchester gig, has chosen to write about the Brilliant Corners in our regular column ‘Ten Songs That Made Made Me Love…’, and has included comments from Davy Woodward about each of his ten choices of singles, albums and other tracks. We are also running interviews with both the Haywains and Horsebeach. Tickets for the Manchester gig can be bought in advance from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/267706 at the advance price of £8 and also on the night for £10. Our lead interview for this edition is with Sarah Cracknell, the frontwoman with seminal indie/dance trio Saint Etienne, who speaks to us about a new limited edition book of photographs from First Third Press that looks back over the band’s entire career. Elsewhere to celebrate a new three box set from Cherry Red which commemorates the influential ‘C86’ cassette, we are running interviews with six of the bands of that era – Fuzzbox, McCarthy, the Servants, the Mighty Lemon Drops, the Bodines and One Thousand Violins. Our other interviews for this month include brooding Leeds-based alternative rockers I Like Trains; Doug Wimbish from rock outfit Living Colour about his band’s involvement in a new EP of Paul McCartney covers, and piano legend and ‘Later…’ presenter Jools Holland. There are also interviews with Virginia-based psychedelic/guitar rockers Pontiak; Australian singer-songwrriter Mama Kin about her extraordinary second album ‘The Magician’s Daughter’ and former Detroit underground punk musician-turned-author Sean Madigan Hoen about his new memoir ‘Songs Only You Know’. Amongst our other highlights there is an article on the new ‘C86’ box set, the third and final part of our series on the Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light/White Heat’ album and a profile of folk musician and traditional gypsy song revivalist Sam Lee. In our Regular Features section, as well as the Brilliant Corners article, Jon Rogers in ‘Hitting the Right Note’ finds hypocritical the media’s stance on the recent One Direction drugs controversy; Lisa Torem in her new book reviews column ‘Raging Pages’ reflects upon Sean Madigan Hoen’s ‘Songs Only You Know’ and Ben Howarth in ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ examines You Tube and Spotify’s increasing impact on rock music. In 'Gig of a Lifetime' Jon Rogers meanwhile remembers a terrible Primal Scream in Leicester in 1989. We are also running sixteen live reviews and Photoscapes. In our Re: View section, in which we look back on albums from the past, there are articles on Grace Jones’s 1981 album ‘Nightclubbing’; Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 soundtrack album ‘Super Fly’ and soul/funk outfit Funkadelic’s 1978 album ‘One Nation Under a Groove’. Our Website of the Month is 'Dust-to-Digital', an American archival website. There are also thirty-two album and single reviews. As always this magazine has come together through the hard work of many people. Thank you to Carl Bookstein, Malcolm Carter, Nicky Crewe, Dastardly, Nick Dent-Robinson, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Tony Gaughan, Dave Goodwin, Bill Gray, Tommy Gunnarsson, Marie Hazelwood, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Adrian Janes, Jon Rogers, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic B. Simpson, Melanie Smith, Anthony Strutt,, Lisa Torem and Paul Waller, all of whom who have contributed either to this edition or our reviews only update in March. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks for all his work behind the scenes and without whom none of this would be possible. We will be back in late June with a reviews update, and then in July with another full edition. We hope to run then interviews with the Human League, Cheetah Chrome, Nina Antonia, Jesu, Dodson and Fogg, John Otway, Broken Records, Steely Dan guitarist Jon Herington, Francis MacDonald and Harry Pye, and Stella Burns. Please check out our regular Facebook and Twitter updates. Thank you as always for reading Pennyblackmusic, John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk

Also In Editorial