Miscellaneous - February 2008

  by Admin

published: 11 / 1 / 2008

Article

Hello and welcome to the February edition of the Pennyblackmusic magazine, and, after the Christmas break, our first full magazine of the year. Our lead interview this month is with the Godfathers. One of the most exciting live groups of the late 80’s and early 90’s, this fiery South London quintet combined a new wave sound with elements of rock ‘n’ roll, country and 60’s pop and in their original line-up recorded three albums, ‘Hit by Hit’, ‘Birth, School, Work, Death’ and ‘More Songs about Love and Hate’ with legendary producer Vic Maile. After the first and best known line-up of the group broke up in the late 80’s, its leaders, vocalist Peter Coyne and his bassist brother Chris, remained with the group to record another three albums and a live album before it filtered out towards the end of the decade. With the original line-up Godfathers having reformed and about to go back on the road, and a double CD edition of ‘Hit by Hit’ about to be released, we spoke to both Coynes about their group and getting it back together. We are also running interviews this month with New York-based musician and comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis about his new album of Crass covers ; 70’s punk/funk group the Au Pairs ; Richmond Fontaine bassist Dave Harding about his debut solo album, ‘Across the Road’, and Greek electro-folk artist Akis Boyatzis about his electro-folk project Sigmatropic. In our profiles section Anthony Strutt reviews both Tim Burton’s new musical, ‘Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ and Kylie Minogue’s double DVD, ‘White Diamond/Showgirl Homecoming’. The are live reviews of shows by Explosions in the Sky, the Kills, Mountain Goats, Murcof, , F**k Buttons, Six Organs of Admittance , Mum, A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Malcolm Middleton and Exile Parade. In our features section Ben Howarth in his regular ‘Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ column examines EMI's financial crisis and asks if record labels have been indulging bands' luxury lifestyles for too long, while in our ‘Photoscapes’ slot Katie Anderson has taken photos of live sets by Funeral for a Friend and Kids in Glass Houses and Matt Williams provides a mixture of rehearsal and gig photos of new band Arthur. In our ‘Re : View’ section, in which our writers re-examine albums from the past Chris O’ Toole writes about Elephant 6 group and lo-fi psychedelic outfit Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 influential debut album, 'On Avery Island'. Our Website of the Month is meanwhile self-described “on-line cultural fanzine” God is in the TV. There are also 32 album and single reviews. In our previous mid-month albums and singles up-date in January we put on-line another 22 reviews. Thank you to Andrew Carver, Daniel Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Dixie Ernill, Russell Ferguson, Tommy Gunnarsson, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Geraint Jones, Sarah Maybank, Chris O’ Toole, Paul Raven, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Anthony Strutt and Helen Tipping, all of whom contributed articles to either this edition or the mid-month up-date. Thanks too to Katie Anderson and Matt Williams for all their photographic work. We will be up-dating our radio station shortly with new shows from Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson and myself. Special thanks to our radio manager Maarten and also to Richard Banks, our webmaster, for all their tireless work. This has been a slightly more subdued edition than usual because of illness and other problems, but we should be on full form in mid February with an album and singles up-date and then another full edition in March. We hope to be running interviews then with Gary Numan, Sons and Daughters, Lightspeed Champion, Fish, Tindersticks, For Against, Hundred Reasons, MV +EE, Last Harbour and the Ruby Suns. There will be more 'Profiles'. We will also have another 'Re : View', another 'Website of the Month' and more features, live reviews and album and single reviews. Thank you as always for reading. John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk