Dog Is Dead, Kappa Gamma, Kagoule – Nottingham Rock City, Saturday December 17.
(Originally written for the Nottingham Post)
Becoming only the second Nottingham act ever to play a full headline show at Rock City, Dog Is Dead returned to their home town on Saturday night, topping an all-local bill and facing a packed house. It was a perfect way for the band to end their year, which has seen them signing to a major label, gaining national radio play and press attention, playing larger venues and festival stages (including a riotously well-received set at Splendour over the summer), appearing on E4’s Skins, and releasing plenty of fine music along the way.
Stepping in to fill the gap left by Tribes, who pulled out of the gig due to an injury, Kagoule opened the show in impressive style, visibly growing in confidence throughout their set. The vintage Sonic Youth t-shirt worn by singer Cai Burns gave you a clue where their influences lay, as the trio drew on elements from early Nineties grunge and shoegaze, mixing them with a modern sensibility and a youthful approach. Still only in their mid-teens, the band made good on the promise of their debut EP Son, adapting to their new surroundings with commendable maturity.
Kappa Gamma were up next, their slot on the bill secured by winning a competition in which local music experts, the voting public – and finally Dog Is Dead themselves – selected the act which they felt most deserved a place on the Rock City stage. The band also claim Bruce Forsyth as one of their biggest supporters – and while this might have come as a surprise to Brucie himself, who was more focussed on hosting the Strictly Come Dancing final than cheering on a Nottingham indie band, a generous supply of Forsyth face masks helped to perpetuate the illusion.
Kappa Gamma’s complex, powerful math-rock made them the ideal warm-up act, and the crowd responded with heart-warming enthusiasm, moshing furiously and cheering them to the rafters. Barely known at the start of the year, they will have won many new fans, and a bright future surely awaits them in 2012.
By the time that Dog Is Dead took to the stage, anticipation had reached fever pitch, and the band were duly greeted like homecoming heroes. Opening with their third single River Jordan, the set mixed familiar favourites with some brand new tracks, which offered a taster for the forthcoming debut album.
This was also Nottingham’s first chance to welcome new drummer Dan Harvey to the band, following Lawrence Libor’s departure in August. The sole non-native musician on the bill – he’s a Doncaster lad – Dan’s delight was clear for all to see.
That aside, all the familiar elements of the Dog Is Dead sound were in place: Trev’s sax, Joss’s keyboards, Rob’s calmly commanding vocals, those soaring, almost church-like five-part harmonies, the chiming guitar runs, the insistent melodies, and the anthemic choruses.
Of the older songs, Young was the inevitable mid-set highlight, its chanted refrain (“Hold your breath and count to ten, we’re losing touch, we’re losing friends”) bellowed back at the band by the whole room. The current single (Hands Down) and its B-side (Burial Ground) closed the main set, leaving us in no doubt as to the encore.
As the opening bars of Glockenspiel Song rang out, Rock City erupted into full-on delirium. Fists pumped the air, heels pounded the floor, and a thousand voices belted out the lines that adorn the back of the new t-shirts: “We are a mess, we are failures, and we love it!”
“If the bells don’t ring in our home town”, sang Rob Milton, “they’re just cheats and liars”. The next time that the lads headline Rock City, perhaps we should be putting St Mary’s Church on standby. In the meantime, let’s congratulate Dog Is Dead on a remarkable year, and wish them every success for the year to come.
Adam Ant – Nottingham Rock City, Thursday December 8th
Originally written for the Nottingham Post.
Click here for a photo gallery of this show.
For someone who dominated pop so totally in the early Eighties – in 1981 alone, he had seven singles and three albums in the charts – Adam Ant’s legacy has been unfairly overlooked. A drawn-out battle with mental illness didn’t help; between 1996 and 2010, the former star played just one live show, and it seemed unlikely that we would ever hear from him again.
Just over a year ago, Adam started to make a few tentative returns to the spotlight. The gigs were low-key at first, but they were enough for the word to spread: against all the odds, the man had found his form again.
Expectations were therefore running high for last night’s show, which attracted a mixture of fans from the cult punk band days, nostalgic forty-somethings, and a fair number of curious younger observers. A few had gone the whole hog, plastering white stripes across their faces in tribute to Adam’s signature look.
Their efforts were more than matched by the 57-year old legend himself, who was decked out in a huge, feathered pirate hat and a gold brocade jacket, with a black cross daubed on one temple. The “dandy highwayman” of 1981 had returned to life; bespectacled and a little thicker round the waist, but still instantly recognisable. A trim little moustache completed the look. It was impossible not to be reminded of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, until you remembered that Adam was the originator, not the imitator.
In place of The Ants, backing was provided by The Good, The Mad & The Lovely Posse (“they’re good, I’m mad”), which featured two drummers (how could it not?) and the burlesque performer Georgina Baillie, no stranger to unwelcome press attention herself. (You might remember her as the girl in the centre of the Brand/Ross/Sachs hoo-hah.)
Instead of opening with one of the big hits, the marathon 27-song set began with an obscure track from the early days of The Ants: Plastic Surgery, from the soundtrack of Derek Jarman’s 1978 punk movie Jubilee. It set the tone for much of what followed, as Adam reconnected his pop career with his formative punk roots. Almost all the hits were there – Stand And Deliver, Goody Two Shoes, Antmusic – but so were the early singles, album tracks and B-sides. The B-sides in particular were a real treat: Beat My Guest, Kick, Fall In, a blisteringly brilliant Red Scab, and a deliciously kinky Whip In My Valise, surely a blueprint for much of Suede’s early material.
Compellingly energised throughout – hollering and strutting and baring his teeth, and ripping his T-shirt half-open during Kings Of The Wild Frontier – the singer only stumbled once. Introducing his 1995 single Wonderful as “the only love song I ever wrote”, Adam struggled his way through the song, which sounded awkwardly at odds with the rest of the set. He recovered with a brand new song, written in tribute to the late rockabilly singer Vince Taylor: a fallen star, who never recovered from a descent into drug abuse and madness.
Based on the evidence of this magnificent show – performed with dashing, if damaged, panache and cheered to the rafters by a rapturous crowd – Adam Ant looks to have escaped that kind of sorry fate. It was truly heart-warming to see him back where he belonged: on stage, tarted up to the nines, standing and delivering, and bringing smiles to the faces of his reunited “insect nation”.
Set list: Plastic Surgery, Dog Eat Dog, Beat My Guest, Kick, Car Trouble, Zerox, Ants Invasion, Deutscher Girls, Stand And Deliver, Puss ‘N Boots, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Wonderful, Vince Taylor, Whip In My Valise, Desperate But Not Serious, Antmusic, Cleopatra, Never Trust A Man (With Egg On His Face), Goody Two Shoes, Vive Le Rock, Christian D’Or, Lady, Fall In, Red Scab, Prince Charming, Get It On, Physical (You’re So).
Swimming: binaural headphones show, Broadway Cinema, Friday December 2
“Are you here for the binaural?” The respectable looking lady to our right leaned over to us, with a friendly, enquiring smile, before introducing herself as the mother of Swimming’s singer John Sampson, and their drummer Pete. During the conversation which followed, I was hit with a new thought: to fully grasp where the art is coming from, perhaps you need to talk to the mother. For John and Pete’s mum was not only a mine of information – biographical details, key career highlights, the full skinny – but she was also possessed of a keen understanding of the ideas, inspirations and aspirations that have informed John’s songcraft.
And there was nothing that she didn’t know about “binaural” performance methodology, either. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it’s a method of sound recording that seeks to reproduce the exact sensation of being in the same room as the musicians, by means of microphones which are attached to the ears of the binaural broadcaster.
For this unique performance at Broadway, Swimming were cloistered away in the Lounge, while the rest of us gathered inside the Café Bar, each equipped with a pair of high-specification cordless headphones. Our channeller for the evening was Dallas Simpson, who has been working within this medium for the past ten years. “My ears are your ears”, he told us before the set began, explaining that we were about to be offered “a one-to-one relationship with Swimming”.
Forest Fire, Hhymn, Twenty Year Hurricane, Fists – The Chameleon, Nottingham, Thursday December 1st
“We’d just like to say to Forest Fire: we’re not usually like this”, said James from Fists, following a second fluffed intro. “We played Glastonbury!” he added, smiling sheepishly. “Yeah, but that was two and a half years ago”, a band mate reminded him. The band giggled, shrugged, regrouped, and tried again.
Perhaps they’ll never be the slickest of acts, but Fists – who, despite booking the acts and promoting the night, were happy to place themselves at the bottom of the bill – aren’t the sort of band who will let the odd wobble knock them off their perches. Not that they were exactly perching in the first place; The Chameleon’s lack of a raised stage literally placed the band on a level with their audience, allowing an easy rapport to bloom.
Mixing brand new material with relatively old favourites such as Ascending (which has to be in the running for Nottingham’s single of the year), the band exuded a ragged good cheer. This sat well with the amiable menace of their music, the guitars coalescing into a sustained collective growl. Fists have a winning knack for playing as if teetering on the edge of a precipice; it could all collapse in an instant, but by lashing themselves together for support, they battle on through. Their journey peaked with the final track Stag, in which a steady one-note throb gradually became subsumed into a raging squall, climaxing with a rasping, chanted refrain from the whole band.
Trent Sound Radio: Can Sound Turn A Pound?
(Written for LeftLion magazine)
For those who still remember Radio Trent in its Seventies and Eighties glory days, when the station broadcast on 301 metres AM, Trent Sound’s studio address should hold a special resonance. In point of fact, there wasn’t a “301 Coventry Road, Bulwell” before the service launched on June 13th – but for station manager Andy Lloyd, who sold his adjacent computer business in order to fund the start-up, the chance to revive the memory was too good to pass up.
It’s a fitting inspiration for a station that seeks to “capture the magic, fun and local identity of Radio Trent” – although for the latter-day owners of the now defunct Trent FM, which was subsumed into the Capital behemoth on January 3rd, the tribute fell on somewhat stony ground.
According to Lloyd, “All hell broke loose; they sent a courier up from London on a motorbike, with a cease and desist letter. They didn’t want us to use the name Trent at all. We had to sign certain undertakings about things that we wouldn’t do, and they in turn “permitted” us to use the word Trent. We pointed out that it’s actually the name of a river – which they may not have been aware of, down in London – and it’s not really in their gift to grant. We’ve got Trent Valley Windows, Trent Kebabs… Trent everything, really.”
While various Trent exiles – including the station’s first ever on-air presenter, John Peters – clubbed together at radiotrent.co.uk, which launched as a web-only service three weeks after Trent Sound, Lloyd and his team started to forge a different path. Their ultimate objective is to secure a community radio licence, which would allow them to migrate to FM full time. There will be a chance to do that in 2013, when Ofcom opens its doors to the next round of licensing applications – but until then, the station is obliged to remain almost entirely internet-based, broadcasting round the clock from www.trentsound.com.
Despite this restriction, there are still periodic opportunities for Trent Sound to hit the city’s radio dials, thanks to Ofcom’s “restricted service licences” (or RSLs, as they say in the business). These can be granted to stations who are preparing to apply for a permanent licence, up to a maximum of two 28-day periods per year.
Handily timed for the holiday period, Trent Sound’s first RSL is scheduled to run from December 12th until January 8th. You’ll find them right at the top of the dial – on 87.9 FM, just to the left of Radio 2 – and if you like what you hear, they’re hoping you’ll follow them back onto the internet, after the licence expires. In this respect, the welcome lack of on-air adverts should help curry favour with new listeners. “We really need to get the station out there”, says Lloyd, “and we don’t give a stuff about making money”.
Although the station’s weekday output sticks to an oldies-based format – nothing before 1965, nothing after 1995 – a wide array of evening and weekend specialist slots aim to create “a radio station for everybody”, according to Lloyd. There are programmes dedicated to rock, indie, R&B, house, world/folk and blues, as well as a gay show on Saturday nights, and a three hour show on Wednesday evenings called Notts Live, which is dedicated to promoting local talent.
Presented by Andy Haynes and Bainy Bain, Notts Live has been doing its thing since September 2010. After its original hosts Sherwood Radio shut down in May, the show quickly found a new home at Trent Sound. Each week’s edition is themed around acts that will be playing in town over the following week, and a full gig guide is broadcast during the first hour. “We try not to be genre-based”, says Andy Haynes. “If they’re from Nottingham, we’ll try and feature them.”
Since its inception, Notts Live has featured tracks by around five hundred Nottingham acts. It’s a staggering total, which speaks volumes about the healthy state of the current scene. Live studio sessions have featured such local worthies as Will Jeffrey, Alexa Hawksworth, Adam Peter Smith and Euler, and regular “two hour takeovers” have been hosted by the likes of Satnam’s Tash and the Amber Herd. No stranger to music-making himself, Andy Haynes has been known to join the Amber Herd on stage, brandishing his Theremin. (“I put myself out there as a bit of a Theremin slag”, he explains, “but I’ve not had too much take-up on that.”) The Notts Live brand also extends to occasional live promotions, and to this end there will be a “Notts Live Office Christmas Party” at the Jam Cafe on Dec 21st, headlined by Spaceships Are Cool and broadcast live on the show.
As for the rest of Trent Sound’s schedule, Andy Lloyd’s operates an “open access” policy, which presents opportunities for aspiring broadcasters to get involved. “This doesn’t mean that anybody can”, he cautions, “because you have to have some degree of professionalism, but we’re not an old boys’ network and we want to be accessible. But it’s going to be staffed with the people who will stay. What I don’t want are the glory boys, who will just come in for the RSL. We’ve had it already!”
They’re aiming high, and there’s still a long way to go. But if you agree with Lloyd that “the whole premise of independent local radio has died” – just listen to Capital, and weep for what has been lost – then Trent Sound deserves full credit, for trying to put the “local” back into local radio.
Origamibiro – Shakkei
(Written for LeftLion magazine)
As any Japanese garden designer will tell you, shakkei refers to the principle of “borrowed scenery”, whereby elements of the external landscape are incorporated into a garden’s internal composition. An equivalent approach can be found in Origamibiro’s music, which adds electronically treated background effects to the trio’s playing, suggesting the rush of heavy rainfall, the rumbling of an approaching train, or the cheers of a large crowd. Even when these noises are absent, the music retains suggestions of specific environments.
This sensibility is amplified in live performances, in which sound effects are generated on stage – rustling camera film, a vintage typewriter, a flickering early animation device – and beamed onto video backdrops. Presumably, similar techniques have been used in the recording studio, but the lack of visual clues soon frees the listener from wondering about the “how”, as the ambient textures instead begin to cast their spell.
Initially, these textures are slow, sparse and meditative, with bowed instruments dominating the immediate foreground. Halfway through, a swell of steadily shimmering strings emerges from the stillness, like a sudden shaft of sunlight. Later on, musical box-like tinkles and a repeating two-note interval that could have been lifted from Somewhere Over The Rainbow (“Someday I’ll wish upon a star…”) introduce a sense of nostalgic longing, as if the music was wafting out of dusty crates in a grandparent’s attic.
Experimental but fully finished, ambient yet wholly captivating, this is a truly beautiful piece of work.
Beverley Knight – Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, Wednesday November 23
For her seventh and latest studio album, Soul UK, Beverley Knight has paid tribute to the British soul music which soundtracked her youth and inspired her to become a performer. “This record is an absolute labour of love”, she told the Post, earlier this year. “I’ve always banged on about how British soul doesn’t get the respect it deserves, but you have to honour the people who put it in the spotlight in the first place.”
Ranging from early Eighties jazz-funk to early Nineties acid jazz, selections from Soul UK made up a large part of Beverley’s 100 minute set. Appropriately enough, the singer made her entrance with a red, white and blue scarf around her neck. Tying it to her mike stand, she used it as a prop for the rest of the evening, grabbing it and jiggling it for emphasis. Just in case we had still missed the point, an enormous Union Jack was revealed on the back wall of the stage, about halfway through the show.
As opening numbers go, you can’t get a clearer statement of intent than Get Up!, the 2001 hit which immediately brought half the stalls to their feet. The other half were swift to follow, once commanded to do so. “This is an energetic gig!”, we were warned. The energy levels duly remained high as Beverley, her four piece band and her three backing singers led us through the equally appropriate Made It Back, and into the first selection of Britsoul covers: Freeez’s Southern Freeez, Soul II Soul’s Fairplay, Junior’s Mama Used To Say and the debut single from Jamiroquai, When You Gonna Learn.
The pace slowed for the rapturously received Gold, which led into a lengthy selection from Beverley’s back catalogue. “I want to take you on my own Soul UK journey”, she explained, introducing a medley which went as far back as 1998′s Sista Sista (a welcome revival for one of her finest tracks), and as far forward as last year’s self-explanatory Soul Survivor (when you’ve been in the business for seventeen years, you’ve earned the right to celebrate your achievement).
The main set concluded with a run of hits – Shoulda Woulda Coulda, Keep This Fire Burning, Greatest Day – and then it was back to Soul UK for the first encore: a stunning, gospel-tinged reworking of George Michael’s One More Try. Rocking it up for the final lap, the band tore into Come As You Are, Beverley’s highest charting hit, and a spirited cover of Roachford’s Cuddly Toy closed the show.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed every minute!”, she beamed. “I certainly have.” And perhaps that’s the key to understanding how Beverley Knight has maintained her status as Britain’s best known soul artist for so many years. A natural entertainer to her very core, with a generous spirit and an infectious love of performing, her mission is simply to share that enjoyment with everyone around her. Long may she continue to do so.
Dutch Uncles, Infinity Hertz, Boot Booklovers – Nottingham Rescue Rooms, Tuesday November 22
Before headliners Dutch Uncles made their appearance – upstairs at the Rescue Rooms, in the implausibly named Red Room (it’s actually green) – a couple of local acts took to the stage. First up were Boots Booklovers: five young lads from Beeston, who have been getting their name increasingly known around town this year. Earlier this week, they were announced as finalists in Nusic’s competition to find a support act for Dog Is Dead at Rock City in December, having finished in joint first place in the public vote stage of the contest. They’re a fresh-faced bunch, with neat, buttoned-up collars and instruments that still look a bit too big for their slender frames. The Eighties-slick singer and the Fifties-quiffed drummer have the best haircuts, the lead guitarist and the bassist look like brothers (perhaps they are), and the five-piece comes across as a closely-knit unit with a pleasing sense of purpose. Jangly indie-pop often sounds best when the ideas are slightly ahead of the execution, and if that sounds like a sly dig, then it’s not meant to be. It’s usually a sign that the band are pushing themselves hard as songwriters and arrangers, and in this case, the signs are already clear: this is a band with a future.
Perhaps it was because Infinity Hertz opted to play in darkness – only the drummer was visible, his upper body illuminated by the titchy kaleidoscopic visuals on the back wall – but it was harder to get a handle on what the second act of the night were all about. According to the band’s Facebook page, their stock in trade is “altruistic alchemypop skip-hop shoowave”, so perhaps there’s no point in trying to slot them into a genre. Still, the silhouetted gloom was an apt match for the dour intensity of the music, and in particular for the doomy, somewhat mannered vocals of the lead singer. In place of Boots Booklovers’ freshly laundered neatness, the five members of Infinity Hertz looked more dishevelled, and perhaps less well-nourished. The first band were cheered on by their beaming mums and dads; the second band were stared at by their cool mates. It was a striking contrast.
Opening with the pounding, piano-led title track from their critically acclaimed second album Cadenza, Dutch Uncles had the suddenly swollen crowd on their side right from the start. Led by the appealingly awkward Duncan Wallis – a tall, twitchy fellow, with the slight stoop of someone who has perhaps become used to dodging low ceilings in poky venues – the Manchester five-piece rattled confidently through their forty-five minute set, negotiating the tricksy twists and turns of their material with consummate ease. Their music bears comparison with the math-rock of Foals, Everything Everything and Dirty Projectors, but there’s a pronounced funkiness to them as well, which stops them becoming too cerebral and dry. There aren’t many bands who could successfully inject rock’s punch and dance music’s groove into a re-working of composer Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, as they do on recent single X-O, but Dutch Uncles are no ordinary band. “It feels like we’ve righted a wrong”, said a delighted Wallis at the end of the set, “because our last couple of gigs in Nottingham were a bit shite”. They can’t come back soon enough.
Interview: Rumer
An edited version of this interview originally appeared in the Nottingham Post.
You’ve just got back from the States. Has your body clock re-adjusted to UK time?
Yes – although having said that, I was up until four o’clock in the morning. I went for a little stroll at one o’clock in the morning, and found a local restaurant with the lights on. The restaurant owner and the chef were having a glass of red wine, so I joined them for a couple, and picked up on the local gossip.
You’re now preparing for the new tour. Will there be much in the way of new material?
There aren’t any new original songs, because they’re still sketches, but I’ve got an interesting new choice of covers.
You put a shout-out on Facebook for suggested covers. Have your followers given you any useful leads?
They got me looking behind my shoulder, thinking: are this lot in my house? A lot of their suggestions are songs that I love a lot. I could really talk all night with these people.
You use Facebook differently from a lot of people in your position, in that you’ll express what you’re genuinely feeling, rather than just using it as a PR tool. You sometimes post to it when you’re feeling completely sick to the back teeth of everything. Then your fans will rally round.
Yeah, like “I can’t find my bra – where is it?” Or “Oh my God, look at all this laundry!” I really enjoy it, because it’s absolute direct contact. They can talk to me, and I’ll respond. I would say that my Facebook meltdowns are now legendary. (Bursts out laughing) The record company are like: what’s she doing? They all follow me on Facebook as well.
That wasn’t anything to do with the fact that you were ill for a bit, was it?
I was ill. It was a big year, and everything went off really quickly, like a runaway train which took me with it. It was going at a hundred miles an hour. And it was great, but the thing about these big long schedules is this: it doesn’t take account of the fact that you’re human.
So if I wake up in the morning and I don’t feel well, and I’ve got to sing for Her Majesty The Queen, I can’t cancel. Or if my boyfriend’s dumped me and I’ve got to go onto Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, then I’ve got to do it. It doesn’t take into account your emotional state – or your tearful state, in fact – you have to fulfil your commitments, in any mood, and be as professional as possible.
What happened to me is that it just built up, and built up, and built up. I was struggling at adjusting to being in the media: being examined, being judged. As human beings, that what we’re all afraid of, aren’t we? Everyone pointing and staring.
Don’t you adopt the classic tactic of just not reading stuff about yourself?
No, I read everything. But I do stick up for myself, when people have been mean on blogs. I’ll go on and say “Oi! That’s really mean! What, all you grown men are going to start picking on little girls?” Ultimately, I’m a human being with an internet connection. I can see what they are saying, and I can go on there and say: what the fuck do you think you are doing?
I know some people will say that’s really stupid. I think I’m the opposite of what people say I should be. They’ll say: don’t get involved, don’t read anything. But if there are ten grown men tearing me to shreds, I’m going to go in there and make them feel bad about it. But that’s very rare. Most people are very nice.
Does touring change your relationship with your songs? If you’re having to perform them over and over again, you must have to enter into some sort of long-term committed relationship with them.
I’ve been in that relationship with them for a long time. As a singer, you commit to every single song, and you have to live the song when you’re performing it, like you were when you first wrote it.
As time passes and as you change, sometimes the emotional connection to the sentiment can get faint. But that’s when you bring in your meditative processes. You just have to go into that space, and almost method-act your own self. Recapture those emotions, find that part of yourself, and deliver it with all the passion that you can find.
When we spoke last year, before the album was released, you said there were angels in all of your songs. So I’ve been looking at your lyrics, and I’ve been searching for the angels.
The angels are on Come To Me High, for example. I was sitting in my room and thinking: I’m so depressed; what would happen if a chorus of angels were to burst into my room, and talk to me? When you’re depressed, it’s very hard to get out of that space. You have to shift that space by wanting to get out of it – by wanting that shift of consciousness.
And in Thankful, there’s a whole “forest of angels”.
Interestingly, I used to have no idea what it was. Then I realised that my mother was buried in a woodland burial, where you don’t have graves. You have all these different trees, with these little plaques, with people’s names on. And it is literally a forest of angels. I found it the most startling example of channelling. A lot of the most inspired lyrics and melodies were coming from beyond me, and I’m as puzzled as anyone until afterwards.
Before I go on stage, I imagine a circle of angels. I say a prayer, and I call on them. I summon them.
If the person you are now could send a message to the person who spoke to me last year, just before it all kicked off, what message would she convey?
Apart from a lot of practical things, I would say: this will pass. There was a feeling of anxiety around performing live. I got very frightened of big crowds, and I got stage fright. I’ve got much better since then. I’ve learnt a lot, and I’ve overcome that – with the help of my band, and with doctors, and with friends. I’m starting to really enjoy it now.
Tinie Tempah – Nottingham Capital FM Arena, Friday November 11
Tinie Tempah has been here before, but never quite like this. Back in May 2010, a couple of months after debuting at Number One with his first single Pass Out, an unassuming young chap in a plain white T-shirt stepped onto the Capital FM Arena stage, armed with nothing more than a microphone and a backing track. Third on the bill to Pixie Lott and Rihanna, his likeable but basic four-song set gave little indication of the million-selling, Brit-winning, Glastonbury-rocking, arena-filling superstar that he was to become.
When he returned to town in February this year, for a sell-out appearance at Rock City, it already felt like he was too big for the venue. “Surely an arena tour beckons for Tempah now”, our reviewer predicted.
Following a massive summer on the national and international festival circuit, Tinie has been taking his first full-scale arena tour all around the UK this month. The night before Nottingham, he had played Wembley Arena , so perhaps our modest 9000-capacity venue was already starting to feel a little intimate.
He certainly had the sound system for a venue of twice the size, for even by Arena standards this was a loud one. Thunderous bass frequencies tore through the hall, making bowels quake and seats vibrate; not really a problem, as there was almost no one sitting in them after the first couple of minutes. But despite whacking the volume knob way past “11″, the sound mixers never compromised on clarity. When live rap does battle with muddy sound, the results can be horrendous, but the dynamics of this show would have put many rock acts to shame.
The star made his entrance in a flash of fireworks, emerging from the smoke in a black track suit with Spiderman-like blue stripes, his face still obscured by hood and shades. (The hood eventually came down, but the shades stayed on all night.) Tangles of fluorescent string adorned his back, as if he had been ambushed by a thousand party poppers.
The reaction in the hall was so intense, that the crowd never really recovered from it. From the opening bars of the first song to the final notes of the last encore, madness and mayhem reigned. Fists pumped the air, boots pummelled the floor, mosh pits formed and dissolved, and the screams gave even the turbo-charged sound system a run for its money.
Despite making the classic mistake of name-checking Derby at a Nottingham gig – “It’s all about love!”, he protested, as the boos rang out – Tinie delivered a flawless performance, combining a showman’s swagger with razor-sharp lyrical precision. Behind him, the band performed in cages made from tube lighting, which rose from the floor during Let Go and glowed blood-red during Obsession. The usual arena conventions were observed – the “left side, right side, who’s the loudest” pantomime, the acoustic section, the sudden re-appearance at the back of the hall – but Tinie’s Skype video call from Swedish House Mafia was a neat new trick, even if the chances of it actually happening in real-time felt slim. The call provided the cue for Miami 2 Ibiza – or rather “Notts 2 Ibiza”, as it was sung on the night – which sent energy levels to previously unimaginable new heights, putting whole new dimensions of “bang” into Swedish House Mafia’s club banger.
“These are the best days of our lives, whether we know it or not”, he told us, just before knocking us all dead with Written In The Stars. It was a fitting observation for a show that was all about cutting loose, letting go, living it up, and celebrating the moment.
Next time round, they’ll have to find a football stadium for him. And that probably won’t be big enough, either…
Set list: Intro, Simply Unstoppable, Frisky, Till I’m Gone, Wonderman, Illusion, Snap, Written In The Stars, Love Suicide, Invincible, Let Go, Obsession, Miami 2 Ibiza, Hitz, Mosh Pit, Earthquake, Pass Out.
Bruno Mars – Nottingham Capital FM Arena, Tuesday November 1
When it comes to showing commitment, the fans of Bruno Mars are a hard act to beat. Outside the Capital FM Arena, the diehards had been queuing since morning, determined to bag the best spots at the front of the stage. And when the curtain was raised, revealing their diminutive hero in a feathered hat, loose black suit, striped vest and sneakers, the screams rose to an almost Bieber-like intensity.
Hawaiian born, to Puerto Rican and Filipino parents, Bruno has an appeal which crosses national boundaries. Over the past twelve months, the seemingly never-ending Doo-Wops & Hooligans tour has taken him several times around the globe, to venues which have steadily increased in capacity. But although this was the penultimate date of the tour, the freshness of the performers remained commendably undimmed.
Bruno’s long-time collaborator Philip Lawrence, who supplied backing vocals and joined the three-piece brass section in a series of tightly executed dance routines, never tired of geeing the crowd up – particularly in the middle of The Lazy Song, when his girly squeal (“Oh my God, this is great!”) literally stopped the whole show. “I think I might move here!”, he exclaimed. “Follow me on Twitter!”, he added, caught up in the heat of the moment – and cracking Bruno up so badly that he could barely resume the song.
Unlike most of this year’s big pop shows at the Arena, this was a stripped-down, gimmick-free affair, with no props, no dance troupes and no costume changes. If the playing had been anything less than spot-on, this could have made for a lacklustre show – but with the focus placed squarely upon the music, the players rose to the challenge. This was a tight, funky, versatile team, who could effortlessly switch from reggae to soul, and from R&B to rock, drawing on past traditions – the show often felt like a classic soul revue – while connecting with contemporary trends.
As for Bruno himself, he had an unusual knack of combining sunny wholesomeness – there was more than a touch of Donny Osmond about him, particularly in the dental department – with an unblinking sexual directness, such that even the ruder lyrics still somehow sounded clean. Steeped in music since childhood, his references ranged from Michael Jackson (particularly on Top Of The World, introduced as the first song he ever wrote) to James Brown (Runaway Baby, as recently performed on The X Factor, was an early highlight), via Fifties doo-wop, Sixties Motown and Seventies reggae.
The Doo-Wops & Hooligans album, from which most of the set was drawn, is a light, easy-going affair for the most part, with something of the relaxed appeal of Bruno’s fellow Hawaiian, Jack Johnson. It’s the sort of album which might have soundtracked your holiday, wafting out of your favourite beach bar for days on end. Sure, it’s undemanding stuff for the most part, and lyrics such as “You can count on me, like one two three” are hardly likely to be remembered as enduring classics, but there has always been a place in pop for simple good cheer, and it was hard to argue with the effect that it had on the Arena’s capacity crowd. Beautifully sung and fondly executed, the ninety minute set left nine thousand happy fans wreathed in smiles. Job well done, Mister Mars.
Set list: The Other Side, Top Of The World, Money (That’s What I Want), Billionaire, Our First Time, Runaway Baby, Marry You, The Lazy Song, Count On Me, Liquor Store Blues, Nothin’ On You, Grenade, Just The Way You Are, Lighters, Talking To The Moon.
Film preview: Weekend
Weekend is director Andrew Haigh’s second feature-length movie – his first being Greek Pete, a semi-fictionalised documentary about a year in the life of a rent boy. The emphasis on representing aspects of contemporary gay identity persists in Weekend, as does the raw, intimate, ultra-naturalistic approach – but here the characters and situations are, for all their true-to-life plausibility, entirely fictional.
The film was shot in Nottingham, and a large chunk of the action takes place inside one of the brutalist concrete apartment blocks which sit next to the Savoy Cinema in Lenton.
June Tabor & Oysterband – Nottingham Glee, Sunday October 30.
Originally published in the Nottingham Post.
Twenty-one years after recording their Freedom and Rain album, June Tabor and Oysterband – both highly regarded English folk acts in their own right – have finally got around to releasing its follow-up, Ragged Kingdom. It’s June Tabor’s second release of the year, following in the wake of Ashore, a superb collection of sea-themed material. But where Ashore is sparse, bleak and haunting, Ragged Kingdom presents Tabor’s vocals in a fuller, comparatively rockier musical context. As such, it forms a neat companion piece, which also emphasises the interpretive range of both acts.
Not having seen her on stage before, I was warned that Tabor has a tendency to be a rather stern, schoolmarm-like performer. If that had ever been true, then perhaps the genial bonhomie of the six Oysters had thawed her. Smiles and laughter might not exactly be her stock in trade, but there were flashes of easy good humour, as well as some deliciously witty anecdotes between the songs; a tale of a Goth-turned-mum from June’s home town drew warm chuckles from the room, for instance.
But where some might merely see sternness, others – and this must have included the vast majority of the supportive crowd at Glee – were afforded a glimpse of one of English folk’s most justly revered figures, channelling every particle of her being into the material, deftly exposing every nuance of every line with expert focus and keen concentration.
Standing beside her, Oysterband’s singer John Jones provided a relaxed counterbalance, the pair’s vocals meshing with seemingly effortless precision on a cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. Other covers from the rock era included the Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, PJ Harvey’s That Was My Veil, and a lesser-known Bob Dylan song (Seven Curses), which heightened the sensation that, in certain respects, June Tabor could be seen as England’s answer to the great Joan Baez.
Of the other players, special mention must be made of guitarist Alan Prossser’s heart-stopping solo accompaniment on The Hills of Shiloh, and fiddler Ian Telfer’s shudderingly eerie break on a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic classic, White Rabbit. Opening with the rumbling, almost Nick Cave-like Bonny Bunch of Roses, and closing with the tenderly communal Put Out The Lights, the band’s versatility was a pleasure to behold. Four UK dates into their tour, with fourteen more to follow, this was a collective operating at the very peak of their powers.
Katy B – Nottingham Rock City, Tuesday October 18
For once – and this doesn’t happen too often, so it’s worth noting – the teenage girls and the broadsheet music critics are of one mind. Katy B’s shrewd mix of underground dance with mainstream pop has enough club credibility to please the purists, enough musical weight to impress the Mercury Prize judges, enough tuneful accessibility to delight the pop fans, and enough warmth, heart and energy to ignite a live audience.
She has visited us a couple of times before: at Trent University with Magnetic Man, and at the Rescue Rooms, five months ago, where the crowd was even more overwhelmingly young and female than it is now. Katy and MC Tippa, her long-time stage collaborator, have been playing a game on the current tour: who can shout the loudest, the girls or the boys? Every night, Tippa has been trying his hardest to score a win for the lads (“Just once, guys – please!”), only to be trounced by the deafening screams of Katy’s ladies.
“Who here was born in the Eighties?”, asks Katy. There are a few cheers. “And who here was born in the NINETIES?”, she continues. Ouch, my poor eardrums. “In that case, your mum and dad were probably making love to this one”, she grins, introducing a cover of Inner City’s classic house anthem Good Life, oblivious to the winces of those of us who were dancing to it the first time round.
Released almost exactly a year ago, Magnetic Man’s album still casts a strong spell over Katy’s crowd. In common with both of her support acts – rapper P Money and a re-emerging Ms Dynamite, back in the game after an extended maternity break – Katy appeared on the album, and the mere mention of its name drew wild applause. Perfect Stranger is the track in question. In Katy’s hands, the bowel-quaking dubstep of Magnetic Man’s original is given a lighter, friskier, but no less powerful treatment. It’s typical of Katy’s approach, which seeks to convey her love of club culture to a mass audience, and which celebrates the joy that can be found on the dancefloor.
It was no surprise to see Ms Dynamite back on stage for the encore, duetting with Katy on their shared hit Lights On. The two artists share the same infectiously sunny approach to performing, and the smiles from the stage spread through the whole room, leaving us on the highest of highs.
Cultural Vibrations presents Live & Local, Nottingham Playhouse, Sunday October 16
Live & Local is the latest brainchild of music promoter Rastarella Falade, whose not-for-profit organisation Cultural Vibrations has been active since 2009, staging events at the Hockley Hustle and the NEAT11 Festival and organising the Takeover showcase at Nottingham Riviera. As ever, Rastarella’s aim was to highlight a diverse range of local talent, bringing fans of different genres together in order to appreciate the full spectrum of what Nottingham has to offer.
As the Playhouse is currently staging a production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, the eight acts on Live & Local’s bill found themselves performing in what looked like a period drawing room, complete with grand piano, standard lamp and rear windows opening out onto a street scene.
Spotlight Kid – Nottingham Bodega Social Club, Friday October 14
(Originally published in the Nottingham Post)
They might have been together for five years, but Nottingham’s Spotlight Kid are currently being given the “hot new band” treatment. Thanks to the BBC Introducing initiative, they played at this year’s Glastonbury and were playlisted on daytime Radio One. Shortly after that, The Guardian tipped them as their “new band of the day”, under the mistaken impression that their new album (Disaster Tourist, released this month) was their debut effort.
Well, better late than never. And that’s to say nothing of drummer Chris Davis’s work with Six By Seven, or singer Katty Heath’s involvement with Bent – two locally based acts who achieved national recognition over a decade ago.
That said, the gathering sense of momentum which now surrounds the band, combined with the freshness and vigour of their approach, gives you the sense that you are indeed watching a brand new act, poised on the brink of breaking through to a wider audience.
Much has already been made of one of Spotlight Kid’s key influences: the so-called “shoegaze” sound of the early Nineties, spearheaded by bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Curve and Lush. It was a jokey term, popularised by writers who were amused at the contrast between the immersive, expansive, neo-psychedelic sound of these bands, and their shy, sulky disdain for the rituals of showmanship.
None of these bands would have willingly embraced the term at the time – and yet, twenty years on, there seems little point in pretending it doesn’t exist. And so, with admirable good cheer, Spotlight Kid don’t mind in the slightest if you call them shoegazers.
Led by a thick, triple-guitar squall of sound that resembles a swarm of bumble bees trapped in a wind tunnel, they certainly draw on those influences – but on stage, the diffidence of the old school is replaced by an unabashed joyousness and delight. Instead of staring at the floor, they look out at us and smile, spurred on by our response. Coupled with a knack for songcraft and an ability to carve out memorable tunes and hooks from the noise that surrounds them, this makes them an intensely appealing proposition.
Opening their new tour in front of a supportive home crowd was a smart move, which should have fuelled the band with all the self-belief they need for the remaining dates. “If the rest of the tour is even a quarter as good as tonight, we’ll be happy”, they said. It was the only moment of understatement, in a precisely honed and confidently delivered set that was little short of triumphant.
Contemporary Music Weekend, Nottingham Contemporary, Saturday October 8.
Framework is a Nottingham-based charity, which supports homeless and vulnerable people in the East Midlands. At a time when it should rightfully be celebrating its tenth anniversary, the charity has been hit by funding cuts of nearly 50%, which threaten its services just when more people are in need of them than ever before.
Displaying admirable resourcefulness in the face of looming crisis, Framework have organised Raise The Roof, a month-long festival of music and performance that seeks to raise funds and heighten awareness of its work, as well as offering a diverse and well-chosen range of entertainment. During the rest of the month, there will be classical and choral concerts, film screenings, gigs, club nights, exhibitions and even a sponsored bike ride – all of which have been set a high standard by the Contemporary Music Weekend that took place at Nottingham Contemporary on October 8th and 9th.
Nottingham’s music scene: soon to be heard?
(Guardian Film & Music, Friday September 30 2011)
Its biggest claim to pop fame was once Su Pollard. Now, a formidable new generation of Nottingham artists is emerging.
‘So, which acts from round here have been in the charts?” In any decent-sized city, there’s a standard pub conversation to be had – but in Nottingham, it might be briefer than most. Forty years after their last big seller, blues rockers Ten Years After remain the city’s most successful albums act, by a huge distance. As for singles, the hall of fame is still headed by Paper Lace (three hits in 1974, including the chart-topping Billy Don’t Be a Hero), closely followed by KWS (early 90s dance-cover merchants, best known for their grim take on KC and the Sunshine Band’s Please Don’t Go). A pause will follow, as brains are racked. “What about Alvin Stardust?” someone might venture. “No, he’s from Mansfield,” another will counter. Finally and fatally, someone else will dredge up the lone hit by Nottingham’s highest-charting female singer: Su Pollard, who stormed to No 2 in 1986 with the wince-making Starting Together.
Continue reading this article.
Listen to a playlist of New Nottingham Music on Spotify.
Interview: Wilko Johnson
A shorter version of this interview originally appeared in the Nottingham Post.
I looked up your dialling code, so I know I’m calling you at home in Southend. What sort of place have you got? Is it a rock star mansion?
In my more imaginative moments, yes. It’s in a fairly normal street, but my house is the one with battlements. I defy the world from here. Actually, they’re a bit of a con. My house has got a flat roof, where I’ve got my telescope and my observatory. It looks like a little fortress. But if you go up on the roof, you’ll find that actually the battlements are only six inches high.
They’re not really going to repel the continental invaders, then?
Not really. I couldn’t practically pour boiling oil down on them. But I could put up a bit of a show.
Are there any rock star trappings inside? Are you the sort of person that puts framed gold discs on the walls?
Well, one thing that I’ve always thought was really horrible and vulgar – he says, like the fox with the sour grapes – was those bloody gold discs. Would I put them on my wall? No. I gave them away. Some people really dig ‘em, but in fact they’re rubbish – he said, with all the venom of somebody who hasn’t sold a record for about five hundred years. (Laughs)
Does living alone suit you well?
Actually, it does. Sometimes I sit here, and I go “Oh man, I’m so lonely in my fortress here!” But on the other hand, I can do whatever I like. If I want to shoot all the light bulbs out with my air pistol, I can do it. And nobody’s going to tell me off.
Yeah, but no one’s going to sweep the mess up for you, either.
Yes, and the house does turn into a slum, on a regular basis. I’ve kind of reverted to studenthood. But you can’t do anything about it. You think: hang on, this was all tidy a little while ago. And now it’s covered in fast food containers, old newspapers, and things that are probably best not investigated.
Generally, I stay indoors. People are always telling me off, because it’s gloomy here, in my castle. You can’t even draw the curtains. They’re actually nailed across the window. So I’m in this gloom; I kind of creep about. Upstairs, where my bed is, I’ve got this huge television. I connect it up to my laptop, with my astronomy program, and it becomes the window of my spaceship.
There was a supernova the other week; did you catch sight of it?
I’m afraid not. I caught sight of nothing, because it’s been so cloudy. Although actually, I thought I was being clever, because I recently acquired a solar telescope. So I can look at the sun.
I thought that was the one thing you should never do…
Oh yes. We must tell the public, and have a little announcement in a special box: never, never, never look at the sun through a telescope. This thing I have is a special one. If you look through it, you can’t see anything; it’s black. But when you point it at the sun, you can see the sun. It’s pretty good, except the sun is obscured by clouds, just as well as the stars. So I haven’t been doing a lot of astronomy this week.
Have you ever moved away from Essex, or have you been a lifelong resident?
I was born on Canvey Island, I grew up on Canvey Island, then I went to university at Newcastle for three years. Then after some wandering about, we came back to Canvey Island: me and the missus. Then the next thing I know, I made some money from doing rock and roll. So she buys a house up in Southend, within spitting distance of Canvey Island – which is probably the best distance. So I’ve stayed in Essex, but I do like Essex. It’s rather flat.
Flat lands scare me. I want to have a few hills around.
Well, there you go; you’re from up the bumpy bit. I get among hills, and I feel a bit overpowered. I like to see a big sky, a big horizon. Preferably with oil refineries. Then I feel comfortable.
Julian Temple’s documentary film (Oil City Confidential) about your former band Dr Feelgood was very well received. How closely were you involved with the making of it?
When I was told that Julian Temple wanted to make this film, my first reaction was surprise. Dr Feelgood largely existed before the days of video cameras, and there wasn’t a lot of footage of us. And Lee Brilleaux is dead. So how can you do it?
Man, what a guy! The first thing he wants is to film at the oil depot on Canvey Island, in the night time. He was going to project movies of Dr Feelgood onto the side of these big oil tanks, and interview us. What an experience! If you grow up on Canvey Island, you’re always aware of the oil works, but you never go there. So to go in there was a kick. To go in there in the night time, and then to stand there with these great big films being projected, of me and Lee Brilleaux from 35 years ago, was absolutely surreal. I could have stood there all night.
So I thought, well, this guy’s good. Julian gets you to say all sorts of things. I don’t know how he does it. He sort of insinuates himself into the conversation, and I find myself revealing all sorts.
Anyway, the film took some time to make, but I was never involved in the making of it, and I didn’t see any of it, even when it was completed. They gave me a DVD, which I didn’t watch.
So you don’t like looking at footage of yourself?
No. Or reading, or listening to records. The thing is: if you’ve made a record, or done a show, it’s done. There’s nothing you can do about it. So I just like to leave it there, for the universe to either ignore or applaud. I don’t wanna know.
Anyway, when the film was premiered – as we say in the business – in the National Film Theatre in London, of course I had to go and watch it then. You drink champagne, and you take your place. So I’m watching it through my fingers. I was sitting next to my son, and there’s all this stuff from before he was born. And it was the first time I’d ever actually seen Dr Feelgood. And I’m looking, and I’m thinking: pretty good! And I’m digging my boy in the ribs. I’m going: go on, get a load of that. I think it’s an excellent film. I’m very, very chuffed with what he’s done.
Has the film led to renewed interest in your work?
Certainly it was one of Julian Temple’s motivations. He felt that Dr Feelgood had been rather airbrushed out of history, and he wanted to reassert them. So, for instance, I’m finding a lot of younger people are coming to see the gigs now. And I go down Tesco’s, and people are going “Look, there’s Wilko Johnson! Can I take a picture of you with my telephone?” There was one young lad, a shelf stacker. He says “Oh wow, man!”, and he’s shouting out across the store, “Get me a felt tip! I want to get an autograph!” So I creep into Tesco’s now.
I always thought that Dr Feelgood’s legacy had been a bit overlooked, especially in terms of how it helped to inspire the British punk movement. Everyone will talk about Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls, but people never used to talk about the Feelgoods. Did the British punk forefathers acknowledge your influence?
Well, they did. I’d started to hear about these bands, and then it wasn’t long after that that Dr Feelgood exploded – or imploded, or whatever it did – and I was out of the band. And I was thinking, oh man, I wonder what all these new bands think about me? Do they relegate me to the dinosaurs that they are attacking?
But then I started to meet people. I shared a flat with Jean-Jacques Burnel from The Stranglers. Then I was walking in Oxford Street just after the bust-up had become public, in the rain, with my little boy on my shoulders. Suddenly, Joe Strummer comes running up. He goes to me, “You don’t know who I am.” I says, “Yes, I know who you are; I’ve seen you in the papers, man.” He says, “Well, what’s going to happen, what are you doing?” I says, “I don’t know.”
And so I got to meet him, and also the Pistols, and all these people, and I found out that actually, they all rather dug Dr Feelgood. The year before they’d all got going was the year that we were playing in London a lot, and I think most of them had seen us. I think what the punks took from Dr Feelgood was the energy.
In fact, with this flat I had, I used to have half of them sleeping on my floor. I’d get up in the morning, and I’d be tripping over Billy Idol. So I think it’s fair to say that we were quite a big influence on that whole thing.
You were back in touch with The Stranglers earlier this year, as you supported them on tour. How did that go?
It was great, because I’m old friends with Jean-Jacques. Last year, Oil City Confidential won the Mojo award, for being a brilliant film. I went with Julian to receive this accolade, and Jean-Jacques was presenting it. We hadn’t seen each other for about twenty years, so everyone was slobbering over each other. Shortly after that, he invited us to support them, and we were saying, why haven’t we done this before?
The shows went great; they were all sold out, and I think we put on a very enjoyable show. The Stranglers! DUR DUR DUR… (sings the riff from Peaches)
People normally describe your music as rhythm and blues, but today’s R&B stands for something very different. Do the Beyonces of this world have any right to call themselves R&B?
Actually yes, they do. R&B was really an American term for black music. It bounced over to England, with the Rolling Stones and all that, and that’s what we’re doing: it’s rhythm and blues. I started realising a long time ago that this term was a bit nebulous. What do I call my music? I call it beat music. I’m a beatster.
How musically open-minded are you? Is blues your first and foremost love, or do your listening habits range far and wide?
I’m no different from most old folks. I know nothing about anything that’s happened in the last twenty-five years. And being a rhythm and blues person, when I was a teenager: what a snob! It’s got to come from Chicago, or it’s no good. It’s like: how many rhythm and blues fans does it take to change a light bulb? It’s ten: one to change the light bulb, and nine to say it ain’t as good as the original. That would sum me up, in a way. I’m probably still a bit of a snob.
I think we’re all welded to the music of the time we were growing up.
Yes, and you can’t do anything about it. Every now and then, I might see or hear somebody that’s new to me, and it brings you up with a start. But generally speaking, I think you stick in your comfort zone, don’t you? Three chords and twelve bars does it for me.
What is it about the blues that has led to this lifetime love affair with the genre?
I don’t know. Like most Sixties people, I first started hearing it because of the Rolling Stones. When the Stones came out, it was just so exciting. At school, we all started growing our hair long. And then you think: what is this music that they’re playing? Then you start checking it out, and you start to hear the music from Chicago: Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, right through to Bo Diddley. It was just so powerful, and it made the kind of pop music that I’d heard before seem a bit trivial. I remember thinking: wow, this is the thing for me. And that was it. It knocked me out then, and it still does now. I’ll put on some Howling Wolf, and it will give me a tingle.
Like most old folks, I got into my own kind of bubble back then, and I still exist in it. For pure kicks, I’m going to play a record from a long time ago. It’s wrong of me, probably, but I don’t go searching out the latest sensation. But I’m sure they’re very splendid. Good luck to them!
You went through a bit of a hippy phase in your younger days. You did the Katmandu trail, for instance. Do you retain any residual hippy values?
I can still do a full Lotus, actually. I’m sitting on the carpet. Ooh… aah… yes, that’s it! Silly old fool.
That was a good scene. Oh man, I’ve got some beautiful memories of Afghanistan: the country, and the people there. And it’s just been so tragic, to see the way that country has been brutalised. Those people are really friendly, and they dig you, and I think it’s going to be a long time before an Englishman can go to Afghanistan and get a friendly reception. It’s a tragedy.
I guess you’re getting to that stage when people start calling you “one of the great survivors”. What would the Wilko Johnson of his twenties have made of the Wilko Johnson in his sixties? Would he be surprised at how things had turned out?
Absolutely. I’m playing in this local band for a couple of years, and then it starts happening. And of course you think: wow, this is great. I was twenty-five or something, and I’m thinking: yeah, this will be good for four or five years. I’ll have a good time, make a lot of money. If somebody had said to you: actually, you’re going to be doing it when you’re sixty-four, you would have laughed in their face.
But then again, if somebody said: one day, Bob Dylan’s going to be seventy… that still doesn’t sound right to me.
See also: my Dr Feelgood feature for The Guardian, January 2010.
Lonely Heart Club EP – Nina Smith
Written for LeftLion magazine.
Already well-regarded on the city scene, Nina Smith has gone from strength to strength this year, making her one of our most hotly tipped acts. A graduate of Trevor Rose’s CRS studio in St. Ann’s, where she learnt her craft adding guest vocals to hip hop tracks, Nina has developed her own style of delicate, vulnerable, yet subtly assertive acoustic pop, whose roots in urban music can still be faintly discerned.
On this, her debut EP, a beat-free, wordlessly improvised introduction segues into the title track, in which Nina hesitantly contemplates the prospect of a new relationship. (“I think I’m falling in love and I want to just fight it – should I take or embrace or deny it?”) These doubts are confirmed in Sexy Surprise, which has Nina helplessly observing her lover falling for someone new. “Can you let me in?” she pleas, already aware that the game is lost. “Oh, what a surprise”, she shrugs, shoring herself up by slyly mocking his new infatuation.
Then, the killer track: I Won’t Forget You is a deceptively simple love song on the surface, whose superb video (also included on the CD, along with an “on the road” documentary) subverts its meaning, suggesting darker undercurrents which are never fully explained. Lastly, on The Truth, Nina strives to resolve these uncertainties, this time addressing the listener directly. Her final words are inconclusive: “Please don’t make me tell you it’s OK, because I don’t know.” Ultimately, perhaps the only certainty here is Nina’s remarkable talent.
Nottingham Post interview – buy the EP on iTunes – listen on Spotify
leave a comment