Artist: Deonigio
Genre(s):
Trance
Discography:
Waves
Year:
Tracks: 1
Russian s Mix
Year:
Tracks: 1
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Friday, 13 June 2008
Black Lips Talk About Touring With Raconteurs -- And What They're Not Allowed To Do Onstage
"This has been very, very different. I mean, we've only played in festivals to crowds of this many people." That's Black Lips' Jared Swilley, talking about the band's latest gig, one that finds them in unfamiliar territory — playing venues that hold several thousand people, as the opening act for some certifiable six-figure-selling rock stars, the Raconteurs.
I must admit: It was a bit disconcerting to see, of all bands, the lovably lecherous "bad kids" with the "dirty hands" from Atlanta in the support slot last Friday night (and all weekend long) at Manhattan's Terminal 5, a dance-turned-rock club that still has its black-and-chrome motif, fancy bars and disco ball in place. With weird sight lines and sound spots, and zero of the grit that's synonymous with the Lips, I'm still not sure Terminal 5 ought to be hosting rock bands. Mind you, the scruffy ATL-ers aren't complaining.
"We absolutely appreciate the Raconteurs taking us on tour with them — they've been great," said guitarist Ian St. Pé. Though he added they did receive an unexpected welcome to the tour a couple of weeks back, one with which they were unaccustomed. "They gave us a list of things we couldn't do — no setting guitars on fire, no touching the monitors, no spitting." Whoa. No spitting? Hard to believe that was not a deal-breaker for the Black Lips, especially for that salivating little rascal, guitarist Cole Alexander, whose hock-and-spit routine long ago became a trademark. No problem, said Cole. "Yeah, I just have to wipe up my spit. I don't want 'em to slip on it."
No such expectoration restrictions on Monday night in Hoboken, New Jersey, where the Lips were taking advantage of an off-night from the Raconteurs' trek to play their own show at the much more reasonably sized Maxwell's — a show attended, by the way, by Mr. Jack White himself. It was also a chance to play a more-than-40-minute set, and more songs from the Lips' last album, Good Bad Not Evil. Released nine months ago, the record is ridiculously deep in potential singles, and in fact, they've just released another. After somehow turning a song about a natural disaster into a good-time garage jam ("O Katrina!"), and their bluesy musings on hegemony ("Veni Vidi Vici"), the guys have returned with a track about a subject a little closer to home: Atlanta strippers. "It Feels Alright" — and its accompanying black-and-white video — serves up an homage to the boys' hometown and, as St. Pé explained, to a particular night spot known as Magic City. "It's an all-black strip club, where they'll showcase all the new rap songs that come out. They'll play 'em in the club for the girls to dance. It's a famous joint."
And then there's the matter of Black Lips' feature-film debut in director Roger Rawlings' "Let It Be," a fictional account of a band called the Renegades, reportedly loosely inspired by the Replacements, who "almost make it" in the formative years of indie music, the 1980s. While the guys say their taste in '80s music generally runs more toward hardcore bands like the Butthole Surfers, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü, they said they're up for the challenge of playing musicians, in a naturalistic way. "They purposely didn't want professional actors," explained Swilley. "They just wanted a real band. So it seems easy to just be ourselves in front of the camera."
First announced last winter, "Let It Be" has had some delays, but the Lips say it's still on track — though shooting may have to be pushed back to early next year because the boys' main order of business for the latter half of the summer (besides Swilley's impending wedding) will be situating themselves at a rented space in Atlanta and recording a new album. Though Alexander says they've only written "a couple of demos" so far, and drummer Joe Bradley says he's got "four or five" songs at different levels of completion in his head, they add that they are four independent writers and ideas come to them readily. St. Pé's not worried: "We'll be able to pump the album out, no problem."
On the live front, the band is looking forward to England's Glastonbury Festival at the end of June; August dates at Lollapalooza in Chicago and at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool with pals Deerhunter and King Khan; shows later in the year in India, Brazil and China; and maybe somewhere even more exotic. Black Lips' label, Vice Records, and its parent magazine have long had a reputation for guerrilla journalism in extreme locales. Last year, with their VBS.tv cameras in tow, the band played street gigs in Israel and Palestine, and Alexander said a show in Iraq has even been discussed. "We have a friend whose father is Iraqi and he smuggles people in the country. Or we could go in the Green Zone and play a U.S.O. show." Of course, that would be the safer option, but frankly, Red Zone is more Black Lips. "Like a guerrilla show," Cole reckoned. "They told me you can hire a militia, you go in with 'em, they start blasting guns, everybody freezes and you can, you know, play a show." Yikes.
If that all sounds like a pretty nonstop, breakneck schedule, that's nothing new. The old cliché "road warriors" certainly applies to Black Lips, and that's OK with them. After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were busting their asses for far less. As Swilley said: "Other jobs suck way worse." And finally, the Black Lips want you to give them a call on their hotline. The number is (949) 836-7407 (or TEN-SH0P). No joke.
"One of us will answer, for real, if we are on tour in America," St. Pé said. "Give us a call, and you will make our long-ass drives more fun."
See much more of my conversation with Black Lips at Rhapsody.com.
See Also
Friday, 6 June 2008
Sylvie Simmons meets Robert Plant
Robert Plant is smiling. A big, happy grin, the same one he had earlier, through almost the entirety of his show with Alison Krauss, the 36-year-old American bluegrass singer and fiddle player. "Sorry about that," he says, "but it's just so much fun. It's just the revelations, I think, that's what the smiles are about - like, 'We can do it.' I mean, could you ever imagine, with my supposed background?"
The appearance of the beautiful, understated Plant-Krauss collaborative album Raising Sand coincided with a rare reunion of the band in which Plant made his name, Led Zeppelin. Their charity performance at London's 02 Arena last year, with Jason Bonham sitting in on drums for his late father John, attracted a reported 20m applications for the 18,000 tickets, won accolades from music critics and led to rumours of a full tour - stymied, according to the Sunday Mirror, by Plant turning down a £100m offer to reunite for a full Zeppelin tour in favour of this low-key jaunt with Krauss.
Tonight's show, in the lovely little Tennessee city of Chattanooga, is in an old, cream-coloured brick building, looking like a cross between a town hall and a theatre. There is just one ticket tout outside. Like the rest of the audience, he exudes southern courtesy. Plant says the south seemed the perfect place to perform his reading of the music of rural America before a paying public.
"I was just saying last night, halfway through a bottle of Grey Goose, 'I don't know if this is a kind of urban north-east adventure, or whether it really does belong in the Chattanoogas and Roanokes.'" The morning after their show in Louisville, Kentucky, he "drove across the state line into Tennessee in the Clinch Mountains, where the Stanley Brothers were, and I came over the Cumberland Gap, which I thought was a Lonnie Donegal song. And just before Chattanooga I pulled over by the side of a lake and thought, 'Man, this is so, so beautiful.'"
Poking his head into a family restaurant, he saw "a 10-year-old, porky little kid with a hat on, playing fiddle like you wouldn't believe, with a 16-year-old, 6ft 4in kid with a banjo, and the two of them were just standing on this little raised dais, while people were eating catfish, and they were just wailing. Why did I only think that Howlin' Wolf wailed?"
Before his collaboration with Krauss - which grew, after a long gestation, from having met at a tribute to the blues singer Lead Belly - Plant admits he had serious prejudices about country, the music Hank Williams called "the white man's blues". Plant's musical epiphany, in his early teens, had come from black American music, when he saw Son House, Skip James and Bukka White play on package tours of the UK in the mid-60s. "I was really only interested in the black variety," he says. "As a young British male, that does change your life."
The romantic lyrics and mature singing style of the country songs he heard on British radio "didn't make as much sense for me and my friends, who were learning how to be as masculine as 'Squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg.' Bear in mind I was 13. So for a long time I closed my eyes to the possibility of America having a white voice."
Collaborating with Krauss, who started performing country at the same age that Plant discovered the blues, "was like stepping into another world". But, he says, he has learned a lot: "I've been scared and I've liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I'm in my comfort zone."
On stage in Chattanooga's Memorial Auditorium, though, it's Krauss who looks a little awkward, while Plant seems to be having the time of his life. Her singing, though, is astonishing - the missing link between Emmylou Harris and Mavis Staples. "You know what she said to me?" Plant asks. "'You've got to understand, I have never ever stood at a microphone without holding a violin.' So that's 20, 25 odd years of being on stage, and it's the first time she hasn't held a fiddle [during every song]. But she's getting more and more comfortable."
The set also includes new versions of three Zeppelin songs. Which must have been weird for Krauss, who declined Plant's invitation to see the Zeppelin reunion concert and gave her pair of tickets to her brother. The songs, though, fit in perfectly. When the Levee Breaks is stripped down to a folk-blues song with a fiddle refrain and a quote from the traditional Girl from the North Country. And, as Zeppelin fans will tell you, the original version of The Battle of Evermore also featured a woman singer, the late British folk artist Sandy Denny.
That was the first time Plant had sung with a woman, "but it was totally different than with Alison, nothing like as disciplined, an accidental drifting of harmonies. Alison is just a miracle. There was no real, 'Let's do it like this'; the two of us step up to the microphone and she's amazing, she can just follow my voice. She said, on When the Levee Breaks, 'If you want to go up, I'll come with you, just give me one split second.' And I really went for it and she was right above me, soaring like an eagle. It was amazing." He says he's still learning to sing harmony and practising constantly. "I'm listening to songs now all the time and creating harmonies, walking down the street like some sad, old Everly Brother. And it's not stopping here either, that's the good thing."
Meaning a second album with Krauss? The first was, after all, a resounding success, wining a Grammy and selling more than 1m copies. "We're right in the middle of the honeymoon right now and we're coming up with all sorts of great songs. When we go back on the road after Europe, back into the Carolinas and all those places, I think that we'll all be sitting in the back of the bus getting down and writing, maybe. It seems like the natural thing to do. The fluidity and the flexibility that's coming about now, it would be a shame not to do something original."
Dates on the second leg of the tour continue through August - the month Plant turns 60 years old. "It's a monumental number," he admits. "I remember seeing Big Joe Williams and Son House and all those guys at Birmingham Town Hall when I was about 14 or 15, and most of them were born after the turn of the 20th century, so really I am now of the age and the time that those men were when I looked at them like they were some sort of mysterious messengers from another time and planet. So I'm getting up there.
"I don't wish to start sounding like I'm gushing about this particular time of my life, but being with the right people is really crucial. I'm so aware of the fact that if I hadn't taken the chances that I've taken along the line, I probably wouldn't be getting the best out of my voice anymore, I might have messed it up in that awful, predictable place. So I've already got a birthday present."
That awful place is presumably an allusion to Zeppelin or its particular brand of loud, blues rock. When we last talked - in Nashville last October, where Plant and Krauss recorded Raising Sand - he was about to leave for London for the Zeppelin show. The press reported that his bandmates were furious he preferred to promote his record with Krauss than rehearse with them. But Plant brushes it off as media spin.
I remind him of one of the questions Krauss asked him during that last interview: whether it felt good to be on stage with his old band. Well, did it?
"You'd need a month for me to tell you. I don't really know what happened. I think it was a very humbling experience. Because I'm comfortable singing Fortune Teller and Your Long Journey" - two Raising Sand songs - "I can relate to them, they're not my songs but I can really bring them to some new place. But when I'm singing my own songs with that [Zeppelin] persona and that responsibility, then that's pretty heavyweight, and there were so many forces at work."
What kind of forces?
"It was so crucial that we didn't end up sending ourselves up by trying to be whatever it was that people thought we were. Because I don't really know what anybody thought we were."
Plant tells me he was "in tears" at the end of the concert. "Because it really did work, whatever 'it' was, for what it was. A great feat of engineering - social engineering mostly. The trouble is now, with rock'n'roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in." He feels too many big artists are fixated on the "next biggest thing" and are too willing to "sell their souls". "I'm afraid all that stuff really leaves me cold," he says.
So he did turn down a Zeppelin tour?
"There's really no point talking about it," he says. "I don't hold the keys to any decision by anybody to do anything. And everything has to be for the right reason. The reason that I have been flavour of the month or out in the cold myself as a performer is because I choose to excite myself and do these things and give it a good go, take it some place. And that's what Led Zeppelin did before. We were always pushing it and manipulating musical history and you know how serious I was about Zeppelin - it had to be absolutely right.
"So, that's the way forward. I do things because I want to be excited and I want to be risky. More important to me than anything else really," he smiles, "is to find out whether or not I've got the balls."
· Robert Plant and Alison Krauss play Wembley Arena on Thursday May 22
See Also
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Ham Sandwich - Carry the Meek
While some sound the death-knell for the album ever louder, there are still plenty whose records drown it out. Like this one.
Freed from the constraints of cool moniker syndrome and worrying whether it fits the sound, Kells quintet Ham Sandwich turn in as assured and alluring a debut as you'll get between now and the turkey.
Two singers, the right mix of poignancy and darkness in its break-up narrative and some well-timed instrument punishment give 'Carry the Meek' a primitive power which few can summon well - the line "I think I got my hearing back" is very apt, but there's a lot done to your heart too.
And, like the most dysfunctional of couplings, you'll keep coming back. Some will find the name unforgivable, but some of the music is unforgettable.
Harry Guerin
Freed from the constraints of cool moniker syndrome and worrying whether it fits the sound, Kells quintet Ham Sandwich turn in as assured and alluring a debut as you'll get between now and the turkey.
Two singers, the right mix of poignancy and darkness in its break-up narrative and some well-timed instrument punishment give 'Carry the Meek' a primitive power which few can summon well - the line "I think I got my hearing back" is very apt, but there's a lot done to your heart too.
And, like the most dysfunctional of couplings, you'll keep coming back. Some will find the name unforgivable, but some of the music is unforgettable.
Harry Guerin
The Carpenters
Artist: The Carpenters
Genre(s):
Rock
Easy Listening
Pop
Country
Rock: Pop-Rock
Vocal
Christmas
Discography:
Gold: 35th Anniversary Edition (CD 2)
Year: 2004
Tracks: 20
Gold: 35th Anniversary Edition (CD 1)
Year: 2004
Tracks: 20
Carpenters Collection
Year: 2003
Tracks: 30
The Essential Collection 1965-1997 (Disc 4)
Year: 2002
Tracks: 13
The Essential Collection 1965-1997 (Disc 3)
Year: 2002
Tracks: 21
The Essential Collection 1965-1997 (Disc 2)
Year: 2002
Tracks: 17
The Essential Collection 1965-1997 (Disc 1)
Year: 2002
Tracks: 22
Carpenters Gold: Greatest Hits
Year: 2002
Tracks: 19
The Singles 1969-1973
Year: 1999
Tracks: 12
Yesterday Once More CD2
Year: 1998
Tracks: 14
Yesterday Once More CD1
Year: 1998
Tracks: 13
Made in America
Year: 1998
Tracks: 9
Love Songs
Year: 1998
Tracks: 20
Horizon
Year: 1998
Tracks: 10
Karen Carpenter
Year: 1996
Tracks: 12
Twenty Two Hits Of The Carpenters
Year: 1995
Tracks: 22
An Old Fashioned Christmas
Year: 1984
Tracks: 14
Christmas Portrait
Year: 1978
Tracks: 17
A Kind of Hush
Year: 1976
Tracks: 10
Now and Then
Year: 1973
Tracks: 15
Song for You
Year: 1972
Tracks: 12
Ticket to Ride
Year: 1969
Tracks: 13
Voice of the Heart
Year:
Tracks: 10
Live At The Palladium
Year:
Tracks: 9
Specials Star Hall Struggling With Lyrics
The SPECIALS frontman TERRY HALL is studying his band's old albums in preparation for a reunion tour later this year (08) - because he can't remember the words to songs he wrote.
The Ghost Town singer fears old age has robbed him of his memory and, as a result, the band will only perform songs from their first two albums.
Hall says, "There's like an album-and-a-half that I haven't even thought about since 1981. I'm using lots of lyric sheets because I keep on getting words mixed up."
The Specials recently reformed and are now planning their first dates together in 25 years.
Hall and his bandmates have ignored big-money offers to perform at British arenas and instead are planning a tour of theatre-sized venues.
The frontman explains, "That's the kind of venue where we started. I don't like arena dates, at all. They're just soulless."
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Chance to Win My Boy Elvis Tickets
THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED - A list of winners will be posted here shortly.
We have double tickets for 'My Boy Elvis - The Musical' at the Olympia Theatre on Sunday 24 February to give away.
The musical stars Liam Murphy, who won 'The World's Finest Elvis Impersonator' competition in the US in 2006, Alan Curran as Colonel Tom Parker and 13-year-old Craig Connolly as the young Elvis.
The story finds The King and his manager in the afterlife, reflecting and reminiscing about their lives and how things could have been different.
Written, directed and produced by George Twamley, the production features such classics as 'Hound Dog', 'Tutti Frutti', 'The Wonder of You', 'Suspicious Minds', 'An American Trilogy' and 'Burning Love'.
To be in with a chance of winning tickets, answer the following question: What was the name of Elvis' manager?
Send your answer, name, address and telephone number marked 'My Boy Elvis Comp' to entertainmentonline@rte.ie by Thursday 21 February at 12pm. One entry per person. Prize is show tickets only.
The full tour dates for 'My Boy Elvis' are:Dublin - Olympia Theatre, Sunday 24 February Castlebar - Royal Theatre, Saturday 8 March Belfast - The Waterfront, Friday 18 April Killarney - The INEC, Saturday 12 July
We have double tickets for 'My Boy Elvis - The Musical' at the Olympia Theatre on Sunday 24 February to give away.
The musical stars Liam Murphy, who won 'The World's Finest Elvis Impersonator' competition in the US in 2006, Alan Curran as Colonel Tom Parker and 13-year-old Craig Connolly as the young Elvis.
The story finds The King and his manager in the afterlife, reflecting and reminiscing about their lives and how things could have been different.
Written, directed and produced by George Twamley, the production features such classics as 'Hound Dog', 'Tutti Frutti', 'The Wonder of You', 'Suspicious Minds', 'An American Trilogy' and 'Burning Love'.
To be in with a chance of winning tickets, answer the following question: What was the name of Elvis' manager?
Send your answer, name, address and telephone number marked 'My Boy Elvis Comp' to entertainmentonline@rte.ie by Thursday 21 February at 12pm. One entry per person. Prize is show tickets only.
The full tour dates for 'My Boy Elvis' are:Dublin - Olympia Theatre, Sunday 24 February Castlebar - Royal Theatre, Saturday 8 March Belfast - The Waterfront, Friday 18 April Killarney - The INEC, Saturday 12 July
Blind Mississippi Morris
Artist: Blind Mississippi Morris
Genre(s):
Blues
Discography:
Along the Blues Highway
Year: 2003
Tracks: 14
Jessica Simpson - Simpson Has Marriage On Her Mind Despite Split Reports
JESSICA SIMPSON is laughing off reports she and boyfriend TONY ROMO have split, suggesting the sports star might be marrying material.
With Dallas Cowboys star Romo in Chicago, Illinois for promotional duties and Simpson working in Los Angeles, rumours are rife the couple has split, but she insists that's not the case.
And, as if to prove a point, the singer/actress admits she has marriage on her mind: "I want to be married and have kids. I have a future ahead."
But she wants to make sure her second trip up the aisle is forever after splitting from her first husband Nick Lachey.
She says, "I don't know about that yet - I've been down that aisle."
See Also
Madonna's French Kiss�but Was There Tongue?
The musical battle for headline domination is getting heated.�
Mariah Carey may have grabbed the spotlight with her quickie wedding to Nick Cannon, but Madonna knows how to play the...
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