South By South East

London Fields # 65
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 27 May 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here


While most of Great Britain sat inside to see how Graham Norton handled Terry Wogan’s Eurovision crown, I found myself wandering the lanes and seafront of Brighton seeking another type of music entirely. The Great Escape festival is a three-day event combining music conference and showcase spread over thirty Brighton venues. Perhaps partially a UK response to South by South West, it’s now in its fourth year, and draws around 3000 delegates and press and over 10000 punters. This particular weekend Brighton was literally overrun, as it coincided with the Brighton Festival, and its accompanying Fringe events, as well as ‘Heroes Run’ on the Sunday morning after the final night.

But it’s not just about seminars and performances, there’s networking as well. Outside the Thistle Hotel I run into Andrew Todd, the guitarist of The Boxer Rebellion. There’s a big announcement to be made regarding the band very soon, but for the time being they’re being very tight lipped about it. However if things go as planned, Andrew may well get to play his Adelaide home as part of a large touring summer festival in early 2010. The Australian presence was a little muted and understated this year; certainly there was nothing to rival the New Zealand showcase which saw Die! Die! Die!, Connan Mockasin and The Veils amongst the acts performing on the pier on the Saturday afternoon, although their twenty-minute sets were a little restrictive.

As the evening’s events began, so did the inevitable clashes. Torn between I Heart Hiroshima and Yves Klein Blue, we end up at the latter as it’s closest to our next destination. While you couldn’t fault their confidence, I kept waiting for one song to pull me up and make me pay attention; sadly it doesn’t appear. Maybe I’ve become too British in my tastes, but they sounded like 2004, and seemed to be lacking cohesion in what they were trying to do.

The next decision was a difficult one. Two of my favourite bands were playing at exactly the same time, but seeing either one of them ruled out seeing School Of Seven Bells, British Sea Power or Idlewild. However as Joe Gideon & The Shark have a London show next month, we opted for I Like Trains (formerly iLiKETRAiNS) at the large Concorde 2. There’s a disappointingly small crowd, which is a shame as iLT put in a first rate show. Keeping nothing back they open with Terra Nova, with a Rickenbacker bass you feel as much as hear, and the band silhouetted in dry ice in slowly rotating spots. It’s an old school approach but it works brilliantly. It’s hard to see why this band found themselves without a label; the new songs indicate that the next album is likely to sidestep the pitfalls of their ambitious yet flawed debut, and they are a great live act. While there are times it’s not quite gelling, it all comes together for the epic closer Spencer Percival, where the brooding menace which has been building up over the preceding eight minutes explodes into an apocalyptic cataclysm that is literally jawdropping.

Word reaches us that Patrick Wolf’s show is completely full, so do we see whether British India can justify their full page ad in that week’s NME, or go catch Gang Of Four? It’s not a hard choice. With the previous act running vastly over time, Gang Of Four have only fifteen minutes playing time before the curfew sets in, so they make the best of it. Jon King is one of the most brilliant and confrontational frontmen around. There’s a steeliness to him, whether conveyed by his impassioned wail, or the systematic destruction of a microwave with a baseball bat. He and Andy Gill are constantly moving between the three mikes, weaving like some deranged dervish. Their energy can barely be contained. Losing one of the best rhythm sections around is a cruel blow, but Mark Heaney is a strong presence on drums and Thomas McNiece nicely replicates those immense bass lines. While they may not cause structural damage like Allen’s did, it suits the band well. Gang of Two? Nah, they’re still firing on all cylinders.

Then there’s another long walk, trying to catch Dark Horses, Lisa Lindley-Jones new act which for these shows featured guest vocalist Emiliana Torrini. Sadly they’re done by the time we get there, but we do see a relaxed Patrick Wolf walking down the road tucking into chicken and chips. A midnight street conversation sees us at Audio, where I lose my friends to the packed throng on the dance floor. By now it’s nearing 1am and alone I catch the end of the set from one of the last acts performing, The Shiny Brights from Adelaide in the small downstairs bar of Jam. Singer Wolfgang brings some genuine frontman pizzazz to proceedings, and while not quite my thing, there’s a joyous energy here that is somewhat infectious.

The next morning I’m recovering in the Hove sunshine, watching hundreds of people dressed as superheroes trying to break a world record for the largest number of capes ever assembled in the one place. It’s a surreal end to a great experience. Next year I’ll be back for all three days. I only hope they get more extended licensing, or begin shows earlier so that the bands that have travelled so far to be here may be able to play for longer.


© James McGalliard 2009

Future Retro

London Fields # 60
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 6 January 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

Sometimes you need to look into the past to see the future. I was trying to predict trends in the UK music scene for the next year, but realised it would be rather pointless to simply write about acts that are going to be bigged-up or fawned over by the broadsheets or music press. Concentrating on personal favourites who may never even get around to releasing a single song commercially would perhaps be even worse. Yet a great deal of what’s happening here now comes from two places – the early eighties and the mid nineties.

For in the early eighties, synthesizers became affordable, and these cheaper keyboards opened a door to music, like an after echo of the DIY manifesto of punk. Today the sound of those old analogue instruments is ever more sort after, and some of the groundbreaking artists of this era are receiving recognition by a generation who weren’t born when these records were first made. In the mid nineties, the current eighties revival first began - The Human League toured on Octopus, Heaven 17 played live for the first time and Martin Fry put on the gold lame suit again, embracing his past with ABC.

Last month saw The Steel City Tour, when all three of these Sheffield acts played together for the first time. And not cabaret-style with a house band – this was three fully independent groups. It was a great idea on paper, but I’ve seen all perform better in the last decade; it was also hugely disappointing that Martyn Ware and Phil Oakey didn’t collaborate. December also saw Simple Minds on a 30th anniversary tour, which involved them playing the entire New Gold Dream in the middle of their set, while 2007 saw Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark taking Architecture and Morality around the country.

But is the live arena the place to replicate music designed to be listened to at home, specifically by playing a ‘seminal’ album in its entirety? When Gang Of Four brought their Entertainment LP to Don’t Look Back, they pretty much kept to the same set of songs as at other shows on their reunion tour; I’m not sure if every track was actually played. As curator of the Meltdown festival, Patti Smith organised a showcase of the entire Horses album, in order. Yet in the excitement of performance, she forgot a track, which she later slotted into the encore. Now these were seated gigs, in formal concert venues, with an audience there for one act only. Yet when you take this concept to the festivals, it becomes more questionable, for it breaks the cardinal rule about playing known songs to seduce music goers who have never seen you live before. Yet at Primavera Sound in Barcelona the other year, there was Sonic Youth announcing “And now here’s side two, track 2”, as they track listed their way through Daydream Nation. Following a record’s running order slavishly not only takes away the spontaneity of the live environment, but it also ignores that a totally different sequence of tracks may be needed to keep a audience’s attention than is right for the passive listening of a studio recording.

There are other pitfalls of this too. At the same festival, Dirty Three had a valid complaint about performing Ocean Songs - “How are we meant to play an album that lasts over an hour in a forty minute slot?” asked Warren Ellis quite reasonably. Now I’m not necessarily against these things – I’ve paid to see a quite a few of them myself. But do we risk tainting our memories, and do bands risk ruining their reputations? Sometimes these events involve bands reforming, and that raises the tricky question of whether to write and perform new material? James are one of the more successful examples of this, but their 2008 album Hey Ma failed to capture the magic of the live rehearsals that took place during its recording. When they do work, it can be very special. The Blue Aeroplanes launched their deluxe re-release of the brilliant Swagger by playing the album in order, including tracks that had never been played live before.

So why the backward glance? Well, one look at the BBC Sound Of 2009 longlist is enough to make you despair for the future. It was only a few years back that The Bravery won; this year we have White Lies, who sound like The Bravery performing The Teardrop Explodes in the style of The Killers. Other ‘hopes’ also seem to be pillaging the past, and it looks as if there’s going to be a belated attempt to break some Electro into the UK mainstream.

It’s hard to see where 2009 will actually go. There are yet more eighties acts on the way - Blancmange is quietly working together again, and April will see the hit-making version of Ultravox bringing their arpeggios and flanged notes back on stage for the first time since Live Aid. But while the acts of the past were innovators, innovation seems largely absent today. Personally I can see two things – a new wave of C86 influenced acts from the USA, and this ceaseless digging bringing forth a BritPop revival. You have been warned.


© James McGalliard 2009

An Oldie But A Goodie

London Fields # 19
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 19 October 2005
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

As an inveterate gig-goer, I was recently asked, "Is there any band that you wanted to see, but never did?" With reformations, and changes in taste, I was stumped for a moment. Well, there was the Velvet Underground reunion in 1993, but the venue [the soul-destroying black hole of Wembley] put me off the idea, both then and now. Which really only left the impossible dream of Joy Division.

I think I’ve raved enough in the past about the joy of seeing the reformed The Psychedelic Furs back in June. But the worrying trend of 2005 is that the old guard seems so much better live than the young guns.

A few weeks back I caught the original line-up of Gang Of Four playing at the Barbican. Even in such sterile environs, these older men summoned up more bite and bile than virtually any band coming up through the ranks now. Hugo Burnham may have filled out, but he still provides a powerhouse backbeat. From a distance Andy Gill and Dave Allen seem little changed - fairly bristling with energy as they stalk, duck and dive. As a near-Marxist collective, they attempt to undercut the role of frontman, but there’s one member who positively demands your attention. Regardless of which microphone he’s using, Jon King remains the central focus. Whether he’s slowly demolishing a microwave with a baseball bat like a human metronome, or crawling on all fours like a giant spider crab, or even running wildly backwards and forwards across the apron of the stage, arms waving up and down like the last space invader overrunning the base, it’s a magnetic performance. And their sound now is what the old recordings only hinted at – within thirty seconds you know that no one can touch these originals.

You could form a new line-up of a band with sixteen original members, but without one cantankerous grizzly old bastard, it wouldn’t be The Fall. Now in line-up number two thousand, the only thing that unites them is the irascible Mark E Smith. He still looks like a geography teacher and he’s still up to his old tricks. Possibly as an antidote to boredom, he sets about trying to distract the other members of the band. At a recent appearance he turned off a guitar amp, drowned out backing vocals by putting his vocal mike up to the amps, fiddled with drum mikes, and played odd notes on the keyboard. Yet this is all part of the charm, and they still create a great racket - utterly unique, yet completely recognisable.

If anyone else had done what John Cale did for his recent Black Acetate shows, the audience would have walked out. After opening with Venus In Furs, he played a two-hour set imbruing old and new material alike with a Sturm und Drang approach of repeated grinding guitar riffs. This was the Cale of the hockey mask, having fun. Ever since the 5 Tracks EP, every one of his tours has been stylistically different and intriguing. But as he carried it all out with such aplomb, he gets away with it.

This year Simple Minds are the trimmest they’ve been for over twenty years, both musically and physically. They’ve lost all their stadium rock flab, and have heavily trimmed the pomp. Their renewed energy and vigour allows the new material to shine [as does the pre-Live Aid material], and Eddie Duffy’s basswork recreates the steel structures that made us love them in 1981. Charlie still mouths the lyrics, Jim still dances, and they can still send shivers up your spine with the opening of Waterfront…

There may be some interesting developments in music here at the moment, but none of them are in London. Sheffield is at the forefront of an explosion of new acts [surf for Thee SPC or Sandman Magazine for more], and a new wave of pop is threatening to erupt [The Chalets, The Pipettes, El Pres!dente]. But instead of these bright hopes, we’re being told about Battle, who are about as shite as a live experience can be. So instead we’ll continue to look back to the originators, and sometimes find that the imitators become completely redundant.

At a concert to commemorate the life of John Peel last week, New Order did a set drawn entirely from the JD days. While four of these tracks have been a staple of their live sets for a few years now, playing a set with no New Order material, and including Shadowplay and Warsaw, was something special. This was the closest I will ever get to seeing Joy Division [barring a time machine], and dammit, didn’t it make me miss Peelie all over again. In honour of the occasion, you could forgive Barney’s excruciating dancing [now with added pirouettes], and technical hitches. The only thing that let them down was the vocals – the one thing they could never really replace.

But if Mark Burnett is looking for a follow-up to RockStar: INXS, I may have an idea for him…

© James McGalliard 2005