Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Classic Rock

WELCOME Sadly, this isn’t the editorial I’d anticipated writing for this issue. My original plan was to wax lyrical about how delighted we are to have the return of The Black Crowes, and how we got to sit down with the Robinson brothers for a Classic Rock exclusive about their unexpected reconcilliation and return to the road to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of their Shake Your Moneymaker debut album. It’s something I was (and still am) very excited about. But then the evening of Friday January 10 arrived, and at 9pm so did a text message from Classic Rock’s news editor Dave Ling that changed things. It read: “Did you hear the awful news about Neil Peart?” I hadn’t. When I did, I, like the rest of the rock world,…

the DiRT TRIBUTES FAREWELL TO THE KING Neil Peart will always be a mentor and a hero to me, and his influence on me as a drummer for the past 40 years is absolutely impossible to measure. But beyond that, over the past 15 years or so, he became a friend… always such a gentleman and gracious host. Mike Portnoy Absolutely horrible news. Neal Peart has died after fighting brain cancer for years. His later life was filled with so much family tragedy. So, so sad. I’m just shocked. Paul Stanley Today, the world lost a true giant in the history of rock & roll. He was called ‘The Professor’ for a reason: we all learned from him. Dave Grohl There are drummers and then there is Neil Peart. I…

New Chili Peppers Album Coming But Faith No More will not be returning to the studio. THE RED HOT Chili Peppers, who recently confirmed the return of guitarist John Frusciante, are working on a new album. Frusciante joined in 1988 to replace Hillel Slovak who had died earlier that year. Josh Klinghoffer had been with the Chilis for the past decade. Announcing the change “with great excitement and full hearts”, RHCP stated: “Josh is a beautiful musician who we respect and love. We are deeply grateful for our time with him, and the countless gifts he shared with us.” The band’s last studio album with Frusciante was the Rick Rubin-produced Stadium Arcadium in 2006, which sold more than two million copies in the US and brought them five Grammy awards.…

STONEWALL Stonewall, Tiger Lily Records, USA, 1976. £7,000+ Stonewall were a fantastic hard rock band from NYC whose history is shrouded in mystery. Their sole album is one of the most treasured on the collector’s market, with probably less than 100 pressed and just a handful of copies known to still exist. However, the band had broken up long before it was actually released, seemingly without their consent or knowledge. Recorded (allegedly) in 1969, Stonewall is one of the great obscure albums of its time and comparable to other US early hard rock legends such as Dust, Sir Lord Baltimore and Bang. The main difference is that all of those had major-label deals. Tiger Lily appears to be a label set up by the owner of a NYC recording studio,…

Q&A Tim Wheeler The Ash frontman on being misunderstood, firing flames from guitars and writing 10 songs in 10 hours. Words: Ian Fortnam Portrait: Alex Lake Perpetually fresh-faced Ash guitarist, singer and songwriter Tim Wheeler has been settled in New York City for the past 14 years. As the extraordinarily prolific trio prepare to release a double-vinyl (and rarity-bolstered triple CD) collection of their finest recordings, titled Teenage Wildlife, Tim considers their ongoing, seemingly inescapable, reputation for eternal youth: “We’ve always been young for our age, I guess.” How easy was it to curate Teenage Wildlife? There were tracks we’d have liked to have got on that we didn’t. We left out some big singles, like Candy. We had about eighteen top forties, and managed to get fourteen on the…

THE BLACK CROWES As The Crowe Flies The history of The Black Crowes in 20 songs. JEALOUS AGAIN (1990) The song that introduced the world to The Black Crowes: bellbottomed barroom boogie that let the Brothers Robinson live out their Faces fantasies. Through the Aquanet fog of hair metal, the greatest American rock’n’roll band of the 90s had emerged. HARD TO HANDLE (1990) Chris Robinson pushed back against covering an Otis Redding classic, but he was on the wrong side of history: Hard To Handle was the Crowes’ first hit, and they were off to the races. REMEDY (1992) New guitarist Marc Ford helped kick the Crowes up several gears on The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, as embodied by its instant-classic first single, a not-so-sneaky pro-pot anthem. THORN IN…

SKIN DEEP Dismissed by some as a violent cult, the original skinhead scene established reggae, inspired punk and 2 Tone, and even influenced hard rock and heavy metal. Words: Ed Mitchell SHUTTERSTOCK It was like a bomb had gone off. Summer 1979. Gangsters, the debut single from Coventry ska band The Specials, hits No.6 in the charts. John Peel had played it for the first time that May. He loved the thing. It was bloody hard not to. On August 30, the band performed the song on Top Of The Pops. All of a sudden, playgrounds were teeming with little rude boys and girls. Cropped noggins, Dr Martens, trousers hiked to show off white socks, tie reversed to put the thin bit at the front. It was like The Specials’…

Drive-By Truckers The Unraveling ATO Alt.country titans’ twelfth album. Drive-By Truckers always sounded like a good idea: super-smart lyrics, a rocky twist on country and an unashamedly progressive outlook. Alas their actual sound hasn’t always delivered, and too often they’ve surrendered to stodge. Fearful for the United States under Donald Trump’s arbitrary sway, 2016’s American Band was their first British Top 30 entry, and three years on its sense of foreboding has been made flesh. The Unraveling (recorded at Sam Phillips’s place in Memphis) sees their righteous anger (‘Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers’) complemented by a musical surge, where the Steve Forbertesque 21st Century USA is propelled by strings, and the spartan, atmospheric near-nine-minute Awaiting Resurrection is a slower, spooked state-of-the-nation address which evokes…

Ben Watt Storm Damage CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL Beautiful storytelling from one half of Everything But The Girl. PAMELA LITTKY/PRESS Everything But The Girl co-founder Ben Watt has been doing some serious soul searching for his new solo album. A collection of stark pieces in which his drily mournful vocals take centre stage against a backdrop of synths, unflashy piano and upright bass, it finds him in reflective mood. It’s a smart musical move, because Storm Damage showcases what a good lyricist he is. Summer Ghosts is particularly striking, Watt soul searching and nostalgic as he wanders the streets of Hull (Spring Bank, Anlaby Road, Ferensway, Land Of Green Ginger…), the mood as chilly as a Yorkshire February morning. Meanwhile, Knife In The Drawer, with its atmospheric, twinkling melody, suggests soundtrack work…

Theory Say Nothing ATLANTIC Intelligent pop-rock for 2020. Often seen as nothing more than Nickelback copyists, these Canadians have long outgrown that tag, in the process releasing albums imbued with their own melodic identity. Say Nothing continues in that style. Opening with the orchestrally motivated Black Hole Of Your Heart, every track is nicely crafted, as the band mix pop and alt.rock within sumptuous arrangements. Affluenza and Quicksand display multi-layered skill, showing a flair for the dramatic while never forgetting the importance of a strong tune. The band are also prepared to tackle serious subjects, as on History Of Violence, which deals with the issue of domestic abuse, and Strangers, which rails against the hypocrisy of modern politics. The finest track here, though, is the powerful White Boy, which has…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder “Demons” Kiss Off SELF-RELEASED Stockholm bruisers “Demons” (yes, with quote marks) have been slinging rough ’n’ ready action rock since the 1990s, and they are so prolific that you’re gonna have to start driving an Uber on the side or do something else just so that you can keep buying all their limite-dedition singles. But every so often they lay a long-player on us, and so here we are. From the snarling, Pistols-y punk of opener Baphomet Briefs to the clobbering motor rock of Hemisexual, from Mojo Rojo’s furious ball of fire to the glammy arena-rattle of Six Pack Of Champagne, this one covers all the bases. Sure, there are hooks and melodies, but there ain’t a ballad in sight. Don’t let the quotation marks fool you,…

Blackwater Conspiracy Two Tails & The Dirty Truth Of Love & Revolution BULLETPROOF 20/20 Second record from acclaimed Irish rock’n’rollers. Delta blues shot through the prism of County Tyrone might seem like an unlikely formula for success, but Blackwater Conspiracy are making it work for them. Their 2017 album Shootin’ The Breeze garnered the kind of praise that would make Axl Rose blush, and Two Tails is a step up; more ambitious yet refined, more colours to their palette, but tempered when it has to be. Which is not to say that a song like the jumping Just Like A Silhouette couldn’t have come reeling off the Black Crowes’ debut (or Quireboys’, come to that), but in tracks like Bird In A Coalmine, with its Irish whistles, and the stomp…

Kirk Windstein Dream In Motion ENTERTAINMENT ONE The sludge master gets softer. Anyone who believes they know what to expect from this album is in for a shock. Kirk Windstein might have spent close on three decades helping to define the sludge genre through Crowbar, but for his debut solo album he has gone for a far more melodic and mainstream approach. He cites Bread, America and Seals & Croft as significant influences on what he’s done on this record, and you can readily understand what he means. Because while there’s a denser sound to the music than any of those artists, nonetheless Dream In Motion does have distinct soft-rock leanings. It was painstakingly recorded by Windstein over a period of two years. As well as vocals, he plays all…

Nada Surf Never Not Together CITY SLANG Ninth album from power-pop emperors. After almost 30 years of crafting soft-focus melodies every inch the equal of his more commercially successful peers, Matthew Caws could be forgiven for putting his frustrations into music every once in a while. However, Never Not Together, the follow-up to 2017’s You Know Who You Are finds him in a contemplative mood. Come Get Me bristles with a Big Star-ish urgency, while Live Learn And Forget is the sound of a master songwriter coming to terms with his lot in life, Caws sighing: ‘I used to sing about love, falling in and falling out’, before concluding that it’s always best to ‘put your anger away’. Throw in a shameless Oasis tribute (Just Wait), a Raspberries like So…

Girl Wasted Youth HNE Glam rockers’ 1982 album, now with five discs of extras. It was the band in which two famous musicians first made a name for themselves – singer Phil Lewis, who went on to star in L.A. Guns, and guitarist Phil Collen, who joined Def Leppard. In the early 80s, Girl were touted as London’s answer to the New York Dolls. They were, as Collen dryly recalled, “the ponces of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal”. They released only two albums, the first, Sheer Greed, a minor hit, the second, Wasted Youth, an abject failure. But, as Lewis discovered when he moved to LA in 1985, those albums had resonated powerfully with Tracii Guns, his partner in L.A. Guns, and the guys in Tracii’s former band,…

Various Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival RHINO Some of the good and to-be-great, live in a pub in ’78. It was the compilation album that every record shop had, a selection of live tunes from the up and comers of 1978, recorded at the even-then-legendary Hope & Anchor pub in North London. And as a snapshot of that venue’s live variety, it’s perfect. There are bands who made the bridge from pub rock to punk, such as Roogalator, The Pirates, the Wilko Johnson Band – all of whom are in their element here – and there are new bands who were already on their way to becoming Top Of The Pops regulars, like The Stranglers and XTC. The fact that many of the bands here are only just beginning…

Nektar The Other Side ESOTERIC ANTENNA New crowd-funded release marks veterans’ 50th anniversary. Having been based in Germany from 1969 onwards, Nektar have often been bracketed with Krautrock, although, being British-born and more inclined to heavy rock than experimentalism, really they were nothing of the kind. While their debut album Journey To The Centre Of The Eye (1971) was a psychedelic concept record featuring a single, 40-minute track, they fairly quickly drifted into guitar conventionality. Since the death of singer/guitarist Roye Albrighton, they have soldiered on, with the present line-up including founder members Derek Moore and Ron Howden on bass and drums respectively, as well as non-playing lyricist and visual effects man Mick Brockett. The Other Side features songs such as I’m On Fire, Devil’s Door and Skywriter which were…

Lou Reed & Kris Kristofferson In Their Own Words: The Bottom Line Archive SFM Strange bedfellows making sweet music. Between 1990 and 2003, Manhattan’s hip hangout The Bottom Line hosted a series of, on the surface, curious meetings of minds; performers from seemingly disparate backgrounds sharing a stage to discuss and play their music. This two-disc set presents an unlikely pairing from ’94, although through careful song selection and intelligent questions from mediator Vin Scelsa some intriguing parallels are revealed. Beyond Reed and Kristofferson expressing a mutual respect and love for each other’s catalogue, they discuss their fondness for writing in character; Reed’s Romeo Had Juliet, heard in this environment, isn’t so far removed from Kristofferson’s Me And Bobby McGee. Similarly, given a gritty New York makeover, the vulnerable country…

Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters Mike Edison BACKBEAT Entertaining, informative eulogy to the Stones’ unsung hero. Traditionally, biographies are looked down upon by critics if they don’t contain many original interviews. And if you’re going to wing it that way, it helps to be as good and knowledgeable a writer as Mike Edison. The veteran journalist (he edited High Times magazine at one point) and amateur drummer turns this appreciation of Charlie Watts into a rollicking read, thanks to impeccable knowledge and invigorating passion for his subject – his appreciation of the musical roots of Watts’s unfussy but invaluable “roll” is particularly well-informed. Although the book is basically an extended opinion piece, the depth into which Edison goes to make his case for Charlie’s greatness makes for…

Me & Mr Cigar Gibby Haynes SOHO TEEN Humpty Dumpty LSD. Like every well-adjusted acid-crazed subversive kid, Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes liked to drift off to sleep while his parents read him a book. And now he has decided to pass the favour along. But quite how many parents will enjoy reading this book to their children is another matter. It’s four or five pages before the surreal stuff starts. Our 11-year-old hero’s mutt, Mr Cigar, is killed during an altercation with his elder sister’s boyfriend, although he is resurrected the following day, this time with what fans of His Dark Materials might recognise as a daemon. As well as wreaking vengeance on his sister’s boyfriend, Mr Cigar bites his sister’s hand off. After that you need to pay attention,…

Essential Playlist Two Tickets To Paradise Eddie Money Baby Hold On Eddie Money You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me Eddie Money Life For The Taking Life For The Taking Call On Me Life For The Taking Trinidad Playing For Keeps The Wish Playing For Keeps Shakin’ No Control No Control No Control Passing By The Graveyard (Song For John B) No Control The Big Crash Where’s The Party? Backtrack Where’s The Party? Take Me Home Tonight Can’t Hold Back I Wanna Go Back Can’t Hold Back Walk On Water Nothing To Lose Another Nice Day In L.A. Right Here I’ll Get By Right Here Don’t Say No Tonight Ready Eddie…

LIVE! Rod Stewart London O2 Arena Rod sings it again, keeps us amused. It’s pantomime season, and 75-year-old Sir Rod knows how to put on a festive show. As many all-singing, all-dancing lights, films, costume changes and high-kicking girls as our retinas can handle are chucked at us, and a merry old sing-along is anticipated. No one’s worrying about deconstructing any postmodern polyrhythms (even if Rod’s “Well done, Boris!” tweet a few days prior has dampened our ardour). Tonight’s not quite the night though, as a somewhat weird, fidgety set-list opens with three cover versions (The Persuaders, Sam Cooke, Motown) before settling in to the desired ‘greatest hits’ carnival. Even then it stutters somewhat, as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra join in for an acoustic section which, though well intended, breaks…

This month’s contributors DAVE EVERLEY We’ve kept ‘Diamond’ Dave Everley busy again this month. He braced himself to play referee between The Black Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson for this issue’s cover story (p30), he went record shopping with The Cadillac Three (p74), and spent a cold December evening in the company of the Dan Reed Network, Gun and FM (p110). ED MITCHELL Ed Mitchell has been a devotee of ska and skinhead culture since he was a nipper. From oxblood Dr Marten boots to Fred Perry shirts, he’s been wearing the same style of clothes ever since. Which isn’t as sad as you think. This month Ed explores skinhead culture and its impact on the British music scene (p78). You might see some faces (and haircuts) you don’t expect.…

the DiRT RIP Thank you and good night. Dave Riley July 30, 1960 – December 24, 2019 Producer Steve Albini has led the tributes to the former member of the influential Chicago band Big Black, saying that the bass player “bridged the gap between raw enthusiasm and outstanding musicianship better than anybody else in our peer group”. Born in Detroit, Riley joined Big Black in 1984, and remained with them for two years. The 59-year-old succumbed to throat cancer. Roy Loney April 13, 1946 – December 13, 2019 The original lead singer with proto-punk garage rockers the Flamin’ Groovies has died of organ failure at age 73. Loney left the San Franciscan band in 1971, then re-entered the frame following the release of the 2017 reunion album Fantastic Plastic. The…

Neil Innes December 9, 1944 – December 29, 2019 GETTY x2 SOMETIMES KNOWN AS ‘The Seventh Python’ thanks to his association with comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Neil Innes, a pianist, guitarist and singer, was a creative and gifted musician and songwriter who will forever be remembered as a co-founding member of psychedelic surrealists the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and as the mastermind behind the eternally popular Beatles spoof act The Rutles. Innes was born in Essex and raised in Germany. In 1962 he helped form the Bonzos. Their fusion of trad jazz, avant-pop and music-hall nonsense soon became very popular, and six years later the band had a Top Five hit with I’m The Urban Spaceman, co-produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth. In the…

the DiRT HIGH HOPES Dirty Honey The LA four-piece have topped a chart and played with A-listers – and are still unsigned. “We’d look around and go: ‘Why isn’t there a present-day AC/DC or Aerosmith?’” MARC LABELLE REMEMBERS his first rock-star encounter. The Dirty Honey singer/frontman was nine years old when his favourite band, Aerosmith, played near his family’s home in upstate New York. His stepdad heard them on the radio and insisted on driving him to the radio station. Marc didn’t think they’d actually meet his heroes, but then… “Sure enough, they walked out in their full rock-star regalia, and they were signing girls’ boobs and getting into a limo,” he recalls. “I watched them drive away and thought: ‘That looks like a really cool occupation.’” He’s since made…

6 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… Marcus King Meet the southern gentleman who’s no stranger to both triumph and tragedy, and is the best guitarist you’ve never heard of. Words: Henry Yates BORN IN SOUTH Carolina, raised as a fourth-generation musician and a face on the state’s formidable roadhouse circuit aged just 11, Marcus King can already look back on three albums with his eponymous band, and has just released his solo debut, El Dorado. Produced in Nashville by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, it’s an album that announces the 23-year-old as an old soul, roaming from lived-in R&B to stomper blues and bruised country, with a frayed-edge vocal and tender guitar touch that hint at someone who has experienced harder times. He’s got a better record collection…

THE CLASSIC ROCK INTERVIEW IAN ANDERSON He might have become an average blues guitarist. Instead he became the best one-legged flute player in the world, and for more than 50 years led his band Jethro Tull to critical acclaim and huge commercial success. These days, his favourite hobby is simply “waking up in the morning”. Interview: Paul Elliott Portrait: Will Ireland There’s an awkward moment when Ian Anderson arrives in Bath for the Classic Rock Interview. As he emerges from the train station on a rainy winter morning, dressed for the weather in an anorak and woolly hat, he recoils sharply when I offer a handshake. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he says. “But I’ve got a bad wrist.” With a thin smile, he adds: “I’m probably a close…

PETER GREEN WHAT HAPPENED NEXT… Seeking to expand the band’s musical horizons, in 1968, Green brought in a third guitarist, 18-year-old Danny Kirwan. The major hit singles started in 1969 with Albatross, Man Of The World and Oh Well. Green’s well-documented and disastrous encounters with LSD resulted in the demise of the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, but the remnants relocated to the US where, eventually, with a change of line-up – which included just Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from the old band – and musical direction, they became one of the most successful rock bands of all time.…

*CLASSIC ROCK* ON THIS MONTH’S DIGITAL ALBUM… EARACHE RECORDS SAMPLER The label might have made their name as pioneers of death metal and early grindcore, but there’s also a whole lot of excellent rock’n’roll to be found in the Earache vaults. Dive in… 1 Those Damn Crows Set In Stone We’re kicking off our Earache fiesta with these Welsh hard rockers who were voted best live band of 2019 by the popular grassroots New Wave Of Classic Rock (NWOCR) group. Lit up by the kind of hooky propulsion and king-sized guitars that made Foo Fighters massive, this track makes it easy to see why Those Damn Crows earned that accolade. From Point Of No Return www.thosedamncrows.com 2 Massive Wagons Billy Balloon Head It’s the rollicking fan favourite from 2018’s Full…

Black Lips Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart FIRE Ninth studio album from amiably delinquent garage punk/country rockers. Although in the past Black Lips have been produced by heavyweights such as Mark Ronson, for this album they decided to go back to their rough and raw roots. And it sure smells like that from the get-go. Chainsaw is mutant, beat-up, skid-marked, redolent of beer, petrol and asphalt. Rumbler is hobo-picaresque, its harmonica trailing like smoke from a stack. Holding Me Holding You is a trip in reverse gears back up Route 66. But it’s when they slow up, as on the single Gentleman, that they reveal their underlying complexity. ‘This old middle finger has grown fat and tired from flipping the bird,’ they groan, over slide guitar. Get It…

Wire Mind Hive PINKFLAG First album since 2017 from tireless, unremitting post-punksters. Wire have already left a formidable legacy, but there is something impressive about the fact that they continue to drill away, remorselessly, inquisitive, well into the century after the one in which they were born. With Matthew Simms well settled in as guitarist, replacing founder member Bruce Gilbert, they are true to themselves, albeit with a subtly different, weathered hue that comes with age. Simms certainly knows how to deliver Wire energy – compact, disciplined, no waste, no spray, as on Primed And Ready. There are also lovely moments of Wire pop here, the sort of abrasive honey in which Colin Newman specialises; Off The Beach, for example, as sinister as it is breezy (‘Have you ever been…

Stoned Monkey Stoned Monkey ARGONAUTA An undiluted sludge romp. If you love early Melvins, Saint Vitus, Swans and Corrupted, then you’re gonna love loons Stoned Monkey, a trio who revel in devastating riffs that rise and fall with funereal grace. This is an instrumental album that could easily be the soundtrack to an Edgar Allan Poe frightmare, such is the claustrophobia of the performances. In fact you could imagine famed Italian horror maestros Goblin nodding in approval at the way in which this band build the drama, with an intense density that tells of a deeply ingrained passion for making the listener seem uncomfortable, yet also somehow remarkably relaxed. As soon as opening track Pain Of Mind rears up, you know you’re in the presence of a band who’ve reversed…

Those Damn Crows Point Of No Return EARACHE Bridgend boys hit escape velocity. Brutal, honest, driven. This follow-up to Murder And The Motive takes the promise inherent in their debut, ratchets up the intensity 10-fold and positively rams home the qualities that made that record special. Here we have titanic riffs and instantly memorable choruses in blissful harmony, kind of like a Welsh Alter Bridge or Shinedown. With Colin Richardson and Andy Sneap producing there was no chance this was going to sound anything other than immense – Send The Reaper with its Metallica-sized riffing, Kingdom Of Dust, Go Get It, Devil In My Pocket, just take your pick and prepare to be flattened by the breathless momentum. The orchestral, piano-led, emotionally draining Never Win provides some early respite, otherwise…

DBA Live In England X2XCD Rare live show from Yes/Asia veteran and songwriting foil. Generation straddling partnerships don’t always add up to the sum of their parts, but when keyboard maestro Geoff Downes hooked up with LA-based songwriter-for-hire and avowed prog fan Chris Braide, 21 years his junior, the pair brought out the best in each other. Despite making three albums since 2012, they still hadn’t played live until September 2018. That debut show is captured on this double album, and provides a neat intro to their catalogue. The harmonies enhancing Tomorrow help it really take flight, and there’s a stirring melodrama to songs like Machinery Of Fate and Skyscraper, the latter punctuated by newsreel-style voice-overs and even choirboy excerpts. But old Yes and Asia tunes are always going to…

Anvil At Last AFM Anvil continue to be Canadian and metal. Probably no one has ever accused Canadian chuggernauts Anvil of being clever. But you gotta hand it to them with the title of this one: not only is marijuana finally legal in their beloved homeland (it sorta already was, but still…), it’s also their eighteenth album, which means you can legally have sex with it in the US. Otherwise, you know, Anvil is Anvil, and this is their most Anvil record since the last Anvil record. It’s got tongue-in-cheek shit (title track, sad/funny weed story Nabbed In Nebraska), and really, really metal shit (Chemtrails, Food For The Vulture), all of it buoyed by frontman Lips’ relentless bellow and supernatural shred. There are no ballads, no synthesisers, and you don’t…

Various A Slight Disturbance In My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds Of 1966 CHERRY RED Frying tonight – the real sound of ’66. This would be another collection of well-known chestnuts from this seminal year if it wasn’t for Cherry Red’s customary array of obscure nuggets, bonkers oddities and unreleased gems. 1966 is the year pop started transforming into psychedelic rock, so the requisite Yardbirds, Kinks and Pretty Things suitably expand their sounds, but the drugs kick in with the gloriously freaked Misunderstood, John’s Children ‘losing my mind’ and The Smoke’s banned My Friend Jack (who ‘eats sugar lumps’), rendering The Searchers, Moody Blues, Hollies, Manfred Mann, Tornados and Tremeloes desperate to stay relevant. But as Outrage howl, it’s a Different Kind Of Love Song now, manifesting on the proto-psych…

Bryan Ferry Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1974 BMG Finger-poppin’ Ferry bordering on youthful abandon. Given Ferry’s later obsession with perfection, layering and ‘textures’, often spending years on mixing albums, it’s slightly surprising and somewhat refreshing that he’s waved through the release of this live album from a very specific period in his career. It captures the ‘73-‘74 phase where, not content with being the singer in one of the world’s most exciting, innovative bands, he established a parallel solo career as a handsome-devil crooner of covers. Or as he put it, with his art-school training, “ready-mades”. Not that it’s remotely loose or rough, but it does exist on pure love of the songs and conventional live adrenalin. It’s not over-thought. With a set taken from These Foolish Things…

The Bellrays It’s Never Too Late To Fall In Love With… TWENTY STONE BLATT A decades-spanning introduction to this seminal soul-punk powerhouse. ‘Criminally underrated’ is a term chronically abused in rock journalism but it certainly applies to Riverside, California’s The Bellrays, a band of such awe-inspiring rock fury and wall-shaking soul power that mere words can barely shine a light. Since somewhere in the 1990s they’ve been bringing their patented ‘Tina Turner fronts the MC5’ to the people, and while their albums have never quite achieved the primal ferocity of their live shows, many of them have come damned close. This mandatory career-spanning ‘best of’ (plus a few bonuses), should get you on the right foot. Witness the devastating Sabbath-on-speed woosh of Sister Disaster (from 2004’s Red White And Black),…

Gary Moore Live From London PROVOGUE/MASCOT Back in blue. After Gary Moore’s death in 2011, Eric Clapton played Still Got The Blues in concert as a tribute, indicating the high regard in which the former Thin Lizzy guitarist was held by his peers. And yet, in his biography of Moore, I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow, Harry Shapiro raises the regrettably valid point that while Moore is revered by fans and musicians, he’s woefully underappreciated in the wider sphere of popular music. Live From London is a welcome reminder of Moore’s talent. Of all the styles he tried on for size, the blues was a natural fit, and this 2009 show finds him deeply immersed in the genre. Leading a crack band through a raw, varied set, Moore’s guitar work is…

Elton John With Ray Cooper Live From Moscow 1979 UNIVERSAL Hello Bolshevik Road: Elton conquers Russia. In 1979, things were changing. The Soviet Union was tentatively opening up its cultural restrictions, and, even more seismically, Elton John was inching his way back from live retirement with a show there that had little in the way of flamboyant costumes or outlandish showmanship. Accompanied only by his old Yamaha electric piano plus Ray Cooper on minimal percussion, he became one of the first Western pop stars – Cliff beat him to it – to tour Russia. This much-bootlegged two-disc set from Moscow’s Rossiya Hall was broadcast on the BBC, and is now remastered from analogue tapes by Bob Ludwig. So it’s a stripped-down, back-to-basics Elton who pummels the keys here, channelling his…

Lou Reed: I’ll Be Your Mirror Faber & Faber Every bon mot from the Velvets to Lulu. Last time that the lyrics of NYC’s late poet laureate were published, a certain amount of experimentation took place in the layout department. All well and good if you’re intent on accentuating the left-field artistic leanings of your author; not terribly convenient for the reader who can’t actually read the components of some of the most literate libretti in the history of recorded sound. That said, Lou was not without his off days. For every Street Hassle there was a Banging On My Drum, for every The Gift there was an A Gift. But on the whole, this is a rewarding compendium of dark humour, vicious spite, pure romance and searing inner-city wit.…

Humble Pie: The Life And Times Of Steve Marriott Wienerworld Revealing 90-minute documentary about rock’s most mercurial frontman. Charting Steve Marriott’s path from child actor to Mod ace face with the Small Faces to hard living frontman with Humble Pie, this by-the-book documentary contains plenty of footage and anecdotes that die-hard fans will long be familiar with. However, while the format lacks imagination, it’s the spell that Marriott clearly still holds over an impressive line-up of talking heads – among them The Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson and former Pie bandmates Peter Frampton, Jerry Shirley and Greg Ridley – that elevates it above the usual docu-fare. “It was very democratic,” Frampton says of Humble Pie’s ‘anything goes’ working practices. And proof of their unique chemistry comes in a spellbinding acoustic version…

On Track: The Solo Beatles 1969-1980 Andrew Wild SONIC BOND Ongoing song-by-song series critiques former Fabs. This latest addition to Sonic Bond’s On Track canon offers the usual subjective in-depth analysis of every track on offer from its featured artists (on this occasion all four solo Beatles, up to Lennon’s death rather than the full career/single-artist collections we’re used to). But while fun to dip into, it’ll infuriate as often as it delights. We begin with Give Peace A Chance (“1969 was the year that John Lennon went nuts”), followed swiftly by Cold Turkey, which we’re told is “difficult to like… a loud, dissonant song driven by Eric Clapton’s lead guitar”. These are opinions that’ll win few friends among the rabid/buy-everything fans this series targets, but, that said, The Beatles…

LIVE! Dream Theater On three dates, the band play 1999’s Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory in full. “People probably assume we’re this bunch of boring, serious, book-reading nerds.” A merican/Canadian progressive metallers Dream Theater use their latest UK visit to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory – their concept album about a man who visits a hypnotherapist and discovers that in a previous life he’d been a young woman from the 1920s who was brutally murdered – and also their current, fourteenth, studio set Distance Over Time. We catch up with frontman James LaBrie. Dream Theater are currently on tour in Brazil. After all these years are you still surprised by the enthusiasm and sheer volume of your South American fans? Yeah,…

LIVE! Samantha Fish Catch the ‘not just a blueser’ blueser in February and March. SAMANTHA FISH: MICHAEL EMANUELE/PRESS A growing presence on the UK’s blues circuit, Kansas City-born guitarist, songwriter and singer Samantha Fish previews a nine-date tour to promote her sixth album, Kill Or Be Kind. You tend to be labelled as a blues artist, but Kill Or Be Kind is a diverse, radio-conscious record. Do you find the categorisation restrictive? Not really, because blues is the cornerstone of everything I do. However, it’s also a genre that can be quite explorative, and I am seeking to evolve into other territories. I like to bring a contemporary mind-set [to the blues]. Are there any artists you’d like to play with which would possibly loosen the blinkers regarding how you…

LIVE! Tour Dates KEVIN NIXON See below for dates. Currently May 10 to 16. SHUTTERSTOCK See below for dates. Currently May 29 and 30 and June 27. See opposite page for dates. Currently May 24 to 31. See below for dates. Currently May 26 to June 5.…

The Darkness London Roundhouse Justin Hawkins and co. end the year on a series of high notes. With disgraced Gary Glitter securely banged up, and his annual Christmas Gang Show no more than a disturbing memory, the door is open for rock’s more seasonally inclined entertainers to claim Christmas as their own. The Darkness, clearly, are up for it. The stage is dressed to look like the innards of a church, and the band are in righteous form. We get two sets – Easter Is Cancelled is performed in full – the same number of costume changes, and more highlights than a hairdressers’ convention. Heavy Metal Lover thumps, Heart Explodes bounces, a cover of Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out) surprises, and everything is imbued with the band’s usual mix of…

Shellac Elondon Electric Ballroom A rare visit to the capital by the uncompromising trio reaps rich rewards. The biggest crush in front of the stage occurs not because of Shellac’s set of asymmetric, angular and metronomically precise brand of rock, but at the exact moment that they announce that they’ll be selling T-shirts just to the left of where bassist Bob Weston is standing. It’s an odd sight, for sure. But then nothing about Shellac is regular or predictable. Their egalitarian presentation ensures that singer/guitarist Steve Albini, powerhouse drummer Todd Trainer and the aforementioned Weston are lined up in even stature as they pummel out their increasingly intense onslaught. Nothing is as it seems. Trainer’s drums punctuate as much as they intervene, and his grooves are as unconventional as they…

Heather Findlay London Garage The voice of Mostly Autumn goes rock. Heather Findlay has always been a rocker at heart. Before she became synonymous with the folky prog stylings of Mostly Autumn (and later Mantra Vega), her Walkman was full of Led Zeppelin, Queen, Guns N’ Roses… But if tonight’s show is anything to go by – built largely around her Luke Morley-produced album Wild White Horses – it’s Fleetwood Mac who’ve been the most consistent influence in her respectfully under-the-radar career. Findlay knows this and embraces it, covering Gold Dust Woman as part of her set. Joined by a seven-strong crack squad of musicians (who seem like enthusiastic co-conspirators rather than just a backing band), she disproves any notions of being a one-dimensional waif with the robust, rootsy likes…

The Soundtrack Of My Life Saxon frontman Biff Byford on the special records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to him. Interview: Paul Elliott KATE BUSH: GETTY This is a big year for Saxon singer and heavy metal legend Biff Byford. There’s the 40th anniversary of his band’s classic album Wheels Of Steel, and on February 21 he releases his first solo record, School Of Hard Knocks. Of the latter, he says: “It’s very mixed, musically. It’s not just another Saxon album with my name on it.” Having recently recovered from triple-bypass heart surgery, the 69-year-old is in good spirits, his dry Yorkshire wit very much in evidence, as he looks back on his life in music and pays tribute to some of his biggest influences. THE FIRST…

THE BLACK CROWES The Bitter Fall and Joyous Rise of The Black Crowes The Robinson brothers have said repeatedly that it would never happen. But now, after years of bitter feuds and intense sibling rivalry, The Black Crowes are preparing to shake their money maker again. Words: Dave Everley Chris Robinson can’t tell you the worst fight he’s ever had with his brother, Rich. Not because he doesn’t want to, more because there have been so many worst ones. There was the time the pair had to be pulled apart after getting into it on their tour bus before a show by their band, The Black Crowes, at Red Rocks Amphitheater. That was a big one, Chris says. It erupted after Rich knocked over a Fairport Convention box set his…

HIGH TIMES After the world-beating one-two of Toys In The Attic and Rocks, Aerosmith were soaring. But as they started work on the budget-busting Draw The Line, drugs and dysfunction would send them into a tailspin that would take a decade to pull out of. Words: Paul Elliott IAN DICKSON/GETTY As 1977 rolled in, Aerosmith were flying high. In January, the band’s latest single Walk This Way, belatedly extracted from 1975 album Toys In The Attic, hit No.10 in the US. And in February, when they toured in Japan for the first time, they experienced a level of hysteria akin to Beatlemania. There was no rock band on Earth bigger than Led Zeppelin, but Aerosmith were rising fast. As their producer Jack Douglas said: “Kiss was their only competition, at…

Anchor Lane Casino R7 Glasgow rockers roll the dice. Kicking off with a slow burner like Blood & Irony, instead of with coming out all guns blazing, is a gamble, but it’s the perfect opening to a debut that exudes bags of confidence and boasts some impressive intelligent songwriting. Produced by former Little Angels and Gun frontman Toby Jepson, and with the album featuring a couple of tunes – the aforementioned opener and Dead Run – co-written by Ricky Warwick, Anchor Lane take their grungy influences, throw in some heavy bluesy rock and head off in all sorts of different directions on Fame Shame, Voodoo, Shell Of Me and Stone Cold Hearted. Warwick lends backing vocals to Dead Run, but with songs this strong the guest spots are just an…

Elephant Stone Hollow FUZZ CLUB Canadian space cadets take a trip. Faced with the gloom and doom of politics and social media, Montreal pop-psychers Elephant Stone have fled to a parallel planet – only to find that the same destructive people have got there before them and are intent on repeating the process. Nothing for it but to make a concept album, then… Roaming across the late-60s lysergic musical landscape, Elephant Stone leader and sitar player Rishi Dihr (who has also worked with Beck, among others) has come up with a batch of swirling, expansive songs, from the opening, depressing Hollow World to the closing, desperately optimistic A Way Home. Beyond the lyrical thread, the band’s tight harmonies provide a pervasive identity that also dissipates their influences ranging from The…

DeCarlo Lightning Strikes Twice FRONTIERS MUSIC No-compromise AOR. For Tommy DeCarlo, lead singer of Boston since 2007, this solo debut is something of a family affair, given that his chief collaborator is his son Tommy DeCarlo Jr on lead guitar and keyboards. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it isn’t hugely dissimilar to Boston, although the influence of Foreigner circa Agent Provocateur and a good bit of Vital Signs-era Survivor is plain to hear throughout the highly polished melodic rock on offer. It’s classic keyboard-heavy AOR through and through, with plenty of undemanding super-tuneful rockers like the title track, You Are The Fire and Gotta Go, plus the power ballads The One and Still In Love. It’s just like 1984 all over again. Essi Berelian…

Humanist Humanist IGNITION Producer/musician Rob Marshall casts his collaborative net wide. Having initially raised his profile as guitarist with shoegazing mods Exit Calm, Rob Marshall cemented his reputation with his songwriting and instrumental contributions to Mark Lanegan’s Gargoyle and Somebody’s Knocking albums, so it comes as little surprise to find the former Screaming Trees frontman dominating this album. Grounded by explorations into dark electronica and swathes of cascading guitars, Marshall’s Humanist project’s meditation on mortality takes in a number of guest vocalists including big hitters such as Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan (Shock Collar) and Ride’s Mark Gardner (When The Lights Go Out). On what is a coherent journey, the most notable contributions come from those singers removed far from their comfort zone. This ethereal environment suits the Righteous Mind’s Jim…

John Fogerty 50 Year Trip: Live At Red Rocks BMG Under a flannel sky: Creedence leader runs the full gamut of hits. John Fogerty is 74, and the songs he wrote in the flush of youth are the songs he sings in his senescence. On this collection, recorded at the famous Red Rocks amphitheatre west of Denver, he often sounds like an old man, with the more testing songs (Up Around The Bend, Fortunate Son, Down On The Corner) reducing his voice to a breathless yelp. Apart from three songs from 1985’s Centerfield, these are the songs that made his name, songs embedded deep in the American psyche, tied to US counter-culture almost as much as original newsreel footage. And while this performance is largely perfunctory, hearing them stacked up…

Hollywood Undead New Empire, Vol. 1 DOVE & GRENADE MEDIA/BMG Throwback to early Linkin Park. Hollywood Undead claim to have come up with a new sound on this, their sixth album. Well, if a new sound is defined as going back nearly two decades to the time when bands like Linkin Park, Good Charlotte and Alien Ant Farm were hot new talents, then the band do indeed have something fresh to offer. Combining rap with nu metal and pop-punk, what they’ve created is an undeniably well-crafted and effective album stuffed with energised melodies. The Undead prance through the streetwise ebullience of Time Bomb and Already Dead, while Empire suggests something altogether bleaker and nastier, and Killin It offers a more straightforward rap experience. Enemy serves up a manic anthem that…

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates Tim Holehouse Come AAAHH!!! REAL In a genre that can be stubbornly conformist, it’s always a pleasure to hear a bluesman breaking out of his lane. Tim Holehouse has never exactly been a dogma-reciting 12-bar bore – the highly prolific Plymouth songwriter’s lo-fi mutant blues on 2016’s Odd/Even would probably have made Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival crowd drop a bollock. But Come adds another string to his bow, wearing its country influences lightly while birthing the most accessible songs that he’s shown us in a career now spanning 15 years. These tracks are often little more than skeletons, with adornment limited to a handful of rudimentary acoustic chords, the whale song of a bottleneck guitar and the slice of a Nashville-referencing fiddle. But emotionally they linger…

Cream Goodbye Tour Live 1968 UMC Four Cream concerts brought back to life, warts ‘n’ all. The indefatigable demand for Cream concerts currently being satisfied by YouTube and the like has finally prompted the band’s record company into action. This four-CD set features three Californian shows from their final US tour in October ’68 and their farewell concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall the following month. Whereas previous live Cream albums have cherry-picked from a variety of shows, with Goodbye Tour Live you get the full roller-coaster ride, the peaks and troughs of a complete concert. Cream collectors will be wetting themselves over it. The set-list doesn’t vary much. Oakland, at the start of the tour, is more expansive, taking Crossroads at a leisurely pace, trying out Deserted Cities Of…

Graham Parker & The Rumour Live At Trent Poly Sports Hall, Nottingham, 1977 ANGEL AIR/SFM Pub rock’s greatest legacy go back to school days. Slight of stature, massive of voice, Graham Parker could, and should, have been huge. Granted, his recorded output has never exactly dipped when it comes to quality, but there was a golden period during his & The Rumour period (circa ‘76/7) when he could do no wrong. Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment (two studio albums trotted out just six months apart in ‘76) capture a significant wattage of the band’s pub-rocking, blue-eyed soul electricity. Yet it’s in the live arena that the collective (Parker, a shit-hot five-piece band including two Brinsleys and a Ducks Deluxe plus a four-man horn section) positively crackled with elemental power. The…

Glenn Hughes Justified Man – 1995-2003 HNE/CHERRY RED Half a dozen albums that find Hughes between a rock and a soulful place. For someone famously championed by Stevie Wonder as his favourite white voice, Glenn Hughes has not found it easy to build the kind of legacy that many of his inferiors have successfully achieved. Part of that is down to his refusal to conform to the heavy metal stereotype and its attendant vocal clichés. On the face of it, these six albums are an opportunity to box up a decade’s worth of Hughes’s career, literally and figuratively. Instead it inadvertently highlights the kind of inconsistencies that stronger management and guidance could have avoided. If Hughes had been listening, that is. His 1995 album Feel is a wilful switch from…

Gentle Giant Unburied Treasure MADFISH Thirty CDs of Portsmouth’s prog contenders. Being genuine rock stars in Italy and having minor US success just made Gentle Giant pine for more, leading to undignified pop lunges such as The Missing Piece (1977). Recorded in a rustic Netherlands studio because the band they wished they were, Genesis, had just had a hit there, all that rubbed off was the smell of bullshit. Piecemeal reissues have latterly resurrected their cult, and now here is, inarguably, the whole story, including the 11 studio LPs and 15 albums of previously unreleased material, plus lavish book, bells and whistles. The live marathon traces a story from the barbershop madrigal harmonies, skittering time-signatures and colliding counterpoint of 1973’s Excerpts From Octopus to a final burst of wobbly acoustic…

Pete Way Amphetamine LIVEWIRE/CARGO Rock’n’roll with no frills. In 2000, Pete Way delivered his own particular philosophy on music through his debut solo album Amphetamine. Now we all get another chance to hear the gospel according to the one-time UFO and Waysted bassist. And it’s hard to be anything but impressed with the manner in which he does the job. There’s no elaborate production here. Nor any attempt at sophistication. This is basic rock’n’roll, and revels in sounding like it’s just three mates pissed in a bar and messing about. It represents everything that Way has always held close to his heart. Not only does he play bass, he also handles the vocals in his inimitably enthusiastic style, albeit barely in tune. Along with guitarist Walt James and drummer Scott…

The Undertones West Bank Songs 1978-1983 – A Best Of BMG Not a duff moment on it. Not sure why BMG have seen fit to reissue 30 of The Undertones’ finest again, but I sure am not complaining. You can never have too much dissolute male teenage/early-20s perfection. This time round, pop perfection comes in the shape of a double LP with two coloured vinyl discs (gatefold sleeve, natch), seven top-40 hits – Teenage Kicks, My Perfect Cousin, Here Comes The Summer, Jimmy Jimmy, You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It!), Wednesday Week, It’s Going to Happen! – plus my one complaint here: the unnecessary Kevin Shields 2016 remix of second single Get Over You. Why that crass ending? Do not mess with perfection! There are sleeve-notes from…

Depeche Mode Spirits In The Forest DIR: ANTON CORBIJN The nature of fandom explored in beautiful style. When you’ve got Anton Corbijn behind the camera, you know you’re going to get much more than a bog-standard concert film. In fact, Depeche Mode, who hired the director back in 1990 for their Enjoy The Silence video, take a back seat in this documentary based on the Berlin finale of their 2018 Spirit tour, making way for the stories of six fans from around the world. Each has their own struggles, and in discussing how the band’s music has helped them through, a vivid portrait of the life-changing power of fandom emerges. Coming from as far afield as Mongolia, Romania and Colombia, by the end they are family, regardless of geography. The…

Hendrix 1968: Day By Day Ben Valkhoff & Luigi Garuti VORMGEVING Minutely detailed account of Jimi’s peak year. Driven by the patchy standard of Hendrix books, and past errors continually recycled as set in stone, Dutch archivist Valkhoff and Italian collector Garuti took two years constructing this micro-detailed day-by-day account of the year Jimi cracked America through crazily intense gigging at the same time as making Electric Ladyland. With Experience bassist Noel Redding’s diary, the pair list promoters, attendances, fees, hotels, set-lists (where possible) and how shows went, along with documenting recording schedules, jam sessions, business meetings, media interviews, girlfriends and rare days off. Rather than the flippant mythologising that still blights Hendrix, we find out what he did, how it went and, through intimate accounts of him in the…

LIVE! Dan Reed Network / FM / Gun London Shepherd’s Bush Empire With three bands each celebrating an album’s 30th anniversary, and taking it in turns to headline, it’s time to party like it’s 1989. If success is measured by the company you keep, then Dan Reed should have been a superstar. Back in 1989, the singer and his band, Portland, Oregon funk rock contenders the Dan Reed Network, were holed up in New York, working with funk legend Nile Rodgers on their second album, Slam. Rodgers was the founder of disco visionaries Chic, and the producer who dusted albums by David Bowie and Madonna with platinum. When they weren’t working hard, Reed and his bandmates would head to the Columbus Café, an Upper West Side eatery favoured by the…