The Manic Street Preachers returned to the live music scene with a private intimate gig at the Working Men’s Club in west London.
The band showcased material from their new album ‘Postcards From a Young Man’, which is due for release on 20 September, and played all of their greatest hits including ‘Everything Must Go’, ‘Design For Life’ and ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’.
Manic Street Preachers will kick off their UK tour in Glasgow on 29 September, playing shows all over the country.
It seems that Snoop Dogg is getting rejected from traveling to most countries around the world at the moment. The latest country to not accept Snoop is the Netherlands.
Snoop Dogg was scheduled to perform at the Parkpop festival, but the mayor and law enforcement officials asked its organizers to find an artist of more “open and friendly character” to play the event.
“Mojo, the largest concert promoter in Holland says, ‘We have never had any issues with Snoop, who has played magnificent shows at many of the festivals we promote such as Lowlands, North Sea Jazz and at several other promoted shows by Mojo.’ Snoop is a mainstay at music festivals all over the world and has performed at all of these without incident.”
Snoop Dogg is scheduled to perform at the Glastonbury and Wireless festivals in Britain this summer, after a ruling in March by a tribunal there that said the rapper should not have been denied a visa for entry in 2007 after a public disorder at Heathrow Airport in 2006, involving members of his entourage, resulted in Snoop Dogg’s arrest.
SICK BOY: Well, at one time, you’ve got it, and then you lose it, and it’s gone forever…
I don’t mean to be dismissive, but that quote pretty much sums up Muse’s latest offering from me. I understand that they’re one of the biggest bands in the country, if not the world, and that nothing I say here is going to have the slightest effect on their huge popularity, towering album sales, or the droves of fans who will be attending their next run of sell-out gigs. Their reputation is built mainly on the back of their big album, ‘Showbiz’ and a great live act, but I get the feeling that they’ve either lost heart, or something’s turned bitter in the emotional and creative cocktail that they used to get this far. The new album pulls in a load of odd and disparate influences, from the warbling strains of the Dr. Who theme tune heard in ‘Uprising’, or the strangely mangled Queen-like bursting operatic harmonies in ‘United States of Eurasia’ (A 1984 reference?In my anti-establishment band?).
The whole album feels forced, thrown together with a mish-mash of conflicting styles and rather samey material that doesn’t really take the band forward. I don’t know whether they’re trying to emulate bands like Radiohead and Portishead in trying for something avant-garde and different by sticking in these weird elements, but it doesn’t work for me. I now prepare to take flak for the rest of the week. As a small compensation, here’s a link to the Guardian’s rather white-washy piece with a We7 streaming widget where you can listen to the whole album.
A slow, red fire burns within me, steady and warm like coal. Its heat suffuses me, and little sparks and snaps off it, bearing my mind away – back to old friends and remembered joys. This glowing kernel resides inside me because I have seen Fat Freddy’s Drop play live. I was late. I missed the support act. I scarcely had time to buy a beer, and as soon as I had something wonderful happened in my ears.
They played two consecutive nights at the Camden Roundhouse and I was at the second – the last night of their UK tour before they went home to play the Aussie/NZ summer circuit. I loved their album before I went in, and I knew they had a reputation for being great live, but even so I was blown away. In case you don’t already know, they’re a Kiwi seven-piece dub and reggae outfit, that have released one live and one studio album, and they’re big… Sorry, make that BIG down under.
Their music is crafted. This isn’t something that’s been thrown together during a drunken evening in someone’s garage – this has been worked on, pieced, built and blended together. Usually their songs will have a big, warm, deep bass line, something that doesn’t seem complex, but then as the layers of music – a drumbeat, some vibes, maybe a flute, a soft vocal – come in, an unsuspected complexity evolves, the head of the bar isn’t where you thought it was to begin with, and the key’s changed and you’re surrounded by this lush, slow, throbbing mathmos of sound.
They’re not a band that will make you fight your way to the front to get your head down into the mosh pit. They’re not a band that will keep you bouncing like a frog on speed for ninety minutes. Fat Freddy’s Drop are a band who will wrap you up in music, draw you into their performance with textured, fluid, beautifully engineered noises, and a togetherness, a tightness that comes only from practice and professionalism. More than this, their live performances are unique and structured in such a way that they have a definite culmination – an apex that is all the more significant and memorable for the fact that their drops are few and far between.
The Roundhouse gig I attended took the songs I knew and elaborated upon them, with different takes on each. There are sections in their tracks where they take the rolling beat they’ve layered from ten different instruments weaving in and out, strip it back, and then put everything together for the most grinsome, satisfying drop. There was a section during which an acoustic tune had been spun into a long, pulsing, almost trance-like piece of music, totally different from the album version, and it was only after spinning the crowd into this ten-minute trance that they stopped… and let it drop.
Everyone. Every single person in that audience was smiling like a loon and dancing like a happy toddler in front of the stereo. It was a musical epiphany. It was like Jake and Elwood seeing the light. I wanted to do backflips. I can’t adequately describe how good their live show is. Even to describe the fun and antic japery of their sweaty, singlet wearing trombone player is more than I can do, let alone the whole glory of their horn section.
Fat Freddy’s studio album is called ‘Based On a True Story’. If you don’t like it, you can’t come to my birthday party. They should have released their second in October last year (’08), but here we are in March and it hasn’t been released yet, so all I can do is sit, and wait, and Hope.
This is definitely a first, Goldie Lookin’ Chain are holding a pay-what-you-want gig.
The band are holding a warm-up show for their next UK tour in January at Metro in London.
Here’s the blurb:
“Entry to this Metro show is FREE, however, taking a leaf out of Radiohead’s book, you will be expected to pay as much (or as little) as you like on your way out depending on how much fun you had (but you don’t get a free Radiohead album). It’s a bit like the Severn bridge toll into Wales, but in reverse.”
