Remember The Stone Roses? Really? It was 24 years ago that the group released the album that put them on the map, The Stone Roses. It remains an awesome album, but 24 years ago is a long time. Still, when the group reformed in 2011 and toured in 2012, the world didn’t yawn.
In England the group sold 220,000 tickets in an hour. Rolling Stone praised The Stone Roses’ 2013 Coachella appearance.
“Throughout the Stone Roses’ performance, [John] Squire took the songs to unexpected frontiers with unhinged, dimensional lead playing that felt both retro and futuristic, moving from full-on boogie to spectral echoes within the same passage,” Rolling Stone reported.
A film, “The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone,” was made of the reunion tour. It was released in the UK earlier this year,but now it’s coming to the U.S. It’ll be in theaters beginning Nov. 6, 2013 and the DVD and Blu-ray will be released Dec. 3, 2013.
Reviewing the film in England’s The Independent, Anthony Quinn wrote: “‘The Second Coming’ would have been a better title for this documentary about the return of The Stone Roses, but they’d already used it for an album.
“Tickled to be the chosen chronicler of the band’s momentous reunion in 2011, director Shane Meadows (‘This Is England’) presents a fan’s view of the story, which proves to be good news and bad. He loves the music, and conveys something of its headlong energy in both rehearsal and live settings. Just to hear the opening bass rumble of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’raised the hairs on the back of my neck.”
Here’s a promo for the film:
Here’s the original video for one of the group’s best songs, “I Wanna Be Adored”:
Morrissey’s much awaited autobiography, “Autobiography,” published by Penguin Classics, appeared in bookstores today in the UK and Europe. It has not yet been published in the U.S.
The first reviews are in. In the English paper, The Telegraph,Neil McCormick writes:
“With typical pretension, Morrissey’s first book has been published as a Penguin Classic. It justifies such presentation with a beautifully measured prose style that combines a lilting, poetic turn of phrase and acute quality of observation, revelling in a kind of morbid glee at life’s injustice with arch, understated humour, a laughter that is a shadow away from depression or anger. As such, it is recognisably the voice of the most distinctive British pop lyricist of his era. It is certainly the best written musical autobiography sinceBob Dylan’s Chronicles, and like that book it evokes a sense of what it must be like to dwell within such an extraordinary mind.”
Over at iJamming!, Tony Fletcher praises Morrissey’s writing ability. Fletcher says Morrissey’s description of his childhood has:
“…such vivid detail and such literary prowess that it competes amongst the very best writings on 1960s and 1970s Manchester.”
Over at Consequence Of Sound they’ve put together a list of all the most important revelations that are in book, based on what reviewers have written so far.
Here’s a few:
“Morrissey was upset to discover that The Smiths’ debut album was released in different configurations around the world (via Telegraph). He writes, ‘I vomit profusely when I discover that the album has been pressed in Japan with Sandie Shaw’s version of “Hand in Glove” included. I am so disgusted by this that I beg people to kill me.'”
And:
“Morrissey received a letter from Johnny Marr years after The Smiths’ broke up, which he reproduces in the book (via The Daily Beast): ‘I’ve only recently come to realize that you genuinely don’t know all the reasons for my leaving. To get into it would be horrible, but I will say that I honestly hated the sort of people we had become.'”
This is cool. Today, over at The Talkhouse,Dean Wareham, once of Galaxie 500 and now with a mini-LP, Emancipated, reviews the new Mazzy Star album, Seasons Of Your Day.
Writes Wareham:
There are two unmistakeable voices in Mazzy Star. (Well, there is also the restrained drumming of Keith Mitchell, which I have always admired, restraint being an overlooked musical virtue.) One, of course, belongs to Hope Sandoval, a beautiful singing voice that is not all sweetness; sometimes it is cloaked in an intimidating attitude, a kind of quiet sneer. People sometimes assume, when there is a woman fronting a band, that she is just the voice, that someone else is calling all the shots. But during Mazzy Star’s long hiatus she made two strange and mesmerizing albums of her own (as Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions); clearly she knows what she is doing, and the softly meandering “Common Burn,” with its harmonica and glockenspiel, sounds like one of hers.
The other voice is Roback’s guitar, which you recognize from his phrasing and from a few sounds that are his alone. And so at the 15-second point of the first track on the new LP, “In the Kingdom” before a word is uttered, you recognize the band in his inimitable, reverbed slide guitar. Yes, there are a thousand “better” slide players walking around Los Angeles right now but Roback has his own slightly lazy and delicate way; he is a stylist. “I’ve Gotta Stop” delivers the same sensation: an electric guitar phrase pushed through a slight wah, a sound he has been recording for many, many years.
You really want to read the whole thing, not just that excerpt. Head over to The Talkhouse.
Jeff Mangum performing in January of this year (2013) in Houston.
The indie art-rock band Neutral Milk Hotel returned to the stage after a 15-year absence and delivered a “stunning show,” according to Roger Hartley, a fan who was in the audience. The first performance of the group’s world tour took place in Baltimore’s 2640 Space at St. John’s Church Friday night (Oct. 11, 2013). Photos and recording were not allowed but a fan shot the video clip at the top of this post.
Jeff Mangum, the band’s idiosyncratic leader, “stepped out under the lights looking like he’d been holed up in a fire lookout cabin for a decade,” according to Jasper Colt, a long-time fan who posted a review of the show on his blog.
“Mangum’s face was covered in a long beard and his hair hung down to his shoulders,” John Gentile reported at Rolling Stone. “Even his eyes were obscured by the shadows cast from the brim of his cap.” Gentile also noted: “Although Mangum’s voice has dropped slightly since the release of the 1998’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, it has also become much more rich and much more powerful.”
“The setting was perfect,” Jasper Colt wrote in his blog post. “The nave of the quaintly dilapidated Saint John’s Church in the Charles Village neighborhood is known simply as 2640 Space, and comes complete with vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows.”
The hour and a half, 18-song set began with “Two-Headed Boy” and “The Fool,” and ended with “Engine.” Neutral Milk Hotel performed songs off both albums, 1996′s On Avery Island and 1998′s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and from their 1994 EP, Everything Is. The group played no new material. Elf Power was the show opener.
“Thankfully, they kept the stage banter to a bare minimum and stuck to what they do best, covering a good portion of their catalog in the ninety minute set,” Colt, a Washington, D.C.-based photographer wrote. “Each carefully orchestrated masterpiece rang true with the full ensemble of brass, percussion, keyboards and singing saws. There were a few issues with the sound system, but these were easily forgiven in the excitement. The real highlight of the show, for my money, was the haunting sincerity of Mangum’s voice that first drew me into his recordings. Time may have taken its toll on the walls of this old nave, but his sweet and familiar tone remains unscathed.”
“Throughout the show, multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster was as much a centerpiece as Mangum,” Gentile of Rolling Stone wrote. “While Mangum held onto his guitar for the entire set, Koster constantly shifted between instruments, even in the middle of songs, going from the accordion to a banjo to a handsaw played with a bow. That handsaw added the spooky whirl in the background of ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ and witnessing the carpentry tool live in action was quite a sight.”
“All musicians and songs were tight,” Hartley wrote. “Loved Scott Spillane singing words to every song to himself as he awaited horn parts…incredible drums…and Julian Koster playful as ever. The stunning silence of the audience between songs was remarkable. Something I’ve never seen or heard after years of shows. Each anticipating the next and unwilling to do anything to break the warmth in that room. I saw more emotions in one place. Glee … Tears… Excitement…even a little dancing.”
Setlist:
Two-Headed Boy
The Fool
Holland, 1945
A Baby for Pree
Garden Head Leave Me Alone
Everything Is
King of Carrot Flowers
Aeroplane
Oh Comely
Song Against Sex
Ruby Bulbs
Snow Song Pt. 1
Ghost
Untitled (The Penny Arcade in California)
Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
Encore:
Naomi
Ferris Wheel on Fire
Engine
You can hear all the recorded versions of the songs the group played here.
The bright lights shine on Kim Gordon. The New Yorker, which never profiled Sonic Youth during the group’s 30 years as one of New York’s most celebrated and influential bands, kicked things off by devoting six upfront pages to Gordon this past June.
Since then, as the early October release date of Coming Apart, the album she recorded with her current musical collaborator Bill Nace under the name Body/Head, came and went, other major publications devoted space to Gordon. From the New York Times and Rolling Stone to Pitchfork, writers have been more than excited to talk to Gordon about whatever she’s willing to talk about, including her new, challenging noise rock.
“I wasn’t trained as a musician,” Gordon told the New York Times’ Ben Ratliff. “But I did grow up listening to a lot of jazz records, and John Coltrane.”
Coming Apart’s opening song, “Abstract,” Gordon said, has a structure similar to Coltrane’s Meditations: “You have a theme,” she said, “and it falls apart, and then it comes back.”
The Italian writer Elena Ferrante is one of my favorite living novelists. She won me over with her heartbreaking 2012 novel, “My Brilliant Friend,” the first volume of a trilogy. It’s the story of two friends, Lila and Elena.
We start when the two are kids, and we follow them into their teenage years and Lila’s marriage. The two girls live in Naples and their families are dirt poor. The girls or people they know suffer many misfortunes. And yet this is an inspirational book. It’s narrated by Elena long after all that she recounts has happened.
There are two great pieces you can read to get up to speed on Ferrante.
The first ran last year in the New Yorker following publication of the first book of her trilogy. Read it here.
More recently, the New York Times ran this review of “Story of a New Name,” the second volume.
Hopefully the third volume will be published in a year or so.
“Someone in the first balcony yelled out, ‘Fiona! Get healthy! We want to see you in 10 years!’
Apple, understandably, looked aghast, then hurt, then furious. She unleashed a torrent of vitriol at the unseen member of the peanut gallery. ‘I am healthy! Who the fuck do you think you are? I want you to get the fuck out of here. I want the house lights on so I watch you leave!’
That might have been the end of it — the house lights did come on, and the shouter did eventually depart — but the anonymous commenter decided to get one last shot in: ‘I saw you 20 years ago and you were beautiful!’
There was no coming back from that. Apple insisted she was done, spat her frustration into the microphone, and fought back tears. She pulled it together enough to perform an understandably intense version of “Waltz (Better Than Fine)” that she sang through sobs. But the wellspring of feelings burst forth again. She raged, empathized, apologized, and departed. Show over.”
Beatles authority Mark Lewisohn’s 800-plus page biography of the Fab Four will be published on October 29, 2013. The first volume of a three-volume set ends at 1962, the year the group scored their first UK hit with “Love Me Do.”
According to British music journalist David Hepworth, a self-described Beatles expert, “I can open this book on almost any page and find something I didn’t know, hae never had confirmed or have never realised the full significance of before.”
If you saw Neil Young’s Farm Aid performance today (Saturday Sept 21, 2013) at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, you saw a superstar lose his cool as he tried repeatedly to talk serious to the audience about the domination of farming by corporations, about the connection between factory farming and climate change and, finally, about the suicides of Kurt Cobain and Phil Ochs.
Young opened his 40-minute acoustic set with a spirited performance of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
His set was dominated by cover versions, as if the recent release of Bob Dylan’s Another Self Portrait had inspired Young: Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” (included on the original Self Portrait), Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” (played on upright piano), Tim Hardin’s “Reason To Believe (played on pump organ) and Phil Ochs’ “Changes.” Young interspersed just two intense performances of his original songs among the covers: “Old Man” and “Heart of Gold.”
“Early Morning Rain”:
“Old Man”:
“Heart Of Gold”:
“Since I Met You Baby”:
The music was great, but Young was intent on delivering a message beyond the music. “The Farmers are on the front line of climate change…,” Young told the audience. “All that carbon that’s up in the sky. And believe me, this has a lot to do with what’s going on with all these radical weather patterns we’re seeing. It’s real. All the carbon that’s up in the sky, it used to be down here. Used to be in the ground. Used to be in the soil. Used to be down here under the crops. And then Monsanto and all the big chemical companies nnd the industrialists, they came and made factory farms and replaced family farms and they brought in the chemicals, made it so [family farms] couldn’t grow without chemicals. And the farmer, the little guys, tried to get a loan from the bank and the bank said. ‘We’ll give you a loan but you have to use these chemicals, what we tell you to use, or we won’t give you a loan.’
“That’s the truth,” he continued. “That’s what we’re living right now. Those chemicals have made it so we’ve lost sometimes more than half our topsoil. And it didn’t just disappear; it’s up there. We need to bring it down to earth…”
Some of the audience weren’t buying it, and just wanted more music. Young became agitated, and started talking some more about climate change.
“Colorado could be coming down the highway towards Albany right now,” Young said, referring to the recent storm in Colorado that caused nearly $2 million in property damage. “If you don’t believe me, you’re in denial. Wait a couple of months. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it down in New Jersey. You saw it in New York, saw it in New Orleans, saw it up in Canada, saw it in Toronto, saw it in Calgary, in the Midwest. It just keeps moving around like a ghost. We got to stop it…”
He sat down at his pump organ, started to play “Reason To Believe,” but he just couldn’t do it. It was like he was compelled to keep talking about what he felt was the point of the Farm Aid benefit concerts. So he got up and said to the crowd, “I’m not done. I don’t care. Somebody’s got to say something. Somebody’s got to say something. Don’t you want freedom of choice. Wouldn’t you like to burn something clean instead of something dirty? I would. A lot of people don’t believe it. Oh we got to have big oil, he’s out of his mind. I may be out of my mind but we still don’t need it. We got farmers we got the earth we got the sun we got the land. Let’s give it a chance.”
What followed was a funeral slow rendition of the Tim Hardin classic.
“Reason Of Believe”:
And then Young was talking again. “Life is short folks,” he said. “We all know that. There’s no time like right now. I was talking back stage with Pete [Seeger] before he came out here and he told me a tale about this friend of his. We lost this friend a long time ago ‘cause life is short. He killed himself. And Pete talked to him a few days before that happened and Pete said, ‘I wish I’d done something more to stop that from happening.’ I said, ‘Well don’t worry about that, there’s nothing you can do about it. Because that kind of thing happens all the time.’ It happened to me. I had a friend [Cobain], who was a singer and he was great. And he reached out to me and I tried to get back to him through his office. I tried for days and days and finally I gave up. Couple of days later he blew his head off. So life is short and you can regret things…
And that’s when someone in the ground yelled out “Come on, let’s go,” and Young freaked.
“Come on let’s go?” he said. “Did I hear ‘come on lets go?’ I’m on my way buddy. I work for me. So you know I’m trying to make a little point here. But this guy that Pete knew, he was one of the greatest poets that ever lived. He wrote this next song that some of you have probably never heard and it’s long as hell. I don’t know what to tell you… One of the greatest songwriters that ever lived. Phil Ochs was his name…”
And then Young ended his set with a beautiful performance of Phil Ochs’ “Changes.”
Watch Saturday’s Live Aid performances, including Young’s entire set.
Expat Kelly Grovier, who contributes to the Times Literary Supplement, has attempted in this book to predict the future — not as risky as it might seem at first, since neither us nor Grovier are likely to be around by the time it’s possible to judge the success or failure of his endeavor.
“We lack the necessary perspective when it comes to judging what it is about our time that is most important or representative culture-wise, for which reason the work of drawing up grand lists – the creation of a canon of the moment – is best left to those who come after,” Rachel Cooke writes in a review published today (Sept. 21, 2013) in The Guardian. “The art world, moreover, moves so fast these days that such a volume will doubtless seem out of date even before it makes it to paperback (the earliest piece included is Marc Quinn’ Self, from 1991; the most recent is Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds from 2010).”
