it's not all bad news. i can think of two or three lamer years: 2004 was pretty dull, and in 1943 there was a war on!!
notwithstanding the invasion of poland, 2008 was the year of old man strength. the best albums were all by musicians at least ten years 'deep' in the 'game': aidan moffatt's rambling spoken-word sexpert opus i can hear your heart, tindersticks' elegant, modest hungry saw (review), and the breeders' woozy, nagging grower, mountain battles. the best gigs, too, were by chaps who might have liked a sit down afterwards: leonard cohen bringing electric clarinet to the royal albert hall, my bloody valentine bringing earplugs to the roundhouse, and the jesus & mary chain paying tribute to earl brutus' nick sanderson at the forum.
most of the middling stuff was also from veterans: dependable records rather than career highlights from nick cave, bonnie prince billy, portishead, gutter twins, glenn campbell and spiritualized, from ageing metallers like the /dc, the priest, and the 'N Roses, and from rappers around since at least the late 90s: EMC, pete rock, heltah skeltah, lil' wayne, scarface, q-tip, nas, vast aire, el-p, RZA, GZA, tricky and roots manuva. Not Common, though. hell no.
next year one can only expect the same, as market forces, the global credit crisis, and the collapse of the once-sturdy rock pension scheme forces more and more ageing rockers onto the comeback trail.
do remember to keep warm during the winter months.
christmas and rapping go together like pigs and shit, if you'll excuse my language.
from 'christmas rapping' to 'christmas in hollis' to a dipset xmas, there's enough material for a guardian blog post, let alone an entry in galactic mystery solvers. put simply, violence is that much more violent at christmas; incarceration that much more bleak; smoking weed that much more festive.
if i could go back in a time machine, dispensing goodwill to my fellow man, i'd travel to no limit HQ in 1998, and convince master p to put together a christmas album featuruing his full-strength roster (and mr serv-on), cementing his position as the phil spector of mostly-awful southern rap.
of course, master p did release a christmas album, albeit with a thinner roster, in his early, indie days on the west coast. high fo' xmas by the west coast bad boys, a half-hour tape released in 1994, is far more enjoyable than its big-budget west-cast-counterpart, suge knight's xmas on death row.
saddeningly, there is no line rhyming "christmas tree" with "penitentiary", but there are a few gems, not least from king george, who laments that "christmas in the ghetto got me paranoid / makes me wanna spray around with my shiny toy".elsewhere,'rev. do-wrong xmas party' injoins revellers to celebrate "til you throw up, with some egg-nog, gin and some roll-up" over a 'party n bullshit' sample. 'jackin fo xmas' pinches well-known west coast beats for an entertaining seasonal medley. strangest of all is 'ghetto nite', a thin, echo-laden rendition of 'silent night', which sounds like something animal collective might release: what it's doing on a numbskull gangsta christmas record is anyone's guess.
the first rule of successful metal is to name a song after yourself.
in an ideal world, this song would appear on your eponymous debut album. i'm thinking, of course, of 'iron maiden' by iron maiden, off of iron maiden.
in cases of extreme largesse, bands even name songs after other bands. talking heads wrote 'radiohead' more than a decade before radiohead were even formed. but radiohead are profoundly important like that.
pavement did this several times, paying tribute to the likes of jon spencer and (hey!) polvo, as well as singing the priases of REM, smashing pumpkins, and stone temple pilots. if they don't release them on their super-deluxe-back-catalogue-10th-anniversary-domino-records-reissue-fandango-series-of-decade-long-pitchfork-reassessment-reminiscence thing, i might post some more. i, too, pratice, largesse. here's the best one:
if i like how it turns out, i might write some reviews of gigs that i’ve been to, by the dead kennedys, the gutter twins, built to spill, f***ed up and leonard cohen. would you rather i didn’t?
while i’m here, a video. this actually happened in england, which upsets the applecart somewhat:
so, what are your thoughts on the inspirational candidacy of sanitor obama? do you think he’s got what it takes to win? leave a comment in the comments box, saying who you’re going to vote for.
speaking personally as myself, i haven’t yet adumbrated this forum to speak on senteror obama’s candidacy, with it’s themes of hope and change, or to articulate due hommage to his eloquence.
now, that drought can end.
advisedly, i live in a foreign country and am asleep while the American Nation has elections. but, as someone who has occasionally posted rap tunes, i feel it would go without saying to post an enormous picture.
time was, i’d had enough of all these politicians. like my man dizzee rascal, i thought they were all pretty much the same. do you know what i mean? that was, until i saw this:
the bullingdon club and it’s social wing, the Conservative party front-bench, is the true face-image of HOPE. hope that things will CHANGE. hope that CHANGE will work.
just as dentistor obama’s selection of joe budden as his running mate epitomizes and endorses his status as the hip-hop candidate, so the bullingdon’s decision to name themselves after Oxford’s indiest venue ushers in a vital new period of grass-roots DIY politics. heads are starting to recognise this shit, and rest assured, GMS will be in the vanguard of this particular sweep.
no great popular movement is the same without the endorsement of musicians. here, bonnie tyler has stepped up to the plate and given dap to the bullingdons in the webclip for her street anthem, ’total eclipse of the heart’. if you believe in democracy, you’ll stand up too, and make his thursday a total eclipse of the ballot box.
i'm eating guacamole, courtesy of my fair companion, and goddamn it's doing me good.
according to the super furry animals, guacamole is a cure for insomnia, which is not something i'm in a position to confirm or deny. wikipedia is no help, although it does provide an extended digression about peter mandelson, hartlepool and mushy peas, if that's your sort of thing.
if any of GMS' readers are holding it down in the dirty south, may i recommend hudson's caribbean and good food restaurant, st mary's street, southampton? their jerk chicken runs the show.
in 2003, dexys returned to the stage. GMS caught them in sunny basingstoke, and it was fine as fuck, if you'll pardon the expression. kevin's voice wasn't what it once was, but he was ably backed up by pete williams, re-creating billy adams' side-man role from don't stand me down. the lounge sound and theatrical interludes had a lot of the audience heading for the doors. for my money, it was the best reunion gig i've ever seen.
you don't see my bloody valentine or the pixies in pinstripe suits, after all.
a new century saw a new generation of british tv comedians finding humour in dexys. this is from series two of the underrated big train. that's simon pegg as igor, and 'the artist' kevin eldon as kevin rowland. and here's the mighty boosh, doing what they do:
in 1996 kevin signed with creation records. three years later, he released the lush covers album my beauty. that year, the open-minded reading festival crowd bottled off our kev and his cross-dressing strippers. funnily enough, they seemed to dislike rowland's gender-bending karaoke even more than they disliked 50 cent's commercially-oriented homophobia.
GMS readers are a tolerant bunch, or at least i hope so. here's the thong-tastic video for his cover of unit 4+2's 'concrete and clay'.
GMS interrupts dexys week to direct you to the consistently high-quality mixing desk blog, who have a dutch bootleg (so to speak), of dexys from 1981.
it's mostly young soul rebels-era high-octane northern soul, with a couple of handy non-album songs - 'breaking down the walls of heartache' and 'show me'. but the inclusion of 'soon' and 'plan b' shows the way to the incredible five-songs-in-one second side of too rye ay.
while i'm at it, here'sa clean-shaven dexys performing the irish-american traditional 'kathleen mavourneen'. this sort of thing used to happen on telly, you know.
kevin's 1988 solo album the wanderer wasn't as passionate as searching for the young soul rebels, as accessible as too-rye-aye, or as imaginative as don't stand me down. its dabbling in lounge pop and country was deliberately anti-fashion, as was kevin's new look, which fans of the league of gentlemen will recognise as the model for embittered businessman geoff tipps.
the video for 'young man' embraces the unfashionable aspects of british working class popular entertainment in a manner recently revived by GMS-favourite richard hawley.
following the disastrous reception of don't stand me down, dexys tasted one last piece of commercial success: a top-twenty hit with 'because of you', a mediocre theme tune for the unfunny window-cleaning sitcom brush strokes. hey - another comedy connection! 'becuase of you' (1986)
like kevin rowland, shane macgowan is a displaced irishman with a background in punk who found success in the eighties playing big-band folk-influenced barnstormers, until addiction caught up with him and clouded his muse. macgowan's biggest hit, 'fairytale of new york', is as ubiquitous on both sides of the atlantic as dexys' celtic-influenced 'c'mon eileen'. but rowland was the first to try the anglo-irishman-in-new-york idea with 'this is what she's like' from the final dexys album, 1985's don't stand me down.
a critical and commercial disaster, don't stand me down mixed marvin gaye, 70s AM rock, conversational interludes and preppy clobber. the accompanying live show, 'coming to town ... park street south', interspersed songs with dramatic set pieces. the full version of 'this is what she's like' features a rambling monologue about the italian word for 'thunderbolt', a spectacular beach boys-style middle section, and a cagey, nonchalant chat between kevin and billy adams. the hostility with which this record was received is baffling. look out for the hipster on drums.
dexys were to the eighties what slade were to the seventies: eccentrically-attired top of the pops mainstays singing oddball pop masterpieces in thick regional accents. in both cases, their reputation as novelty acts, but their albums revealed much greater depth. both bands made minor inroads into the US, but remained essentially, parochially, defiantly, british. here's the sort of thing that doesn't happen any more: dexys covering slade's inescapable 'merry xmas everybody', beamed into millions of living rooms on christmas day, 1982.
dexys are easy to lampoon, but GMS suspects they were usually in on the joke. here's their classic top of the pops performance of 'jackie wilson said' in front of a picture of diminutive scotish darts legend jocky wilson.
moving on to the raggle-taggle armpit-bearing dungaree-sporting fiddling-gypsy celtic-soul schtick of too-rye-aye, dexys' second album. for all their pretension, passion and sentimentality, dexys have always had a broader streak of humour than most bands. here we have them setting up shop in the young ones'bathroom, to perform van morrison's 'jackie wilson said (i'm in heaven when you smile)'.
searching for the young soul rebels was sold on its succession of up-tempo foot-stomping soul-shouters. but it's the slow-burning centrepieces, 'keep it' and 'i couldn't help it if i tried', which deserve as much attention, coming closer to edwin starr than to geno washington.
sticking with dexys in their projected passion revue rabble-rousing punk-soul ram-jam irish-literature-loving, clean-living, master-tape-stealing, manifesto-spluttering, marching-on-the-spot docker-chic phase, here we have 'there there my dear', released as a single in 1980. unlike its predecessor, 'geno', it didn't reach number one. but then, it was up against 'xanadu' by olivia newton-john and the electric light orchestra. don't f- with qubla khan, kevin. 'there there my dear' olivia newton-john & elo 'xanadu'
hello readers! it's dexys midnight runners week all week here on GMS.
over the next seven days, we'll be revisiting the peaks and troughs of kevin rowland's brilliant, eccentric career. by re-visiting, i expect i mean posting some youtube videos. we'll also be exploring dexys' intriguing relationship with UK tv comedy. by exploring, i expect i mean posting some youtube videos.
we'll start at the beginning, with 'dance stance (burn it down)' from 1979 - one of the greatest opening tracks, from one of the greatest debut albums, from the greatest british band evarr. except maybe pulp. play it loud. "jimmy? yeah! sal? yeah! for god's sake burn it down..."
Raekwon has always been one of the Wu's most perverse characters - sullen and belligerent where most of his fellow MCs are playful and nerdy, insular and defensive where his long-time foil, Ghostface, plays the ebullient, effusive, eccentric extrovert.
Raekwon's debut album, Only Built For Cuban Linx, is an undisputed classic - groundbreaking and sumptuous, consistently ambitious in its widescreen mafia fantasies, yet endlessly rich in its vivid details, classy production and impenetrable slang. His decision to follow it by replacing producer RZA with a string of no-name, low-rent New York beat-makers, and to swap Ghostface for his clumsy, embarrassing posses, American Cream Team and Ice Water, resulted in one of the most dramatic creative down-turns in rap history. Can he rescue his career with the long-threatened Cuban Linx II?
Raekwon and his third-favourite producer
Raekwon's performance at this year's All Tomorrow's Parties festival offered few clues. The rapper recreated his debut song-for-song, assisted by Ghostface and Theodore Unit, adding a few classic Wu verses here and there (mostly the same ones Ghostface had performed the previous evening). There was no new material and little showmanship, beyond some ostentatious cognac-drinking and a rather fetching beard. GMS is partial to the sight of muscular chaps lumbering around a stage, shouting in unison into microphones while a DJ makes gunshot noises, but many people weren't. The crowd thinned, more rapidly than Ghostface's audience, and more rapidly still once Broken Social Scene brought their Fleetwood Mac-style communal indie drivel to the main stage.
Raekwon may not know much about entertaining ambivalent hipsters, employing handy weed-carriers or beat selection, but he sure knows his way around a dense crime narrative. Not content with re-hashing 'Scarface', Scorsese and John Woo, 'Musketeers of Pig Alley', the best track from his middling third album, The Lex Diamond Story, takes inspiration from D.W. Griffith's pioneering 1912 short noir of the same name. If you've got 15 minutes to spare, the whole film is below, and comes highly recommended by yours truly, and, erm, Raekwon.
More D.W.? 'The Reformers', from the following year, is a priceless skewering of moralising interventionist liberals, as 'Dickensian' in its way as 'Musketeers'. Word to Scott Templeton. The League of Civic Purity - now there's a posse.
Every year, come December, bloggers compile lists of their favourite albums of the past twelve months. And every year, without fail, rap-loving bloggers start to argue about whether mixtapes count as albums.
Those who would exclude mixtapes from their imaginary competition insist on the need for a level playing field. They find one in the legal and commercial constraints governing the creation of albums. Mixtapes' illegal use of un-cleared samples, borrowed beats and previously-available songs, they argue, makes it impossible to judge them on equal terms with commercial releases. Defenders of mixtapes argue that market forces and intellectual property rights provide an arbitrary and unhelpful framework by which to judge works of art. Mixtapes, they argue, offer artists freedom to express themselves without the need to gratify record company marketing departments; they also allow the use of samples that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
An aesthetic argument runs in parallel. Critics argue that mixtapes are often uneven, hastily thrown together, and poorly-mastered, and that they offer instant gratification rather than anything of lasting value. Supporters counter that, originality notwithstanding, mixtapes are frequently more coherent and satisfying than albums. Why bar Wale's excellent Mixtape About Nothing from an end-of-year list on the grounds that it was given away for free? Why make apologies for Nas' patchy Untitled when his N****r Tape stands as one of the best releases of his career?
After all, the idea of an album as a 'statement' or free-standing original work of art only developed in the mid-sixties: its gold standard has always been a certain type of predominantly male, white rock music. Hip hop, with its traditions of freestyling and DJing, has more in common with folk music, where performers constantly adapt, re-interpret and add to existing tunes and lyrics. Using the idea of the 'album' to judge rap distorts our appreciation of the art-form: for instance, many consider Kool G Rap one of the all-time great MCs, but he rarely appears on lists of great rap albums, let alone great albums.
None of this matters, of course. Artists will continue to make music, and will, on the whole, struggle to make a living doing so. Bloggers will continue to bicker and list. My opinion? Of course mixtapes aren't albums. They're mixtapes. The clue's in the name.
None of which makes me any the wiser about what the hell's gone on with the new Clipse album, The Clipse present the Re-Up Gang. Is it a mixtape? Is it an album? One thing's for sure: it's bloody awful.
The Virginia duo's series of mixtapes, We Got It 4 Cheap vols. 1-3,saw them adding vocals to familiar beats, frequently improving upon the originals. On Present the Re-Up Gang, they reverse the formula, recycling verses from Volume 3 that originally accompanied tracks by the likes of Shawty Lo and B.G., fitting them instead with original beats. If new rhymes over old beats makes a mixtape, what about new beats under old rhymes? Further muddying the waters, Present appears to have secured a commercial release, via Koch Records - a label that operates in a grey area between albums and mixtapes, offering artists one-off album deals, together with an unusual degree of creative control, low overheads, fast turnarounds, competitive royalty rates and an allegedly relaxed approach to sample clearance. Finally, the logic of claiming to 'present' the Re-Up Gang is baffling. The Gang is made up of the Clipse plus Philadelphia rappers Ab-Liva and Sandman, who featured heavily on all three mixtape volumes, and were given equal billing with the Clipse on the third. What is the point of this album?
None of this would be a concern if Clipse's round-about manner of creating original music was at all successful. Instead, the recycling process has diluted any distinctive qualities the group ever possessed. Fulfilling the dictum that a free market tends towards homogeneity and mediocrity, Clipse have hit the golden mean of turgid drugs-and-money-rap: something like a G-Unit album, but with slightly sharper metaphors and less memorable beats.
When not damping their once-chilling drug-talk with dead-eyed celebrations of wealth, Clipse use the album to air rap's dullest and most self-indulgent theme: record label politics. This mind-numbing tendency, a favourite of the world's most boring rapper, 'Regular' Joe Budden, has become so prevalent that prissy complaints about altered release dates and threadbare promotion budgets have even tainted the latest album by the Roots - an otherwise creative and intelligent group. Clipse's attempt to make a fast buck by recycling lyrics and rush-releasing a sub-par album renders such complaints insincere. The apparent ease with which they reconcile money-talk and self-pity while expecting fans to pay for work vastly inferior to that given away for free six months ago raises questions about their integrity and judgement.
It's interesting that one of the album's recycled verses features threats against Lil' Wayne, another successful mixtape rapper. Where the Clipse's heavy release-schedule has seen them creeping steadily towards mediocrity, Wayne's constant output has seen him embrace eccentricity. The resulting commercial album - though entirely uneven - has already sold over two million copies. Clipse Present the Re-Up Gang would do well to equal G-Unit's Terminate On Sight, which has yet to sell a tenth of that.
GMS had long considered devendra banhart a respectable tyrannosaurus rex tribute act who would never raise his game and pen 'ride a white swan'; always destined to be indie-rock's second-best r. kelly fan.
but here's his new video, for the tropicalia-style 'carmensita'. it brings back memories of watching the mahabharat on saturday afternoons in the early 90s. the BBC needs to bring that back - it was like the wire, only in 9th-century-BC India, and with cardboard weaponry.
'carmensita' also contains mention of a homunculus. uncle lawrencewould be proud.
more fun:
tyrannosaurus - 'deborah' (live at kempton park, 1968)
the new roots manuva video is wicket. the beat isn't 'deep cover', but i like his delivery. as usual with roots, the order of play is eccentric englishness, with no mention of balling and certainly no gatting. it's not gully by any means, but i reckon it's on point. predictably, the contest is likely to end in a draw.
roots manuva - 'again and again'
here's another teaser from his new album, slime and reason, 'buff nuff', a true homage to raekwon's 'ice cream' video:
and more on the sportz theme: 'witness (one hope)'
Hello there! The internets are going ape for the latest viral-blogging think-piece phenomenon: listing your favourite album since the year of your birth. Well, not your birth; my birth.
I’m happy to help out, but I might as easily just list all the Nick Cave and Will Oldham albums, plus the same rap albums as everyone else. So here’s my favourite British albums. How’s about that, eh?
I was born in 1979, and Smashing Pumpkins wrote a song all about it:
The best British album of 1979 was nearly Judas Priest Unleashed in the East, but art-snobbery got the better of me. Anyway, a number of observations:
• The collapse of the British music industry in the late 90s was quite dramatic. A few smaller-scale bands kept things competitive – Mogwai, Arab Strap, Tindersticks and Gorky’s made it in; Hefner, Dawn of the Replicants, Four Tet and McLusky were all contenders. I’m sure the Brit blogrollers could think of more. But aside from breakthrough releases by the Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, the Streets, Dizzee Rascal and the C***plays (and waves of imitators), it’s been a pretty shapeless decade. I'm not crazy about Franz Ferdinand, The Life Pursuit or Curses, but the competition's pretty thin. Thoughts?
• I’m surprised My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Radiohead and trip-hop and didn’t get a look-in. Are you?
• Perhaps I should invest in lots of Elvis Costello and PJ Harvey records to make myself cooler and more knowledgeable.
• 1994 was right difficult.
• I might have forgotten a few.
Here we go, one video per decade:
1979 Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures 1980 Dexys Midnight Runners, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels 1981 Iron Maiden, Killers 1982 Richard & Linda Thompson, Shoot Out The Lights 1983 David Bowie, Let’s Dance 1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Welcome to the Pleasuredome
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - 'The Power of Love'
1985 Jesus & Mary Chain, Psychocandy 1986 The Smiths, The Queen is Dead 1987 Happy Mondays, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) 1988 The Pogues, If I Should Fall from Grace with God 1989 Vaselines, Dum Dum 1990 Happy Mondays, Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches 1991 Teenage Fanclub, Bandwaggonesque 1992 Spiritualized, Laser Guided Melodies 1993 Tindersticks, Tindersticks
Tindersticks - 'City Sickness'
1994 Suede, Dog Man Star 1995 Pulp, Different Class 1996 Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go 1997 Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, Barafundle 1998 Arab Strap, Philophobia 1999 Mogwai, Come On Die Young 2000 Belle & Sebastian, Fold Your Hands, Child, You Walk Like a Peasant 2001 Tindersticks, Can Our Love 2002 Libertines, Up the Bracket
Libertines, 'A Time for Heroes'
2003 Waterson : Carthy, Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand 2004 Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand 2005 Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock n Roll 2006 Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit 2007 Future of the Left, Curses 2008 Aidan Moffat, I Can Hear Your Heart
Do you know what it's like falling in the mud and getting kicked, in the head? With an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does, that never happens. Sorry, Ted, skip that, it's a dumb question.
tracks posted here are for sampling purposes only and will be deleted in a few days. if you are, or represent the band, and desire the deletion of a track, please contact GMS and it will be done. support bands - buy their music, go to their shows.
