Music Features and Interviews with Bands, Musicians, Djs and Solo Artists.

Bowman's Blog - November

ClashMusic — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:15:06 +0000

How do, Clashers, I hope all is good in your hood. It’s been quite a busy time since we last spoke. Hopefully someone quite close to me will have bagged a No. 1 album by the time you read this! Thanks everyone - ‘In This Light And On This Evening’ indeed.

Get Ready For The Weekends

I’m a few weeks in to my new home, weekends doing the Breakfast show. Have to say I am totally loving it, really exciting to have a new show, new team and I think change is a very good thing. Having a sixteen-month old little boy, I’m up anyway so I’m used to the early mornings. What we now have to do is convince people it’s the new rock ‘n’ roll, being up early at the weekend and coming on my show live. I’ve already managed to convince Nick Frost and Simon Pegg to do just that. That doesn’t mean to say we haven’t had or intend to have some wicked guests. Least not Mr. Paddy Considine, Shane Meadows and Skor-Zay-Zee who came in to talk about their new film, Le Donk And Skor-Zay-Zee. It’s only being shown at thirty-five cinemas around the country, which I think is appalling - where is your support for British film, Mr. Multiplex? Worry not though, it is due out on DVD by the end of the month, with the added bonus of hilarious extras. See if you can spot my double name check. Yup, I have ‘kind of’ been in a Shane Meadows film. Tick that one off the To Do list.

Dr. Parnassus

The legend that is Mr. Terry Gilliam also came in to chat to me about his new film, The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus. It’s been worth the wait with this film, a magical fairy tale told in only a way that TG can tell it. Of course, everyone knows that it is also Heath Ledger’s last performance, and nearly didn’t get completed when he so tragically passed away. He really takes your breath away when he appears on screen for the first time, it kind of makes you ache that this is it, the last we will ever get of this great man. He had so much potential, such a talented man, so beautiful and bohemian and different, such a loss for us all. To hear Terry talk about Heath, he just beams when he mentions his name, like he was an adopted son and an inspiration to last year’s fellowship winner at BAFTA. If you haven’t seen the film yet then I urge you to get along to witness one of my favourite films of the year. Also, if anyone knows of any way I can actually adopt Terry Gilliam then drop me an email please.

Ba Ba

I’ve been doing quite a few DJ gigs round the country over the last few weeks and it’s been a blast. I’ve been getting the train there and that has allowed me to a) get loads of work done, b) sleep, and c) watch loads of films. One of those I think I tried to watch before was Lions For Lambs with Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Andrew Garfield. It’s another film about the war on terror, the American government and the ones who are really suffering; the troops. It’s really good, Andrew Garfield is definitely one to watch, he’s going to be a huge star. You might have seen him in Kid A or Red Riding, both of which really showcase how diverse he can be. There is one scene in the film where Garfield’s character returns home after a long meeting with his lecturer, really to decide on his future and whether he wants to make a difference. He sits down and the news is on, the top story is talking about the break up of a relationship of some vacuous celebrity. If you’ve seen the film you will know what I’m talking about, it’s a short scene but really hit home to me the state of our media and the state of our popular culture. I posted a Tweet straight away asking, ‘When did our popular culture become trash?’ Someone quite rightly posted back, ‘When did trash become popular culture?’ A question I think we’ll save answering till next time - any thoughts you may have on the subject please drop me an email.

Night Owl

I’m writing this the morning after I’ve done my first night shift on Radio 1. I say night shift, I was covering for Nick Grimshaw (10pm - midnight). It was so much fun and such a joy to play really good music and have nothing else to do than have a chat and play a few awesome tunes. I definitely got the bug and hope to be doing a bit more of it. If anyone was listening and heard me chatting to Jared Leto, I did not email him for a booty call. I just want to be his pen pal!

Reunited

You get to a point in your life when friends go their own way, spread their wings and move to different parts of the world. It really does take a lot of effort to keep in touch and speak or email or Facebook each other and maintain a connection. I think those true friends are the ones that you maybe don’t see for weeks or maybe months, but when you do see each other it’s like you only saw each other yesterday. I had such a good night last week when my friend Ben was over from New York, and God bless him for arranging a dinner for about twenty of us. That is all it takes really, one night and it’s all back to normal. Happy birthday Ben x x x

Happy New Year

Have you thought about it yet? So much pressure on having an ‘AMAZING’ New Year that you kind of forget what it’s all about. Thankfully this year for us it’s been taken out of my hands and we are heading to New Zealand and Australia. My other half is playing at some festivals, which means we are kind of doing a two-week tour of the southern hemisphere, how exciting. Obviously I’ll show you my slides on my return.

From now on I want to end each column with lyrics from a band, so I’m gonna start off with The Maccabees: “If you’ve got no kind words to say, you should say nothing more at all.”

Until next time x x

Email me at: edith@clashmusic.com
Text me: send EDITH then your message to 87474 (Texts cost 50p plus your standard network rate.)
Twitter me: edibow

Royksopp's Last Day On Earth

ClashMusic — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:48:04 +0000

If you were to die tomorrow, how would you spend your final day on Earth? Exploding into heaven this month is Royksopp’s Torbjørn Brundtland.

Where would you wake up?
I would want to wake up at home in Bergen, Norway. I’m not that old yet but I’m getting there and I’ve started to realise that there’s a reason why people tend to want to be home when they’re sick or about to die. There’s something very artificial about going to a luxurious place where you’ve never been before to spend your last day.

Who do you wake up next to?
I’d like to wake up next to at least one out of every species of animal. But it would also be nice to wake up with my girlfriend.

What would there be left to achieve on your last day?
I can see myself making this grand plan of finding everyone and telling them all how much I love them. However, instead I find myself in bed at 3pm and I’ve slept for half the day. I would probably make grand plans and then just oversleep. So I think it could go two ways. I could try and be generous and get together with the people that I’m close to and tell them all how much they mean to me. But at the same time that’s also really egocentric as I’m about to die and therefore the more I make them love me, the more pain they’ll be in. So I think I’ll skip that just because I’m selfless. So I’d go to my enemies and tell them how much I hate them all. I could be as rude to them as I want as I know that I’m going to have the last word anyway. But my enemy list isn’t that long and I wouldn’t be that cruel, just the odd harsh word and kick in the ass.

What’s gonna be the soundtrack to your flight?
I’d be listening to ‘Radioactivity’ by Kraftwerk. Not the whole album though, just the first three songs on side A and the beginning and the end of side B.

Who do have at your final dinner?
I’d invite Silvio Berlusconi. There’s just something about the whole Italian political thing that really fascinates me. We played in Italy recently and the whole crowd were cheering. I just thought to myself that’s what Berlusconi must feel like all the time. He’s just a beautiful man and nobody can take that away from him.

What are you going to eat?
I’d be polite and therefore we’d eat Italian food.

What are you going to do after dinner?
I’d take in some fresh air and pristine Norwegian scenery, the things that we Norwegians are so proud of.

What would be your greatest regret?
That I’ve spent too much of my life worrying and thinking too much about really unimportant things and meaningless little details. Like when you’re having a really refreshing shower and you spend the whole time thinking about ridiculously pointless things. I know that I would have had a much more relaxing life if I had been able to let go of these stressful thoughts.

Who is the last person you kiss?
It’s really boring, but I’d have to say my girlfriend.

How are you going to die?
I’d jump off a cliff with a bomb attached to me so that just before I hit the ground I’d explode. I’d do it all to an Eighties heavy metal soundtrack like Twisted Sister.

What would your final words be?
I’d probably say something very pompous that doesn’t have any real meaning to it. Something like, “Everyone should all live together in harmony.”

What song would you like to be played at your funeral?
I’d like Vangelis to play at my funeral if he could - the Greek keyboard magician.

What’s it going to say on your gravestone?
“What are you looking at?!”

Which dead star would welcome you at the pearly gates?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that the afterlife appeals to me because of the idea that I will increase my understanding of the world when I’m there. I want to find out the meaning of life and see the bigger picture. If the afterlife was just an excuse to revel in ignorant bliss like everlasting drug trips, then I would be rather disappointed. Knowledge before bliss, definitely.

If you were resurrected the day after, who or what would you like to come back as?
If it weren’t for the fact that they’re endangered I’d like to be resurrected as a tiger.

100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music - Part 5

ClashMusic — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:04:42 +0000

Our countdown reaches the final furlong with the top plonkers being revealed. Will it be one of the serial offenders or a fresh face?

Given Eric Clapton, David Bowie and Lee Ryan's unsavoury outbursts, it really took some doing to beat them to the number one spot but hats of to....Kasabian!

Make sure to catch up on the full countdown on ClashMusic.
PART 1, PART 2, PART 3,PART 4

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20
“I gave up rock ‘n’ roll for the rock of ages! I used to be a glaring homosexual until God changed me!”
Little Richard

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19
“Yes, if there is such a thing as [genius], I am one.”
John Lennon

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18
“I’ve got a fierce passion for politics but I can’t stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I’m up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.”
Pete Doherty

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17
“Sometimes when I’m flying over the Alps I think, ‘That’s like all the cocaine I sniffed.’”
Elton John

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16
“Don't do drugs, don’t have unprotected sex, don’t be violent... leave that to me.”
Eminem

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15
“Well, put it this way, compared to the Razorlight album [Bob] Dylan is making the chips. I’m drinking champagne.”
Johnny Borrell

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14
“I think if it doesn’t do what I say, if it doesn’t do what I want, if it isn’t politically subversive, if it isn’t sexy, if it isn’t stylish to make all that happen then it isn’t truthfully worth listening to.”
Malcolm McLaren

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13

“I’d love to think that I’ve maybe influenced people to consider a vegetarian lifestyle, but in my heart of hearts I fear that more than that I’ve encouraged them to get wasted and fucked up.”
Chrissie Hynde

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12
“Good music should always come from the groin. Never the brain. Good music is about fucking.”
Mani, Primal Scream

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11
“Drugs goofed my mind up.”
Brian Wilson

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10
“To be in Kings Of Leon you need at least two STDs, a drinking problem, and a love of animals.”
Nathan Followill, Kings Of Leon

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9
“I’m really happy I’m me because if I wasn’t I’d be scared. If you want that Number One spot you need to listen to my album and try to beat it.”
Kanye West

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8
“It’s actually come as quite a shock to learn just how many people don’t like me.”
Phil Collins

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7

“I’m warning you with peace and love I have too much to do. So no more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed, nothing. Peace and love, peace and love.”
Ringo Starr

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6
“I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon - but I want to stay alive.”
Madonna

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5
“What about whales? They are ignoring animals that are more important. Animals need saving and that’s more important. This New York thing is being blown out of proportion. Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed.”
Lee Ryan, Blue, on 9/11

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4
“We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first - rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
John Lennon

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3
“When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.”
David Bowie

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2
“Vote for Enoch Powell... I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white.”
Eric Clapton

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1

“Dance music was on its arse before we came along.”
Serge Pizzorno, Kasabian - the saviours of dance music.

- - -

Make sure to catch up on the full countdown on ClashMusic.
PART 1, PART 2, PART 3,PART 4

Classic Album: Portishead 'Dummy'

ClashMusic — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:11:39 +0000

Is there a more sneeringly dismissive term in pop criticism than ‘dinner party music’? To describe a CD as ‘a bit dinner party’ is to imply that it possesses the kind of bland inoffensiveness that won’t disrupt the chinking of cutlery on plates. Moreover (and, perhaps, more damningly), ‘dinner party music’ is supposed to make a statement about its owner - it’s music as a personal PR move.

Portishead’s Dummy may have been one of the most critically-fawned-over albums of the 1990s, but its smoky, late-night ambience also made it the perfect accompaniment to delicious soirées. This remains a source of great consternation to its makers. Speaking to The Guardian last year, band member Geoff Barrow complained, “You’re writing music because you’re really concerned about certain things and then it gets put on to entertain twats at trendy fondue dinner parties.”

Barrow’s probably over-dramatising things (also, how long has it been since fondue was “trendy”?), but you can understand his frustration. A comment he made to Uncut magazine gets closer to the heart of the matter: “The idea of people having dinner parties with it meant that the mood of the record was overlooked a bit… Because that wasn’t really very nice.” It’s certainly true that passive listeners would’ve been left unaware of the album’s lyrical themes, which, as Barrow correctly points out, really aren’t very nice at all. Vague sci-fi and spy movie motifs are threaded through the album, but they’re the only remotely playful aspects to be found within what is an incredibly bleak album lyrically. “Refuse to surrender / Strung out until ripped apart / Who dares, dares to condemn / All for nothing”, sings Beth Gibbons on opener ‘Mysterons’, and the record’s mood doesn’t lift thereafter.

In 1994 I was far too young to be holding dinner parties, but ownership of a copy of ‘Dummy’ was undoubtedly a statement-making move in my school. By late 1994, the popularity of Britpop lights such as Blur and Oasis had already rendered them a touch passé. ‘Dummy’ - with its mysterious artwork and (at that stage, anyway) absence of any flag-waving singles - seemed to offer one of the first steps into ‘proper’ music fandom.

‘Dummy’ may have seemed like the ideal antidote to Britpop’s leery boisterousness but, in reality, Portishead made music that was as quintessentially British as, say, ‘Parklife’. Sure, the building-block influences (hip-hop, the blues) are as American as apple pie, but the combination of these with rain-streaked melancholia was an entirely British concoction.

Portishead can’t claim to be innovators in their field, though: in terms of Anglicising hip-hop, Massive Attack undoubtedly got there first. But ‘Dummy’ is a better album than anything produced by their Bristolian peers. Its greatest strength lies in its adhesion to the classic album template: there are ten excellent, fully-formed tracks, and absolutely no filler. The musical palette - hip-hop scratching, martial drums, dubby bass, Sixties spy-movie guitar and wobbly theramin - may not alter much from track to track, but the songs themselves are varied and hookily memorable.

‘Sour Times’ and ‘Glory Box’ will be the most familiar songs to the uninitiated (if only for their regular use in the Nineties zeitgeist-riding drama This Life), but ‘Biscuit’ is my favourite. In the verses Gibbons sketches a typically depressing situation (“Haunted I tell myself, yet I still wander / Down inside, it’s tearing me apart’ - bloody hell). For its chorus (if you could call it that), Gibbons steps aside and the voice of 1950s jazz pianist Johnnie Ray is piped in from beyond the grave and slowed down to a sub-funereal pace. It’s terrifying. And completely awesome.

A proper appraisal of ‘Dummy’ isn’t complete without mention of another musical taboo phrase: ‘trip-hop’. Having been debased through misuse by the likes of Morcheeba and Sneaker Pimps, by the Noughties trip-hop was considered unspeakably naff, and most of its key acts (including Portishead) sought to distance themselves from the genre. But trip-hop’s influence has seeped through into some highly successful recent albums. Barrow might baulk (especially given his criticism of the album’s producer Mark Ronson), but Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ is hugely indebted to ‘Dummy’.

Fifteen years after its release, ‘Dummy’ has aged much more successfully than any other British album of the era, trip-hop or otherwise. That’s doubly surprising given its modishness at the time. So, perhaps those hosts and hostesses of mid-Nineties dinner parties deserve some credit. Geoff Barrow might, however, respectfully disagree.

Words by Christopher Monk

Released: August 1994
Producer: Portishead / Adrian Utley

TRACKLISTING
1. ‘Mysterons’
2. ‘Sour Times’
3. ‘Strangers’
4. ‘It Could Be Sweet’
5. ‘Wandering Star’
6. ‘Numb’
7. ‘Roads’
8. ‘Pedestal’
9. ‘Biscuit’
10. ‘Glory Box’

MUSICIANS
Geoff Barrow - Rhodes, programming, drums, string arrangements
Beth Gibbons - vocals
Adrian Utley - guitar, bass, theremin, string arrangements
Clive Deamer - drums
Andy Hague - trumpet
Dave McDonald - nose flute
Richard Newell - drum programming
Neil Solman - Rhodes, Hammond
Strings Unlimited - Er, strings

1994: IN THE NEWS
Kurt Cobain is found dead. He had committed suicide via a self-inflicted gunshot.
The Channel Tunnel opens.
Labour leader John Smith dies suddenly.
OJ Simpson flees from the police after he fails to surrender to them on charges of murdering his ex-wife and her companion.
Brazil wins the football World Cup for the first time in twenty-four years.

1994: THE ALBUMS
Green Day - ‘Dookie’
Blur - ‘Parklife’
Jeff Buckley - ‘Grace’
Soundgarden - ‘Superunknown’
Oasis - ‘Definitely Maybe’

100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music - Part 4

ClashMusic — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:08:09 +0000

Day four of our countdown and a bit of a special treat today as we give the Gallagher brothers of Oasis some room to let forth on any number of subjects (but mainly each other).

Their insults may may boiled over into the actual split of the band but hey, they're brothers, and I'm sure we'd all like to think they'll be talking again soon (if only at Christmas round at their mums).

But first, to get us warmed up, a quick outburst from that other famed gob-in-mouth specialist, Jonny Borrell.

Read the other parts of the Top 100 countdown - PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 5

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40
“If I saw me I’d want to speak to me, too - I’d think, ‘That guy looks like he’s from Mars, he’s somehow strangely compelling.’ I don’t even look human.”
Johnny Borrell

- - -

Some people make a habit of saying the wrong thing. We call them the Gallagher brothers. Here’s a small example of the comedy gold that spews forth from their imaginations

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39
“It gets better and better being me.”
Liam Gallagher

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38
“Maybe they think I’m a big-mouthed cunt from Manchester, and they’d be correct. I don’t give a fuck what people think about me. I’m not arsed.”
Liam Gallagher

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37
“I suppose I do get sad, but not for too long. I just look in the mirror and go, ‘What a good-looking fuck you are.’”
Liam Gallagher

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36
“Chris Martin looks like a geography teacher. What’s all that with writing messages about Free Trade [on his hand]? If he wants to write things down I’ll give him a pen and a pad of paper. Bunch of students.”
Liam Gallagher

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35

“You’ve seen one of our gigs, you’ve seen ’em all.”
Liam Gallagher

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34
“Drugs is like getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning.”
Noel Gallagher

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33
“[Liam is] like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
Noel Gallagher on Liam

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32
“If there were gold medals for taking drugs for England I would have won a shit load”
Noel Gallagher

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31
“You’re not fuckin’ telling me that somebody that’s into The fuckin’ Wombats is feeling the same thing as I was when I was into the Pistols? I’m not fuckin’ having that.”
Noel Gallagher

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30
“We’re inherently lazy working class Mancunians, you know what I mean? We wanna be getting pissed half the time, and the other fuckin’ time we wanna be getting fuckin’ high.”
Noel Gallagher

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29
“I do all the work so it’s only right that I should get the most money. Plus I am the most handsome.”
Noel Gallagher

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28
“I hate that Alex [James] and Damon [Albarn]. I hope they catch AIDS and die.”
Noel Gallagher

- - -

And now back to the wider world of egotists, lunatics and the delusional...

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27
“Rock and roll doesn’t allow you to grow up - especially if you’re not trying very hard to.”
Scott Weiland, Velvet Revolver

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26
“I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead.”
Lou Reed

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25
“Never talk about a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. That way when you talk about him you’re a mile away and you have his shoes.”
Nathan Followill, Kings Of Leon

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24
“There wouldn’t be no grime without me.”
Dizzee Rascal

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23

“I won’t be happy until I’m as famous as God.”
Madonna

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22
“Somebody said to me, ‘But The Beatles were antimaterialistic’. That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’
Paul McCartney

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21
“Of course we’re doing it for the money. We’ve always done it for the money.”
Mick Jagger

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Read the other parts of the Top 100 countdown - PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5

The Dodos' Private Passion

ClashMusic — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:50:47 +0000

It’s time for another obsession session as we explore the anorak within. This Month: Meric Long from US trio The Dodos lets loose his inner chef.

IN THE BEGINNING
“I grew up spending a lot of time with my Mom in the kitchen just watching what was going on. Nobody ever taught me the basics, but when I found myself working in kitchens later on I would often mentally go back and think of the things my Mom would do, especially when I would be panicking, cos I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve always been passionate about food and how to cook it, but I think I realised how obsessed I was when I started reading cook books into the wee hours nightly.”

CULINARY DISASTERS
“I remember trying to make Hollandaise sauce when I was like twelve cos it was Father’s Day and my Dad loves eggs Benedict. I went through a carton of eggs trying six times, but the sauce just kept breaking after thirty seconds of mixing in the melted butter. We ended up having eggs Benedict without the sauce, which isn’t much of a treat.”

MY FAVOURITE RECIPE
“My favourite recipe is this stuff we called panade at the last restaurant I worked at. It’s basically cubes of stale bread that you stack in layers of Gruyère cheese and sorrel and cover in rich broth and then bake forever until it becomes like a salty, sour, gushy cake. I love things that are pickled, and sorrel kind of has that tart, vinegary thing going on without ever being pickled. I can’t really say it’s my signature dish cos I didn’t come up with it. The things I come up with are usually sort of stupid and more fun to make than cook. The last thing I came up with was a burger stuffed with blue cheese and portabella mushrooms, and then injected with red wine. There was really no point to the wine, I just wanted to use one of those meat injectors.”

ACQUIRED TASTES
“I come from a Chinese mother, so there’s a lot of freaky ingredients that a lot of gringos aren’t keen to eat. There’s this stuff called fermented tofu that comes in a jar and it looks like something from Frankenstein’s lab. It smells pretty awful and it’s salty as all hell, but I used to eat it out of the jar when I was a kid. Just a speck of that stuff will power up any dish you throw it into. I pretty much think putting something pickled in your food always makes it better as long as there’s enough fat or richness to balance it out. Lucky for me there are a million things that are pickled so the possibilities are endless.”

CELEBRITY CHEFS
“I love cooking related shows like Top Chef, Iron Chef, and Anthony Bourdain. It’s insane what people are doing on those shows compared to when it was just your straightforward instructive cooking show. Instead of being told what to do in the kitchen you just get to watch chefs doing incredible stuff. I feel like the creativity that people get to witness now has totally raised the bar of what people do in their kitchens. I think Masahara Morimoto is my favourite chef on TV; every time he’s on Iron Chef he does a bunch of stuff that’s mind blowing, and I feel like he has the perfect blend of using really traditional Japanese techniques with his own wild ideas. I’d be terrified to cook with that dude and don’t think I belong anywhere near the same kitchen.”

FOOD SHOPPING
“We’re pretty spoiled in and around San Francisco, cos there’s a ton of amazing markets to shop from that get their stuff from small farms in and around the Bay Area. I love going to Asian markets cos everything’s dirt cheap and you can get all sorts of weird crap. There’s a certain amount of pride I take in going to specifically Chinese markets and actually being able to identify most of the products there.”

COOKING ON TOUR
“We don’t really have the means or energy to cook on tour, but Logan and I made a cooking show while recording our last record. While Phil was busy working on mixes, we had a Flip camera and made three episodes of Stackers, which I’m hoping will take off if this music thing collapses.”

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT
“I could not live without Sriracha hot sauce. It goes good on everything, especially things that are white like cottage cheese or ranch sauce. It’s sweet, spicy, and the beautiful red colour goes really well against a backdrop of white.”

FOCUS
“Cooking isn’t a way for me to unwind - cooking is like music for me in that it’s another means to be focused, to perform, and ultimately please someone else. I don’t think I’m the best person to cook with cos I get sort of intense and maniacal. The unwinding comes with the face stuffing.”

How Black Sabbath Survived The Music Business

ClashMusic — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:07:18 +0000

The aspiring rock star’s indispensable guide to surviving a life in music, with advice from those who know best.

Bill Ward is the drummer in what many say is the biggest metal band in the world… the mighty Black Sabbath. A member from the band’s inception, he has dealt with enormous global success, and come through the other side of heavy alcohol and narcotic addictions. Bill’s experience should be heeded...

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE COOL
For me I’ve learned that being cool will kill me. So I don’t walk around all fucking hip, slick and cool and all pop star-ish while holding all the pain in. I let all the pain out in the morning. It doesn’t matter what might be bothering me, I just let it all out. I try not to live in any ego - I live in the reality of where the fuck I am. By doing that, I’m able to transverse all of the twists and turns and daily conflicts and ups and downs. To distance yourself from all the distractions gives you a sense of self-worth.

YOU HAVE TO BE FIT
If I know I’m going on tour, I start to train at least two months before we start. I start playing more vigorously and then I do walks, I build them up to ten mile a day walks because I want to get a lot of endurance. I also do a lot of push-ups. The backstage exercises are about twenty minutes stretching arms and legs, getting anything that’s had a whack the night before fixed - I get a massage to fix anything that’s sore. It’s really, really important. As a drummer I totally recommend looking after your bones and muscles. Years ago, there was a university that wanted to stick a load of sensors all over me to check what I was doing during a set. It turns out I was doing the equivalent to running fifteen miles a night in a one and a half hour concert. These days, as long as I’m doing those ten-mile walks, then I can usually measure that I’m going to be fine for the show. I still play my ass off and need to be really fit. If you’re playing in a hard rock band - if you’re playing in Sabbath - then you need to be in good shape.

CHERISH YOUR BAND
I feel like I’m playing in the living room. I don’t feel like I’m at a gig, even though I know I am. It feels like I’m with my entire family and that I know everybody there. I can’t feel more at home. If I wanted to die, I would want to die on stage. I would be honoured to die on the stage. It makes more sense to me up there than it does when I’m in my actual house when I come off tour. Being on the stage is hard to describe but it feels really normal and really, really nice. I thoroughly enjoy it. For a long time the original band weren’t playing together, but it’s a fucking privilege to share a stage with them. When that’s going on, I cherish it because I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen again. They’re great memories and it’s very sad to think it might never happen again with that band.

READ YOUR CONTRACTS
I think one of the things a band needs to have, besides a good accountant, is to sign really good contracts. I’m a victim of wanting fame and fortune so badly that I paid the price for that. I can’t speak for the other members of Black Sabbath in this regard, but we were all part and parcel of things like that where we signed into not very good contracts. I think it’s very important that any band, no matter how humble they may be, they need to sing into good paperwork which allows them what they need to have: freedom and security. Then you need to have a fucking ass-kicking logo and then, above all, you have to have kick-ass songs.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE
The best thing that I can say is to let the audience do what it wants to do. Let the audience react; they have a right to applaud and they have a right to boo. Let the audience be and leave them alone. If you go down well then great, and if you don’t go down well, then you’ve got to go and do it again tomorrow. When you watch Ozzy [Osbourne], he’ll go onstage and say, ‘Come on, you miserable bastards.’ But that’s as far as he’ll go with it, he just says it to get people to join in. A lot of artists do that but they’ll have a point where they’ll let go of the audience’s reaction.

HAVE A LAUGH
One of the biggest things that you’ve got to do when you’re out playing on the road is you have to laugh. And most of all laugh at your fucking self. You have to have a good laugh every single day. You’re supposed to be having fun out there; it’s not supposed to be all serious - the music can be serious and the discussions can be serious but I have to find those silly, fucking stupid things that happen and really laugh. Otherwise there’s no point in being out there.

Words by Josh Jones

100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music - Part 3

ClashMusic — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:30:16 +0000

Wednesday brings part 3 of our countdown with a further selection of howlers from some of the biggest names in music.

Kanye is back, (of course he is), with another line only he could deliver, alongside Dave Grohl, Morrissey, Missy Elliot, Terry Hall, John Lennon and others who really should learn to keep it zipped.

Read part 1 of the countdown HERE, part 2 HERE, part 4 HERE and part 5 HERE.

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60
“I thought I’d give being a frontman a shot. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing - I still don’t.”
Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters

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59
“The Beatles were just a band that made it very, very big, that’s all.”
John Lennon

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58
“Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else.”
Morrissey

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57
“I’ve never had a problem with drugs. I’ve had problems with the police.”
Keith Richards

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56

“If I didn’t have some kind of education, then I wouldn’t be able to count my money.”
Missy Elliott

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55
“I was thinking what the differences were when we last played here twenty-eight years ago. Well, there’s the smoking ban, but fuck that. We’re still bombing the shit out a country we shouldn’t be and the Prime Minister is still a cunt.”
Terry Hall, V Festival 2009

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54
“How could you even dream or think something of someone who is as uncommercial as I am?”
Lou Reed

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53
“How the fuck am I still here?”
Mani, Primal Scream

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52
“If Amy Winehouse thinks she’s invincible, she’s so far wrong it’s not even funny. She shits, she bleeds, she shaves, just like everybody else on the planet.”
Joe Elliot, Def Leppard

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51
“There’s no guy that would wanna kill us. There are girls that get so obsessed they would want to kill us. They wanna shoot us, they wanna do whatever.”
Caleb Followill, Kings Of Leon

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50
“There isn’t a town in the world I haven’t run amok in.”
Joe Strummer

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49
“I’m an instant star; just add water and stir.”
David Bowie

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48
“The Who is just a brand name now - two old fuckers with wrinkles and tricks.”
Pete Townshend

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47

“I break my back for music because it’s something that I love, but I’m not going to break my back for a bank. I wouldn’t want to be an ATM repairman; there are some things that just aren’t worth it.”
Josh Homme, QOTSA

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46
“As I get older my eyesight’s going bad, I don’t know what I’m in for [with groupies] until they come backstage and they’re very large with missing teeth.”
Nikki Sixx, Motley Crue

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45
“I already feel that I am making a political statement by sticking around in music, when I am doing it so differently to everyone else.”
M.I.A.

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44
“I do sometimes think I could have done without the drugs actually; that was a waste of time, and a huge risk. But then again, there’s nothing I can change, so in a way regret is pointless.”
Marianne Faithfull

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43
“When I get stirred it incites something inside of me. I want to bash my head on the wall… I don’t know what else to do. If I could rip my fucking chest open on that stage I would.”
Keith Flint, The Prodigy

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42
“I’ve learnt that there’s nothing in my day to day life or anything that I do that is in any way aimed at changing how I’m perceived or how I’m presented; it’s completely impossible.”
Pete Doherty

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41
“I use too much of my brain and need to let some of it rest.”
Kanye West

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Read the other parts of the Top 100 countdown - PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5

Dizzee Rascal Interview

ClashMusic — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:37:21 +0000

After a white-hot summer, Dizzee Rascal’s new pop-dance direction is about to be unveiled in full on fourth album ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’, the latest chapter in his unstoppable ascent…

Though the promised barbecue summer never shone through, it could scarcely have been more scorching for Dizzee Rascal, real name Dylan Mills. The grime-raised star smashed more festivals than space constraints permit us to list here and crashed the charts with number one singles ‘Bonkers’ and ‘Holiday’, following similar success last year with ‘Dance Wiv Me’. The ‘Boy In Da Corner’ has firmly become a man in the limelight. Still, it’s going to take a tricky balancing act to please rafts of new fans while appeasing long-term devotees. Can he pull it off? Dizzee, frankly, is enjoying the ride too much to worry. Just don’t mention his old mucker, the godfather of grime and fellow Top 10-troubler, Wiley…

If the sign of a real man is to stand on his own two feet, then few could argue that with ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ Mills is striding into adulthood. He’s come a long, long way since formative days ripping up the pirate radio airwaves out of Bow, East London, to stand atop the UK charts seemingly whenever he fancies releasing a single. Days of teenaged petty crime and school expulsions sure seem a long way in the past. But not only is the new LP a turning point in terms of moving his musical goalposts toward bold, balls-out, pop-laced pastures new, unlike its three predecessors - incendiary debut ‘Boy In Da Corner’, darkly paranoid follow-up ‘Showtime’ and 2007’s transitional ‘Maths + English’ - long-time label home XL are no longer involved.

Released three days after his 24th birthday, ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ is the sound of Mills going it alone, via his own Dirtee Stank imprint, and flicking all-comers the bird in the process. It’s the distillation of perhaps the craziest phase in his life so far, a period that has married greatest commercial success with surreal anomalies like royal wildchild Prince Harry claiming allegiance (and nearly getting punched on the nose by his hero after acting a touch over familiar at the Wireless Festival). Bursting with three Number One singles, only the stinking rich would bet against ‘Dirtee Cash’, the successor to ‘Holiday’, making it four in a row. To misappropriate the words of blog-pleasing US rappers Clipse, this shit sells itself. And as Mills himself puts it on album cut ‘Money Money Money’, “Can’t stop grinning / Because I can’t stop winning”.

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Dizzee Rascal - Dirtee Cash

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And winning here means a schedule busier than the average head of state: a brief initial meet at Dirtee Stank headquarters in South London also sees Mills dispense promotional t-shirts to Baltimore club producer Aaron LaCrate (who guest produces hard-edged album cut ‘Road Rage’) as ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ thumps forth from serious studio speakers; we next speak en route to the airport heading to European tour dates. It’s safe to say his diary is - cue groans - pretty damn bonkers at the moment.

“I was having a little party at my house,” Mills begins nonchalantly, as if setting the scene of a sneaky council estate knees-up while his mum’s out, as opposed to a bash at his current abode, a Home Counties mansion. “Snoop Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle’ album had been on about five times, over and over. I was like, ‘Fucking hell, I need to make an album like this. An album you can put on and actually have a party.’ I wanted to make music that would make people get up, move and jump about, instead of stand around and want to fucking kill each other. And that’s what I’ve done. ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ is basically a cheeky album, naughty but nice. It’s still dealing with some naughty issues but it’s on a party vibe fully, all up-tempo, upbeat and quite happy.”

True to his word, if nothing else ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ is an unashamed soundtrack to forget-tomorrow revelling, from the ubiquitous ‘Bonkers’ through to electro-house rave-leveller-in-waiting ‘Bad Behaviour’. As sonic bookends, both lay their cards confidently on the table, featuring respective production from Armand Van Helden and Tiësto, monstrous dance music names that need scant introduction to even those outside clubland. Men, it’s fair to say, who know a few things about detonating a dancefloor and selling a shedload of records into the bargain. Factor in a brace of contributions from eyebrow-arching Scottish nu-disco king Calvin Harris, one apiece for drum and bass don Shy FX (a second link after ‘Maths + English’ tune ‘Da Feelin’’) and the aforementioned LaCrate, plus liberal sampling of early ’90s hit-maker The Adventures Of Stevie V on ‘Dirtee Cash’, and it represents a cast covering bases from trance to crunk-ish filth. The crucial crux? Mills maintains that is his finely honed ear for a pop tune.

“I get pop music now. I get what a pop format is, to be up with there with the greats and the best. I don’t think I really knew how to do it when I started out because the environment that I was competing for was the underground pirate radio scene. It was more MC-based. And there ain’t been too many things UK-wise and MC-based that have been in the charts. So that was my only reference. But being in the music industry over a seven-year period, going to all the festivals, all these different events, I actually learnt how to do it along the way.”

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“I wanted to make music that would make people get up, move and jump about, instead of stand around and want to fucking kill each other.”

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Quite aside from various past Top 20 hits, it would be easy to forget Mills’ myriad brushes with mainstream music. After all, ‘Maths + English’ is almost certainly the only record in the history of sound waves to feature Alex Turner, Lily Allen and superlative, sadly since-defunct southern gangsta rappers UGK, even if the album as a whole didn’t quite coherently gel. Or indeed fail to acknowledge his willingness to mix genres, a propensity that stretches back as far as a young follower of various scenes and artists that at the time rarely crossed paths, from Nirvana to drum and bass and hip-hop. And those listening carefully would have noted that he has never been afraid to counter street-level spitting with moments of almost light-hearted fun ever since the musical-tastic ‘Dream’, a ray of cheer in the claustrophobic confines of ‘Showtime’.

“People think the whole pop thing is new to me,” Mills laments, frustration evident. “But I toured with Justin Timberlake when I was nineteen. I did a track with Basement Jaxx around the same time, as well as supporting Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay-Z, Nas, Sean Paul. I’ve been exposed to a lot of the biggest things going. As well as [his producer and manager] Cage pushing me to try not to be afraid to go pop, in my own way. I feel like while I’m putting out music I might as well be at the top. I want to get the album out there to show how diverse I really am. There are big pop hits but there’s a full-bodied record to show people who are new to me that I’ve got a lot to offer.”

As already touched upon, however, XL, the label with whom he shared his rise to initial fame, weren’t so convinced. And Mills is in bullish mood pondering how hitting the singles chart summit on Dirtee Stank justifies his decision to take the totally independent route.

“XL didn’t decide not to take me up for this album,” he reveals. “I had an offer but it weren’t the offer I wanted. I did pretty much what I wanted on XL anyway, but it’s mad that when it came to me making a progression towards pop music, they didn’t get it. They were offered ‘Dance Wiv Me’, but they didn’t get it. I put it out myself and it went to Number One. It’s turned out that I’ve done my biggest records on my own label. Of course it proves a point. It proves a big point. And it was the first independent number one in fourteen years, so it was an even bigger point.” He pauses. “And then I did it again.”

Those hits have undeniably ramped what went before up several notches in the celebrity stakes, ‘Bonkers’ truly confirming him as a real major league player this summer. Indeed, as the tune of the festival season, one unnamed shindig even asked DJs to stop dropping it with such overkill frequency.

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Dizzee Rascal - Holiday

- - -

In Mills’ mind, though, there isn’t a great margin between the varying divisions of fame. Despite a slightly fractious relationship with the press circa his Mercury Prize victory, he claims he would have dealt just as well had current meteoric success arrived earlier in his career, as a cocksure teenager.

“I’d have coped the same way. The Mercury award was worldwide fame. I still had paparazzi outside my house. How I dealt with it was by getting on with my work. I’m older [now]. I’m more tolerant to some things,” he chuckles. “Intolerant to some things as well. But I just appreciate life and what’s going on more. The things that mattered to me when I was eighteen don’t matter to me now. I get into a lot less trouble than when I was eighteen. I keep out of as much trouble as I can. I’m an adult now, man. It’s more and more about the music for me. Like, I didn’t really hang around festivals too tough but now I hang around and enjoy it. I’ll stand there, watch David Guetta or Fatboy Slim or something like that, and just enjoy it as much as I can.”

A-list pop star status doesn’t come without some cost, of course, and Mills admits since he literally can’t leave the house nowadays without reams of averages Joes and, err, Joannes clocking him.

“It’s been mad,” he marvels. “Being recognised by people in the street that you wouldn’t think would recognise you. A lot more people; like your everyday person. And to be fair, it’s mostly loads of love, man. All love. It’s nice that people are enjoying it. When I’m on Glastonbury main stage in front of ninety thousand people that’s when I stand there and thinkm ‘This is what it’s about, man’. Of course there are days when I just want to be left alone, when I want to have a day off. It’s tough, innit. But I accept it now. I walk down the street and think, ‘Fuck it, man, whatever’. It’s lovely. It’s nice to know that I can make music for all sorts of people. That was kind of my goal.”

The flipside, naturally, is the turncoats and haters, plenty of which are almost guaranteed to rear their collective heads in the coming months. Few artists have divided opinion - particularly in grime and hip-hop circles - as much as Mills since he broke out of the pirate radio movement. And going pop seems set to exasperate the situation.

“People say about my first album being raw and gritty but not everyone got it, so I was always trying to be open-minded and branch out,” he considers. “If we’re going to talk about hardcore grime and that, they’re all basing their whole careers on shit I started eight, nine years ago anyway, let’s be real. I ain’t taking orders. I don’t answer to none of them. It’s about making music, innit. That’s all it is.”

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Dizzee Rascal - Dance Wiv Me

- - -

On the wrong day, there are few more humbling experiences than interviewing a top-level rapper. Cases in point for your present company: left dangling on the phone for a Snoop Dogg conversation that never materialised, nigh on blanked by Nas during a spectacularly stunted five-minute chat that rarely stretched beyond monosyllabic on the part of Kelis’ ex, and enduring more rescheduled times and cancellations than any given British railway station. But nobody in our experience, from G-Unit to Xzibit, has harboured bubbling-under levels of could-switch-at-any-moment menace equal to those displayed by Dizzee Rascal.

And controlled anger for haters pales into insignificance when talk turns to other original stars of the grime world enjoying latter-day chart success, specifically his former mentor/sometime Roll Deep crewmate Wiley. The original cause of their well-publicised beef may be lost somewhat in the mists of time - ‘Showtime’ track ‘Hype Talk’ hinted at the spat, reportedly instigated when his older friend bailed from Ayia Napa after Mills was stabbed there in 2003 - but six years on, the scars still run deep.

Have tensions eased in recent times, we enquire? Is there still beef?
The mood changes in an eye blink.

“What difference would it make to your life if there was or there wasn’t?” he shoots back, instant ire all too tangible.

Change tack. Does he ever see Wiley around?

Several seconds of blank, rather alarming silence is the only repost, permeated by telltale intakes of breath of a man about to lose their composure. It’s not something you like to talk about, then?

“What are you, fucking genius?” he explodes. At our end of the phone line the faint strains of a journalist quietly soiling himself are quite probably audible. “Of course I don’t fucking want to talk about it.”

And so we don’t. Although he theorises that the graduation of grime’s turn-of-the-millennium class into mainstream contenders - Tinchy Stryder emulating Mills’ multiple Number Ones and Wiley also scoring high with ‘Wearing My Rolex’ - are down to individual skills rather than any wider movement.

“I don’t think it’s about the grime scene,” he muses. “I think with certain artists, like the artists you’ve named, it’s about individuals who do the right thing, doing what they’re supposed to and making it.”

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“Would I ever put on one of my own tunes to romance a lady? Nah, that’s going a bit far for me!”

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For Mills, making it to that hallowed ‘next level’ has largely been engineered by for-the-jugular simplicity driving his bona fide huge hits. Despite such direct beauty primarily powering ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’, Mills does still manage to chuck a handful of curveballs into the mix among ambitious club slayers.

A soulful pre-R&B vibe permeates ‘Chillin’ Wiv Da Man Dem’, his laidback ode to maxing and relaxing with his friends, some herbal smokes and a videogame or two, arguing about the football as they go (soccer aside: “I’m from east, so I guess West Ham’s my team, but I don’t really follow it,” he concedes - although his childhood friends include Bolton Wanderers’ Nigerian international defender Danny Shittu).

“I’m a massive R&B fan. Massive. Jodeci, Keith Sweat; all that shit,” he enthuses. It’s also, he assures us, the patented Dizzee Rascal soundtrack to romancing lucky ladies. “When I was a kid I had my slow jams tapes, of course. Have it ready, man. Ha ha. Would I ever put on one of my own tunes? Nah, that’s going a bit far for me!”

At the opposite end of the subject matter scale, arguably the best-realised departure on ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ is reggae-flavoured Shy FX collab ‘Can’t Tek No More’, which strips its central sample from ’80s black youth culture movie Babylon.

“I was at my cousin’s and we put that film on,” Mills remembers warmly. “I fell asleep, but something was rolling in my head and when I woke up they were chanting that actual part that’s in the chorus [sings the titular protest song-esque refrain]. A few weeks later Shy FX sent me that with a beat. It was a bit of an omen. It’s not just about my pressure. It tackles recession, the war that’s going on and everyday hardships. That’s my first attempt at a reggae track. This whole album’s got shit that people wouldn’t expect me to do and I’m loving it.”

While demonstrating the full range of his palette, moments on ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ where Mills covers his most superficial inspiration source - cold hard cash - also ironically coincide with some of the record’s most socially aware lyrics. “I know that money ain’t everything,” he states with measured maturity. “I’m all right with it, you know. I could have been out on my ear a long time ago. This is probably the album where I’ve celebrated it most - the high life, living large and just party life in general - but there’s a lot more to me than that.”

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Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden - Bonkers

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Proving his vision beyond the green stuff, amid the dosh chat of ‘Money Money Money’, Mills name-checks “Jeremy Paxman on the news”, a cheeky nod to his infamous Newsnight interview, circa Barack Obama’s election.

“It was lovely,” he chuckles at the memory of a tête-à-tête that featured surreal moments including Paxman addressing Mills as “Mr. Rascal”. “I went on there and got exactly what I wanted out of it. I think it went really well. I said everything that needed to be said. I said on there, ‘Yeah, Britain could have a black prime minister’,” he continues. “But is the question, ‘Is a black man capable of running the country?’ because sometimes it gets twisted what people really mean. There’s two ways of looking at it.”

Politicians don’t escape Mills’ lyrical viewfinder, either: the press gladly jumped upon mentions of MPs in ‘Dirtee Cash’ in the wake of the expenses scandal. “They hyped it up, but it weren’t about MPs at all,” he says. “They hadn’t even heard it so I don’t know what it’s about. I talk about the recession and the economic crisis.”

Bearing in mind his oft-quoted line in ‘Boy In Da Corner’ standout ‘Hold Ya Mouf’ about representing “a problem for Anthony Blair”, does he see himself as a problem for Gordon Brown too?

“What do you think?” he half laughs back. His question is an open one; the conclusion less so: Mills might be making music for house parties rather than political parties, but it’s clear he still considers himself a voice of the street.

His slight incredulity at tabloid headline makers’ Dizzee updates continues when we list a few choice news tidbits from recent months. Did a busload of German swingers really turn up to the ‘Holiday’ video shoot in Ibiza under the impression they were visiting a porn shoot (For the record: “Fuck knows! I don’t know, I saw it in the paper like you did!”)? And while he doesn’t deny declaring interest in an EastEnders cameo - the best Albert Square gangster since Goldie? - acting is lower down his To Do list than that might intimate.

“Right now I’m happy to just channel it into my music videos,” he admits.

Mills’ latest grinning performance in the ‘Holiday’ promo video won’t win him any Oscars. It did, mercifully, allow him a whistle-stop break in Ibiza (we neglect to ask if he had time to road-test the track’s semi-genius why-didn’t-I-think-of-that pick-up line, “Are you really too busy for a suntan?”). Tragically, for a man providing a backing track to so many summer breaks, that has proved the closest thing to a getaway he has managed this year.

“It’d be nice to have a little holiday,” he sighs, a touch wearily. “But I’ve been to festivals, made people jump up and down, doing what I want to do, so it’s all good.”

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“I feel like while I’m putting out music I might as well be at the top.”

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If it seems like the hard work is done, though, in Mills’ eyes it has only just begun. Releases from Dirtee Stank artists Smurfie Syco and Newham Generals are set to follow ‘Tongue N’ Cheek’ out the blocks. His notional To Do list features working with OutKast’s eccentric hip-hop maestro Andre 3000 (“Because he’s broken so many boundaries, innit”) and a long-suggested recording summit with The Prodigy (“We bump into each other a lot, but it’s hectic right now for us”). Until then, is there anything really left to achieve?

“I still haven’t had a Number One album,” he shoots back immediately, steely determination lacing every word. “Platinum, maybe double platinum, Number One around the world consecutively. That’d be good.”

You suspect it’s a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’ that the ‘Boy In Da Corner’ will complete his mission to infiltrate every corner of the globe.

Words by Adam Anonymous
Photos by Chad Pickard & Paul Mclean

To watch an exclusive video interview with Dizzee plus behind the scenes footage of Clash’s photo shoot, head over now to our Video Channel HERE.

100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music - Part 2

ClashMusic — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:05:03 +0000

Part two of our countdown in the Top 100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music sees some serial offenders get their tuppence in (Kasabian, I'm looking at you).

Other notable quotes today come from such legends as Elvis, Hendrix and Lennon alongside newcomers, who we can excuse a little, like The Twang, Arctic Monkeys and, king of foot in mouth self promotion, Kanye West.

Read part 1 of the countdown HERE, part 3 HERE, part 4 HERE and part 5 HERE.

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80
“I’m not homosexual, I’m not heterosexual, I’m just sexual.”
Michael Stipe

79
“It’s no longer sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s crack, masturbation, and Madonna.”
Scott Weiland, Stone Temple Pilots

78
“Ultimately, I want to make everyone horny.”
Patti Smith

77
“I like them old and rich.”
Lily Allen reveals what she looks for in a man.

76
“I just don’t think we’ve ever wrote shit tunes. Even when we were amateurish, we knew we were writing better songs than other bands.”
Phil Etheridge, The Twang

75

“When I dance, it’s incredible. I can’t describe it, there’s no words. You just tap into your mojo and you just go.”
Johnny Borrell

74
“All this role model bullshit; you don’t have any extra responsibilities because you made some good songs! Your only responsibility is to make good songs.”
Kanye West

73
“If you want a warning about doing drugs just look at Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse - it couldn’t be any plainer. I mean, let’s face it, they’re doing nothing for your intellect, your wit or your complexion…or your hairstyle for that matter.”
Peter Hook

72
“The hippie aesthetic and the way of life has always made me want to puke, but at the same time I’m a complete hippie; I’m just a vegetarian, peace and love, love vibe, hippie meditator - and I hate hippies! I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I may as well just shoot myself in the head!”
Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers

71
“Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.”
Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails

70
“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”
Elvis Presley

69
“I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
Jimi Hendrix

68
“Elvis died the day he went into the army.”
John Lennon

67

“The American public really does have a death wish for me. They want me to die. I’m not going to die.”
Courtney Love

66
“When I die, bury me on my stomach and let the world kiss my ass.”
L.L. Cool J

65
“I’m thought of as this pissy, complaining, freaked-out schizophrenic who wants to kill himself all the time.”
Kurt Cobain

64
“I’ve always enjoyed myself. Unhappy periods for me last about twenty minutes.”
Keith Moon

63
“When I first went to the Betty Ford Center I was very surprised they didn’t have a bar there... I thought they taught you how to drink like a gentleman.”
Ozzy Osbourne

62
“A rock ‘n’ roll star should have a drug habit at least once in their career, they should have a Rolls Royce, should smash the fucker up, should have a big house, should get off his head and THAT is a rock ‘n’ roll legacy.”
Tom Meighan, Kasabian

61
“I think I’ll got to Thailand for a year and become a Thai boxer. I’m gonna train for a year.”
Matt Helders, Arctic Monkeys

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Read the other parts of the Top 100 countdown - PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5

Singles Round Up - 2nd November

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:33:04 +0000

As November comes a knocking, ClashMusic counts the minutes 'til the Xmas novelty songs are unleashed with a look at this week's releases.

Former Clash Magazine cover star, Jay-Z, claims this week's Single of the Week with the euphoric 'Empire State Of Mind' featuring Alicia Keys. Jay-Z's missus also puts in an appearance elsewhere alongside Royksopp, Snow Patrol, Paolo Nutini, The Soft Pack and Chase & Status.

Jay-Z – Empire State Of Mind

New York, New York so good they named it twice. But will ‘they’ ever stop singing about the place? Seriously, the Big Apple has inspired more odes than a Grecian Urn and shows no signs of breaking. Rap heavyweight Jay-Z is the latest to pen a letter of devotion to the city that never sleeps, with the thumping backbeat sounding like a million heartbeats thumping at once. Enormously anthemic it seems that Jay-Z is so damn hit right now he can even coax a decent vocal out of Alicia Keys, which is no mean feat.

The Soft Pack – Answer To Yourself

Like rock’s walking, talking self help book The Soft Pack return with some more snarling, uplifting rock. Formerly The Muslims, the band remain unrepentant to anyone who didn’t get the joke. No wonder – ‘answer to yourself’ they chant, as guitars fly by like Jenson Button with his foot stuck to the floor. A stomping, storming track the American group emerge as brats with a heart of gold. Hotly tipped, ‘Answer To Yourself’ will satisfy the doubters but only increase the hype around The Soft Pack.

Snow Patrol – Just Say Yes

Apparently Gary Lightbody has claimed that ‘Just Say Yes’ is the closest Snow Patrol have ever got to techno. No wonder techno is running screaming in the opposite direction. If techno had its guts ripped out and replaced with a sulking, anodyne wreck this is what it would sound like. Just say no, people!

Paolo Nutini – Pencil Full Of Lead

Try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to hate Paolo Nutini. Sure, this is Tesco music of the highest order taken from an album that is set to delight mothers and irritate their kids on Christmas morning. But somewhere underneath this ‘Sing Sing Sing’ propelled trad jazz pastiche lurks an entertainer, and for that I salute him. Of course, if anyone buys my mum ‘Sunny Side Up’ for Christmas that opinion could well change…

Beyonce - Broken Hearted Girl

One from the other side of Beyonce. The dull, ballad side that is. Sure to be the song of choice of X Factor auditionees next year, the blandness of 'Broken Hearted Girl' is unoffensive but tarnishes the fantastic pop star aura of 'Crazy In Love' or 'Single Ladies' Beyonce. It's funny how the guy in the video is clearly not Jay-Z. Or even remotely like Jay-Z. I wonder if he sees that as a good or bad thing?

Royksopp - This Must Be It

Featuring the vocals of Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife and Fever Ray, 'This Must Be It' is the latest lush, synth-pop effort from those Nordic kings of chilled out dance, Royksopp. Sounding suitably futuristic, it's chorus comes dangerously close to Sophie Ellis Bexter's 'Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer' but keeps it's cred intact and makes for an unsurprising but effective effort.

Chase & Status - End Credits ft Plan B

The surprisingly angelic sounding Plan B adds his voice (and acoustic guitar) to this Pendulum-like pummeler, taken from 'Harry Brown' OST (which Plan B appears in). A bit good it is too. The drums threaten to overpower Plan B's contribution which is the most immediately like-able part of the track. The fact that it makes me wonder about new material from Mr B is a good indicator of this successful collaboration.

Johnny Foreigner Interview

Robin Murray — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:16:51 +0000

In these days of internet led viral sensations, it's more than a little heartening to hear of a band earning fans the old fashioned way.

With a multitude of single and EP releases to their name, Johnny Foreigner have toured the length and breadth of Britain. Hell, the Birmingham trio are so adept at navigating the motorways of this great nation that they probably have a Little Chef loyalty card.

Shipping out to Brooklyn to begin work on their second album, 'Grace And The Bigger Picture' arrives with Johnny Foreigner becoming a genuine cult phenomenon. With more and more tour dates selling out, the band have even begun to notice the growing trend for JoFo soundalikes - becoming an inspiration to young British musicians eager for something fun yet challenging, uplifting but not dumbed down.

With Johnny Foreigner feeling confident enough to even release a remix EP, ClashMusic caught up with singer Alexei Berrow to talk the talk...

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So you’ve just come off tour – how did it go?

Aw yeah it went amazing! It’s kind of the first time we’ve been able to sell out venues on the whole tour. It’s been made watching so many people sing along. It’s such a massive improvement on the last tour, in terms of more people coming along which has been great.

Word certainly seems to have spread about the band. What do you attribute this to?

Well it’s just through word of mouth. It’s not like we have much choice, we don’t have the same industry profile as when the first album came out. It’s just word of mouth. We done it in a proper, natural way in that we’ve played, and we’ve played well enough for people to want to come along next time. It’s nice. It’s very, very satisfying.

On a negative note you had a mic stolen in Leeds – any news on this?

Yeah. (Laughs). I think it’s long gone. Our label’s bought our sound man a new one. It wasn’t so much the money aspect of it, because they’re not that expensive, it’s just that it completely ruined the night. It meant a lot to our sound man, I think I was the least famous guy that he’s worked with!

You said in the statement that you’re going to come back to Leeds, has the show been confirmed yet?

I think it’s been booked. There’s so much stuff to do. As soon as we came off tour we had a few days where we had to do some real work, then we did a few shows so I haven’t really sat down with email. I think it’s been confirmed, but we don’t know about it yet. That’s how it usually happens!

I take it you won’t allow the incident to affect the way you perform.

No, no. Stuff goes wrong around us all the time – we just laugh at it now.

Johnny Foreigner - Feels Like Summer

You also released a remix EP recently, what made you do this?

We’ve wanted to do it for ages and ages. All our friends do stuff like that on the computer all the time, but none of us have done anything about it. We never really had access to all the parts before, the individual separate tracks for all the songs. We got all the parts of this specifically so we could do this. It was great fun – we’ve had a few more back now that we didn’t get back in time for the EP. I don’t know what’s going to happen with them but we’ll find some way of putting them out.

How did you go about choosing people to remix the songs?

Everyone we know seems to have some kind of laptop that they can do stuff like that on. They all sit on the tour bus and do things like that. So we just asked people we knew, really! All the bands on there are people we’ve grown up with, and we’ve all been friends for a while. It’s kind of nice to start working together!

You tour quite often, when did work on the new album begin?

We did it in February. We had, literally, a two and a half week gap between jumping off one tour and jumping on another. We kind of toured, did that and then jetted off with Hundred Reasons the day after, I think. That seems to be how it works. There’s either long periods where you’re sitting around being bored or there’s times when too much stuff happens and you struggle to fit it all in.

Is song writing a group effort with Johnny Foreigner then?

I sort of get a vague idea, a verse and a chorus, something like that. Then I take it everyone else and we flesh it out. We get a song from there.

Does the way you perform live influence how you write songs?

It’s a shame, we don’t really think about things like that it all happens very naturally. We tend to just sit down and write. It’s not like we discuss whether the chorus is prominent, or make sure one part is repeated. It seems to all fall into place very naturally, since we’ve been playing together for so long we can all agree on what it sounds like in our heads. The more we play together the more the idea becomes focussed. I know that sounds hideously pretentious but I hope that makes sense!

What led to recording the album in Brooklyn?

Well Alex Newport emailed us. Which we couldn’t believe. We knew who he was because of At The Drive In, and he also did one of the tracks on a Death Cab album that we really like. We got a mail from him saying “yeah we’d really like to record you!” and we were just shocked. We didn’t know much about his other stuff until we got out there. We YouTubed him one night when we were in the apartment and realised that he had done massive acts! We had no idea.

What does he add to the band in the studio?

Just like a proper punk approach. Like, if it sounds good then record it. Don’t think about anything too much.

I’d imagine that would suit you quite well.

Yeah I mean we spent a whole year having to think too much, possibly, so it suited us pretty well.

Did that allow you to experiment then?

Yeah. Well we had a far clearer idea of what we wanted to do than the last one. It wasn’t that we wanted to do other stuff. But I mean before we did the first album we thought “oh we want it to sound like so and so” but not really knowing how to describe it. Whereas with this one I think our musical vocabulary has expanded. It’s less experimentation and more just being ourselves.

Were the songs completed before you went into the studio?

All the songs were written in the gap between leaving one studio and going to the next. It was all written in hotel rooms, vans and places like that.

Did the praise lavished on your debut album take you by surprise?

Yeah I guess, to an extent. We were confident and we knew it was good, but we didn’t expect to get such a good reaction. I don’t know, we’re also cynical enough to know that the music business is more about advertising. We’ve never been that bothered about press, to be honest. It’s reassuring, and it gives us confidence and opens opportunities for us. But at the same time we were doing this for a while without record deals and without any of this. We always enjoyed it, so if it all fell apart tomorrow we would still find a way to do shows.

Didn’t you release a CD-R album years ago?

Yeah! That was mad. We released that ages ago, made about forty copies and then completely forgot about it. Then we looked on the internet and “oh shit, there’s that album!” We write so frequently it’s not that much of an effort to get it out there.

You’re well known for frequent singles, EPs etc – does the rise of the internet remove the need for a compilation of this material?

I’m not sure there’s much need for a compilation for a band at our level. Maybe when we split up, or if one of us dies in like a hideous car crash or something, it would be good to cash in. But at the moment we’re still working on new songs, so it’s more about getting those out. I think that’s the one good thing about the internet destroying everything is that it just makes everything so much easier for people to get into, and it makes it easier for us to get songs out there.

Could the extra remixes be released as a download, then?

I haven’t the foggiest. I really don’t know. I’ve only heard two of them, I think there’s another two that have been sent to our manager. But we’ll find some way of putting them out.

Is there something quite refreshing in the remix process?

Yeah completely. It’s amazing. You record the songs and when they’re done you just sort of switch off and move on to the next ones. It’s really good, we can listen to is and enjoy it. We’ve been listening to them and trying to work out what they’ve done with each bit.

You won’t be able to repay the favour I suppose.

No, we’re so inept. Junior is working on it though, the last remix on the EP is one that he did. He’s been remixing a few. But we’re not up to the same level as everyone else.

Johnny Foreigner - Criminals

Were you able to experience much of the Brooklyn music scene while you were out there recording?

No we didn’t get to go out at all. We spent the first day going into the machine shop where we made our first album to just go and say “hi” and grab a few bits and pieces that we left there. Then every other night we kind of woke up, went into the studio for twelve, stayed until twelve and then went home and slept. It was pretty intensive.

Are you finding that through touring you’ve encountered bands and people that you have quite a lot in common with?

Yeah completely! I was trying to think of some witty answer but basically we’ve made a lot of friends through this. A lot more than we would if we’d done some other job for a certain amount of time. It’s weird with other bands on tour you live in each other’s pockets for two or three weeks, and then you go off tour and you never see them again. But it just makes the re-union all the more emotional.

Have you noticed new groups who sound like Johnny Foreigner?

I still can’t get over it. There are bands who I listen to who’ve said “oh come check us out you’re a massive influence on us” and some of them are just awful and horrible. Some of them are absolutely brilliant and I don’t see any of us in them at all. It’s madly flattering. There’s a band called Mammoth Mammoth who I’ve been listening to and they completely blew me away, they’re amazing. They sound like Tubelord, So Many Dynamos – they’re just fucking incredible.

It must be quite flattering.

Completely. It’s amazing. I never, ever expected it. It makes you feel like part of a chain. We started off writing to our favourite bands saying “you’re awesome, can we please do a gig with you?”. Now we’re finding people doing the same to us.

Johnny Foreigner's new album 'Grace And The Bigger Picture' is out now.

Renaat Vandepapeliere Interview

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:01:25 +0000

Belgium is responsible for more than mere waffles and chocolates. With a roster that includes Aphex Twin, CJ Bolland and Derrick May amongst others, the legendary R & S Records has been making an impact on dance music since 1984.

Clash was fortunate enough to spend a little time with label founder Renaat Vandepapeliere who, along with his partner of 27 years, Sabine Maes, also created the Apollo label as an outlet for more chilled releases. Renaat reactivated Apollo in 2009 with a superb compilation album that includes classic tracks and new cuts alike. Such is his attention to detail, Renaat spent a year compiling the tracklist for the release.

But why did the label disappear in the first place? "I've been away because I was totally bored with the business side of music. At that moment, I though the whole dance music scene was repeating. I was listening to the same records with the same sounds, so I said 'I've had enough. Bye, bye'. I could have been a very clever businessman and exploited it. I could have made much more money, but if I don't feel something in my life - I stop."

This may strike you as a somewhat unconventional view for a label manager, but this is simply part of an unusual history for the enthusiastic and engaging Renaat. "I'm a frustrated drummer!" he confesses. "That was my first ambition, but I didn't have it in me to be as talented as heroes like Gene Kruper, Billy Cobham or Tony Roster Jr."

Like most children growing up, music was always around, and Renaat often found himself listening to the radio. His father, perhaps sensing his son was paying more attention to pirate radio stations than to his studies, took the radio away, smashing it in front of him. Nevertheless, that exposure to the diverse nature of radio undoubtedly set Renaat on his path to embracing a variety of music.

"I have a soul background, I have a jazz background - I listen to various kinds of music. You can't put me in one category. Yeah, I love dance music as a DJ, but I can go from Metallica to Kraftwerk to Vangelis to classical music. For me, music has a time and place. Sometimes I can't listen to dance music and sometimes, I can't listen to rock. It has to fit with the right atmosphere and the right people: you have to capture a moment."

This desire to craft moods becomes more apparent when Renaat graduated from DJing to the development of R&S Records. "I worked in a record shop, but as a DJ I was getting very frustrated with the Belgian scene. The clubs were so commercial and American music just wasn't accepted. The guys that were importing records here, they went straight into the studio and created a bad cover of it. I didn't like that. I said 'Respect the artist. License it in, and let's have the original track'. That's where the idea to start the label started, and it was New Beat that gave me the chance."

The New Beat genre was borne when Ghent's Marc Grouls and Antwerp's 'Fat' Ronnie Harmsen began playing 12" techno records at 33rpm instead of the prescribed 45rpm. New Beat's influence spread to the UK, with the NME devoting a front cover to this emerging form that would come to influence electronic artists such as The Prodigy, KLF and Autechre.

Never one to pander solely to fans, Renaat sought to expand the label's catalogue by releasing incresingly eclectic electronic diversions. "When you create a label, and you're trying to do different stuff, your core fans don't accept it. This was part of my frustration." Releasing Aphex Twin's seminal 'Selected Ambient Works 85-92' seemed to typify this. "It was very strange during that time: people thought I was crazy. Everybody said 'Why are you putting Aphex Twin out?' I remember the first year we sold twenty copies. But this is the sort of record that goes from hand-to-hand, and builds on word-of-mouth."

The ability to tap into the musical zeitgeist was something that R&S became apt at, and Renaat himself is unable to recall how many releases from the label triggered scenes within the burgeoning dance explosion. The inexplicable intuition and diversification of R&S and Apollo's output accounts for much of this ability. "Apollo was an escape for me, it's balance. Dance music is something serious. I can have fun, I can drive home, but then I would put on an Apollo CD."

Of course, you don't need to have been out on a bender to listen to an Apollo CD, but the times have changed since Renaat's been away. Drugs are different, cheaper and more accessible and though the intention of dance music has remained the same, its method of delivery has noticeably shifted with cultural and technological changes. So how does Renaat feel to be back in the game again? "Now I feel vibrant again, I feel great again. I was preparing for a return anyway because I want to build a hi-tech club that travels the world. If you took ecstasy at that party - you'd die. It'd be too much!"

I asked Renaat why he felt the need for this travelling 'superclub'. "When I go out, it's not the same vibe any more. Maybe it's me, because I'm so spoilt, but don't get me wrong - I don't want to live in the past, I'm not nostalgic. For me, I see the kids and I think they're missing something. Now you get a list of very expensive DJs, big lights, and a big soundsystem, but when you walk in - you can smell the money. There was a certain passion and love put into the old parties. When those guys put something on, they were ready to be slaughtered: their hearts were in there!"

Looking to the future, Renaat continues to develop new artists, "I don't care what it is, so long as it's done from the heart - not a McDonald's product! I can smell that a mile off."
In running from that hideous, ubiquitous, corporate smell, Renaat has stumbled across Irish quartet, The Plea and has now started his own indie label. "Hopefully, I can do R&S jazz!" he laughs. His enthusiasm for music and risk-taking is deeply infectious. But what of the result?
"Let the consumer decide - let the people decide. Not me! Who am I? Who the fuck am I? Nobody! I'm just Mr Nobody. I like music, and that's it."

History is sure to judge this specific loss to percussion a significant cultural gain.

Words by Ash Akhtar

'Apollo - Past, Present, Future' is out now on Apollo Records.

Ungdomskulen’s Bergen

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:30:40 +0000

Norway has a reputation for Black Metal where band members murder and each each other. Bergen in the north, however, is a meting pot of many styles of music all rubbing shoulders in a scene that’s got killer bands rather than bands that kill.

With one of Northern Europe’s most vibrant music scenes ablaze thanks to the patronage of Whitest Boy Alive, Datarock, Annie and Ralph Myerz, the scene is set for the next ‘Bergen Wave’ led by none other than angular glam rockers Ungdomskulen.

When faced with the age-old question ‘how would you describe your music?’ Ungdomskulen’s Kristian aptly replies, “I think we fit very well into the high-speed-experimental-jazz-prog-scene. It’s vocals, guitar, baritone-guitar and drums chasing a tone-burglar down the street.”

Ungdomskulen started out as three teenagers who, according to themselves, required a lot of practice before they came what they are today. “We weren’t very skilled at our instruments back then, and wanted to play more challenging and complex rock music. I guess Ungdomskulen was formed the day we had gotten comfortable in what we were doing prior to Ungdomskulen.”

Musically the threesome have been praised for their instrumental talent. “Our biggest strength must be our ability and courage to experiment with sounds and rhythms,” says Frode.

The band isn’t hesitant to divulge the secrets to their song writing processes either, as the moustached bassist continues: “We’re very good at pushing each other towards new directions. Our biggest strength must be our ability and courage to experiment with sounds and rhythms. Our musical skills are a side effect of that curiosity rather than something we aim for. Since we all make the music together, we all try to bring good spirit when we get together to write songs, and sometimes our bass player Øyvind brings cookies.”

They are certainly a happy bunch, and their glam stage presence belies hours of jamming, chasing their heroes such as The Zombies, E.L.P, Bob Hund, Gentle Giant, The Latin Kings, Nirvana and Wings. None of the band members originally came from Bergen. The decision to move to the second largest city in Norway was made with their aspirations in mind. “All babes move to the bigger cities eventually, and so did we,” explains Kristian. “Bergen has a laidback attitude, still the Bergensers are talkative and easily provoked in a charming way, with a lot of love for their city.

For being such a small town there are extreme amounts of resourceful and creative people that make Bergen a nice place to live, whether it’s the yearly film festival, dance nights or the D.I.Y spirit that is found everywhere.mBecause of the diversity of the bands and artists it’s not easy to describe the music scene as rock or dance oriented. One could probably, because of some of the bigger more successful acts hailing from Bergen, describe the Bergen scene as an electronic/dance scene. But you’ll also find a lot of other different styles and genres. Since it’s such an open-minded audience and a lot of nice artists helping and supporting each other, everything is kind of allowed.

That way it’s a creative scene which can surprise you and keep you on the alert. The music scene is really good. There are a lot of great bands in this city and there are a lot of bands coming to town to play. Bergen is the most important city in Norway when it comes to music, and if you have a band and want to get somewhere with your music Bergen is really friendly when it comes to building a network and get a chance to play at different venues. I guess we could say the constant rain is an influence as it makes us do our very best so we can get the hell away from it to tour in less humid places.”

A couple of special recommendations from the band:

Black Metal Mecca

“Given our history and how closely attached Black Metal is to our nation more should probably be made of Black Metal, but hanging out on a daily basis it really doesn’t feel that it’s a big Black Metal scene. It would be fun if there were a lot more though, that way we could all wear spikes, be angry and intimidating and tell everybody that Bergen is all about exotic black metal and nothing else.”

Eat local, think marmalade

“A great place to eat is Pingvinen, which serves good traditional Norwegian food. And there is a café called Knøderen, and they serve very good Svele. Svele is Norwegian traditional thick pancakes, served with brown cheese and marmalade. Ah yeah!”

24 hours in Bergen

“We would go to the aquarium for sure. It’s located on Nordnes, which is sort of a secluded area with little traffic and a lot of trees. There’s nothing that seduces our visitors as seeing the mating penguins or feeding of the snakes. After that we’d go to 3 Kroneren for a hot dog - they have the nicest sausages in town, and a lamb hot dog is the perfect lunch to eat on a bench somewhere looking at people and telling tall tales. After that we go to play goodminton in the Nygårds Park. Goodminton is where you want to keep your game going as long as possible - there is no net and no rules. We also bring beers and drink and play until the sun goes down. Then, after a quick meal somewhere nasty, we head to Landmark and dance the night away to contemporary dance music, and then we go down to the pier and watch the sunrise and bath naked in the ocean.”

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Ungdomskulen's A-Z of Bergen

Apollon or Robot
Two good record shops for vinyl.

Bien
Converted drug store now transformed into a bar.

BIFF
Bergen International Film Festival, a very good festival. They have a lot of good documentary films and independent stuff from all over the world.

Café Opera
Café Opera has a lot of club nights and a monthly favourite is a prog rock night hosted by our very own Kristian Stockhaus called Prog Rock Me Amadeus.

Hulen Unique
Bergen venue that’s an old bomb shelter inside a mountain and it’s dark and cosy and totally worth checking out.

Knøderen
Cafe serving very good Svele, which are Norwegian traditional thick pancakes, served with brown cheese and marmalade.

Landmark
Good for coffee or a rave. Ungdomskulen’s favourite hangout place in Bergen, with a high ceiling and nice sofas and general awesome atmosphere.

Line Ira
One of Bergen’s best music promoters.

Lydgalleriet
A really cool sound gallery.

Nøsteboden
An ancient wooden pub by the old harbour selling delightfully expensive beer.

Nordnesparken
A beautiful park with a real totem pole in it.

Øyvinds Place
The traditional restaurant where the annual Ungdomskulen Christmas Feast takes place in October.

Pepper
Funky clothes shop in Nygårdsgaten

Pingvinen
Good traditional Norwegian food like stewed lamb.

Razika
We’re impressed by this local band with just girls. They’re really young, really nice, polite and talented.

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Words by Matthew Bennett

100 Most Outrageous Quotes In Music - Part 1

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:28:41 +0000

When you’re famous, saying the wrong thing can be fatal.

Whether it’s a slip of the tongue, a moment of madness or total naivete, having your words recorded for posterity will ensure a lifetime of embarrassment - especially when they’re part of a list like this! Here, we’ve gathered the 100 most outrageous things as said by those who should really stick to what they’re good at...

We'll be revealing the Top 100 over the course of this week, stay tuned!

Read part 2 of the countdown HERE, part 3 HERE, part 4 HERE and part 5 HERE.

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100
“I don’t mean to sound like a cheap prostitute, but you can call me what you like.”
Chris Martin

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99
“I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.”
Jim Morrison

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98
“Until I was nine years old I thought ‘cunt’ was a term of endearment.”
Pete Doherty

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97
“Everybody does drugs... When you go on the road, there’s nothing to do but do drugs and fuck.”
Steven Tyler, Aerosmith

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96

“I don’t listen to music. I hate music.”
Johnny Rotten

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95
“I hate to see chicks perform. Hate it... Because they whore themselves. Especially the ones that don’t wear anything. They fuckin’ whore themselves.”
Bob Dylan

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94
“To some I’m a junkie madman who should be dead, and to others, I’m a mythical genius.”
Keith Richards

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93
“The way I compliment a girl now is by saying, ‘I want to throw knives at your vagina’.”
Marilyn Manson

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92
“I feel bad for people who don’t drink, When they wake up... that’s the best they’re going to feel all day.”
Frank Sinatra

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91
“England isn’t good on lubricants.”
Caleb Followill, Kings Of Leon

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90
“I don’t pay any attention to the business side of music. I paid a whole lot of attention to the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll though.”
Chrissie Hynde

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89
“I’m on a diet. It’s very strict: all hot dogs. Just sausages, constantly. It’s working out - I’ve gained fifteen pounds!”
Beth Ditto

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88

“People would say to me, “Hey man, you look just like Paul McCartney”, and I’d say: “I wish I had his money!””
Paul McCartney

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87
“The idea of having to conform to someone else’s ideal is unacceptable. I’m gonna be me. And if I can’t be me, then I’d rather not do it.”
Lenny Kravitz

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86
“I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.”
P.J. Harvey

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85
“I could go on stage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out and people would think it was some statement or something.”
Bono

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84
“As long as you remain black, you’re still gonna be a nigga.”
Eazy-E

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83
“The only thing that could possibly save British politics would be Margaret Thatcher’s assassin.”
Morrissey, 1992

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82
“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
Decca Records’ rejection letter to The Beatles, 1962.

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81
“I’m a bisexual man who’s never had a homosexual experience.”
Brett Anderson

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Read the other parts of the Top 100 countdown - PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4 PART 5

Ones To Watch: Twinkranes

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:59:54 +0000

You’ve got to love a band whose motto runs “100% psychedelic as much as you can.”

Given their sprawling, Krautrock sound you might not guess Dublin’s Twinkranes’ year-zero band. “Growing up, one of the first bands we got into was Happy Mondays,” says the band’s Anto (AKA Blonde Fox). “It was kind of like a gateway drug, we got into so many different bands through them; Roxy Music and Eno, onto stuff like Cluster and all those bands. Y’know when you get into a band and people reference them then you follow through as see what they were into. That’s what forms you and influences you.”

Maybe not so strange when you recall the Mondays’ love of Can and Twinkranes’ similar manifesto of trying to meld the structures and sounds of dance music with a more rock-orientated, live instrument set-up. “We were always into dance music and were trying to make dance music live, with live instruments.”

Spotted by Twisted Nerve’s Andy Votel, he snapped the trio up putting them to work on his Migrating-Caustic-Mutable tour, honing their chops. The three members, Blonde Fox, Rooster and Auburn Spinner, are long-time friends who coalesced into the self-proclaimed “psychedelic power trio specialising in zone-out progressive pop musik” from various elements of Dublin’s vibrant music scene. Blonde Fox clarifies: “It was kind of overdue that we got together and got a band together. We’d been friends for a long time and I’d been working on some material and we just got the lads involved and one of the lads, Ray (AKA Auburn Spinner), is a DJ and he wanted to get on board, and meself and Rooster were working on some material and we formed the band that way.”

The band is part of the latest blooming of talent from their hometown, which is something they put down to the credit crunch. “Things have been going really, really underground, which is great. I think a lot of the money has gone out of the city so it’s kinda put an edge back to it, y’know gigs going on in people’s house and spaces where you never had it before because I think a lot of the rents are a lot lower, so it’s getting a bit of its identity back after the way things were, so supposedly affluent.”

Their debut album, ‘Spektrumtheatresnakes’, was recorded live in Stereolab’s London studio in an intense three-day period that saw the band focus and streamline their live excursions into seven fat-free tracks, playing live in the studio with only the vocals overdubbed. Their adventurous live sound hasn’t been ditched though, as the trio hope to do some one-off 12” releases with a side each devoted to extended workouts.

With talk of new material already, it’s apparent Twinkranes are building up a momentum equal to their thrilling, pulsating music.

Words by Nick Annan

Where: Dublin
What: Psychedelic motorik power trio
Unique Fact: Their ‘Being Kong’ song was used in the film Cherrybomb starring Rupert Grint, who has apparently turned his Harry Potter co-stars onto the band.
Get 3 songs: ‘High Tekk Train Wreck’, ‘Fizz Not Feedback’, ‘The Charmer’

Carl Craig and Innerzone Orchestra

ClashMusic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:26:39 +0000

“I’m always busy,” laughs Carl Craig when I ask if he’s been working hard recently.

Looking back, it was a foolish question to ask someone whose ongoing duties and interests include record label boss (his own Planet E Records), remixer, multi-instrumentalist and occasional vocalist. Oh, and one of the most highly regarded and innovative techno producers to step out of Detroit (or anywhere else for that matter) - recording under a staggering host of musical aliases over the years.

But even for a man with as many pie-stained digits as this, Craig has been especially busy of late, organising and rehearsing for a one-off reformation performance of his seminal Innerzone Orchestra project, to take place at this summer’s Get Loaded In The Park festival. With Craig himself on programming duties, he will hold together a full live band and ten-piece string orchestra, displaying Innerzone’s enticing mix of electronica, jazz, twisted soul and freeform improvisation. This promises to be a truly unique live show.

Having created probably the most coherent and original fusion of electronics and jazz in modern times with their only recorded album, ‘Programmed’, Innerzone Orchestra came to be regarded as the ultimate example of what a dance orchestra could achieve. Then again, calling Innerzone a dance orchestra is to simplify things to a horrific degree. What made the group so innovative and influential to countless musicians was the scope of musical bases they covered, all in a single album. The final track of ‘Programmed’ - ‘Bug In The Bassbin’ - also has a bit of a story to tell. Produced by Craig in 1992, and featuring some of the musicians who would later make up Innerzone, ‘Bug In The Bassbin’ effectively signalled the beginning of the Orchestra (though their album wouldn’t be recorded until 1999, seven years later), and is now recognised as having helped to kick-start and nurture the beginnings of the breakbeat and drum and bass scenes.

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“I wanted to present something that would be different, musically. I wanted to do something that came from my heart.”

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A bold claim for a single track, but give it a spin and you’ll see why. Full of deep bass grooves, shifting synth melodies and a drum break that would inspire/get robbed by countless beat-heads, it sounds like a fresh answer to all the jazzy d‘n’b/instrumental breaks efforts produced over the last decade, and was created years before most of them were even dreamt up.

Even at the time, Craig knew he was making something special: “I had a clue that something was going on, because I wanted to go down that path - when I was making ‘Bug In The Bassbin’, I wanted to present something that would be different, musically. I wanted to do something that came from my heart.” Though its impact was initially confined to the underground upon release, ‘Bug In The Bassbin’ was eventually - inevitably - picked up by DJs, including the likes of 4hero, Goldie and J Majik, all aware of the potential of speeding up the track’s already fascinating syncopated beats - a technique that would be used more than once in the coming years of drum and bass.

A little later still, and the track was picked up by James Lavelle, who would become a key player in various incarnations of the breaks and beats scenes. Lavelle reissued ‘Bug In The Bassbin’ on his Mo’ Wax label - a respected source of trip-hop and hip-hop, with a big audience. The track’s status as a classic - for everyone from beat-hedonists to beard-stroking jazz obsessives - was cemented. And although Craig may have known that he was tapping into something when he created the track, even he didn’t know quite what was to come.

“When I first heard a DJ playing ‘Bug In The Bassbin’, I knew they were playing it faster than normal, but I didn’t really have the concept of how it would inspire people. I knew that I wanted to inspire, but I didn’t have any idea of how it would be an integral part of inspiring guys to make breakbeat or drum and bass or whatever. I mean, breakbeat itself was something that was going on at the time when I made ‘Bug…’, with Shut Up And Dance [UK pioneers of old skool breaks and rave], that kind of stuff. But when people were inspired by ‘Bug…’ to make early drum and bass, I had no clue that would be the case.”

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Innerzone Orchestra - Bug In A Bassbin

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And it’s not just drum and bass that wears that mark of Innerzone on its sleeve. As well as hearing its influence in various electronic/instrumental crossovers such as Tom Jenkinson’s Squarepusher and the various dance orchestras undertaken by the likes of Matthew Herbert and Jeff Mills, Innerzone effectively paved the way for most of the ‘nu-jazz’ outfits like The Cinematic Orchestra (who owe more than a passing nod to some of the tracks on ‘Programmed’) and Jaga Jazzist.

Though the project has seen a number of musicians pass through its ranks (including minimal techno stalwart Richie Hawtin and Detroit bass-playing legend Paul Randolph, who both contributed to tracks on ‘Programmed’), Innerzone’s appearance at the Get Loaded festival will feature - as well as Craig himself - several original members of the project, including Craig’s long-time collaborator, experimental pianist Francesco Tristano, and Wendell Harrison, both of whom receive the highest praise from Craig.

“Francisco is an original member and integral piece of the puzzle. Wendell Harrison; I call him the snake charmer because he plays that sax and that clarinet in a way that is still so entrancing, and his solos… They’re events in their own right. Their solos are very important to the reaction of the people and that’s how it’s a lot different to what I do as a DJ. As a DJ you can play a song, and the song will work and the improvisation that you’ll do will be based around filtering and looping, or the way the next song is mixed in - things like that - in order to get the crowd to respond. But it’s a different way, and maybe not as entrancing as what happens with a pro soloing, like Wendall Harrison.”

And if you think that soloing clarinets have no place locking horns with electronica, well, you’re wrong. Part of Innerzone’s beauty comes from its wide range of styles and the musicians’ ability to blend together these conflicting elements, creating something intricate yet accessible - be it Craig’s Detroit techno roots, to hip-hop to percussive world rhythms to future funk to a strong jazz element that characterises the whole album - everything here is crafted by the finest names in the modern business. Fittingly, listening to ‘Programmed’ also brings to mind some of the great names in modern jazz, particularly the pioneers of improv-based free jazz: ‘Bitches Brew’-era Miles Davis, the later years of John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock (whose sublime ‘Sextant’ album is particularly reminiscent during parts of ‘Programmed’), and the mighty Sun Ra, with his untouchable, other-worldy ‘Arkestra’ and penchant for improvised electronics. Fittingly, one of Innerzone’s original line-up, percussionist Francisco Mora, played in the late, great Sun Ra’s band of eccentric geniuses.

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“Innerzone was an avenue for making music that is avant-garde.”

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By now, it seems clear that despite frequent glitchy electronics, Innerzone is a very different machine to the techno background with which many will associate Carl Craig. But then again, Craig has always been an innovator in whatever musical direction he pursues. Much of the reason he became so highly regarded was his willingness to explore other musical dimensions through his electronic work, refusing to stick to the traditional techno parameters, embracing the range of musical influences that being of Detroit’s ‘second generation’ offered. It seems that Innerzone was the perfect channel to fully explore these elements: “Innerzone, for me, was an avenue for making music that is avant-garde; a way of dealing with my inspirations from jazz. It’s an opportunity to play music that’s different to what I do as a DJ. When I’m playing on my own as a DJ, it’s focused on what I do and how I get people to respond, based on the music I play, whereas with Innerzone, it’s a collective, and people’s responses are based on the musicians and how they play.”

With credentials for Craig and Innerzone overflowing from every conceivable direction, I’m curious as to whether it may be a tad strange to perform at Get Loaded In The Park, surrounded by artists whose musical careers may have been kick-started by both his solo work and Innerzone’s album: “Nah, it’s never strange, man; we just do what we do. I’ve been as influenced as much by them as they have might been influenced by me.” Doubtful, Carl, but it’s good of you to say so.

But one thing about the upcoming live show is certain: a horrific amount of preparation is required to perform something as intricate as ‘Programmed’ (as well as some of Craig’s solo tracks), with as many musicians as will be on stage. In particular, the ten-piece string orchestra that will accompany Innerzone - though doubtlessly fantastic on the night - will provide more than enough to keep Craig as busy as ever in the run-up to the festival: “Yeah, the string arrangements are probably the most difficult part because they have to be written without the string players themselves, and then everything that needs to be fixed has to be fixed on the spot. I can’t say it’s going to be an easy thing to do, but we’ll work on perfection during rehearsal, and I’m sure the performance will be wonderful.”

To be honest, it could hardly be anything else.

Words by Tristan Parker

Top Ten Halloween Songs

Nick Annan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:23:35 +0000

Showing we do pay attention to the outside world beyond our cd avalanche besieged office, we present ClashMusic's Halloween Top Ten.

Staying away from the obvious, ('Monster Mash' and any heavy metal song of the last thirty years), we've dug up some of our favourite bands and artists' gloomier, doomier, and sometimes sillier, moments to create a better quality of Halloween party soundtrack.

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The Horrors – I Can’t Control Myself

Transcending their early, skinny goth, tag with the excellent ‘Primary Colours’ album (though they remain skinny goths), The Horrors are included based on their chosen bandname, the song title (which brings to mind Frankenstein thrashing about) and the majestically haunted, yet rocking, vibe of the track.

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Drums of Death – Got Yr Thing

It’s not all about the greasepaint skull face paint. Imagine he did have ‘Yr’ thing? I reckon he’d be a nightmare to get it back from. A sizeable Glaswegian in skullface make up with Yr thing? Now that’s scary. Anyway, be sure to watch the promo clip above that creepily sees his trademark visage infect a club full of kids like a zombie outbreak at a Kiss concert.

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White Lies – Death

A song called ‘Death’. They’re in! Channeling the spirits of Joy Division, Interpol, Editors and numerous other serious young men, White Lies must love Halloween. That said, for a song called ‘Death’ it does get oddly uplifting towards the end. Make sure to watch the video until the one minute thirty marks for a low budget WTF! moment.

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Friendly Fires – Skeleton Boy

A band better known for their euphoric choruses, Friendly Fires win through with ‘Skeleton Boy’. The title is the first win but check out the video for much Sesame Street vibe skeleton fun. Not very scary but pretty amusing, if just for frontman Ed Macfarlane’s dancing.

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Tricky – Pumpkin

With a feel that’s more ‘can’t be arsed’ than out and out threatening, there is something un-nerving about this classic from Tricky's debut album, ‘Maxinquaye’. With Martina Topley-Bird playing the siren in contrast to Tricky cracked whisper it simmers away, leaving a toxic afterglow in your cranium.

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Bottin - Horror Disco

The full Halloween package from Italy's Bottin. Spooky synth disco, aptly named, and a promo video that seems consist of a 4:11 edit of a low budget sci-fi horror film. The best bit is the battle between a green skinned alien and a pissed-off, acne troubled crew member.

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Arctic Monkeys – Brainstorm

Although it’s the album title that brings Halloween to mind, (Favourite Worst Nightmare), it’s lead single, ‘Brianstorm’ almost shares it’s title with a form of insanity used in 1906 as an defence for committing murder (Wikipedia dot what?). That said, it’s a cracking tune worth airing under any pretence.

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Lethal Bizzle – Crazy Nightmare

Although the title, ‘Crazy Nightmare’, brings the Halloween vibe, the track, from Walthamstow’s foremost grime MC, is a standard issue, my dad’s harder than you, rap battle track. The video does attempt to bring some chills but is more naff than nightmare.

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Yoko Ono –Yes, I’m A Witch

Poor Yoko’s had a hard time of it for pretty much the last forty years but she doesn't need your sympathy, oh no. Writing a song called ‘Yes, I’m A Witch’ is a classic Ono. From 1974, the music is actually pretty pleasant jazz funk with her half spoken whisperings darting nimbly over the peaks.

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Joe Goddard – Apple Bobbing (Four Tet Remix)

To banish all those impending nightmares from your mind, let’s end on a more innocent Halloween pastime, apple bobbing. Thankfully you won’t be getting your hair wet here. From Joe Goddard’s fruit themed new album (he’s the hairy one from hot Chip if you don’t recognise the name). Here presented in it’s remixed form by Four Tet (cause the original isn’t on YouTube) you still get some of the early Aphex melancholia to bring you back from behind that cushion.

Words by Nick Annan

Dave Navarro's Last Day On Earth

ClashMusic — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:20:39 +0000

If you were to die tomorrow, how would you spend your final day on Earth? Getting in touch with his inner reaper this month is Jane’s Addiction’s guitar supremo, Dave Navarro.

Where would you wake up?
Probably on another planet that was having its first day.

Who do you wake up next to?
I think that Megan Fox and I would have a real good shot at reigniting some kind of human species.

What would there be left to achieve on your last day?
To be honest, if it was my last day on Earth doing any type of work would probably be the last thing on my mind. So I don’t think there would be any professional endeavours on the last day on Earth. But, I’ve been to the North Pole so you might as well throw in the South Pole. Gotta check out the South Pole.

Who do you invite for your final dinner?
When my last day on Earth comes around I’m not sitting down for any kind of a meal! But if I were to eat, what would be on the menu would be any combination of carbs, cheese, fat and sugar. Absolute self-indulgence.

What would be your greatest regret?
You’re talking to a pretty unapologetic guy who doesn’t regret much. You know, in all sincerity on that one, probably that I haven’t spent more time with family, close family.

What would be the last album you’d listen to?
It would be either ‘The Fragile’ by Nine Inch Nails or Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’

Who is the last person you would kiss?
I think I’m going to have to go back to my original Megan Fox answer.

"You're talking to a pretty unapologetic guy who doesn't regret much."

How would you like to snuff it?
Well there are a number of different ways in which it would be nice to die: one would be to pass quietly and safely in my sleep, one would be to over-experiment with opiates, and one would be to have a cardiac arrest while in the process of making love to Megan Fox. I think I’ll go with that one.

What would your final words be?
“That was fucking amazing.” That includes the band, that includes Megan, and that includes life.

What song would you play at your funeral?
I’ve always wanted inappropriate music at my funeral, something that wouldn’t make anyone else unhappy. So maybe something by The Sugarcubes.

What would it say on your grave stone?
The funny thing is I’ve thought about this a million times and I’ve got a million great answers, but not on the spot, I don’t have it. So, just: ‘Here lies Dave Navarro. He did the best he could.’

Which dead star would welcome you at the Pearly Gates and why?
Probably my mother because I haven’t seen her in thirty years. She’d show me where all the strip clubs are.

If you were resurrected the day after tomorrow, who or what would you come back as?
Sincerely? Guitar player for Jane’s Addiction. I couldn’t be happier. I really would do it all over again. I think the way it’s gone is the way it’s supposed to go and I would do it exactly like that.

The xx Interview

ClashMusic — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:04:45 +0000

"A lot of the songs were written at night. We would play our instruments really quietly because we didn’t want to wake anyone in my house up.”

Emerging from the same London comprehensive that spawned Four Tet, Hot Chip and countless others The xx are something of a mystery. Amid a British guitar scene dominated by braggadocio the group aim to reside in the shadows, bound by both shyness and a sense of mystery. Formed at school, The xx seem to recall something of the romance of the adolescent in their adoption of symbols such as the sun and the moon as their own. “I think I find those symbols quite romantic, and quite peaceful,” says singer Romy Madley Croft. “I like that poetic style of imagery. I prefer to sing about those things, rather than a relationship or whatever.”

Yet the band have a clear pop touch. Live, The xx throw in covers by Aaaliyah and old school R&B merchants Womack & Womack alongside their own material, though strangely The xx seem to be both hampered and fuelled by their introversion. The band’s twin vocalists [Romy sings with bassist Oliver Sim] often vie for attention, yet never seem to trip on each other’s toes. “Neither of us thought when we were children that we were going to be singers - we’re not natural performers,” Romy admits. “We’ve had to work hard to be singers. When we made the first single we were so polite, like ‘You first, no you first’.”

Style-wise, The xx seem almost communal in their addiction to noir. “I’ve always worn black. I suppose people in my family have worn dark colours, and that’s maybe rubbed off. We’re aware that it’s good to look like a collective, that we need to look like a band. But we’ve never sat down and discussed it, it’s almost subconscious - a group understanding of what looks good.”

The xx’s debut album, ‘xx’, is out now.

Words by Robin Murray

Read ClashMusic's Ones To Watch feature on the band HERE.