Girls

I'm hooked on the melancholic surf sounds of Girls at the moment. They'll be playing the Scala in London on February 23rd and I suggest that you check them out if you get the chance. This Pitchfork review gives some fascinating insight into the band's origins:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13477-album/



http://www.myspace.com/girls

Highs and Lows

Jay Reatard (May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010)

I saw Jay Reatard play at The Underworld in November. It was a strange gig, madly intense but over in a flash. I decided not to write about it at the time because I couldn’t quite decide what to say about it. The music was amazing but there just wasn’t enough of it. Jay whipped the audience into a frenzy and then wondered off stage abruptly and wordlessly. There was no encore and no explanation. We speculated on what could be wrong. Was he pissed off with the venue? To put it bluntly, The Underworld stinks of shit. Or was he pissed off with touring the UK in general? He opened the show by asking, ‘Have any of you guys ever been to Birmingham? Well don’t go there. It’s a shit hole.’ Looking back, I guess it was the fact that he was just so very weary.


Photo from Camden Underworld gig

The songs he did play were amazing. Oh It’s Such a Shame and My Shadow left us all bruised, concussed and euphoric but you could tell that his heart wasn’t in it.






When I heard, this evening, about his death at the age of 29 it all suddenly began to make sense.
His ‘about me’ box on Facebook reads ‘(Jay Reatard) is sick and tired of being sick and tired of you!’
It’s not a wonder that Jay was sick and tired, he was a wildly prolific artist, who began recording music at the age of 15. His live performances were filled with an unsustainable amount of energy and power. Jay Reatard was the embodiment of garage punk in the noughties and his genius for creating raw, powerful, torment laden music stands with the likes of Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain. He may not have received the recognition he deserved in his lifetime but his legacy will live on forever. RIP Jay Reatard.


Waiting For Something - a short documentary about Jay Reatard

Jay Reatard | MySpace Music Videos

Cover Versions

I've recently been Djing at my friend's awesome night Re-Cover (a night dedicated to the art of the cover version). So here's a list of some of my favourite cover versions. Enjoy!

Box Elders @ Barden's Boudoir 04/12/09

Bardens touts itself as a ‘boudoir’ as if suggesting that it’s some kind of velvet covered, perfume soaked utopia. Of course it is nothing of the kind, it’s actually is a dingy dive with sweat dripping off the walls and a selection of flat beers served in plastic cups. The only nods towards the Louis XIV opulence that the name implies are a couple of leather armchairs at the back. Dave Goldberg, Box Elders’ multi-talented drummer and keyboardist, explains to me that this particular style of armchair upholstery is known as ‘diamond tuck’. I’m mildly impressed with Goldberg’s command of upholstery terms but not nearly as impressed as I am with his ability to play the drums, the keyboard and shake his maracas all at the same time.

Some bands like to express their collective ethos by wearing matching sharp suits and making similar dance moves. The Box Elders are not one of those bands. In fact, the three members of Box Elders don’t look like they should be in a band together at all. Bassist Clayton McIntyre, with his long flowing blonde mane and his tasselled leather waistcoat, tells me that he is the reincarnation of original Metallica bassist Cliff Burton. A little spooky when you discover that he was born on the day Cliff died. Clayton rocks and headbangs his way through the set while brother Jeremiah, on lead guitar looks a little more subdued in a Tom Waits-esque fedora. At the back Goldberg sweats it out with his multi instrument ensemble giving a performance that is so energetic it would be equally at home on the Baltimore electro scene.

Cliff Burton:



It is a pleasure to watch the Box Elders performing their lo-fi, ramshackle brand of noise pop. Although incongruous each member brings their own unique energy to the band. The songs have a tongue and cheek irreverence about them and Jeremiah introduces one song by explaining, ‘This is a sad song about loving someone who can’t love you back. It’s called necrophilia.’
The song Dave samples Jonathan Richman’s Egyptian Reggae and, like Richman, the Box Elders make smile inducing, quirky and uplifting music.





They ended the set with cover of Teenage Kicks by The Undertones which they dedicated to their road manager ‘who hates everything apart from this song'. It was a brilliantly upbeat cover that was bound to raise a smile out of even the most hard to please of roadies.

http://www.myspace.com/boxelders

When The Going Gets Tough - Ten Songs To Save Your Life

Happy Halloween! How The Cramps put the Psycho into Rockabilly

Formed in 1976 by husband and wife duo Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, The Cramps pioneered a ghoulish new brand of rock 'n' roll known as psychobilly. They took all the best elements of rockabilly, garage and surf music and steeped them in fetishism, Horror, 50's kitsch and B-movie clichés.

They covered rockabilly standards and masterfully subverted them with lashings of leather, blood curdling screams and the eerily distinctive sound of the psychobilly guitar.







With one foot in the past and one foot in the rock 'n' roll apocalypse they resurrected ? Mark & the Mysterians garage classic 96 Tears in the monstrous form of Human Fly...





...and turned Fever, originally made famous by Peggy Lee, into a haunting graveyard anthem.






With song titles like Bikini Girls With Machine Guns and I Was A Teenage Werewolf The Cramps inhabited a lusty, transgressive, go-go dancing world.




Unfortunately, lead singer, Lux Interior passed away in February of this year but I'm sure that if you look hard enough you'll still be able to find his spirit gyrating at a Zombie Dance somewhere this Halloween....