Chris Brokaw + David McNair + Barry Peak
Tonight at the Pavilion, Ormeau Rd, Belfast, I think it's £6 in. Chris Brokaw (ex-Come, Codeine, Consonant etc) wwas one of my favourite gigs of last year, and this should be equally good. It's a shame I can't go as I'm working that night - I've had a busy, anti-social working week this week. Yet another solo performance by Barry Peak in support, one of the first shows he has done post-Torgas Valley Reds, so worth a listen.

I still haven't sussed out how to put together a listings page, or gig previews, or wahtever you want to call it. I have thought about using the myspace calendar feature, so I might give that a go next week when I have more time to fool around with the settings.

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Wrong Music tour: Shitmat etc
These guys missed their ferry and had to cancel the Cork gig last night, however Dublin and Belfast are going ahead as planned. Here's a nice poster for the Belfast show...

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Temporary outage outrage!
Well, we still don't know what happened but the dot.com address got overwritten or hacked into or something. As it is only a masking address for the blogspot page it was quite clear that all the info was gibberish, and it also had attempted to overload my email. Thankfully that didn't work due to my arcane email set-up.
Anyway, posts have been slack this week because I've been busy, been out at a couple of gigs (Belle and Sebastian, Broken Social Scene, both VERY good) and more significantly I've discovered myspace and I am in the stages of early addiction! I've been told that this will pass. It is the best way to get in touch with me though!

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YOUTUBE VID: Husker Du on the Joan Rivers show, 1987?
Extraordinary that they should appear on a mainstream show like this, and even get an interview with Ms Rivers afterwards! The song is 'Could you be the One' (and not You Could be the One as she announces it).

Husker Du 'Could You Be the One" + interview with Joan Rivers

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YOUTUBE VID: Sonic Youth McBeth
This dates from the Ciccone Youth/ Whitey Album era and I had never seen it before. Does anyone know who the woman with the dark hair is? The sound is a bit squelchy and compressed but it's interesting to hear them working with beats like this, kinda like World Domination Enterprises or someone.

Sonic Youth - McBeth

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John Peel's Record Box: Electro Hippies

John Peel's Record Box: Electro Hippies

34. Electro Hippies 'Mega Armageddon Death' Peel Session 1987

[band biog] | [session info]
The 7" record with the most tracks on it, at least so far, and the first complete Peel session to be included. The title track is a single second burst, a short sharp exclamation mark, and all 9 tracks total just over 8 minutes. Electro Hippies were (the less well known) contemporaries of Napalm Death, the Stupids, and Extreme Noise Terror. This kind of punk/ metal was popular in the late 80s, it kind of blends 'Land Speed Record' Husker Du with speed metal, and it always reminds me of school and the first times I became really attached to the Peel programme. I had taped a Stupids session from the same year as this, and someone at school was so appalled by it they took it out of our communal tape player and flushed it down the loo.
Nearly 20 years later this sounds tamer than it did at the time, but it still has an edge to it. I enjoyed rediscovering this one.

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GIG REPORT: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah + Dr Dog, Belfast Mandela Hall, 3rd February 2006

GIG REPORT: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah + Dr Dog, Belfast Mandela Hall, 3rd February 2006
Another success story built on the internet and word of mouth, CYHSY's story is kind of the US version of what the Arctic Monkeys and the JCB song have done in the UK. Now they have properly released their album in the UK and are touring to promote it. It's no surprise then that tonight has sold out, although there was another strong rumour around locally that the Arcade Fire were going to be the surprise support band!
Obviously that was untrue, but it may have played a part in getting a good crowd in on time to see Dr Dog. I had never heard of them before tonight but I was pretty impressed. They're clearly not afraid to plunder classic rock for their ideas - there's a lot of Neil Young, the Byrds in there, and one of the guitarists looks a bit like Tom Petty! They win the crowd over too, and I suggest that fans of Wilco and Pavement check them out on the rest of this tour.
I should admit that I have a problem with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The first couple of times I heard the album I had to either stop it or fast forward it because the singer's voice grated so much. If you haven't heard them I would say that he falls somewhere in David Byrne/ Daniel Johnson territory and he is occassionally very flat. I can see how this could work if the band were going for an experimental sound, but the music is conventional indie-pop. Having said that, the album has grown on me a little, and there are a couple of tunes on there that I love.
The crowd are really into them from the start, there's a huge reaction to some of the songs and the band respond to this. All of them seem to be grinning simultaneously. 'The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth' is the point where I am totally won over. Half way through a technical fault disrupts the show (no power on the stage monitors I think) and while this gives me time to chat to some people I hadn't seen earlier, it also unsettles the audience and the gig loses momentum. They play a few more then they encore with 'Upon this Tidal Wave of Young Blood', which is better than the recorded version as the vocals don't grate as much in the live setting. That goes for the whole gig actually, the singer wasn't as hard a listen for me and he gelled better within the overall sound.
I was surprised that a lot of people who like the album more than me didn't rate the show too highly. One of my favourite sleeve notes is by Robert Forster on a Go-Betweens compilation, when he states that "in rock n roll terms, the Go-Betweens always take the chequered flag." For some reason this came in to my head during the first few CYHSY songs tonight. The trouble was that they took the flag too early then spent the rest of the night doing laps of honour.

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YOUTUBE VID: The Fall and Michael Clark, from the ballet of 'I Am Kurious Oranj'
I really wish there was a properly released full version of the ballet, as it was before my Fall-gig-going years, and I would love to see it. This is pretty good, you see Brix on a burger, some giant baked bean tins and a lot of Michael Clark in action. The song is 'Cab It Up' by the way.

The Fall - Kurious Oranj

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John Peel's Record Box 29-33, an Eddie and Ernie special

John Peel's Record Box 29-33, an Eddie and Ernie special

29. Eddie & Ernie - I believe she will + We try harder (CHESS)
30. Eddie & Ernie - I'm gonna always love you + Outcast (EASTERN)
31. Eddie & Ernie - Time waits for no one + That's the way it is (EASTERN)

More than anything this is box is proving to be a treasure trove of forgotten soul and rockabilly performers. Eddie and Ernie were an RnB duo from the '60s (biographical info here), and some of their material on these 7 inch singles is just beautiful. Sweet voices in the vein of Sam Cooke or Sam and Dave, I have to admit that I had never heard of them before. Some of their material occasionally pops up on Northern Soul collections, while all the B-sides are now found on the Lost Friends collection on Kent/ Ace records. No throwaway material here, all of these songs are worth hearing, adn in fact the B sides are more uptempo and immediate than some of the A-sides. It makes you think how much material like this has been forgotten. Eddie and Ernie's era is now represented by those acts that stayed in the mainstream, and acts like them remain unknown, even to music obsessives like me. It's a shame, but at the same time, a pleasure to discover them.

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YOUTUBE VID: Bushwhacked
Yes the first of FAR TOO MANY!! I was going to link to some musical gems for the first of this series, but I thought that this Chris Morris cut-up was highly appropriate given that Bush did his State of the UNion address yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/w/Bushwhacked?v=93F5tr8vM50&search=bushwhacked#comment

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