“The Fall are on Jools Holland’s show next week.
Mark E Smith is the only artist in the history
of the show to have a clause in his contract
inserted to state that Jools will not play
boogie-woogie piano over any of his songs.”

Fucking yes!

Almost as good is this email that I imagine every single member of the diskant team received:

Hi, Mr. Stockwell!
I work at Stick Figure Productions here in New York (www.stickfigureproductions.com). We are currently beginning production on a new reality show that’s going to break the mold of reality shows
– it’s the first ever on-line reality show. Showing on AOL.com. Warner Music head Lyor Cohen is headlining a new “Apprentice”-like show for the music industry. The final contestant will produce an unsigned band’s first album and sign them to his or her own label in the WMG family. A good opportunity for any young man or woman looking to make a big leap into the record business.
Now we are looking for possible contestants. Basically asking them to put together a short video about themselves and the local band they believe is the overlooked diamond that they’re going to help break out. If you had any tips or resources
that could help me out, kind of get the word out, I’d appreciate it. It looks like your site speaks to the kinds of people we’re looking for.
Please feel free to e-mail me back or call me at my office: ***-***-****. Thanks for your time and I look forward to talking with you. –Darren

Personally, I’m thinking of recommending Orthrelm. Or maybe Hotototogisu. Or The Skaters. Oh, so many TV-friendly bands to push towards stardom!

Julian Gaskell is part of the Icons of Poundland collective that wreaked musical havoc in the north-west with their home-baked folk/skiffle/punk mischief. He now resides in the more sedate climes of Falmouth and writes spooky, upbeat songs that sound like Tom Waits strung-out on fresh-air! The four tracks that make up ‘Demonstration Recordings’ aren’t a million miles from Mr Waits’ often-potent light jazz/dirty blues cocktail, and rattle between whacked-out, lowdown gritty stompers like ‘Learn From Your Mistakes’ and the gothic, gypsy-blues of ‘Gather! While Ye May’. His voice is full of bedraggled, smoky mystery and he plays guitar, harmonica, balalaika, banjo and zither. For anyone who doesn’t know what at least one of those instruments sounds like, the answer is: pretty special. This CD bubbles along like a particularly bucolic avant-folk experiment. If you like your avant-folk experiments bucolic then you’ve come to the right place.

Contact: julian@iconsofpoundland.co.uk

Hi all. I know Chris wrote extensively about Damo about this time last year but I thought I’d break my main blog duck by telling you all about his gig the other night.

It was ace. Damo’s ‘sound carriers’ for this gig were Joe and Neil (Polaris / Bilge Pump) on guitar and drums respectively , Stu (Leeds DIY PA guru) on bass, a keyboard player who was having the time of his life, and a percussionist with a snare drum, cymbal and a box of tricks including a whistle, a football rattle and a baking tray full of pennies. He was my favourite.

For those who haven’t seen Damo recently, he is about 5 foot tall, with long grey hair and a goateee beard. He was wearing a gojonnygogogogo tshirt at least three sizes too big for him. At the start of every ‘song’ he’d point at the person he wanted to start it. They’d play a bit, then the others joined in and Damo sung. He’s got two voices, one is his Can voice and the other is this Tom Waits-like gruff howling. Sometimes he’d swap between these voices during the song, so it was a bit like watching a 60 year old Japanese schizophrenic.

Good job I like 60-year old Japanese Schizophrenics.

I think the band perhaps were a bit nervous at first. Not that it wasn’t ace, it’s more that they started out sounding a bit like Can, but then slowly gained the confidence to do things their way. By the end of the set they were in full flow, doing free jazz bits, spacey bits, krauty bits etc etc.

After every ten minute song (they probably did about 8 pieces, they were on stage well over an hour) Damo would applaud each member of the band in turn, applaud the audience and then point at the guy he wanted to start the next song.

When they finished there was the longest, loudest call for an encore I’d ever heard, so they came back on to do two more pieces… I think the band may not have been sure whether people were enjoying it up to this point because during the encore they were having the time of their lives, laughing, playing with / off each other, the keyboardist looked like he was high, the drummers were having call-and-response battles on the drums. The second to last song was awesome – faster and groovier than everything that had gone before it, and the previously reverential crowd indulged in a bit of dancing down the front.

When they finally, finally finished, Damo announced he was ‘going to bed’, but then shook hands with most of the audience and then sat down signing autographs etc.

Feh, you can call it self-indulgent or arty or whatever (couldn’t find anybody to come with me!) but I thought it was ace, and it was never noodly or muso-ey (apologies to any musos or noodlists reading this).

Damo! Damo! Come back on, and do another song!

The first candidate on my ballot paper this afternoon was Captain Beany, representing the New Millenium Bean Party. Because this is a secret ballot, I reserve the right to tell you whether I did or did not vote him. But check out the manifesto – it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. Especially the bit about giving Prince William a bachelor pad in Cardiff Castle so he can date Charlotte Church.

The best is yet to come – for some strange, mesmerising reason I think this page is possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks: The Wales Yearboook General Election Guide

Update: Beany received 159 votes, just 17,833 short of what would have been a fantastic victory for Cardiff, baked beans and Prince William. Meanwhile, in nearby Cardiff North, the Vote For Yourself Party candidate received 1 vote. Presumably from herself.

Weird, weird, free-associating anti-folk which makes me think that Charles E. Cullen has done too much acid and spent too much time living on his own, rocking wildly and intently on a hand-made rocker on his hand-made porch. Twenty songs of bluesy, reverbed vocals and beginner-style guitar with a variety of comedic titles (‘I got a rare poultry disease’, ‘Kenny’s outdated muscle relaxers’ etc). They remind me of very early Beck; stream-of-consciousness glimpses of strangeitude recorded without apparent reference to anything, and played with the fervour of the Shaggs on an off-day.

The enjoyment of the sheer oddness on display is slightly tempered by the volume of material, which is sometimes overwhelming. I feel this might be a good CD to put on after picking up a sketchy hitch-hiker: make sure to turn up the guitar solos, which sound like the scratching feedback of a murderer.

Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation

I haven’t been able to stop looking at this for like a week.

Funny stuff.

I just searched Google for something (quite innocent!) and it returned results with the following 2 headings:

1. Trousers to his manga gay porno an old codger is wacking off when…

2. Free Banana Tits

what??

On Wednesday night I visited the legendary Fillmore East Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd. It’s a nice enough place, housed in an old deconsecrated Welsh Methodist chapel, and there’s a vending machine in the foyer selling baked corn snacks for 10p a packet. I was in two minds whether to go for Tangy Toms or pickled onion Space Raiders, but the sun had been out all day and I was happy, so I had a packet of each.

I was there to see two friends of mine supporting some guy I’d never heard of. I don’t think they’d heard of him either. We didn’t really know what to expect. There was a stack of promotional postcards next to the ticket office, and they were intriguing – a moodily lit close-up of an androgynous person in tragic-cabaret style with glitter paint lazily seeping from one eye, all done in tastefully deep purples. Very camp, very classy. The reverse was similarly intriguing: ‘a techno-traditionalist’ we were told. Great! ’21st century folk music’. Awesome! ‘Radio 2 airplay’. Fantast- wait, that didn’t sound too promising! But, you know, I’ve got an open mind. And I’m a big fan of Desmond Carrington.

Halflight (the friends of mine) were on first, and they were great. They always are. But I’m not here to talk about Halflight. I’m here to talk about Jim Moray, the 21st century techno-traditionist folk musician.

Jim shuffles onstage dressed in Strokes-lite. Slim-fitting black trousers, black shirt (sleeves rolled half up), 80’s new wave red tie. The geeky offspring of Dennis Pennis and Elvis Costello. His first song is an acapella ‘folk tune’, and is probably about some Merrie Maiden or Olde England’s Forests Green or whatever. It’s nice enough, but he doesn’t have the strongest voice I’ve ever heard. It’s Tesco Value Glenn Tilbrook. Kwik Save Elvis Costello. But the brilliant thing about it is – get this – he’s got a gadget. It’s a small silver box! With a cable coming out of the back! And it makes bits of his voice repeat over and over again! So that he’s doing backing! Vocals! With! Himself! The small audience (mostly 40-somethings sitting comfortably at tressle tables) love it. Couples look excitedly at each other, and squeeze each others hands. Look, it’s that lovely young lad! The one off of Radio 2! He’s singing a nice song! And he’s got a gadget!

Jim’s band enter the stage. They’re geeky new wave lite, too. And things suddenly get very bad. Now, I appreciate folk music as much as the next man. I have two Robbie Basho albums. I think Woody Guthrie was a genius. I have an Anne Briggs CD. I’ve seen the Albion Band live. My mum knows Ashley Hutchings. I’m a big fan of the new wave of world folk sweeping across the land: Avarus, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Hala Strana, Islaja, Lau Nau, Six Organs of Admittance. Ah, you say, then it’s Jim Moray’s technology you don’t like. He’s got a sample-and-hold box, see. And an Apple Powerbook. But no – as that legend of electronica Adamski once said, I love technology. What I object to, and in the strongest possible terms, are beautiful, traditional English folk tales repackaged in slick, bland, melodramatic, sub-Coldplay soft rock and cynically marketed to boring, meat-and-two-veg slackjawed morons for them to play in the Vectra while they’re driving to Carpet World, on the apparent premise that it’s an exciting and unprecedented marriage of tradition and technology, and on the actual premise that it’s mildly pleasant, easy-to-listen-to background music for tasteless idiots. I hate Jim Moray for the same reason I hate Kenny G. Jim Moray is not a folk musician in the same way that MacDonalds do not sell hog roasts.

For what seems like the next three hours, Jim and his band plod through Runrig-esque rock-pop tune after Runrig-esque rock-pop tune, all devoid of any passion, soul, or respect. Respect for the source material, or respect for modern music. The guitarist shuffles around self-consciously with his shiny new stratocaster and looks like he’d probably be able to instantly tell you the square root of any 7-figure number. He does smooth, American RockFM-friendly solos with a tasteful amount of reverb and overdrive. The bassist has an expensive bodiless upright, and he plays it smoothly and proficiently. The drummer, well, he’s no Elvin Jones. But he doesn’t have to be. As Owen, my companion for the night noted, it’s the first time in a long time he’s been to a gig where he could have played any of the parts. And we’ve been to lots of gigs recently. And of course, because this is a folk gig, the songs are all about Cuckoo’s Nests, Bonnie Black Hares, Raggle Taggle Gypsies, Rose-cheeked Milkmaids and the like. There’s a constant stream of urine flowing from each of the band members, and it falls collectively upon the corpses of everyone that’s ever written, performed and enjoyed listening to these songs in the days before recording, in the days when songs were sung and handed down through generations purely to entertain or to educate, with no marketing bullshit and no desire to get rich at the public’s expense. In the days before Pro Tools could sequence clinical, reverbed glockenspiel to add colour to a live track.

And in some ways, it was the glockenspiel and synthesized string quartet that made me the angriest. Here are four guys on tour, playing live. Presumably they have glockenspiel on some songs from their album. Presumably they also have a string quartet, playing sweeping, but slightly lame string sounds. Great. They have every right to those things. But if they want to have a glockenspiel in their live set, I’d prefer them to have a glockenspiel player. Not an Apple Powerbook trotting out a few simple notes of accompaniment. Why does this make me angry? Because it smacks of the fear by the marketers of the live sound deviating too much from the songs that people have heard on the radio, at all costs. As if the audience will walk out of the gig and demand their money back if they don’t get a perfect reproduction of the song they heard on the Ken Bruce show. You don’t need me to tell you that this is NOT what live music should be about.

It turns out that Jim Moray is only 21. We all have different ideas of success, but I would not be happy to think that I was being mildly championed by Ken Bruce to a nation of musically apathetic 50 year olds at any age, let alone when I’ve only just got the key to the door. Is this any worse than a bunch of 21 year olds starting a Green Day tribute band? I’m inclined to say that yes, it is.

But then – am I being reactionary here? Were the same things said in the 60s when Fairport Convention and their contemporaries started melding English folk and rock into one significant new sound? They were simply taking traditional song forms, and melodic ideas, and bringing them up to date by incorporating them into a modern rock framework. Isn’t that what Jim Moray is doing? Is Jim Moray, in actual fact, a visionary genius bringing people’s folk heritages bang up to date? Reminding them of things that would otherwise be forgotten? And if Jim is seemingly only popular with ordinary, common people, isn’t that what folk music was all about in the first place? Giving the common people a voice?

I get so confused. Now, where did I put that tankard of mead?

Behind me, a man wearing an Australian Rugby shirt cut down into a sleeveless vest as a fashion item is yelling
‘PLAY YOUR F*CKING DRUMS!’
His friend has a quite nice two-tone dye job on his hair and is wearing a blazer with a military vibe to it. He is yelling far more random outbursts but in a similar vein:
‘NICE SONG!’
and
‘LEARN HOW TO PLAY!’ are two of them.
There is a girl standing behind me with her back to me and she is punctuating everything she says with weird muscle spasms of either her cigarette hand or the hand clutching a glass of white wine, which is pissing down my back every time she says anything.
Despite this I am grinning like a fool.
Just an hour earlier all these people were dancing to the opening band. I don’t remember what they were called which is sort of stupid because I am reviewing this. They had guitar, vocals and drums. The female singer had an amazing voice.
Amazing because it was Siouxie Sioux’s and she must have stolen it. It made me hope Siouxie was having a quiet night in and not out at a party where she was supposed to be the life and soul, as without her voice it would have been hard for her. I hope she has called the authorities. Anyway, people were dancing in a sort of robotic way with fag hand outstretched, occasionally stopping to pull out a camera phone and record the moment.
This is Liars Club and despite the overwhelming sensation of being someone’s Dad at a disco, I always have a decent time.
Everyone is dressed in a way that proves they must have some disposable income. Not because their clothes are expensive but if you’re wearing a lemon golf sweater with matching visor, a Columbo rain mac and spats then you best not be getting public transport back to Bulwell.
So anyway, if I was going to create a band that best typified the worst parts of Liars Club then it would be the first band, name not known. One girl in particular who always reminds me of Princess Di for some reason, strutted back and forth in front of the stage so often checking herself out, I couldn’t even deal with being in the room.
When they finished, there was a sudden influx of not-quite-so-well-dressed folks waiting for the second band. NYC’s Magik Markers. Not often a band on Ecstatic Peace gets to play Liars Club.
Even when they were setting up there seemed to be a gulf between them and the environment. I mean; they look sharper than I do (not hard) but they seem out of place. It endears them to me. As does the roadie for the last band (name not known) who is so obnoxiously in-their-face when they are setting up that I can physically feel the tension between them.
He brushes the bassist aside to search for something he dropped with about 6 Maglites and prevents them from starting playing. It’s a pretty weird scenario.
The DJs were still playing as they started up but they didn’t f*ck about. They are immediately amazing. I don’t know how much of that is to do with the band and how much of my enjoyment they engineer or how much comes from the sheer weirdness of the situation. My favourite gigs have so little to do with the band and if they’re on form and so much to do with surroundings and little coincidences and events that transpire. This is the perfect example.
The change that has come over the singer is empowering in itself. She has her foot on the monitor, glowering at the crowd and spouting forth fast jabber preaching while punctuating this with tons and tons of guitar noise’ less played, more wrestled. I spend the first 10 mins crouched down at her feet before feeling supremely uncomfortable and having to move back a bit. They deal less in the build up and more in the total crescendo in immediate form. The guitar and bass are set up to give no time to notes and everything they do on them spews forth differing tones and noises (but never notes). It’s hard to tell whether they are unschooled or if they’ve managed to liberate themselves from any knowledge they might have had. Or if they are just plain furious.
They clear the back of the room pretty quickly and as I move back myself to get a good view the gig gets better and better as their howling and slashing mixes with people’s heckles and utter confusion. I can’t stress this enough. Magik Markers are f*cking BREAKING some of these kids. They don’t know what to do ‘ I don’t know what to do either except just laugh my ass off. It just serves to highlight how much of a ritual most of what passes as alternative culture has become that something can baffle so easily.
It just keeps getting better, reaching a peak where the guitar breaks down, leading to impassioned ad lib lyrics about guitarists with no hands but a big heart. Princess Di stands up in this part and in some kind of drug induced stupor begins trying to catch her own tail and latch onto a beat or something familiar, clutching at the singers face and feet and her own camera phone. It’s ghoulish and perfect. At times it’s like she’s about to cry and she looks really lost. I am caught between horror and crippling laughter. She is looking back at us all, not sure what to do, looking completely vacant and behind her the singer from MMs is going absolutely apeshit on her twenty dollar guitar with an electric toothbrush.
The drummer seems to want a better vantage point and climbs onto the bass drum leading uber male roadie man to rush onstage mid song and physically pull him off. It looks for a moment like a fight is going to happen between them but roadie dude is a mountain of a man and the howling noise continues to soundtrack blank shrugs and ‘what the f*ck is going down?’ expressions from the band.
Finally the bassist takes off her bass and lies it down to begin pounding it with any available object. I genuinely feel this is on the verge of getting properly out there and uncontrolled and that Magik Markers will play all night when the tech dude runs on and turns the bass amp off ‘ obviously borrowed gear. It’s a perfect end. I am moved to heckle the roadie without even thinking and the whole thing leaves me feeling super energised.
I missed the last band but nothing was going to top that, it was incredible. Half of the people I went with hated it and half loved it. I don’t know ifI loved the band but as a gig it was unbelievable.
The only thing that could have made it better was to find out the roadie and Princess Di girl were part of Magik Markers all along thus making it the best piece of theatre ever acted.

Addition! March 2006 – James Smith proves himself to be a god amongst men by putting footage of this show on You Tube. Click here!!!