Quiet

It'll be quiet around these here parts for the next few weeks as I try and salvage the degree I am currently failing.

More diatribe and blurb to come just as soon as the bile has built up again and the blood pressure has gone down.

The Teenagers - Homecoming

Dirty French lo-fi sex popsters, The Teenagers, release the single “Homecoming” through Merok Records (they who helped launch Klaxons) on May 7th.

The single is really quite splendid, in its own twisted sort of way. I had no idea that the French could produce this type of thing. I thought they could just churn out dance music to take drugs and tan to, à la Air, mind expanding laser shows and synths, à la Jean Michel Jarre, or rap and Paris riots, à la MC Solaar.

The song is basically the story of a boys rampant hormones, with “I met her hot step daughter, she's a cheerleader, she is a virgin and she is really tan”, and a girls quest for the perfect “first time” with “it was perfect, a dream came true, just like a song by blink182”.

It’s the combination of a dirty back lane romp and a pop-tastic stomp. Boasting all the sexuality of James Brown in his prime, and the degradation of having to sleep with his corpse. In fact, putting its overt sexism into context, lines such as “she is such a slut” and the chorus of “I fucked my american cunt” are about as degrading for the female character as me having to walk round Gary Glitter’s sex cave, wearing no clothes, other than knee-high silver platforms and a silver waistcoat, chanting “I’m the leader, I’m the leader”, whilst Glitter crouches on his honkers with a Malaysian boy called Ashraf hanging out of his back end, it really is that twisted.

When listening, you can’t help feel sorry for the female character, no matter how male and macho you want to be. She’s been completely used by this dirty French bastard, but still considers the whole thing to be “a romance”.

It makes me feel funny, actually. As if I’m reading the transcription from a rape scene caught on camera. It’s that really awkward feeling you get. You know sometimes when you forget how to walk? When someone you like has noticed you and you think that they’re watching you, and you totally forget how to walk, and subconsciously you’re really trying to concentrate on how to do it, but you just end up looking like you’ve shit your pants. Horrible.

Anyhow, it’s good. It’s offensive, it’s sexist, it makes you feel awkward, but it’s quirky, poppy and cool enough to get away with it.

Maybe it’s a modern day Romeo and Juliet, with the “MySpace generation” meeting each other online and fucking offline, whilst the parents are out selling fake Eiffel Tower’s and catching frogs.

Go get it.

It’s out on May 7th and in the meantime, you can grab yourself a listen over at their MySpace.

The Strange Death Of Liberal England - A Day Another Day

These scamps come from Portsmouth, home of docks, ports, ships, boats, water and sea. And this is their new single, which I'm enjoying, it's good.

The song opens up with the most pleasant of noises, it’s a lovely stroll in the park, in the tree to my left, there’s a little tinker plonking away on his glockenspiel, across on the rockery, a cheeky young knave plucks away on his guitar, and behind the hedge shaped like a cock (chicken, perverts) is a singer, doing that David Byrne/Clap your Hands Say Yeh! thing.

It’s a beautiful, therapeutic little number, but hang on, what beast is this that is creeping up on me from the bowling green. Fuck it, this park analogy thing that I’m trying isn’t working. Basically, it starts off dead canny, nice and quiet, no bother at all, then it just launches into this big psychotic rant, this big scary monster, shouting it’s message at me. The song is like some sort of multi personality character, in the way that it launches from nursery rhyme to all out assault.

My auntie Joan was a schizophrenic. Well, she wasn’t my auntie, she was my mother’s, but you don’t have "Great Aunties" do you, and you definitely don’t have "Great Aunt’s". You do have them, but it’s much too middle class to say, “I’m off to my Great Aunt’s on Sunday”. Saying that like, back in those days, it would have been more like, “I’m off to my Great Aunt’s on Sunday, to clean up the big pile of piss she’s left in her kitchen and to clean her arse”. Bit more working class and rock and roll eh?

I miss my schizophrenic auntie Joan, she used to always come round ours, crying her eyes out, screaming at my mother, saying people were trying to kill her, it was brilliant. As soon as she came in, we’d have to get the brandy from under the stairs, because that’s where the spirits are kept, under the stairs. She always needed a quick double brandy for the shock (?) and to take the edge off things.

She was fantastic, she used to buy a pair of men’s shoes and put them in mud and then go round on her hands and knees, making footprints on her carpets with the shoes, then go in her cupboard, get all her bits of paper out from an old tin, and throw them all over the bedroom. Then she’d stub cigarettes out on the carpet and smash some plates in the kitchen. Next, she’d get on the phone to my mother and the police, saying “he” had been in her house, his footprints were there and he’d been going through her stuff. Fuck knows who “he” was, or was meant to be.

After finally being disowned, after being exposed for the fraud that she was, she done off with some bloke she’d met at the head hospital and they went away and got married. Don’t even know if she’s still alive, what a brilliant woman though, wish I had've thought on to give her a guitar and see if she could bang a tune out, they reckon there’s a fine line between genius and madness. She might have been the next Syd Barrett, or something.

This single is very good though. If it really was a multi personality type person, it would have pinched bits from Arcade Fire, from Clap Your Hands Say Yeh!, from Hope of the States, loads more actually, but comparing people is for losers, and I’m not a loser, honest.

The single is out now, you can get more information, and listen to the single at their MySpace, and here is the video............

Bill Withers - Live At Carnegie Hall

Bill Withers’ “Live at Carnegie Hall” album was recorded in October of 1972. Everytime I listen to it, I feel as if I was there. I can see all the black girls with big afro’s and the black men with huge collars around me. It’s like the audience of a Richard Pryor stand up, just without Withers cracking off jokes about white folk.

The album opens with an extended version of the song that got me into Withers, “Use Me”. I used to have this old compilation of 70’s funk and soul stuff. For the most part, it was fairly poor, but hidden away amongst the layers of flares and platforms, was Bill Withers’ “Use Me”.

I sat up on my bed and rushed to grab the CD case about 30 seconds in, to find out what it was, I knew I’d found something straight away.

Withers was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia. I did a search for Slab Fork to see if my suspicions about the town were true. A consensus found that Slab Fork had a population of 202, the same 2000 consensus showed that 199 of the residents were white, two were mixed race and one Alaskan.

I can just imagine Slab Fork like, everyone knows everyone, everyone wears them lumberjack shirts, the two “mixed race” folk will be handymen. The town will have three shops, a general store, a locksmith and a hardware store. I reckon the hardware store will be run by Ted, a 70 year old fat man with white hair, selling nuts and bolts to the 202 residents and somehow managing to use his nuts and bolts sales to finance a radical white supremacist group from behind his counter, of which only he and his cousin are members.

I wish Bill Withers was my Granda, in between songs he tells his little stories, about how he loved his Grandma before the song “Grandma’s Hands”, about relationships before “Let Me In Your Life”, in fact that bit still puts a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye to this day, even though I’ve heard it a million times.

He’s just a proper bloke, basically. He worked in a hardware store, probably not dissimilar to Ted’s, packing people nuts and bolts into brown paper bags, he was in the Navy, he worked on an assembly line for Ford. He’s a working class hero that would’ve been held in even higher regard had he been white, I truly believe that.

His work has been plundered left, right and centre. From people covering songs like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean On Me”, to samples being lifted from “Grandma’s Hands” by Blackstreet, and “I Can’t Write Left Handed” by Fatboy Slim, to alternate versions of “Just The Two Of Us” in Austin Powers and “Who Is He And What Is He To You” on Tarantino soundtracks.

This album completely showcases his everyman charm. There is no barrier at all between him, his band and the audience. It’s all about interaction, showmanship and storytelling. His songwriting is beautiful and his vocals are showcased with him holding the same note of “she’s gone” on “Hope She’ll Be Happier” for an impressive 14 seconds, you just want to clap at the end of it, along with the audience.

Towards the end, when the medley of “Harlem/Cold Baloney” starts, it’s just one big party. I can just see everyone on their feet, dancing about and smiling. In parts, the album could almost be one of those churches in America with all the big gospel, soulful songs, people clapping and singing as loud as they can, it’s amazing.

He’ll be 69 years old this year, a few years back he told Courtney Cox and David Arquette to fuck off, when they asked him to play their wedding, saying “I ain’t no wedding singer”. Legend.

I genuinely will cry when Bill Withers dies like. It’s not often that you find somebody in your lifetime, who is still alive and whose music means so much and says so much to you.

God bless you, Bill.

Watch this video, his patter beforehand and the drummers smile are priceless, class…………

Shiny Toy Guns - You Are The One

I’ve been trying really hard to find some more music that I like, so I can write some more positive reviews. I think it’s getting to the point where I may be looking like a bit of a one trick pony, and that’s not a good thing.

So I decided to have a go at Shiny Toy Guns’ new single, “You Are The One”. A song with a title that doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism from the start, there’s no reason why it should, but it’s already reminding me of pseudo-punk band The Offspring’s “Not The One” and I can’t get it out of my head. Have you heard that song? Honestly, terrible. I’ll see if I can get a YouTube of it for the end of the review.

“You Are The One” begins with a ‘massive’ synth’s riff, it could be Magaluf in ’83, or an even kitschier Killer’s. But let’s not give up hope, the drums have started and the vocals have started, and there’s a boy and a girl singing.

You know what, this song sounds like something that would feature on a fight scene from “Power Rangers”, or on one of them mad cartoons where the blokes are all full of steroids and walk round with no tops on and swords in their hands. Bit like He-Man, but in the future, where the main male character is racing towards the girl he loves in some sort of spaceship thing, and she’s fighting off an evil goblin with her primitive bow and arrow, with the camera going backwards and forwards to the two of them.

This is no joke, like. I feel physically violated by this song. It’s not even funny, if I could think of a metaphor or an analogy, in a crap reviewer type of way, the closest I could come would be that this record makes me feel like being teased into the boot of a Morris Minor by a quarter bag of rhubarb and custard, driven to a remote farm, raped for a bit, threatened that they’d tell my parents I was a gayer if I told, then dropped off at the end of my street.

Strange, I remember the days when paedophiles used to be all over the place, only in those days, they were referred to as “weirdo’s” and “strangers”. I’ve only just worked out recently that when we used to watch video’s at school in the 80’s, and it was all “Don’t Talk To Strangers”, that strangers were fucking nonces. I just thought they worked in sweet shops or kennels and they were people that my mam and dad didn’t know. Why the fuck call them “strangers”? It’s not even a threatening word is it?

In one of the videos, fucking “Tom” out of “Reggie Perrin” played the part of a stranger, I’m terrified to watch repeats of it now man. Did he have any idea when he got cast as “Stranger In Car”, that he was actually portraying a bloke who nails kids. Fucking hell man, in the 80’s it was probably fair game to do a bit method acting as well, hanging out with kids in playgrounds and pyjama parties to get into the part.

Aye, but nowadays it’s all, “hanging’s too good for them” and “they should lock them up and throw away the key”. I don’t know, I reckon they get a bad press me like, there used to be a strange man a few doors down in everyone’s street, so what if he had a wank at his window when you walked past, so what if he put old ten pence’s on the pavement outside of his house so he could get a Polaroid of you bending over, at the end of the day he kept himself to himself, and you always got belter sweets off him at Halloween.

We had this bloke called “Ted the Puff” man, dirty old bastard with dead skin on his face. Lived round the corner from us, had an etching of an old sailboat on his top window, used to call me “Sir Robert” all the time for some reason. He was no bother, I mean when I was a paper lad, he used to try and rub his crotch against me when I walked past him in the paper shop, who could blame him, I had a cracking arse when I was 12, but it never went further than that. Moral panic these days man, I reckon half of it’s made up. If the kids are anything like I was when I was their age, they’ll be a right bunch of cockteases.

Anyhow, dreadful, just dreadful, it’s actually not even that good. If this song was a ten to two pick up, I’d have to put a bag over her head whilst I shagged her, and a bag over mine in case hers fell off. It’s just horrible and I need to know who buys this, I really need to find them all and hunt them down, not hurt them, just ask “WHY??????”.

Horrific.

The single was out this week I think, 16th April, I really don't care. If you want to see if I'm lying, visit their MySpace.


“Not The One” by The Offspring, put together by some yellow bellied frog…..

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away The Tigers

Manic Street Preachers, they of dead/missing “guitarist”/songwriter fame, return with their new album, “Send Away The Tigers”.

Androgynous bass player, Nicky Wire has earmarked this as the album where they “went back to their roots”. So that means lots of “Generation Terrorists” riffage, solo’s and sloganeering? Well, maybe just a teensy bit of it.

I’ll be honest from the start, half of this album is shite, appalling actually. But the other half is OK, really. Not mind-blowing, and certainly not the old Manic’s that I love, but it’s quite good.

First things first, we might as well deal with the first single, “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”, featuring the vocals of Ikea warehouse worker, Nina Persson, getting the weekend off from eating Dime bars, meatballs and forklifting flat-pack palettes.

It’s one of those summer pop anthems, it’s the type of thing that the Manic’s did on “This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours”. You know the thing, the “You Stole The Sun From My Heart” type of fayre. In fact, the title of that song actually features as a lyric in the new single. It’s by no means offensive, and it’ll no doubt have fans of Sterephonics and that ilk in raptures.

The first two songs on the album, title-track “Send Away The Tigers” and “Underdogs” are really quite bad. The title track is maybe the weakest song on the album, so I’ve been racking my brains as to why it’s the opening track. Is it some sort of post-modern fucked up Manic’s thing? I really don’t know, but what I do know, is that it’s gash.

“Underdogs”, features the line “this ones for the freaks” about 1400 times. I’m presuming that it’s some sort of dedication or ‘thank you’ to the fans who have stayed with them. It’s awful like. It’s working class sentiment doesn’t quite cut it.

The single, “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough” is the third song, and then it’s pretty much hit and miss after that, but the better songs are in the second half. James Dean Bradfield welcomes back the screeching lead guitar in the openings of “Rendition” and “Autumnsong”. These two, along with “Indian Summer” and “Second Great Depression” are surely the contenders for the next singles.

When Nicky Wire had said they had returned back to their roots, I’m not entirely sure what effect this had. In parts we have the same sort of solo’s that Bradfield wanked over in “Generation Terrorists” and “Gold Against The Soul”, I would imagine that the solo’s would go on even longer in the live shows. But other than these few things, they haven’t really went back to their roots in terms of songwriting. They are still a post “Everything Must Go” band. Although it does seem from the recent promo work that Bradfield has laid off the pies a bit.

The only thing that comes close to the ‘old’ Manic’s is the hidden track, a cover of Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”, which is almost the same idea that they had when they covered Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea”. And covering a Lennon song? Have they completely sold out following the removal of the “I laughed when Lennon got shot” lyrics from live performances of “Motown Junk”, maybe this song is some sort of subliminal apology or retreat.

Don’t let them tell you that this is blah blah blah and that it’s blah blah blah, because it isn’t. It’s OK, it’s now what we have come to expect from bands like the Manic’s, an album with a couple of decent songs and a handful of forgettable ones.

If Richey is still around, come back mate, even if it’s just to give them a journal of all the fucked up lyrics you’ve been compiling for the past 12 years. That might be a start.

The album is out on the 30th April.

This is the first single..........

The Social - Under Grey English Skies/London Is Divided

I stumbled across this band today, and was dreading having to give yet another band a right slating. I’m fed up with slating people; I want to listen to things that get my gander going. I just want some good clean fun.

After the first listen. Get in there. Good clean fun. I like good clean fun and that’s what this record is.

It makes me think of a million and one things, it’s brilliant. The Social have a singer who is somehow the product of a full on Edwardian orgy, involving Morrisey, an amateur dramatic who fancies himself as a baritone in an opera, a medieval town crier and a dirty camp little Goth. Great stuff.

I can imagine the singer, Laurence Hussey, walking through Camden Market on a dirty, dark medieval night, with a wheelbarrow, shouting out “Bring Out The Dead”, whilst the trendy residents throw out buckets of piss from their windows and remove the rings from the corpses of their grandparents before offering them to Hussey's barrow.

Imagine that crap comedy with Nicholas Lyndhurst (he of small narrow head fame), where he goes back in time so that he can knock off some war-time broad. Well, that’s what this band are, sort of. Except they don’t keep on going back in time so that they can get their end away with one of our grandparents, they’ve come from the past. In fact, maybe the “Goodnight Sweetheart” analogy was a bit crap. We’ll try another.

Imagine that film, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, where they have to go back in time to recruit historical figures and bring them back to modern day in order to pass their class, and not flunk. Well, that’s what this band are, sort of. They’ve been seized from another time to bring us their brand of rock and roll, and I love it.

I swear Charles Dickens would have loved to have been this band’s manager. It’s George Orwell, Edgar Allen Poe, Industrial Revolutions, bent and crooked hags with glints in their eyes, diseased chickens sleeping in the same beds as children, rats feasting on a sleeping mans toes.

I honestly can’t stop singing “I will bring the fight to you”, from “Under Grey English Skies” over and over again. It’s 80’s jangly guitar pop, it’s Gothic, it’s baroque, it’s wonderful and uplifting.

Comparisons have been drawn with Interpol and Clash. I can’t see the Interpol comparison myself, but they certainly know how to make a stomping tune if this is anything to go by. The guitars dance about like The Smiths or even early Stone Roses on “London Divided”.

Get hold of this when it's released on the 23rd of April, it’s worth it. I’d love to take them back in time so I could be the richest man in Old London Town, I don’t think I could be any happier with my merry band, my pocket full of farthings and a syphilis carrying, corset wearing, buxom hag by my side.

You can get more information on The Social from their website and their MySpace page.

The Enemy - Away From Here

The Enemy are a band from Coventry, home of The Specials. They’ve been tipped for big things.

It begins with, “I’m so sick, sick, sick and tired, of working just to be retired”. It’s not quite up there with The Who’s, “I hope I die before I get old”. But I suppose the sentiment is equally as false.

This song is an anthem for the bone idle dole waller scum, who prefer to sit in their seat all day, wearing semen stained Reebok tracksuit bottoms, swigging on a can of wild dogs piss and eating ice pops.

The idea of the song, i.e. getting away from a shitty town, is hardly a new idea. “Being a slave to the modern wage”, seems far too close to the shite that Hard-Fi were recently peddling with “Working for the cash machine”. We also have another Hard-Fi cliché of “living for the weekend” with “Saturday is your only highlight, when you go out and live the high life”.

The “away-oh-way-oh” chant of the chorus is a football terrace anthem; it seems that they’re trying to work their away back full circle to the laddism that was produced by Oasis with “Definitely Maybe”. The themes are similar, but The Enemy’s song about not working and getting to another town, still doesn’t come close to Oasis’ anti-work anthem “Cigarettes and Alcohol” or the small-town escapism of songs like “Half The World Away”.

Stabs at popular culture references come with the inclusion of a lyric about Richard and Judy, but I think Jeremy Kyle would be more their style in all fairness. In fact, it probably won’t be long till the singer has some sovereign ring wearing slag up the duff, whilst the drummer tries to scrape enough money together to get his girlfriend a big chunky gold clown necklace, to replace her oval eye hologram one.

The Enemy fail with their attempts at wit, they also fail with their attempts at being edgy. It doesn’t matter how many times the singer tries to snarl like Jam-era Paul Weller, or sneer like Johnny Rotten, it just isn’t happening.

It’s a shame really, I like to remember Coventry for Keith Houchen’s diving header in the FA Cup, miniature moustachioed winger Micky Ginn, Lady Godiva and of course, The Specials. But now I have to remember Coventry for these pox-ridden charvers.

I wish they would get away from here, useless twats.


The single is out tomorrow, the 16th of April.

iLIKETRAiNS - Spencer Perceval

iLIKETRAiNS have a new single, called “Spencer Perceval”. For anybody who didn’t know, it’s about Spencer Perceval (obviously), the first and only British Prime Minister to be assassinated.

Of course, I already knew this. I did History at GCSE and at A-Level. Although we never did British history at A-Level, we had these two evil twins in our group. They used to parp up with the answer to every single question, and then gave an elaborate explanation for their one word answer, when no explanation was needed. You know the type of crap that them "Eggheads" come out with on that "Eggheads" programme? Tossers.

Aye, so those twins, who were a cross between the twins off "The Shining" and a pair of rotten cadavers, had shouted out once that the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated was Perceval. I’ve always remembered that, and now you lot will as well.

Quizmasters in pubs all over the country will be devastated if this song catches on. I’m not kidding, the question of “Name the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated”, has popped up in practically every pub quiz I’ve went to. Along with “What is the capital of Peru?” and “What measurement is used to measure horses?”

So I’ve gave this song a listen, a few times. It clocks in at a mammoth 9 minutes and 18 seconds. So it’s a fair bit time I’ve wasted. The song gives the point of view of the assassin, John Bellingham. Apparently the B-side, “I Am Murdered”, gives the point of view of Perceval.

Not since Iron Maiden’s “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” (clocking in at 14 minutes plus), have I given a song of such length a chance. I loved that song as well, not sure if I would now, it’s easily been 15 years since I’ve heard it. In those days I used to try and have a mullet, headbang at school discos with glitter gel on my hair, and wonder when I would finally get pubes like my older brother.

Back to the single. Leeds based, iLIKETRAiNS, have been referred to as “library rock” by some. This is because all of their songs are about history, dead people, past events etc. As much as I like the term “library rock”, I prefer the term “bollocks”.

It’s as dark as an adult raven’s wing this song, like. It does eventually build up its haunting guitar and gloomy vocals to a fierce crescendo and then dies down again. The drums make me imagine Bellingham being led to the gallows, with a black hood on his head.

I keep on thinking of the Manic Street Preachers when I listen to it. You know the same sense of foreboding you get from “The Intense Humming Of Evil” from “The Holy Bible” album? It’s nowhere near as good as that, but it’s the same sort of feeling. Claustrophobic and morose.

I don’t like it. But I’m very sure that plenty of people will. My opinion doesn’t count for much like, but when people write songs of this length about such topics, it all seems a little self indulgent to me.

Maybe it’s not quite as bad as some of the Manic’s post-Richey attempts at clever songs with a historical context, but it isn’t floating my boat either way. If I want to be educated/patronised, I'll watch "Eggheads"

The single came out on the 26th of March through Beggars Banquet.


Here's a clip from Eggheads, starring Phil "The Power" Taylor, watch out for how much of a cunt CJ is.......

Travis - The Boy With No Name

Scottish band Travis have a new album, will this a be return to the form of their first album?

One thing that I do like about this album is the cover art. It reminds me of New York or Chicago in the 1920’s. Which is a brilliant thing.

I’d love to have been a gangster back then. I’d have been called Bobby ‘Two-Guns’, and obviously I would’ve had two guns to shoot my gangster enemies with. I also would’ve had two gangster molls. The first one would be proper bang on, I’d keep her behind closed doors though so nobody knew about her, and give her a good seeing to after I’d collected protection money from the local greaseball grocery store and paid off the cops. My second moll would be some sort of cripple with a serious disfigurement and speech impediment. I’d drive around in my gangster van, with her in the back, in a cage. The public would think I was a gangster with a heart, whilst my enemies would fear me and think I was a lunatic for going out with a handicapped.

Obviously I wouldn’t kiss her or anything like, in case I got the AIDS, and after doing my rounds I’d put her in a kennel or such like in my back yard whilst I went to bed with moll number one. I can just see it now, pulling up at the local butcher to pick up my protection money with mong moll in tow, “Hey Mr. Two-Guns, I’ve got some raw liver for your girl”. Brilliant.

Anyway, I digress.

I have a soft spot for Travis. Even though they’ve never actually made any music that I like for about 8 years. The fond memory I have is from when they had their first album out and they “Blackflowered” Oasis at the Arena on the “Be Here Now” tour.

Since then it’s been pie fights on Top of the Pops, the video with the press-ups, the video with the giant egg, and the video with a car in it (I think). Fuck knows, it’s all been fairly middle-of-the-road crap.

So it’s safe to say that I wasn’t entirely optimistic about listening to this. Travis are the type of band that people who don’t even like music listen to. They’ve become a horrible, horrible, horrible, abject corporate beast, whose songs are safe enough to be played on local radio and populist enough for buskers to earn a few quid off, in between “Wonderwall” and “House of the Rising Sun”.

But I’m not one to judge……..honestly. I was more than happy to give this a chance, but only because of “Tied To The 90’s”, “More Than Us” and “Happy”.

To be fair, I did try and like this album, I honestly did. But fuck me, it’s just fucking depraved. You know them horrible computer drums that David Gray used in “Babylon” and Damien Rice used in his re-working of “Cannonball”? Well, they’re only using the same PC for the song called “Big Chair”. What sort of name is that anyway? Is it about Ronnie Corbett?

They’ve got a song called “Battleships” as well, which I thought might be decent, but it’s got nothing to do with bombing F3 and G4 (if only). It’s just rubbish.

This whole album is just the most nauseous nonsense out of all of the nauseous nonsense they’ve produced in recent times. It’s what housewives will iron to, it’s what hideously boring couples will fall in love to, it’s what drab couples will listen to when they go for drives on Sunday afternoons because sex has become too monotonous.

In fact, maybe this album is brilliant, it’s going to save the relationships of the criminally mundane, it’s going to give wankers something to tap their steering wheel to when they’re stuck in traffic, it’s going to help mother put creases in little Johnny’s school shirts.

But, when I thought it couldn’t have got any worse, and after really giving it a chance, there’s a duet with K.T. Tunstall, the Queen of Lesbos. Honestly, is there any need? And the sound of it, approaching my mind like a radio-friendly juggernaut, is the most terrifying noise I’ve heard since, well, we’ve all heard our parents “at it”, haven’t we?

So there you have it. Travis return, with more heartless, soulless, routine banality.

If I really was a gangster, I’d get all of Travis, all of those couples, all of those business men, all of those ironing mothers, up against a wall, and get my crippled, handicapped moll to gun them down.

And you know what, if she did, I’d even kiss her in public. Because, unlike Travis, I do have a heart.


The album is out on the 7th of May. Here is Travis' "More Than Us"....

Air - Pocket Symphony

Air, are yellow bellied cowards from France. And the duo have a new record out.

I like Air. They remind me of days of yore. In fact, many years ago their “Moon Safari” album was just about everywhere, along with Groove Armada’s “Vertigo” album. The music was always cropping up on holiday shows, house selling shows and as incidental music in any programme that involved sunshine in the background of a scene.

Whenever I see the names of Air and Groove Armada, I think of two things. The first being Judith Chalmers’ big fat satsuma head, sitting by a beach, drinking a Jamaican mans sex wee from a halved coconut, telling us how wonderful her holiday is. The second thing I think of is my mates crawling up the walls of a dingy flat, chewing their faces off, looking for another line and wondering why the fuck I’m standing there in a chef’s uniform and a plate full of bacon sarnies.

Aye, those were the days, when Air’s “Moon Safari” wasn’t just the soundtrack to every fucking programme on TV; it was also the soundtrack to a handful of twenty-something’s summers.

I’ve lost Air since then, and Groove Armada for that matter. My mates have moved onto harder drugs, whilst I’ve became even more hermit like and fell out of love with the hedonistic days of Ibiza, that I can no longer handle. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a listen to the latest offering from the duo of the land that eats horses.

This is really quite pleasant. It’s in no way arduous to listen to, the music just floats about. It would be equally enjoyable to lie listening in the dark, lie listening in the sun, or lie on a dog-hair covered carpet in some dingy flat on a comedown.

It’s just like a magical summers dream. The first song, “Space Maker”, begins with what sounds like Ian Botham (OK, I can’t think of any French cricketers) tapping two cricket stumps together. And you don’t get much more summer time than cricket do you?

Then the album just drifts off, it’s easy listening stuff. Air haven’t even bothered to try and put any big pop songs on here, just nice, easy listening. Jarvis Cocker appears on “One Hell Of A Party”, which could almost be the come down to Pulp’s “Sorted for E’s and Wizz”. In fact, it’s so grim that it’d probably put even the most well equipped junkie on a bad trip.

My favourite song is “Left Bank”, and if not only because the vocals could be Elliott Smith talking to me from beyond the grave, but the Jose Gonzalez style guitar, most recognisable in his murder of The Knife’s “Heartbeat”, does get annoying.

Overall though, this is just lovely.

But that’s the thing, as much as it’s "just lovely”, that’s pretty much all it is. It’s not the best album in the world, it’s not even Air’s best album, it just is what it is, just a nice chill out album. So I suppose if that’s what you want to do, then it’ll work.

I’ll probably burn this onto a CD in a few months time, put it on at a barbecue at a mates house, don the chef’s uniform and make my mates some bacon sarnies all over again. Good times.


The Nigel Godrich produced album was released on the 5th of March.

Bjork - Earth Intruders

Diminutive mentalist and Icelandic fishmonger, Bjork, is back after an absence of four years or so, with her new single “Earth Intruders”.

As a youngster, Bjork learnt to play the piano in between gutting fish and sucking the brains from crabs, whilst chasing polar bears across the arctic tundra with an axe. Most of her early life was spent sleeping within the blubber of a carved open whale, bit like when Luke Skywalker survived inside that mad animal in the Empire Strikes Back.

Maybe that’s why Bjork’s as fucked up as fake tits on a zombie.

The song begins with a beat that sounds something like the type of tune you’d find all the apes dancing to on The Jungle Book. But then it goes off in a mad direction with all kinds of synths and effects. I reckon Timbaland (who co-produced), must’ve been getting some new effects on his Casio and he was dying to test every single one of them out. I was just waiting for “gunshot”, “helicopter” and “human voice” to kick in at the end.

When I was getting hold of this single, I read a snippet of a review which described this as tribal music which would unite us all as one global tribe. Having a fucking laugh isn’t he?

Honestly, if Bjork thinks I’m going to have this booming out of my beatbox, whilst I stand in my bedroom, naked, with berry juice smothered on my breasts, banging a spear up and down on the floor and disembowelling my dog, then she’s got another thing coming.

It’s typical Bjork, mentalist lyrics, mentalist music, at times it starts sounding like that Pussycat Dolls one, you know the one where the music has some sort of Egyptian slant on it, purposefully done so that all the hormone wielding pre-pubescents imagine the Pussycat’s singer done up as Cleopatra, getting done up against the side of some grotty little pyramid, and rush out to buy the single, hoping the CD will contain the video so they can pause it till it scratches.

If this is meant to unite us as “one global tribe”, I reckon Bjork needs to realise that they don’t do MP3’s in Ethiopia. Stick your money into buying them some big bags of flour man, Bjork, they don’t need this crap.


You can buy it via download now, and buy the CD on May 21st.

Bright Eyes - Cassadaga

Bright Eyes’ new album is his latest piece of work since the lazy live album, "Motion Sickness".

I’m not entirely sure if this album is meant to be an anti-war album, a religious album, or just a full of your own self importance album. Maybe it’s all three.

In terms of its political angle, it follows along with the mass, grandiose style over production of recent 'political' albums such as Green Day’s “American Idiot”, whilst keeping the grainy lyrical rhetoric of Neil Young’s “Living With War”.

And funnily enough, it seems to me that Bright Eyes’ frontman Conor Oberst would rather be prancing around with these rockstars, shouting about how wrong war in Iraq is and how evil the Republicans are. Fair enough, he’s not quite gone the same lengths as Bono, in becoming that full of himself, but maybe he isn’t so far off. With this new album, I think the only thing he’s missing is Courtney Cox getting up on stage for a dance.

It’s not going to be fashionable any time soon, to promote war in Iraq, but it’s certainly getting passe listening to our indie heroes moan on about it.

So we’ll get the formalities out of the way, the bit that you’ll read in every review you’ll read of this album. Cassadaga is a spiritualist camp in Florida. Oberst’s recently travelled there with a friend. I’m not sure what he found there, to be honest, I’m more concerned with what he lost.

Oberst’s lo-fi glory days have faded away, and it really does pain me to say it.

Occassionally we do have a brilliant lyric from Oberst, but too often there’s throw away lines and clichés. Songs that would sound so much better with Oberst bashing seven shades of shit out of an old battered acoustic, have been replaced by strings, slide guitar and backing vocals that remind me of Hall & Oates for some reason. And it appears that Oberst is actually trying to put on the frailties in his voice, so insincere.

The political aspects of this album are tired. The religious themes are annoying. His self importance and smugness are become extremely patronising.

It’s just all a little bit too much for me at the moment. Perhaps I’ll come back to this album in a few months time, or maybe a few years time, but I really can’t see it. As a fan of Bright Eyes’ career, it’s really unpleasant to fall out with music you love.

It’s not quite as bad as splitting up with a girlfriend, but it’s certainly as bad as losing touch with a good friend, and knowing that something has changed, and things won’t really ever be the way they used to be.

The album came out yesterday, the 9th of April.

Natasha Bedingfield - I Wanna Have Your Babies

He/she buck-toothed inbred tramp-dog, Natasha Bedingfield, has a new single out on April 16th, presumably about her suspicious relationship with her brother.

The single continues along the same lines as the turgid, listless wank-pop that she's released in the past. In fact the only reason that this single is appearing here, is because somebody said to me "why is everything you write about guitar bands I've never heard of?". So I'll answer that ignorant person with this review.

I can imagine that when young Natasha and Daniel were kids, they'd sit up at night in the bed that they shared, with a torch under the covers. Daniel asking her to touch his tail and Natasha forcing his hand onto her front bum, whilst their Dad (who surely looks like Tim Henman's Dad), sat at the end of the bed reading the letters page out loud from the Daily Mail, in complete outrage at the working classes and the country's immigration policy.

In fact, the last time I seen the brother and sister combo together was at Live 8. The pair of them were singing a duet, which involved various overtly incestuous dance moves. I'd never felt so sick and violated from watching the TV since Jacko was at the Brits that time.

Where has Daniel gone anyway? The last time I seen him, he was wearing one of those mad frame things round his head and shoulders after a car crash. You know them mad contraptions that people wear? Sort of like the carcass of a virtual reality helmet, the type that Maggie Philbin on Tomorrow's World told us we'd all be wearing in the future, putting the dishes and hoovering to one side so we can sex some polygon whore with triangular tits.

In fact, if this was the future, and songs were in pill form, just like our meals, this would be a little pill of poison.

Vile sow, stop making records and go off to create your troglodyte children elsewhere. And another thing, nobody gets to use "wanna" in a song title apart from the Ramones and the Wildhearts. Please, fuck off.

The National - Boxer

The National's follow up to "Alligator" has been leaked, so it would clearly be rude not to listen to one of the most eagerly anticipated records of 2007.

I would quite easily describe "Alligator" as one of the best albums I've listened to in the past five years, so for me, it was going to be hard to follow.

However, after giving the album time, I don't think The National have just followed it, they've also surpassed it.

This album is beautiful and this band needs to be in your life. The songs are sketches of our lives, tableau's of relationships, cut scenes of conversations, it's quite simply brilliant. Every tune has been crafted and formulated into a sublime series of monologues.

I once had a conversation about The National at a gig with somebody that I barely knew. He described "Alligator" as the perfect 'break-up' album after splitting up with his girlfriend. I'm so happy that I'm not going through a break-up at the moment, because half of the songs on this album would have me bawling my eyes out.

"Start A War" particularly, is one of the prettiest songs on the album. To me, it's all about a couple getting back together for one more try, with "I'll get money, I'll get funny again". It's heartbreaking listening.

As with "Alligator", the lyrics stand out. The songs, especially songs such as "Apartment Story" and "Guest Room" are depictions of American life that Edward Hopper didn't quite get round to painting. Awkward silences, self doubt, painful glances, tense stilted characters.

Not since I really got into Dylan in a big way as a kid, have I heard a record where imagery has been so startlingly captured.

I genuinely believe that The National are one of the most important bands in the world right now. As soon as you can, get this album and devour it, fall in love with this band, turn your lights off and just as Matt Berninger sings, put your "arms around the stereo for hours".

An absolute epic.


"Boxer" is out on the 21st May.

Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm

New single, this is the taster of things to come from the young scallywags from Sheffield.

I wasn't a fan of the first album, and I don't think it's an age thing. I don't think being an old, miserable, bitter cunt equates to lack of taste. People try and tell me that the first album was to todays kids, what "Defintely Maybe" was to me. That's total shite that, like.

Don't get me wrong, the "I Bet You.." single was a fantastic pop tune, but that's exactly what it was, pop. It wasn't anything experimental, groundbreaking or world changing, just good clean pop. And we all like a nice bit of pop, it makes the world go round, but there's only so much of it I can take. Plus they're also guilty of creating the criminal chat up line that virginal indie boys use with virginal indie girls, "I bet you look good on the dancefloor", before they go off behind the bins of Ku Club for a bit fingering.

So "Brianstorm" opens up and it's the music off Pulp Fiction mixed up a bit with "Gravity's Rainbow" by Klaxons. "Brianstorm" is a witty play on words, changing the word "Brain" to the boys name "Brian", and even though the song begins with the words "Brian......", it's amazing how many useless fucking DJ's keep on introducing the song as "Brainstorm", thick cunts. Course if it was actually called "Brainstorm", they'd have to change the title of it anyway to "Mind-mapping" so they don't upset the eppy throwing fit freaks. Political correctness eh?

So it goes on a bit and goes on a bit more and it mentions "T-shirt and tie combinations" and then it goes on a bit again. Then he throws a bit more of his Steel City twang in with "Thunder!!". Brian is the lad that all the indie lasses want to get shagged off and the lad that all the lads want to be like.

It's shite like, honest man, it's just shite. It doesn't do a thing for me. It doesn't do anything, doesn't go anywhere, doesn't say anything, I can't see the point in it.

But the kids are decent enough at coming up with a catchy melody and it's guaranteed to get to the top of the pops. Headline slots at the summer festivals await, how glad I am that I won't be going to any.

Longevity? No, I can't see it, but I'd love them to prove me, and old cunts like me, wrong.

It's out on the 16th of April and you can view the video for the single here........

Archie Bronson Outfit - Dart For My Sweetheart

Aye, it's a re-release of a single from the brilliant "Derdand Derdang" album, which as a rule, I don't usually agree with. I'm going to let them off on this occasion though, because everyone deserves to hear this single if they didn't hear it the first time. It was re-released on the 26th March, so it'll be around somewhere.

The song rolls along like a big sexy tank, picture a giant Panza all dolled up in make up and suspenders. With the verses of each line beginning with a number from one to twelve, it's a bit like that song about Noah's Ark where the animals came in two-by-two, three-by-three, four-by-four and so forth.

Sam Windett's howl in the chorus could almost be the "Hurrah! Hurrah!" from said biblical, school based classic.

The song oozes sex, lust, bitterness, jealousy, I still find it hard to believe that the band are from England. I'd even go so far to say that they're one of the most under-rated UK bands about, as their brand of blues shakes through my crooked spine, must go to the chiropractor, or change these speakers.

If you aren't going to get the single, then do yourself an Easter treat and get the "Derdand Derdang" album, it's got enough balls and soul to get your grandparents going at it like Easter bunnies.


More information can be found at the Archie Bronson Outfit website

Hummingbirds - Another Day EP

Finally I got my hands on the “Another Day” EP. I’m fairly shit at turning up to gigs that I promise to attend, so I feared I’d never get hold of one, but sure as the night follows day, and by hook or crook (what a shit pair of phrases), I got it.

I’m really pleased I got it as well, because it’s smashing, in fact it’s better than smashing.

I first saw Hummingbirds at the Cluny on October the 1st 2006. The only reason I remember this, is because it was the day that I put on an all dayer for charity and nearly ran myself into the ground with stress. No miracle cure for baldness will save my hairline after that day. As far as I can think, this was the first gig for Hummingbirds. There was a fair bit of anticipation to see what they could come up with. After all, the band was made up of various members from various other popular local bands that had since disbanded for one reason or another (we’ll go into the north east rock family tree another time, folks).

Anyhow, they weren’t too tight, but there was definitely something there. The six of them piled on stage, amps and instruments all over the place, it was a bit messy and the nerves were clearly there, but the tunes were there as well. At the time I thought they were good, but I was maybe a little disheartened if I’m honest. I was expecting to be blown away. Did they rush into the first gig? Did they not get enough practice’s in? I don’t know. They were by no means shit, but they could’ve been better.

A few months later, on the 9th March 2007, I finally got to see them live again. We all squeezed into South Shields’ only indie joint, B-Side Basement Bar. I managed to make it because it was just round the corner from me and I was running out of shit excuses that people hadn’t heard before.

In all fairness, after the October gig, I wasn’t expecting much, what a fucking idiot I am.

As we all shuffled up to the front, I found myself totally mesmerised for the entire set. I realised how good a songwriter James Binless really is and what a talented bunch of scamps they are.

Right, now that I’ve set the scene, I’ll actually talk about the EP.

The first thing that always strikes me is James’ voice. It’s one of the most distinctive voices on the local scene. As the title track of the EP begins, you find yourself in a wonderful place, it’s uplifting and majestic.

The first verse says, “simple in every way” and funnily enough, that’s what I love about Hummingbirds. They do the simple things very well. There isn’t any pretence about the lyrics or the music, why should there be? Lots of bands have a million and one ideas and try and put too much bollocks and shite on top of more bollocks and shite, but Hummingbirds do the basics, keep it nice and simple, that’s why it works and that’s why they’ve got brilliant pop songs.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if they don’t know what to do with their instruments, because they do. Young Johnny Bond could almost be Johnny Marr at times (OK, maybe not, but I couldn’t have got away with James Bond), he’s certainly a million times better than me on the guitar and probably 12 years younger.

The second track see’s another Binless original of “Nothing In Your Heart”. The song had previously been made popular by local band 21gunsalute (of which Binless, drummer Marc Corby and keyboards & vocals Craig Chirnside were all part of at one time or another) and I didn’t even realise it had been penned by Binless in the first place. The song is an anthem, it goes places where the original recording by 21gunsalute wasn’t bold enough to go. The military beat has been replaced and the backing vocals from Chirnside make the song a perfect slice of pop goodness.

Finally, we have “We’ll Set Our Sights Low”, in which Chirnside takes over lead vocal duties. The song could be from the latest Hope of the States album if they were all still around. Fantastic stuff again, Peter Slowey’s guitar soars, whilst the rhythm section of Chris Ellaby (bass) and Corby keep the song together, allowing the rest of the band to force feed us melody and smiles.

The last lyrics on the EP are “onwards and upwards my love”, nothing could fit better. I’m not really into arse kissing, but in this case, I haven’t really had much of a choice.

I really can’t wait to see Hummingbirds again.

For more information you can visit the Hummingbirds Website

Bright Eyes - Four Winds EP

I've been in possession of this EP for almost a month and until now I've hardly listened to it. It's all about Mr Oberst's sneak preview into his forthcoming "Cassadaga" album.


The title track opens with the fiddle and a nice tap your feet beat. I keep on waiting for the song to turn into Tinita Tikaram's "Good Tradition", but it hasn't happened yet. Conor's latest lament could almost be off Springsteen's recent "Seeger Session's" album.

It's a modern day protest song that could really work if it had a bit more bite and was a bit less pleasant to the ears.

"Reinvent The Wheel" is all mouth organs, pianos and strange bits of lead guitar, he's certainly taking advantage of his full new band. The song veers towards Springsteen's (again) "The River" just over halfway through, before a mad bit of strings comes in, reminding me of the shitty effects we used to have on our keyboards at school.

The next song begins almost like Leonard Cohen's "So Long Marianne" or Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", but "Smoke Without Fire" actually ends up going off a bit like "Waste of Paint" from the "Lifted..." album.

The fourth song is full of the type of lead guitar I'd expect to hear from some '70's funk album and the melody I'd expect from some Nescafe advert, before the guitar kicks in. The song namechecks a line from "Gold Mine Gutted" on the "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" album.

The final two songs seem to be lazy to me and just fill out the EP. The final song contains a drumbeat that makes me think that the SS are marching down the street to smash my windows and drag me kicking into the night. If only they knew that I'm genuinely not Jewish, I just look it.

It all finishes with the line "I'm not sure if I live here anymore", whilst some Dick Van Dyke type chirps away in the background, maybe it should be "I'm not sure if I can write amazing songs anymore".

If this is what we have to look forward to, then I don't hold out a great deal of hope for Cassadaga. And on that note, I'm going to bundle my mother into the workings of a piano, whilst I hide in the attic for two years and compose my diaries.


And here is the video for "Four Winds", with Conor looking not unlike AJ from The Sopranos.....

Aerosmith - Rock In A Hard Place

In my opinion, this is the most under-rated album of rock dinosaurs Aerosmith's career. Recorded in 1982, the album has a completely different line up to previous albums and the albums thereafter.

After the self titled 70's debut and the album "Rocks", this for me, was the only decent piece of work that they did before they "sold out".

Joe Perry (not the snooker player, the Brian May-esque guitarist) had got fed up with laying on Steven Tyler lines of ket, only for the rubber lipped singer to whitey on Perry's best leather chaps, so he fucked off in 1979. Meanwhile, rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford had done off in 1981, sick of his bandmates lack of enthusiasm for cruising around the industrial estates of Middlesboro', full of scag, trying to get a five quid nosh off some toothless, emaciated brass.

So the band was falling to bits, Tyler had died several times on stage (actual death, not the way a shit comedian dies on stage), but they vowed to carry on with the one who looks like Garth from Waynes World (Tom Hamilton) and the drummer who looked like all he's missing was a CB radio and a Yorkie to fit in with his long distance trucker look (Joey Kramer).

The remaining members drafted in Rick Dufay on rhythm guitar and Jimmy Crespo on lead. It was felt that their hairy chests and weird dress sense would be able to take the band to the next level.

The song opens with "Jailbait", with lyrics sounding like "Take me outside and rape me", controversial, but part of the course in those days when you were in a big touring rock band. The song is all about taking under-age lasses up the wrong 'un (allegedly) out the back of some dirty biker bar.

"Lightning Strikes" is a tale of rival gangs getting together for a rumble, whilst "Bitch's Brew" is another amphetmaine fuelled stomp.

In fact, every single song on the album seems to be an amphetamine fuelled stomp. The lyrics are nonsensical, guitars are frantic, but it all makes for great listening. At times, you can hear how completely lost in their own self importance they are and how the drugs are finally taking their toll. A cover of Julie London's "Cry Me A River" also features as the token ballad that appears on every Aerosmith album, however, it's certainly darker than the original.

The album was a massive commercial flop. Five years later, Perry and Whitford returned and the band vowed to go "clean". They recorded one more album whilst under the influence of smack, "Done With the Mirrors", which is an horrific mess.

The drugs were eventually kicked and Aerosmith finally became the commercial cock-rock demi-Gods we now know them as, with albums such as "Permanent Vacation" and "Pump" making them a gigantic rock dinosaur again.

Over the next few years, Aerosmith released their 37th greatest hits compilation, containing the exact same songs as all of the previous 36 compilations.

1982 was also the year that the legendary John Belushi snuffed it, so enjoy this clip...........

Kings Of Leon - Because Of The Times

So they’re back, the three brothers and their cousin, with a new album that marks a departure from the previous long players.


What the fuck is going on with the mad ‘80’s guitar riffs and atmospherics in this album? I love Kings of Leon; I was just as gutted as every other person who seemed unable to get tickets for their forthcoming Newcastle show (apparently selling out in 7 minutes).

Perhaps by coincidence, the new album opens with a 7 minute song called “Knocked Up”. A weird Christian cowboy has got some weird Christian cowgirl pregnant and they have to run away before God strikes them down or their Dad’s ground them and perform a makeshift abortion with a garden hoe.

The guitar that squeals in after 30 seconds or so hurts my ears when I’ve got it on the iPod and it makes me think that I’m listening to a guitarist from one of those dreadful Funeral For A Friend types playing with Johnny Cash’s backing band. I’m yet to make it through this song.

By the time “Charmer” starts, Caleb’s vocals sound like that horrible lass off “The Grudge” and that fucking guitar is there again. Honestly, get fucking rid of The Edge. The rest of the guitar sounds like Bleach-era Nirvana to this ugly twats lugs.

“On Call” kicks in and I’m already starting to lose patience, but this song is better, clearly the single of the album. The vocals and the words are perfect man, no matter how many times it’s the same line over and over again. Actually, I fucking love this tune.

Next up is “McFearless”. I was hoping it’d be an ode to a new red hot chilli based burger at the famous golden arches, but no such luck, I like it as much as I’d probably like said processed cow sandwich. “Black Thumbnail” is better, but yet more stupid effects, this time on the vocals for “My Party”.

“Ragoo” takes its name from the jars of pre-made Italian sauces for pasta. I’m now wondering what has happened to Kings of Leon, Eddie Van Halen is now playing guitar. Weren’t these fuckers meant to be forking hay and delivering calves in dungarees? I’m picturing them in spandex with silk scarves and tassels tied around their wrists right now.

The acoustic guitar of “Fans” takes me back to the Byrds, but the vocals are somewhere between that cunt out of Counting Crows and that homeless bloke who stands at the roundabout down Shields waving at the ships.

By the time I get to “Arizona”, I’m starting to wonder when they got Phil Collins in on the drums and Phil Collins’ session guitarist in on lead.

Honestly, this album is such a massive disappointment to me, I’m devastated.

Maybe it’s just me, but the things I loved about this band from the previous albums seem to have disappeared.

If they’ve grown up, I suggest they get back to their roots, and if that means burning down black churches and nailing gays to crosses, then so be it.


Cheer yourselves up with some fretwankery from the lead guitarist in the number one Phil Collins tribute "Faux Collins"

The Replacements - All Shook Down

For personal reasons, this is probably my favourite Replacements album. Most fans of The ‘Mats (Replacements – Place Mats, get it?) would shudder at the thought of this, but it was the first album I heard and the album that made me fall in love with them.

For month’s I’d read and watched interviews with American rock stars citing the Replacements as an influence. Whether they were doing it for credibility or because they were being honest, it didn’t make any difference, I knew I had to hunt them down and digest them.

It was at that time when I used to spend most of my days in the old Steel Wheels at "the Green" just off Monument. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t doing skateboard stunts or trying to cop a feel of some pale Goth’s tits, I was literally milling around the basement of Steel Wheels looking for hidden treasures and bargains, before fucking off for a half warm pastie from Greggs.

At the time I thought I was a punk. I had women’s purple Wella hair dye in my shitty haircut, tartan trousers, a chain hanging off my belt and a T-shirt saying “Fuck the Future”, I looked like a right bell-end.

Anyhow, I sought out the Replacements and grabbed a hold of “All Shook Down” for £6. I picked up Husker Du’s “New Day Rising” the same day for the same price.

I felt a way I’ve never felt for a long time when I first played the album. You know that feeling you have when you’re younger, where finding new music is so exciting and you have a huge hunger to fill yourself up with new ingredients? I wondered why I’d only just discovered this band and why I hadn’t been listening to them for ages.

Unfortunately for me, it was the last studio album recorded by the band. I use the term “the band” loosely. By the time it was recorded, the band had all but disintegrated. Most of the songs are just Westerberg and session players.

Most see the album as a pre-cursor to Paul Westerberg’s solo career, in fact it was originally intended to be his first solo album. To me, Westerberg hasn’t really come close enough to the songs on “All Shook Down” with his solo stuff. It’s easily the most commercial album that the band made. However, this is only because of its production, it definitely doesn’t have songs as strong and anthemic as the earlier stuff. Nothing on the album comes anywhere near “Achin’ To Be”, “Unsatisfied”, “I’ll Be You”, “Kiss Me On The Bus”, or “I Will Dare”.

It always makes me think how massive they would’ve been had those songs been on a later album with the glossy production that “All Shook Down” benefits from. But even then, just as they always did, they probably would’ve found some way of fucking things up when they were on the crest of greatness.

Westerberg is still on top form though. That's probably the thing everyone loves most about the band, Westerberg's talent with his lyrics.

Despite the songs themselves not being as strong as earlier songs, and half the band missing, I still love the way the album makes me feel every single time I listen to it and the little smile I get from some of Westerberg's one-liners.

Sometimes the tunes don’t have to be the best tunes ever, sometimes the melodies don’t have to infect your brain, and sometimes the musicianship doesn’t have to be cock on. Sometimes you can just hear something, fall in love with it and feel 16 all over again.

To finish off with, here's a fat, bald man covering the album's title track.........

The Dictators - Bloodbrothers

I recently stumbled across this delightful little number and I've enjoyed giving it a good listen to. Don't worry, it's not a coalition of Pinochet and that ilk, but rather a punk band from New York who recorded this little gem in the year I was born, 1978.

I was taken by the cover to start with, I like the romanticism of going round with flick knives and chains in your leather jacket and tight jeans, getting Italian lasses up the duff and having disregard for your body odour. Brilliant.

In all fairness it's punk by numbers, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. As we all know, if you want to be a punk band, you need to have at least one song containing the name "Johnny" or "Jimmy", and The Dictators don't disappoint with "Borneo Jimmy", a song with a lead guitar a little too polished for punk but a vocal as lazy as Joe Strummer.

When I listen to this album I sometimes wonder if the image I'm getting of them is right or not. I'd like to think that they have fights with The Warriors and the Baseball Furies on their way back from a gig, but a part of me thinks that lead vocalist Handsome Dick Mantoba might be shouting to lead guitarist Ross The Boss, "Hey man, I ain't jumping the subway, the inspectors might get on".

One for the fact fans, Bruce Springsteen (the real Boss, OK Ross?) counts the band in on "Faster and Louder", now that's a bit alright isn't it? My favourite number is "Baby Let's Twist". It starts off with a basic enough chord progression that made me think I'd got hold of a Boston or Rainbow album, but the song more than redeems itself with its sing-along snarly chorus. Definitely the most commercial and radio friendly song on the album.

However, the song "Slow Death" features backing vocals that remind me of car journeys in my Dad's old Nissan Bluebird, feeling car sick and listening to '70's soft rock. Quite an aptly named song.

Anyhow, enough of the cynicism, the album is worth a go. The band are clearly tight as fuck and I bet they would've been decent live. When this album came out, I would imagine it was ace, but in hindsight, I've heard it all before. At times it could be The Clash, at times it could be The Ramones, whilst it tips its hat to late '70's American rock such as Aerosmith.

In fact, speaking of which, compare the garb from the cover art with aforementioned Aerosmith in their 1982 hit "Lightening Strikes".

Four years on from '78 and it's still cool to wear leather jackets, slick your hair back and knife some fucker.



And I'll post a bit about early '80's Aerosmith another time.

So get your leathers on, watch The Warriors and The Wanderers, equip yourself with either a bat, a piece of pipe, a chain, or a flick knife. Get yourself some tight jeans and a black leather jacket and your sorted.

I've struggled to be honest, my DVD of The Warriors has gone missing, my VHS of The Wanderers has snapped. I've got to either use a branch off a tree for my bat, the inner working of a kitchen roll for my pipe, my dogs lead wrapped round my fist for a chain, or a rather menacing looking butter knife for my flick knife. None of my jeans are tight, so I'm wearing my mam's leggings and a black bin bag for my jacket.

Not sure if I look like a nonce or a Great North Run contestant as I leave the house with a rollie in my mouth.

That's me done for now, I'm off to Newcastle in my colours, then I'm going to try and bop my way back to Shields on the Metro, don't worry, I've got my chain.

You can view more at the Official Dictators Website