2013/02/26

Bowie's second single...The Stars are out tonight.

The White AlbumS. Our life via this legendary LP...Rutherford Chang Story.



Rutherford has a unique vinyl collection. He only collects the Beatles first pressing of  The White Album.
I met him in Recess gallery where he exhibits his collection.



In this show Chang is creating a record store that stocks only White Albums. But rather than selling the albums, he buys more from anyone willing to part with an original pressing in any condition.




2013/02/25

Searching for the Sugar Man, Oscar!



Searching For Sugarman wins documentary feature Oscar


Searching For Sugarman spins the fascinating story of Sixto Rodriguez, a forgotten American folk-singer who became a hero for the anti-apartheid movement in 1980s South Africa.


"Rodriguez is not here tonight because he didn't want to take the credit," says producer Simon Chinn. "I think that tells you all you need to know about the man."

Johnny Marr's interview.



Next week, guitarist Johnny Marr will receive the fabulously titled "Godlike Genius Award" at a ceremony hosted by the British music magazine NME. It will honor a life spent largely in the shadows, off to stage left, supporting some of the biggest band leaders in rock history: Chrissy HyndeDavid Byrne, and most famously, Morrissey. Together, Marr and Morrissey founded The Smiths, one of the most influential British bands of the 1980s.
The Smiths shone brightly through four albums, then collapsed in spectacular fashion 1987 with a flurry of insults and lawsuits. This week, Johnny Marr is doing something he's rarely done in his esteemed career — releasing an album of his own. His new solo LP is called The Messenger, and he spoke about it with NPR's Jacki Lyden. Hear the radio version by clicking the audio link on this page, and read more of their conversation below.
JACKI LYDEN: Writing for your own voice, you control the narrative. Do you write differently for yourself than you did when you were more of a sideman?
JOHNNY MARR: I've learned to write music for my own voice — my own actual singing voice. I think "narrative" is a good word. This record wasn't a case of me deciding it would be a good thing to do a solo record and then setting about doing it. What happened was, around the end of 2010 I started to get a lot of ideas and notions about things that would be good to write songs about. TBC... Follow the link above. 


2013/02/24

Clive Davis "The Soundtrack of my life"


If Columbia Records hadn't signed Bruce Springsteen in the early 1970s, there's a chance The Boss could have just been a small-stakes act, playing gigs around Asbury Park.
But music history would, of course, unfold differently. And Springsteen wasn't the first or the last huge success for Clive Davis, the man at the helm of Columbia Records at the time. Over more than four decades in the music industry, Davis helped make household names (and, in some cases, icons) out of Billy JoelCarlos SantanaBarry ManilowAlicia KeysSly StoneAretha Franklin and Whitney Houston.

Davis shares personal stories about his life and career in his new memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, and he spoke about it with NPR's Don Gonyea. Click the audio link on this page to hear the radio version, and read more of their conversation HERE

2013/02/23

The Cornershop on Facebook!





Nina Simone at NPR...



Three days after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, performer Nina Simone and her band played at the Westbury Music Festival on Long Island, N.Y. They performed "Why? (The King of Love is Dead)," a song they had just learned, written by their bass player Gene Taylor in reaction to King's death.
Simone's brother, Samuel Waymon, who was on stage playing the organ, talks with Lynn Neary about that day and his reaction to the civil rights leader's assassination.
"We learned that song that (same) day," says Waymon. "We didn't have a chance to have two or three days of rehearsal. But when you're feeling compassion and outrage and wanting to express what you know the world is feeling, we did it because that's what we felt."
Waymon and the band's performance of "Why? (Then King of Love is Dead)" lasted nearly 15 minutes as Nina Simone sang, played and sermonized about the loss everyone was feeling.
The song later appeared on several greatest-hits collections, most recently on the Anthology release from RCA.

2013/02/22

The Guardian and the new John Grant's LP


When it was time for John Grant to record the follow-up to his acclaimed debut album, The Queen of Denmark, many assumed he would return to Texas to record once again with members of Midlake. Instead, having recently visited Iceland for the Airwaves festival he decided to explore the country some more, making 80s synthpop-influenced tracks with Biggi Veira from Icelandic dance pioneers, Gus Gus. One of the songs they collaborated on is the album's title track, Pale Green Ghosts, which was influenced by the long car journeys Grant used to take to clear his head. "I'd take the I-25 between Denver and Boulder, which was lined with all these Russian olive trees, which are the pale green ghosts of the title: they have these tiny leaves with silver on the back, which glow in the moonlight," he explains. "The song is about wanting to get out of a small town, to go out into the world and become someone and make my mark." While the original creeps along tetchily over a disintegrating electronic pulse and sighing strings, the No Ceremony remix – premiered here – beefs up the beats, filters the vocals and even throws in some acoustic guitar for the instrumental breakdown, which makes it more in-keeping with Grant's perceived musical style than the original.


• Pale Green Ghosts is released on 11 March via Bella Union.

2013/02/21

Nick Cave live, 9 PM.

Watch Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' live streamed show from LA'sThe Fonda Theatre - Tomorrow, 9pm PST. 



The show is a special event to mark the release of Push The Sky Away - the band will be presenting the new album live with the accompaniment of strings and choir along with some old favourites.



Watch the trailer & subscribe for updates at rockfeedback

Searching for Robert Johnson.

2013/02/18

Please please me, remaking a classic...


On the 50th anniversary of the 12-hour session at Abbey 

Road that resulted in the Beatles' genre-defining album 

Please Please Me, leading artists attempt the same session.


Are you a drummer without band?



2013/02/16

Grammy's impact on sales... Interesting.




Post-award weekly sales total: 224,500Post-award sales bounce: 202%Cumulative sales since release: 3,261,000
Spinal Tap's manager Ian Faith was right: Death sells. It also generates awards — for John Lennon at the 1982 Grammys, and for Nat King Cole, electronically resuscitated by his daughter Natalie, at the 1992 Grammys. When R&B legend Ray Charles passed away in June 2004 with an album of duets already in the can, it was a safe bet that the disc would not only sell well but dominate the following year's Grammy ceremony. For heaven's sake, Genius Loves Company opened with a duet between Charles and recent Grammy queen Norah Jones (see 2003, below); this, friends, is why the term "Grammy bait" was invented. By the time Grammy night 2005 rolled around, the posthumously-released album had already peaked at No. 2 on the charts and sold more than three million copies. Because Brother Ray was, of course, not present to perform on the Grammy ceremony, his post-show gain was nearly eclipsed by alive-and-kicking band Green Day, who won Best Rock Album forAmerican Idiot and performed its title track. In the end, however, Charles's album outdid the Bay Area punkers' by about 50,000 copies — a handy reminder that even a poppier strain of punk can't fully qualify as Grammy bait.

2013/02/15

Billy Bragg on air, BBC, tomorrow. 9 AM.

Sian Williams & Richard Coles with musician Billy Bragg, a woman who did a good deed every day for a year and a photographer who lost three limbs on assignment in Afghanistan. John McCarthy look in on the Arirang Games in North Korea, composer Debbie Wiseman play snooker with JP Devlin and writer and broadcaster Dawn O'Porter shares her Inheritance Tracks.


2013/02/12

Liam Gallagher tells teen fan: 'You'll like the new Beady Eye album if you're into drugs' No comment...

Liam Gallagher has been filmed telling a teenage fan that the new Beady Eye album is, "like rock 'n' roll, but fired out into space".

Two teenage fans, Ryan Butterworth and Elliot Cole, ran into Gallagher outside the Forester's Arms in Brockenhurst this week, and have uploaded their impromptu interview to YouTube – scroll down to watch. Chatting to Butterworth about the forthcoming second album from Beady Eye, Gallagher says: "It's rock 'n' roll but it's fired out into space. If you're into drugs you'll like it. it's pretty druggy." 

Liam also goes on to say that Beady Eye will be touring soon and that they are currently getting plans for lives shows together. "We'll be out in a few months. We're playing festivals, bar mitzvahs. We've got to make it right this time, last time was a bit fucking stupid." When camera man Cole asks about the possibility of Beady Eye playing Reading Festival, Liam responds: "We're not doing that fucking thing!"

Speaking to NME about his chance encounter with Gallagher, Ryan Butterworth described the Beady Eye frontman as "genuinely the nicest man I have ever met". TBC HERE

The new OCS gun shot by Uncut...




2013/02/08

Eddie Piller, Mod in Soho. ;) (Thanx Si!)

Me old man...



There’s a clip from a TV show called Check It Out in 1980 where Paul Weller’s dad, John Weller (Paul’s manager from The Jam days until his death in 2009, aged 77), talks about his role as a father to his only son. “I couldn’t give him money,” notes John, a handsome, then 49-year-old cockernee geezer, “I couldn’t give him an education, but I could give him inspiration.”
Paul Weller, just turned 54, ponders these words over a latte at 11am in a comically non-showbiz tapas cafe on London’s Portobello Road and nods in recognition.
“He was a unique character, me old man,” he muses. “He wasn’t in any way academic, or me mum. They were proper old-school, working-class people. He had a really lousy relationship with his own dad and I think you either stay in that cycle or you think – I’m gonna change it. And that’s what he did: he took time, encouraged me and my sister.  TBC Here.

Weller in Paris, Marco C's collection.









2013/02/05

The Heavy, Par Stéphane C. Jonathan.



De vrais soul-rockers ! Fondé au milieu des années 2000 près de Bath, dans le sud de l'Angleterre, le groupe The Heavy est une bombe: un chanteur black nommé Swaby, capable d'un velours à la Curtis Mayfield et de grognements caverneux façon Screaming Jay Hawkins, mais aussi des guitares très garage rock, un groove entre soul et hip hop, des mélodies claires comme une ballade des Kinks, des ambiances de B.O. de séries B peuplées de zombies et de Dr Frankestein...
Il y a tout dans ce groupe. Révélé avec un premier album magnifique, ("Great Vengeance and Furious Five" en 2007), magnifique comme un pot d'échappement décalaminé monté sur un moteur Tamla Motown."Colleen", "That Kind of Man", "Set Me Free"... Que des tubes.


Who cares...




On February 28, 2013, The Who & Elvis Costello will be taking over The Theater at Madison Square Garden for their fundraising concert! WHO Cares is a fundraising concert to benefit Teen Cancer America & Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer in the establishment of a teen and young adult unit.

2013/02/03

Ron Sexsmith new album stream, track-by-track commentary

Ron Sexsmith isn’t a superstitious man, otherwise he wouldn’t have waited for his 13th album to make what he says is his most personal to date. Forever Endeavour, which you can stream below until Feb. 4, shows the singer-songwriter reflecting on themes of mortality and mutability with his usual gift for incisive writing, all wrapped in an orchestrated wall of guitar, woodwinds and brass. TBC HERE.

Never really understood why the fragile canadian songwriter never had more success... Do justice to this lp, it's time! ;)

2013/02/02

Out of order...

Hi Gang, Completely stuck in a hospital bedroom... Not so cool. Be back soon. ;) Got a connection in the new room. Will try to post again.