Julian Cope on 6 Music

Posted on July 21, 2016 by kevinsmusicblog

ARCH DRUDE IN FOR IGGY POP

We’ve had some stellar radio stand-ins on 6 Music for Jarvis Cocker of late, and this week we get the Arch Drude packing the Iggy Confidential slot on Friday 22nd, 7pm, for two hours of psychedelia – a must-listen, surely. Who knows what qualifies as psychedelic in Cope’s hefty book – I mean, Sleep’s Dopesmoker DEFINITELY, though that ain’t gonna make it onto a two-hour Friday night trip – but we may well get sunburned freak outs, acid fry-ups and sunnO)))shine daydreams cocktailed with the likes of Roky Erikson, Sky Saxon, Can, early Floyd and prime Love.

Floyd and Love have gotta be a cert for the playlist surely, because they’ve inspired and named Cope’s location-free festival that’s happening Right Now, every day this month, wherever YOU are:

SydArthur Festival

Buddhist appropriation entirely intended, SydArthur is a tribute to tenyearsgone Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee who passed away just 28 days apart in July/August 2006.

As ever, Cope needs little encouragement to evoke the Cosmic Order, the ancients, the gnostics and the sha-manics in rock n roll, and so the SydArthur Festival – a festival of the mind, of the head – is now a Thing on Head Heritage. Check the calendar and note that JC’s broadcast is George Clinton’s birthday. Parliafunkadelic on the playlist?

Line all of this up next to Uncut magazine’s fine fine fine Arthur Lee/Love feature last month and you can’t help but fire the Love revival machine so an in-through-the-side-door review may be on its way v soon.

Tune in Friday, turn it ON.

David Bowie

Posted on January 17, 2016 by kevinsmusicblog

Listening to David Bowie. Again. Sixth straight day now – nothing but Bowie, except for Iggy Pop’s The Idiot last night, which has DB within and all over anyway.

Man, what a week. No one saw that coming, did they? And yet here we are, a week in to a world without David Bowie, a week that started just hours after Blackstar emerged as a vigorous statement of presence and life.

It seems odd to feel this saddened and moved by the death of someone you never knew – it’s not grief, but it is loss of some sort, and the scale of comment and tribute to David Bowie means that it must be valid, it must be real. Listen to Marc Riley open his evening show on the day of Bowie’s passing and you’ll hear a seasoned broadcaster who struggles to hold it together. It’ll bring a tear. It did to me.

With Blackstar topping the charts, many people will have had it on heavy rotation this week. Me, I can’t bring myself to play it again just yet. It was the last music I played on Sunday evening, 10^th January, and that exploratory first proper listen had good omens – not surprising given the Sue, Blackstar and Lazarus teasers ahead of the launch, all of which led to us being just a bit fckn excited by the Bowieotherness of this new music. Like everyone, I looked forward to sinking into Blackstar as an album after two months of trying not to hear the singles too often. Wanted to save some of freshness for the right context.

Waking the next day, we hear that Blackstar’s creator had died. Day by day the insights and revelations started to unfold with touching, revealing comments and tributes from the likes of Tony Visconti, Brian Eno, Mike Garson and Henry Rollins who, as usual, pens a precise, impassioned piece of reportage, fanaticism and insight. He writes about music like the fan that he is, like the fans that we all are.

With Bowie though, we’ve all got our own version, haven’t we? No-one really knew who he was but he made connections, not just with people and listeners but with ideas, scenes, forms, genres, literature, cities even. He connected on a distant yet inexplicably deep level with us, so much so that you could pick him up at any time in his career or your life and still have him mean something massive. You didn’t have to have been there in his reputation-defining decade, transfixed by a full-beam Starman on the telly. Death of Ziggy? Nope – wasn’t around, read about it as an adult. Low, Heroes? Same deal. My earliest memories are a TOTP Ashes to Ashes vid and a lingering oddball imprint of Bowie in front of a mirror turning himself into a baldy alien – spooky as fuck. Still haven’t worked out how I saw that.

So he was part of the pop years of early childhood with Let’s Dance, Absolute Beginners, Under Pressure and the like, but when you reach adolescence and leave pop behind because you’re starting your guitar-heavy trip, how do you find David Bowie?

You don’t.

You don’t find Bowie because, unlike Zeppelin, Sabbath, Motorhead and other relative elders, he just doesn’t figure in those scenes. He’s irrelevant. Meanwhile you get busy with Soundgarden, Faith No More, Ministry, Tool and Nine Inch Nails, whose Broken becomes a big deal. So aggressive. The Downward Spiral becomes the best new album you’ve ever heard, and that’s when it all starts: Trent Reznor cites Low as an influence.

And you’ve never heard of Low but you can’t believe Bowie the Popstar could ever have informed Nine Inch Nails.

And then you discover the Stooges, and see Bowie’s name on Raw Power.

And you see that Nirvana’s Man Who Sold the World was not written by Nirvana.

And around the same time you hear some industrialised rock on daytime Radio 1, but there’s a proper singer and avant piano that your youngadult ears don’t understand … surely not NIN with a vocal transplant?

No. It’s Heart’s Filthy Lesson, and the Outside album – dark, vital, bold, conceptual, heavy and one of Bowie’s best – is the one that marks the start of a beautiful, labyrinthine journey with the man who took a permanent leave of absence from our world this week. 1995 was my Real Time convergence with the path of Bowie’s restless star.

So it wasn’t so much that I or people like me found David Bowie, but that – somehow – Bowie found us, and what he did in the next couple of years cemented his presence: tour with Nine Inch Nails, appear on Reznor’s Lost Highway soundtrack, bang on about Photek and drum n bass and fuse it all into Earthling (fckn great record, don’t know why it gets a so-so from cr*t*cs), sing on Goldie’s Saturnz Return album, become a player in the art world, publish a fake book that hoaxes the art world… and that’s just the stuff I either have or remember from a sliver of time in what were supposed to be his past-it years. Can you imagine how warp-speed the 1970s must have felt?

And can I say again how essential Outside and Earthling are?

But, like Blackstar, they haven’t been played (yet) this week … instead, solace has been found in the post-Earthling run of ‘Hours…’, Heathen and Reality, records that slightly underwhelmed on first listen but grew – like new Bowie pretty much always does – as soon as you accept that it is what it is, and it’s not what he was. Those albums, all air-conditioned cool and surface calm, give you SPACE to luxuriate in the lost man’s voice and do it far away from the mega hits that covered the news and the radio this week. Hours… may be the slightest of the three but even there, If I’m Dreaming My Life and What’s Really Happening are Bowietimeless. Black Tie White Noise, Buddha of Suburbia, All Saints Collected Instrumentals and Tin Machine (never understood the full-on trashing they got) have also all done the job this week. New detail is revealed with every listen, which is one reason why we end up with our very own strange fascinations of this far-reaching artist: he gave – no, gives – so much that we can always learn and will never, ever catch up.

David Bowie. Transmitter, seer, creator, and truly an artist of both sound and vision. A more significant rock music loss is impossible to imagine.

Check these other Bowie posts:
Blackstar Day
Earthling review
Lost Nuts track 2020
Brilliant Live Adventures CD series 2020
Bowie & I photo exhibition

The great RSD swindle?

Posted on April 19, 2015 by kevinsmusicblog

Yesterday was Record Store Day (RSD): best day of the year for record store shoppers.

Race down there silly early, wishlist in hand/in head from store email (you are on their mailing list, right?), feast eyes on vinyl goodies, get paws on summat new, feel rightly proud for helping to keep the record stores alive.

Get down there mid aft like a normal, no list in hand/head coz it’ll have been vultured by the earlies, feast eyes on vinyl goodies, recoil from the prices, try to shake off emerging RSDD (record store day disappointment) for the second year in a row, find something that was on your very own non-RSD list, feel proud for helping to keep the record stores alive, reflect on the fact that you do this every week anyway and think, actually, is this whole RSD thing a bit of a con?

OK, not a con exactly but a distortion with a misdirected focus.

Like you, I love music. That’s an understatement, as it is for many of us. We can be compulsive and nerd-like but it comes from a good place – we’re just very very keen. We’ve all got our own obsessions yet we can all get along in the same space, and nowhere is that space better defined than a truly great independent record shop. Those places feel like home, and if you’re lucky enough to have one as your local, you’ve got it made. Every week you can get some music IN YOUR HANDS, and that last bit’s absolutely crucial for those of us bothered by record shops and premise behind RSD: the browse, the immersion, the search, the discovery, the exchange, the thing you take with you. The physical elements of music.

So I feel bad for saying that Record Store Day leaves me feeling a bit cold.

Not the publicity or the occasion itself, or the ready-made excuse for going to the record shop on this very day – that’s exactly what we want and need for our music-dealing havens.

Nah, the bit that grates is its contrived gold-rush. The RSD special editions. The engineered ‘rarities’. The sky-scraping prices – 10 quid for a 7-inch single??? 10-inch EPs that sell for album prices, albums that sell for $$*@!!$!??? Very quickly you feel priced out but, swept along by the day’s momentum, you try to convince yourself that this disc is worth it. You look again. And again. And those repeat looks tell you this: it’s not worth it. It’s a 7-inch single with two tracks that you’ve already got, and it’s a tenner if not more. PUT IT BACK. It’s an RSD selfie – proof of presence, proof of participation.

Hmmm. I used to buy records all the time and I love the records I’ve got. They have their stories and they’re definitely part of mine, but when CDs came along, vinyl became pretty much obsolete. There was no choice but to buy CDs … fair enough. I love CDs too. Now we’re in a vinyl revival, so we’re told, yet it looks more and more like a revival for those who’ve got the cash to spend twice as much per album as a CD costs.

Sorry, but no.That makes no sense to me.

I’d rather buy more music. Vinyl is now saved for favoured bands or special releases, and that’s a subjective thing that’s got nothing to do with what RSD dictates will be released on April the Whatever each year.

So instead of creating a faux collectors’ market each April, why doesn’t RSD do justice to its own name and remember that it’s about the SHOP and the music? I don’t remember seeing it called Limit$d V$nyl Day or Records-Only Day. It’s Record Store Day. Why not turn it into a chance for everyone to buy more music in their favourite record shop? As well as stocking the limit$d v$nyls, indie shops could cut the prices of non-RSD vinyl and CDs for the day. I know that the suppliers have a big hold on what happens as far as stock goes, but as a music fan and record-store customer, this is what would make the day unbeatable. Something for all fans and customers, not just the dawn-start v$nyl grabbers.

I did buy a new CD, but it wasn’t RSD approved. Already it sounds fckn immense and I’m only two and a half tracks in (clue: Seattle). I’ll probably divulge more in a review some other time, but the point is already made – ’tis the music, not the spectacle, that really delivers.

That was my day. How was yours?

Mind the gap

Posted on October 19, 2014 by kevinsmusicblog

Mind the gap???? That’ll be the gap between posts … yeah, it hasn’t been the most productive of times amplifier-wise in the past couple of months, but I’m hoping to sort that in the autumn-to-winter weeks.

Maybe a short-and-dirty monthly round-up of some new listening/discoveries, plus back catalogue reviews of forgotten or revisited records from the 90s/00s.

And of course, a gig or two as and when they turn up.

In the meantime, how about a bit of Monster Magnet?

Drudes, freaks and wolves

Posted on July 9, 2014 by kevinsmusicblog

The Arch Drude is back in the news – the book news. Fiction news, to be exact, coz he’s only gone and put out his new (and first) novel, One Three One, on Faber and Faber. He nipped in to Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone for a wee chat about it so go check the July 6^th episode for a short interview and snatches of music from Neon Sardinia and Dayglo Maradona, just two of the book’s fictional-bands-real-music backstory.

And as if an interview wasn’t enough reason to tune in, check these amplifier-friendly arteests on that same show’s playlist:

Jex Thoth
Poino
Yes (new single!)
Brain Donor (a righteous My Pagan Ass, no less)
The Safety Fire (right-now prog)

Anything else to report and reveal from this surge of rock radio activity?

Only the promise of a Freakzone interview with Southern Lord’s WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM on Sunday

AND a 30-minute Cope mix on the Freakier Zone on Saturday.

Who needs the World Cup???

Glastonbury Saturday: Metallica

Posted on July 3, 2014 by kevinsmusicblog

Still got doubts?

Sure. Lee. Not.

Metallica headlined Glastonbury and did exactly what they had to do – pulled it off with a festival-friendly yet thrash-infected set drawing heavily on the Ride/Black albums, and at least one cut from every record bar Load (surprisingly) and St Anger (not at all surprisingly).

So we got Fade, Nothing, One, Sad But True, Roam, Cyanide, Master, Nothing Else Mutters, Unforgotten and tonnes more biggies. Highlights included Memory Remains, its croaking Marianne steamrollered by mass na-na-nana, and Whisky in the Jar … ‘COZ IT’S WHISKY IN THE JAR-O, innit? Those tunes don’t get as much of a look-in these days, now that Metallica have plumped for the Metal more than the Rock in their live outings, and this was the place to revive a couple of those looser jams. Even the too-familiar Enter Sandbags sounded fresh again – every fecker in the field knows it so when that choked intro finally frees the monster hook that broke the band and sold a million (or 30) black albums, the release was huge.

Seek and Destroy brings the show to an end and it’s a show which, for all of its faux controversial (but undeniably fun) talking points, entertained. Striding that stage with total confidence, Metallica grabbed the moment, worked it hard and got a win-win out of it, or so it seemed from the TV. And while there won’t be a metal slot every time – maybe a hard-rock flourish for a year or two? – the time was right and Metallica were definitely the right band to do it. AC/DC next year?

Robert Plant

Ahead of the night’s novelty-value shake-up, however, the man who brought the class and the Glastonbury spirit to Saturday’s Pyramid stage was – as ever – the peerless Robert Plant.

Mining a seam of west African swirl ‘n trance mixed with those deep-set rock and roll sensibilities, Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters put on a show beyond reproach. Dreamland and Mighty Rearranger tracks get aired, as do a couple of newies (check the Perry Farrell-meets-Afro Celt Sound System air of Little Maggie), as do Zep classics – reworked, of course. Black Dog, now in its third incarnation following Plant-Krauss’s spooky two-step swing, is a beguiling prospect as its dusty psychedelia morphs into desert rave. Fresh as the first time you heard it. So is Funny in My Mind, its street-tough rockabilly makeover far removed from Dreamland’s take on it. Superlative stuff.

And this is what sets Plant and his band(s) apart. The explorer, the music fan as music maker, it’s these reworkings that keep the songs not just alive but LIVING – they’re timeless and increasingly formless, shapeshifting their way into whichever space and spirit is called for. Jimmy Page might be the curator of Zeppelin’s material, but Plant’s the one giving it new life in a global sense. In his hands, Zeppelin music becomes the trad arr of the modern day, ready for reinterpretation by whomever.

Which I guess is where Zep and Plant started anyway. Bring on the new Space Shifters record, it’s surely gonna be a bit special.

Metallica v Glastonbury

Posted on June 27, 2014 by kevinsmusicblog

We’re 48 hours from Metallica’s Glastonbury headliner slot. CANNOT WAIT. It’s like those good old bad old days when you’d scrabble around for hard rock morsels on TOTP or the Chart Show and feel joyously stuffed by even the tiniest scrap of six-string riff action. Glastonbury has a big-time metal headliner for the first time and that has thrust a playful, us-versus-them underdog thing into the festival hype.

How are they gonna play it, though? I reckon they should cast off the speedier stuff they’ve been playing the past few years and show some Glasto-sized balls by turning out a kick-arse crowd-pleasing setlist. Be a festival band. Play the hits, pull a few groovers out of the Load/Reload bag, nail some Battery-like blitz to the masts and do a couple of classic home-crowd covers.

Yep, covers. How could that not work on Saturday night? Play the heritage card and win / kill ‘em all – Sabbath, Motorhead, Queen, Thin Lizzy, they’ve all made it onto Metallica records and any one of them would go down like cold scrumpy in a hundred-degree hell-hole.

As would Free Speech for the Dumb, come to think of it. What an opener THAT would be (thanks to Garage Inc., on the stereo right now, for the reminder). And for a wildcard cover idea, how about a sneaky quid on Smoke on the Water? Not only has it got mass singalong potential for any number of drunks and wasteds in Worthy Farm, but it’s a well-placed nod to Deep Purple’s influence on Metallica’s earliest roots too. Just a thought. What’s your wildcard bet?

Anyway, it’s nearly show time and, whatever happens, Metallica’s appointment has brought a bit of extra fizz to the top-slot debate (though if you want to read a less enthusiastic view, from a metalhead no less, check Dom Lawson’s bummer-mood piece ‘Another half-baked vanity project’ from the Guardian the other week – an astonishingly churlish, self-regarding glob of journalism. Have a look here).

I hope Metallica storm it on Saturday. And if they don’t … well, so fckn WHAT.

DRUDION no more!

Posted on March 14, 2014 by kevinsmusicblog

No more Address Drudion! What are we gonna do????

For around 14 years the Arch Drude, aka Julian Cope, has been posting his monthly missives and under-the-underground reviews with the shamanic, preachin’-revolution flamboyance that only he can bring to a page.

Now he’s closing that particular chapter of his rock ‘n roll voyage – March 1st saw the last of his Monthly Drudions on Head Heritage as family Cope pack up and move on. Go check his last post if you haven’t already.

And if you fancy a trawl through some of the best essay-length record reviews this side of Lester Bangs, go check the Album of the Month feature from the Unsung section too.

For 10 years, Cope put a monthly review of an unsung (unappreciated, unrecognised, underground) record up, pulled from anywhere in the previous 50 years. Oriented towards the heavy/noise/psyche end of things, it’s an inspirational rock source from a great writer who’s a music FAN, and many of the reviews were compiled in his Copendium tome of a couple of years back.

While we’re on the subject of Cope, don’t forget the On This Deity blog by his wife Dorian – the link is at the bottom right of this page, or if you can’t be bothered going all the way over there, have a look at it right here.

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