Lovebox 2008!

This rainy afternoon I made my way to Marlay Park for Lovebox Dublin. I went up early in the day, mainly to see Detboi, an Irish DJ/producer who has some tracks on Sinden and Hervé’s recent Machines Don’t Care CD. As demonstrated recently, this writer doesn’t have much faith in Irish music, so seeing such home-grown talent rocking some awesome tunes on such a platform is always going to bring a smile. The same can be said for Arveene’s set later in the day, although his decision to cut Justice’s MGMT remix short baffles the mind. An answer when you’re ready Arv…

Outside of the dance tent, the lineup was a little bit more confusing. London’s Lovebox festival spanned two days and featured such acts as Manu Chao, Flaming Lips, and festival founders Groove Armada. Dublin got such vanilla acts as Plain White T’s and Paolo Nutini on the main stage. The crowd seemed far younger than that of any other event I had been to lately, and the rule on the tickets – Under 17s only with 25yrs+ – did not seem to have been enforced by any means. Personally, the real draw was N*E*R*D, the band fronted by a certain Pharrell Williams. I won’t lie – their new album is far from their finest work, but In Search Of… and Fly Or Die documented times in my life in the same way that the Manic Street Preachers documented the lives of others. As said in my Twitter posts this evening, hearing these songs live made me feel like a teenager again. The friends I was with were as up for some fun as I was, so N*E*R*D’s performance almost made paying for the festival worthwhile.

After that, however, there wasn’t much for which to stay around. Maximo Park may be signed to Warp, but they’re not the type of band whose music I enjoy. So, with my home a twenty minute walk away, I decided to head in the direction of my bed. On the way out, I walked towards what looked like a set of toilets close to the ticket desk. As I realised it was something for the more fortunate VIP types (I had paid for my ticket) I moved back in the direction of the main festival toilets. I was then accosted by a security employee who said I needed to get my ticket scanned, as I had apparently crossed the boundary of entry. I then approached someone with a ticket scanner only to find myself pushed back by another member of security saying I could not re-enter the festival. At the same time, the first security staff member pushed me back towards the main festival arena, while another member of staff repeatedly shouted “hurt him”. For the good of my health I decided to walk away from this shoddy excuse for a “festival”. I was so close to thinking that the fifty euro it cost to get me into Marlay Park was well spent, but this experience, at the very end of my time there, certified my opinion that Lovebox 2008, hauled from the reins of Pod by MCD, was a waste of my time and money.

This American Life

The award winning Chicago based radio show This American Life, presented by Ira Glass, has recently done a show on break-ups. It’s divided into four segments the first of which is about Starlee Kine, co-creator of the Post It Note Reading Series, who after a particularly tumultuous break-up decides she needs to write a break-up song to really exorcise her demons. The only problem with this is that she has no musical training or songwriting experience. Quite the pickle.

How does she overcome this? By turning to none other than Phil Collins for some advice. It’s a great listen and really entertaining, with reflections on break-ups and break-up songs from Glass, Kine and Collins himself. All capped off with a performance of Kine’s ‘torch’ song at the end. The episode is free to stream and enjoy online over on the This American Life page.

Tokyo Police Club: Whelans May 19th 2008

It is Tuesday evening and Whelans is positively heaving with bodies. Where did all these people come from? Since when did Tokyo Police Club become so popular? I feel like a fish out of water. Maybe I’m staring over the precipice of a generation gap? As the gig continues, and one non-descript angular anglophilic helping of post-punk rattles into the next, I wonder how so many people can be so excited about this band? Faced with such adulation, all I can say, is “Tokyo Police Club. We have no spark. But it’s not you. It’s obviously me.”

I forget to bring my notebook with me, and instead attempt to review the gig via the medium of text messages delivered to our very own Daniel Gray. Dan texts back the results to me the next morning. Erm, let’s just say they make for interesting reading. Here are my heat of the moment rantings about Tokyo Police Club. Ahem.

“Like getting trapped in a 5 min segment between Steve Jones and Alexa Chung on Channel 4 Sunday. Our own Dan Gray warned me not to go. Then I realized why: he was moonlighting as the band’s lead singer. Gray: you’re rumbled.”

“I am staring across a grandcanyon-size generational gap. And about 1 mile away I see a turd on the horizon….. I feel like I need Nivea Visage, youthful exuberance, and cloth ears”

“I would rather orally remove a piece of chewing gum from a Labrador’s paw in Kells than be at this soulles derivative MTV2 culture vacuum”

“I can’t even believe these derivatives have British accents. This Anglophilia sucks shit. I would find more musical sustenance at Lenny Kravitz. All I can smell is a fruity haze of trans-gender eau d’toilette and hear bleak, meaningless indie repitition in the english tradition. Horrid”

Like Karaoke But Good

I spent last Saturday morning on the bank of earth outside the Alpha tent at Lowlands in Holland, watching the largest crowd of the weekend go crazy for a retrospective of Dutch pop music. It took place not long after noon, but still the crowds came in their droves. They packed the tent, and sat all around outside in their thousands too, having the first beer of the day, or the first joint.

What the retrospective consisted of was this: contemporary musicians came onstage with the house band and did interpretations of the classics of the last fifty years of Dutch pop music. The performers ranged from the singer in Holland’s stadium punk gods Heideroosjes to a collection of other people you’d have to have grown up near a windmill to have heard of.

And the music ranged from this song about driving a motorbike by a man in a pirate hat, completely in Dutch, to Little Green Bag from Reservoir Dogs. It was like the afters of a wedding in the middle of the day with 10,000 people at it, in the sun in Holland. It was deadly.

As it came to an end, my friend turned to me and said “if they did that in Ireland, it would be terrible”. Would it? I think, for a backwater, we have quite a proud little history in the noble field of kitsch pop music.

Here are some of my suggestions for what songs could be done and by who:

Joe Dolan – Beautiful Woman
Covered by: Grand Pocket Orchestra – imagine it double speed, the horn parts on melodica, and the random piano plinks on toy glockenspiel… perfect!

Dana – All Kinds Of Everything
Covered by: Róisin Murphy – “things of the night” indeed.

B*Witched – C’est La Vie
Covered by: Fight Likes Apes – all of this makes so much sense in my head!

Wade in, disagree, suggest loads more, and we’ll make it happen at the next Analogue night. Maybe.

Scooped!

Once more, Analogue gets to music news, first. (I know that makes us sound like a trailer for Fox News, but whatevs.). Last night, Conor wrote this about EMI. In this morning’s Irish Times, Brian Boyd offers his distinctly more hopeful thoughts. Who’s right?

Dodgy Sample Friday

There are certain songs that are just so awful that they remain engrained in one’s mind for eternity. Years have passed since the release of Alice Deejay‘s Better Off Alone but even still I can’t help but shudder when I hear the Eurodance stylings of the group’s hit single.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBu5X3TvNw]

I thought they’d disapppeared. I thought I’d never have to be subjected to that song again. Hell wikipedia even tells me their lead vocalist now makes a living as a freelance make-up artist. Never did I suspect that said song would be sampled, nine years on by some unknown American rapper. No siree. However, while perusing an old issue of mixmag earlier this week, I stumbled across something, something so terrifying I had to share it.

For those of you who are up to it, this dear readers is Wiz Khalifa, Say Yeah

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaHKWxeeLZI]

*shudders*

EMI: A Sign of the Times?

Illustration, Aaron Taylor

Will the last artist to leave EMI please turn the lights off? As one of the largest music companies in the world haemorrhages artists on a seemingly daily basis, that question seems to become more pertinent. Radiohead upped sticks last year, taking the opportunity to release their latest album “In Rainbows” for virtually free online, and in the past few weeks The Rolling Stones parted company for a more lucrative deal with Universal when their contract expired. So why is one of the biggest music companies, home to the Beatles back catalogue, Robbie Williams and Coldplay come to a state where artists are almost queuing up to leave?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IakDItZ7f7Q]

There are a combination of factors – including the changing face of the industry, illegal downloads, bad management and a sense of complacency based around the almost guaranteed revenue stream of its enviable back catalogue. However the straw that broke the camels back was the recent purchase of EMI by the venture capital firm Terra Firma. As private companies, VC firms do not need to make public published accounts for shareholder and market scrutiny. In the heady days before the credit crunch they were heavy with easy cash to gobble up companies left, right and centre. They were considered unorthodox to say the least, a somewhat business fad and to some just plain gold diggers. Circling ailing companies, they swooped down with the intention to fix what they see is an almost failed – if not dying – company. Stripping the fat right down to the bone from the business, ruthlessly culling unnecessary workers and parts, they eventually sell it off for a tidy sum. In their wake they leave resentful former workers and grumbling listed companies horrified by the sheer audacity of their ways.

In the case of Terra Firma, EMI was such a company. It had fared worse than many of its peers by failing to take on the revolution in music that technology had forced upon it. It had failed in merger talks with some of its rivals and had been accused by business analysts of neglecting the lucrative US market, barely promoting major acts such as Robbie Williams. In a fit of desperation EMI had signed Robbie to a contract reputedly worth $160 million making him rich “beyond my wildest dreams” in his own words. EMI lacked innovation and flair to combat the changing face of music. It had become “boring” as Paul McCartney stated as he jumped ship a number of months ago; and vulnerable to a take over by its rivals. Even they were shy of making a move with a company burdened with $1.8 billion debt. However to Terra Firma, here was a chance to reform the business and make a quick buck. It salivated over what it saw as a cash cow of a back catalogue that included Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Rolling Stones, it bought the company in early last year almost without question and with seemingly undue haste for $6 billion.

That the music industry is unlike other businesses is a well-known fact. In their minds EMI was a “classic example” of its own strategy to “look for the worst business of its kind in the most challenging sector”. However Terra Firma seemed to be ahead of themselves, not fully understanding the company and industry they had now found themselves in. Radiohead issued a statement when they left EMI a year ago, haranguing the company that Terra Firma had tried to form out of EMI. Stating that Terra Firma “Don’t fully understand” the music industry guitarist Ed O’ Brien wrote “because one of the great things about the music industry is that it’s not an industry. It’s a collective of a series of relationships with people”. Here was a company, which only saw figures and accounts, dollar signs and financial opportunity to many artists and could not fathom this business based upon the intellectual property of the art of music. Terra Firma immediately began to cull what it saw as unnecessary employees, forcing 2,000 redundancies (almost a third of EMI’s workforce), and forensically combing accounts for a means to releasing more money. Here they found one of the more interesting aspects of the story. It was announced that in the financial year before the take over EMI had spent over $400,000 on what was stated in the accounts as “fruit and flowers”, allegedly a euphemism for sex and drugs. $20,000 was spent on scented candles alone in an apartment in L.A.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ySdocMeBW8]

The ruthlessness with which Terra Firma had wielded its axe, and the shocking probing of expenditure taken for granted in the music industry had created a revolt within the ranks. Artists grumbled and began to openly attack the company. When Terra Firma began to make Robbie Williams work a bit harder for his money the artist allegedly revolted. He had reportedly vowed to withhold new work in protest over redundancies within the company, although this was later denied by his manager Tim Clark. Nevertheless it only highlights the sheer scale of the economic problems facing the company and the harshness of the policies the private equity company had taken to combat this.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXoAbIDyY88]

Within a year, artists free of multi-album deals began to jump what they saw as a sinking ship. Radiohead left and found artistic freedom on their own. The Dandy Warhols complained consistently about the workings of EMI subsidiary Capitol Records and left to go their own free path. Finally the big shocker came this summer with The Rolling Stones leaving for Universal. Unconfirmed reports from Coldplay and Kylie Minogue’s camps had shown a similar eagerness to leave. To lose one major artist is unfortunate, but the new EMI had begun to look carelessness. To make matters worse for Terra Firma, the credit crunch had swallowed up all of the easy credit, which many private equity firms had lived on like a never ending drip. Saddled with massive debt and the sheer incoherence of the industry, it’s safe to say that EMI is close to fatally loosing its way.

What will become of EMI? There are many options. If the record companies are able to adapt to illegal downloading, EMI has a clear chance to pick itself up with or without artists. It could sell the whole business lock, stock and vinyl case to a rival. It could renew contracts to be similar to the 360-degree deals Live Nation has signed with artists such as Madonna to make money from not just the ailing record sales but also from the booming live business. It could simply sell everything while holding on to the publishing division and back catalogue. Any are viable options to Terra Firma, however one way or the other EMI will continue loose artists who feel stifled and neglected. The question is in the end will there by any left? So could the last artist in EMI please turn the light off?

Midnight Juggernauts

Are you ready for lift off? Melbourne’s Midnight Juggernauts return on Tuesday September 30th to the same stage where they took us to some breathless heights back in May, Crawdaddy. Expect a good bit of guitar, a lot of synth and a smidgen of disco as your inflight menu as they blast out hits as “Shadows” and personal favourite “Road To Recovery”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qf12eLVSck]

Blk Jks: Whelan’s August 20th

The Internet likes to call the South African outfit Blk Jks “afro avant noise rock“. This is pretty ridiculous labeling and it’s also very confusing. But I can see how it came about as Blk Jks’ sound has aspects of all these tags. This pretentiousness though completely fails to convey the pure revelry of the funky racket they notch up live. Last night I caught them peddling their groove at Whelan’s as part of their European tour.

In my shameful ignorance of African music I had no idea what to expect, but what I was greeted with was a complete surprise. It was incredibly dense music, constantly changing rhythm, tempo, language, mood and tone to create a whirlpool of sound. It defied all my preconceived notions of African music. It certainly sound like rock music, and there was also an obvious heavy western influence. Yet it also had a unmistakable otherness to it, an Africanness, something exciting, invigorating and alien.

It was a complete medley of genres. This was reflected even in their stage presence and stances. Linda Buthelezi, lead guitarist and vocalist, cut an angular figure, with violent punk poses and reckless thrashing, while to his left bassist Molefi Makananise seemed to be straight out of a seventies funk band. Contrastingly, rhythm guitarist Mpumi Mcata’s jumpy grooving completely suited his clipped reggae style, and at the back Tshepang Ramoba’s ecstatic drumming and solos put me in mind of a free jazz player. Yet although they all seemed to be from different bands and different genres, hell even different eras, they gelled, the music worked and it resulted in fantastic show.

Blk Jks’ Mystery EP is out now.

New Yacht EP & Video

Portlands Yacht have just announced on their myspace blog that they’re releasing an Ep called Summer Song digitally via itunes and on 12″through DFA. Here’s the video for the title track. Don’t forget to check them out at Electric Picnic next week.

YACHT – Summer Song from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

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