More super Upset the Rhythm stuff coming up in the next week or so, including a show that features Morgen und Nite! I’m totally honoured to be playing on the same bill as formidable drone ladies Marcia Bassett and Heather Leigh Murray. And Nite, of course, even though he is not a lady. Come and see us. I’m the one rolling about on the floor with two synths, and Nite is the one standing up with all the pedals.

ZAIMPH + HEATHER LEIGH MURRAY + MORGEN UND NITE
SUN 5 MAR - GREEN NOTE, 106 Parkway, NW1 7AN
[Camden Town]

ZAIMPH is the solo project of Marcia Bassett, best known for her intensely prolific work in Double Leopards and Hototogisu and various collaborations with the likes of Tom Carter. Under the ZAIMPH moniker, she has recorded and released two solo transmissions of mirage-like guitar, fried electronics and disembodied vocals. In person, Marcia’s set verges on the ritualistic, as she turns the room into a swirling vortex of light and energy.

HEATHER LEIGH MURRAY has long underpinned Charalambides, Scorces and Taupis Tula with her shimmering swathes of pedalsteel wizardry and otherwordly vocal intonements. Heather is now striking out with a growing number of solo performances, which see her improvisations taken to further extremes. It’s an encapsulating experience, as Heather enters a trance-like state layering her instrument and voice, until her bloodied knuckles can claw at her strings no more.

MORGEN UND NITE (aka the duo of Frances Morgan and Leee Nite) make spontaneous drone ectoplasms, behemoth riffs, high-end killer-hummingbird oscillations and BBC Radiophonic doom using guitar, analogue synthesis, harmonium and telepathy. They like listening to the music of Heldon and the voices of cats, playing in the key of C sharp and observing the colours purple and green.
Doors 8PM - £5 - WeGotTickets

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
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The Retro Spankees/Winston Echo/The Bobby McGees/Das Wunderlust/Larry Pickleman
The Free Butt, Brighton

Words meander fitfully. Words leap and laugh around, caustic in their indignation. Faces flurry past, an ice storm of blurred memories and irritating cigarette smoke. I can’t recall the last time I had so much rare fun. I can’t recall the last time I watched four-and-a- half-bands from the front section of the Butt. I can’t recall much, actually – which may account for my continuing enthusiasm. I have few comparison points, little context.

Larry Pickleman transports me back to that squat in New Cross Road where ‘ranting’ poets such as Seething Wells and the (annoying, even then) Ben Elton would hold court, splendid in their sardonic anger. Mr Pickleman draws upon the odd sample of noise, Guinness, a store of stories concerning his three children – mostly along the lines of “Go to school, they say/Or you’ll be a FOOL, they say” and is so ebullient, so good-natured it’s all I can do to stop myself from leaping on stage and joining in as a human fret-box. Guitar bites, like Joe Strummer. Words hurt, like Courtney. “Ah, but you would like it,” the Irishman says afterwards. “You’re an old fucker like me.” True, but he makes me feel young again.

Das Wunderlust leap up and down, up and down, sending out spiteful shreds of emotion and break-up material, arguing vociferously with other Middlesborough sorts in the audience, the keyboard clashing and hiccupping loudly…far more early punk-disco Bis than Help She Can’t Sing, which is a fucking relief: far more Valerie than vanity; not serious enough to merit attention in the ‘proper’ music press doubtless, but again this is a relief. They charm, and smile, and bounce, and swap instruments – or do they? Maybe they just sound like that. Music as comforting and sticky as an ice cream on a hot summer’s day: no, really.

The Bobby McGees leave me flummoxed: a ripped-out tooth necessitated way too much alcohol consumption on the part of Mr McGee himself (smart shoes, suit, beard, strong Glaswegian accent) as he strums his ukulele and mostly tries to rile the audience. His companion (demure, flower-pattern dress, ukulele) looks on disdainful in her punk rock librarian glasses as he takes audience members to task over their Converse footwear – “I’ll get back to you later,” he barks at one: later includes a shoe being hurled on stage in response to a new number called “I Fucking Hate Converse”. The songs are absolutely charming, twee-r than Uncle Twee’s simpering elder brother Joe Twee McTwee Twee Top – ‘Please Don’t Dump Me’ (the title repeated over and over again), ‘No Friends’ (“I’ve got no friends…not one…”). It’s all in the delivery. Simultaneously antagonistic and heartrending and dumb, The Bobby McGees are purest essence of C86, distilled and with a thousand early BMX Bandits bootlegs clutched to their hearts.

Emily claims they’re “too twee”. That would be Emily, twee-est person I know in Brighton saying that. Whoa. Now there’s a compliment.

Winston Echo looks like a very nervous Frank Black, alone up there on stage, frantically strumming away at his acoustic and exhorting us all to shut the fuck up: his nervousness communicates itself as charm. He stops a number, forgets words, starts another, takes requests, sings pitiful and lonely songs about dole life, falls in love with someone on the Bureau de Change desk, hopes they notice him, strums some more, words nearly lost in his earnestness. I’d say he was a nascent English version of Daniel Johnston, if that wasn’t too obvious – or a Noughties Clive Pig.

I love to compare people to Clive Pig, cos no one knows what the fuck I’m on about.

I miss the Retro Spankees, mostly: they seem excellent, they have a song that may or may not be named after a near neighbour of Brighton, they bounce up and down with even more alacrity than Das Wunderlust – but lose points for having fewer female members – and they too have keyboards, and sound like they grew up grooving to the unfettered fun of Bis. They too are similar to Help She Can’t Sing, only THEY’RE FUN. The drummer presses two copies of their album into my hand, the childishly gleeful I Know You Are But What Am I? What, in case I lose the first? I’m most glad he does though, because now I have – to quote Dickon – a secret crush on the fourth trombone. I absolutely fucking LOVE this music, and want all five acts to reprise this entire show, in my front room, six weeks from now, recorded on four-track, no arguing.

And this time, I promise. I’ll pay even fuller attention.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, February 16th, 2006
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Jens Lekman/Bill Wells/The Legend!/Esio Trot
St Andrew’s Church, Hove

I’ve always seen words in blocks, shapes – not sentences or letters, but blocks, shapes, like patterns coalescing on a chessboard, fluid. I see concerts as birdsong: unfettered, inspiring but oddly limited to the same five or six notes, the same patterns forming and un-forming and reforming. All I seek for are the odd moments of magic – my baby Isaac smiling, innocent of hurt and hatred, smiling with unquestioning love in his eyes; a half-empty church, icy-cold, high arches, low eaves with a few troubadours singing songs of rejection and hope on stage, coloured in by brass and a tinkling keyboard. All I look for are those moments of magic: someone or something slightly askew – the girls on the door selling the most delicious chocolate cake for 50p a slice, or the tea steaming up gratefully in our chapped hands, anything to stave the cold, Jens Lekman with the power suddenly blown out, picking up an acoustic guitar and continuing on anyway to the accompaniment of finger-clicking and a softened saxophone, a teenage girl transported from the mundane, in raptures, twisting and turning through the church aisles with her partner.

On stage myself, with Chris Anderson playing his tinkling Omnichord keyboard, strumming moments of beauty behind my un-amplified voice that takes strange turns and twists soaring up to the rafters as I sing of death and Girls To Share Your Life With, breast feeding and decayed ambition. On stage myself, jacket thrown off, jumper thrown off, because as Jens says when he appears – and does same – it’s the best way to keep warm in a snowstorm, strip naked and huddle up to a companion. Watching from the crowd as Esio Trot charm and beguile, transported back to 1988 and it’s a village hall in Hertford and The McTells and Beat Happening are on stage, and The Legend! plays a set with his electric guitar unplugged, and everything is discordant and jangling, out-of-tune but so mesmerising, Velvet Underground filtered through a secondhand tape-recorder and a collection of Postcard Records. Watching from the crowd as Bill Wells soothes and excites us mightily with his jazz-inflected firestorms, the female brass section from Gothenburg improvising harmony and rhinestones like I’ve continually missed from rock music, Jens playing a bass – a favour that Bill then returns.

Watching from the crowd as Jens sings his own Beat Happening sample; and afterwards, sated by the tea and cake and wonderful chilly atmosphere, we watched Jens Lekman play half-a-dozen songs to half-a-dozen fans (by request) as most folk shuffled out anyway, figuring that concerts really ought to have a proper end, and we discussed Scout Niblett and Television Personalities before braving the bitter storm outside.

Chris Anderson said: “Well, isn’t there something wonderfully English about this whole evening?” and it would be hard to deny him his observation. Fortitude, beauty, village halls, music…sometimes I’m still proud to be living here in Brighton (and Hove actually).

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
(2 Comments)

Around the time I wrote about Martin Rev’s Strangeworld album for issue 11 of Plan B, I wrote to Tommi Gronlund of Sahko recordings, the Finnish label who originally released the album, to ask him if he could tell me a bit more about the album and how it came to be (and why no one seemed to have heard of it). He wrote me back this lovely reply, which didn’t make it into the magazine for deadline reasons, but which serves as a nice footnote to my Music That Time Forgot piece. Someone re-distribute this album! Please!

“I met Martin Rev for the first time in Washington Square park in 1997. I think I got his number through Mika Vainio [Pan Sonic] or Lary Seven.We got an idea with Jimi Tenor that we should ask him to produce the new Brandi Ifgray album. I gave him Brandi’s first album in the park and he gave me his new songs in exchange. Martin didn’t get so excited abut the Brandi album and finally Jimi and Maurice Fulton produced it.

In Barcelona I made a copy of Martin’s CD for Mika Vainio. Then it somehow got buried in the CD mountains. After a year or something Mika played the record in some laidback after hours boozing session. He said that he was strongly convinced that Martin’s unreleased album was the best record of all time. After that I took the record in consideration again and released it in early 2000.

Everything was really slow with that production. We had a marvellous photo session with Martin and Lary Seven on the Lower East Side in early summer 1999. After the session we went for dinner in an excellent Indonesian restaurant in Chinatown. Martin made an impression on me by ordering only a plate of plain white rice. He liked it so much that he ordered another plate to take away in a doggy bag. Mika Vainio has told several times that Martin has very extraordinary taste – also when it comes to food.

At the time when Strangeworld came out, our exclusive distributor EFA started to do worse and worse. I was expecting some sales for this album and I remember making 3000 LP sleeves, which was (and is) much for us. Only 1000 sleeves were used, and of those 1000 pressed records I still have half left. I made more CDs and I think I still have at least 500 left. We were lucky that EFA send the stock back before they went bankrupt in 2004.

I personally feel that Strangeworld is still very fresh and strong, and looks awesome with Lary’s beautiful covers.

Martin sent me another unreleased CD around the year 2000. Maybe I should check it out once more…Maybe there’s another forgotten treasure that the world is more ready to understand this time.”

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
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So anyway, in the absence of opinions on that wrong-headed new ‘weird’ folk comp that’s doing the rounds at the moment, in the absence of analysis of the new Ellen Allien/Apparat interface, in the absence of any musings on the psych/noise/weirdshit presence on Myspace (and you thought it was all indie kids and pervy old dudes etc etc), in the absence of anything resembling time in which to write anything about anything - oh, and in the absence of an internet connection in my house! don’t let’s forget that, readers, because it’s important - here’s my favourite site today.

Although they’re only purporting to “check out the facts and figures behind the news”, there is something incredibly comforting about Stats.org. Often because they seem to conclude that even if we’re being lied to, the truth is, oddly, not as bad as you expect. That’s something I need to tell myself on a sort of generalised level most days, and of course it’s not always the case (neither on Stats or on me), but what the hey, a girl’s gotta believe something and today I believe in statistics. Intelligent interpretations of, obviously.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
(6 Comments)

Polydor have just reissued The Jam’s superlative collection of A-sides, B-sides, rarities and album tracks Snap!, and - I can’t quite believe this myself - I’m excited. Ridiculously so. It went straight on the CD player by my computer, and there it’s staying until I have to leave to go to the dentist about this half a tooth that broke off a few hours ago. The reason it’s so ridiculous that I’m excited is that I already own most of these songs - original seven-inch, original LP, CD reissue, variety of compilations, BBC Sessions, bootlegs, live stuff, box sets, punk compilations - up to a dozen times, but I can’t help myself. I FUCKING LOVE THIS MUSIC! It soundtracked some of my most turbulant, miserable and rewarding times - well I remember hearing that line from ‘When You’re Young’ about “You swear you’re never ever going to work for someone/No corporations for the new age sons” while I was working on the production line in Cundell’s Corrugated Cardboard Factory, having just been turned down for university. “Tears of rage roll down your face,” Weller sang, possessed, “but still you swear it’s fun.” Man.

My love for The Jam is one of the reasons I feel empathy for folk who love Kaiser Chiefs and Arctic Monkeys, even if I don’t particularly like the music. When you’re a teenager, you need someone to articulate your frustrations.

I always hated Weller’s solo stuff, mind.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
(7 Comments)

Here’s what I’ve been listening to while trying to write my Nirvana book (part 2)

1. The Research - Breaking Up
2. The Organ - Grab That Gun
3. The June Brides - Every Conversation
4. Spider And The Webs - demo
5. Catfish Haven - Please Come Back
6. The Zombies - The EP Collection
7. McKinlay ‘Soul’ Mitchell - The Town I Live In
8. Various - Fonotone Records
9. Quasi - When The Going Gets Dark
10. The Wipers - Is This Real?

Saw The Research two nights back: Russell battered three layers of submission out of his timid keyboard like he was auditioning for Quasi; Georgia threatened to hit him with her bass; Sarah jumped up in a futile attempt to see the back of the Free Butt. Tunes spun and serrated, a sugary edge masking the bitter aftertaste. (A little like medicine, perhaps?) People laughed, a fraction too loudly. Some twat stood right in front of me, videoing for his own private pleasure - ignoring the fact he was at a live concert. Started with ‘The Way You Used To Smile’, announced as ‘our best song’, which it so remained until ‘I Love You But…’ came along and stole our hearts once more. The band seemed nervous, and rocked harder than I expected, or even necessarily wanted. Halfway through, Charlotte came over faint - lack of sleep, cigarette smoke, claustrophobia - and we had to leave. Bah.

Earlier, the band came over for tea and muffins, and recorded four songs on the 4-track, cheered on by Russell’s girlfriend Charlotte, and my mum. They’re so sweet and polite! The songs sounded so special, only slightly hampered by my entire lack of technical expertise. (I move people around the living room to achieve a balance, rather than overdub.) Piano, Casio, upturned footrest, baby’s tambourine, two acoustic guitars and of course those three voices, dipping in and out, swooping.

Man, we felt special.

I’ve just got to the part of the biography where Courtney flies out to Chicago to meet up with Billy Corgan and ends the night with Kurt in his hotel room. Man, where is Urge Overkill’s number when I need it?

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
(1 Comment)

This is my favourite review I ever received…

The Legend!
Room At The Top, London
The Legend! kept watching the clock. Five minutes passed, then 10: “We never play more than 20.” Looking embarrassed and self-conscious on stage he apologises: “I’m sorry it’s not wacky but when I get a guitar in my hands I get all serious.” You probably never guessed that the only exclamation mark would be on the back of Simon’s guitar; comprehended the dual identity, the insecurity beneath the popular exterior: key words and phrases that lurk beneath the surface: loneliness, unhappiness, now lay naked.
Sad songs and in this case their titles say enough: ‘The Price Of Friendship’, ‘Fixed Grin’, (no) ‘Room At The Top’. The music reflects the state of mind, merely a vehicle for the lyrics; shambolic anger and confused emotions, fluctuating pulse and tearing heart-strings.
The fans? They wanted to be entertained by an ever-smiling man who with limitless, boisterous enthusiasm has launched a thousand groups and ‘zines. The Legend! The story of an unhappy clown, created by his boyish, unaffected love for music. Cuddle and protect him - He’s vulnerable.
Helen Mead, NME, 1986

Although I did always like John Robb’s description in Rox of The Legend! being “a choirboy lost in a field of out-of-tune guitars”, and the Sounds line, “Like listening to someone dying”.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
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