1. Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire - Christmas 1979 (Damaged Goods)
The best fucken Christmas single you’ll ever hear, this side of Otis Redding stuttering his way through ‘White Christmas’ and that Sonic Youth one about copping dope. Oh, and anything from that James Brown album. Well, whatever. The best fucken Christmas garage rock single you’ll ever hear, this side of The Sonics (the Sixties ones) and Jon Spencer shafting ‘Blue Christmas’. Whatever. The best fucken Christmas single you’ll hear this year, for damn sure.

2. Wild Beasts - Assembly (Domino)
Outrageously outrageous voice, chirruping and wailing delightedly away to itself like yr scary (and slightly sexy) Aunt Maude at bath time, over a rollicking jaunty and upbeat tune.

3. Ed Askew - Little Eyes (De Stijl)
From the Seventies: the exact point where Bob Dylan intersects with Daniel Johnston.

4. Dial - 168K (Cede)
Medium level noise and a wee smattering of skronk no wave guitar from ex-members of UT, God and Furious Pig. Raw, cathartic and mesmeric.

5. Acolytes Action Squad - Winkle Time (Early Winter Recordings)
Remember Effi Briest? Remember Nista Nije Nista? Remember the idea of experimentation being fun? Murky, meticulously deconstructed, angelic, zoological rock that’s 50 times even better…um. It’s not a competition, you know.

6. Ted Milton - Odes
The Blurt front-man/saxophonist/damn fine genius returns with a series of gentle, measured, rather unsettling entreaties to heart tattoos and lipstick and bruised skies, that’s approximately 50,000 times more interesting and entertaining than I’ve just made it sound.
Everett True

Posted by Everett True on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
(1 Comment)

Tuesday 17 July, 8pm
The Hope, Brighton (11-12 Queens Road)

6 quid adv/7 quid on the door

The Strange Death Of Liberal England
Mechanical Bride
The Legend! (Everett True)

“The name is drawn to indicate the welter of confusion felt by these five youths from Gosport, a crap seaside town near Portsmouth…is it five? It’s hard to tell, because they never keep still on stage, leaping about, switching instruments and smudging their guitar strings like Sonic Youth in reverse, thrusting giant placards into the audience’s faces bearing slogans like ‘Repent! Repent!’ and ‘I Saw Evil’, hammering the hell out of a keyboard or two, shouting off-mic in unkempt harmony like the bastard children of Silver Mt Zion Orchestra, instruments dropping out altogether until there’s just a hint of triangle or ricocheting feedback, before the flame-haired mop starts yelling blue passion once again” - Plan B 23

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Friday 20 July, 7:30pm
The Hub, Brighton (The Vogue Gyratory, 106 Lewes Rd)

3 quid on the door

Pete And The Pirates
Mathew Sawyer And The Ghosts
The Legend! (Everett True)
plus Plan B DJ Jon Slade

“Songs tumble and soar for the stars like a cross between The Chills and my Nineties Irish crush The Frank And Walters, and yes, I’m sold. The way the vocals vibrate, mic overloaded. The way the drums come pounding through solid and friendly. The guitars that nestle snugly up to the other guitars. And of course, it’s about the sound, not just the song - Phil Spector, Sonic Youth and Ramones understood that, as did Flying Nun, why don’t more artists?” - Plan B 19

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Saturday 21 July, 7pm
Hanover Community Centre (33 Southover Street BN2)

8.50 quid adv/10.50 quid on the door

Holly Golightly
The Brokeoffs
The Legend! (Everett True)

“Holly Golightly. Forgive me while I swoon. Her name, her music, her whole persona is associated with a certain exquisite Fifties-style fashion and rock’n'roll; sharpness, style. Her music is a drawl of simple eloquence, a sugar-sharp dispatch from past times where a song was a song, and a melody a melody, and all that mattered was honing the sound so you could communicate both with elan. I can’t think of anyone so able to define her own sound this side of Kim Deal, although I’m not so convinced it’s deliberate on Holly’s part. She plays uncomplicated, cheap, nasty, attitudinal, punk rock rock’n'roll of the highest order. She is, as Jack White once put it, herself - and there is rarely a higher compliment”- Plan B 22

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Monday 23 July, 8pm
The Pressure Point, Brighton (33 Richmond Place BN2)

5 quid/4 quid (student)

Tenebrous Liar
Revenge Of Shinobi
The Legend! (Everett True)
Virgin Passages

“Guitars wail softly; feedback melts into feedback, sharp noises jar and trip as if from a great distance. A soft voice stumbles across anachronism and narcotic desire, meaning lost in mumble, the guitars becoming louder now. There’s a mandolin, an echo slide, a handful of late night recording sessions and a handful of love. There’s misery and then there’s wallowing. This is beyond both” - Plan B 19

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Monday 30 July, 7.30pm
Prince Albert, Brighton (48 Trafalgar Street)

6 quid adv/7 quid on the door

The Nightingales
Christy & Emily
Violet Violet
Plus Plan B DJ Everett True

“Songs tumble past, pasty-faced and brimming with mother’s pride, as fresh and corruptible now as when they were first aired two decades back, times changed and words tilted appropriately - ‘Use Your Loaf’, ‘Urban Ospreys’, ‘Which Hi-Fi?’. The crowd rears as one, raises a pint or three to heaven, and still the melodic tumult continues: imagine Erase Errata, The Ex and someone smart, large and bespectacled rolled into one, tightly excoriating ball, and you’ll be nowhere near” - Plan B 17

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Posted by Everett True on Friday, July 13th, 2007
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Punk Planet has gone under. Motherfucker.

Punk Planet was one of the very few magazines of the past decade that I felt genuinely proud to say I’ve written for. It was smart, intelligent and full of informed argument, politics and criticism. Dan always made sure he paid his contributors what he could. I really dug its chunky design too. I’m not sure how many people know this, but when Steve Gullick and I started Careless Talk Costs Lives (the forerunner of Plan B) it was one of the very few magazines that I showed to Andrew Clare as an example of what I liked in publishing. I’m not saying it was necessarily a direct influence on what we did, but I certainly held it as an example that a smart, soulful, passionate magazine based round music could survive and indeed prosper.

And now it’s gone, partly due to some major-ass problems with its distributor (a worry that every independent publisher is acutely aware of - indeed, if it hadn’t been for a fortuitous bit of timing on Plan B’s part a little over a year back, we might not even be here now).

Motherfucker. Suddenly, the world seems that little bit darker.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
(No Comments)

Free show, 8pm

Thursday 7 June
The Hub, Vogue Gyratory, Lewes Rd, Brighton

WET DOG
“Sure, they recall The Raincoats (but where’s the violin?). Also, The Birthday Party (it must be the bass, and scratchy guitar), and Devo; also, the WASP synthesiser-bashings of late Seventies punky upstarts pragVEC (but where’s the keyboard?)…” - Everett True, Plan B magazine

THE LEGEND!
“More entertaining than Nina Simone” - Nick Cave

Posted by Everett True on Friday, June 1st, 2007
(No Comments)

Nice to see Domino are reissuing Young Marble Giant’s timeless Colossal Youth album from 1981. Especially as the reissue comes with a bonus CD incorporating the original Salad Days demo, a near-mythical tape I thought had been long lost in the mists of time; and a chance to hear the first unreleased YMGs songs in 25 years.

It’s just a shame they couldn’t have found someone who actually likes the band to write the sleeve notes. Seems odd. Surely, there would have been any number of contenders?

Posted by Everett True on Monday, May 14th, 2007
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Editorial

This month’s Plan B is a testament to the wave of hugely talented men who are poised to take hold of the music scene in 2007. From Nick Cave to Patrick Wolf to Grandmaster Gareth, they’ve brought new energy to a scene dominated by females. Plan B has always looked to the future, and we see a future where men are making music on equal terms with their female counterparts. What the critics are already calling ‘malecore’ is the music of tomorrow. A bold statement? We think not.

We’re proud to present our first annual ‘Men In Rock’ issue, the same way we’re proud to feature so many special individuals in our pages: just because they look a little rough and don’t like to wear eyeliner doesn’t mean they can’t make great music. No, don’t call us sexist! This is no token gesture on the part of the Plan B editorial team: we plan to feature more and more men within these pages as more and more men make great records. All of our main stars this month are living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you’re wearing a shirt and a tie, a hoodie, or even a nice pair of corduroy britches.

While newspaper critics herald the ‘female invasion’ of music, even suggesting that women have the evolutionary upper hand because they’re “in tune with their feelings” and “less afraid to be candid about human frailty” (Observer Music Monthly), Plan B takes a stand against such lazy essentialism. After all, who could accuse the elfin Patrick Wolf, the heartbreaking Arthur Russell, the none-more-confessional Of Montreal or even the sensitive brutes of Grinderman of being out of touch with their more vulnerable side? Or fail to see the ‘human frailty’ in the lyrics of both Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Klashnekoff?

What really amazed us when we put together this issue was how awesomely different men are from one another. In fact, it seems almost insulting to group them all together just because they’ve got cocks and make music. Nonetheless, we hope they appreciate our support.

Normal service will be resumed next month.
The Plan B Editors

http://www.planbmag.com/order

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
(3 Comments)

OK. I will post my Top 25 on iTunes (with a slight rejoinder that it isn’t an entirely accurate depiction of my listening habits, because I still listen to most new CDs on the CD-player)

1. The Long Blondes: Once and Never Again (second mix)
2. Anton Karas: The Third Man : The “Harry Lime” Theme 
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Let Me Know (Demo) 
4. Lily Allen: Smile
5. The Long Blondes: Lust In The Movies
6. Bunky: Boy/Girl
7. Camera Obscura: Let’s Get Out Of This Country
8. Camera Obscura: The False Contender
9. Nikki Sudden: In Your Room
10. The Diskettes: Get! Together!
11. The Dresden Dolls: Sex Changes 
12. ESG: You’re No Good
13. The Soulsetters: Soul Train
14. The Pretenders: Stop Your Sobbing 
15. Willie Hightower: Walk A Mile In My Shoes 
16. The Au Pairs: We’re So Cool 
17. Camera Obscura: Dory Previn
18. Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers: Why Do Fools Fall In Love 
19. The Jam: Down in the tube station at midnight 
20. James Carr: The Dark End Of The Street 
21. John Cooper Clarke:Beasley Street
22. Little Anthony & The Imperials: Tears On My Pillow 
23. Animals And Men: The Man With The Spiked-Toed Shoes 
24. The Chordettes: Hello! Ma Baby 
25. The Whyte Boots: Nightmare
25. I’m From Barcelona: We’re From Barcelona
25. Silver Jews: There Is A Place

Posted by Everett True on Sunday, August 20th, 2006
(2 Comments)

    Been awhile. Rarely go out, so there’s little to report on. Maybe the odd iTune chart, but right now that seems not very interesting. Been editing - a great games column that made me want to read more on the subject; an excellent cover feature from Melissa, parachuted into her situation with only a day’s notice; beautiful words on a disappointing M Ward show and our brand new letters page (which came about, despite an underwhelming response)…failed my driving test again, this time cos I’d been up the entire previous night suffering from food poisoning…hoping that I won’t be away when Patrik Fitzgerald plays in town soon…looking forward to Juliette And The Licks (except that their current image is crap)…happy with my MySpace page - http://www.myspace/thelegendeveretttrue - and examining all my crazy new MySpace friends….

Posted by Everett True on Saturday, August 19th, 2006
(1 Comment)

Started off the day by listening to the Greatest Song Ever, no questions broked, ‘Oh Happy Day’ by the Edwin Hawkins Singers (Nick Cave knows it: ‘Deanna’ is taken straight from the source)…a song that never fails to leave me tingling and shivering and tears prickling my eyes, pure inspiration.

Then, on the way back from the nursery (beautiful sunny day, as ever mourn all the sheep bleating along in the long line of motorik hum clogging up Dyke Rd), a Wedding Present song came onto my iPod - thought I’d listen to it, why not, I’m rather fond of Gedge, get more fond of him the older I become actually, song called ‘Shivers’ from their reccent album Search For Paradise, well knock me down and call me ragged but the song is gorgeous, beautiful, swamped in sumptious analogue keyboards, beautiful old organ sound, the kind of organs Steve Fisk cherishes and collects, exactly like his organs actually…hey, wait a minute, didn’t Steve produce the last Wedding Present album - these are his keyboards! Whoa.

And then straight into The Legend! (’I'm Not Like That’) and a wonderful Camera Obscura song (’If Looks Could Kill’) that I stood on the doorstep and listened to until those thunderous drums had faded into the distance.

Nice.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
(No Comments)

Just finishing filing the 130 or so applications for the two Plan B jobs advertised a couple of weeks back…slightly overwhelmed by people’s enthusiasm and obvious passion for music and disgust at the way it’s treated within the media in this country.

One hundred and thirty! There are only two jobs going, y’know - which means 128 disappointed people. And some of these emails are just genius.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, June 15th, 2006
(2 Comments)