Archives for May 2010

Los Angeles all female four-piece Warpaint brought their own brand of experimental art rock to London's Lexington last night (24 May), and what an attack it was.

At Brighton's Great Escape festival earlier this month and at South By South West before that, they were the talk of the town, quite rightly so.

These girls know how to rock, and so accomplished they are in their roles, their playful and dynamic live show takes on a life of it's own compared with their dreamy Mazzy Star-esque MySpace tracks.

With only eleven songs in the set, they played for over an hour, owing to the space they give the tunes to develop legs and meander into some experimental jam.

The drum and bass unit were both busting matching brilliant red, all-in-one romper suits and maybe it was their eye-catching attire, or the fact that they were centre stage no further than a meter away from each other at all times, but I couldn't take my eyes off them.

Australian lean mean drumming machine Stella Mozgawa barely broke a sweat, driving the band with post-punk rhythms, while bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg's body undulated as she emitted strong, repetitive bassline grooves.

Their on-stage chemistry was expressed further when percussionist Stella swapped with Theresa to play some guitar on Set Your Arms Down, and she and Jenny knelt together on the floor, occasionally touching heads as if they were conjoined twins sharing the same musical frequency (pictured above).

Their sounds underpinned the stirring guitar parts and hypnotic vocals of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman, which would peak and trough in and out of epic crescendos.

Warpaint count Billy Zane, the late Heath Ledger and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante - who gladly mixed their debut EP Exquisite Corpse - among their fans.

40 Days and 40 Nights actress Shannyn Sossamon, who was the original drummer and is the sister of Jenny Lee Lindberg, was in the audience as was Babyshambles' Drew McConnell and BBC 6 Music presenter Steve Lamacq, who has been championing them on his show.

The crowd was also smattered with an intriguing group of shaven-headed, somewhat lairy lads, who looked as if they'd accidentally missed the pub playing the England match and ended up there.

However, they turned out to be super fans, singing every word to the band's commercial calling-card, Billie Holiday, which features the melody from Mary Wells' Motown classic My Guy.

It seems the secret's out and the fast-rising band could be quite a success in the UK, deservedly so.

Their lush shoegaze melodies can obviously melt the hardest of hearts and what's more, we have their first album to look forward to as they've been in the studio with Grammy Award-winning producer Tom Biller.

He recorded the acclaimed Punch Drunk Love soundtrack, among others, helped launch the Silversun Pickups' career and recently co-produced the Where The Wild Things Are Soundtrack written by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Warpaint's debut LP is scheduled to be released this year, August I believe. Watch out, because this talented bunch seem to be on the right warpath to greatness.

SET LIST

Warpaint

Stars

Jubilee

Beetles

Polly

Composure

Bees

Billie

Set Your Arms Down

Elephants

Amazing

Georgie Rogers is a reporter for 6 Music News

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We haven't asked you to choose your keyboard favourites in the I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band vote

In fact, the meat and two veg purists might contend that the keyboard is an unwelcome interloper into the classic vocals, guitar, bass, drums combination.

But in case anyone wants to consider what an ivories-tickling side order might bring to the main course of the Fantasy Band they have been assembling over the past few weeks, here are some suggestions.

Purely personal. Probably contentious. Just a bit of fun though - no need for anyone to get hot under the collar!

The 10 listed below are chosen for what they might bring to a band rather than on the basis of the fastness of their fingers.

First some notable omissions. No Wakeman and Emerson for me. Brilliant players without question, but could they integrate into a fantasy band line-up? I don't think so. The capes and knives would be out before you know it. These guys always end up being bigger than the band.

No Elton John or Ben Folds either. Great writers and stage performers and no one is doubting their technical ability - but would they be happy to camp out on the edge of stage behind a wall of keyboards and consoles while others hog the limelight? Of course not.

I'm ruling out Jools Holland too as he's been a band leader far longer than he was ever a sideman in Squeeze.



And would Tony Banks work in any band other than Genesis? I'm saying no. Just a bit of fun mind, remember.

Matt Bellamy and John Paul Jones also have a good shout for inclusion but they appear in other categories, so won't feature here.

So who's in?

1) Ray Manzarek

Not just the creator of maybe the most sophisticated top ten keyboard intro in history (fighting it out for my money with Party Fears Two by The Associates) but laying claim with his left hand for the bassist's job too.

Key Track - Light My Fire, The Doors

2) Dave Greenfield

His driving style would be a pulse-quickening boon to any band. Punks weren't supposed to be able to play this well.

Key Track - No More Heroes, The Stranglers

3) Brian Eno

Self-proclaimed non-musician, but one who would bring so much more to the party than mere keys-bothering. Any outfit featuring him would immediately become a 'Fantasy Band'.

Key Track - "Heroes", David Bowie

4) Steve Winwood

The 60s boy genius who went on to form Traffic and Blind Faith. His contributions to classic albums from acts as diverse as Marianne Faithfull to Paul Weller via Lou Reed show just how useful he could be to have around in any band.

Key Track - Gimme Some Lovin', Spencer Davis Group

5) Ian McLagan

Tasteful, classy and an integral part of two of Britain's greatest ever bands. Moddily psychedelic with The Small Faces; lopingly bar room with The Faces. Author of one of the most entertaining musical autobiographies ever, to boot.

Key Track - Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, The Small Faces

6) Billy Preston

The one contender for title Fifth Beatle who actually got an equal playing credit on the label. And he played on Exile on Main Street too. Good enough for them - enough for me.

Key Track - Get Back, The Beatles

7) Jon Lord

A virtuoso, concerto writing, Hammond hammerer but a team player too. Happy to be hidden behind his kingdom of keys 'like a cocktail waiter ready to serve drinks at any time.'

Key Track - Hush, Deep Purple

8) Richard Wright

Considered. Soulful. And creator of some of the most uplifting music ever.

Key Track - The Great Gig in the Sky

9) Mike Barson

Are Madness a 'proper' rock'n'roll band? While the argument rages on, I'm putting him onto the list anyway. After all - it's only a bit of fun.

Key track - Grey Day, Madness (nothing flash but perfect for the song)

10) Nicky Hopkins

Nimbled fingered Zelig. Session man, yes - but what a career! Who, Stones, Kinks. Blimey!

Key track - Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones

So, that's my list. Who'd be in yours?

John Piper is the Series Producer of I'm In A Rock 'n' Roll Band

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I'm in a Rock 'n' Roll Band - John writes baout making the series

What's Your Fantasy Rock 'n' Roll Band?

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I'm in a Rock 'n' Roll Band - video and votes

Robert Seatter, the Head of BBC History has written a fascinating post on the About the BBC blog about an unusual musical anniversary. 19 May 1924 was the first day radio listeners heard cellist Beatrice Harrison playing while nightingales sang, live from a Surrey garden.

You can hear their collaboration below:

Read Robert Seater's full post and leave a comment

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The BBC Story website

If you're a Later... with Jools Holland fan, you may have noticed at the start of the live programme on Tuesdays we have been putting what's known as a Twitter'hash tag' on screen for a few seconds. It looks like this:

The thinking behind this is quite simple: firstly we wanted to make watching the programme more social for those who like to watch TV with a laptop running at the same time. Secondly, it's a useful way for us to gather some instant feedback.

Read the rest of this entry

For the longest time our series exploring what it takes to make a great rock 'n' roll band from the floorboards up was called 'Fantasy Rock 'n' Roll Band'.

There was something about the notion of looking at the DNA of rock 'n' roll bands role by role - lead singer, guitarist, drummer, other one - the quiet one, the secret gel of the band be it bass, keyboards, dancer or whatever - that suggested that once you've taken the constituent parts of those roles apart and looked at what it takes to, say, be a lead singer ("Ego and insecurity" argues Lauren Laverne, "To be get laid, to get rich and to get famous" said Bob Geldof, "To have fun and change the world," says Bono), not only would you understand a whole lot more about every role in a rock 'n' roll band but, like any mad scientist, you'd then be free to recombine these elements to invent your own fantasy band.

But the more we looked into each role, the more we celebrated the great rock 'n' roll myths and the great practitioners of each discipline, the more we became fascinated by the extraordinary and singular fate that brings a great band together in a single place at the same time, to weave a singular magic that only those particular elements could hope to imagine.

The greatest magic of the bands we love is how they come from the same place at the same time and the journey they then go on together that is both the shape of their career with all its highs and lows and the music they make.

Imagine if Arctic Monkeys weren't all from Sheffield, if they hadn't known each other as teenagers, how could they have gone on the journey we've been enjoying these past few years? What brought John Cale from Wales and Nico from Germany to link up with Lou Reed in New York City and combine for that matchless first Velvet Underground album?

Rock 'n' roll bands are so often local affairs that begin in hitherto unheralded neighbourhoods and go on to write their local knowledge round the world; think what The Who did for the mods of Shepherd's Bush or what Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band did for Asbury Park? We'll be exploring this in particular detail in the fifth programme of series that is devoted to the journeys that bands go on together, to the understanding that a great band is also a great narrative, a story writ large. Even if they break up after one perfect album like The Sex Pistols.

Great bands come from somewhere and although I am as partial to the occasional supergroup as the next fan - if you count Cream and Them Crooked Vultures but pass on Velvet Revolver - it's the precise set of circumstances and the precise history which a band shares together that makes us love them.

BUT - and it's a big BUT, there's still something about breaking bands into their constituent parts that invites us to play with the heroes of rock 'n' roll like so many toy soldiers. So we'd like you to play the game. Ignore actuality, history, circumstances and accident and play God. Build your own Fantasy Rock 'n' Roll Bands like God was a manager and we might mention your line-up in the studio show that ends the series on Saturday 5 June. I'll have Richard Ashcroft on vocals, Johnny Marr on guitar, Ray Manzarek on keys and Martin Lamble of Fairport Convention on drums, even though he died in a car crash before the 60s were out, he's still my favourite skinsman. Over to you.

Mark Cooper is the Executive Producer, I'm In A Rock 'n' Roll Band

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I'm in a Rock 'n' Roll Band - series producer John Piper writes about the series

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William Zantzinger, Hattie Carroll & Bob Dylan

The strange name William Zantzinger is familiar to almost everybody who knows Bob Dylan's music - Zantzinger is the monster who beats a hotel maid to death in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, one of the songs on Dylan's 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Although often labeled a protest singer, Dylan has never been a very political animal and he recorded relatively few protest songs. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is one of them. It is a true story. William Zantzinger, a rich young tobacco farmer, turned up drunk at a society ball in Baltimore, Maryland, on 8 February 1963. He told 51-year-old Hattie Carroll to pour him a drink. When Hattie failed to serve Zantzinger as swiftly as he wanted he abused the maid verbally and tapped her with his walking cane, which as Dylan sang Zantzinger "twirled around his diamond ring finger". Carroll was so outraged she collapsed and died of heart failure. Although a court heard that Zantzinger's actions led to the death, he received a mere six-months for manslaughter.



The sentence was handed down at the crescendo of the Civil Rights movement, the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech in nearby Washington DC. The young Bob Dylan sang at the March on Washington. Reading about the Zantzinger case in the newspaper afterwards, he seized on it as a paradigm of racial injustice - for Carroll was a black woman, abused by a white man.



When I came to write Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan in 2000, I decided to try and speak to Zantzinger. Although Dylan's song had made him almost a character of legend, a storybook villain, I knew Zantzinger was a real person. Was he still alive? I found him still living in Maryland, listed in the phone book. I rang the number. As soon as I introduced myself, Zantzinger started ranting and raving about Dylan, "the son of bitch", saying he should have sued the singer for defamation. When I tried to question the farmer more closely, he slammed down the phone.



I quoted Zantzinger's few angry words in my book, which was a bestseller in 2001, and when Zantzinger died last year I noticed that newspaper obituary writers from around the world - for Dylan had made Zantzinger infamous - quoted the few words the farmer said to me. It seems his comments were unique. I remembered then that I'd taped him, and still had the tape.



That little micro-tape has become the kernel of a remarkable 30-minute radio documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 am on Friday 14 May. Producer Sara Parker and I went to Maryland to make the programme,The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which I present, uncovering a surprising amount of new information about this case. Most interestingly we found witnesses from the ball where Carroll was attacked, original contemporaneous court notes from the trial and, in the office of the son of one of the original prosecutors, we found William Zantzinger's cane, broken into pieces, not by the blow against Hattie, but because the cane was snapped and thrown away afterwards to hide the evidence. Holding the fragments of this legendary article I felt like I was handling John Dillinger's pistol.



Dylan's admirers (I don't say 'fans', for as Dylan reminds us fan is short for fanatic) may be surprised to learn that while Zantzinger himself was furious about the song, which he claimed defamed him, and does include a key factual error, the Carroll family were not pleased about the ballad either. At least one of Hattie's kids takes the view that Dylan exploited their story, helping make himself rich, while some of Hattie's grandkids couldn't pay their way through college.



Apart from Down the Highway, Howard Sounes is the author of a number of non-fiction books including a forthcoming major biography of Sir Paul McCartney, Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney.

Related Links

The Lonesome Death Death of Hattie Carroll - the Radio 4 programme

Howard Sounes - the writer's own website

Every month the BBC reviews a sizeable amount of new albums from across the genre spectrum, and every month I try to pick a handful that are really worthy of your time and (hopefully) money.

April's selection is here, below, but it's only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are many more excellent albums from April out there, awaiting discovery, from under-the-radar delights to mainstream pop affairs. So make sure you don't miss out: follow our reviews as they go live via Twitter, or make a point of bookmarking the Music homepage and visit us frequently. There are usually new reviews uploaded every day of the working week.

May's shaping up to be a particularly splendid month for new albums, with The National, LCD Soundsystem, Deftones, Foals, Toni Braxton and Kelis among the big-name acts with fresh material forthcoming. So look out for a similarly quality-of-content round-up in a month's time.

Bear In Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth

(Hometapes, released 5 April)

Recommended by Huw Stephens

"They've Yeasayer's playfulness, MGMT's way with a deceptively catchy melody, and The Ruby Suns' penchant for layering on an infectiously happy haziness that keeps the listener coming back. Expect to hear a lot more about Bear In Heaven over the coming months."



Read the full review

High Places - High Places vs. Mankind

(Thrill Jockey, released 5 April)

"High Places have moved on from their excellent debut, with a greater emphasis on so-called conventional instrumentation positioning them on the fringes of the ongoing chillwave explosion, albeit with enough invention to outlast most of its central protagonists."

Read the full review

Caribou - Swim

(City Slang, released 19 April)

6 Music Album of the Day

"Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, is a doctor of maths - and with this album everything seems to add up. Stripped and purified beats sit comfortably with an atmosphere of the ethereal, while Snaith's lullaby vocals lead you into exciting new worlds."

Read the full review

Starkey - Ear Drums and Black Holes

(Planet Mu, released 19 April)

Recommended by MistaJam

"A homeland forerunner in the sonic catchalls of grime and dubstep, promoting his own nights and labels, Starkey is among a rare few stateside producers to have successfully competed in such quintessentially British artforms."

Read the full review

65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway

(Hassle, released 26 April)

Recommended by Huw Stephens, Marc Riley

"From being a fringe concern - albeit one with an underground reputation worthy of rabid devotion - 65daysofstatic have grasped hitherto unimagined opportunities, capitalised on experiences and brought an eclectic yet huge arsenal with which to entice newcomers and open-minded veteran travellers with."

Read the full review

The Futureheads - The Chaos

(Nul, released 26 April)

Recommended by Fearne Cotton, Zane Lowe, 6 Music Album of the Day

"The Futureheads have always had more nous, more range, more brains than their indie punk peers. Album number four delivers on the hope amongst their fanbase that the band might give up on their commercial dreams, instead ploughing the oddness that always set them apart from the pack."

Read the full review

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - I Learned the Hard Way

(Daptone, released 26 April)

Recommended by Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show

"Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings can hold their heads high and proud with icons of the soul scene, for here they match bold exuberance with sensitivity and affection on a truly brilliant album that elevates them far beyond pastiche."

Read the full review

Small Black - Small Black EP

(Jagjaguwar, released 26 April)

"Seven tracks of fuzzy, foggy, fantastic synth-pop-through-a-mangle akin to fellow blogosphere big-shots - but should an absolute beginner persevere, they can't fail to find the tremendous beauty within these purposefully flawed gems."

Read the full review

Food - Quiet Inlet

(ECM, released 19 April)

Recommended by Jazz on 3

"Quiet Inlet reveals a technologised rhythmic approach distantly related to jungle and two-step as well as connections with 1970s Miles Davis recordings. Food's music is a magical hybrid of technology and improvisation, Europe and America, ambience and dance."

Read the full review

Ty - Special Kind of Fool

(BBE, released 19 April)

Recommended by Nick Grimshaw, Ronnie Herel, MistaJam

"As ever, Ty fills his lines with specifically British homeland references, keeping things conversational and often dryly humorous. There are jazz, soul and electro trimmings, but the end product couldn't be perceived as being any of these genres in the full sense."

Read the full review

Paul Weller - Wake Up the Nation

(Island, released 19 April)

Recommended by Radcliffe & Maconie, Victoria Derbyshire, 6 Music Album of the Day

"The album roars along at an impressive pace, taking the listener on a hallucinogenic expedition through Weller's varied stylistic terrain. Here the Modfather is making full use of his exceptional musical vocabulary, and Wake Up the Nation feels like an unrestrained sonic exploration."

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Martha Argerich - Argerich Plays Chopin

(Deutsche Grammophon, released 5 April)

"This chance unearthing of over an hour of Martha Argerich recordings is quite the find. Clearly focused, she coaxes incredible narrative-led performances from these works. The last thing we hear on the disc after this mammoth effort is ecstatic applause - anything less would be inappropriate."

Read the full review