Albert Tatlock
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Posts posted by Albert Tatlock
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1. Saw the Man in the Sand film on BBC2 - having an interest in Woody/roots country/Americana (for want of a better description) and also great respect for Billy Bragg. Then there was this band producing some fantastic melodies. So it was Mermaid Avenue. Got Being There soon after but it just didn't click and in fact I gave it away. Had to buy it again later once I had come to my senses :-)
2. 2004 London Astoria on the AGIB tour. A few weeks earlier found VC and asked if Wilco were worth seeing live, since on the I Am Trying DVD (which I had got by then along with YHF & ST and loved them all) they struck me as a bit ramshackle at times. Also met my first US VCers there and later became good friends with a few UK ones too. This was also about the first live band I had seen in many years after not having time for music for quite a while. Got my second wind after the teenage years and the start of a major re-ignition of interest in music and hugely rewarding when I think of the shows I've seen since (Wilco & non-Wilco). Most UK tours and a few European jaunts since, plus very luckily 3 JT solo - 2 London and 1 HSB in lovely SF.
P.S. Nice inclusive thread for a change
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You should not start counting from zero - the default premise is that bböp will be there
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P.S. Top Tip: The air guitar playing involves less post-solo laundry duties if you do it before the plunger is put to work.
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I really, really could use a Wilco plunger. For all those who want to combine air guitar with household chores. Win - win!
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Also, Lost was filmed in Hawaii, Dr Who is based in Cardiff.
The weather is not so reliable for filming year round
(and serious note - it is the major, major production for BBC Wales stretching their resources)
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Ta very much!
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So, next headlining London show is on the Thursday before the Friday and Saturday Wilco double header. JT and co may need to up their game to avoid an anti-climax
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Jim Jones Revue: Britain’s last rock’n’rollers?
By Andrew Perry
Daily Telegraph 7:00AM BST 16 Jun 2011
Out-and-out rock’n’roll bands are, at present, in desperately short supply. The British music press are scouring the nation for a young combo worth hyping, with little success. Oasis have split up, and Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye have yet to impress. Ten years ago, in similar times of need, we looked across the Atlantic to the Strokes and the White Stripes, but this year, the former delivered a lukewarm synth-pop record, and the latter announced that they’d disbanded. Who is there?
A plausible answer is: the Jim Jones Revue — a group of inveterate rockers, whose moment in the limelight seems to be imminent. This time last year, the five-piece ensemble were still playing in grotty pubs and clubs around the country, but they have quickly graduated to — and sold out, in advance — places like Camden’s 1,500-capacity Koko, pretty much by word of mouth.
They are by far the most exciting straight-ahead rock’n’roll band Britain has produced in a decade or more. Their sound is a highly adrenalised reactivation of the shrieking, piano-pounding early rock of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. One could argue all day about what makes them relevant today, and not retro — for one thing, they certainly wouldn’t have got away with their punky, lo-fi aesthetic in the 1950s — but ultimately it’s their sheer energy, exuberance and, frankly, excellence, which has won them their following.
When I meet them during a breather of just a few hours on their tour, they’re as breezy and enthusiastic as a bunch of teenagers fresh to the road.
“Being in a band — I would do anything to do it,” says Jim Jones, the band’s hollerer and guiding light. “I always knew it was what I needed to do. It’s not because of money, or where we’re positioning ourselves in the market, or any of that rubbish. You just feel it in your bones.”
Jones, in fact, has considerable “previous”: he first surfaced in the late 1980s fronting High Wycombe’s Thee Hypnotics, whose heroes were, audibly, the Rolling Stones and Iggy & the Stooges. It was while struggling thereafter in the more 1960s soul-inspired Black Moses, that he crossed paths with the Revue’s future guitarist, Rupert Orton (younger brother of Brit-winning folkie Beth), who was promoting vintage blues soirées around London, under the irreverent banner Not The Same Old Blues Crap. As Black Moses crumbled, Jones and Orton set out to take rock back to its 1950s source.
“We wanted people in the band who knew what they were doing,” says Orton. “People who’d got an understanding of their instrument, and the kind of music we wanted to play. Not to belittle younger bands, but we wanted men, you know?”
In 2008, these journeymen with greased-back quiffs were swimming against the tide of alternative rock, where hip young things with asymmetric fringes were largely tinkling out New Wave synth-pop. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark when, that year, they recorded their self-titled debut album in a dingy rehearsal room, live, in two days flat. “If you turned it up too loud, it just became white noise,” Orton proudly recalls. “It was a statement of intent: this is what the band is like, take it or leave it.”
It sold next to nothing, but the band really existed for blasting out their scabrous boogie-woogie on stage, for however many like-minded souls would pay to listen.
“We all remembered the first gigs we went to as kids,” says Orton, “where you got your head blown off by the excitement of seeing a visceral rock’n’roll band — for us, it was Johnny Thunders, the Birthday Party, the Ramones, the Clash. But we couldn’t see that kind of thing around anymore, so it was like being on a mission — if nobody else is going to do it, we need to do it.”
The Jim Jones Revue’s cause was furthered by Jim Sclavunos, the drummer from Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and Grinderman. Also a highly able producer for hire, he helped them bring order to their chaos on their second record, Burning Your House Down, without taking away any of their excitement. With its nods towards punk and post-hardcore as well as lashings of primal rockabilly and R’n’B, it could only have been made in post-millennial Britain.
Jones, a full-tilt blues shouter of the old school, says his lyrics are “anything but pink Cadillacs and bobby socks. They’re dirty red buses and difficult women in Lower Clapton”.
He pooh-poohs the notion that his age ought to preclude him from his whooping and cavorting on stage, noting that Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, the veteran Chicago bluesmen, “didn’t have much of a career until they were pushing 40”.
He also laments the fact that there are precious few artists from the original rock’n’roll era still treading the boards.
“Bo Diddley died last year,” he says, “and every time you see another one drop off the list, you look around and go, 'Who’s left?’ The other day, I suddenly thought, 'Oh s---, it’s us!’ I don’t presume to be as good as those people,” he says, “but who else is carrying the message?”
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... like this one ...
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Most exciting thing I've seen in a long time ... Maybe since Strummer and Jones were at it ...
Just click on anything by then in Youtube after that.
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Gillian Welch: Harrow & The Harvest (Acorny Records)
It's been eight years since Gillian Welch's last album and the The Harrow & The Harvest is worth the wait.
The interplay between Welch and David Rawlings's guitars is dazzlingly expert as they dance around the slow, melancholy beauty of Welch's voice. There cannot be another musical duet around at the moment who are able to make two acoustic guitars and two voices produce a sound that is so subtle and yet powerful.
Tracks such as Down Along The Dixie Line and Six White Horses are vignettes steeped in the American southern country life they have observed so closely in Tennessee.
Welch once admitted that "I don’t start writing until I’m totally miserable" and the opener Scarlet Town is certainly bleak. "It's a little dark and a little vengeful," she said.
Human frailty is the theme of The Way it Goes and Dark Turn of Mind, songs which all the more effective for being performed in their understated yet complex manner.
Tennessee is a gem of a song ("Of all the ways I've found to hurt myself, you may be my favourite one of all") delivered in a perfect languid drawl by Welch but all 10 originals are hugely satisfying and complement each other so well.
Also worth a mention in dispatches is the glorious album cover artwork by John Dyer Baizley, a painter and musician based in Savannah, Georgia.
This is American folk music at its very best.
They had better come to the UK this time around ...
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If you really mean 'day' then I think you will be on your own. For all the shows in the UK I've ever attended I've been more than satisfied with an hour and a half to 2 hours before opening up time (and have been at the front then) - though being dead front is not so attractive to me now - a polite three or four rows back will do nicely.
There is one man who will have all the answers though
Bbop, where are you ... -
5) River is in prison for "killing a good man, the best she have ever known." Is this the death of the Doctor in 2011?
a) I say not, she obviously remembers the murder, but apparently has no recollection of killing the Doctor in 2011. This crime is on someone else. My money is on Rory, since Moffatt is a fan of making us think people are talking about the Doctor when they are really talking about Rory.
In a recent newspaper interview here, the actor who played Rory very breifly referred to his Dr Who role in the past tense when describing his latest theatre work, and then clammed up as if he realised that he had let something out of the bag, so my money is on him not making it much longer.
Yes, feels like a lot of holes in this story, but it was so choc-ful of little gems (the Victorian sword-weilding lesbians and the lactating egg man) that I was content with letting it all wash over me. Not to mention the fact that I could hardly reconcile what I was seeing with the cardboard props and silly rubber mask Dr Who budgets of old. Tremendous stuff.
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Any suggestions for October 26th?
It's a Wednesday, so can't be reserved for Jools Holland or something. Very odd only a few days in to have a night off.
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Hey! Are you in Cardiff too? Always good to hear of Wilco fans round these parts ;-)
My friends and I have got tickets for Bristol - cannot WAIT!!! Been waiting 5 years to see these guys live.
Quick question - we got 'general admission' tickets - I take it that means we're in the standing area?
Sorry for obvious question...just want to make sure :-)
Born and bred but living in London now :-( Just want to see them in my home town one day.
Don't know anything specific about the Colston Hall, but I would generally say that GA = standing area.
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Well, that's a 68 quid bet on the next album being a corker done. Come on lads!
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And is the Roundhouse definitely GA? I always wanted to see a show there...
Every time I've been there - just standing in the circular-ish hall. There are raised seats around the sides but I think those are first come first served too and, of course, not something you're likely to consider
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For those non-Brits, the map link (and address) they have on WilcoWorld for the Roundhouse is wrong. Here is the correct location:-
I think there is a pub with the name 'Round House' in Covent Garden - which is what they're stating. Wilco HQ have been informed
It's decent enough, though some people complain about the sound there depending on where you stand (saw Brian Wilson there once and God Only Knows was blissful so was fine for me) but always a bit of a pain to get out of - don't know what would happen if they ever had a fire.
Still, a good spread of UK shows - they're getting closer to Cardiff with Bristol, but still not close enough :-)
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The Chronicles of Na-na-na
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Nice start - part one of a double feature set in the USA. Some puzzles for the grown ups and creepy scares for the kids.
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Jacques Brel (France)
Indeed - but technically Belgian
Petr Fiala - Czech
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Nice hour and a half (no advert breaks
) doc/biographic interview on George Martin on the Beeb tonight. Look out for it if you are interested.Best quote on being miffed at having the Let It Be Tapes ttaken away from him with no credit for producing the original sessions: should have been credited: "Produced by George Martin. Overproduced by Phil Spector".
A lot of stuff I never knew he was involved with that are tunes from my childhood etc. (did know about alot of the comedy stuff, but there were a few surprises)
What's another way to say "Dad-Rock"?/
in Just A Fan
Posted
Nappy thrash
Pater petra (going back to linguistic roots and with a nice anagramatic ring about it)