Music through the ages - Abraham Lincoln.

Most people consider that the murder of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth - a little known actor and Confederate spy - was politically motivated.
However what is not commonly known about Booth is that he also had a sideline job promoting young musicians whom he would exploit by enlisting their help in selling tickets and performing at events he would arrange.
These young men and women were clearly being exploited as they would receive no monetary compensation for their efforts, and instead Booth would only make vague promises about future opportunities where they may perform alongside a rising star of the time.
These promises were of course never delivered on, and due to his failure to follow through with what was in many ways a verbal contract a young woman called Elsie Walker contacted President Lincoln and informed him of her disappointment in Booth and claimed that his actions were ‘far from what would be expected from a gentleman.’
Lincoln agreed, and in return publicly stated that he would not rest until these practices were stamped out prior to going on record to say that ‘the music business is a swamp where the scum always seems to float to the top.’

Booth was allegedly then informed of this while drinking heavily in a local tavern.

Eye witnesses questioned later claimed that in response he criticized Lincoln at length and shouted ‘no man steals the money from my pockets. I party hard on that money’ prior to him overturning a table and storming out gesticulating wildly and heading in the direction of Ford’s Theatre.

The rest is as they say history.

In her memoirs Mary Lincoln (nee Todd) spoke fondly of her husband and his achievements, but expressed some regrets that Abe mistakenly thought that after challenging the slave trade he could do something about the music business.

From the 5^th of March, in honour of Honest Abe, and his attempts to change the fortunes of struggling artists The New Hellfire Club have a run of live events arranged under the banner of the big band pay day.

All the money taken from ticket sales will be - after outgoing costs* - split evenly with the artists involved.

Please do support the cause.

Honest Abe wants you to.

* All outgoing costs are basic and the artists participating in the events can be made aware of them.

Events link.

NHC Music.

Hamell on Trial - Nice and Sleazy - Glasgow - 02/07/14

This is not a photo of Ed Hamell.
It's an egg
No Ed Hamells were harmed in the taking of this.
No audience members enjoyment of
the performance was impacted on either.

Three songs in and I want to kill the guy standing in front of me.

I mean really kill him.

Two songs in and I was considering choking him out or maybe donkey punching the fucker without indulging in the anal sex part of it.

Three songs in and my head is filled with homicidal rage that storms behind the rictus smile that I am trying to maintain.

There he goes drunkenly swaying to the right obscuring my vision again meaning that I have to compensate with a mirror sway to the left to catch a glimpse of Hamell.

Then he hitches to the left and I pistol whip my head to the right to compensate.

It’s been going on since the punch drunk sleep deprived Ed Hamell took to the stage.

I could move, but on one side is a group of people blocking me in and on the other is a space that would allow me to have the clear view of an amp.

There’s some momentary respite when he bends down from the waist and takes a photograph of his shoes with his mobile phone.

He’s apparently the weeble that wobbles but refuses fall down.

The patron saint of drunks is holding him up.

Look, don’t ask me what he was doing with the phone.

The first time that I would have had a clear and unrestricted view of the stage he distracts me with his strange need to photograph his feet.

Maybe he was focussing in on the laces and he was going to send it to someone with the message ‘look, I tied them myself’.

Meanwhile I can hear the master of the raconteurs conducting a verbal assault on the audience as he thrashes away at his guitar with all of the subtlety of a teenage boy whose hand appears to be super glued to his cock.

When I do manage to see the stage there he stands with his eyes rolled into the back of his head and firing out words of street gutter wisdom like an amphetamine fuelled auctioneer that wants to sell you the truth.

He is magnificently out there on his own, figurative and literally.

The one man show that delivers something that no one else is looking to put out there.

If you are a fan then you will know the score.

It’s the bar fly blues filtered through the bowery punk scene.

The alcohol drenched debauched dreams of Bukowski are punching it out with narcotic reality of Jim Carroll’s New York streets.

There’s some Lenny Bruce delivering schoolboy smutty jokes in there that gleefully challenges the audience not to smile in puerile delight to.

It’s as they say, all good.

Even better would be if I could see him, and at that Halleluiah, he stumbles a foot and a half to his right and stays there.

For maybe a minute there he is.

Hamell on fire.

Then the obligatory mobile phone is raised by another audience member to capture the moment, but instead of holding it in front of his own face he has his arm stretched out and is holding it in front of mine and I have the pleasure of watching the show on what must be a three by five inch screen.

The quality is fantastic.

At a rough guess maybe it has a bazillion pixels.

In fact he holds it aloft for so long maybe I could fuckin count them.

I am so happy for him that he can secure these memories through the latest high tech gadget and store them away to masturbate over at a later date.

Oh wait a minute.

That’s a lie.

I've spent a portion of the night looking at a neck and now I’m watching a miniature Hamell and misanthropy is sitting like a monkey on my back.

Is this really the live music experience now?

The performance itself is a juggernaut one.

Get in the way and he will roll right over you and that is as it should be.

Dance, start a mosh pit, strip naked and swing from the beams and I will cheer you on, and maybe even participate, but please just stop with the mobile phones.

Even apply the time worn everything in moderation rule.

Take a few photographs and enjoy yourself.

Just for the love of God stop and lift your head up and look around you.

While the camera is storing the moment in time you missed it, and so did I, and that is unforgivable.

Meanwhile the show goes on with some tracks from his latest release ‘Happiest man in the world’ added to the set that easily hold their own against the much loved songs from previous outings.

Bearing his soul after the break up of his marriage sees him in a contemplative mood on the material, and unlike that Robin Thicke fella I doubt Hamells ex wife is looking to secure a restraining order on hearing it.

There’s an acceptance of the present that sits well with his casting of his eye on a future that he fundamentally understands will be alright.

The man certainly has a way with words.

There’s no doubt about that.

He is the great communicator.

The machine gun fire of the delivery simply can’t take away the poetic eloquence of the delivery.

Neither can the jokes that he casts out seemingly at random throughout the set.

The stage antics and the jokes are just window dressing hanging around the meat of the performance, and what a performance it is.

When he opens up to the audience and asks for requests it may be akin to voluntarily walking into the lions den, but you could never claim that Ed is anything but fearless.

The broad Glaswegian accents that he is struggling to understand roar out the options with one man making it his life mission to ensure that Pussy is sung.

Ed obliges as expected.

His intro to the song touches on how it came about after watching an episode of the Sopranos and an enthusiastic woman takes it upon herself to educate him on how Alabama 3 provided the theme song.

None of it makes any sense at all to him as she slurs the music lesson at him, but she is undaunted with the communication breakdown and continues as the belle of her own ball.

Ed takes it on the chin, rolls with it and comes back with the knockout blow that is Pussy.

Exhilaratingly is a word used often by reviewers, but it is apt.

It’s an exhilarating performance from start to finish and as we all lean into the home stretch I doubt anyone could lay claim to not having a blast.

Even the guy who took a photograph of his shoes must have had the time of his life.

I mean why not?

He seen Ed Hamell and woke up this morning to find that a record of his feet being at the show is now preserved forever.

Bottom line is that Hamell on Trial is a force of nature that has a bleeding heart attitude pinned to its sleeve, and while he may be out there breaking ground where angels fear to tread it is a damn fact that the world needs people like him to do that.

If this was the sort of review that awarded stars then I’m giving his six out of five.

He’s back later in the year as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.

You know what to do.

The Temperance Movement/River 68s - Nice and Sleazy - Glasgow (08/05/13)

Wednesday wasn't a good day.

Early in the morning, and without much fanfare, a malignant misanthropic malaise descended on me.

As each minute slipped by it dug its claws deeper into my psyche and embraced me ever tighter to its bosom.

It would be fair to say that by noon I hated everything and everyone.

Even Travis Bickle.

Fuck the rain coming and just washing the scum away.

Let it come and sweep everyone away.

Bring on some biblical sized disaster and be done with it.

Pain can be the catalyst for feelings like that, and I am in pain.

It radiates from my fractured arm, my chipped wrist and ankle, and it throbs across my cracked rib, and I hold it responsible for much of how I felt.

The dull ache has been with me for weeks.

Although it certainly feels longer.

It's a gnawing pain that rarely subsides unless it is being blanked out by a much sharper one.

The secondary pain is one that snatches my breath away, brings tears to my eyes, and is akin to what I imagine holding a naked flame to a raw and exposed nerve ending would feel like.

I'm sick of it.

So sick of it that I thought twice, and then a third time, about just giving the trip to Glasgow to see The Temperance Movement and the River 68s a miss, but a part of me knew that I would regret it.

As William Congreve said 'Music has charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rock, or bend a knotted oak' and if you swapped savage beast for my emotional well being, rock for bone and knotted oak for muscle then good music was probably exactly what I needed.

That was my focus.

To just tune everything around me out, and stand alone and let the music wash over me.

Let it smooth away every sharp edged stabbing pain and soothe me.

I knew it would be a gamble though.

Not every show can carry deliver, but I decided that the options where to allow myself to continue to hate everyone, or try and find my way back to some semblance of balance.

The River 68s were a good therapeutic start.

Unfortunately I had short changed myself by turning up just in time to catch the end of their set.

Having seen them before I am well aware of how good they can be, and from the plaudits being voiced around me it was obvious I had missed a great performance.

The sound as I walked into the cave that is Nice and Sleazy's was the best I have ever heard in the venue, and Craig McCabes vocals were coming through not just loudly, but with perfect clarity.

Things have went a bit quiet of late in the River 68 camp, but that is going to change.

Take my word on it.

The next year is going to see them kick some doors in.

The buzz that surrounds The Temperance Movement right now is just waiting to be passed over to The River 68s.

A solid debut album will ensure that they draw attention to themselves that could lead to pretty much anything.

Nothing is quiet in The Temperance Movement camp right now though.

With dates in venues to small to hold them creating a bit of a frenzy for tickets, and a forthcoming appearance on the bill with Bruce Springsteen, The Black Crowes and Alabama Shakes at the Hard Rock Calling festival in London, the band are currently on the cusp of reaping the rewards that they have been working hard towards achieving.

Is it all a case of the Emperors new clothes though?

All talk and no walk?

The answer is not at all.

Everything I wanted was there for me to take.

I stood near the front and felt the hairs rise on my neck.

I closed my eyes and the music held me, and it did in fact incrementally make me feel better and better.

It was as if I had created a small bubble for myself to exist in and my only connection with the world outside was the music of The Temperance Movement, and do you know what?

It's all that was needed.

The savage beast was soothed and the muscles in my neck lost their tension.

My loathing for humanity took a back seat and I felt a nudge of positivity for the first time that day.

As the night progressed the set went from being good, to great, to then reaching, and attaining that magical moment that goes beyond it just being another show.

I've spoken about it before.

That shared communal experience that sits outside what is normally expected.

When they turned off the pa and did an acoustic version of a forthcoming album track called Chinese Lanterns they struck a chord with the audience that will lead to those who witnessed the show to be able to say in years to come that they were there.

Nothing more will be needed to be said.

'I was there' will convey it all.

What they created in that moment can't be repeated on a stadium stage, and it will only rarely be created in small venues.

That's because everything has to fall in place at the right moment.

It's when metaphorically speaking the stars align.

Drop some unknown quantity from the equation and it can't have the electricity of life breathed into it.

For me this was to touch aural nirvana.

A small glimpse at something that is mainly indescribable because it goes beyond being conveyed in a review.

It has to be experienced as anything other than being there in the moment will just be a facsimile that lacks all the shading and passion that the original has.

If the live experience is the original painting then the description of it is just the paint by numbers version being regurgitated in a cack handed manner.

Bottom line is that The Temperance Movement probably stopped me from setting fire to the world and watching you all burn.

And they didn't even know it.

http://www.thetemperancemovement.com/      http://www.theriver68s.com/

Trongate Rum Riots - Nice and Sleazy - 5/01/12 (Glasgow)

The Lemon Party aren't doing it for me.

It's no big deal though.

The problem isn't that they fall short of being a good band, but instead that I get the impression that I am seeing them on the cusp of attaining what they are aiming for rather than the witnessing what would be the final product.

It's as if the band are a work in progress, as all bands are of course, but in this case they are still hovering around a specific sound that they can lay claim to as their own.

There's some nice angular post punk guitar work on show and the arrangements of the songs, while busy, highlight that there's a great deal of talent on stage, but their whole set just seemed to scream 'come and see us in a year and we will blow you away.'

I don't think that that is an empty promise either.

So while I wasn't bowled over this time that not to say that I would personally write them off.

There's some good things going on and once they all zero in on a common purpose then it's likely that they will nail it.

I'd keep an eye on them.

It could be that there will be a reward for those who choose to hang about to see what The Lemon Party come up with.

Alba Roma annoyed me.

In fact they really really annoyed me.

It wasn't that they lacked talent, as there was no doubting that regarding their abilities as musicians no one was just coming out of the starting gates.

They can all play, and play to a very high standard.

The issue I had was with the lack of fire in the performance.

Bands who delve into the wild world of the Romany need to appreciate that there's a beautiful and anarchic aspect to the music.

The romanticized view is that around the campfire late of a night the work hard and play hard ideology is unleashed, and with a heady mix of alcohol and passion the music takes on a life of its own.

It can make you dance with wild abandon, or turn on a sixpence and pull a tear from your eye.

As an interpretation of that Alba Roma aren't quite there.

One possible solution after another as to how they could just push forward and grab at what they are clearly wanting flickered through my head as we went from the first to the third song.

What did they need to ignite the flame?

I gave up considering it when I glanced around and seen the abject boredom on my companions faces.

I asked if they wanted to go to the upstairs bar and both lunged at the offer like hungry lionesses.

After a couple of drinks and airing our views on just why Alba Roma didn't invoke a positive impression we returned to the cave downstairs to catch Trongate Run Riots, but found Alba Roma were powering through their last song.

To be honest it looked as if they had hit their stride, and maybe they just needed longer to get into the swing of things than I gave them.

Or then again maybe that's bollocks and the rum I had consumed had just kicked in.

Best band of the evening, and deservedly wrapping themselves in the headliner status, was of course the Trongate Rum Riots.

Prior to this baptism of fire all I had known about the band was based on recommendations from the Coffins, The New Hellfire Club and Darren and Miff of Gobo photography.

All of them have been unstinting in their praise of the bands live performances, and once your ear is bent for long enough the only way to get some respite is to give in and go and see whoever it is that is being promoted as the best thing since sliced bread.

Fair play though because they didn't steer me wrong.

There's no fat on this band.

Every member is pulling hard in the same direction and the cumulative effort from them is jaw droppingly impressive.

All three vocalists can effortlessly take the lead on a song and the harmonizing is pretty much spot on to.

The musicianship is virtually beyond reproach and the professionalism shown when some technical issues reared their ugly head provided an example of how they firmly grasp the concept of how 'the show must go on.'
Some far bigger and more famous bands could learn from them in this respect.

To my ears the original material is already of a standard that is yearning to see the inside of a studio
They must have an albums worth of songs that are all ready to go.

In fact this is the whole package already existing in the hear and now.

Some bands take years to get to where the Trongate Rum Riots are, and that they are there already prior to even getting a debut out is damn impressive.

With their folk influenced backbone this is the sound of the past resonating in the present with a drunken swagger coupled with a leer and a wink.

Some will mention the Pogues, The Levellers and such, when reaching for a comparison, but these guys are having a party at sea while they all have their feet firmly on the ground, and the rolling decks apparently suit the Trongate Rum Riots perfectly.

I can see a long future ahead of them.

Everything is in place for them to be the perfect festival band for 2013.

First gig of the year and it hit the ground running.