What more needs to be said? Nuthin'

On a positive note

Just a quick one.

Once again I've been reading a post on facebook about how musicians are being ripped off by dodgy promoters and rarely financially benefit from providing entertainment to others.

It often seems that everyone profits but them.

I broadly agree with the sentiments and support the efforts of those who wish to highlight anything that will improve the situation.

Yet I often feel that there are many ethical promoters out there who are being tarred with the same brush when it comes to this argument.

So instead of dwelling on the negative how about we offer a solution.

In the comments section please feel free to post the city/area where you are from, and then the promoters and venues who you would recommend.

Lets make a word of mouth recommendation list that can be spread about to help bands, solo artists, the good promoters and excellent venues alike.

Also there is no need to have a dig at the crap promoters and venues as by not mentioning them they are starved of publicity and with every act that is steered towards more ethical promoters and venues we will strengthen their foothold in the music business and belittle the chances of the less than ethical to prosper.

Remember though. Yhis isn't for promoters or venues to promote themselves.

Please keep it to bands.

Mention your bands name to and even contacts if you wish.

I'll refrain from saying who I like and leave it up to the artists to provide a solid list of those who offer a good service.

Mainy

Do you feel lucky punk?

Well Rebellion, the much loved and equally loathed punk festival is over, and while the blood is still running hot I would think some of my Scottish brethren who were at it will be looking for something to keep the party going.

Meanwhile others who missed it will be wanting to start their own punk party, and there's a couple of good options coming up this week that they should be aware of.

First is Social Distortion supported by Chris Devotion and the Expectations playing in the ABC on Wednesday night.(22nd)

The only chance of a ticket for this is from the touts on the night or a private sale as it's been sold out for a while now.

It's a gig that I'll definitely be trying to be front and centre for.

However if anyone seen them at Rebellion and can't justify splashing the cash to see them again so soon, or if SD aint your thing then this Friday (24^th) Phoenix Promotions are at Pivo Pivo in Glasgow with the crackin' line up of Distorted Truth, Splinter, Buzzbomb and Alkotron & Haggis.

It's a mere fiver on the door and starts at 7pm.

Last time Distorted Truth were in town a mates band was having their album launch and I tossed a coin to decide where I would go and they lost lost out on the pleasure of my company.

So I'm looking forward to this chance to take a second bite at them.

Another mate has fried my brain by repeatedly telling me how good Alkotron are so this is going to be my opportunity to either agree or disagree with him instead of just telling him he talks shit without having any real evidence to back that up.

It's also going to be my first chance to see Buzzbomb since they released their latest album.

So bring on Wednesday and Friday as I'm ready.

Something wicked this way comes.

I really should be sleeping just now.

I've got a night shift ahead of me and I'm getting past the age of staying awake pre and post working hours.

Yet here I am listening to the new Dollyrots album and jumping back and forth between internet news pages and checking on what has been happening in Russia with Pussy Riot and the UK with Assange.

Both cases have parallels.

While many with a vested interest would claim that to be rubbish, and then ask what some women protesting in a church has to do with the extradition of an alleged sex offender, the reality is that they are pushing a smoke and mirrors agenda.

What they have in common is that both Pussy Riot and Assange have, in the eyes of governments, thrown down a gauntlet in support of freedom of speech and freedom of information, and in return the governments are looking to silence them, while also making an example of these individual in an attempt to frighten us all.

Instead what I think may happen is that both Pussy Riot and Assange will be perceived as martyrs to a just cause.

Most of us can see exactly what is happening here, and we feel very uncomfortable about the move towards global totalitarianism.

What is needed is for more people to become increasingly uncomfortable and add their voices to ours in an attempt to to slow down, or derail, where we are going.

Who could really argue that both governments and business are looking to shaft us all at every turn.

In decades past they maintained an illusion that this wasn't the case by paying lip service to things like human rights and the employment laws.

Both are things that they are increasingly becoming rather open about ignoring.

Look at the evidence of their arrogance.

Michael Gove sold off school playing fields even when his advisor looked into it and said it wasn't the right move to make.

No one seems to want a privatized police force, but it looks like we are getting it even if it is delivered drip by drip.

When people advocated for NHS reforms were they asking for the nurses and doctors contracts to be ripped up and if they didn't sign the new ones then they could leave?

I very much doubt it.

Anybody want to add more?

So very much is going against the will of the people that I sometimes find it difficult to understand why there hasn't been major civil unrest yet.

The Pussy Riot and Assange cases brutally illustrate very plainly that there is a global issue in regards to those in power listening and acting on the wishes of the people.

They don't care now.

Who will put up an opposing argument?

They will wage war without public support, lie and cheat on behalf of their friends in business and more.

That is the unvarnished truth.

It's entirely possible that the faces of Pussy Riot and Assange will be on the placards and flags of the revolution.

It's just a waiting game now.

While the governments are wanting to extinguish the flames of rebellion it feels like instead they are fanning the spark that could set alight the world.

It's going to be an interesting week.

Loose lips sink ships.

First day of high school and my girlfriends daughter has been asked to provide some information for a class project.

Are there any places special to your family (For example, a holiday home, a previous town you lived in, or where your parents/grandparents come from, etc.)

So the translation would be do you have second home, and could give us some info so we can have a record not just of where you are from, or live, but the last two generations of your family to.

How many close relatives do you have? (You can include some of their names)

Or in other words could you add family who aren't immediate. Cousins, whoever.

Who do you take after in terms of looks or nature?

It's for the eugenics file.

How does your family celebrate special occasions? (For example birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, passing exams, etc.)

Lets see if we can class you as normal while attempting to glean how religious you are and how educated some of your family are.

Ask your parents for a photograph of yourself to use in a poster display. ( Preferably one of yourself alone. but if that is not possible then a good one of yourself with others.)

This is for a harmless bit of fun, although we aren't saying that your image and those in the photograph with you wont used to identify you when skynet takes over. (joke)

It's all a bit STASI isn't it?

Or am I being paranoid?

I mean it's not like they are fingerprinting the kids.

Oh wait a minute. They did do that

A few years ago they took the fingerprints of all the kids in the my daughters class and then sealed the page off with some sort of cellophane as part of a project on crime.

I asked for a meeting and queried it.

I didn't really get an answer that filled me with much confidence as to why the prints were sealed, so I asked for the page of fingerprints to be removed.

They did this and I took possession of the page, but a short while later they managed to get her fingerprints when her mother - who she resided with at the time - gave permission as they were going to be used in the high tech school cafeteria where after swiping your fingerprint the cost of the lunch would be debited from an account.

Now I'm sure I'm not the only one who is uncomfortable with the information that is gleaned about us all from multiple sources on a daily basis.

It really is relentless.

As I said though, I'm not paranoid about it.

I share details daily, but I do want to reserve the right to share what I wish with who I wish.

We are told often enough that we should be very careful with who we give our information to as the details we provide could be exploited.

I fully endorse that sort of common sense advice.

It's just that unlike others I extend it to include authority figures to.

I like my privacy. I like to maintain a degree of control of the information that is out there about me and I think that's normal for most of us.

Anyway. As I will be assisting with homework tonight the answers are going to be rather limited.

It's going to be No, Seven, Both my parents and Usually with a party, in that order.

The photograph will be one that's at least eight years old, blurry and taken from a strange angle.

Lets see what they can get from that.

If there's a request to expand on the information provided I'll mention it on here.

Shifty Presidents

Hip Hop, like most genres of music, has two major threads to it.

One is the public face that is designed for mass consumption.

It's unchallenging, repetitive and has only one purpose in life, and that's to act as a cash magnet.

There's very little heart or soul in the shiny bling heavy MTV targeted hip hop that is promoted globally.

It's a stereotype that feels like it has left its expiry date far behind.

A hollow fast food representation of something that should have some meat to it, but doesn't.

The other is the sound of the underground, and it's there that the beats pump fast and passionately.

Especially here in Scotland where acts like Hektor Bizerk and The Girobabies are ripping up the rule book and casting it in the air like confetti.

In this ever shifting bastard offspring of a loose scene the only thing that you can expect is the unexpected, and strangely enough the latest act to throw his hat in the ring defines this unexpected aspect, as instead of a skinny pissed off wigger from a council estate spitting out rhymes Shifty Presidents hails from Chicago, and prior to relocating to Glasgow has been around the block a bit.

While presently he's more Eminem and Jay Z than the punk upstarts with a fistful of repetitive beat that we are used to, there's undoubtedly some influences from his travels creeping into what he is rapping about, and it's clear from listening to his rhymes that what we have is an artists who is maturing and using his experiences to move beyond simple emulation of his heroes and is edging ever closer to a sound of his own.

This stranger in a strange land soaking up partially foreign influences could be exactly the thing that Shifty needs to push some space between himself and the pool of rappers he has left behind in Chicago, and vice versa it adds a certain flavour to what he does that Scots audiences will only have an experience of from watching the dreaded MTV.

If he can tread that line between where he came from and where he's at, and then forge something from both then there's really no telling where he will end up.

While some may be intent on repeating history this is a young man who has his eye on the prize and is keen to write his own story.

You've got to give him kudos for that.

It's not all praise though.

Nothing is ever perfect, and what I am hearing is an artist on a journey. and some of the destinations he is referencing could be left in his rear view mirror.

The bitches and other stereotypical hip hop phrases and terms that are liberally sprinkled sound dated and should be left in the mouths of the less intelligent rappers out there.

Which he isn't one of.

It just feels counterproductive to pay lip service to something that he could easily replace with a more visceral turn of phrase.

However while that is a criticism it's still clear to see that Shifty Presidents is moving away from that and reaching for a less ghettoised sound, and it's this forward momentum that gives me hope that we will be hearing plenty of good things about him once he has soaked up some more experiences and used them to turbo charge his songs.

Facebook.

Katarina Juvancic & Dejan Lapanja - Selivke

Based on watching Slovenian folk duo Katarina Juvancic and Dejan Lapanja playing a live set I entertained quite a few misconceived ideas of how their debut album would sound.

In my head it already existed as soft strains of acoustic guitar overlaid with vocals, and very little else.

I fully expected some sparse beauty, but instead what I got was an album heavy in accomplished musicianship that effortlessly jumps from gypsy folk to riffing rock.

An album with a real bite to it that has pleasantly, and playfully, slapped the stereotypical expectations that I had out of my head.

On a track like Mene Nema the listener is very easily transported to a New York loft where the song wouldn't have sounded out of place if it had been an artistic statement dreamt up by Lou Reed and Andy Warhol as part of a Velvet Underground session.

Elsewhere there's the flavour of Leonard Cohen in how the phrasing and music co-exists together that is rather evocative.

Then later again, just as you may think that you are beginning to get to grips with what is going on, Katarina playfully wraps herself around a bluesy track like 'Balada o rozki in vrtnen palcku' that conjures up an image of Bjork jamming with the Doors, but only after it has schizophrenically went through some apparent personality issues as a song.

Make no mistake. This is a real musical journey that takes you around the globe as it cherry picks what it wants from every country and era that it chooses to.

It's all rather astounding.

Throughout the very wide breadth of music that has been approached it sounds like the duo have stolen all the instruments that the Slovenian National Orchestra had, and in an act of rebellious mischief used every damn one.

And used them well.

I could make quite a credible argument that this is a punk folk album due to how it has a foundation in folk story telling that has been built on with the attitude of partially rewriting the rule book on how a traditional style should be approached.

However, while I could wax lyrical about how much enjoyment that 'Selivke' has given me, it would be remiss of me not to draw attention to there not being one singular phrase throughout it that is sung in English.

While this may be something that will make an English speaking music fan think twice about purchasing it, I would advocate throwing caution to the wind as my lack of understanding - of what I am told is stories about women – has not been a barrier to the appreciation that I have for the album.

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The Hostiles/Car Crash Radio/The Kimberly Steaks/Cal Murray - Pivo Pivo - 02/08/12 (Glasgow)

I don't think many people would disagree that with every solo gig that Cal Murray tucks under his belt that he just gets better and better.

He's certainly blossoming as a solo artist.

It's not that the material he is playing has gotten stronger as it was topically powerful from day one. Instead it seems to be that he is just becoming increasingly comfortable playing front and centre on his own, and that confidence allows his set to flow far more evenly resulting in a firmer connection with an audience.

Previously pretty much everything on the technical side has been in place, a good voice, solid songs and the ability to play them well, but along with that a certain amount of personal charisma needs to be promoted as well, and that has been increasingly revealing itself to the betterment of the set.

For the style of music that he is playing I could argue strongly that he's a technically better singer than Billy Bragg, and far more honestly belligerent in promoting what he believes in than Frank Turner.

From the amount of people who made the effort to arrive early, or disengage themselves from the bar area to take his set in, it looks like others are starting to pick up on how talented he is.

Things are only going to get better.

 04-Pay My Way by Cal Murray 

The Kimberly Steaks who were next are a band that I've been told that I must have seen before. Yet I drew a complete blank on them.

There was absolutely nothing jogging my memory at all.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy them. In fact I did. I just don't ever remember seeing them before and I doubt I have as you could file them away as once seen never forgotten.

From the first song I was immediately transported into the past and instead of the gig taking place in Pivo Pivo in the present I could have been standing in the basement of the 13thNote or Nice and Sleazy from nights long past.

It's classic pop punk. Gilman street seen through beer bottle glasses from Sauchiehall Street.

Not that this is a bad thing.

It's not a style of music that is riding the crest of a wave any more, but who cares.

If you want a nostalgia trip as this was your thing then these guys will deliver.

You also wont be disappointed if you care not a jot for what is being pushed as the current trend to follow and are just looking to be thoroughly entertained.

Hell. I'm giving them a big seal of approval.

All the way from Carlisle 'Car Crash Radio' sound like they aren't going to take any prisoners.

They're the next evolutionary stage from what The Kimberley Steaks are doing. They've still got the pop punk skeleton, but it's padded out with a more modern take on the sound.

Specifically impressive is the attitude of the front man who plays the set as if he's performing to a stadium full of ecstatic fans.

It's that sort of attitude that can sometimes separate the wheat from the chaff.

By wearing that self confidence like armour the band are far removed from those who are playing in clubs and will never escape them.

There motto could be 'treat the club like a stadium and one day it will be'.

Apart from the front man the band are all tight with the bass and drums providing a solid frame work for some impressive guitar work to be layered over.

I liked them so much that I'm going to try and catch them playing again this weekend before they head back home.

They're another band whose names getting tucked away in the mental file labelled 'one to keep an eye on'.

It's been literally years since I last seen the Hostiles and sound wise it's a whole new ball game.

Maybe others who have seen them regularly would disagree as they have participated in the gradual change, but for me it sounds like they have dropped the pop overtones on their ska sound overnight and and are now encroaching on Operations Ivy's more aggressive style.

Or in short this is a muscular beast of a band, and all the more impressive for it.

Watching them it's very obvious that they are well deserving of securing the support slot on the forthcoming Reel Big Fish tour.

In fact they are so good that the tour shouldn't be viewed as a headliner with a support, but instead a double headlining tour.

Everyone should make sure they get there early and grab a prime spot to watch the guys from.

I fully expect them to pick up plenty of new fans on every leg of the tour and by the end of the year this could be they can look back on it as a one of the best they have had as a band.

There's two more nights lined up to celebrate the release of their new ep.

One in Prestwick and another in Edinburgh.

If ska punk is your thing then do yourself a favour and make sure you make it to one, or both.

The Hostiles   Car Crash Radio   Cal Murray   The Kimberly Steaks 

Green Day - Let yourself go.

Over the last couple of years I've found myself slowly drifting away from Green Day.
Is it just me, or do others think that the pop punk behemoths seemed to retread too much old ground the last couple of times that they toured the UK.
The main issue seemed to be that they were desperately trying to recapture the excitement of the American Idiot tour.
Basically there was far too little forward motion for me and I found myself far more impressed with the supports.
All the talk of a Sandinista styled treble album has left me somewhat cold to.
Especially after the gap filling live album.
Now here we are on the build up to the release and I've got to say I'm loving the footage that just been released to go with the track 'Let yourself go'.
Maybe there's life in the old dog yet.
Still unforgivable that Mr Armstrong is going to be a judge on the US version of 'The Voice' though.

I blame Kerry Katona

The economic screw tightens and in the entertainment world the small town club return to type.

What am I talking about?

Well I'm referring to the time old tradition of clubs who wouldn't normally let a lover of live music darken their doorway deciding that a Sunday night would be ideal to host a couple of bands.

It's never been about providing a service to a community, and there's rarely anyone involved behind the scenes that has a love for music either.

It's always about the filthy lucre.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen this happen.

On the plus side they never last long, but while they are operating what they do is provide an alternative to the events that the local hard working and altruistic music loving promoters are putting on.

This in turn has a knock on effect, and in the worst case scenario the small town heroes who provide us with live music get squeezed out, and then when the club decides that live music isn't enough of an earner and pull the plug on their nights – as they always do - we are left with a vacuum.

Everything locally goes back to square one.

On a very small scale it's like the big multinational supermarket coming to town and then leaving after all the corner shops have closed.

That's the awful downside.

Even worse is that a little bird has told me that the club in Kilmarnock has hired in a Glasgow booker/promoter to secure them the artists.

There's something wrong with that in my opinion.

The natural order of things is that young men and women in small towns start locally and build up what they do on a grass roots level, and then they take the skills they have garnered to the big city and attempt to crack it.

If it's the big city moving outwards and expanding, then it becomes a one way street, and the bottom rung of the ladder that leads to success is simply drawn up leaving our own young entrepreneurs clutching at air as they try and snatch at it.

The bottom line is that no matter how 'sweet' the deal is I'll not be supporting the clubs venture.

Especially as when they were challenged on not using locals who know their way about the music scene they claimed that no one had approached them.

It's hard to swallow this from them when I know of a few people who in the past have contacted them and made enquiries about booking their venue for live events, and in every case they said no.

Maybe no one approached them for this specific venture, but I have a sneaky suspicion that was because it was outsourced prior to anyone hearing about it.

Anyway. I'll continue not to darken their doorway, and instead continue to support the efforts of David Hanvey, Dani Camacho, Taylor Buntain and Danya Bryson as they are the people that deserve our patronage at their events.

They work hard and I'll not be helping anyone pull the rug from below their feet.

I sincerely hope others will think about all this before they commit to supporting the club shoehorning itself into the local live music scene.

Even if a mates band is playing.