Hearts and Minds. Dreams and Music

Hello blogging world… I apologise for the delay in me writing this, I’m having a few life issues – one of those being a lack of my mac, its poorly and so has been taken away to be fixed, which will take UP TO 4 weeks. I’m on day 6 and I feel a bit like I have lost a limb, possibly two. However, this does not detract from the fact that I have blogs to write… so here goes (on a pc that I’m trying to get my head back round to using)…

A good few weeks ago now or so ago, after a bizarre day at work my Mum, Dad and I travelled to P-Town to the Pyramid Centre to see Seth Lakeman doing his current rounds promoting Hearts and Minds.

Now here, I have to make a slight confession, up until going to the gig, I hadn’t really heard a lot of Seth’s music. I could tell you quite a bit about him, but my pure reason for getting these tickets (apart from the fact they were a birthday present for my dad…) his support act was Delta Maid. One of my new music crushes. So primarily my reason for this particular gig was to see her, the first time I’ve been more excited by the support act rather than the main attraction.

I can’t say that the Pyramids are my favourite of gig venues, I think I have been rather spoilt of the most recent venues I have been to. It was a fine sized room and all, but the acoustics were naff, however, Delta came on and performed beautifully. You really can’t beat a girl on stage with her guitar singing country/blues. Interjected with the stories behind the songs, including Any Way I Want To and Stop Worryin’ Baby.

A blonde Liverpudlian, you would be hard pressed to believe this girl was of British origin when she starts to sing. However, Liverpool is famous for its musical greats and this girl and her guitar are no different. I now have two copies of the same E.P. one downloaded and one hard… I can’t begin to tell you just how excited I am about the album release due in March.

I have read many things written about Delta on the net, in an aim to get to learn more, however most seems to be the same article re-written, so here I am to write something new. This girl is totally awesome, she has an amazing style which she is (as the internet tells you) self-taught… aren’t the best always the self-taught ones? (Lennon and Clapton are the two that currently spring to mind) She has amazing lyrics that really hit home and a beautiful singing voice and she is definitely hotly tipped as ‘one to watch’, well in my humble opinion she is.

All of a sudden the atmosphere shifted and on to stage came 4 young guys, who played a fabulous set to a crowd who were just as up for the performance, if not more so than the band themselves. The band settled in to their first few tracks and it showed all the promises of a fabulous gig. Which it most definitely was.

I have never seen someone play the violin and sing. At the same time. Does that not seriously impress anyone else? Surely the violin is one of the most difficult instruments to learn to play, most can only master a noise to replicate that of a cat being strangled or possibly worse, but here was this gorgeous sea shanty music coming from some of the best violin playing I’ve seen in a long time…

I have to admit, being somewhat of a novice where Seth was concerned, by the end of the gig I was well and truly involved and had it not been for the lack of my Mac, his extensive album range would most definitely already have been on my iPod.

Without a shadow of a doubt two artists I will be seeking out in the future (in fact, Seth is playing, not too far from me on the night of my next birthday… so definitely a possibility of a celebration to be had….)

From Farm Boys to Boy Band

Daniel Dylan Wray finds the evolution of Kings of Leon plain offensive

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I used to fucking love Kings of Leon, and pretty much everyone I knew did, even if they won’t admit that now. I was seventeen when their debut album came out, and it being the first year I could drive, it was an integral part of that summer and subsequently my adolescence. It felt fresh, raw, edgy and damn right good; granted, this was to the ears of a naïve seventeen year old, but, this accompanied by their mysterious background and downright weirdness (like a horror show Brady Bunch crawling out from their barn and being brought up on rock ’n’ roll, moonshine and little else) meant they had everything that was enticing about a young new band to a young new man. I mean, their album was called ‘Youth & Young Manhood’!

Now fast forward a few years – past albums two and three that, regardless of personal taste, undeniably showed genuine progression, musically – and then, fuck me, what went wrong? As their popularity and bank accounts have grown, so too it would seem has their sense of self-importance and self-worth (highlighted in one single night when Caleb moaned that he was cold to a Reading Festival crowd who weren’t cheering loud enough). This band used to be weird. Genuinely weird! I remember watching the NME awards years ago as they grunted their way through interviews looking either completely unwilling, unable to speak, or just really stoned. They seemed to not care about such things; publicity, it seemed, was a downside to being in a band – a necessary evil that allowed them to do what they loved for a living. Then things went so sour. The wretched ‘Sex on Fire’ was the catalyst, transforming them from parameter, semi-commercial guitar band to fully-fledged radio-friendly unit shifters.

They went from stoic, morbid and frigid performers to being in a video wearing vests and standing in front of flames as they pouted for close-ups.

It seems that with this meteoric rise came the arrival of their ego’s and boy did they come big, throwing any sense of ‘what’s best musically?’ out the window and replacing it with ‘how can we become even bigger?’. Their popularity continues to soar and their musical integrity continues to plummet, perhaps making it not too surprising that the band have been adopted by the Oasis crowd now that the Gallagher’s aren’t talking.

Most damning, though, is the band’s refusal to take a break; to go a year without releasing a record; to step out of the spotlight and practice the old absence makes the heart grow fonder trick, even if time can also make for a better album.

It’s as if they fear being instantly forgotten and no longer being considered current or relevant, or perhaps rich. The band’s new album is out this month, which means they will have been doing the album release/promo/touring shtick for maybe three years straight, and its hard to believe that the motive for that is creativity.

They’ll no doubt be back at all the summer’s festival’s again next year, being decidedly un-weird and dodging what they once were, which incidentally was an interesting, publically evasive and promising young band. The U2 comparisons suddenly become pertinent as a result. Remember the young Martin Hannett produced, post-punk U2? Me neither, but they did once exist, and as wholly believable rumours circulate that the other band members have had to try and intervene with Caleb’s personal music writing sessions now that he’s worked out if he writes the songs on the album by himself he gets all the royalties and money, you have to think that not even Bono is that ruthless.

A little article found in this months Loud and Quiet by Daniel Dylan Wray. A paper I have loved for a while, for many reasons. But this one just forefronted itself ahead of the others. This, a rant, I have had on many occasions, in varying states (quite often in a club, when Sex on Fire has come on in the small hours of the morning) and leads rather nicely into an issue I currently have.

A new found favourite artist has been dropped by his record label, the artist in question is Alan Pownall. The label, Mercury. It is a shame that within the music industry there only seems to be one focus. Money. As it was once sung, ‘money makes the world go round’ and whilst that is true, especially in these ever-tough financial times we appear to be sailing through. It saddens me that the main focus is no longer the music and is in fact just the money. Whether that’s the artists or just the record labels, I’m sure the line between becomes rather blurred in some places.

Alongside this fact, is one that in fact, talent has been over passed for shows for worthless individuals to showcase themselves to a majority who don’t actually have an interest in music, but in fact just regurgitate the crap that the mass-media force feeds them, believing that it is decent. Whilst this happens, there are real artists, with real talent and a passion for playing who are ignored because the people with the power to do something impressive, ignore the power they have to influence and inspire and instead decide that they won’t make enough money out of selling someone who actually has talent and therefore result in selling music with scantily clad individuals gyrating about to promote their ‘musical abilities’.

Of what little influence I have here on this blog, I would like to promote a few AWESOME bands, who have some real talent and have inspired me, there is a much longer list which would include the likes of the Beatles/Stones and Clapton. But here I would like to go for the lesser know awesome individuals who really deserve the airtime.

Jay Jay Pistolet - http://www.last.fm/music/Jay+Jay+Pistolet

The Mummers - http://www.last.fm/music/The+Mummers

Lissie - http://www.last.fm/music/Lissie

Diane Birch - http://www.last.fm/music/Diane+Birch

Delta Maid - http://www.last.fm/music/Delta+Maid

Kassidy - http://www.last.fm/music/Kassidy

Alan Pownall - http://www.last.fm/music/Alan+Pownall

Polly Scattergood - http://www.last.fm/music/Polly+Scattergood

Andy Clockwise - http://www.last.fm/music/Andy+Clockwise

And. Just for the record. The first album I got when I passed my test – Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. Now there’s a driving album.