Friday Gig Guide: London 5th September 2008

Aye aye sailors, welcome to the Friday Gig Guide, a quick round-up of what you could be doing if you were cool enough to be in London and wealthy enough to drop everything and score tickets to some gigs. I shall be at home watching Big Bro and eating potato salad as firstly I have flu (poor me) and secondly I have massive studenty type finance situations. Bring on that next loan installment!

Koko has Scottish lads Sergeant supported by the lovely and equally Scottish Attic Lights and you can score tickets here for just a fiver!

The Roundhouse has Ash would you believe, yep, that same band that did tracks Shining Light and that one filmed in a basketball court... aah nostalgia. Indeed, if you're into nostalgia then this is the gig for you as the boys are playing '96 release 1977 all the way through as a one off trip through Britpop's heydays. It looks like they're playing minus the rather talented Charlotte Heatherly though, boos all round. Tickets for this one are sold out, but why not pull out your old CD and reminisce?

If you're after one that hasn't sold out (and let's face it, that does rather make more sense), Barfly has the experimental psychedelic rock trio Modey Lemon. No, I hadn't heard of them either, but over at The Line of Best Fit they've been raved about, and apparently this is the first time they've toured since 2005 so if you missed out the first time, catch them now!

Kentish Town's Forum has bugger all, but the same town's excellent Bull & Gate has female-fronted indie scenesters Glue (gotta love a singer called Flavia!) backed by the high octane alternative kids City Plan from Northern Ireland.

Grab some tunage here so you can shout along with the lyrics:

Attic Lights - 5 Weeks Behind
Modey Lemon - Become a Monk This track is actually pretty awesome. Look at those boys! Crazy!



As always, as ever; please be supportive and if you like what you hear, well, you know where they're playing now so there's no excuses to not get out there and get to a gig!

Irish music and the not so Irish...

Well, after yesterday's treck into Stars' Take Me to The Riot, I hit the town for a bit of a big night with some Irish nurses and crawled in at 4:00a.m. with bad covers of The Galway Girl still ringing in my ears. I sent the obligatory drunken text to my girlfriend (away for a visit to her family) which ran along the lines of:

Baby this guy jest tried to lips me! Hlep!

Being a music obsessive, I didn't take the wise route of sleeping when I got home, but instead started making playlists for hangovers, listening to my work as I read James Frey's rehab memoir A Million Little Pieces. This is a book which features the word vomit on probably one in three pages, so not the *best* choice for a hangover.

Now, in the interest of sharing my pain with you all, here's Gerard Butler pretending to be Irish in P.S. I Loves Yeh:



Feeling like working on your own drunken version of the song? Grab the fine Steve Earle version here:

Steve Earle - The Galway Girl

Yes, you should go buy a Steve Earle album at this point, but you should also buy yourself a copy of P.S. I Love You, if only for the fact it's so bad, it's hilarious...

The Latest Obsession: Take Me to The Riot by Stars

Welcome to my latest (and long-running) obsession. today I'm blogging about Take Me to The Riot by Canadian indie dahhlings, Stars.

This, ahem, 'riotous' track was the first single shipped from 2007's In Our Bedroom After The War and began streaming on Pitchfork way back in July '07, long before the album's release date. From that first tantalizing stream I have been gripped by the sheer pace of this track, and have been including it on mixtapes and playlists for well over a year.

So, why should you care about the song? Well... Besides the twinkling piano opening and the gently intertwined octave-split vocals of Broken Social Scene proteges Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, there's the feel of the song; this is a work that unravels at a gently building pace, before a crashing, energetic burst of music takes over. Then of course, there's the brilliantly thought out, sing-a-long inducing chorus:

Saturday nights in neon lights
Sundays in the cell.
Pills enough to make me feel ill
Cash enough to make me well.
Take me, take me to the riot!
Take me take me to the riot!
And let me stay...

Ready to get taken to the riot? Grab the tune here:

Stars - Take Me to The Riot

I love Stars; from the Sheffield accent of Torquil singing about flat caps to the Final Fantasy re-working of Your Ex-Lover is Dead on the remix album Do You Trust Your Friends?, the band is full of hidden joys. Any friend of mine worth their hipster scout badge will know Elevator Love Letter from 2003 release Heart is both my favourite song possibly of all time, and top of my iTunes "25 most played" list at any given time. This is basically a heads-up: expect to see that song featured as an obsession at some point in the future!

Stars were generous enough to offer the album in digital format before its hard-copy release in 2007, so if you fancy owning just the electronic copy, get yourself here and buy it. For a proper hold-it-in-your-hands real copy with beautiful art-work and liner notes (including a story!), you can again buy it here! See? It's fun to support music!

Metal Wednesdays: 27th August 2008

Ok, ok; so it's Thursday. But you know how it is; I totally meant to post this yesterday but my girlfriend made me breakfast in bed, then we went to the cinema, and there was this Spanish bar having happy hour and cocktails were drunk... You get the picture. So here, in all its glory, I present The Post I Should Have Posted Yesterday:

Happy Wednesday homies! Welcome to the latest installment of our Metal Wednesday's series, and today we're talking about those sexy Finnish boys, Northern Kings.

Mentioned in the previous Metal Wednesday post, Northern Kings is something of a Euro-metal supergroup, formed from the diaspora of bands Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, Charon and Teräsbetoni.

As you should be aware by now, I have more than a little fond spot for Marco Hietala of Nightwish fame so for me the album was a bit of a must-have. My girlfriend is also a mahussive Sonata Arctica fan; check them out, they're actually pretty awesome, and minus an odd obsession lead singer Tony Kakko (featured magnificently as a quarter of Northern Kings has with a mysterious girl called 'Dana', the band do achieve moments of greatness that bear more than a slight resemblance to early Sabbath or Iron Maiden. The long and short of this is; I like Northern Kings. In fact, for cheesy metal covers of mostly 80's songs (uh-oh, I didn't mention that's what it is, did I?), the album, Reborn, is infinitely listenable, and infinitely surprising.

While ironic cover-versions have been somewhat killed in the last few years, there's still enough fresh interpretation (and genuine, non-ironic love for the chosen tracks) on this album to get you to track 13. I will admit, however, to a dip in concentration during the middle of the album, with cheese-fests like I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight and the ghastly Phil Collins' dreariness that is In the Air Tonight providing little to enthuse over. Stick with it, though; final track Brothers In Arms is a joyous affair for what is actually quite a sad Dire Straits original, riotously affirming the damn good fun these guys must have had with Reborn, and the fun you're going to get if you grab a copy.

Enough of all that nonsense, here's a couple of tracks:

Northern Kings - We Don't Need Another Hero
Northern Kings - Don't Stop Believin'

As always, these songs are for sample only; please be kind and go buy the CD: Reborn by Northern Kings

Vacation Songs

Hello campers! First of all, my apologies for Metal Wednesday's no-show yesterday, we're taking a trip to the seaside and that means no time for blogging and mucho mucho mucho packing, arranging and sorting out the kitten etc! I can assure you next week we'll be back on track with a proper Metal Wednesday kicking off our return (probably no posts till then, sorry my guys and guy-ettes).

Now, as a peace-offering to you all for my lack of posts in the coming days I've put together a little bundle of vacation-inspired tracks for you to delight in. Summer might not be quite as hot as expected here in the UK, but we can still hitch a ride to Rockaway beach...

A little about the choice first; 'Rockaway Beach' is from The Ramones' 1977 album Rocket to Russia and has one of the best sing-a-long choruses for a car trip. Plus, as with most Ramones songs, you can learn it in about 30 seconds, so even the uninitiated can join in. 'Summer Skin' is from Death Cab's seminal album Plans and lusciously explores the fleeting world of summer romance over a lazy bass-line that bores into your mind. 'Holiday from Real' is a bouncy piano-driven track by Jack's Mannequin, side project of Andrew McMahon, originally from Something Corporate. It's getting featured here mostly for the line "She lets me drive her car so I can score an eighth from the lesbians out west in Venice". Our final track, 'Packing Blankets' by Eels is more about packing up your past and starting again than packing your suitcase, but it's so endlessly cheery it works perfectly for a road trip. Check the lyrics:

Today is a lovely day to run
Start up the car with the sun
Packing blankets and dirty sheets
A roomful of dust and a broom to sweep up
All the troubles you and I have seen

The Ramones - Rockaway Beach
Death Cab for Cutie - Summer Skin
Jack's Mannequin - Holiday from Real
Eels - Packing Blankets
Bonus! The Ramones - Endless Vacation

As always, please be supportive of the artists, and if you like their work, you can buy it at the following locations:

Hey! Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology by The Ramones
Plans by Death Cab for Cutie
Everything in Transit by Jack's Mannequin
Dasies of the Galaxy by Eels