I have precious little details on these two tracks but the poster said they were from a 2003 demo session that he recorded. So that would place them well after Lauren Laverne had worked with Mint Royale and, obviously, a few years after the break-up of Kenickie.
Of course, Lauren Laverne is now a DJ and an author but these two tracks remind us fans what a fantastic singer she was.
Until she fronts a band again, play these.
Gaz Coombes, Paul Weller, Tim Burgess, and my favorite DJ -- and ex-lead singer of the band which I loved so much and whose b-side inspired my e-mail handle -- Lauren Laverne were at the Christmas Tree Sessions gig in London last night (December 5). The event was for Save the Children's Christmas Jumper Day charity drive.
More details here:
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/
And here:
http://www.christmasjumperday.org/
About Christmas Jumper Day:
All money raised from Christmas Jumper Day activities will help save the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children. In the world's poorest countries, more than 7 million children die every year from easily preventable causes like diarrhea and malnutrition. Simple solutions, like vaccines and mosquito nets save lives – so by getting friends and colleagues to take part in Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper day on Friday 13th December and donating £1, you can help make a real difference.About Save the Children:
Save the Children works in more than 120 countries. We save children's lives. We fight for their rights. We help them fulfill their potential.Musicians from Christmas Tree Sessions performed in festive knits in support of Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day. Join them by donning your Christmas jumper on Friday 13th December and donating £1 at http://www.christmasjumperday.org/
And it took me a minute to find video from the event but here's a clip someone took of Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes performing a lovely new track called "Buffalo":
These guys are from Manchester and they rock. That's really all any music fan needs to know before going "Oh yeah, let's play that!"
Sounding a helluva lot like Loop channeling Jesus and Mary Chain, Hey Bulldog -- named after one of my favorite Beatles songs -- brings the fuzzy goodness on "Numb" and you can play it below.
There's a trace of early Nirvana here but the sound is closer to American garage rock channeled through those Loop lads and their psychedelic wickedness.
For more details on Hey Bulldog, hit up their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/heybulldogmusic
When he's not busy running Slumberland Records, Mike Schulman is in Manatee, a Bay Area band who are equal parts early Replacements, mid-period Husker Du, and...a hint of Circle Jerks or Fear? Just a hint...maybe on the punkier cuts like "Things Falling Down" or "Chased By Anderson Cooper" (Robert Pollard called and was angry that he didn't think up that song title).
For a limited time this month you can get pretty much everything from Manatee for free. Just head over to their Bandcamp page.
Of course, I urge you to pay for this stuff.
Or at least head over to Slumberland Records and buy something like a piece of Mike's past which also happens to be an essential compilation.
Hit up Slumberland Records.com for more details on Mike's label.
Manatee's official Facebook page is here.
And the Manatee Bandcamp page is where you wanna go.
In late 1987, I read something in Option magazine about The Chills. I got Brave Words on cassette -- back in the days when Homestead Records in the U.S. was distributing A LOT of killer music, both homegrown and imported -- and then I sought out anything on the Flying Nun label.
If the Creation folks in England were attempting to make something Sixties-infused, with a Byrds record as the common touchstone, the guys behind New Zealand's Flying Nun Records were on a more literate wavelength. Looking to both Australia's The Go-Betweens and NYC's Television for inspiration, these bands were rough around the edges but their tunes had melody and the words to the songs had smarts.
First it was The Chills, then The Verlaines, and then The Clean for me. It would be a year or so before I met anyone else into these bands even while I found a handful of people who knew who those Creation bands were. The Flying Nun stuff seemed more obscure and wonderful.
This is "Getting Older" and it's The Clean's second single. And it's hard in spots -- were they listening to Neil Young or Sonic Youth? -- but it's also got real yearning in the vocals. It's the sound of young men who'll never get old...or young men who know deep down how inevitable that journey will be.
I got the Morrissey autobiography at HMV in Causeway Bay last Friday.
(Along with that David Sylvian "best of" which had been marked down.)
It's slow going so far but he's got a way with words. Obviously.
I found this rare version of a track from the final Smiths album. Enjoy and wish me luck as I make it through the Moz tome.
For the second time, the boys in Dot Dash have the honor of opening for Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers. The show is Thursday, December 5, 2013, at the Black Cat and details are here.
It was October 22, 2011, when Dot Dash opened for Hugh Cornwell before. My review of that gig is here and the photos and videos in this post are from back then.
Dot Dash are gonna be playing songs from their superb 3rd album Half-Remembered Dream.
And one of those pop gems is the sublime "Hands of Time" and you can play it below. Download it here and click the "free download" link.
I have heard that Hugh Cornwell has still got Clem Burke from Blondie in his band and that dude is worth the price of the ticket alone.
Check out the photos and videos below and head on over to Dot Dash's page on Facebook for more details:
www.facebook.com/dotdashdc
I'm sure The Replacements played Trenton's City Gardens more than once. And I can't track down the date of this recording -- the Soundcloud user left it a bit blank -- but there's a point where Paul Westerberg says something about being fired and it could very well be directed at the late to the stage and soon-to-be-sacked Bob Stinson.
Even if this is just another ramshackle gig for the 'Mats, it's still a great version of this classic from Let It Be
This post is a follow-up to this one from last spring.
1. It was probably stupid of me to throw out that Dream Police CD insert autographed (in 1997) by all the members of the band except Bun E. Carlos.
2. There are better individual songs on Reckoning but R.E.M.'s Murmur is a better overall album.
3. Dead Can Dance get a free pass on being pretentious.
4. There are days when I think that "Lipstick" by the Buzzcocks is my favorite single of all time.
5. The best Christmas present I ever received was probably that cassette of Aztec Camera's High Land, Hard Rain in 1983.
6. That one famous 4 Non Blondes song can still make me want to pick up an axe and start swinging.
7. If I had a dollar for every big-haired sorority chick who came into the Record Co-Op asking for "that tape that has that 'big hands' song" on it", I could probably afford to hire the Violent Femmes to play my birthday party Jeff Spicoli-style.
8. I like 2 Creed singles. Sue me.
9. Between mid-1984 and early 1987 -- barely 2.5 years -- Husker Du cranked out 2 double LPs (Zen Aracde and Warehouse: Songs and Stories) and 3 other LPs (New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, and Candy Apple Grey). They are all uniformly fantastic, life-affirming, transcendent, and essential.
10. Whenever Ira Kaplan unfurls a guitar solo on a slow(er) Yo La Tengo song I feel like a Deadhead listening to "Jerry" unwind on "Dark Star" or something.
I spent my first Thanksgiving in Hong Kong (in 2012) at Pizza Hut (!) in Causeway Bay. This year, the excellent Prime Bar and Grill on Lamma Island did "American" Thanksgiving.
(They owed it to us Yanks after they did a Canadian Thanksgiving back in October!)
It was awesome. The pumpkin pie was freshly made which was a nice suprirse after the typical pre-made pies people grab at the grocery stores in the U.S.
Since I spent two Christmas vacations here in 2009 and 2010 before I moved here in 2011, I don't really mind spending Christmas here. But, for some odd reason, Thanksgiving here makes me incredibly homesick.
So among the many thousands of things I'm thankful for, I am a little bit grateful and pleasantly surprised that I could have such a good U.S.-style Thanksgiving here.
(And they are doing it again this Sunday if you want to head out to Lamma Island for a Thanksgiving follow-up, the "leftovers" as it were!)
The guys (and gal) in Superchunk are now as old as the people that would have yelled "Turn that shit down!" back in 1993 when "The First Part" roared out of indie kids' dorm-room speakers and POS car stereos.
(I referenced that song 'cause I think there's a bit in this video where an imagined mosh pit is a nod back to the pillow fights in the 1993 vid for that Foolish single.)
Decide for yourself and play the video below.