Two seminal Black Sabbath albums are getting revamped and re-released this week. If you don’t already own the originals, then you should treat yourself to the polished up and expanded versions of Masters of Reality and Black Sabbath. Slap them on your stereo, turn it up, turn out the lights and smoke a large and suspicious cigarette. That’s my advice.
On Tuesday 16th June 2009, Tubelord played a gig at a venue called The Cellars - a lovely little pub in Eastney, Portsmouth. Ed, Tom and their counterpart/assistant Leam had the pleasure of interviewing Tubelord before their epic gig. The meeting was arranged for 6, however both parties were late due to us getting lost and Tubelord fixing their bank payments, which set everything back a bit. However, several sitting-in-the-road-and-listening-to-soundcheck minutes later, they were welcomed in by the bright Face of Joe, and they felt priviledged as everyone else had to sit in the road still as we headed to Destination: Backstage - the pub’s back garden and a couple of plastic chairs. Ed prepared his magical recording devices AKA Creative Zen MP3 players and the interview was GO.
Johnny Foreigner ‘Feels Like Summer’ from Best Before Records on Vimeo.
We featured this tune a little while ago, but it’s worth mentioning again as there’s now a great video to go with it. Featuring a robot that drinks and nestles itself in bosoms. Sounds like Bender from Futurama, but it’s not.
Blues/rock and roll duo The Movers and The Shakers have a coming-of-age tale like a great White Stripes lyric. Kitti Moon met Paul Alexander at High School; he introduced her to The Beatles and she introduced him to the Rolling Stones. They bonded over a love of Blues, were then separated for many years post-High School and then met again randomly at a book store.
Washington DC trio Secret Pop Band are into brisk riffs. With little over half an hour worth of post-punk tunes Pardon the Solar Interruption has a very late eighties sound - a mix of The Pixies and REM. They name the Apples in Stereo as an influence, but they are bit looser than the composed math rock of that band. Definitely a band with college music geeks appeal they sing about perennial themes as the smell of Week Old Beer and breaking up with your girlfriend (Sunday’s Hard Rock Fall).
Poor Scott Kannberg. He’ll forever be “the other one” when it comes to any discussions of Pavement, which is a little unfair given his vital contribution to that band. Malkmus may be the one everybody knows, but it was largely the combination of the two of them that made it work. He’s dabbled around a bit in the ten years since Pavement split, releasing a couple of Preston School of Industry albums. Both were decent, neither were spectacular. Like Malkmus, it seems to be a constant battle to differentiate oneself away from the Pavement connection that seems doomed to failure.
Last week, I declared The Zookeepers record to be "the album of the year so far, hands down". I was then chatting to someone earlier this week about the merits of doing a ‘records of the first half of the year’ list, rather than waiting until December for a 2009 round up. Then the excellent Ryan’s Smashing Life did exactly that.
So I felt like fate was telling me to create my own albums of the year so far list. Which is what I’ve done here.
She Keeps Bees like to keep it brief. The 11 tracks on their latest album Nests clock in at less than 27 minutes, so it’s clear that they’re not pissing about. It’s this brevity that’s part of their appeal. No flab, just straight to the point bluesy rocking that ought to have Jack and Meg looking over their shoulders.
We have come to the point in the development of user-generated content where fan videos are infinitely more awesome than the official one.
Created from footage pulled from the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Max Reinhardt. Relatedly, Pinkie is reading Angela Carter’s Wise Children currently, which is loosely based on the production of this film.
Loved the photos-- the conversions came out real nice, and the one w/ the bloke in the jean jacket staring...
Great article on Hatcham Social, interesting hearing it from the photographer's side.
And loving the backstage pictures particularly.
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our new myspace
@ www.myspace.com/cutsberingas
and our fans page @ fb
http://www.facebook.com/pag es/Cuts-Causticsultraisttotall yslice/53472659361
next month..c.u.t.s will be release E.P..
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I have never heard of these guys before today. There are always problem children at concerts trying to pick...
I love beth Ditto, she may be big but her voice beats one and most of the singers out at...
Some recent shots of Hatcham Social by Charlie Ingham. Here also a piece about the band written by the photographer....
The Thermals photos from Glasgow Stereo, 17/06/2009, Stephen McLeod....
A gallery of photos from various gigs by artrocker.com favourites Pulled Apart by Horses. Photography by Tom Martin and Stephen McLeod...
Primavera Sound festival part two. On the second day of the festival there was a special day-time concert in the rather lush Joan Miro park where we caught our faves...
Finally recovering from a great Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona and we have some pictures to share. We’ve eschewed the big names like Jarvis Cocker, Bloc Party, Neil Young, My...
The last few months have been pretty crazy for us in OSA, here are some shots from our adventures. They’re not chronological or anything like that, but they cover pretty much everything we’ve been up to. Enjoy. Lawrence, 
INTRODUCTION TO THE END We all need to vent. We all need to roll over and get ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ may be off our collective chest. The trick is, when you get ‘it’ off your chest,...
Artrocker.com: Glasgow's a pretty hot city at the moment. I was up there just this weekend. What do you think is making Glasgow bands so hot right now?
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