*As Womad 2023 has just passed, I thought I would post my review of Womad 2022, which never got printed in the end because the title it was supposed to appear in ceased publication shortly afterwards. Better late than never!


REVIEW: Womad 2022, Charlton Park, Wiltshire (July 28-31)      

This was without doubt a momentous Womad festival – the first in the UK for three years following the pandemic period, and the 40th since its inception – and boy did it show.

There were 39,000 in attendance at the last Womad in 2019, this weekend rising to 40,000, and thankfully no heatwave weather this time – a more temperate mix of sunshine, cloud and patches of drizzle to clear the air. Spirits certainly weren’t dampened at any point though: the atmosphere from the outset unsurprisingly a lot more buzzy than usual.
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The biggest trump card of this festival, as ever, is the sheer variety and eclecticism of its programme, with bands and artists from all over the globe, covering a wide spectrum of musical genres. It remains truly unique in this respect on the UK circuit.

As it's been a while since my last blog post, and because they tend to be mostly music-orientated these days, I thought I'd expound my favourite tracks of the 2010s, before we get too far into the new decade.

The 10s was a cultural timespan so fully immersed in the digital era that half of any new music you listen tends to go under most other people's radars, the last hurrah of the singles chart being so far into the past now you'd need a Hubble-strength telescope to detect its dying rays.
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Nowadays my main sources are BBC 6 Music, as ever; Radio 2 (!) occasionally; otherwise random tweeted recommendations from friends and those I'm following, and around the summer festival period I'll peruse music websites for the lowdown on bands I've just come across or am about to see. Nothing from TV, nor from an equivalent to NME, which is quite sad when I think about it, compared to the pre-internet era of MTV when it actually played videos and the music press when the alt scene was thriving.

New acts aside, heritage artists like Metallica and the late Leonard Cohen have still been producing the goods, to my ears, although I can't see that continuing much longer.

The final cut is an unholy mix of (mainly) alternative, indie, metal, post-punk & electronica, but also some classical, reggae, trip-hop and African jazz-funk. There’s a few not included only because they’re not on Spotify, like a bonus track from Bowie’s 'The Next Day' in 2013, which proves why the app can’t always be relied upon.
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Got my hands on a review copy of LoC - the dramatised examination of seminal Norwegian black metal band Mayhem - released last week on DVD. 

​As a lifelong metal fan I’m well acquainted with the story of these church-burning nutjobs (while never having got round to reading the eponymous book) so to finally see a filmic representation of what went down was certainly an eye opener, and not wholly in a positive way.   
 
I thought I’d fire off some thoughts on the movie and its cast/director, what was good about it but mainly where it all went a bit wrong. The former can be summed up in its being visually decent - slickly produced and edited – which is no surprise considering director Jonas Åkerlund’s history of music videos for the likes of Rammstein, Ozzy and Metallica (not to mention J-Lo, Pink and Lady Gaga!).
 
There were also some genuine lols punctuating the film, derived chiefly from the middle-class suburban situations of these cod-Satanic black metallers, like the little sis peeping and guffawing at the band rehearsing in the family home basement.

​We've all had one of those nights, be it a party or, in this case, a gig, where the whole affair is punctuated by a series of bizarre incidents, when you can't predict what else is going to happen but know that something definitely will, with alcohol usually the culprit. I had such a quintessential one of these last Saturday that I had to relate it in a blog post for posterity.

It all began with the suggestion from my 60s music-loving mate Pete that we go and see 'Cosmic Charlies' at Fiddler's Elbow in Camden, the band being "Europe's premier Grateful Dead tribute" est. 1988, and the venue a dive pub near Chalk Farm Station, in its own words "a classic, no-nonsense, retro live music venue".

What made this an attractive proposition is that Pete is a proper 'Deadhead', having seen the real deal a couple times in the 60s & 70s, and he rated the Charlies - had even bumped into fellow Deadheads at their shows who were at the same concerts fifty years ago. So for me, having listened to a lot of Grateful Dead over the years and knowing that it was more about the  'live experience' with them, this would be the closest I could get to it, surely.

After roping in mutual muso mate Gordon, 10 years older than me and 20 younger than Pete, and equally beguiled by the Dead's legacy, we assembled in nearby retro bar Joe's for pre-beers, ​where Pete primed us by waxing nostalgic on the quasi-religious communal experience of the Dead's often 7-hour sets, plus how he once climbed up the scaffolding tower at one of the big outdoor shows while off his face before remembering that he hated heights and couldn't work out how to get down. Tonight would have a lot to live up to.
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It was early December, 1995, a Saturday evening, and my parents had gone away on holiday, leaving me the sole occupier of the family home for a week. As a burgeoning rebellious teenager that meant only one thing: inviting the lads from sixth form round for a Saturday-night session of beers, smoke and music, specifically the stuff we’d recently been getting into: The Beatles, The Kinks, anything that had influenced the Britpop movement which had crested that summer with the Blur .v. Oasis chart showdown.

Little did we know there was another British artist who’d had a major influence on both those indie heavyweights: Oasis were to cover Heroes as a B-side two years later while Blur faced legal intervention the same year after their single M.O.R was found to bear more than a striking resemblance to Boys Keep Swinging (Eno & David later received a joint songwriting credit for the track).

Back in my hazy living room that evening we were all well aware of Bowie as a musician, although he hadn’t quite made it onto our session A-list. Only two years previously I’d bought my first single of his – Jump They Say – enamoured by its funked-up Nile Rodgers vibes, chorus guitar wail and jazzy trumpet solo, all contrasting the morbid lyrical content. As my teenage ears were more attuned to modern production values it was tracks like this, rather than Changes, Space Oddity etc, that floated my boat. Appreciation of the older stuff would surely follow, but for now it would all be kept in the back seat even longer by what we experienced that evening.

Celebrity fatalities generally leave me cold and unresponsive but, as with the demises of Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury  22 and 25 years ago, David Bowie's death last week was one of the few that did impart a slight wrenching effect, in a breakfast radio switch-on moment that'll now be ingrained in my memory until my own end.
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It was the abrupt nature of the news, following the unmentioned cancer, and because he was so enduring - I'd actually predicted he would headline Glastonbury this year following the new album release which turned out to be his final words, and was cursing my luck even more at being abroad and missing the tickets boat again.

However while last Monday began grimmer than most January weeks ever could, it actually became rosier as the day continued, with wall-to-wall Bowie tracks on BBC6, a monsoon of memories and commemoration online, and just going through all my albums, photos and video clips, all work plans shelved.

By the end of the week, however, I'd consumed so many similarly worded tribute pieces as to have reached saturation point, a feeling nailed by David Baddiel who tweeted on Friday:

​The news is out: Lionel Richie smashed it at Glastonbury, aced it, won it, and various other victorious verbs. I have to say that the whole spectacle though - both the performance and the reaction - has left me scratching my head a bit.

It seems that all the Sunday afternoon heritage act has to do to 'win' Glastonbury is deliver their 70s/80s standards with enthusiasm, and as long as the sun comes out and people know the words then that's that - they win.

To my eyes and ears though, no crowd numbers or singalongs can detract from the fact that Richie's music is and has always been middle-of-the-road wedding reception cheese, the kind I'd dance along to with the aunts for a few minutes before quietly slipping away.

Maybe it's my predilection for thrash metal or 50s rock 'n' roll but Richie's placid soul-pop croonings just drift straight over me, and the novelty factor quickly dissipated. I was there for the whole of Stevie Wonder in 2010 though, who had a bit more spunk and funk in his armoury to deploy - however because Twitter hadn't taken off by then there wasn't the same Richie-factor reaction.

As I watched Lionel repeatedly hollering "Thank you Glaston-Berry!" amid All Night Long and his solo We Are the World - the crowd straining to remember the verses - it all reminded me of an anodyne Heart/MagicFM family roadshow, and that familiar Sunday comedown feeling, trying to rouse yourself for whichever codger is wheelchaired onto the stage that year.

There's always hyperbole afterwards - from Eavis iterating each year "the best one yet" to similar media gushing over Jay-Z 'conquering' Glasto in 2008, completely at odds with the sight of thousands drifting away in apathy after the first track.

I can't help but think that if Kanye West, whose headline designation drew the wraith of thousands of petitioning rockists, had not flopped so badly the night before would Lionel have been elevated to music Messiah status the following day?

"Richie Proves He's The Biggest Rock Star" ran one headline. A sad day for music if revolutionary call-to-arms anthems now include Hello and Three Times a Lady.

So, to all the Richie-lovers out there, tell me how to win your heart, cos I haven't got a clue...



See also: When Joni Mitchell wore blackface for Halloween (BBC)

This is the original version of a gig review written for Record Collector in March, which was as usual chopped down to fit into its live reviews section so I thought I’d post it here unedited with a final curtain pic taken from the balcony.

I covered this show primarily because Albert is a true guitar legend who I saw live for the first time with Jools Holland at Greenwich's Old Royal Naval College in 2010 (above); and secondly because the special guest lineup was accordingly pretty impressive, with rock 'n' roll gentry including The Shadows and Shaky airing some long-overdue new material. 

As I tweeted after, it’s actually quite poignant that this lot are pretty much the last of their kind, of a scene that'll soon
be consigned to history unless contemporary acts beyond the likes of Jake Bugg try to keep that 50s flame flickerin’...

The third entry in my Britpop triptych is a few indie music/movie mashups I recently put together in commemoration of the equally maligned and celebrated mid-90s scene whose 20th anniversary arrived last month. (For other reasons I’ve been making videos see my previous Ronnie O’Sullivan video entry posted on snooker final day).

This first one marries one of the genre's best singles and bands, both saluted in my Britpop doff piece, with one of my favourite Ian McKellen flicks – the 1995 totalitarian adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which was partly filmed at my uni and at Battersea Power Station near where I later lived. Its scenes of Ian as Richard in proper villain mode were more suitable a video for the punky tune than the standard studio promo I thought.

After my last blog post on Britpop fizzy drink wars, I thought I'd pen a more considered reflection on the mid-90s guitar band phenomenon whose 20th anniversary the music media have pinpointed as around about now.

I was 16-18 in the years 1994-96, and was before then a staunch metaller listening solely to thrash metal and Nirvana after renouncing chart music at the turn of the decade.

That all changed when I heard the first 30 seconds of Oasis' Definitely Maybe in '94 - Rock & Roll Star's guitar squall crashing in through the speakers of my brother's bedroom stereo. It was the moment I first saw the bridge between metal and 'indie', which until then had just sounded lightweight and twee in comparison.

I just read with interest that Blur bassist turned farmer/cheesemaker Alex James is to launch a new fizzy drink called 'Britpop' after applying to trademark the name. 

With Oasis juice already a big player in that market, the stage could be set for a repeat of the 1995 pop battle when Blur famously pipped Oasis in the race for #1, in the days when the UK Top 40 still held some significance.

If the other indie bands of that era also get involved we could have a proper Britpop V2 (also a drink) 20 years on, with the action switching to the groceries sales chart.

So, if Brett Anderson, Jarvis Cocker or Rick Witter is following the developments, how about trademarking these names and joining the fray:
> Suede-ade
> Shed 7 Up
> (insert fruit) -Pulp
> Bluetonic
> Mansun-ny Delight

Think of the promotional opportunities at your own gigs – you could put a fizz back into your merchandise sales and may even become the new Coke?

Say what you like about Alex James, he seems to be the only Britpop vet with true entrepreneurial spirit...

This is the original gig review submission for the December issue of Record Collector, in which it was pared down
to squeeze into its live reviews section so I thought I’d post it here unedited.

L42 are one of my favourite bands from the golden 80s era when singles success actually meant something, and as mentioned in the review they still play their funkpop classics with the same enthusiasm and technical flair as when
they started out.

Last saw them at Royal Albert Hall in 08 but Indigo2 a great little venue too so full justice given and no negatives to report.