On February 8 2015, Bob Malone performed most of his superb new album “Mojo Deluxe” at The Grand Annex in San Pedro, California in a one-off performance supported by Mike Baird (drums), Jeff Dean (bass), Chris Trujillo (percussion), Bob Demarco (guitar, banjo), Marty Rifkin (slide guitar) and Lavonne Seetal, Trysette and Karen Nash (vocals). As well as a live performance, this was recording for the DVD “Mojo Live”, so there was absolutely no pressure at all on the band to turn in a great performance. If you’ve read what we’ve said about Bob in the past, you won’t be surprised to hear that they nailed it, start to finish.
If you’ve seen Bob touring the UK, his band comprises two Italian musicians (guitar and drums) and a British bass player. They’re great musicians and they gel perfectly as a band, but many of the songs on “Mojo Deluxe” have big arrangements, which a four-piece just can’t deliver, no matter how good they are. So Bob’s solution was to bring the gig to the audience rather than the audience to the gig (apart from the lucky ones who were in the Grand Annex on the night).
What you get on the DVD is a group of superb musicians playing a set that was meticulously prepared and played, with all of the verbal sparring that goes on between songs, including a bit of faux-snarky husband/wife dialogue to spice things up. From the raucous opening of “Don’t Threaten Me (with a Good time)” and the instrumental “Chinese Algebra” (which works perfectly as a solo piano piece or with the full band) to slow closers “Paris” and “Gaslight Fantasie” everything is played to perfection. There’s even the obligatory version of the Faces classic, “Stay with Me”, giving all the band an opportunity to trade licks with Bob, and just generally have a good time. There’s even some excellent still photography on there as an extra.
If you get the chance you go and see Bob Malone live, but this is something a little bit special. It’s unlikely that this show will go out on the road; this is the only chance you’ll get to see this and you really shouldn’t miss it. It’s a great record of great show and the only thing missing is the smell of spilt beer and soggy carpet; you can probably manage without that. Good Christmas present? I think so
Out now.
There’s a couple of interesting tours coming up in late November/early December that we really thought we should share with you. First up is a tour by the absolute legend Ronnie Spector with her “Ronnie Spector Sings the Fabulous Ronettes” tour, featuring the greatest Ronettes hits, including “Me My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, “Do I Love You” and “Wallking in the Rain”, plus Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector originals that became hits as covers, such as “I Can Hear Music” (Beach Boys) and “Chapel of Love” (Dixie Cups). The tour follows the release earlier this month of “The Very Best of Ronnie Spector” on Sony Music.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ronnie’s also working on her new album “English Heart”, a set of covers of songs by the sixties British invasion bands including The Beatles, The Stones, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Animals which is scheduled for release in April 2016 on 429 Records. If you want to see the greatest hits tour, Ronnie’s doing the following dates:
November 28 Philharmonic Hall Liverpool
November 29 Royal Concert Hall Glasgow
November 30 The Sage Gateshead
December 1 Town Hall Birmingham
December 3 The Barbican London
December 4 Colston Hall Bristol
In early December, the European leg of the Light of Day tour comes to the UK. The Light of Day Foundation is a charity raising funds for research into Parkinson’s and related degenerative diseases, which originated in New Jersey in November 2000 and has been supported by many performers including Bruce Springsteen (whose song gave the Foundation its name), Michael J Fox, Southside Johnny, Darlene Love, Willie Nile, Jakob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Badly Drawn Boy and Gary ‘US’ Bonds.
The headline band for the UK tour this year is Joe D’Urso, Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, Eric Bazilian, Ed Manion and Jake Clemons. If you want to see some incredible musicians and donate some cash to a very good cause, then you can catch the Light of Day tour on the following four UK dates:
December 4 Oran Mor Glasgow
December 5 TAPE Arts Centre Colwyn Bay
December 6 The Musician Leicester
December 8 The Half Moon, Putney London
You should catch both of these tours if you can, and maybe we’ll see you at The Half Moon for the Light of Day gig.
We’ve been waiting for this one for a while now, and I’m chuffed to say it was well worth the wait. The second Black Casino and the Ghost album, “Until the Water Runs Clear” is packed with great individual performances, but the great strength is the way they work together as a band. Elisa Zoot’s voice is stunning and Ariel Lerner’s guitar playing is faultless across a range of styles, but Paul Winter-Hart (drums) and Gary Kilminster play a huge part in the band’s sound, supplying the rhythmic pulse and some melodic and inventive basslines.
There are some influences which are woven through the album; there’s more than a hint of sixties pop, and a hint of psychedelia channelled through the trip-hop filter of Portishead and Massive Attack or the shimmering nineties pop of Saint Etienne and Morcheeba. So the obvious opening song is one which sounds like early English folk, isn’t it?
“The Pool” proves that Elisa can do the quieter, more reflective songs as well as the belters, starting with a finger-picked acoustic guitar backing and multi-layered backing vocals, adding shards of percussion, synths and slide guitar before dropping back to the minimalist guitar backing. After the trippy feel of “Age of Contagion” and the monster guitar riff of “Veggie Tarantula” (the two singles so far), it’s a bit of a departure but it’s very effective.
The sixties influence is clearest in “Soul Mall”, the bass-led “Sherry” where Elisa delivers the verses in a cool, almost dismissive style, and “Mr Puppeteer” and “Hoochie Coochie Lover” where Ariel plays in a clipped, precise style that’s very Hank Marvin, or maybe it’s just like Eddie. Apart from the obvious “Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer”, there’s a darkness and obsession suffusing the album, and it surfaces in lines like ‘Wish I could skin you, look at what’s in you’ in “Hoochie Coochie Lover”; it’s challenging and not always comfortable but, if comfort’s what you want, you should be listening to Smooth Radio.
There are still a few more stylistic twists and turns to the album; “Tarjeteros” has an Ennio Morricone feel, “Bitter Beast” contrasts a verse with a hint of Bjork with a wall of sound chorus, while the album’s last song, “Solar Storm”, closes the circle with Elisa’s controlled vocal over a sparse arrangement that builds with keyboards and backwards effect before fading into the ether.
I don’t think I’ve heard a better album than “Until the Water Runs Clear” this year; Black Casino and the Ghost have created an album that’s full of hooks to grab your attention, but is full of dark and mystical undercurrents to keep you enthralled.
“Until the Water Runs Clear” is out now on Amazon and iTunes. Go on, treat yourself to an early Christmas present.
If you want to see Black Casino and the Ghost live (and you really should), they’re playing at The Finsbury on December 8th and it’s completely free.
I’ll be honest with you, music journalists and photographers love to whinge to each other, and anyone else who’s willing to have their ears bent, about venues. We all love a moan about bar prices, surly service, bad sound, not enough light, too much light, red light, white light and so on and so on. While I was watching three bands playing at Surya on Friday November 13, all of this was brought into sharp focus by the events unfolding in Paris coming up on my phone every time I left the basement venue between bands. Initially, I didn’t want to write this review, but as the full horror became apparent later, it was obvious that the only way to react was to keep calm and carry on. I guess the best thing I can do is dedicate this to the memory of all the people who died at the Eagles of Death Metal gig and at other places in Paris on Friday.
The publicity for the gig featured four bands, but only three appeared on the night; a trio of trios, each with the same line-up of guitar, bass and drums, but each with a very different sound and dynamic.
First up were Chapels, an improbably young band that played with huge amounts of enthusiasm combined with a mixture of humour and diffidence. They had loads of good ideas that never seemed to quite mesh into a coherent set and tuning problems didn’t really help. If you’re looking for comparisons, then early Nirvana wouldn’t be too far wide of the mark (they got a few requests for “Smells like Teen Spirit”). The band looked like they were having a good time and it was well received, so it was a good start to the night.
Circus 66 moved things up a couple of gears with their funky power trio setup, harking back to the sixties/seventies feel of Cream and Taste with a more current twist of the funky Red Hot Chili Peppers spicing up the mix. Matt Pearce (guitar), Tom Parker (bass) and Ben Blackman (drums) all have good voices and manage to throw a bit of old-fashioned showmanship into their performance, making complex arrangements look ridiculously easy and apparently having a really good time before passing on the baton to the headliners.
LUME brought along a substantial and enthusiastic following and were obviously top of the bill material. I caught them earlier this year as the first band on the bill at The Garage and it was obvious that they wouldn’t be doing that for long. This time, they sounded like headliners right from the opening notes of “Budapest” (which opened and closed the set). Henry Mata, Alex Holmes and Nelson Taia make the most of the three-piece line-up and show that they’re all about musicianship; Henry only has one guitar effects pedal (a wah-wah which he used to play a fragment of “Voodoo Chile”) and Alex Holmes becomes a second guitar player at times, playing in unison with Henry’s lead lines. The songs are all strong and the band didn’t put a foot wrong, winning over the supporters of other bands on the bill as well, so I guess that’s another step up the ladder.
I don’t know how I managed to miss this one for so long, but this was my first visit to Dingwalls, and what a great music venue it is; good visibility all round, nice lighting for a few photos and a perfect atmosphere for this line-up of Gaz Brookfield, Mad Dog Mcrea and Ferocious Dog. The omens for the night were all good when we had a quick chat with Michael Mathieson of Mad Dog Mcrea on the way in to the gig and got in just in time to catch the opening set from Bristol-based Gaz Brookfield whose fast and furious acoustic songs set the tone for the evening.
The names Mad Dog Mcrea and Ferocious Dog seem to be inextricably interlinked in certain musical circles and, having been really impressed by Mad Dog Mcrea at The Half Moon earlier this year, I was curious to find out more about Ferocious Dog. I may be in a small minority here (although Plus One certainly agreed), but the running order didn’t really do Ferocious Dog any favours; Mad Dog Mcrea are a very difficult act to follow.
Ferocious Dog have built up a substantial following over the last few years with their high energy blend of folk and rock with punk attitudes and that’s exactly what they delivered on the night. They were visually striking as well (you can see the photos in a few days) but that added to my misgivings about the performance, particularly when compared to Mad Dog Mcrea. It felt a bit like things hadn’t moved on since the days of The Levellers or Chumbawamba and that some of the feeling for the music had been swamped by the attitude. It might just have worked out if they hadn’t been the last band on.
For a band supposedly promoting their “Almost Home” album (it’s very, very good and you should listen to it), Mad Dog Mcrea played a set that was much more of a greatest hits package based on requests from their many fans in the crowd. So, although “Heart of Stone” appeared near the start of the set, it was all about the crowd pleasers, from the traditional “Raggle-Taggle Gipsy” through “Johnny no Legs”, “Climb a Hill” and “Am I Drinking Enough?”, to the madness of “Little Black Fly” and “The Happy Bus”. Michael Mathieson (acoustic guitar and vocals) fronts up the party, but it’s also about the interplay between Pete Chart, Jimi Galvin, Dave Podmore, Dan Crimp and Nicki Powell, who create fascinating textures and glide effortlessly through changes of style and tempo. The band might try to make it look like it’s all just a bit of fun, but the music is everything, and that’s what connects them with the fans, who love the commitment and sheer joy of the band’s performance. Another triumph for Mad Dog Mcrea.
It must have been difficult for Ferocious Dog to follow that set. They didn’t do anything that was bad, but the bar had already been set way too high.
OK, just to give a bit of a heads up, if Noel Gallagher had been influenced by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (™) instead of The Beatles this is probably what Oasis would have sounded like. You know from the kick-off that Righteous Reprobates aren’t doing subtlety here; “My Psychosis” storms in with a noisy Les Paul riff and Charlie Kenny’s pounding floor tom and kick drum while the lead guitar gently feeds back before crashing in alongside Jack Collier’s bass and Rob White’s vocals. It’s melodic, it’s fast, a little bit noir and the band seem to have thrown everything they can into four minutes to grab your attention, including a sixteen-bar solo from Jack Griffiths which runs through most of the range of rock solo techniques, including the obligatory fret-tapping and whammy bar abuse.
Go on, just crank it all the way up, jump about and wind up the neighbours; that’s the kind of song it is.
“My Psychosis” is out on December 7th. Meanwhile, here’s the video:
Elisa
Here’s another little teaser from Black Casino and the Ghost to whet your appetite for the upcoming album “Until the Water Runs Clear” which is out on November 16th. It’s been a while since their debut “Some Dogs Think their Name is No”, and we’ve heard some of the new material live, so the expectations are high. “Veggie Tarantula” opens with an overdriven guitar riff followed by a thunderous bassline and you wonder if Elisa Zoot’s voice can cut through the wall of noise; the answer’s obviously yes, although you have to wait until the chorus to hear the raucous sound of the entire band playing at full tilt. And just when you think you’ve been battered into submission, there’s a bit of remission with a psychedelic breakdown and layers of ethereal vocals before everything goes back up to eleven. Absolutely glorious.
We’ll have the album review for you in the next few days; in the meantime, just watch this on repeat.
