I’ve been landed with editorial duties on this one, so I can explain how this particular theme came about. For various reasons, I’ve not been able to get to the big festivals this year but I’ve done quite a few local multi-site festivals with lots of indoor gigs going on. Maybe the artists aren’t as well known as those on the stages at Cornbury, Glastonbury, Isle of Wight or Reading/Leeds, but they’re still incredibly interesting people to photograph. These are all people totally committed to what they do and I hope the photos capture that. These are people that may only ever be known on their own local music scene, or they may go on to achieve international recognition. You might have an idea about their potential, but how often have we all been wrong with those predictions? As always, these are in no particular order.

The Slacksons @Hanwell Hootie

The Slacksons are a fascinating band from Bristol centred around producers Mikey and Andy combining samples and live musicians to create a barnstorming live experience fronted up by manic singer/rapper Mikey. I was invited along to this gig at The Hanwell Hootie by Darkspin Music Management, who look after The Slacksons after shooting the band at another couple of gigs – that was a no-brainer. Even without stage lighting, the band creates lots of striking imagery and Mikey and Andy aren’t camera shy and the monochrome editing and tight crop capture something of Mikey’s onstage intensity.

Bad Soul Buskers @Leek Blues & Americana Festival

Every year at the beginning of October the town of Leek in Staffordshire hosts a five day festival with live music in the town’s two gig venues and various pubs around the town. There’s a huge variety of music from established touring acts and visitors from the US to bands featuring musicians from the area around Leek. The town’s in the Staffordshire Moorlands, about 600 feet above sea level and it can be bloody cold at that time of year – just sayin’. This year I made a conscious decision to only shoot the pub gigs, partly to give myself a bit of a challenge. Gigs in pubs that aren’t set up for gigs is definitely a challenge. Bad Soul Buskers was the first band I shot, at The Red Lion on the Market Square. I quite like a bit of eye contact in close-ups and I definitely got that here from the singer, who really likes the shot.

Jim Maving @High Tide Festival, The Cabbage Patch

Jim’s a stunning guitar player that I’ve been bumping to at gigs for a few years now, working with people like Dean Owens, Lou Kyme and his old Case Hardin bandmate Pete Gow. He also played in The Mick Ralphs Blues Band. And I just need to say at this point that he’s a bloody good bloke as well. I’ve photographed Jim in many settings from pubs to theatre gigs, in monochrome and in colour and he always looks good. Makes me a bit jealous really, particularly as he’s such a brilliant player. This particular gig was mostly indoors (the picture windows opened out on to the street, so the lighting was kind of interesting. Unusually for Jim, this gig was all about his own material and he was holding centre stage. Superb performance delivered as always, and I liked this shot of Jim pulling the audience in to the experience.

Hannah White @High Tide Festival, The Cabbage Patch

I first saw Hannah four and a half years ago at ‘Vin’s Night In’ at The Hospital Club. My first impression was that her songs provoked strong reactions – what’s the point in songwriting if it doesn’t provoke a reaction. I’ve photographed her a few times since, particularly over the last year, and discovered how committed Hannah and husband, and guitar player, Keiron Marshall are to music (running The Sound Lounge live venue and organising the first Folk in the Park event in Sutton this summer) and to environmental causes. She also gives everything when she’s on stage and she’s a very interesting person to photograph.

I like to see talent being rewarded (and good people). Hannah’s a great songwriter and a heart-rending performer in a classic country tradition, so it didn’t come as a surprise when Ricky Ross played Hannah on his ‘Another Country’ show in Scotland after a recommendation and then invited Hannah & Keiron to play as support on his solo UK tour. And the accolades for her latest, appropriately named, album ‘About Time’ keep coming in. I’m sure there’s more to come.

Stoneash Blues Band @Leek Blues & Americana Festival

This was shot at The Wellington Inn on Strangman Street in Leek. It’s a pub that features live music, but as an add-on so it’s a challenge to get decent lighting and backgrounds, not for the first time, or the last. Stoneash Blues Band is typical of a many of the local bands playing at this event; it’s all about the music. Most of these people do this for love and not because they have any expectation of ever becoming rich on the back of it. This band had all the chops, timing coming from years of gigs, loads of little anecdotes and a singer with a voice that was honey over gravel. What more do you want from a free gig?

Steve Jenner has been contributing to Music Riot for many years now. He’s a huge fan of all sorts of music and he’s been a radio station manager and presenter for decades. Over the last couple of years, he’s achieved a lifetime ambition by securing regular gigs on Radio Caroline including proper live shows with record decks and everything from the Ross Revenge moored at Blackwater Estuary; there is no such thing as too old. Here’s Steve’s take on having a chance to play new music again on air.

As you may or may not know, I’m a presenter on Radio Caroline’s two oldies channels, Flashback and Radio Caroline North, which recall the halcyon days of ‘the pirates’ and this year I’ve been given the opportunity to go out to and present shows from their original broadcast boat the Ross Revenge, moored in the Blackwater Estuary just off Essex, and it has just been the most remarkable experience. However! In a year of ‘firsts’ I found myself playing new music on the radio for the first time in years when the organisation asked me to ‘sit in’ temporarily for a number of presenters on Radio Caroline’s main ‘Album Channel’, which features both classic and contemporary album music. Well, it doesn’t so much feature it as scream it out via 4000 watts on 648AM (AM rock, eh? Who thought THAT would be making a full-on reappearance in the broadcast environment at this stage in the game?) as well as all the usual digital armaments (apps, online, phone, Alexa, you name it we’re on it.) So, here’s my High Fives featuring musical airplay delights which have glowed briefly but brightly for me this year…

Todd Rundgren – ‘Puzzle’

This is just gorgeous. Taken from his album ‘Spaceforce’ it is a sumptuous wallow in modern recording techniques allied to great writing from someone who knows how music works and always did. Glass of wine/box of chocs in the bath stuff. It has hooks which positively tear the flesh but do so totally painlessly. Hear it once and you don’t forget it in a hurry. Better digitally online than on AM, I would venture but honestly, if it was being cranked out of the North Sea at stupid o’ clock at night to the accompaniment of crystal set whistle and fade, you’d have to have some.

Bernie Marsden – ‘Na Na Na Na’

This isn’t gorgeous and yes I know I’ve just been banging on about how lovely it is to be playing new music on Radio Caroline’s main channel. BUT it’s a new cover, from an album called Trios released earlier this year by a guy who in rock ‘n’ roll terms is a national treasure to many due to his work with Whitesnake. Bernie Marsden has been hammering out this stuff with customary joy and gusto since Noah floated the Ark and the fact that he’s chosen a sassy, trashy old Cozy Powell hit 45 as an opportunity to revisit the spirit of former glories is alright by me. Very alright by me. A spirited thrash which deserves praise just for having the brass balls to cover the thing in the first place, I so enjoyed playing this even though I knew it wouldn’t be universally met with similar enthusiasm. Sometimes you just gotta!

Tedeschi Trucks Band – ‘Soul Sweet Song’

These have been knocking out class music for a while now and it is great to see the increasing evidence that more and more people fitted with ears as standard are realising they’re in the presence of something rather special here. This is by no means their most popular song or in many respects a standout track but boy, does it programme beautifully. The sort of song that Raises The Tone, just by being there on the playlist. And I’m told that they’re That Good live as well. Highly unlikely many who hear this will actively dislike it; and many love it, that much is already clear.

Ricky Ross – ‘I Was The Beatles’

Just the voice, just the song. Just the piano with a bit of a string arrangement dropped on top. Recorded at his house with strings and brass bits added later, ‘Short Stories Volume 2’ appeared on Cooking Vinyl earlier this year. Not much on the face of it, it’s a song which drips loss and longing for a past which remains just out of reach to us all, it positively aches with the weight of lost love and friendship and potential unfulfilled. It has all the haunting quality of Deacon Blue’s cover of ‘What Do You Get When You Fall In Love’ but it’s an original song, even though it is shot through with intentional echoes and reminders. Delightful.

Dr. Feelgood – ‘Damn Right I Do’

In truth I don’t know if this song was ‘A-listed’ by Radio Caroline’s main album channel but I do know that various tracks from this, their latest album and first for ages, have seen considerable airtime on the station with a number of our presenters. I was present at a live showcase of the by the band at their stomping ground of Canvey Island this winter; as chance would have it this was shortly before Wilko died. There are those who say it doesn’t sound like original Feelgood, isn’t the original line–up and all the usual stuff but if you park that for a minute and just listen, this title track in particular in full–on, direct and punchy ‘attack’ mode has juke-box classic stamped all over it. Virtually no such thing now of course in any meaningful sense but certainly grabs the attention as a proper ‘45’ should as it leaps out of the radio at you.

And if you’d like me to leap out of the radio at you and play you some new music, I’m next scheduled to feature on the main Radio Caroline album channel on 648AM and all the smart stuff on New Year’s day at 10AM through until 1PM, as I ‘sit in’ for Phil Meek. I will be both ringing out the old and ringing in the new, the way you do…

There’s no other way of saying this; 2020 has been an awful year and it’s been hard to take any kind of consolation from it. Anyone in the world of music has had to look long and hard to take any positives out of this situation. For many of us, it’s been an opportunity (or maybe a necessity) to look in the rear-view at some of the things we did in the past; gigs that we went to, albums that we bought and people that we met. I’ve moved around the country a fair amount and, in the era before media players and streaming, I had to limit the music I could move around with me. I’m not saying I was limited to five albums or, later, CDs, but these are albums that always made the cut and they’ve still had the same comfort blanket value through two lockdowns. In chronological order:

 

“Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3” – Various Artists

I know; it’s a compilation, but what a compilation. This was the soundtrack of my teenage years; every youth club disco, every party, every time I went to a friend’s house, this album was there. It was perfect timing, with a 1969 release just at the time that I really started to listen to music properly and had a few quid from my paper round to actually buy records.

The Chartbusters series started in 1967; if you’re a cynic, you might accuse Motown of trying to recycle material but it is the music business and it’s fair to say that this series was packed with hits. It was basically a singles industry at that time, so a compilation from a successful company made a lot of sense. So why Vol. 3? Well, the sleeve design evolved as the series progressed, reflecting current social themes, but Vol. 3 was the one where the designers nailed it; it’s simple, bold and incredibly striking and the musical content lived up to the standard of the design.

If a sixteen-song album starts with Marvin Gaye’s “Grapevine” and ends with Smokey’s “Tracks of my Tears”, there’s a lot of wiggle room for the other fourteen songs. Throw in a couple of Stevie Wonder classics, The Temptations’ “Get Ready” and Edwin Starr’s “Stop Her on Sight” and you’ve already got a classic compilation. Take a look at the entire album and it’s studded with classics and minor classics. That’s why it will always have a place in my elite albums.

“Aja” – Steely Dan

I bought this the week it was released in September 1977 and took it with me to Dundee for my second year at University. I was in a shared room, but it was with Kev, my room-mate from my first year. We both played guitar and had some musical tastes in common; thankfully Steely Dan was one of those shared tastes. “Aja” was played a lot and we may have smoked some recreational substances, which may have enhanced the listening experience. In my final two years, I had my own room and, again, “Aja” didn’t stay in its sleeve very long. It was starting to look a little worse for wear. You can read the next part of this story in this piece; I don’t want to do it in detail again here. Let’s just say it burned “Aja” into my consciousness and since that time the album’s been a constant companion.

I’d been a Dan fan since the early days and, by this time, I knew to expect the unexpected but this album was something else. They had seven beautifully-constructed and slightly sleazy songs (ok, maybe more than slightly sleazy) and spent studio time with the best session musicians in the world putting together versions of the songs, picking out the seven favourites for the album. They started as jazzers playing rock and with “Aja” they arrived at jazzers playing jazz or maybe jazz-funk; going back to their roots. Like all of the albums mentioned here, this should be in everyone’s collection. It was certainly in the collection of the next band.

“Raintown” – Deacon Blue

I’m Scottish; I’m proud to be a Scot and I used to love the times when the music industry radar periodically located Scotland on the UK map. The mid-to-late eighties was one of those periods; Deacon Blue were one of the bands to be signed and they’re still recording and gigging today. I saw them at Cornbury a couple of years ago and they sounded great with songs covering a period of thirty years. The band members mostly have new day jobs now; Ricky Ross is a radio broadcaster and Dougie Vipond is a TV presenter with BBC Scotland, but that’s all irrelevant when the sticks click and the band fires up.

I bought “Raintown” on vinyl originally and I still have that copy now. The title song was a tribute to Glasgow that spliced Blue Nile with Springsteen to create a wide canvas sound that came to define the band. As much as I loved that song, and the anthem “Dignity”, it was “When Will You (Make my Telephone Ring?)” that I connected with. It was a soul song (they even had Jimmy Helms on BVs) and it was over the top and gorgeous. It was part of an album that you needed to listen to from start to finish (turning over the vinyl halfway through), because you wouldn’t want to miss out on the opener “Born In a Storm” or the yuppie tale “Chocolate Girl”.

And you know that the Steely Dan connection is “Deacon Blues” from “Aja”, obviously.

“His ‘n’ Hers” – Pulp

When the Britpop wars broke out, I was missing in action. Why would anyone hitch themselves to bands that were so obviously influenced by sixties pop. Oasis was The Beatles without the subtlety and Blur was an arch Goldsmiths-enabled Kinks tribute band. We had to be better than that and I’d already committed myself to a band that had much more in common with the East Midlands surroundings I knew as a teenager. The band was from Sheffield and the songs reflected life in the North Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire/South Yorkshire area; Blur and Oasis were copying sixties bands while Pulp felt much more like a musical interpretation of Stan Barstow’s short stories.

“His ‘n’ Hers” was the breakthrough album: it wasn’t the album with the anthems that followed it and turned Pulp into an arena and Glastonbury-headlining band. “Different Class” featured “Common People” and “Disco 2000”, both complete bangers and remixed to within an inch of their lives; as much as I loved them, I still identified much more with the characters and the narratives of “Lipgloss”, “Babies”, ”Acrylic Afternoons” and “Do You Remember the First Time?”. This is still my favourite Pulp album and probably my favourite ‘Britpop’ album.

“Protection” – Massive Attack

Only a few months after “His ‘n’ Hers” and so different. If Sheffield defined Pulp, then Bristol defined Massive Attack. The first Massive Attack album “Blue Lines” three years earlier was already firmly embedded in my consciousness. “Unfinished Sympathy” was a classic single and Shara Nelson had a perfect voice to front up the songs. Massive Attack wasn’t a prolific band (quality rather than quantity) and by the time “Protection” came along, Shara had moved on, replaced by a mix of singers and rappers including Tracey Thorn, Tricky, Nicolette and Horace Andy. Along with close neighbours Portishead, Massive Attack defined trip-hop, mixing influences from hip-hop and dub, creating a sound that was both ambient and punchy.

The title song has always pushed my buttons; it’s gorgeous. The bass is thunderous (particularly for a slow ballad), while the guitar, keys and vocals are all crystal clear with a shimmering touch of reverb. The mix is full of space and all of the individual elements stand out. And there’s Tracey Thorn’s almost effortless but incredibly powerful vocal. It’s a classic song and it sets the tone for the album; loads of punchy bass and spacy, dubby mixes – trippy even. The kind of music that might accompany a spliff or two. Which takes us back to my second selection.

Allan was a bit chuffed to get his first big festival photo accreditation this summer for Cornbury Festival in Oxfordshire. It was perfectly timed to coincide with a complete weekend shutdown of rail services through Oxford during the hottest weekend but it takes a lot more than that to stop a determined photographer. When he eventually made it there, well, we’ll let him tell you about it.

 

OK, Friday night and the first band to play in the dark with stage lights was Stereo MCs. Had to be done really. It was a bit of a nostalgia thing; loads of memories of my DJ days in the late eighties/early nineties. From the outset, it was obvious that Rob Birch is still a hugely charismatic and dynamic frontman. I think this just about captures it:

Last set on Friday night was UB40. I saw UB40 on their first national tour when they supported The Pretenders on tour across the UK in 1980. They were fired up, they wanted to succeed and they sounded amazing. Nearly forty years on, it’s a very different story; there are two UB40s touring and neither’s convincing. This version is pretty pedestrian, but they have one secret weapon – Brian Travers. I’m sure he wouldn’t claim to be the best sax player in the world, but he knows how to sell it:

Saturday night was busy (although Alanis Morissette decided not to allow any press access for her set) and the Songbird Stage was the place to be. Obviously Mavis Staples was a do-not-miss, but PP Arnold was another. You would think she’d never been away; she sounded fabulous and looked like this:

Sunday afternoon on the Pleasant Valley Stage; anyone for a bit of Deacon Blue? Definitely; I saw them a couple of times in the very early days and I loved them. It’s partly a Scottish thing, but it’s mainly a music thing. They have great songs and they have the experience to sell them on a festival stage. You never know, Ricky might do a bit of politics. Actually you do know, he will. Anyway, he’s looking pretty pumped these days:

Sunday evening headliners – Squeeze. We go back a long way; I saw Squeeze for the first time at Dundee University Students’ Association; there were more people on stage than in the audience and it was still a great gig. I’ve photographed them on occasions forty years apart (I know, I don’t look that old) and I still love those Difford/Tilbrook songs. This time, it was Yolanda Charles that really caught my eye:

I’m guessing that most of you, unless you’re Scottish or you’ve spent some time in Scotland, won’t even have heard of Michael Marra who died on Tuesday in his hometown of Dundee.  Michael was a true free spirit, an original and innovative songwriter who had an uncanny knack of tapping in to the Scottish psyche and who inspired, and was in turn worshipped by, generations of Scottish performers including Pat and Greg Kane, Eddi Reader and Ricky Ross.  His songs reflected life in Scotland from the 60s onwards and covered all of the subjects we talk about in the pub; football, politics and religion and all the rest.

I first saw Michael (or Mick as he was known then) playing with the band Skeets Boliver at Dundee University Students’ Association in my first year at university.  Skeets were a great live act and played constantly on the Dundee scene in the late 70s.  They even secured a record deal with Thunderbird Records, releasing two singles which went unnoticed outside Scotland as punk erupted and swept subtlety aside.  When the inevitable Skeets break-up came, Michael secured a two-album deal with Polydor, went to London and recorded the album “The Midas Touch”.  Despite critical acclaim, the relationship wasn’t made in heaven.  The second album didn’t happen and Michael moved back to Dundee; London’s loss.

The move left Michael free to write songs about subjects he was interested in and to write and sing in a Scottish idiom and accent; just using “wee” instead of “small” can make a huge difference to the way someone hears the song.  It was from this point that he found his true voice (I once described Southside Johnny’s voice as “honey poured over gravel”; Michael’s was broken glass poured over gravel, and totally authentic) and wrote his greatest songs.  After returning to Dundee, Michael’s reputation as a songwriter grew almost daily as he produced songs which reflected life in contemporary Scotland over a period of nearly thirty years.  You can find plenty of examples of Michael’s work on YouTube and I really recommend that you check some of them out.  If you want a bit of help, try these: “If Dundee was Africa”, “Chain Up the Swings” and “Mother Glasgow” (Hue and Cry).

Michael had a wicked sense of humour as well, probably developed by dealing with Dundee hecklers over the years.  I’ve got a Skeets Boliver live bootleg which features some Marra patter between songs and I loved his routine about the lack of promotion from Thunderbird for the second Skeets single, “Moonlight in Jeopardy”.  It went something like:  “They put up posters outside all the Tube stations in Dunfermline; and you know how many tubes there are in Dunfermline”.

My thoughts are with Michael’s family; their loss is so much greater than ours.  RIP Michael Marra; fans of real songwriting everywhere will miss you.

Did you hear the one about the radio presenter, the TV presenter, the actress and the music performance teacher? Or, alternatively, Ricky Ross, Dougie Vipond, Lorraine McIntosh and Jim Prime?  The members of Deacon Blue have taken time out from the day jobs to release a new album, 25 years after their first, “Raintown”, in 1987.  I first heard the band in that year; “When Will You (Make my Telephone Ring)?” was released as a single and I was hooked from the first listen.

The current band are two-thirds of the original line-up; bass player Ewen Vernal is now with Capercaillie (and guested with Love and Money” on their shows last year) and, sadly, guitarist Graeme Kelling died in 2004.  So, apart from the obvious 25^th anniversary, why release an album in 2012?  Because they have a bunch of great new songs and they still love playing together, and that’s good enough for me.

If you bought “Raintown” in 1987 and managed to avoid listening to anything by Deacon Blue since then, “The Hipsters” would sound like the logical next step.  The songs are just as strong, probably even stronger, than those on the ground-breaking first album but the overall sound is more immediate and engaging than the very 80s production of “Raintown”.  There’s a reason for that, and I’ll come back to it later.

The album opens with “Here I Am in London Town” which harks back to “Raintown” in that the lead-off song on both albums has a stripped-back production, but there’s more to it than that.  The opening song on “The Hipsters” looks back to the period just before the release of the debut album when all of the members of the band were “waiting for the world to begin again”.  The title track, “The Hipsters” is one of the best singles I’ve heard this year and a great summer song; it’s just a shame that we didn’t have a summer to do it justice.  It’s also ironic because Deacon Blue were never hipsters and no amount of sales would make them hip; but that’s probably why we loved them so much.  Just in case we missed that particular bit of irony, the balance is redressed with “The Outsiders” which is the position they were most always most comfortable with: “this world seemed so much lighter, when we were the outsiders”.

It’s difficult to pick standout tracks from the album because the songs are all superbly crafted and the arrangements work perfectly to bring the songs to life, so all I can do is point you in the direction of some of my personal favourites.  “The Rest” is a feelgood barnstormer which sounds like the E Street Band at full throttle with great piano lines and sus4 guitar chords driving the chorus along, while “It’ll End in Tears” has a really bouncy feel but an ultimately downbeat message.  The final song “Is There No Back to You?” is a gorgeous lovelorn ballad which brings the album to a melancholy but fitting close.

The songs in this collection are the work of a mature and confident songwriter with nothing left to prove and a lifetime’s experience to draw on.  The material on “Raintown” was good by any standards but the relationship songs, apart from “When Will You (Make my Telephone Ring?)”, were always at a slight distance from the subject matter or in the third person.  It felt like you were hearing a snatch of a conversation from the flat next door or catching a glimpse of a scene through a restaurant window.  On “The Hipsters”, the narrative of the relationship songs is in the first person and we’re drawn into the heart of the situations, which gives the songs much more power.

The arrangements all work perfectly to enhance the songs and range from the sheer power of “The Rest” through the ‘60s pop feel of “That’s What We Can Do” to the minimal feel of “Here I Am in London Town” and “Is There No Way Back to You?”.  And it’s just possible that I’m over-interpreting, but is Ricky Ross paying tribute to some of his songwriting heroes here?  The production and/or vocals on three of the songs have a familiar feel; “Here I Am in London Town” is very Neil Young, “The Rest” is pure Springsteen (with a hint towards the end of Big Country) and “Is There No Way Back to You?” has a feel of “Jealous Guy” era John Lennon.  Despite the usual stories of star-crossed lovers (“Turn”, “She’ll Understand”, “Laura from Memory”, It’ll End in Tears” and “Is there No Way Back to You?”) the overall feel of the album is still uplifting because of the relationships in “Stars” and “The Rest” which, against all the odds, end happily, and the sheer exuberance of “The Hipsters” and “The Outsiders”.   This is a great collection of songs, great arrangements, great performances and a great production.

Going back to the immediate and engaging sound of the album; there’s a very good reason for it.  The songs were thoroughly rehearsed before the band went into the studio and recorded them live; that’s quite a brave and unusual move these days and it’s paid off because they’re good enough and confident enough to perform to that level.  Before The Beatles, that’s how everyone recorded and maybe there’s still a place for that immediacy now; it was good enough for Joe Meek.

This album is the best, most moving collection of songs I’ve heard this year and I’ll be listening to it for years to come.  What more can I say?

The single is released on September 23^rd, followed by the album on the 24^th.