There was a time earlier this year, when I was hobbling around with the help of a crutch, when I thought that I would have difficulty scraping together five gigs that I’d actually seen; how wrong was that? It’s been difficult to narrow this list down to five, so I think there might be a few honourable mentions as well. So, in absolutely no order at all are my favourite live shows of 2014.

Jim StapleyJim Stapley Band at 93 Feet East

Jim Stapley’s debut album almost made my top five albums, but there was absolutely no doubt about this live performance. Jim has a phenomenal soulful rock voice and he has pulled together a superb band to deliver the songs live. This was an album launch gig featuring virtually all of the album “Long Time Coming” (plus a cheeky cover of Rihanna’s “We Found Love”) and, despite atrocious weather and a half-full venue, Jim and the band gave it everything. The songs were strong, the band were cooking on gas, but what a voice.

 

Stone FoundationStone Foundation at The 100 Club

Towards the end of a very busy year for the band, this was an appearance at the annual Delicious Junction bash and another headline slot at The 100 Club with a set based solidly on the “To Find the Spirit”. All of the band members are great players but, despite the solos, this isn’t about individuals, it’s about the group; it’s the perfect combination of a locked-in rhythm section, keyboards and horns. It was also a chance to see how the new members Gareth John (trumpet and flugelhorn) and Rob Newton (congas) had bedded in. It’s fair to say that the horns sounded better than ever and the congas added a little bit of icing on the cake. It was a great set from the band and a stomping encore of “Jumping Jack Flash”. Enough said.

YokaLittle Devils at The 100 Club

Yeah, The 100 Club again and it’s blues Jim, but not as we know it; Little Devils are fronted by singer and multi-instrumentalist (sax and flute), Yoka. The rhythm section of Graeme Wheatley and Sara-Leigh Shaw (aka the Pintsized Powerhouse) built a solid base for Big Ray’s guitar and Yoka’s vocals and instrumental solos. The quality of the playing alone would put this gig up there with the best this year but this is also great fun; the band obviously enjoy themselves and the audience will always pick up on that. Great performances and big smiles all around the room; that’s a pretty good combination for a great night.

Federal CharmFederal Charm and Ian Hunter’s Rant Band

This was the final night of the Ian Hunter tour and the audience was in a party mood. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Federal Charm but they seem to get better every time. They got a huge cheer when they strolled on to the Shepherds Bush Empire stage and powered their way through thirty minutes of melodic blues rock featuring their powerful cover of “Reconsider” before making way for Ian Hunter. What a legend; played for two hours and kept the audience spellbound throughout, and the voice still sounds great. We even got an appearance from Mick Ralphs for the encore. Top night.

Gary BondsGary Bonds, Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes

Now this sounded like a great idea. 60s legend, and big influence on the Asbury Park scene teams up with Southside Johnny for a UK tour; I’ll even pay for tickets for that. Albany Down, despite a ten-second soundcheck, got the audience nicely warmed up for the main event which was a set from Gary Bonds (with some help from Southside) and a set from Southside (with a little help from Gary Bonds), both backed The Asbury Jukes. As ever, the superb musicians (Jeff Kazee, Tom Seguso, John Conte, Glenn Alexander, John Isley, Chris Anderson and Neal Pawley) fitted together perfectly and reacted instantly to any curveballs thrown by Southside. Seriously great players but they know how to have a bit of fun as well. They’re a great attraction as The Jukes, but Gary Bonds just tipped it over the edge.

It was incredibly difficult to narrow this down to only five gigs and there are a few more which deserve honourable mentions. I saw Vera Lynch three times (including their final gig at The Barfly in Camden and a gig in a Shoreditch shop window), The Kennedys and Edwina Hayes at Green Note and Dean Owens and Black Scarr on Eel Pie Island and all of those were great nights. Here’s to many more in 2015.

We always like a good live music picture here at Riot Towers and we even manage to publish one occasionally. When we asked Allan to pick his favourite five live shots this year, his first reaction was a hissy fit about only being allowed to choose five pictures because he wanted to choose six. It wasn’t a Spinal Tap thing but a bit of the old artistic temperament; apparently there’s no way of making five pictures look symmetrical, so we allowed him his bit of graphic licence. Here’s what he has to say about his choices:

The first unusual thing is that there are two photos of sax players, and both of them were taken on the same night, when Stone Foundation supported The Blow Monkeys at Under the Bridge. It’s a lovely venue and the team there pay a lot of attention to detail in their presentation which means that the sound and light are spot on. The lighting on the shots of Gary Rollins (Stone Foundation) and Neville Henry (Blow Monkeys) is very different; one’s very warm and the other’s quite cool, but they both work.

The Glenn Alexander shot (from a Southside Johnny gig at Shepherds Bush Empire) works because it has all the rock guitarist elements, but you can see him watching centre stage because he’s playing with Southside and anything can happen. As for Pete Kennedy (taken at a Kennedys show at Green Note), I loved the concentration, but how often do you see photos of an Ovation ukulele?

The shot of Nick Bowden and Paul Bowe of Federal Charm was another one from the Empire, when the band supported Ian Hunter on the final night of his UK tour. The band only had a thirty minute support set but they threw everything at it and I think this shot captures the energy they poured in to that set. I wish I could say that the shot of Keisuke Nishikawa (at a Vera Lynch gig) was carefully planned, but the downward look and the atmospheric lighting just happened to coincide with the click of the shutter.

 

Guy TitleSo it’s kind of a bittersweet moment then; the last gig ever for Vera Lynch and it’s at Barfly Camden. The bar service and the lighting are basic, but at least the sound is good. I managed a very quick word with singer Guy Harries before Vera hit the stage for the last time and the inside track is that the split is just one of those things that happen in the music scene today. No-one fell out, no-one got killed and all of the band members looked like they were really enjoying their final gig. It’s always sad to see a good band split, but I’m sure we’ll see the various Veras cropping up in various guises before too long.

The final set was a compilation of favourites from the two Vera Lynch EPs, including the crowd-pleasers “Dog in the Club”, “Horror Doctor”, “Child of Jago” and “Stormy Weather”, which finishes perfectly with “The End of the World”, from the second EP; it’s a lovely note to bow out on. It’s wonderful to see the band giving all they’ve got to make it a memorable final gig and especially to see Guy terrifying the front row of the audience during “Horror Doctor”.

It may be a small ripple on a small pool, but I’ll miss Vera Lynch: I saw the band four times in just over a year; they were always entertaining and bloody nice people as well. There’s a big hole out there now waiting to be filled by a band that can distill evil cowboy punk with mutant funk and camp theatrics; any takers?

The End of the WorldOK, I’ll admit it; the Riot Squad are big fans of Vera Lynch. We’ve seen them live a couple of times now and it’s quite an experience.  So what happens when you strip away the stagecraft and theatrics? Well the second Vera Lynch EP, “The End of the World”, answers that question.  The musicianship is superb throughout the five tracks as they bounce between musical styles from the mutant funk of the opening song “Child of Jago” with its wah-wah and clean, clipped guitar sounds to the sleazy camp metal of the closer, “Dog in the Club”.

The End of the World” starts as a slow environmental ballad before a squalling guitar signals the apocalyptic final third of the song, neatly underlining the song’s lyrical message.  Stormy Weather” combines pumping melodic bass with clipped guitar chords on the off beat and over-driven guitar to back lyrical themes of extremes of nature; you even get a reggae breakdown towards the end. “Horror Doctor” is a psychobilly/Cramps-style piece which is already a live favourite.  The band sounds perfectly at ease with the various genres featured across the five tracks of this EP and the instantaneous switches from one to another.

It’s easy to see why the Vera Lynch fanbase is growing; the live performances are riveting, but there are some good songs to back up the shows with thoughtful lyrics (“Child of Jago” made me hit the search button a few times) and interesting arrangements delivered with a theatricality that’s reminiscent of the late Alex Harvey (look him up kids) at his best.  It’s a clever mixture of the thought-provoking and the unhinged and it’s great fun.

You can see them live at the EP launch on May 10 in Shoreditch.

“End of the World” is out now and available from Amazon, and ITunes.

There are two albums which were reviewed on MusicRiot on the Top 40 Independent Album chart last week, Neneh Cherry’s “Blank Project” and Stone Foundation’s “To Find the Spirit”.  These albums have a few things in common; they’re both fourth studio albums, they both have guest artists, both were rated as 4* by MusicRiot writers and both feature guest performers and the similarity pretty much ends there.  Except that, as Neil Sheasby, bass player and songwriter with Stone Foundation pointed out a few days ago, both albums were in the 30-to-40 section of the Independent Album chart, “To Find the Spirit” at 33, “Blank Project” at 38.

It isn’t a straightforward comparison; Neneh Cherry’s album peaked in the top ten a fortnight earlier while “To Find the Spirit” has just entered the chart in its first week.  The interesting story here is the journey that each of these albums made to reach those chart positions.  This isn’t a criticism of Neneh Cherry; it’s an achievement to get any kind of significant album sales at a time when the value of music has been so degraded by piracy and the industry has no time or money for artist development.  Most of the bands I’ve spoken to recently have only the most tangential contact with the traditional music industry, usually at the distribution end of the chain.

Neneh Cherry was operating on a fairly tight budget with “Blank Project”; it was recorded and mixed in five days (featuring guest appearances from Robyn and RocketNumberNine) by Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, generating a certain level of interest in the project outside Neneh Cherry’s own fanbase, which is still reasonably healthy after a long time out of the spotlight.  In the weeks leading up to the release there was a significant amount of interest from the trade press and even the inkies in the UK; the physical release was in vinyl and bonus CD form with the CD containing the almost obligatory remixes.  So, signs of a marketing budget there.  Maybe not a huge budget, but enough to get the album into the mainstream media.

Stone Foundation have been doing their thing for about ten years, building up a local, then national, then international following; putting in the hard graft, basically.  The band has played as Stone Foundation and has also backed touring soul singers such as Nolan Porter and Joe Harris, building a reputation and a hugely loyal fanbase.  There’s no complicated organisation in place here; no manager or entourage; just seven very gifted and committed musicians (plus long-time production collaborator, Andy Codling) with a total belief in what they do.

“To Find the Spirit” has a few guest appearances too.  Nolan Porter, Carleen Anderson, Pete Williams from Dexys and even Paolo Hewitt are all there.  The album even has a remix; the Dennis Bovell dub of “Don’t Let the Rain”, which is available on all formats.  The promotion campaign was minimal, focussing on social media and a support slot on The Selecter’s anniversary tour, but still the album managed to break into the official Independent Album Top 40.

It would be easy to moan about how much better it was in the good old days when artists got huge advances and only toured in support of an album, but that model just doesn’t apply any more.  Most artists now only make money by touring, and a lot of that income is from merchandising.  Take a step away from singles charts and there are thousands of talented and hard-working musicians taking control of the recording, marketing and distribution processes (physical and electronic) to get their own material out into the marketplace with very little help from the mainstream media.  The MusicRiot writers try to cover as many artists as we can who are working in this way (as do thousands of other websites) but it’s only effective if our readers actually do something about it.  It’s so easy to try before you buy these days that any music lover should be able find new artists doing something interesting and appealing if they make the effort.  It’s all going on out there but, despite 6 Music’s slightly patronising campaign, it won’t come to you automatically; you have to make the effort to go out and find it.

So I say thank you to Stone Foundation and the other artists and labels we’ve featured recently; The Brothers Groove, Roscoe Levee, Bandhouse Records, Drumfire Records, Ags Connolly, Phil  Burdett, Dean Owens, Jo Hook and Geoffrey Richardson, Noel Cowley, Pete Kennedy, Aynsley Lister, Vera Lynch and the Billy Walton Band.  All of these artists are making their own wonderful live and recorded music while doing whatever else it takes to allow them to keep on making music.

Now go out and support them.

Cover229, The Venue?  It’s easy to get to because it’s part of the International Students’ House complex just across the street from Great Portland Street tube station.  Venue 2 is a basement room with a stage at one end and a bar on one side.  The acoustics are reasonable so it’s not a bad place to watch up-and-coming bands.  My mission tonight, if I choose to accept it, is to have a look at London alt-indie (let’s leave the description at that for the moment) band, Vera Lynch.  In keeping with their highly eclectic sound, the band has a multinational line-up with members from the UK, USA, Hungary and the Far East.  They are: Sándor Sztankovics (drums), Ted Barker (bass), Keisuke Nishikawa (guitar), Brian Pistolesi (guitar) and Guy Harries (vocals).

If you could splice the musical DNA of Dick Dale, Ennio Morricone and English ‘80s post-punk, you might come close to defining the Vera Lynch sound; you might even want to throw a bit of early Bowie and INXS in there.  The band has an EP out at the moment, “Evil Cowboy Surfer Songs” (to be reviewed here soon), and you might expect to hear all four songs from the EP as part of a short live set, but it doesn’t work out that way because, well, this is Vera Lynch.  In fact, only two songs from the EP, “Fire” and “”Evil Cowboy Surfer Song”, make the live set.  The band opens with “Dog in the Club” and then “Lost Property”, “Horror Doctor”, “Child of Jago” and the anthemic closer, “The End of the World”, follow the two songs from the EP.

It’s quite a spectacle; the band look great and they play together as a very tight unit, moving through varying musical moods with style and panache and providing a bedrock for the lead vocals.  Guy Harries is mesmeric and messianic, a twenty-first century Ian Curtis (but with a sense of rhythm) who transfixes the audience with his scary, stary-eyed delivery and a voice that might just have a hint of Freddie Mercury in there as well.  Musically and visually, they are impossible to ignore and you really should make the effort to go out and see them.

If you want to see Vera Lynch live in the next few weeks, you can see them at The Dolphin in Hackney on Friday February 28 or Underbelly in Hoxton on Friday April 18.

Civil Protection coverOne of the benefits of being a member of the Riot Squad is that you get to visit all sorts of weird and wonderful venues and (mostly) hear great new bands; sometimes you even get both at the same time.  So this time it’s Buffalo in Islington, a cellar bar with enough PA to ensure the bands are loud and a room that you could probably cram 150 people into if you had a big shoe-horn.  We were invited to go and have a look at Civil Protection, who were first on the bill but thought it was only polite to check out the other three bands on the bill.

Sound Off played a set that was musically solid but not particularly strong vocally, while Punch and Judy featured original material plus a couple of covers including the song you couldn’t get away from this summer, “Get Lucky” which they rocked up a bit at the expense of its funky feel and it sounded pretty good.  Of the three, Vera Lynch impressed most.  They describe themselves as dark alt-surf-garage rock with a sprinkling of psychedelia; the musicianship is very high quality, the songs are strong and they have a very charismatic frontman and I’m sure they’ll be featuring here in the near future.

Civil Protection are a five-piece from Yorkshire (bass, drums, three guitars and occasional vocals) and they released their debut album, “Stolen Fire” earlier this month.  They’ve been compared to post-rock bands like Mogwai and This Will Destroy You, but there’s probably a bit of Sigur Ros in there as well.  It’s impossible to describe what they do as songs, because there aren’t a lot of vocals; soundscapes is probably better or, if I’m feeling really pretentious, tone poems.

The set opens with the quietly haunting “Monedula” and, as on the album, eases gently into the opening of “Stolen Fire” which builds layer on layer, guitar on guitar using all of the band’s dynamic range.  “My Memories will be Part of the Sky” starts like a piledriver before easing back into a build-up starting with a melodic bass line.  “Many Moons Ago” and “Redrawn” have similar structures, starting slowly and gradually adding textures (although “Redrawn” does it twice) before hitting a peak and releasing the tension with a gentle coda.  And that’s it; thirty minutes and five pieces.

Civil Protection live are a collage of textures and layers of guitar (and bass) parts with a huge dynamic range.  The band move effortlessly up through the gears from one clean, quiet guitar to the whole band playing at full power in a live setting with as much confidence as on the album and somehow convey emotional states without using lyrical content.  The changes of pace and levels throughout the short set ensure that the audience is always attentive, waiting for the next move. You should make the effort to get out and see Civil Protection live as soon as you can but if you can’t do that, then get yourself a copy of “Stolen Fire”.