The CLUAS Archive: 1998 - 2011

22

I’ve just come back from a look at That Night We Play Music, a play in the unlikely surrounds of the People’s Liberation Army Theatre in north Beijing. I went to see Xie Tianxiao and his mate Wan Xiaoli, the main draws in the play which was presented by the pair’s Beijing-based music label Thirteenth Month. Impressario  Lu Zhongqiang, who runs Thirteenth Month, introduced the drama as a parody of lip-synching singers and "arrogant big-shots" i.e. Hong Kong bubble gum pop stars and their managers, who command all the best slots on Chinese TV and advertising rotas. The main star was undoubtedly Xie, who in various past lives has tried to emulate (successfully) Jimmi Hendrix and Thom Yorke in both material and appearance. His pals and peers Zhang Chu, and Qiu Ye, founder of rock band Zi Yue, also made cameos in the play, which was worth going to see for Xie’s playing and to two-finger the Mandopop establishment which rule China’s music scene. But this was no masterpiece of stage crafting. I’ll wait for Xie’s next album/gig.

See Xie's best Hendrix impersonation, and artwork for the last album he recorded with his band, Cold Blooded Animal:


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21

Last Friday night your correspondent was at Les Nuits Zebrées, an invitation-only concert at La Bellevilloise hosted (and broadcast live) by hip Paris station Radio Nova.

Our interest was in Tony Allen, not just because of his connection to the legendary Fela Kuti but because his was the only name on the line-up that we recognized. Still, we were assured that the other acts would be just as good, so along we went in curiosity.

And the intrigue was heightened when we saw that Allen wasn’t even top of the bill, but would be on and off by 10:15 that night. Who were these people unknown to us, Oxmo Puccino and Java, headlining and filling this concert while relegating an international cult hero to a supporting role? We’ll come to them later.

First, Tony Allen, his shiny shellsuit and his 8-piece band. No sooner had he settled into his seat than he uttered the dreaded words: “Tonight we’ll be playing only new songs, no older stuff…” New songs meant safe-hands Afrobeat with support-group lyrics about celebrating everyday and living life to the max.

The group’s guitarist kept to fairly basic chicken-scratching all night, which probably accounted for his slightly demented expression: one could see that here was a man who would sooner have been celebrating savage riffs and sexy licks. Still, like reggae, Afrobeat is hard to get wrong – so long as the band is tight and the words not too distractingly naff, it’ll always get you moving.

We caught the last few numbers of Oxmo Puccino: he’s a Mali-born rapper, real name Abdoulaye Diarra. Unlike his more muscular French counterparts and their concrete-block beats, he raps along to melodic music and supple rhythms. It was impressive and likeable stuff. Oxmo Puccino will be at the Solidays festival here in Paris next weekend – as will your correspondent, and we’ll make sure to catch him again.

But what about this Java, then? Digging desperately for scraps of pre-gig info, we were told that their brand of rap + rock + trad French had filled the 1,200-punter Elysée Montmartre the previous week, so they were clearly big in France. This was news to us. All this time the room had filled to bursting. The excitement was palpable and the heat was intense: condensed sweat dripped from the low ceiling. Then on stroll Java, four thirtysomething Parisians dressed by the houses of punk and ska.

You can see how Java (left) have generated such a large live following. Their hip-hop beats get people jumping and the stiff, strident rapping of R.Wan whips them into a frenzy. Where punk bands have a guitar, Java have a very French-sounding musette accordion – this gives them an air of home-grown authenticity but also a slightly conservative familiarity which calls like a siren to the mainstream Gallic punter. Musically, there isn’t anything radically new here – modern chanson française already prizes monotone/spoken lyrics, retro instruments and the rhythms of rap and electronica.

That said, Java are hugely enjoyable live. They have in abundance what most hip-hop or French acts sorely lack – a sense of humour. They sum up their philosophy: “Java, c’est du rock n’roll… sex, accordeon et alcool” (sex, accordion and alcohol). A new song calling for ecumenical unity was potentially pompous, but its wit was underlined by R.Wan dressed as the Pope. 

And on ‘J’Me Marre’ he touches on that most painful of French sporting heartaches: Seville ’82. (Believe us: regardless of 1998, French people have still not gotten over Schumacher and that penalty shoot-out.)

Most boho French acts (and Java are certainly bourgeois bohemians, or at least heavily dependent on that demographic) make a big deal of singing right-on lyrics with crowdpleasing digs at Sarko and ‘the fascists’. Java are more subtle and less superficial than that: R.Wan prods the ruling conservative mentality by succinctly observing how Paris is petrifying into an open-air museum (‘Paris Musée’) and how today’s working classes could soon change their sympathies from the Communist Party to the right-wing Front National (‘Mona’).

We’ve been listening to Java’s new album, ‘Maudits Français’ – the title is a play on “cursed French” and “badly-said French”. Quite simply, the live energy isn’t there – the beats are lower in the mix, so the swirling retro accordion dominates and gives a rather quaint feeling to the whole thing.

Still and all, Java are worth listening to if at least to find out what’s popular in France today - check out some of their tunes on Java's MySpace page. Here they are live with their manifesto, ‘Sex, Accordeon Et Alcool’:



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21

Put French musicians around a dinner table or bar counter these times and the conversation will probably turn – in jest or in earnest – to le loi Hadopi, Hadopi’s Law. This is neither a French cop show, obscure rule of physics nor droll observation about how your tartine always falls to the carpet butter side down.

Hadopi is not a person but the acronym of the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet, a proposed state body to regulate the traffic of copyrighted material on the Internet.  And le loi Hadopi is a government-sponsored bill that seeks to create the Hadopi and punish the act of downloading or sharing copyrighted files illegally, i.e. without paying. Under a three-strikes system, an offender would receive two warnings before finally having their internet access cut off.

The bill has had a troubled life. Introduced by Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right government, it was first supported and then opposed by the deeply-divided opposition Socialist Party. But it soon became clear that France’s left-leaning mainstream music artists actually favoured the bill, although with some discomfort at being seen to support something sponsored by Sarko. Realising that they had seriously misjudged their own constituency, some Socialist deputies abstained an Assembly vote in April where the bill was defeated, and then from the May vote in which a re-jigged bill was passed. It was then sent to France’s Constitutional Council to check that it was legally sound.

But on 10 June the Council sensationally rejected the bill as unconstitutional. Giving a non-judicial body such as a state agency the power to cut off a person’s internet and personal communications access, the council decided, would breach two principles: presumption of innocence and liberty of expression.  Now the bill will be redrafted and returned to a parliamentary vote.

With impeccable timing, then, an association called Libre Accès held its annual Fête des Arts Libres (Free Arts Festival) in the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement of Paris last Saturday night. The day and night’s programme included discussion of the loi Hadopi and performances by acts who have chosen to make their work freely available on the Internet. Your correspondent was there to see a Paris band called Lonah, whose entire back catalogue of two albums and one E.P. is yours to download for free from their website. We recommend you check them out. (Obviously, if a band makes their music available for free then nobody’s going to have their internet snipped.)

What’s better than one good band? Two good bands! Also on the line-up were Franco-Venezuelan foursome Guarapita, whose sound is that of Latino revolutionaries gone ska. The crowd liked them a lot - even more when they started serving vodka and orange out of a plastic bucket. Free music and free booze: life is good.

Regardless of how the mainstream artistic world feels, the trend for celebrating ‘free’ music is spreading. The Fête de la Culture Etudiante (Student Culture festival) will take place on 27 June at the Bellevilloise in Paris. There’s no entry charge, and the festival’s slogan is ‘Libres comme les arts’: free as the arts. (Though we must admit we'd be willing to pay to hear a band from Angers called Misty Socks play their fine new single 'Not A Wanker', pronounced "wonker" à la française. We've made up none of that.)

Meanwhile, le loi Hadopi lies waiting to re-appear in some new form, as intriguing a drama as any U.S. series you could download without paying. Perhaps it’s closer to a French cop show after all.
 

Here's the atmospheric electro-rock of Lonah's 'Les Effacés':


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19

I spent an evening in Tom Lee’s music shop in Hong Kong lately. Easy to find – the punk kids loitering outside - and a joy to peruse, the shop is half a century selling musical instruments, sheet music and classes in the depths of Kowloon, Hong Kong’s densely populated entertainment district. Wedged in among the dim sum restaurants, Tom Lee’s Cameron St store in Tsim Sha Tsui opened in 1953. The store and another  are today the company’s show rooms among the firm’s 20 outlets across Hong Kong. Interestingly they’ve also gone global, building out from a showroom in Vancouver to 9 stores accross Canada. There's also a Tom Lee's in Macau. It’ll be very interesting to see if they open up in mainland China: the many, mostly tiny, music shops in Gulou district down in Beijing’s historic quarter would all fit into Tom’s Lee’s two-storey premises.  

 

John Lee, CEO of Tom Lee's music (thanks to HK Chamber of Commerce for pic)

I've written before here about China being the world's number one maker of entry-level instruments - and, increasingly, professional level gear too. Tom Lee's takes advantage of its China links in shipping cheap, quality gear into North America. Aside from the bilingual (English and Cantonese) signage and heritage - lots of collector-only guitar framed and mounted on the wall – Tom Lee’s has what most mainland stores lack: a vast product range, and knowledge of the product. That’s not to say that the stores in Gulou aren’t friendly and learning fast: they are. But how enjoyable to wander around Tom Lee’s for a few hours.

 


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17

Anatomy of the CLUAS writers poll (part 2)As promised last week in the first part of the anatomy of our poll to find the top Irish albums released in the last 10 years, you'll find below the albums that were voted for but did not make the top 50. In total there are 86 albums that were voted for but that did not make the final published list of ranked albums. Of these, 5 were voted for by 2 writers, the rest secured a solitary vote.

A quick glance and you can see some acts who were 'penalised' for their productivity in the last decade as their votes, being spread over multiple albums, diluted their rankings and so reduced their prospects of making the final top 50 (e.g. Ann Scott, Redneck Manifesto, Future Kings of Spain, Nina Hynes and Pony Club).

[Aside: I didn't have the time to do a forensic eligibilty check on the albums below so you may come across entries that were not full length albums, or were released before 1999, or are by acts that are not Irish...]

Albums outside the top 50 that secured 2 votes:

  • Bell X1 - Flock
  • Crayonsmith - White Wonder
  • The Dudley Corporation - In Love With The Dudley Corporation
  • Hybrasil - The Monkey Pole
  • Super Extra Bonus Party - Super Extra Bonus Party

Albums outside the top 50 that secured 1 vote:


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17

Cork Indie Music ScenePerplexingly, CLUAS continues to be Ireland's number one website for jazz music (well, at least in the eyes of Google, Yahoo and Bing). Not happy with just addressing the needs of jazz aficionados, CLUAS has strived to earn it metal stripes and we are now the number 1 website for Irish heavy metal music (according to Google and Bing where CLUAS holds both the 1st & 2nd slots on searches for 'Irish heavy metal music', while chez Yahoo we currently hold the 3rd and 9th spots for the same search).

Now we are on our way to becoming the top website for the Cork Music scene. This, er, radical development is thanks to a new page I published on the site last week without any fanfare. The page brings together links to all articles from the first 10 years of CLUAS that relate to Cork bands in addition to reviews of gigs that took place in Cork. I simply stuck a link to this new page from the main CLUAS page and then around the website I found a few instances of the word 'Cork' and I simply changed them into a link that points to the new Cork specific page. I then sat back and let the search engines do the rest...

A week has passed and already the results are impressive for the major search engines, just see the table below:

Search phrase Our ranking on Google Our ranking on Yahoo
cork indie scene 1 2
cork indie bands 1 7
cork indie music 1 not in top 10
cork music scene 4 2

 

[I also checked our ranking on Microsoft's excellent new search engine Bing but it is not - at the time of writing - throwing up CLUAS as a result for any of the above searches. I expect that to change in the next week or two].

To be honest I was not surprised at this quick result. For years I have been honing CLUAS so that it is optimised for search engines and, indeed, a very significant proportion of our traffic comes from search engines. In time I expect this new page to attract a healthy and steady number of new people to the site who are interested in Cork music, and if even a fraction of them become repeat visitors, and maybe even join the CLUAS writing team, it will have been worth the effort.


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17

So, did you head along to Naive New Beaters at ALT on 6 June? As we mentioned, that NNBs show was the entrée to the main course of Let's French, the annual Dublin festival that celebrates France's national music day on 21 June.

Let's French 2009Let's French 2009 features a mix of live concerts and music films. It all starts tonight (18 June) with a screening of Daft Punk's Interstellar 555 at the Denzille Cinema on Denzille Lane. Later, the first concert of the weekend is by Parisian hip-hop crew DSL at the Andrew's Lane Theatre.

Tomorrow night (19 June) there's a special concert at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in honour of... Jacques Brel. (Yes, Jacques Brel was Belgian. You can take this up with the Let's French people yourself.) But the real treat is a screening at the Denzille of the film of Serge Gainsbourg's fabulous 1971 record 'Histoire De Melody Nelson', the greatest French album ever. A series of colourful and trippy videos for each track, featuring a too-cool Serge and a groovy Jane Birkin, it's a fantastic time capsule.

For any early risers on Saturday morning, at the crack of noon there's a screening of Louis Chedid's musical 'Le Soldat Rose' at the Denzille Cinema, then a family open mic show at the Alliance Française at 2 p.m. That night's concert at Twisted Pepper is the festival's centrepiece - electropoppers Housse De Racket.

On Sunday, Fête de la Musique day, there's another full journée of events. Have your brunch at La Mère Zou while listening to jazz. Then head to the Denzille Cinema again fro an afternoon double-bill: Jacque Demy's children's fairytale classic 'Peau d'Ane' with music by Michel Legrand and (for dragged-along fathers) starring Catherine Deneuve, followed by Alain Resnais' 'On Connais Le Chanson', a romantic comedy where characters sing along to classic French pop hits.

Finally, on Sunday evening there's a free Fête de la Musique concert at The Village featuring French singer-songer Marie Cherrier and Dublin's favourite French rockeuse Lauren Guillery.

Full details are on the Let's French website. Here's Housse De Racket with their 2008 single 'Oh Yeah':


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16

Key Notes will admit he has a soft spot for Oxegen, and not just because it takes place 20 minutes from his house.  Last year, not only did this blog have the honour of being the first person served a beer in the festival site but, more importantly, ensured that CLUAS was the first publication in the world to review Oxegen.  He's looking forward to the 2009 edition which will see Oxegen remain a four day event.  Punters who decide to stay on Thursday night will once again enjoy the likes of The Stone Roses Experience and AC/DC cover band, Hells Bells on the Thursday Night Live Stage as well as the return of the Headphone Disco and Campsite Funfair.

Friday July 10

Friday night on the Main Stage is really about one band and one band only.  Blur make their long awaited return to the live scene and lots of people like Key Notes, who grew up with Blur versus Oasis, will get very excited.  Snow Patrol are also playing the Main Stage while Oxegen Stage 2 features the likes of Therapy?, Duke Special and Keane. 2 Many DJs, Mogwai (both Heineken Green Spheres) and Ladyhawke (Red Bull Music Academy) are amongst the other highlights.

Irish interest on Friday revolves around Republic of Loose, Fight Like Apes and God Is An Astronaut, all of whom are playing Heineken Green Spheres.

Key Notes One to Watch: David Holmes (Red Bull Music Academy)

Saturday July 11

This blog's opinion on Kings of Leon is public knowledge but the Irish Public have voted and the band return to Oxegen to headline the Main Stage on Saturday night.  Of Far more interest to Key Notes will be the Main Stage performances of Elbow and SqueezeOxegen Stage 2is where the real action is on Saturday with the likes of Nick Cave, Doves, Eagles of Death Metal and The Gaslight Anthem all forming part of an eclectic line-up.

If none of those bands are for you then you could always check out Pete(r) Doherty and Regina Spektor (all Heineken Green Spheres) or Crystal Castles (Red Bull Music Academy).  Irish interest comes in the shape of The Blizzards (Main Stage), Director, C O D E S and And So I Watched You From Afar (all IMRO New Sounds Stage)

Key Notes One to Watch: Pet Shop Boys (Heineken Green Spheres)

Sunday July 12

The Main Stage plays host to The Killers on Sunday night where the audience can also see performances from The Specials and Ocean Colour Scene.  Elsewhere, Nine Inch Nails (in what could be the bands final Irish performance) and Jane's Addiction are sure to draw a big crowd to Oxegen Stage 2 as will Manic Street Preachers and That Petrol Emotion who both play Heineken Green Spheres. Those of you who feel like dancing can check out Felix Da Housecat and MSTRKRFT in the Oxegen Dance Arena.

The IMRO New Sounds Stage has some of the brightest and best in Irish music performing on Sunday.  Headlined by the brilliant Villagers, the stage also plays host of Concerto for Constantine (who put in one of the performances of the weekend last year), Wintersleep and Dark Room Notes.

Key Notes One to Watch: Villagers (IMRO New Sounds Stage)

For those of you who want to wake up hungover, tired and dirty on Monday morning, but having enjoyed a great weekend of music, tofu burgers and lobster sun tans, a limited number of weekend tickets are still available for Oxegen from the usual outlets.


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16

When I heard, saw Yu Tian playing an underground passageway in downtown Beijing I easily parted with the RMB20 (EUR1,90) for his self CD. His easy strumming and sad songs about love lost and whacky observations on China’s social development. The soft, sad voice and Morrisey-esque literariness both mean he’ll never be a big star in China. Stars here become stars by smiling when they bop about stage singing upbeat pop. 

Tunes like 'Ke Yu Bu Ke Qin' (Possible to Meet But Can't Beg For It) suggest a Bob Dylan fan but there's a much softer voice here, less political lyrics and a dreamy delivery that suggest a poet who's picked up a guitar to accompany musings under a willow tree in a Beijing park. If you're ever down at the computer marts in Chaoyangmen on a weekend, you'll usually find Yu in the subteranean passageway linking the BuyNow centre with the other side of the crazy highway (though it's called a 'street') that runs through this neighbourhood in high rise Chaoyang district.

 

 


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15
Although Bruce Springsteen’s songs tend to focus on highways, as Prefab Sprout slyly observed in their song ‘Cars and Girls’, it is a little known fact that in 1967 The Boss tried his hand at surfing in New Jersey.

According to his lifelong friend and band mate Steve Van Zandt however, Bruce did not have as much success with wave riding as he did with guitar playing. In an interview with wenn.com, Van Zandt’s opined that it was a bizarre hobby for Bruce to choose as surfing wasn’t cool in New Jersey at that time, “So we went to the beach so he could demonstrate it to me. He goes out. First wave, he gets up on it, falls off it, surfboard comes up and knocks out his front teeth. He comes in dragging the board, bleeding like he's had his throat cut. I told him I'd take a rain check on it."

In 2007, New Jersey blogger Paul Mulshine posted the following on his NJ Voices blog, “I was out at my favorite surf spot the other day....I was surprised to see Springsteen out there. He was ripping it up on a longboard. It's rare to see a local hero like that in the lineup.”

Notwithstanding Springsteen’s various forays into surfing, it is possible to embark on a surf quest from the East Coast of the United States down to Mexico stopping only at surf spots drawn from the titles of some of Bruce Springsteen’s songs. No less than five of Springsteen’s finest narrative ballads are set in places which boast surf spots of a reasonable quality.

Song #1: 4th of July, Ashbury Park (Sandy)
Surf Spot #1: Ashbury Park, NJ

Song #2: Atlantic City
Surf Spot #2: Atlantic City, NJ

Song #3: Galveston Bay
Surf Spot #3: Galveston Bay, TX

Song #4: Balboa Park
Surf Spot #4: Balboa Park, San Diego, CA

Song #5: Sinaloa Cowboys
Surf Spot #5: Sinaloa, Mexico
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Nuggets from our archive

2000 - 'Rock Criticism: Getting it Right', written by Mark Godfrey. A thought provoking reflection on the art of rock criticism.