More than once during their barnstorming performance this weekend, Bobby Vylan, vocalist with Bob Vylan proclaimed from the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Institute that “We are the cutest band in punk rock. The friendliest band in rock’n’roll. The most important band in Great Britain”. He might just have been right.
Springs begins cooking with “Spaced Out Invaders - Part I Quirks,” its fourth track. A spindly, rotating guitar figure interweaves with clattering percussion and pulsating electric bass. Around three minutes in, a sax – which, until this point, has kept in the background – begins whipping up a maelstrom. Overall, the effect conjured is that of a space rock-inclined exotica, Martin Denny had he been an early Seventies freak.
After the chart success of his second album, June 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul, it was inevitable that any single had to represent Isaac Hayes in a different way to the LP. The album’s 12-minute version of “Walk on by” would not work as a seven-incher. There was also “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which clocked in at over 18 minutes. They did, though, become the A- and B-sides of a tie-in single. But only after significant editing.
The name is so familiar it inhibits analysis. Gerry and the Pacemakers – Gerry Marsden and his band, a group with a designation pronouncing they made the pace, were with the trends. For a while, the case can be made that this is how it was. After The Beatles smashed into the charts, Gerry and the Pacemakers occupied the rung below them as the UK’s second-most commercially successful new band.
The bar staff at Saint Luke’s will rarely have had an easier night than this one. Such was the youthful nature of the crowd for Isabel LaRosa that there was little for them to do, beyond handing over occasional cans of Coke.
The atmosphere felt like a school disco, from constant sing-a-longs to whatever was blaring out over the PA (and a mass dance routine when Chappell Roan’s "Hot to Go" kicked in) to gaggles of arm-locked girls hurrying back and forth across the floor ahead of the main event.
Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands is one of those films that, perhaps embarrassingly, feels very necessary. An examination of the history of solely all female bands in Scotland since the 1960s, it is a great demonstration of how little seems to have changed, particularly when it comes to the industry’s perceived "risk" when backing these groups.
Tess Parks’ fourth solo album is suffused with otherness. When lyrics are direct, they are destabilised by the etiolated, freeze-dried voice delivering them. “Sometimes it feels like everyone should be dancing, maybe I should be dancing,” she sings during “Koalas.” It does not sound as if Parks has the energy to dance.
The Undertakers were central to the Merseybeat boom. The best of what they issued on single in 1963 and 1964 captured the raw, stomping sound adored by Liverpool’s audiences. But hits were elusive and they dropped off the musical map at the end of 1964. The Beatles never forget The Undertakers though. In 1968, former Undertaker Jackie Lomax was signed to their label Apple.
The years may go by and the albums might change, but there are always a few constants with Public Service Broadcasting. There is the recorded message that precedes their arrival for one, a disembodied voice booming out to inform the crowd to put their phones away and not talk loudly.
Just before the five-minute point, a Mellotron’s distinctive string sound is heard. Three minutes earlier, a guitar evokes Robert Fripp’s characteristic shimmer. Uniting these might result in King Crimson but, instead, these are just two elements of “I Cover the Mountain Top,” the wild, 22-minute opening track of Catching Fire, a studio-quality live album recorded on 20 January 2017 at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazzscene.