Shogazing female fronted bands

Life sometimes throws up magic combinations like cheese and marmite or pineapple, coconut and Bacardi. Aurally speaking one such magic combination is a gentle female voice over often ludicrously overdriven guitars. Lots of bands we admire were making the most of this combination in the 80’s and 90’s. Personal favourites include My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Belly and The Breeders. Unlike your X-Factor winning divas the likes of Miki Berenyi, Bilinda Butcher and Tanya Donnelly were not great technical singers, instead they sounded real and were not only singing their own music, but singing music that was also special, breathtaking, ground breaking and very cool. Check out albums like Loveless, Gala, Star and Last Splash coming from labels like 4AD and Creation. Just thought I’d blog say how much we liked and miss bands like this.

Spot the influences...

The Solid Silver Sixties Tour 2011

We really enjoyed seeing the Solid Silver Sixties tour 2011 this week and briefly meeting some of the musicians afterwards. We saw the tour in Liverpool and Manchester and hope to go again to a few more soon. The bands included the legendary Merseybeats and the amazingly versatile Vanity Fare who backed Wayne Fontana, Chris Farlowe, Terry Sylvester and Dave Berry. They all still sound great and the music speaks for itself. It's mind blowing to think of the classic original records the various artists were on, including The Air That I Breathe and He Aint Heavy He's My Brother (Terry Sylvester),  Handbags and Gladrags (Chris Farlowe), The Crying Game (Dave Berry), Game of Love (Wayne Fontana), Sorrow (The Merseybeats), etc. Music that has since inspired covers by the likes of Rod Stewart, Bowie, Boy George, Simply Red and Radiohead ;-).

From left to right Eddie Wheeler (Vanity Fare), Dave Berry, Mark Ellen  (Vanity Fare), Billy Kinsley (The Merseybeats), Terry Sylvester,  Tony Crane (The Merseybeats), Chris Farlowe, Wayne Fontana

He's some of their other tunes...

An unashamedly optimistic look at the future

The future might not be that rosy. Personal wrinkles aside, the bigger picture may bring with it dwindling resources, climate change, nuclear proliferation, natural disasters, super bugs, nanotech killer goo or just some kind of cultural malaise as information overload and the financial ‘bottom line’ decrease our attention spans.

However, it’s nice to day dream about a new technological utopia in which robots do all the hard work. A future where all our major energy, health and food problems are sussed and our abilities to create, explore and communicate are enhanced.

Here’s a youtube with a futurology timeline that includes some predictions taken from a number of authoritative sources. Though prediction is notoriously difficult. For example in the late sixties many people thought we’d be inhabiting other planets by now (it was a reasonable prediction given the success of the moon landings). Conversely, nobody really forecasted the rise and impact of the internet or the momentus changes it’s bringing about. The most interesting change right now being the way powerful interests have lost control of information, thus creating a world where, for example, dictators simply can’t exist.

Technology offers a longer and better life with less impact on the environment; whether that's going to work for everyone is ultimately a test of the human condition.

Anyway hope you like the video, please comment on the youtube and share it around on facebook, myspace, etc.

Here's some other future gazing stuff on youtube ...