Archive for April, 2006

“Boom boom bap. Tap tap tap. That’s the beat of my life” sang The Sweetest Voice. ‘Boom boom thud. Buzz buzz buzz’ sang the onstage monitors. Or at least that’s how Green Gartside heard it. This was pop’s most-infamously stage-shy star staring his demons in the face. “You wonder why I haven’t played for 26 years?” he sighed as another technical glitch left him looking for the exit sign.

And yet, in sharp contrast, for those of us out there in front of him – a loyal band of performance-starved devotees – it sounded quite wonderful, flaws and all. A sublime set of all-new songs bristling with hooks and harmonies. Pure pop with the windows of possibility opened wide.

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3 More clips, that’s what. Cooking, E11th Nuts and Robin Hood (encore). That makes six clips sofar from last monday’s gig in the Luminaire. Green is wearing the Double G & The Traitorous 3 T-shirt again, as you can see in the encore. As for the songs, i don’t have a clear favourite yet, that has to surface through several listens. Do enjoy Cooking a lot, especially the last part. Go something, go something, go something…

What’s this? It’s another clip from last mondays gig in The Luminaire yet again! Snow In Sun. The little false start in the beginning makes it just that bit more special. From an audience point of view ofcourse, must be different for the performers. Then you want things to be perfect. I’m really happy with the gigs and the chance of seeing a more human, approachable side of Scritti Politti, which up untill the beginning of this year was a sort of mirage in the desert. Now, it’s real.

Thanks to John Hyde and David C for letting us show these clips.

Another treat! This time it’s After Six, my favourite singalong song sofar. I’ve caught myself humming Jesus, keep your love away from me… quite some time.

I’ve also learned my lesson and checked the tracklisting, After Six is on the cd, but then ofcourse completely different. Or so i imagine. Because i haven’t actually heard it.

All clips are accessible as well from the Video page, where you can see all clips we’ve got sofar. Not the best quality, but unique material nonetheless.

Feast your eyes and ears on a new clip from the gig in the Luminaire last monday April 24th. The song featured is Am I Right In Thinking . You do need the Flash 8 player. Thanks David C and John Hyde for letting us show this clip on bibbly-o-tek.

Update: It appears i do not know the tracklisting of the upcoming cd by heart, i need to memorize. Someone had to point out to me that Am I Right In Thinking isn’t on the new cd. And i really love this song!

Well, it does seem that the official cover is really gonna be like this! On amazon.co.uk and play.com the ‘No image available’ placeholders are replaced by this, at first look, very basic cover. At second look though, hmm, it’s still really basic. If you zoom in (click the picture!), it’s a bit better. What looks like a really flat DIY job, is actually an applique stitched on jeans. A homemade look which might refer to the homemade feel of the cd maybe?

Well, i’m not completely against it. I do have to see the whole cd before final judgement, including typography and inner sleeves. It might not be as bad…

So, what do you think?

Okay at least we tried. We tried to contact Rough Trade. We even tried that old method; the fax machine.

No luck, no responses, nothing.

We haven’t heard the album yet! And I personally don’t have a clue weather or not Green is using one of my sounds on that album (I am a sound designer for Reason, a music-application Green told me he did use for this album).

But obviously this guy Tim of Channel4 has more luck.

We’d go so far to say that this album is as beautiful and strange and uniquely pop as anything Scritti Politti have ever produced.

We want that CD!

Update 0: Thanks Tim for the article and cool looking Green pic!

Update 1: It seems that Channel4 still doesn’t have a proper permalink structure on their website. Here is the permanent link to the article (thanks Tim!). Maybe we should take a screenshot and save it for Scritti Archive Reasons…

The date for the release of the new album White Bread, Black Beer is most likely June 5th this year, but with the past delays, you never can be sure. First word on a new album was a year ago, in an interview for the UK radio station Resonance, where Green mentioned he was going to miss the deadline for March 2005. He sure was right about that! What the album will sound like is still a bit of a mystery, apart from The Boom Boom Bap, which you can have a listen to at the Guardian.

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Cat. no. VSCTD1731/VSCDX1731/VST1731/VSTDJ1731
Release date 05-07-1999

This is an 11 track remix promo cd, containing the Radio Edit of Tinseltown To The Boogiedown, the Album Version, “Dead Certainty” and 8 remixes (variations) of Tinseltown To The Boogiedown by the likes of producer Psycho Les, hiphopster Pete Rock, DJ Rob Swift and Ali Shaheed Mohammed (one of the founding members of A Tribe Called Quest). My personal favourite is the Rob Swift Variation, who gives the tune a spin with a catchy dancehall style beat and a recurring scratch sound.

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Browsing through some old favourite sites, i came across Flip Flop Flyin’ from Craig Robinson. Years ago, antiquity in internet time, i asked him to add Green to his still growing collection of Minipops, small pixel drawings roughly 70 x 45 pixels in size. His Anomie & Bonhomie time Green Gartside is funny enough instantly recognizable. The sunglasses, the beard. Maybe if you zoom in you can see the piercing!

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Robin Hood (we know who you are) send us this:

Click for large version!

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A date for a new gig popped up: friday, June 2nd, there is a Scritti Politti gig scheduled at the Hay Festival in South Wales. The program, sofar only available in pdf format, says that at 22.00 in the Cinema venue, there will be Green Gartside – Scritti Politti. There are no more details available, but it seems most likely that it is actual gig, not a screening or Q&A. Even though a Q&A might be worth attending!

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There is new page up at bibbly-o-tek: the complete Scritti Politti GiGography! Well, as complete as it can get anyway. Hours of searching the internet unearthed gigs, venues, lineups. It’s harder to get setlists right, and I’m very much in doubt that information will ever be available. I suspect there are a lot more gigs in the early days. I know of one in Hal 4, Rotterdam somewhere in 1979 or 1980, but i gotta go to the attic (the real one at the top of my appartment) to search for the right date.

The list isn’t not Explorer foolproof yet! Gotta work on that, but it has to wait till i have access to a pc with IE on it.

If you have any information on any gigs anytime, it would be great if you would share it!

As we’re patiently awaiting the next gig in two weeks time on April 24th in the Luminaire in London, it might be a nice idea to go back to when the first news on the gigs became public. Its a well known story to all who follow the Yahoo group, but for those who don’t, here goes. On monday January 2nd, 2006 at 1:18 pm a post appeared on the Scritti Politti Yahoo group.

[…]with support from …..oddly enough Green from Scritti Politti’s new band Double G & The Traitorous 3

Stunned and incredulous responses followed. The news of a new cd coming out, and the first public airing of Boom Boom Bap on radio BBC6 just a week before that seemed enough to satisfy a patient scritti fan. And who were Double G & the Traitorous 3 anyway? Yeah, Double G might refer to Green Gartside, but it could just as well be, hmm, well, who ever…

A few days later it started to look like it was for real. A response from Geoff Travis, Rough Trade founder, stated:

“hello,
yes this saturday night at the windmill in brixton,tell your friends
and come down.
it really is true.

best
geoff”

So on saturday January 7th, in the Windmill in Brixton, London, there was the first live performance in 26 years of Double G. ..and the Traitorous 3 …plus 2.

I do remember my own reaction. It’s a funny thing, being a scritti fan. It can lay dormant for years and years, i mean, 5 (technically only 4, since Early is a compilation) albums in 25 years! And ever since the mid 80s there was no question of a live gig. I remember reading interviews in 1985, when Cupid & Psyche came out, where Green flirted with the idea of playing the songs live. It just never happened.

After the gig rapt reviews started to flood in. The Guardian posted the first official story about the gig. And there was gonna be more too! It was then i decided i wasn’t going to miss out on this and i asked in the group if other Dutchies were interested in teaming up and going to the next gig. Lucky for me there were, and thats when i met Marco and Ernst, on February 5th, on Rotterdam Airport, on our way to London. Must admit i met Marco a week earlier in Rotown in Rotterdam. But it felt nice to write we met on the airport!

It feels like ancient history now, a couple of months further on. But if you told me a year ago i would see Green play live twice (and maybe more) in 2006, i would have called you a dreamer.

The one question that troubled/entertained/puzzled me: why now? I don’t have an answer. But i suspect, being in the Rough Trade fold again, which seems to me a music loving, enthusiastic bunch of people, it might be simple the fun of it. And i hope it keeps staying fun for a long time!

As for the name ‘Double G & the Traitorous 3’, it’s obvious who Double G is. The Traitorous 3 might refer to The Treacherous Three, formed in the late 70s by Kool Moe Dee, Special K and DJ Easy Lee. There is also a reference to Funky Four Plus One and Double D. And one might even think of a certain bra-size…

[Ed.] Hmm, in the Yahoo group Rhodri (the keyboard player) says this listing is an error.

A kind comment (Mike) pointed out there is another gig scheduled for next friday, April 14th, in the Windmill Brixton. The place where the first ever Double G gig took place. At this short notice i can’t make it to London (also, money is an issue). Can’t speak for the other bibbly-o-tek co-authors though! Its still excellent news, good to keep the gigs going!

Today I claimed our blog bibbly-o-tek so Technorati can start indexing blogs which link to us. I also added a technorati.com/tag/scrittipolitti link to the ‘Scritti Resources’.

Double G & the Traitorous 3 will take the stage in the Luminaire in London once more on april 24 th !

See here on the website of The Luminaire.

Update: We’ve just recieved a confirmation email from Double G News:
The next Double G show is on Monday 24th April at The Luminaire, 311 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR.

Tickets are available for £6 at the following link:

http://www.wegotickets.com/event/10123

Double G and the Traitorous 3 (+2) are becoming more and more a band, at least as it looks from the outside. The gig in Paradiso on thursday march 30 th was great. The vibe was good, Green seemed relaxed and the band more in tune with eachother. Music before and after a concert always has my interest, it determines a large part of the atmosphere ; Green had an excellent choice of old school reggae before and load hiphop beats from DJ Shadow after the concert (he brought his own cd’s). The setlist was similair to the Luminaire gigs, for me the “D to the O” song was new. My personal favourite is “Robin Hood”, announced as a song about socialism and beautiful women. The band sounded fuller and the guitars a bit rougher. I am very curious what the album will sound like. With most bands you first have the album, wondering how it will sound live. Not with Scritti this time. We now know what is sounds like live, now let’s have the studio album ! After the fantastic performance Green & co hung around in Paradiso to talk to their friends and fans. Stagemanager Andy gave me a copy of the Robin Hood lyrics, Green was so kind to autograph the lyrics and make a small drawing on it (Robin Hood ?). Afterwards the whole gang, including some fans (and the bibbly-o-tek team) went for dinner in a turkish restaurant across the street (where they had, i guess, no clue who their guests were). All in all a night worthy to write about in your diary.

More clips on the video page! This time its a whole bunch of them. A bit broken up and not the best quality, but it might give you a sense of how the atmosphere was. A little bit.

‘We’re actually Double G and the Traitorous 3 plus 2 this evening, untill we’ve learned how to become Scritti Politti because we haven’t… i haven’t done it for a long time’

is what Green says at the start of the gig.

Sure Cupid & Psyche 85 was a fantastic album. But there was one thing no one could ever imagine: Scritti performing those songs live. So for me Scritti only existed on records.

But this year, 2006, it all changed. Scritti started performing live again! Okay, Green is using the Double G & the Traitorous 3 (plus 2) moniker, but no doubt: they are the new Scritti. And probably the best Scritti ever!

The gig at the Paradiso on the 30th of March was a great one. Scritti was playing in the small hall which felt strange because I played in the big hall years ago with the band MAM. But it suited the band better; a smaller place with more intimacy.

The band was really going for it; a very energetic sound and a great overall contact between band-members. Green wasn’t that anxious, he seems to be more relaxed than anyone could imagine.

To make a long story short: it was a great gig. I was glad to hear they will be peforming more often (probably Amsterdam again, soon, within 2 months). Green asking us out for diner was another amazing thing. So just before leaving I gave Green my Melodiefabriek-card. You’ll never know what happens next…