Thanks to loyal longtime Bibbly-o-tek.com visitor David C and to the folks at theartsdesk.com you can now listen to Green Gartside’s new studio track “Fruit Tree” on the new “Way to Blue” Nick Drake Tribute album.  (Green has performed live in the past.)  Here is  a quick clip of my favorite part of the song. Also, here is a link to a great article and the full version of the song on theartsdesk.com. You can also buy the track on iTunes here!

John

According to thisisnotretro.com BEF is scheduled to release Music of Quality and Distinction Volume 3 Dark on May 6th. The release includes Green covering The Delfonics “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time.”   This shouldn’t come as a complete surprise since Green performed this song live in 2011 with BEF. Here is our post about their special live event.  Interesting follow up to this song from BEF Music of Quality and Distinction Volume 2 and Green Covering Steve Wonder’s classic “I Don’t Know Why I Love You.” Here is a link to a video of that remake!  Concert goers claim that Green also sang the Stevie Wonder’s classic tune at the live event, but a I have never seen a video clip, which I would love to see and hear! In the immortal words of Ben Stein “Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?” ( Update April 2: Greg C posted this link to Amazon for a quick snippet on FaceBook.)

John

So I tracked back to the fact that Scritti hasn’t played Germany since 1979. April 9th to be exact. We have this listed in our Gigography section. I don’t have it memorized so I had to look it up. I found that they played here with Red Crayola. (Now known as Red Krayola.) Did you know they are from Texas? I didn’t. Who knew? They toured with Scritti back in the day. And they are still active. The poster has been around and on the internet for a long time.

Bibbly-o-tek.com visitor Roger Homes says that the gig was to play at Ratinger Hof in Düsseldorf , but was moved to the Okie Dokie in Neuss, a suburb of Düsseldorf. The Okie Dokie is still operating today. I suggest the band get a hold of them and see if they can add December 1st date at the Okie Dokie. It is only a short drive from Cologne, the last scheduled gig in Germany. If that happened, it could be truly epic!

After further review (American football fans will get the aformentioned reference) Scritti also played in Berlin in 1979. This was NOT in our gigography, so I thought I would mention it here. I found from this link that they played S036, a legendary venue in Kreuzberg’s Oranienstraße with Red Crayola as well. They played there on April 7th if that link is accurate.

If you are in Germany towards the end of this month, be sure to get tickets and see Scritti play live. If that doesn’t work for you, then try some of the UK dates in December. Or, pray for a 2006-esque miracle and hope they play North America again sometime soon.

28th November » Hamburg ¦ Kampnagel [tickets]

29th November » Berlin ¦ HAU [tickets]

30th November » Cologne ¦ Alte Kranhalle / Balloni [tickets]

Opening for St Etienne:

10th December » York ¦ Fibbers [tickets]

11th December » Edinburgh ¦ Liquid Rooms [tickets]

12th December » Manchester ¦ Ritz [tickets]

13th December » Brighton ¦ Concorde 2 [tickets]

14th December » London ¦ Shepherds Bush Empire [tickets]

By the way Strohmeyer is German for Straw Tax Collector.

Auf Wiedersehen!

John

They also be bringing in the Vice Chair of the PRS, Paulette Long, for a special session on “Making Money from your Song” – an important part of any songwriter’s knowledge. And on the 4th day individual recording slots in Studio A with a top session band are organised for all attendees to record a track they’ve written during the course.

The cost is just £395 including the recording sessions. Places are limited to 10 and they expect this to sell out fast.

To book contact Julia Craik on 020 7729 7593 or info@premisesstudios.com and please say you read about it on Bibbly!

Address: The Premises Studios, 209 Hackney Rd, London, E2 8JL / check their website for more info →

Former Scritti Politti drummer Tom Morley recently emailed us at bibbly-o-tek.com about some music created around the Peace One Day A Global Truce 2012 worldwide event.  This event which is set to occur on September 21st of 2012 is to be a day of non-violence throughout the world at all levels. Efforts by this organization had a similar day in Afghanistan recently.  They had a written agreement with the Taliban so that health and aid workers could help the needy without fear of violence or kidnapping. Peace on earth and non-violence are a pretty darn noble cause if you ask me. Visit Peace One Day to learn more an find out how to get involved.  Here are the three songs and videos of his work that coincides with this global event:

Tom Morley Peace One Day song 1

Tom Morley Peace One Day song 2

Tom Morley Peace One Day song 3

Some trivia: The city scenes of the third song were shot in Chicago from the Magnificent Mile shopping district.  You can see the NBC Tower in the background. Coincidentally, I met Green and the rest of Scritti Politti in 2006 in Chicago at the Double Door. Thanks Tom for being involved in such a worthy and noble cause and for sharing this inspirational music with us!

John and the rest of the Bibbly-o-tek.com team!

photo: Marco Raaphorst

Here we are in the year 2012 with a new Scritti Politti line-up which is able to perform the classic songs in a superb way. They are a small group: drummer Rob Smoughton, Dicky Moore on guitar, Green on vocals and guitar and Rhodri Marsden on keyboards. Plus a computer, of course.

I felt it was about time for setting the record straight and finding out how these old songs were reconstructed for live gigs. So I asked keyboardplayer Rhodri a couple of questions. And guess what? He was happy to answer them!

Tell us a bit about the reconstruction of these old Scritti songs
Rhodri: I think it’s well documented that Green doesn’t enjoy listening to his old material! So what often happens is that I create a MIDI file with all the parts as I THINK they are. Green then works through it and corrects any mistakes I’ve made, and then creates / chooses all the sounds for the parts on his Mac. So by the end of that process we have a recreated Scritti song in Logic Pro which we then use to work from.

I see that you’re using laptops on stage, tell us about it
Rhodri: Actually, we’ve just slimmed down our setup massively in the last few days. Until recently we had four laptops onstage (very old ones, Powerbook G4s); one for live keyboard, one for live drums, two backups in case anything goes wrong. But the new MacBook Pro can handle everything, so that halves the number of computers onstage. Phew. I use a Nord Electro 2 keyboard to trigger my sounds and Rob uses an electronic drum kit, a Roland V-Kit. Green and Dicky both have amp simulators rather than real amps. So it’s really quiet onstage, which is lovely. You can hear all the detail.

Drummer Rob Smoughton is also playing samples on his electronic drumkit?
Rhodri: Yes, Andy (Houston, Green’s engineer) and I spent a lot of time creating virtual instruments for each song we play, using the sounds that Green’s been working on. One drumkit instrument per song for Rob, about ten for me! Some of the songs, like Wood Beez, are a real challenge to play, getting all the parts triggered from one keyboard.

Where do you draw the line between live-playing and laptop?
Rhodri: We started using backing tracks recently; firstly to get a fuller sound, secondly to keep the timing rock solid. Rob plays to a click in headphones, and the parts that we physically can’t play with four human beings come from the laptop – most of the time it’s just bass. Some songs there’ll be hardly anything pre-recorded (Skank Bloc Bologna only has that fast glockenspiel, for example); we play as much stuff live as we possibly can!

(thanks Gavin!)

And do follow @scrittipolitti on Twitter for updates!

From the Applecart Festival 2012 Website: Whether or not Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside is the brainiest man in pop music (The Guardian, Feb 2011) is a question that can wait for another day. One thing that is definitely unarguable is that his band’s back catalogue is utterly flawless – an audacious stroll from post-punk to perfect pop, block party hip hop to astrally projected soul music.From the early single on Rough Trade (the label he remains on to this day) ‘The Sweetest Girl’ through his purple patch in the mid 80s which saw ‘Wood Beez’, ‘Absolute’ and The Word Girl’ go top ten through working with Miles Davis on ‘Oh Patti’ to his Mercury nominated White Bread, Black beer in 2006. Thirty years on from his epochal debut, Gartside is playing The Apple Cart. Expect a fair few songs to remember.

Ticket information, a nice map and other info can be found here.

John

Scritti Politti will play live at 2 venues coming up!

First they plan to play live at the Lexington on March 13th. This was planned and tickets were offered via “The Word Magazine” (seams appropriate n’est pas?) The link to We Got Tickets says it is sold out. Perhaps a look into the secondary market is worth a look for would-be concert goers. Thanks to Bibbly-o-tek visitor DD for bringing this to our attention!

Also Rhodri tweeted recently that they will be performing live at Bush Hall on April 25th. This show sold out very quickly so a second date has been added.  You can catch them a day earlier, on the 24th!  At the time I posted this article, tickets were still available for the 24th here.

An interesting tidbit: (from the Bush Hall website) Scritti Politti have since slimmed down to a 4-piece, with Green playing alongside Dicky Moore, Rhodri Marsden and Rob Smoughton. The show will feature songs from both the past and the present; it marks a proper return to live work for the band, with a handful of festival appearances scheduled over the summer.

Note: Rob Smoughton was the drummer from Hot Chip during their 2010 tour.

John