Archive for the 'Review' Category

My friend Ron Kane, who is a fan of my old band MAM has send me his review of yesterday’s Scritti gig at The Roxy. Although it was a Dutch band (and singing in Dutch) MAM had a couple of fans in America, LA for example.

Here’s Ron’s review:

Scritti Politti!

Last night, Scritti Politti played The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood.
It was their American debut show, and they said so. I had waited 25+ years to see them.

They played lots of songs from the new album, wonderful sound. Also, I could recognize “The Word Girl”, “Wood Beez”, “Die Alone”
and “Brushed With Oil Dusted With Powder”. The surprises were to hear “The Sweetest Girl” and “Skank Bloc Bologna”.

Green’s voice was very good, but he said he had a bad cold.

The band was good, the playing very tight – but there was an instance of “Laptop failure” before “Wood Beez” – Green was very funny and chatty – before they played even one note of music he greeted his Los Angeles fans by saying, “We don’t play ‘perfect Way'” – OK, Green!

There were two opening acts – I do not know what they were called, and it’s not my style of music, anyway. They wouldn’t let us sit down, “All of the tables are reserved!” – even though nobody was sitting at any of them when I asked (I looked later, maybe 3 of 24 tables had someone sitting at them). At least the ticket was inexpensive!

Scritti Politti play two more shows in the L.A. area – but I probably can’t get to either of them. They were also selling T-shirts and buttons, the CD and a poster (Only 210 made!). The T-shirt had the tour dates, I already ordered the CD from Japan (bonus tracks and a DVD!), so I bought the buttons (for the new album) and the poster (autographed).

Ron

Ron is huge music fan and a huge music collector. Check him out at Flickr.

We’re very happy we can publish the director’s cut of the interview with Green by Simon Reynolds, published in a shorter version in the Guardian.

GREEN
by Simon Reynolds

“We went to Marylebone Registry Office, because that’s where McCartney got married,” recalls Green Gartside of his wedding a couple of months ago. “We chose the shortest service, just a couple of sentences, and we didn’t really tell anyone, so we had one witness each. But this pudding of a teenager, with two different speech impediments, officiated, and he read the standard script that goes ‘thank you all for coming, it means so much to Alice and Green that all their friends and family are here’. We couldn’t really stop him as he lisped his way through it! But, no, it was a very lovely thing. I think I might even have had a tear in my eye.”

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A couple of review printed in magazines. There is a very positive on in Uncut, July 2006.

One in Q Magazine.

Kay send us a scan of a review posted in Intro in Germany, it’s a review of the 5th February gig in The Luminaire.

And finally a review in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.


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Just got home from work and my usual trip to Velet record store in Rotterdam, where i don’t need to say what I’m coming for. And no, nothing yet, but they assured me the CD and vinyl version are definitely going to be on friday. So now a quick post on some new reviews and interviews, just before dinner. Reading earlier reviews, White Bread Black Beer get a good reception, with the added note it’s regarded as an uncommercial record. Personally, i don’t much care. I love the music, and can be quite an evangelist about it (this website is proof of that!), but a huge commercial success might chase Green back into hiding. Even though it seems a thing of the past.

Anyway, time for some links! There is a really interesting interview at Incendiary Magazine, where finally someone asks some original questions. The same website has a review as well. On the Dutch 3voor12 website there is a review as well, albeit in Dutch. I’ll translate it maybe later this evening and add it in the comments of this post. The well-respected 3voor12 site also has White Bread Black Beer on the listening post, which is really good publicity.

Some news on upcoming gigs as well! Scritti Politti will play on Bestival, which takes place on the Isle of Wight 8-10 September, and on the Big Chill festival at Eastnor Castle Deer Park 2006, 4-6 August. Apparently this place is between the Cotswolds and the Welsh Marches.

Thanks to Chris Norris: Daily Telegraph’s review of White Bread, Black Beer. Short but neat!

An interview by John Lewis with Green in the London TimeOut. There is also a short review on White Bread Black Beer.

Scritti Politti: Interview
Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside tells Time Out about his colourful journey from post-punk squat-dweller to ’80s R&B technician to Hackney ‘pub rocker’, and how he learned to play live again

As an adolescent, Green was obsessed with folk…

‘At school, I used to go to a folk club in the Newport docks area. Martin Carthy was my hero. He’s a seriously funky guitarist! At art college in Leeds, I followed Carthy around the country. I was once stranded in the middle of nowhere after one of his gigs, and Martin and Norma went completely out of their way to give me a lift home, which was lovely of them.’

He liked the way that old men urinated at folk clubs…

‘They had a way of holding their cocks while they were pissing. I found that fascinating. I wrote a lyric about it on the first album. “He held it like a cigarette/ Behind a squaddie’s back/He held it so he hid its length/And so he hid its lack.”’

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We’re rapidly approaching the release of the cd, and reviews are starting to show up more and more. This little bit caught my eye:

It’s a spring thing, a blossoming thing, a journey through the valleys and across the peaks of the artist’s own domestic landscape as he stops inverting the violent hierarchies of popular culture and comes to terms with more practical issues like the next glass of beer or the next loaf of bread. Sounds still rub and collide as frequently his syntax shifts, but with the dispersal of the clouds that masked his vision, and the recession of expectations comes a more satisfying sense of self. It’s both a road to no regret and a record of his undoing. And it’s all very, very beautifully unravelled.

from Crud Magazine

You can read another review on handbag, boomkat and an interview on intro.de, which i’m still translating to english.

If you find any other reviews we have missed, please add in the comments.

An article by Simon Reynolds in The Guardian today with a review on White Bread, Black Beer and an interview with Green.

The new album weaves together elements of everything Gartside has ever loved and revisits every stage of his nearly five decades-long journey through music. The Beatles are here, there and everywhere on the record; T. Rex and the Plastic Ono Band meld on the deliciously stompy anti-Jesus ditty After Six; Gartside’s pre-punk passion for folk-rock and traditional English music is audible in his guitar playing; and there is hip-hop in the beats and R&B in the production’s gloss.

We’re quite chuffed bibbly-o-tek is linked at the bottom of the article!

A positive review from The Observer on White Bread, Black Beer.

White Bread, Black Beer marks a welcome return to the more specific intellectual concerns of his earlier lyrics (but the subtly nutritious ‘Cooking’ boasts unexpected swearing), and a simultaneous rediscovery of the pure pop sensibility which made his later, more mainstream work so addictive.

A nice White Bread, Black Beer review in Word Magazine issue May 2006. Thanks to Enda P. Guinan for spotting it.

You can read the review after clicking on the thumbnails below.