This is the tenth song in the Play It Again Mayhem series which began back in 2020. Check out the earlier posts by clicking here (Betty Wright), here (Elton John), here (Roxy Music), here (The O’Jays), here (John Miles), here (Steely Dan), here (Climax Blues Band), here Little Jackie and here for Gwen McCrae. I promised that once I got to ten Play It again Mayhem Posts that there would be a Spotify Playlist, so click here to take a listen!
This time it is the turn of the seminal British band, the much-missed Kursaal Flyers. The band formed in 1973 and took their name from the imitation train which was used to advertise Southend’s famous amusement hall, the Kursaal, which had recently closed. The song “Little Does She Know” reached the UK Top 20 singles chart in 1976 and the band appeared on Top Of The Pops. I guess that the band was surrounded by washing product boxes on the show because they briefly mention detergent in the lyrics. Top Of The Pops was strange sometimes wasn’t it? It has a chorus that many songwriters would kill for and stays in your head a long while, for more than 45 years for me! The song can be found on their third album, ‘The Golden Mile’ released in 1976. Is this tune a guilty pleasure or simply a great tune? For me, it’s the latter! Check out the tune in the videos below (one from Top Of The Pops and the second from Supersonic) and via the newly created Play It Again Mayhem playlist on Spotify.
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That mighty metal behemoth better known to us mere mortals as Not Now Norman are back with what I reckon is their best song to date, and let’s face it there is some tough competition! It is called “Save Me” and is available on all platforms now. It is a song about humanity is destroying the planet and was inspired by the Australian wildfires and the talking shop of COP26 that ultimately achieved nothing. We can’t stop climate change, but we can begin to lessen its impact. “Save Me” is a heartfelt message to humanity, especially the younger generation to do something. Listen to Greta Thunberg and her peers and listen to this anthemic song. The riffs are drawn directly from heavy metal Valhalla and Taylor’s vocal performance is passionate, emotional, and in a nutshell fucking awesome. Added to that the whole band is at peak performance. The lyrics are simple but so very powerful, how can anyone ignore words like “Save me from our destiny. Save me from a time, where everything around us dies“. Click here to check out the complete lyrics. This is a mosh pit anthem with a great message. Download, stream, buy it, I don’t care how you get this song in your life, just get it, become a Norminion, and more importantly, listen to it (and I mean REALLY LISTEN), take in the message, and act!
You can catch the band live in Stockton-On-Tees this Saturday, 5th March as part of Women In Music.
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This is the fifteenth in our Mayhem Virgins series and it features Bruno Skibbild a Singer/Songwriter, Author, and Social Worker. He was also the winner of the Best Country Song Award at Clouzine Fall 2020. A country song, you’re thinking this guy is American right? Well, think again the rather talented and diverse Bruno was born and raised in a small town in Denmark called Snejbjerg, which is roughly in the centre of the country. Mr. Skibbild got his first guitar from his sister when he was in 7th grade and he still plays it. As a teenager, Bruno played in a local band, M87 and this is where he began writing his own songs. After completing his Masters in American History Bruno taught at all levels of education from elementary school to high school. At the same time he moved away a little from his music to bring up his children, twins no less. Then in 2017, he got his music muse back and travelled around Denmark with Neal Ashley Conrad performing songs from The Boss in “The Springsteen Show”. As a teenager, his first music loves were Springsteen and Kiss. Nowadays he takes some of that influence and would probably describe himself as a country-rock artist.
In 2019 Bruno Skibbild finally recorded and released his first single, a song he wrote when he was just 16, it is called “A World Tomorrow”. It’s a great tune with a really 70s soft rock vibe and exceptionally good considering how young he was when he wrote it. By then Bruno was in his mid-forties and didn’t take anywhere near as long with his second single “Long Walk” which came out in 2020. This tune chugs along nicely with riffs reminiscent of Keith Richards on the more country-style Stones songs. Bruno was much more prolific in 2021 releasing four singles; “We Pray For It Everyday”, “Dead To Me”, “When The Past Is Done” and “She Would Never Give In”. There is a vein of darkness flowing through these four tracks and maybe that was driven by some of the awful turmoil going on in Bruno’s life at the time. I particularly love “Dead To Me” which I can imagine Nick Cave singing. His next release was full of rightful anger and questionable justice after social services wrongly removed his children from his care. Bruno said this of the track “I wanted to tell the story about a personal family nightmare that me and my children experienced in 2007. I was wrongfully accused of the abuse of my children and the County took them into custody without any further investigations than the original accusation. It took me 8 months to get my children released from the institution where they were kept isolated. Now being an artist, music helps me push away the trauma through singing it out.” Given the anger and sadness in the lyrics, it is quite an upbeat tune, which perhaps reflects the positive outcome of his children being returned to him. Bruno recently released another single “Gonna Jump Like An Evil” which sounds like Dire Straits recording with a South American Salsa band with jazz aspirations. Without a doubt, this is my favourite Bruno Skibbild song to date. He records his music at Oak Mountain Black Swamp Studio in Copenhagen. Click here to check out all these tunes on Spotify
A quick shout to those of you who have faithfully followed the Mayhem Virgins series, you know it is for artists that have never featured on these pages before. However, technically, Bruno got a mention in a recent Mayhem’s Top 20 Artists post, but in my defence I had mostly drafted this post by then!
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I don’t get the opportunity to review books here on With Just A Hint Of Mayhem, but I am pleased to say that following hot on the heels (ok more than three months) of my review of John Illsley’s autobiography I have just read another, obviously music-related tome. This one is for ‘Into the Never – Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral’ By Adam Steiner, which was originally published in 2020 by Backbeat Books. This is Adam’s first non-fiction book following his first novel ‘Politics of The Asylum’ from 2018. Adam also publishes poetry and is a journalist. Among other things, presumably in his spare time, he has also lectured on Creative Writing and Publishing at Coventry University.
If you are a fan of Trent Reznor’s music then you may well have already read this book, if you’re not then I would recommend that you do, maybe using the album that it covers in great detail as your soundtrack. There is a similarity between Steiner’s book and the ’33 1/3′ Series that has published some great pocket-sized books which explore the creation of classic albums, (including book 78 in the series covering Nine Inch Nails ‘Pretty Hate Machine’) although ‘Into The Never’ goes to a far greater depth to study how ‘The Downward Spiral‘ came about. In fact, one of the huge collection of Steiner’s references is Daphne Carr’s 33 1/3 book.
‘Into The Never’ not only deals with the actual music and how it was constructed and recorded but also analyses the whole creation of the album. Including Trent Reznor’s probable state of mind at the time and that he initially worked on the album at a home recording set up in a rented property on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. Not just some random property though, this was the house where the infamous Manson Murders took place. Although there is no suggestion that Reznor rented the place because of that. The book has caused me to completely re-examine ‘The Downward Spiral‘ which I always considered a good album. But after playing it quite a few times while reading the book I have come to appreciate it as a great album a truly seminal release and possibly Trent Reznor’s finest recorded moment. Adam Steiner writes with a great intellectual gravity while ordering his words in a beautiful flow that kept me interested from start to finish. Questions about whether ‘The Downward Spiral’ is autobiographical or simply a concept album akin to Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ are considered. As well as Reznor’s fraught addiction issues and his path on a rocky road to self-destruction (which thankfully he survived) the book also deals with relevant aspects of US social history from the aforementioned Manson Murders to the Columbine School shootings via the Vietnam War.
There are some really sharp references to what most definitely did influence the album or in some cases may have influenced. Including, my list is not exhaustive,
Authors; George Orwell, Greil Marcus, Chuck Palahniuk, Albert Camus
Philosophers and Thinkers; Michel Foucault, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche
Musicians; David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Richey Edwards, Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Johnny Cash
Artists; Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon
The book also discusses the theological impact alongside the major world events that probably played a part. Additionally, there are plenty of references to films (‘Natural Born Killers’) and music (“Helter Skelter” by the Beatles). This is perhaps the most in-depth publication about an album that I have ever read and frankly, my musical knowledge and appreciation of ‘The Downward Spiral‘ is so much richer because of it. Fans of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails will devour this book and those who appreciate great music and classic albums will love it too. Click here to find it on Amazon, or better still pay a visit to your local independent book store or your public library!
Adam Steiner
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On the last Mayhem Top 20 post, I mentioned that I was changing how it would be published. Instead of waiting for Obscurify to tot up listens on a seemingly random date, I will now take a snapshot at the end of each month. So the Top 20 for February is the first of those. Many of you know that I am a keen user of a site called Obscurify. It claims to tell you how obscure your listening on Spotify is. Compared to the rest of the UK I achieved a level of 100% more obscure than other users in the UK. 100%, is that even possible? Either way, I am proud of it! Anyway, regular readers will know that it also lists my most obscure artists, (the top two of which have been there since I began doing these posts) which currently are;
Woke Up Dead (One of the two bands that have been ever-present in my obscure list and an excellent band to boot!)
Promethium (This metal bunch continue to fly the flag for great British rock and like Woke Up Dead have been ever-present in this obscure team)
Black Acacias -(I have no idea how I found this lot. Their album came out in 2008 and they have 4 monthly listeners on Spotify. There seems to be no information about them online, apart from the music on Spotify. If you were in Black Acacias or know anything about them please contact me. They appear at number 13 in this week’s chart)
Folk The System – (folky protest and frankly great songs, this lot make their second appearance in the obscure list. They appear at number 27 in the extended chart)
As for the February Top 20, only Dame David and Kate Bush remain from the last chart. Other classic artists include Suede, Arctic Monkeys, Glen Campbell, Alison Moyet, Culture Club, Bob Dylan Dionne Warwick, and Frank Turner. Bruno Skibbild makes his second appearance and there will be another post about him very soon. Nine Inch Nails crash in at number one, I have just read a great book about their album ‘The Downward Spiral’, lookout for a review of that on these pages sometime soon. The rest of the top five is The Skinner Brothers, Hawksley Workman, Heartsink, and the aforementioned Kate Bush. Four of the artists who feature in the February Top 20 are current contenders for my album of the year for 2022, can you guess who they are? Who knew that there was a band called Diamond Dogs? I didn’t until now. Gonora Sounds from Africa produce some of the most uplifting music that I have heard in a long while! Here is that all-important top 20. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
1 Nine Inch Nails 2 The Skinner Brothers 3 Hawksley Workman 4 Heartsink 5 Kate Bush 6 David Bowie 7 Glen Campbell 8 Paul Draper 9 Bob Dylan 10 Alison Moyet 11 Gonora Sounds 12 Culture Club 13 Black Acacias 14 Dionne Warwick 15 L.A.B. 16 Diamond Dogs 17 Suede 18 Arctic Monkeys 19 Frank Turner 20 Hurray For The Riff Raff
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