Dark Miles is the former lead singer of the now long-gone band MOSH from Portugal. Dark Miles is actually Pedro Lima (a.k.a Pete Miles) and hot on the heels of the dark and deep song “Your Heart Is An Empty Street” (released in January) is his immense new song “When The Lights Go Out”. The new track has the makings of a long-lasting epic anthem. His voice is full of power and soul. The song is about freedom and equality and being a decent human. I can hear Depeche Mode, Mansun, Chris Cornell, Iggy Pop, Pearl Jam, Mark Lanegan, and even a shot of 90s Bowie in this gorgeous and classy new offering from Dark Miles. The video is stark, hard-hitting, and thought-provoking. It also made me incredibly angry at the world we have made. It is also age-restricted so you will have to watch it on YouTube, but make sure you do watch it.
Miles said of the song, which was recorded during the covid pandemic, “It was a period where we found ourselves deprived of some elementary freedoms, and consequently rediscovered how fragile these freedoms are,” he added that “whether in what we feel, in what we do, in what we want and in what we are, this freedom is constantly put to the test, particularly in the times we live in, in which the nightmare of war has once again stripped many people of their human dignity.” Check this song out, I think you will love it, I do!
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“Shopping” is one of the most different and original songs that I have heard in quite a while. It sounds like someone put Blur, BA Robertson, Pulp, Talking Heads, and Yard Act in the same wash and they all blended together mixing colours and styles into something brand new. The song is an anti-celebration of the slow death of the UK High Street and the parallel rise of ridiculous and obscene levels of consumerism driven by those greedy online giants. Yes, Amazon and friends I am talking about you! The song quickly works into your head and refuses to come out. Welly is the frontman and obviously gives his name to the band too. Welly was born in Southampton and apparently showed no interest in music as a child, although he was allegedly obsessed with the same six songs on an iPod Shuffle that his father clipped to his school trousers every day! I would love to know what those six songs were! Based on “Shopping, ” Welly is probably an expert in the lyrical kitchen sink dramas of everyday life and has a voice on bigger issues. I can picture Welly being around for a very long while and a band that will adorn festival stages across the UK regularly. The video is ace and it looks like the band had a lot of fun making it at The Keiller Centre in Dundee.
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On March 20th, 1977, the iconic T.Rex played their final gig at The Locarno in Portsmouth, UK. This was the last show on the Dandy In The Underworld tour, which featured support act The Damned. In September of 1977, Marc Bolan died in a car crash. On the same date in 1977 Lou Reed was banned from appearing at The London Palladium in England because of his punk image. He had planned to play several shows at the Palladium to promote his album ‘Rock and Roll Heart’.
Meanwhile, some rather interesting nuptials took place on March 20th. On that date in 1970, David Bowie married his first wife Mary Angela Barnett a.k.a. Angie. They later divorced in 1980. On the same date in the previous year, 1969, John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.
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The first time I saw Goldie Lookin Chain was at the Reading Festival, I think in 2004, or thereabouts. They were full-on comedy rap and as entertaining as fuck. I have seen them a few times since at festivals. Some of the stuff they released in the first flush of their success was absolute genius that finely blended great rap with sharp, sublime comedy. So I was never going to pass up the opportunity to witness GLC in full flight once again, twenty years later. This time it was at the magnificent Crescent in York and the gig was a sell-out! Were GLC any good? I will tell you later, but first I must tell you about the wonderful support act, Marx. I am not talking about Karl Marx, just Marx. He is a passionate and talented rapper from Hull spitting tales of real life in his biting, cutting, perfectly formed ciphers. He dishes it out to landlords, Rishi Sunak, and a whole host of other bad guys in equal measure. If Eminem had been born twenty-five or thirty or so years later than he actually was and in Hull rather than Missouri USA he probably would have sounded like Marx. He delivers his lines perfectly and struts across the stage like he owns it, and tonight he did! The beats supplied by his DJ were stunning and fitted the tracks like a Saville Row suit. I particularly loved the Roy Ayers sample. “Rent Money” and “Student Loan” (at least I think they were the titles) were my highlights in a set full of them. I am definitely a fan of this bloke Marx now.
It is probably fair to say that in the current more politically correct climate, much of what GLC has done in the past might not be acceptable to some. While this is likely to be true I still find them fucking hilarious. It’s comedy and bloody good comedy at that! It was just 5/7 of the whole GLC crew, but that did not spoil the night one bit! The crowd was up for a fun night and that is what the GLC Crew gave us in abundance. A large contingent of the crowd came dressed for the occasion in garish tracksuits, including a delightful Greggs trackie number and plenty of heavy gold chains. Despite the invitation to get shitfaced later in the set some of the crowd were shitfaced on arrival, probably as it was Saint Paddy’s day. All the classic GLC tunes were on show; “Newport State of Mind (You’re Not From Newport)”, “Soap Bar”, “21 Ounces”, “Baneswell Express” and “You Knows I Loves You”. Talking of the latter is there a love song with a finer lyric than “To prove my love, I gotta tattoo, on my bollocks. I was gonna have your name but I only got initials ’cause I couldn’t stand the pain”? Smokey Robinson never managed to describe the pain of love so well in any of his songs, did he? But the biggest reaction and party vibes came with “Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do” and “Your Missus Is a Nutter”. But frankly, nothing could compare with a wonderfully extended singalong of “Your Mother’s Got a Penis”. Is there a better way to end a getting shitfaced kind of night? probably not! I can confirm that Goldie Lookin Chain retains their hilariously filthy, Welsh comedy charm, you knows it!
I was actually there that day!
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Two of my favourite songs were released on March 18th, 19 years apart. The Clash issued “White Riot” on 18th March 1977 as their first single for CBS. Then 19 years later, in 1996, the Prodigy released the now iconic “Firestarter”. Seriously where has the time gone as those singles turn 47 and 28 years old respectively!
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This is the fourth in the Mayhem 12 Inch single series and I apologise again for the rather smutty, Carry On, double entendre, innuendo title for this feature. Can any of you constant readers think of a better title? But I am quite obviously talking about the 12-inch vinyl single. Eventually, this will build into a playlist of my favourite 12-inch singles and remixes, many of which I used to own on vinyl. There will be a Spotify playlist when the series reaches five songs. So far we have had “Do What You Wanna Do” by T-Connection from 1977, “Everybody’s Singin’ Love Songs” by Sweet Thunder, and “You + Me = Love” by the Undisputed Truth. This time it is the turn of Freeez with an 8-minute take on their huge hit “I.O.U.” from 1983.
Freez began as a jazz funk band which evolved into a more electronic sound that fusion of jazz, funk and electro hits every button on the 12 inch mix of “I.O.U.”. The song reached number 2 in the UK and smashed its way to number one on the US Dance Chart. Arthur Baker wrote the song and he remixed it with the help of John Jellybean Benitez. It went on to become the 18th-best-selling single of 1983 in the UK.
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This is the first in what I hope will be a very long-running series. I have decided to look at the most popular songs from every year I have existed. There will be some artistic licence on my part as I will always seek to include at least a few of my favourites from each year. The format will be a top ten for each year and will cover the music and songs I grew up with, came of age with, and achieved my greatest success alongside music that comforted me in bad times. The first top ten goes back to the year of my birth, 1959, yes I really am that old! Obviously, I don’t remember actually hearing these songs in that first year, but I have heard them all many times over the years. One little snippet I can give you is that “It’s Only Make Believe” by Conway Twitty was number one on January 1st, 1959, the day I was born. I have focused on the UK charts, so that year’s US best seller doesn’t feature in my list, but for all you fact fans, it was “The Battle Of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton. So here is the first Rolling Back The Years With Mayhem Chart, for 1959. It has quite a few good tunes I reckon. Please enter the Time Tunnel now! If you are too scared to enter the tunnel, then just click here for the playlist! The chart for 1960 will follow soon.
1 “Living Doll” – Cliff Richard & The Drifters 2 “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” – Buddy Holly 3 “(Now And Then There’s) A Fool Such As I – Elvis Presley” 4 “Mack The Knife” – Bobby Darin 5 “Here Comes Summer” – Jerry Keller 6 “To Know Him Is To Love Him” – The Teddy Bears 7 “What Do You Want?” – Adam Faith 8 “It’s Only Make Believe” – Conway Twitty 9 “Stagger Lee” – Lloyd Price 10 “C’mon Everybody” – Eddie Cochran
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I remember reading towards the end of last year that Steve Harley was receiving treatment for a nasty form of cancer. But I was still saddened to hear that he passed away this weekend. His musical career started with playing folk clubs and peaked with the huge success of his iconic 70s band Cockney Rebel. It always bugs me when journalists refer to Cockney Rebel as a glam rock band, they were so much more than that. They had their first success at the tail end of the glam period with the non-album single “Judy Teen” hitting number 5 in the UK charts in 1974. “Sebastian” from the first Cockney Rebel album ‘The Human Menagerie’ reached number two in the charts in the Netherlands and Belgium the previous year. Harley was incredibly diverse in his music, which I loved about what he did. ‘The Psychomodo’ from 1974 remains one of my favourite albums of all time and one of the few albums I ever skip a track on, even in the age of streaming. The pinnacle, and the song that most people will remember Steve Harley for is most likely “Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)” which made it to the top of the UK charts and the Irish charts in 1975. I saw Cockney Rebel a couple of times in the 1970s and I saw Steve play live a few times since then, the last time was in 2010. The music world has lost a huge talent in Steve Harley. My thoughts are with his family, friends, and fans across the globe. R.I.P Steve Harley.
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This is the 21st song in the Play It Again Mayhem series, which began in 2020. Check out the previous entries along with this new one in the Play It Again Mayhem Spotify Playlist click here to take a listen! So far, 15 of the 21 songs are from the 1970s. But this one was released in 1968, although it was reissued in the UK in the 1970s after it became popular on the Northern Soul circuit. It is the incredibly talented Archie Bell and the Drells from Houston, Texas, with “(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown”. Gotta love a song tile with parentheses, right? The song is about a dance showdown which is obvious when you hear lyrics like “I know I’m good, so you better be better. When you get out on the floor, you better have your steps together“. This tune really takes me back to my youth. I love it, do you?
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Has the island of Anglesey ever produced a great rock band? Probably not, well at least until Dying Habit came along. This bunch is a mega powerhouse of a band. This is the fourth time they have been reviewed in the pages of WJAHOM (once in 2019 and twice in 2020) and we said good things about them back then. The new single “Celestial” is a brooding, slow-building, epic tune that showcases the individual talents of the band and the enormous and gorgeous noise they make together. Nathan Jones’s vocals are up there with some of the best rock singers and he conveys a range of emotions with apparent ease. The rhythm section of Mark Jones on drums and Daniel Garner on bass would enhance even the best bands. But the tour de force for me is the riff Tsunami produced by Alan Hart. The song encompasses everything from classy prog to sharp metal while weaving in the more rocky side of Traffic and maybe a few hints of Pearl Jam. The hooks are strong and the melody is divine. According to the band the song “explores consciousness, how we know nothing about the time we spend asleep other than the dreams and nightmares we experience“. “Celestial” deserves to be heard, listen to it now! If their new album, ‘The Chaos of Silence’, (due out later this year) is half as good as this tune it will be extraordinary.
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With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 