On this day (23rd February) in 2013 Jermaine Jackson officially changed his last name to Jacksun. Really? Let’s get serious about this Jermaine! He previously and unofficially took the name Mohammad Abdul Aziz upon his 1989 conversion to Islam, (which I do understand by the way) and said he was making the new change for “artistic reasons.”
On 23rd February 1980 U2 appeared at The Moonlight Club, at The Railway Hotel in London, where tickets cost just £2. The band played in many pubs, clubs, and toilet venues in 1980 in and around London including The Half Moon, Herne Hill (allegedly to just 12 people), The Marquee, Hope & Anchor, 101 Club, The Rock Garden, Electric Ballroom and Dingwalls. I was at two of those shows; Dingwalls and the Hope & Anchor.
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February 12th has been a busy day in music history and therefore this is possibly the longest title of any post I have ever done before. So let’s start with February 12th, 1992 the KLF took to the stage at the Brit Awards to perform their hit “3 a.m. Eternal”, but not in its original dance classic form, but wonderfully supported by ace thrash metallers Extreme Noise Terror. The highlight of the performance featured Bill Drummond strafing the audience with a machine gun, obviously, no one was hurt and no real bullets were used. It was later announced that “The KLF have left the music business“. Later Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep with the message: “I died for ewe – bon appetit” tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. The KLF remains one of my favourite acts from the 1990s.
On 12th February 2009 a nude photo of Madonna taken in 1979 a little while before she became famous, was sold at auction for $37,500. The monochrome shot was taken when Madonna was a 20-year-old dancer trying to make ends meet in New York.
As far as I know, Bono has not worn lingerie, well not in public at least. Anyway on 12th February 1997 U2 held a press conference in the Lingerie Department at the Greenwich Village Kmart store in Manhattan, New York City, to announce their Pop Mart world tour, which began in Las Vegas in April 1997. This is kind of interesting as the big U2 show at the moment is in the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Just over two years after his death on 12th February 2005 Clash frontman Joe Strummer had a train named after him. It was the Class 47 locomotive 47828 and it was made official at a ceremony in Bristol. It is a diesel train, owned by Cotswold Rail.
John Lennon became the first Beatle to appear on BBC’s Top Of The Pops show since 1966 when he performed “Instant Karma” on 12th February 1970. In 1970, John Lennon performed “Instant Karma!” with the Plastic Ono Band. The tune is one of the fastest-released songs in pop music history. Lennon wrote, recorded, and mixed the single in one session and released it within ten days. It also became the first solo single by a member of The Beatles to sell a million copies in the USA.
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Other than the Beatles I really hadn’t thought about how many bands have played exclusive gigs on rooftops. But there are quite a few, here is a top ten, but I am not brave enough to rank them, so they are in chronological order. The list includes 4 British acts, 4 US artists, 1 Brazilian and an Irish band. Five of the rooftops, were in the US, four in the UK and one in Brazil. Sadly I never witnessed any of these rooftop shows firsthand, but I have been lucky enough to see six of these acts play live 🙂
1955 Elvis Presley – Porky’s Rooftop, Newport, Arkansas, USA – did the King kick it all off?
1967 Roberto Carlos – Copam Building, São Paulo, Brazil – not the footballer with the same name, this fella was known as the King of Latin Music
1968 Jefferson Airplane – The Schuyler Hotel, Manhattan, NYC, USA – way before they converted to a Starship, they laid the foundations for the city they built on rock ‘n’ roll
1969 – Beatles – Apple Building, Saville Row, London, UK – the last live show the Fab Four ever played. The title of this post is a John Lennon quote from that gig.
1987 U2 – Apple Studios, Los Angeles, USA – part of the ‘Rattle And Hum’ shenanigans I think
2010 Bon Jovi – O2 Arena, London, UK – Jon, Richie and the boys stepped onto the roof of the venue they were playing a residency at
2011 Kasabian – Skylight West, NYC, USA – the Leicester lads play a set to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, or maybe the 40th anniversary of Mulberry, or maybe both!
2012 Madness – Buckingham Palace, London, UK – the Nutty Boys played for Her Maj on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee – Brian May also played the rooftop. Hardly the Pistols riverboat trip back in ’77, but I suppose it’ll do.
2013 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Dick’s Drive In, Seattle, USA – I so wish they had played on the roof of a “Thrift Shop”. This wasn’t their only rooftop gig that year, check out the video below.
2021 Bull – EMI Head Office, Kings Cross, London, UK – one of York’s finest showcased their debut album ‘Discover Effortless Living’ with a fab show which was streamed earlier tonight. A small roof for a band, a giant leap for bandkind! Terrible pun I know, but trust me, Bull really are destined for great things!
Given that it was 1955 and there was no social media there appears to be no footage of Elvis’ roof top gig. Bull’s marvellous set is not on YouTube yet, but click here and it might still be available on their Facebook page 🙂
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This Sunday, 5th May sees the launch of Vinyl Eddie Records at Fibbers in York. A great record store promoting excellent music in York. One of the labels first releases is from the Receivers, a northern dynamo of a band from York. Their EP, available on vinyl, is called ‘There’s More To The World’. To be pedantic though back in the day a six-track release would most probably be called a mini album, but that is splitting hairs and I have none left to split. Is this a good release from this fine band? Well, read on to find out.
The record kicks off with “Leave The Right Marks” a pulverising rock song that arrives with colossal force and doesn’t relent for its full three-minute life cycle. Nick’s vocals are particularly strong on this one and the lead guitar work from Alex is exemplary. But the engine room of Harry’s bass and some full on Bonzo Bonham style drumming from Louis is like a finely tuned formula one car. It holds everything together on this delicious hard rocking opener. The next track “Saturday” is one you may have heard before as it was a taster release from the boys back in March. It takes the indie guitar sound to greater heights and has a late 70s post punk ambience about it. For some strange reason it brings to mind the Bluetones classic “Slight Return” for me, I have no idea why. The chorus is a sticky earworm that burrows into your head and refuses to come out.
The wave of pulsating power riffs that opens and underpins “All Your Friends” is compulsive, enthralling and after two spins convinced me that this is my current favourite Receivers tune. It has a feel of early U2 with guitar work that would make Dave Evans proud. Meanwhile “That’s What They Told Me” takes Nick’s vocals into the territory of Mark E Smith and John Lydon in his PiL peak. It is a discourse on modern life for the young, well that is certainly what it feels like to me. The next song is called “Rimshot” and for those dirty minded people reading this please note that a rimshot is a percussion technique used to produce an accented snare drum back beat. Anyway the song is redolent of Oasis when they were good and would compete well with almost anything from the first two albums from the Burnage Boys. The guitars on this track are very Noel Gallagheresque. This collection signs off with the nicely chilled majestic come down of “Grand Central”. A song that might have come from my favourite BritPop era band Gene with a vocal that is as good as anything Martin Rossiter ever committed to vinyl.
This is a damned fine release which will get the boys even more recognition and exposure and deservedly so. Word is getting out about the Receivers and they have been played plenty on local radio and feted by the local press. They have even had a spin from Steve Lamacq. ‘There’s More To The World’ heralds the start of what could be a great career for Nick, Harry, Alex and Louis collectively known as the Receivers. You NEED to own a copy of this record, so I suggest you do whatever you can to make it so. Most companies really fear having to call in the receivers, but York’s Receivers would and should be welcomed everywhere to ply us with their intelligent, thoughtful and frankly bloody marvellous tunes! If you miss out on a copy of the record then click here to take a listen on Spotify.
More 10th birthday list shenanigans for With Just A Hint Of Mayhem. Today it is my ten favourite bands of all time, although as with other lists this might be different if I did it again next week! Obviously this is in no particular order. Regular readers will know that so far I have shared with you top ten most viewed posts on the blog since it began back in February 2009, the top ten countries that have given With Just A Hint Of Mayhem the most views, rock/ music related books, biographies and autobiographies and yesterday my top 10 Bowie songs. (Click here,here, here and here to view those again). Stay tuned, there are still five top tens to come after this! What will they be? Well sign up, follow or just check out this site regularly to find out! What are your favourite bands, be they current, ancient or defunct?
Many of you who know me will by now know that my wonderful wife Catherine will very soon be embarking on a mammoth 109 mile charity walk on the Cleveland Way in the North East of England. A map of the Cleveland Way is shown at the very end of this post. Why is she doing this? Well four years ago Catherine and I were totally devastated by the loss of two children as a result of an adoption disruption. It was clear to us that the support needed by vulnerable children was just not available. There was no money and no urgency to the long term support that was needed. It is incredibly important to both of us that the children and young people in our community have access to the support they need to thrive and to grow into happy and resilient adults. We know that we are unable to do anything now for the children we lost, but we want to try and make a difference to the lives of other children and young people. We want to do whatever we can to try and prevent what happened to our children from happening again. Please feel free to contribute toward Catherine’s target of £10,000. Her efforts so far means that she is already at 46% of that total. Click here for the link to donate.
Anything you can add to that will be invaluable to the two charities we are supporting. Those charities are The Island (Enhancing the quality of life for vulnerable children and young people in York) and SASH (Working to prevent homelessness in young people aged 16-25 in York, North Yorkshire & East Yorkshire).
The Island offers support to vulnerable 8-13 years olds in York who are struggling to cope at home, at school, or in the wider community, or who are experiencing difficult transitions in their lives. The Island links these young people with volunteer mentors with whom they meet on a weekly basis over the course of a year (or longer if required). This allows them to develop supportive, ongoing relationships, whilst also providing them with the undivided attention and the ‘islands of space and time’ they need to increase their confidence and self-esteem, participate in worthwhile recreational activities, and move forward in their lives.
SASH run supported lodgings schemes which help young people develop the skills they need to live on their own. They provide an emergency nightstop service that makes a difference to young people’s lives when most needed.
Both charities need your support. They only exist because people in our community care enough to help them do what they do. Please click here to find Catherine’s Virgin Money Giving page. Now obviously this blog is essentially a music blog so I have picked ten walking themed songs (ok the first one loosely links to Catherine’s walking route) I hope that you enjoy them. In fact feel free to listen while you donate 🙂
So after nearly eight years of blogging I am approaching my 1,000th post on here. This one you are reading is post 999. But for post 1,000 I made a little offer to my Facebook friends, I asked them to name one song (or one artist) that they wanted me to include in post 1,000. So before I get there I would like to extend that offer to any of you in the blogosphere that would like their song added and receive a name check. I promise to try to say something nice about your song choice! Just message me or add a comment.
Anyway now for post 999, I went through a whole range of ideas for this one; songs about or related to the emergency services was a favourite until I thought of doing a sum. So what follows is a list of twenty songs with numbers in their title. If you add all those numbers together they total 999. Trust me they do, I used a spreadsheet 🙂 I hope you enjoy them and that you exercise your brain with a bit of mental arithmetic while you do!
I would like to say a big thank you to all of you who read my blog and to wish you a wonderful Christmas and a fab 2017 for you and all of your family and friends!
The other day I decided to take a quick count of all the artists in my album collection where I have at least 10 albums by a single artist. I included CDs, LPs and cassettes (although the only non compilation cassettes that I have are David Bowie bootlegs). Oh and while I’m on bootleg recordings obviously I have included them whether they are live, studio outtakes or simply unreleased stuff. I have not included digital recordings. I was surprised to find that there are 4o artists where I have at least ten releases by them. The list is below, (artist followed by the number of albums) there are no real surprises for me, are you surprised at any on this list? Have you ever done anything similar? I have also added a song from each of the top ten artists 🙂
David Bowie 141
Bob Dylan 30 Johnny Nash 26 Bruce Springsteen 26
Beatles 25
Neil Young 25
Elton John 19
Bob Marley 19
U2 19
Rod Stewart 18
Pink Floyd 17
REM 17 Elvis Costello 15
The Eels 15
Prince 15
Paul Weller 15
Ryan Adams 14 Led Zeppelin 14
Madonna 14
The Clash 13 Elvis Presley 13
Radiohead 13
Kate Bush 12
Oasis 12
Lou Reed 12
Stevie Wonder 12
Morrissey 11
Tom Waits 11
ZZ Top 11
Jeff Buckley 10
Julian Cope 10
Johnny Cash 10 Michael Jackson 10
John Lennon 10 Manic Street Preachers 10
Kylie Minogue 10 Iggy Pop 10
Rolling Stones 10
Frank Turner 10
The Who 10
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers of this blog a very happy and prosperous new year. I hope that 2014 will be everything you want it to be. Keep on rocking!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 