The Experimental Tropic Blues Band interjú

Pali: 1999-ben alakultatok. Hogy kell elképzelni az akkori Experimental Tropic Blues Bandet, és hogy kell elképzelni egy koncertet?

Boogie Snake (gitár, ének): Nem változtunk túl sokat azóta, kivéve, hogy már nem játszunk neo bluest úgy, ahogy akkor. Leginkább egy szürreális para-rock banda vagyunk, avagy belga nyomi-rockerek. Koncertjeink mindig nagy bulik, nagyon ritka mikor nem élvezzük azokat.

A kezdetek óta nem változott a felállás, ami azért nem túl gyakori. Ilyen nagy az egyetértés?

A főiskola óta vagyunk barátok, és általában ugyanazokat a zenéket szeretjük. Próbálkoztunk plusz emberekkel is, de nem működött valami jól.

Egészen hétköznapi, normális figuráknak tűntök, de a színpadon azért meg tudtok őrülni. Láttam egy videót „Electric Cock” címen. Az mi a franc volt? Tovább / Read more »

A Dope Calypso az egyik legkeményebben dolgozó honi underground zenekarok egyike. 2013 októberében alakultak, legelső koncertjüket a következő év májusában adták (büszkén mondhatjuk RNR666 bulin), kiadtak egy EP-t, és egy CD-t, készítettek egy videóklipet, és nemsokára rögzítik második albumuk 12 vadonatúj dalát. A zenekar tagjai a Kollaps illetve a Haunebu zenekarokból lehetnek ismerősek. A Dope Calypso zenéje mindkettőnél nyersebb, lényegre törőbb, miközben egész kellemes énektémákkal operálnak. Élőben ütnek igazán, főleg amióta egyik gitárosuk Fenderjét egy Gibson Flying V-re cserélte.

– Hogy szuperál az új gitár?

– Kurva jó, imádom. Van egy üzenete vizuálisan, hogy mindenki kapja be.

– Mint a hosszú hajnak, nem?

– Ja, bár azzal több a gond, ha már őszül, meg kopaszodik az ember, és hozzá nem mezőőr.

– Hát igen. Amúgy nem tervezitek, hogy Lacinak is vesztek egyet? Akkor aztán durva lenne a színpadkép.

– Jó lenne, csak vannak megszólalásbeli kérdések is. Nem szólhat a két gitár ugyanúgy, ugyanolyan frekiken, ezért neki tök más hangú gitárja van, jelen esetben egy Epiphone Sheraton. Ráadásul így neki a mélye is sokkal több, az meg szintén jól jön basszgitár nélkül. Meg nem akarok Jay Reatardos kérdésekre válaszolni állandóan. Nem vagyok akkora fan.

– Nekem eszembe se jutott J.R. Durva, hogy erre asszociálnak az emberek. Amúgy ő meg egyre poposodott, de ti azt hiszem nem arrafelé akartok haladni. Azért gondolom, mert a Kollapshoz képest a DC sokkal direktebb valami.

– Jaja. A Kollapsban több kompromisszumot kellett kötnöm, bár személyesen nagyon kötődik hozzám, azért terelgetve volt a zene egy olyan irányba, amiben én már nem érzem annyira jól magam. A DC tiszta lap, és csak a sötét filceket vettük hozzá elő, meg vastagokat.

– Kábé mint a logótoknál, amit személy szerint nagyon kedvelek. Tényleg, ki csinálta? Tovább / Read more »

Bad luck lurks in the footsteps of Bono Vox. At first the tail-gate of his private plane detached over Germany, then, almost right after this, he had a serious bicycle accident in New York. Were these really accidents? Our reporter who investigated the case had to face some gruesome facts. 

THE KILL BONO CLUB

is a worldwide network, its roots go back to the early 90s to San Francisco.

Experimental rock band Negativland released an EP in 1991, which was titled U2, with two cover versions of U2’s song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

The effect didn’t fail to come. The Irish band’s record company and management sued them and their record label, SST, instantly. The charges: violation of trademark law and copyright, and fraud, because millions of confused U2 fans would buy the EP (which was released in 6951 copies) believing it to be the new record from their favourite band, making million-dollar profit for the swindlers. Furthermore this EP damaged U2’s so expensively formed image, and mocked at the covered song: Tovább / Read more »

Not enough people know Anni Rossi, the singer/ songwriter/ violonist. She plays with her instrument like you’d play the guitar, indeed, she isn’t scared to strum the string, making it a perfect tool for RNR.

Meet with Anni

a place (I won’t name for some personal reason) in Williamsburg

On Friday night, following an evening of drinking cheap beer with colleagues, I joined my new roommate, Andy, a New-Yorker and member of an anarchist organization called The Base. I knew that he knew the place where I needed to be. It was his friend’s birthday, and their musician friends were playing for her. Those kinds of friends are very precious, between tours, they will certainly animate your greatest parties.

That said, the gigs were very pleasant. First line, a guitarist and a drummer nostalgic of Kurt , second, a band from the past future, I mean like the people during the eighties pretending to be from the future. ( I’m not sure if you know what I mean, I’m stoned.) Anyway, those guys freaked me out, they were really good, but I just couldn’t take it, it took me back to … a night in Budapest, it was November, We were waiting for the bus in Nyugati station, I was wearing somebody else’s hat and he loved it… I was mentally preparing for the long tricky way back home (since I live in the extremities of Bushwick, just on the border with Bedstuy…) when I heard the name of Anni Rossi, which surprised me for the reason I mentioned before. So I asked around: what about Annie? She’s here? Really??? Where? (Turned out she was there all the time.) Is she going to perform? She’s great, isn’t she? I was, let’s say, suddenly a little overwhelmed and turned straight back to shake her hand: Are you Anni Rossi? Yes, and what’s your name? Line. Line who? Line ** ******. Curious and nice, she seemed unfamiliar with this kind of devotion, yes because I confessed my passion for one of her song, it was playing in my headphones in Thailand, Scotland, and on various trips here and there.

I asked her insistingly to play it, she said she’d try as she didn’t bring her violon (maybe she was upset with it), that night she preferred an electric banjo, accompaigned by the classic bass and drum combo. The concert was like a Rob, Ryan and Anni family reunion. Her belly button proudly displayed, she performed with a nonchalant attitude and voice like a cool Cold War Kid. Sipping her whiskey in between songs, she took it slow, inspiring air, expiring it, creating beautifully contained bluesy waves.

And finally the way back home wasn’t that bad at all, walking with magical bubbles in my head. Anni Rossi is just Loveli, check it out!

*

Bushwick

is located in the center of Brooklyn, where I live. It is full of brownish little 2 storey houses with flat rooftops and old factories transformed into lofts. It wasn’t such a nice neighbourhood (criiiiime) a couple of years ago, but as the rental price is cheaper than in other shiny and trendy places such as Williamsburg (headquarter of the hipster community), a lot of young and poor artists/ professionals like me are living in there. In my street seems to live many repented, retired gangsters, so it’s kind of quiet, apart from loud conversations and tooting at 2 am.

The mentioned neighbouring Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant) is the land of heavyweight rappers and boxers. For example Mike Tyson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but the chess world champion, Bobby Fischer also lived here.

In 1931, the Republic Bank of Dallas fails. Among the executives there is John Lomax (1867-1948). He lose his job, like many others in those days. Originally he is an English teacher and folklorist, previously he was full professor at Texas A&M University (Agricultural & Mechanical), later worked as a member of administrative staff at University of Texas, and was co-founder of Texas Folklore Society. He is a nation-wide known figure owing to his anthology of cowboy songs and folk ballads.
In sight of his father’s depression his eldest son encourages him to begin a new series of lecture tours about American folk music. In the course of this they go to New York and Washington. Lomax concludes agreements with a publishing house and the Library of Congress. For the latter he takes to make field recordings on him. In the summer of 1933 his expedition starts. His youngest son, then 18 years old Alan go with him. Go after sounds to plantations and farms, at juke joints and penitentiaries. At Angola Prison Farm in Louisiana he discovers twelve-strings guitar player Lead Belly, who has been sentenced for attempted homicide in a knife fight. In 1934, after his release he become driver and assistant of Lomax’s next round. He gets publicity and recording contract through Lomax, and finally become one of the most influential blues musicians. Just very few names who covered his songs: Abba, Nick Cave, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, The Fall, Brian Wilson, Tom Waits.

And there is the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. There he makes recording with Bukka White (1909-77), who has been imprisoned for shooting assault. Parchman Farm Blues about the hard times was written by him, but this is „When Can I Change My Clothes”, because there’re old pictures from the farm

„Most of the guards were untrained men, employed because they knew how to ‘handle and drive niggers’. We saw with horror that there were sadists among them who took pleasure in persecuting, beating, and torturing the helpless prisoners. We did meet sincere, kindly men trying to better the lot of the prisoners, but they were hampered by the limitations of the institution itself. A report in the New York Post confirms my own impression of a generation ago: ‘The state penitentiary system at Parchman is simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor. The warden is not a penologist, but an experienced plantation manager” – said Alain Lomax. Also here were inmates such famous murderers as Son House (self-defense, pistol, 1902-88) and R.L.Burnside (dice game, pistol, 1926-2005). And there were many nameless prisoners whose songs has been recorded by the two Lomax

1. Bama – I’m Going Home 2. Bama – How I got in the penitentiary (interview) 3. 22 and Group – When I Went to Leland

Bama – How I got in the penitentiary: Well, boss, the way I got in trouble the first time: the folks was barin’ me, and I cut and shoot a feller up. So, I just got in the penitentiary and just worked and worked and worked so much. I had to work. Cut up the fellow, shoot’um up. And then, when I got out of the penitentiary, I thought I had worked enough, and I decided I could make my livin’ without workin’. And I commenced with puttin’ pistols on folks. And that wouldn’t do. And I commenced to stealin’ everything that wasn’t hot and nailed down. And the polices commenced to runnin’ me every whichaway – every way I turn. So, after I got’um started runnin’ me, I just kept on doing wrong – fightin’, stealin’ – you know – an’ robbin’. And sometimes I wouldn’t (doing) be nothin’ but I’d been doin’ so much ’til that when they’d get me, I’d due to been got anyhow. An one, two time they ‘rrest me, an’ I told’um I hadn’t done nothin’, an they said, „Arrest you in egvance – you gonna do sumpin’.” So that way I just stayed in the penitentiary all the time, boss. In and out, in and out, for the last 18 years.

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) , after death of his father in 1948, continued his father’s mission. He introduced Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and others on radios and in concerts and records. His big fish was Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-72). He also went after songs to the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa. “Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a very peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folklore music, being very temperamental and ornery. … He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner, and paying practically no attention to his personal appearance. … He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results” – was written by an FBI agent, for Alan Lomax was observed as a supposed Communist between 1940 and 1980.

44 songs from his Parchman Farm recordings between 1947-59 on 2CDs with 124-page hardcover book have been released this month by Dust-To-Digital. These Negro work songs are perfect for your everyday job.

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essence of delta blues by rnr666

Charlie Megira is a highly talented Berlin based Israeli guitarist. He has released some different style albums under various monikers in the last few years. His music ranges from 50s style surf rock and roll through dark wave to garage rock.

– I grew up in the 70s and was surrounded mostly by traditional Moroccan music and on top of it all my father still owned a very nice records collection of popular music in the likes of Elvis Presley, RitchieValens, The Platters, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bill Haley, James Brown, The Temptations, Santana, some disco records like Boney M and ABBA. I can also recall some Sanremo records and Julio Iglesias, Johnny Holliday, Nino Ferrer and so on… A beat later I also used to hang out with my older cousin that introduced me to some rock music like Whitesnake, Iron Maiden, Scorpions and more. I remember I once asked him why all those bands are wearing dirty and ripped cloths, I thought they were poor and maybe could not afford to buy nice cloths… Anyway I really got into this heavy rock and also liked Bob Marley a lot.

I was a very good student and a talented swimmer

Tovább / Read more »

„I’m tired of American bands that sound like they’ve listened to more New Order than Howlin’ Wolf or Hank Williams.”  – John Schooley

The harmonica player Walter Daniels and guitarist John Schooley have been shadowy figures in the rock n’ roll underground for a combined forty years. Daniels was mixing blues with punk rock as far back as 1992 with Austin, Texas combo Jack O’ Fire, alongside the Big Boys’ Tim Kerr. He recorded with the Oblivians the Melissa’s Garage Revisited LP (1999), but recorded and performed live with everyone from James Williamson to Eugene Chadbourne, most recently lending his harp to the OBN III’s for their latest album. John Schooley is known as a root rock’n’roll one man band (but he is also member in The Revelators). His first single was among Goner’s first records, and another cult label, Voodoo Rhythm also released his records. It’s a meaningful fact that he toured with blues legend R.L. Burnside as his guitarist.

Now the two together on one, exclusively acoustic album, titled Dead Mall Blues. It’s mainly a selection from the American songbook. 8 from the 10 songs

We Got To Meet Death One Day by Blind Willie McTell (1898-59)

Poor Willie lost his eyesight in his childhood. Soon after lost his father, then his mother, so went whither he could. Wandered in Georgia with his 12 strings guitar. His records were frequently released between 1927 and 35, but under different names because he signed exclusive contracts with concurrent labels… It was a generally established custom at that time. After his record of 1949 he became itinerant musician again. In 1956 a record shop owner recognized him at a corner in Atlanta. The man lured him to his shop with a bottle of corn whiskey. During some shows his last tracks were recorded there.

Tovább / Read more »

Aretha Franklin in Punk, Sometimes with Nick Cave

Shilpa Ray is an Indian American singer-songwriter. She got Indian classical music education, and learnt to play harmonium and piano. In her childhood it had been forbidden her to listen to pop music. Her first pop experience was Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. Then she has taken to music of Velvet Underground, Cramps, Stooges and Joy Division. After her bands „Beat The Devil” and „Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers” were split, she toured with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as a backup singer and supporting act. Then she recorded a version of Pirate Jenny featuring Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for compilation album „Son of Rogue Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.” (It was co-produced by Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes’ bandmate in the band „P”, Johnny Depp.) Her latest EP It’s All Self Fellatio was released by Nick Cave’s own label in 2013.

Shilpa Ray in Palisades, Brooklyn

It’s back home that Shilpa Ray closed her 6 weeks US tour. And the gig was as stunning as the character herself. She plays harmonium (a kind of beautiful piano/accordeon instrument) that fits perfectly with her style. Wavy hair and open mouth, her cat voice hiss and miaows through the sound system sitting in front of me and I let my body speak with the alive machine.

Shilpa, I’d like to say that you’re a sort of hero. You possessed your public by spreading your healthy, angry, frustrated feeling of shame. Your natural talent is an inspiration to all the unloved ones. So what else do we need? You transform your own emotions into a real touchable and touching music. The tribality of it all, sustained by heavy beats proves that you can deal with being rough and powerful. The female fans say it surely, you inspire and transpire feminity.

John, the professional pedal steel guitar/keyboard player melts with her. He says, when playing he tries to inverse the melody making his music complementary to other’s, and that’s the magic trick of being a professional artist. This 6 weeks tour has been tough for the band, but finishing it at home just makes it seem all so smooth. Indeed, John lost himself on stage and that’s how he knows it’s been a good night!

Oooo crap, Shilpa has to fly away and there are so many things I will never know about the artist, though, after having heard what I heard I ‘ll always remember her melodic inside.

People! Do yourself a pleasurable favor and listen to It’s all self fellatio, you’ll see, it’s all so goooood.

Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

You’ve got only a limited time alive, so you’ve got to use your imagination. Otherwise, you’ll die of boredom, quick.
M. Gira

Life is too short not to fill it with real things.
Jeanette Winterson

The Realization of the Primal Brutality of Man

So, what can you do this autumn? Evening closes in fast already these days, the shadows on the streets turn blue quickly, then disappear. You realize that sometimes you’re listening to your own bones as they wait for the cold to creep into the days and slowly conquer them. And there is a special day.

The 4 of October has been the remembrance day of Saint Francis of Assisi for quite a long time. You know him for sure, the guy who wrote that strangely serene, yet beautiful hymn which you probably didn’t read, and who’s famous for preaching to the birds. That’s cute, isn’t it? You can visualize him instantly in faded sepia colors, as if he has just stepped out of a Zeffirelli flick, walking barefoot on the thick grass of a luscious park, stopping at a pomegranate tree to tell something really important, very poetic and easy to remember about God’s goodness (p.e. „Lookee here, God is good, capisci?”) to the nightingales and robins. There should even be a flamingo standing nearby, eavesdropping. Right? Fuck that.
Frances was a genuinely cool kid, so first he tried to help his fellow men and guide them. His original plot was to preach to his people and make them repent and then, you know, redemption, eternal life in God’s loving light and all that stuff. Only he realized that his people didn’t give a shit about any of those. On top of that, after graciously accepting his help they robbed him too, just to be on the safe side, and even would have killed him, if that was possible. So, when he admitted that his neighborhood was filled with dead men who were still walking and doing harm, he chose the nicer dead, and off he went to the cemetery, which at those times was more like an open-air person-rotting plot, not resembling at all to the very pleasingly landscaped parks which we know as cemeteries nowadays. There the dead were basically lying around and rotting silently, occasionally being chewed or bitten by this animal or that, but at least they did not kill each other any more. So there was this hippyesque kid immersed in conversation with these carcasses, and there were the crows too, nibbling on the eyes of the same carcasses. That’s how the legend started, anyway. You can take it for a fact.

Tovább / Read more »

Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa – Savages Imagination. Album review.
Let’s see my notes! Well, at first, who is Takako Minekawa?

Do you remember the J-pop explosion in the 90s? Exactly I think the members of shibuya-key movement, e.g. Pizzicato 5, Cornelius, Kahimi Kane, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Towa Tei, Maki Nomiya and others. Among them Takako Minekawa made the wittiest music. Her particular experimental electro-pop was influenced by the 60s French Yé-Yé and Brazilian Tropicalia movements, Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk, house and the fashionable electronic dance music of the 90s, for instance the Ninja Tunes’ artists. And her music was nevertheless unmistakeable Japanese. It was very playful and silly parade of sounds and moods. Between two catchy pop songs always was something peculiar, but funny abstraction, but often also inside the catchy pop melodies. Her records were released between 1995 and 2000, and there was a hit in 1996, Fantastic Cat

After 13 years silence she came back last year with a common album with Dustin Wong. He is a Hawaiian born half Chinese/half American guitarist. He grew up in Japan and went to college to the US. There he founded an experimental guitar duo with Matthew Papich (nowadays: Co La): Ecstatic Sunshine (2004-07), and a Deerhoofesque art rock band: Ponytail (2005-11). After the break-up he has begun solo career, and makes experimental guitar albums. And now here is the next Minekawa & Wong album. And it’s (or at least, I like it) better than the previous one. The music is very playful and silly parade of sounds and moods. Inside the songs, between two peculiar, but funny abstract electro-pop melodies, always are catchy pop tunes. Unfortunately many people averse to the phrase „pop”, and same time they consider „rock”, „metal” and  „punk” as positive things, when there are many load of shit under the label of „rock”, „metal” and „punk.” This is pop, because this is not rock. Rather alternative disco a la Mouse on Mars.

And here is another strange thing. The „Savage Imagination” comes the Beastie Boys in my mind, while this is almost entirely instrumental album. And this fact has been observed after I listened to it many times! Well, their rate of creativity is equivalent with the mentioned boys.

LP and CD out on 22 September by Thrill Jockey Records (US)

CD and digital on Plancha Records (Japan)

And finally let’s see the cats!
A rabbit tail long interview with Takako Minekawa Tovább / Read more »

DEMJÉN HIRST
is a chaotic garage rock band in Budapest.
They will play before Audacity at RNR666 Party
in Budapest on Sept 11.

INTERVIEW

– The members?
– Dániel Bernáth (guitar, vocal), István Nagy (drums), Gyula Veres (guitar).

– Where do you live?
– Budapest, but we’re from east of Hungary.

– When it was founded, and why?
– 2 years ago. But we have been doing it more seriously for 1 year. We were at same class at University of Fine Arts in Budapest. In the early times our goal was just to drain away our tensions, and to gratify our primitive instincts, but today we do it for success, money, shine, free beers and so on.

– Did you think to write Hungarian lyrics? By the way, what are its themes?
– Yes we did, but rejected the thought. There were many reasons, but the first: the language of rock is the English. And such music like ours needs this simpler form of expression. In Hungarian I can’t express myself in such manner that I would like to do it. In Hungarian it’s harder to be rude. I should say sophisticated banalities about things of the life as love, pain, anger, hope and similar banalities of the life.

Tovább / Read more »

This month will be released the next album of the British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, entitled Give My Love to London. From Paris, because she is living there.

Her life was pretty vicissitudes. She has begun her singing career as a folk music performer in coffeehouses in 1964. Her first hit was „As Tears Go By” was written by Jagger, Richards and then Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham. It was one of the first original compositions by Jagger and Richards, as until that point The Rolling Stones had chiefly been performing blues standards. Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in order to force them to write a song together: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.” The song was given to her. Later the Stones also recorded it.

As Jagger’s girlfriend in these years she made big impression on the Stones. For example she is co-author of Sister Morphine. First it was recorded by herself with Jagger, Ry Cooder, Jack Nitschze and Charlie Watts, and was released as B-side of her single in 1969.

Tovább / Read more »