LTW newsletter 90

Dear Warriors!

Sorry about the gap in these newsletters! I was busy building a bunker in the grounds of my tower block in preparation for the next world war. It’s a flimsy construction made out of egg boxes and blind faith and it may come in handy in the next few months as the apocalyptic current times creeps to my doorway. BUT! Don’t let that get you down…I was actually finishing off writing a book about Oasis and its been a frantic frenetic few weeks of typing like a maniac with my fingers raw red and eyes frazzled and leering at the world like some kind of maniac with an over made up face … but that’s enough about Trump…in the meantime the site has been glorious…life has been going on despite the headlines and we have a creative overload…

Last night I posted the first interview with the legendary John McKay, the guitarist from the first two Siouxsie and the Banshees albums. We have been moving in mysterious ways here and after finding him a record deal the next move was to get the world out about how brilliant his upcoming album is - a collection of demos from the tail end of the Banshees and later on that showed that far from burning out he was at the peak of his powers.

We were sorry to hear of the passing of the legendary Johnny Green, famously the tour manager of The Clash at their peak and in later years doing the same job for John Cooper Clarke. Johnny also wrote books about the Clash, ‘A Riot Of Our Own’, and a book about his other passion, the Tour de France, ‘Push Yourself Just A Little Bit More’ . An erudite and hilarious man Johnny was one of the good guys and one of the great raconteurs with the best stories to tell. Godspeed Johnny…

Since we all started in this media lark as fanzine editors it was more than fitting to return to our toots with a fanine. This week we brought out a new print version of the website… the Louder Than War fanzine. Created in the spirt and style of the classic punk zines and a totally Xerox DIY operation the limited edition zine is available from here…

Ellen Beth Abdi has been the voice and face of Manc music legends New Order and A Certain Ratio in the past few years. So it’s great to see that she has taken the next logical step and started releasing her own solo material. A song about the violence of waiting and stunning in its own right it’s a great debut. 

Now that the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum and lines between farce, satire and the apocalypse have become very blurred, you would think that Laibach would have become almost redundant. Yet tonight the Slovenian band are in even more sharp focus than ever before. Revisiting their 1987 ‘Opus Dei’ album finds that martial masterpiece sounding even more in tune with these gonzoid times than when it was released.

Kasabian are a funny band aren’t they? Sitting somewhere between Primal Scream and Oasis they have number one albums but feel like a cult band, their music is playful and inventive but they are sneered at by critics and yet they keep moving their sound on and into other spaces whilst more acclaimed game changers remain static. 

There is something loveable about the way The Lottery Winners have sneaked up to become so hugely popular. Using joy, pain, humour, humanity, a lively stage presence, and incredibly catchy songs to make a Sunday night feel like a Friday.

Great to see that the Clash legend Mick Jones has reemerged from his hibernation with his Rock & Roll Public Library again. It’s his massive collection of pop culture stuff and there is so much great minutiae int here that it makes it a perfect reflection of the bric n brac of pop culture itself. 

Our reviewer jokingly, described Shapes as, “It’s like that time Sandie Shaw fronted The Smiths,”… but, like all good humour there is some truth in this. Never one for resting on his laurels, Mr Shapes was on the hunt for a new project. After laying down four demos he felt he needed a female voice to replace his guide vocals… His wife, New Zealander, Kat had provided backing vocals to three tracks on the Daysdram (on Lost & Alone, Blues and Made in Heaven) so would have seemed like the obvious choice, however, initially this wasn’t even given a thought. Shapes Like People, and their debut, Tickling Haze was conceived.