LTW Newsletter 52

Hello warriors,

It's been quite a week here…not the one I planned either…  I ripped all the tendons in my left arm and was misdiagnosed in the hospital just before Glastonbury. It was actually on the way to Glastonbury that I thought there was more wrong with my arm than they had told me so I stopped off in Bristol and went for a scan at a physio and my worst fears were confirmed and I had to rush back to Manchester and go to the hospital for an operation to get my tendons stitched back on.

Ouch!

So instead of being the compère at Billy Bragg’s Leftfield stage at Glastonbury, I was in fuzzy post-operation world. I am currently in 3 months of rehab the injury and typing this communication one-handed!

A new skill!

In the meantime, there was all the drama at Glastonbury, including Billy Nomates, whose great set was shown on the TV resulting in the normal faceless trolling from the kind of people who don't put their real name to anything. Billy performs solo to a laptop and for some people, music can only be music if it's played on trad instruments and they were hurling their abuse, forgetting that many artists can be quite sensitive behind their sprightly performances resulting in Billy cancelling her upcoming dates. Hopefully, she has reconsidered and LTW were in touch to extend good vibes and encouragement. Legit criticism is one thing and comes with the territory but the internet can truly be a cess pit sometimes. Is it too much to ask that people are to post under their real identities?

A gig, a theatre performance or an experiment? Christine And The Queens is all of these, and something else which doesn’t really have a category too….our reviewer comes to terms with the idiosyncratic brilliance of Christine and The Queens ‘He is at his most spirited when, during the first of this intriguing show’s three parts, he serenades members of the audience sitting on either side of the gangway. It’s as though he is trying to be as excruciatingly intimate with total strangers as possible, not simply for shock value, but to convince them of his absolute commitment to the words and the music. At one point Chris, a tiny yet muscular figure, clutched my wife, sitting to my right at the edge of the row of the seats.

The Skids comeback has been a bit more than a jolly romp around ye olde hits. Singer Richard Jobson always had an arty ambition about him that, married to his self-taught working-class roots made him a fascinating combination. Post-reformation Skids albums see a band not resting on their laurels but trying to move forward and the new one gets a great review on the site.

Brudniy Pres is a festival in war torn Ukraine trying to keep the music going in tough times. Ukraine hasn’t seen a big music festival in a classic format since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. On Kirilovska Street, famous for its electronic clubs far beyond the country’s borders (K41, Closer), the music scene is slowly coming alive. The festival took place at Keller Bar, the place where Ukrainian underground electronic music lives, and the fact that it happened is incredibly important for our whole music industry.

Generation Sex are chugging around the UK this week. The old lags with added lagging have been hitting the festival circuit, and if opinions are mixed there is always something great about the Jonesy guitar sound and the Gen X songs deserve their airing in the mainstream as the band was far too underrated in the punk era. The Pistols songs are timeless and there is something touching about their version of My Way. Looking forward to the Manchester gig! With Bob Vylan!

John Cooper Clarke has announced new UK tour dates under the amusing title of, ‘Get Him Whilst He’s Still Alive’ tour.

Rick Froberg the driving force behind Drive Like Jehu has died at 55. The singer, guitarist, and visual artist was a much loved and respected musician emerged from the scene that he shared with his friend and longtime collaborator John Reis who left this statement on his socials.

The classic Nina Antonia book on Johnny Thunders has been rereleased. We all think we know the story of Johnny Thunders: a genius guitarist and chaotic heroin user, but the full story is more than skin-deep. Nina Antonia’s first edition was published in 1987 while he was still with us. She was given exclusive access to personal information, friends and families (rockers have several families: the blood family, and the rock’n’roll family) to provide the extra levels of detail that an unauthorised biographer might have missed.

Muse have always believed bigger is better, which makes them the perfect band to fill Milton Keynes Bowl. Nils van der Linden is dazzled by the spectacle: a visual feast backed by oversized performances of their juggernaut songs.

bdrmm pick up where they left off. But as new things were looked for, sure enough, new things have been found. The results are remarkable. Shoe-what? asks Ryan Walker.

The legendary Monte Cazazza, who coined the term ‘Industrial Music for Industrial People’ that became the ‘industrial’ term has died. Primarily a performance artist Cazazza built up a rep in the mid-seventies underground for his deliberately provocative aesthetic and stance with an art to his art of darkness. Cazazza pushed and prodded the boundaries of taste in an artful manner. His influence extends way beyond his underground reputation.

I may have not made it to Glastonbury this year but my team did! While I was doing the hospital thing Worthy Farm was rocking the sun was shining, LTW enjoyed something old and something new, some pop music and some soukous jams. Richard Thompson brings the tears and Guns N’ Roses take on the doubters in epic style…

I saw Funke and the Two Tone Baby at Beautiful Days festival last year and was impressed by the one man music machine creating an engaging danceable avalanche of sound. Now there is a single! The one-man mechanical alt-blues band, recently named in The Guardian as one of the Top 6 Acts To See At Glastonbury, has released a “visceral, staccato banger” charting the rise of dairy-based political intervention.