LTW newsletter 56

Hello Warriors,

As autumn begins to tease us with its crisper narratives and yellowing nuances and we desperately grip on to our rain shod summer there are still a last clutch of festivals to wade our way through praying for the rain to rest for a couple of days. Pretty soon, those Christmas ads will be appearing in the shops and hotels and ever wishing our life away gaze will attach itself to Dec 25th!

Meanwhile! Whilst the rest of the UK seems to be on some sort of holiday, we here at LTW towers (a mouldy tower block in the middle of Manchester) continue to grapple with the ever flowing river of music and culture pouring at us from all directions, like a gonzoid flood of possibilities. Our busy beavers and crazy capybaras have been busy immersing in the pop/noise! Some of it is great, and some of it confusing as we sift through the detritus of modern culture looking for the gems like gold prospectors on some far flung Wild West frontier.

This week there have been a lot of live reviews as we got immersed in festivals and gigs and even some albums - no one normally releases albums in August but we have found some! Johnny, who was once Rotten and is now Lydon seems to be as busy as ever. He never seems to be too far away from a headline but his day job continues as relentless as ever. Public Image Limited have a new album out and we sent our writer into the sonic abyss to make sense of his latest release.It (Opens in a new window) was as ever, not an easy task and full of contradictions musically and lyrically as the old punk rock curmudgeon continued to yell at the clouds in his own idiosyncratic way over his crack team backing band’s punk funk workouts.

We here at LTW had never heard of Beatle Bob - we had heard of John, Paul George and Ringo of course but not another one called Bop. Turns out he was one of those super fans that every town has who turn up at every gig for years in end and are part of the local circuit. The late Beatle Bob was from St Louis and was famous for dressing as a Beatle and doing a crazy dance at every show in town. Alex Maiolo wrote up his life story and the piece has ballooned into one of our most read articles ever - Beatle Bob had more people reading his obituary than most of the people he idolised- life is stranger than fiction.

Last year one of the best music books was Miki Berenyi from Lush who wrote her autobiography and it was a gripping story of music fandom lived through the inter zone of post-punk into shoegaze and Britpop that her eventual band Lush somehow captured. There was a dark side to the searingly honest book but also a redemption - a bit like her band’s own music that has been released on a box set that is a reminder of how often underrated her music was.

We were sorry to hear of the death of Jamie Reid - the 76 year old artist’s graphics defined punk and were a key part of the Sex Pistols story. His contribution was massive and proof that perhaps the perfect bands who make the biggest cultural impacts are really not the 4 pieces of pop culture cliche but ten pieces or more - a core group of musicians surrounded by the right managers, artists and producers. The Pistols are a key example of that and each constituent part cannot be removed. The music was of course, brilliant and Rotten was a magnetic one-off at the time but those graphics from Jamie Reid were equally important in the story and redefined what artwork could be whilst matching the band's fire and brimstone perfectly.

We were also sad to hear of the death of Rodriguez. The legendary musician had lurked somewhere in our field of vision for years with a curious career that seemed to bloom in the most unexpected places, such as South Africa where he became a superstar and symbol of revolution against apartheid as this in-depth article and brilliant write up underlines.

Oasis occupies an odd place in British culture - the biggest band here in the nineties but so big that everyone has an opinion on them both positive and negative. They now seem to exist beyond the cultural argument to the point where they are almost invisible yet they are still enormous and to this day a whole raft of young bands still look to them for inspiration. The estranged Gallagher brothers now play out their cartoon cut-out roles in a slowed down soap opera of the middle aged wah wah madness that drove them to the toppermost of the poppermost. Liam Gallagher played a small warm up show and we were of course, there and review it here. Liam has remained an iconic presence and his gigs are packed with teenagers who were not even born when Oasis ruled the charts - perhaps it’s own perpetual teenage rampage that is part of this added to the timeless quality of the music that still strikes a nerve with so many people beyond the narrative that works?

One music memoir we are really looking forward to comes from Pauline Murray from Penetration that tells her tale of a classic punk outsider who created exquisite punk stained art in what was then the cultural backwater of the North East of England in the mid-seventies. It may have been all flares and long hair as far as the eye could see but she was inquisitive enough to be on the case of the glam underground and then punk itself, seeing a very early Sex Pistols show in Northallerton of all places. Her own band, formed shortly afterwards define cult status and are Chris Packham's favourites from the era and remain a haunting and brilliant listen and her life story will be an inspiring read. She gave us her top ten favourite albums here.

The Hives besuited explosion onto the scene in the middle of the Strokes and White Stripes explosion was a welcome added corner to that triangle of key bands from the time. The Swedish groups had been around but no one bought their records until Alan McGee collected all the best tracks from them into a pretend greatest hits package that became a greatest hits package on its own - a real case of wish fulfilment. The group’s own snazzy sharp sense of self created an iconic image and stunning stage show with a sly and funny back story which they return to years after their last release…and they still sound great!