The Rock Review

Festivals

Summer only means one thing to me; festivals. OK well, two things really. Because summer also makes me think of chilled glasses of cider sitting while outside a Looe hotel, watching the sun slowly setting. Bet you can almost picture it, eh?

Most people think music festivals only come in two sizes big and absolutely massive. Glastonbury fits in the latter category, with its countless stages. The Scottish event T in the Park is another absolutely massive one. Did you know that for the weekend that festival takes place, the campsite in Kinross is the third largest “town” in Scotland?

I’m not even that keen on the big festivals, to be honest. The Leeds/Reading combination or Rockness in the Scottish Highlands, for example. I prefer my festivals to be smaller, cooler and, even better, only a few miles drive from my home!

Which is where Party in the Park comes in, an annual event held in Trereife Park just outisde Penzance. You’re not going to get any superstars headlining this music festival, but you will get to see some of the best local bands and singers, of all ages, all music genres and, unfortunately, all abilities! The standards have improved in recent years, but there always seems to be a couple of teenage rockers who slip through the net, despite their singing and guitar playing being of rather questionable ability!

As I said, the best thing is definitely the fact that I don’t need to travel the length of the country to enjoy the ambience of a live music festival; free buses run you into Penzance after the event is over, if you don’t want to take your own car, but with Party in thr Park finishing at midnight, you can stay sober at the festival, drive yourself safely home and still have time for a few beers when you get back!

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Using music in the theatre – Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett

A bit of a diversion, this post, but as I sit in my lofts north london I thought I’d share with readers here some thoughts on how rock and roll can be used to great effect on stage, as part of a critically acclaimed and popular new play now touring round the country. Mike Bartlett is one of the United Kingdom’s most successful younger playwrights, whose Earthquakes in London was a huge hit at the National Theatre in 2010. Currently touring is his play Love Love Love, which explores the generation gap between the so-called “baby boomers”- the first generation of UK youth to really experience popular music as we know it – and their children.

The play begins in 1967, as the Beatles are about to premiere their new song All You Need is Love in front of a worldwide television audience. A rather conventional young man, Henry, is waiting for his date Sandra to arrive, but his Oxford student brother Kenneth won’t leave the flat to give the young couple some space. By the end of the first act, Kenneth has seduced Sandra – and they dance to the live broadcast of the Lennon – McCartney masterpiece before Henry enters and is broken. At the top of Act 2, some twenty years later, Kenneth and Sandra are married with two kids. As the curtain rises their youngest child, Jamie, is coming it the full Ian Brown impersonation as he lip-syncs along to the Stone Roses'She Bangs the Drums. As soon as the older, sleeker Kenneth enters, he’s yelling at his son to turn the music down.

Using these two songs both illustrates the generation gap in terms of the kind of music that’s played and the actors'and audiences'response to it. Plus they’re both great tracks! Highly recommended viewing.

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Sheila’s broken down

Big things are afoot in the world of no deposit car insurance. The EU regulators (unpopular already) are expected to rule that gender-specific car insurance companies or policies are discriminatory. One company sticks in the mind for all the wrong reasons: at the cinema, three Australians (not renowned for their singing voices) wail about car insurance in a garish pink Cadillac.

Essentially the insurance company caters for women. Without men (statistically much more likely to make an insurance claim) increasing their premiums, they can buy car insurance for much less than they would be able to at a mixed-gender insurance company. It makes sense – if I was a woman, I wouldn’t want to have to pay more money to insure my car just because of the likelihood that men will crash over the course of the following financial year.

Be that as it may, the EU regulators are suggesting that it is in fact sexist and discriminatory to only allow female drivers to buy insurance from your company. I can sort of see their point – if I barred women from my bespoke yachting agency, then I’d be told off. Not least by my stunningly attractive wife and two beautiful daughters, who need to use the facilities before their record-breaking round-the-world pedalo next week.

I, for one, think that women-only car insurance is not particularly discriminatory. It would not be able to exist if it was not selective, so opening it up to men effectively abolishes it. It isn’t fair, no, but nothing is really fair.

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Metal Deserves More Credit

Some genres of music seem to get more stick than others. Metal is one of the those that really seems to struggle to get the critical acclaim that it deserves. Rock music, of course, is always going to be cool. While it is has now been terribly commercialized by the music business, it has somehow managed to maintain a rebellious edge that has kept the kids coming back again and again ever since Chuck Berry pioneered the Rock that just keeps rolling these days. Pop similarly manages to somehow get an incredible amount of positive attention, despite it being so formulaic and lacking imagination. Sure, it’s perhaps the most enjoyable music but there’s little thought behind it. And then there’s classical music. Classical music is of course going to get endless credit.

Metal, considering its popularity, is just filed away in a chest of drawers by critics who think that they know better. However, I think that sort of the world’s best musicians are metal musicians. At the speed that you have to play — without using computers — you have to be absolutely incredible to get anywhere. The drummer needs to be able to do some incredible double bass maneuveres, and the guitarist needs to have 19 fingers and seven thumbs to be able to hit every note. Metal deserves better coverage, especially the vocalists. It’s almost impossible to train someone to become a metal vocalist. You have to have an incredible range, from harmonious shrieks to utter screaming pain and beautiful highs.

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Take a Trip to the Bullfight before it’s too late

The bullfight in Spain has been an institution for hundreds if not thousands of year. The thrills of seeing the matadors play with the bull in an almost ceremonial ritual that has enthralled visitors to Spain for a long time and drawn many people on holiday. While it is not for those people who have a weak stomach or for people who are concerned with animal rights, it is still an incredible sight to behold. Men put themselves a few centimetres away from death every time the bull runs pass them. There are usually hundreds of horses involved too, with horse owners coming from far and wide, making use of that horsebox insurance to get their steers to the venues safely, but not all of them will survive to make the journey back.
But you will have to be quick and organize a trip down to Spain to see the bullfights soon because the way that things are going it seems that the bullfight is not only becoming less popular an activity for Spanish people to watch, but it is also becoming something that local governments are banning. The province in which Bercelona is situated has been recently considering a complete ban, and as young people increasingly grow up without being exposed to the thrill of the bull fight they will likely also be unmoved by attempts to ban it.
So you’ll have to be quick. Take a camper van down to Spain and spend a few weeks visiting the beautiful country. Campervan insurance is very cheap so there is little cost involved, especially compared to how much flights and hotels will cost. Hotels especially in town where bull fights are being run will be very expensive. You may only have a few years before the bullfights are banned, so don’t delay!

Jail Weddings: get off your Cheap Sofas and check them out.

The name of the LA band, Jail Weddings directly denotes the theatrical drama and the stage performance of a 10-band member (3 gals and 7 guys) ensemble, though these musicians are too cool to take themselves seriously without irony. They are a pied combination of punk and the 60’s girl-band the Shangri-Las with a bit of Elvis, including the well-performed sound production rivaling Phil Spector’s huge Wall of Sound.

Gabe Hart who is the front man and leader of Jail Weddings is a passionate singer whose full voice and ‘snarl of the upper lip’ sometimes resembles early Elvis, but the polite naivety of Elvis is replaced with the edgier darker aesthetics of Nick Cave. Watching this band perform is literally a party celebration primarily because of the shear size of its members and variety of instruments used. In addition to the usual rock ‘n roll standards of guitar, bass and drums there are an occasional violin, piano, sax and xylophone.

The retro influence to Hart’s compositions and lyrics are with those of intense themed songs revealing obsessive heartbreak and sappy love popular to young adults in the Doo-Wop era music of the early 60’s and perhaps the irony here is that the innocence of that time is long past, lost and gone. Revealed in Hart’s delivery of music is an extreme heightened drama that often holds a prolonged tension similar to a David Lynch movie without a release and creating a mystery. The retro fashion worn by the Jail Weddings’ members, especially the female singers beckon viewers to become part of the ‘event’ and performance, so get off of your Cheap Sofas and check them out on the net and let’s hope they get over to play in London soon.

Jail Weddings

http://www.jailweddings.net/

http://www.myspace.com/jailweddings

Photo by Sara Morrison

John Digweed at Bedroom Beach, Sunny Beach

So it was the middle of August and I bought a sexy dress from Motel Rocks and a ticket for the performance of John Digweed at Bedroom Beach (Sunny Beach summer resort), Bulgaria. It was rated as one of the most anticipated parties for the summer with the Armin Van Buuren and Sandy Rivera performances. People were so eager to see and listen to Digweed performing that even a month before the performance at the famous club, the tickets were already getting over.

The club itself is an amazing place to be – huge and comfortable tents on the very sand at the beach, small pools between the tents, long and beautifully decorated bars, all sorts of drinks and perfect clubbing atmsphere. However, the performace, even before the very beggining, started to seem a bit unsatisfactory. Truely the organisators did their best to create the perfect atmosphere with the amazing sound system and clubbing lights, great visual effects and huge screens with official Digweed videos. But something else was giving the fans the feeling that actually it is just an ordinary night at Bedroom Beach.

As soon as the party officially started, many young performers started playin trance and house music – so far so good, they were really good and their sets and mixes were perfect. The club itself was taking care for its visitors with perfect waiting staff, dancers and rasonable prices considering it is in a summer resort.

However, the main reason why people came was John Digweed, and he had not yet come and perform. People were enjoying the music, but after all they were all here because they wanted someting more than just an ordinary clubbing night. By the time Digweed came, half of the club was empty, many of the visitors were already had eough of partying and most of the youngest visitors had already started their own party at the very sand of the beach.

The

So I just recently got back from an eleven-day holiday in Spain and during this time had a good old knees up at Benicassim, supposedly the “Best Festival in Europe”. Although I had a fabulous time, I did fail to get fully engulfed in the festival fever.

I have been to quite a wide variety of festivals, all of which have been in the UK. I’ve been to the big ones; Reading and Glastonbury and smaller ones like Womad and Freeze festival. So I decided to do one somewhere else in Europe.

Benicassim is the perfect mix between a festival and a holiday, you’ve got the option of camping, but hostels are very reasonable so you can stay in comfort and not have to pack your own paper hand towels. There is obviously the added extra of the festival being situated a twenty minute walk to the beach and the town is littered with swimming pools, that also have bars and cafes.

However with all these off site pros there are unfortunately a few on site cons. The festival itself fails to provide people with the community feeling that normally appears in campsites. There was little intermingling between groups of people; quite a lot of the other festival goers were either quite aggressive or very unresponsive. You may think this is because the festival is in Spain and the group I went with were from England, however the majority of the festival goers were from the UK or Australia.

The sound at the festival was also quite poor quality. Festivals in the UK do battle quite a lot in terms of sound, especially when it is windy. However when the weather conditions are perfect and the system is working properly you KNOW you’re at a festival. You wake up ears ringing/ bleeding from the night before with a lovely glow that only a festival goer can exude. However this did not appear at Benicassim, unless you were front central the sound and atmosphere was terrible.

Although the festival was enjoyable, it felt like a UK festival on foreign turf without all the fabulous things about British festivals. Sorry Benicassim but I feel you fail to be the “Best festival in Europe”.

Madonna will be a living legend for years to come

Madonna has always been one of the women that has been unique within the music industry. When she first starting performing she was known for her crazy outfits, provocative nature, and amazing voice. When you go to see Madonna perform it is a show that leaves you amazed.

Madonna first started as a young and upcoming performer. Her music dripped in sex and scandal. She sang of things that were not the norm. Nothing about Madonna was of the norm. She loved to be scantly clad and singing her heart out. Madonna was one of the first women to completely exude sex through the radio. She has had many, many hits among which include, Like A Virgin, Poppa Don’t Preach, and La Isla Bonita.

When you hear Madonna’s music it makes you think of her as being her own guiding light. She will do what she wants when she wants. She inspired women to step out of the cages they had made for themselves. She showed them that being sexy is not a bad thing. That being proud of your body, your sexuality, and your individuality is a good thing. Not to mention that being naturally beautiful as an older woman is completely possible without the use of cosmetic surgery and Botox!

The outfits that Madonna has worn throughout her career have been mocked and copied throughout the years. She is best known for a cone bra she once wore. She has always been on the forefront of fashion. Her ripped stockings, many bangles, and crazy hair were copied during the eighties and nineties. Still to this day she is a trend setter.

While most of career has been provocative, Madonna has also written many well selling children’s books. She turned her creativity in a different direction after giving birth to her children. Madonna is still performing and coming up with new songs. She is an amazing, creative woman that has inspired millions and will continue to inspire for years to come.

Musician Review: Azu

Azu is an unsigned musician. He calls his music “organic pop.”It is a fresh, unique style. Azu’s music is unlike typical pop. It has a distinct sound to it. This is a new style of music that I believe will become as huge as today’s pop.

Azu is from the United Kingdom and keeps his accent in his music. He is inspired by Michael Jackson, and began singing at a young age. Azu writes all his own music and insists on being involved in all the creative processes that go into his songs. This musician and song writer doesn’t sit back and pay others to write his songs. He knows what he wants to say and he chooses what goes into his songs. He has a part in the way the music will go with the lyrics, the tempo, the beat, etc.

I believe today’s music has strayed from what music is supposed to be. Instead of a creation made with the singer’s voice and background music from instruments, music is filled with abstract sounds from sound effect machines. Singers distort their voice now with voice machines. Where did the natural sound go? Azu is trying to bring back this natural sound. He rewinds the clock and gets back to the basics or music. With a simple acoustic guitar and the wide range of Azo’s voice, you won’t catch voice machines and sound effects in these songs.

If you’re looking for not only a fresh voice but also a fresh style, Azu is definitely worth looking into. Azu could be the next star in a new class of music. Azu is rewinding the clock and getting back to the basics. Music has become littered with fake beats and sounds. Azu brings it back to where we started with simple background music and a fresh to voice.

Oh another great new thing; really exciting news about the new band, I just talked to this great company who agreed to give us a good discount on the Packaging Solutions, check them out and see what you think!