kinks

Ever wondered why the English New Wave band The Vapours were just a one-hit wonder with Turning Japanese? They don't. They know exactly why. A little background though: they were from Guildford and the mainman was singer/songwriter Dave Fenton who had a day job as a solicitor. Playing as the Vapours, the four-piece were spotted by Bruce...
> fromthevaults/3252/the-vapours-turning-japanese-1980/

For the Oasis tribute band No Way Sis their work was done for them: Oasis were notorious for borrowing/plagiarising/thieving melodies which songwriter Noel Gallagher cheeerfully admitted -- and their song Shakermaker owed more than a nod to the Greenaway-Cook song I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (a hit for the New Seekers and also used as...
> fromthevaults/3236/no-way-sis-id-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-1996/

Despite being one of the most exciting and interesting bands of the Britpop Nineties -– singer Simon Fowler had a rough and soulful voice, guitarist Steve Cradock a member of Paul Weller's touring band –- this outfit from Birmingham never really took hold in New Zealand. On their home turf they had Weller as a vocal...
> music/3134/ocean-colour-scene-saturday-keep-on-keeping-on/

From the outside – even on the rather mundane inside -- the Irish Centre on Birmingham's dreary, windswept Digbeth High St doesn't look like the city’s premier rock’n’roll venue. And it’s probably not, but . . . “Yeah, the history’s here though,” says Ocean Colour Scene’s lanky...
> absoluteelsewhere/3138/ocean-colour-scene-interviewed-1996-take-it-to-the-top/

It is one of the ironies of Nick Lowe’s life that -- despite producing the first three Elvis Costello albums, the success of his solo debut Jesus of Cool in ‘78 (retitled Pure Pop for Now People in the more sensitive American market), being in the dream team with Cooder and drummer Jim Keltner on the exceptional John Hiatt album...
> absoluteelsewhere/2592/nick-lowe-interviewed-2009-as-times-go-by/

Somehow it seemed inevitable that an English musician would talk about clothes. These people work in a world where a photo shoot can be as important as the album of the moment. And right now with the 70s revival, bell-bottoms, chokers and an Afro are being analysed as “cultural signifiers.” Every music has its own pair of trousers....
> absoluteelsewhere/2075/damon-albarn-of-blur-interviewed-britpop-v-usa-1993-england-made-me/

Anyone looking for that low door in the wall which allows entry into the distinctive garden of English pop-rock is, almost invariably drawn to the Kinks whose songwriter Ray Davies had a mainline into the Anglo-heartland for almost decade from the mid 60s.Davies' songwriting could sometimes be satirical or cynical, but more often than not he...
> essentialelsewhere/803/the-kinks-something-else-1967/

The early albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones appeared in different versions in Britain and the States. New Zealand being a colony thankfully got the UK versions for the most part, just as the gods intended. But in some instances we got something different from both -- and in this case, better. The album The Unstoppable Stones...
> essentialelsewhere/786/the-rolling-stones-the-unstoppable-stones-1965/

The European Arc label is doing God's work in this world by bringing to light music from Eastern Europe right across to the shores of the western Pacific. Already in its ever-expanding catalogue it has well annotated collections from Tuva, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Samarkand and beyond. And this 21 song collection is very much from that...
> world-music/1706/badma-khanda-ensemble-mongolian-music-from-buryatia-arc-elite/

As an example of cosmic symmetry it could hardly be improved on: my 13th birthday,  the Beatles playing in Auckland, and my Dad offered two free tickets. It was only many years later my older sister told me about the free tickets – and that Dad had declined them. I guess that was why, long after the Beatlemania screaming had...
> absoluteelsewhere/514/rocknroll-never-forgets-a-journey-back-through-time/

Ray Davies, the former Kink and for the past decade a solo artist, say that these days he “stays -- notice I don’t use the word ‘live’ -- at Highgate Hill which is literally half a mile from where I grew up in Muswell Hill. It’s the highest spot in London and you can look over the city, one of the more romantic...
> absoluteelsewhere/1800/ray-davies-interviewed-still-a-well-respected-man-2008/

The first clip on the exceptional Who bio-doco The Kids Are Alright captures the band at their unpredictable best. It is late '67 and they are being interviewed on the US television show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by the very straight Tommy Smothers. They are witty and slightly heretical and - we now know - prankster drummer Keith Moon...
> film/828/the-who-the-kids-are-alright-dvd-reviewed-2004/

This will be brief as some of the previous albums in this beautifully packaged CD/DVD series Music of Central Asia have already drawn attention to these compilations which come with remarkable doco-footage from the regions (See tags). This sixth volume takes the listener to Azerbaijan and the keening, soaring folk styles of music there,...
> world-music/1479/alim-and-fargana-qasimov-spiritual-music-of-azerbaijan-smithsonian-elite/

Ray Davies -- formerly of the Kinks (see tag to an Essential Elsewhere Kinks album) -- has had a busy time of it lately: in late 2003 the great English songwriter (of Englishness) was awarded an OBE, a week later he was shot in the leg in New Orleans, his Other People's Lives solo album in 2006 was much praised (it also comes with insightful...
> music/1451/ray-davies-working-mans-cafe-v2-shock/

Okay, this is not for everybody ("Who is that?" said my wife, and not in a favourably curious way) but the previous collection in this Music of Central Asia series (see tag) was an impressive package of a CD, an excellent doco-DVD, and a very useful essay in the booklet. This equally handsome pack, volume five in the series,...
> world-music/1452/badakhshan-ensemble-song-and-dance-from-the-pamir-mountains-smithsonian-elite/

This beautifully packaged collection -- informative booklet, DVD with doco footage and interactive instrument section -- is not only a handsome set, but contains the remarkable voices of women singers from Central Asia, the region between Iran and the Steppes. Politics and ethnic separations over the past half century have lead to a diaspora...
> world-music/1425/various-music-of-central-asia-vol-4-bardic-divas-smithsonian-elite/

By the time he came to releasing albums under his own name in the early 90s, Paul Weller had already had two separate careers: first in the Jam and then the Style Council. If the Jam had been quintessentially English and took its references from the Who, the Small Faces and Ray Davies as much as Mod culture and the rage of the punk years,...
> essentialelsewhere/798/paul-weller-wild-wood-1994/