PiL

John Lydon’s post-Pistols band kick off UK tour at Coventry Kasbah.

Just what happens to a punk after the demise of the ‘70s? The hardcore ones seem to have kept hold of their Doc Martin boots and colourful mohicans - for as long as their scalp can bear - and define anything and everything thereafter the decade as ‘shit’. John Lydon however was fairly quick to develop his post Pistols band Public Image Ltd when he formed the group in 1978, developing his style to adopt a more experimental dance rock persona.

PiL, as they’ve become branded by abbreviation, completed nine albums before they separated in ‘92 and then kept quiet until 2009 when the band was revived with three new components to back Lydon - who remains to be the only original member.

And as for Mr Rotten 33 years since he walked off the stage and out on the Sex Pistols during their famous last show in San Francisco… Well, he’s still got a good head of hair on him, and it appears that he’s become somewhat of a caricature too; pulling faces and jiving about between burping and wiping the sweat off his mic with a towel. He also seems to have developed characteristics akin to that of Hazel O’Connor - only cruder and more mucosal - but regardless presenting the same gestures, stances and manner of movement.

Swilling his mouth and spitting into a bucket between every song (the mucus problem stemming for almost a lifetime now), Lydon swanned onto the stage with his troop of iconoclastic beatniks (never to say hippies) and opened with Public Image. The crowd were a blend of an older set reminiscent of PiL the first time around, and the young ones who have caught on since. Neither lot could throw their plastic cups very far.

It seemed difficult for fans to sing along since many of the songs involve a series of groans, wails and warbles, which occasionally go to shape incoherent messages of disdain. But by no means are Lydon’s utterances undermined for much of the time, and one of the essential purposes of PiL has always been to act as platform for Lydon’s huge and varied array of opinions. And there’s always one mentalist on the front row, keeping up the morale, and enjoying the show singing along to each yowl and bellow - raising a finger every now and then in honour of the punk rock god.

Lydon has certainly calmed his amplified attacks over the microphone as the years have passed and now instead seems fundamentally “happy”, as he voiced to the crowd, to be the man in his position. Every now and then the old look of contempt creeps back into the act and he empties his nose in a projectile fashion across the stage - but mostly he’s become a content and appreciative, more mature performer. Half way through the set he announces that “There’s more of this disgusting rubbish” to come, you’ve been warned.

In just about two hours, John, Lu Edmonds, Bruce Smith, and Scott Firth rode along on a sub-woofer through such classics as This Is Not A Love Song, Death Disco, USLS 1, Warrior, Bags, and Religion before they walked off stage and paused before returning to complete an obligatory encore. On their reappearance, the band set to work on Order of Death, Rise, and then finished on Leftfield song Open Up (which Lydon reportedly dislikes). Introductions made in honour of the successors of Keith Levene and Jah Wobble from the original line-up came right at the end of the show.

The only thing to really complain about is how repetitive PiL can become when many of their songs loop and lie on the same bass line for eight minutes or so; but with riffs that sound like a piece of copper spiralling down a coin depositary - there’s always something to get you rocking with fresh enthusiasm - and they still pack out a venue.

Can You Teach an Old Dog New Tricks? Seasick Steve Album Review.

It could be said that Steven Gene Wold is a guy who has risen from the very bottom of the barrel, right the way to the top of a musician’s game - by anybody’s standard. But what a search engine, or perhaps some article dubbed as from the streets to the charts might define as the ‘bottom’, is really just a colourful and at times surreal background.

In order to reach his knee-slapping, boot-thumping, string-twanging rockabilly status that the world loves and recognises today, Seasick Steve has had to live through various incarnations as a hobo, tramp, worker, bum, hobo again, and had to travel on a hell of a lot of boats to get there.

Once the record companies caught sight of Steve’s wood-chopper style beard, trucker style cap and dungarees matched with plaid shirts, they listened to his songs about life as a down and out - and the whiskey he washed it down with - and turned him into an epitome of a kind.

But behind the Seasick Steve the music business has branded with anchors, swallows, bourbon bottles and treasure chests in the name of a this is me identity, is a man who is all of those things but in spirit and honesty and not in commercial value.

Steve left home at 13 and lived rough travelling by freight train until he started touring as a musician. He learnt to play guitar at the hand of a man called K. C. Douglas who worked at his granddad’s garage. Eventually he fell in with people of the scene such as Janis Joplin and then went on to become a studio engineer, befriending another icon from the 27 club Kurt Cobain. After that he absconded to Europe, living in Paris for a short time and then moving on to Norway. It was during this spell where he set the motions rolling as a confirmed musician. To cut a long story short; he has a lot to sing about.

Four studio albums down the line, You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks has been released on Jack White label Third Man Records in the US and London based independent record label Play it Again Sam in Europe. We’re presented with twelve tracks of super-charged uber-cool groove, to points where Steve calms down to deliver soulful and really quite romantic sentiments.

The album opens with a track called Treasures; a soft forlorn ballad depicting the importance people lay on material treasures, and a judgemental society that has turned it’s back on those who have no notable belongings of value. The strings involved put the finesse on the melancholy of this Cash-esque wonder.

Next comes the title track of the album You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks. Steadfast verses, intermittent with riffs and explosions, pent-up slide and exuberant vocals. On live performances Steve is joined by Zeppelin-come-Them Crooked Vultures’ bassist John Paul Jones and long-term drummer Dan Magnusson.

Burnin’ Up is a feverish offering harkening back to the days of original rhythm and blues, ebbing inoffensively before the pace quickens and the intensity rises in true Seasick style. Don’t Know Why She Love Me But She Do surely could have been given a shorter title especially for such a snappy number, and plays almost as a barn dance.

Mid-album track Whiskey Ballad was written by Steve’s son Paul Martin Wold, and after beginning with a refreshed ‘aahh’ of Steve supposedly taking a sip of the spirit it goes into a chirpy ditty reinforced by a whistle. It’s the kind of song you’d expect to hear from a decked porch from someone swinging on a bench seat by the Mississippi. It paves the way to Back In The Doghouse whereby Steve busts out his three-string trance wonder guitar for this Bo Diddley style track of gutsy temperament.

The tone is lowered once again when Underneath A Blue and Cloudless Sky restores a poignant stirring emotion. A serenade of vows, promising to pass the years until the implicated beloved’s ‘hair turn grey’; intertwined with visions of vast corn fields and endless skies. Very likely a sentiment written for wife Elisabeth.

Days Gone is another song pacing almost schizophrenically between quiet and explosive, the hook arriving abruptly with Steve seemingly adopting a couple of personas, voicing orders and obeying them in succession.

The final track is a reflective sing-a-long entitled It’s A Long Long Way. It effectively evokes a folksy feel played on an ordinary acoustic guitar; capturing the simple and traditional essence of the song perfectly. The album ends on a reminiscent note confirming the idea that Steve has journeyed long enough to have earned the wisdom of a guru.

All in all the album transitions through enough diversity to make it a worthy addition to anyone’s music collection. However tracks such as Have Mercy On The Lonely and What A Way To Go may come across as lesser significant versions of other options available on the same CD, and are perhaps destined to be the skippable options. Fans are going to rave about Steve’s progression over the last decade - and the journey isn’t over yet.

The Cribs Sent to Coventry, Kasbah.

In the last 10 years The Cribs have come a long way from their roots in the Merrie City. They developed as musicians and as people in the north of England, finding their feet in an old abandoned mill - an unofficial venue where they would also put on a whole camaraderie of chancers with a dream. A decade on and the brothers Grimm (famed as Jarman) return to the smaller stages again for the first time since the departure of Smith’s guitarist Johnny Marr. Bassist and singer Gary Jarman takes time before the first show in almost a year to talk about the band’s humble beginnings.

There aren’t many bands left in the prestigious bracket of independent music, and whilst other bands have pinched the label and used it to billow their massive corporately funded bank accounts, The Cribs have somehow maintained their original status and have never gotten caught up in the act of ‘selling out’. The only difference now is that the audiences have grown bigger - as has the demand for a trio who’s tour once meant playing a couple of gigs between hometown Wakefield and nearest big city Leeds, making sure their funds were set to at least cover the petrol costs.

“When we first started out we never played the established venues in Leeds, a lot of them were pay to play and we avoided all that stuff and just played venues where some kid would just put us on. Even after we were signed we would do that, people would book us and we’d just pay for gas money fuel money. That was important to us.”

And there’s surely no better way to stay humble than to play the first gig in nine months at Coventry venue the Kasbah so to warm-up for the onslaught of festivals starting in June; and it seems that no time whatsoever has been wasted on ‘warming up’ over a single song. Straight in with Cheat On Me, it took all of three songs before Ryan had fallen off the stage, and remained helplessly crumpled at the mercy of the bouncers - guitar centre of the heap.

It was a sell-out gig. And with the kind of crowd proficient at being Cribs fans, in no time at all the barrier was shifting forward on a river of sweat and booze, and countless amounts of innocuous miscreants sailed over the front row and were marched off to the side. It was pandemonium - but in the best possible way. The greatest thing about it was it looked like the start again; a band so obviously passionate about music, performing, fans, rock n’ roll - each other. When you think that the Cribs are now a decade old, it seems as though they’ve hardly been around for long, especially when taking into account a vivacious appetite for live shows and how remarkably in tact their ethic has stayed altogether.

They’re far from ignorant upon looking back and pinpointing the various fundamentals that have confirmed the band’s identity up until the present. It’s that organic thing that all legendary artists have - just look at Joy Division, Sonic Youth, the Libertines - they have all set themselves up in a way that has meant longevity in the long run.

“DIY is something you should really value highly, and the ability to do that and have that control and have that ethic that you can do whatever you want is something that was really important to us at the start. We had a studio and we recorded bands and put bands on in the studio. The worst thing you can do as an artist or any sort of creative person is to sit around and complain that ‘there’s nothing going on’ or ‘no one’s interested in what I do or where I’m from.’ I really think it’s an excuse to somehow justify yourself in being apathetic, really it shouldn’t matter if there’s nothing there to start with or that you’ve started from a blank canvas.”

It undeniably helped the band’s case that they went about the process with a natural, long-haul manner and were saved from being thrust in to the limelight from an early stage. Instead they’ve had to adapt to getting the best out of their music, and to learn the ways in which the industry is run - which paved the way to Wichita Recordings who have only ever shaped around the mould of the Cribs.

“We never got big over night it was a gradual thing, so I never had those moments of shock. I was such an uncomfortable person and I wasn’t someone who celebrated like that. We’ve had a different transition to a lot of bands by the way it’s been done in that organic way - we’re about to make our fifth record and that’s way more important than becoming the biggest band in the world and then vanishing.”

During this recent set, The Cribs thundered through works from all four albums including guaranteed favourites such as Another Number, Bovine Public, and Hey Scenesters! All of which were met with nostalgic gratitude and a shower of empty plastic cups, out of nothing but love and generosity of course. The crowd were at their wildest when guitarist Ryan came to stand on the front of the stage and tease the front row by playing riffs at the end of several dozen fingertips.

Gary graciously points out that he’s aware that the band are no longer the new kids on the block (not that this appears to affect sales much). And although many questioned the decision to get Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr in for the fourth studio album, it did in fact alter the sound just enough to prevent the band from becoming such as a broken record. Johnny’s departure will contribute much to the same effect, and sure enough the Cribs will be reborn again.

“The kids who have now taken the place of the kids who mobilised when the Cribs first started probably wouldn’t have anything to do with us because we’ve been on the radio or been in the charts, and it’s very difficult to retain that cache because as soon as you move out of the underground, the underground doesn’t want you back.”

The decision to get Johnny in in the first place was like any other decision that means changing things from the winning formula - it uncompromising backlash, and disgruntling critics and fans alike.

“People like to make out that because he’s older than us it’s weird to have him in the band. You’d really have to be in the band to understand it because it would be impossible for someone to fit into the band if we didn’t get on with them, and the reality of it is trying to fit into a band of brothers for 18 months and to tour and live with them on a bus - no matter how beneficial it is to your creativity or your output it really wouldn’t be possible to maintain.”

It’s down to that all important chemistry just like with any band member working closely with another member of the group, and for Gary, he misses hanging out with Johnny almost as though one of the brothers has departed the band.

“It’s been difficult because we were very close friends and I only realised today that it’s the first show we’ve done without him. I miss his company, that’s the primary thing. I just liked having him around he’s a really nice guy, and I did like working with him but I also just like working with my brothers and the freedom and liberation of that.”

After releasing the first two records, the band had secured their status as underground and their genre was sealed as a lo-fi garage rabble post-punk rough and ready indie rock. By the time the third album Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever came out - produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and mixed by Nirvana engineer Andy Wallace - the Cribs had firmly reached a commercial high point; guilty only of superseding accusations of ‘selling out’ on the grounds of creating quite frankly a fucking good record.

“I guess we did make a pop record, but it didn’t come from a cynical place, it still came from a similar progression that the first couple of records came from anyway.”

And it reached the highest chart position than previously for the band of brothers, landing in at number thirteen and to be beaten only by their following record Ignore the Ignorant; which secured it’s final place at number eight in the UK charts. But chart success is not something particularly important to the band, and Gary admits personally that,

“For me it’s just flattering if anyone cares about us and because I’m in a band with my brothers, that if anyone likes what my brothers do then I automatically feel some degree of affection for them anyway. Purely on a human level that makes me feel like a friend because they care about my brothers so it doesn’t feel weird to me on that level.” He continues to say “Some of the best satisfaction I’ve had is being able to turn our fans on to people like Jeff Lewis and Comet Gain and bands that no one’s heard of before.”

And indeed Sonic Youth! They noticeably gained added cool after Lee Ranaldo contributed guest vocals on the track Be Safe on Men’s Needs, and the Cribs could only be as high as a Kaiser Chief to be working alongside one of their ultimate influences.

“They’re just so very creative, much more like artists in the legitimate sense than in the musical sense. Lee had all these ideas of cutting up newspapers and making a collage to then recite the lyrics from, then he had three or four different poems we put together - all these really brilliant ways of working.”

Now the Wakefield lads return back to being a band of brothers again. This time round they’ve had to come from the various States of America that they’ve divided themselves across since maturing somewhat and marrying ladies of cool; retaining everything Jarman-esque which grants them rock star status, with one wise statement that sums up what the next generation of mover-shakers should be aware of.

“I think the most exciting stuff comes from the fringes or the misfits - the people who upset the old guard a little bit. There’s quite a degree of snobbery and elitism in indie music in particular, I’m aware of it.”

The Cribs tied up their first set in almost a year after about an hour and a half. Ryan Jarman disappeared into the crowd for umpteen minutes, and the band left despite demand for an encore. But if the Wakefield trio have taught you anything at all - it is certainly to defy convention at all costs. People can be downright bovine at times.

Pete Doherty at the Leamington Assembly...

On a cool breezy early May evening bustling youths could be found littering the streets of Leamington Spa, they’re dressed like culture guzzling scenesters as they drink from cans and draw breath between cigarette draughts in an air of anticipation. The Assembly hall stands modestly amidst a diner and a nightclub a short distance from the central parade. The venue doesn’t look particularly spectacular from the exterior, but inside the stairwell paves way to an art deco wonder hall of architectural splendour - shapes and intricacies that even the Romans would have been proud of. Previously a ballroom and once a bingo hall, on this night the building played host to ex-tabloid fodder and eternal Libertine Pete Doherty. Although now on a firm streak of maturity, he is billed as ‘Peter’.

He is late. Perhaps this time the reason is down to the traffic on the M40, but in all honesty this kind of anarchic behaviour has come to be expected of the Babyshambles front man and in any case the fans are less bothered about the wait these days. A mere 40 minutes behind schedule, the crowd have been waiting long enough for the levels of excitement to rise, and not quite long enough for waves of agitation to sweep across the standing masses. Semi-surprisingly the venue has not been packed out to it’s full capacity, perhaps revealing once and for all the kind of sway bestowed in the reigns of the media. It’s been a bit quiet on the ‘Potty Pete’ front of late - from the tabloid presses, to the quality music mags - and could it be that the reflection falls on ticket sales?

Fortunately for Pete, his talent and allure can stand strong long after the headlines have swarmed like locusts to leech his worth and vanish with the remains, for he has evident longevity. He has a loyal following too - young and older impressionables alike flock to him like some kind of prestigious god - the leader of the lost. And now on this night he had returned to the midlands; an area he can announce as a ‘home’ after spending part of his adolescence growing up in Bedworth.

Fans were certainly happy to see his return. And so after a few false starts, Peter burst onto the stage with a confidence hard earned after years of spotlight familiarity, with his tall glass of alcoholic coke in hand and his trilby perched proudly on crown - his cigarette still alight after entering from the stage door. And he’s looking good too! Washed hair, a trim physique, and no obvious signs of grubby fingers. The crowd screamed on before their icon, and Pete set up to open with Killamanjiro after a brief but meaningful apology for his later than planned appearance.

From the first note Doherty delivered an energetic and charismatic set which felt as fresh and relevant as when the songs were first written, demonstrating without cause to prove the indispensable passion Pete has relentlessly possessed as a song writer and performer. The majority of the set alternated between past favourites penned historically by himself and Carl Barat during the Libertines’ heyday, and otherwise choices from the Babyshambles repertoire. New Love Grows on Trees and Last of The English Roses broke through noticeably as solo album Grace/Wastelands material, and one particularly nice touch came from a performance of For Lovers - a Wolfman song played with the addition of ballet dancers who joined Pete on stage for a few of the other softer numbers.

Despite it being an acoustic show, the set seemed to fit Pete’s particular mood of the day and the majority of songs were certified peppier numbers such as Can’t Stand Me Now, Time for Heroes and an encore featuring Fuck Forever. Every song was playing with vigor and expression, often set apart by flamenco style outbursts and freeform instrumentals. It was certainly refreshing to hear The 32nd of December along with Bollywood to Battersea; songs which are often neglected from some of the more current live shows. Occasionally Pete relies on his audience’s familiarity to fill-out songs and stands back to await the chanting to hook lines and series of ‘oh oh oh ohs’, himself jiving and circling the stage to a rhythm of his own. A fantastic display of artist to fans interplay.

Other points of interaction involved tossing unopened cans into the sea of ravenous scamps - receiving back the empty ones foaming as they hit the stage, and then capping his performance by launching his plugged guitar centre field. Just shy of two hours and the room had been thoroughly charmed by Doherty’s infectious enthusiasm and Irish shindig style tomfoolery… Even the security staff appeared enraptured at one point.

The generation defining Albion was one of the last songs of the night, and support artist Alan Waas returned to the stage after an earlier mediocre singer-songwriter performance to have another blast at his mouth organ. The moment was well received.

The night ended as it began, with dishevelled rogues and snappy dressers dripping steadily out of the Assembly and disappearing into the woodwork of Leamington’s silent streets. The last contenders lingered on to buy t-shirts and lighters in honour of their idol - let’s just hope that Pete is saving his merchandise fund for something useful.