Beastwars - Coming Soon!

I had a bit of an exciting moment at the postbox this week concerning Beastwars. 

I've written before about my fandom of the local Wellington stoner rock heroes, who release their sophomore LP 'Blood Becomes Fire' next month. 

It looks like it's going to be another visual as well as aural treat, with the cover again being provided by Wellington artist Nick Keller. (Whose dayjob sees him working for Peter Jackson's Weta Studios).

Keller's work on Beastwars debut LP

I'm particularly excited by the theme on this release, as "the new album serves witness to the end of days, told through the eyes of a dying traveler from another time". That sounds like my kinda party.

 The LP's out on the 13th April and I've pre-ordered one of 100 x vinyl copies of the release, to join my 1/300 white marble vinyl debut LP and 1/200 glow-in-the-dark 7" of their last 'The Sleeper/Tower of Skulls" single release. (Unfortunately, I missed the Ltd. to 100 gold/red vinyl LP's and have just got a black one).

What I wasn't expecting through the post in advance of the release was a note from their drummer Nato, with three Beastwars plectrums. 

Geektastic, eh?

Sleep 'Dopesmoker' 2 x Southern Lord LP

The legend goes something like this: seminal Stoner-rock band Sleep released two well-received independent LP's ('Volume 1.' and 'Sleep's Holy Mountain) before causing a major label bidding war.

After being courted by several labels, they signed to London (being promised total artistic control) for a significant advance, which they then blew on pot and custom-made hand-wired backline.

Over the previous couple of years, the band had been crafting their magnum opus; secreting away riffs and ideas and not even playing them live so that, once recorded, the LP would be a complete artistic statement.

After several months working with their regular Engineer/Producer Billy Anderson (with whom they made both of their previous records), they hand in potentially the most uncommercial major label release ever: an LP consisting of one 63 minute song called 'Dopesmoker'; a quasi-spiritual epic, ('Chronicle of the sensimillian') telling the story of a (possibly alien) tribe called 'Lungsmen' crossing the desert to Jerusalem to deliver pot ('the creed of the Hashishian').

Unsurprisingly, London refused to release the LP in its submitted form - though did try to "salvage" something release-able by passing it to Producer Dave Sardy to provide additional post-production. A few test pressings and promos went out under the title of 'Jerusalem' a year later (1997) with the original track (less around ten minutes that was discarded) divided into sections. By this time Sleep had already split up. (Guitarist Matt Pike later formed the more metal orientated High On Fire, in which he also provides lead vocals; Bassist/Vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius formed Om).

Over the years, the stoner rock movement grew up in Sleep's image and the LP became legendary, without most people having heard it. A full version was finally released on Tee Pee Records in 2003 (without Sardy's  additional production).

Last year, Southern Lord again re-released the LP, this time with approved remastering and new cover art, and it's the deluxe 2 x purple LP version (Ltd. to 4000 copies) that I've bought.

It is an absolutely beautiful package.

I've become familiar with bits of the LP over the years but last weekend sat and listened to it in it's entirety on my Fostex studio monitor speakers. The LP absolutely matches the hype - it is a compelling, rolling masterpiece.

Sleep's Matt Pike (Pictured here with High on Fire, Wellington, Feb 2011)

Neil Young

Neil Young & Crazy Horse + The Drones

‘Psychedelic Pill’ LP Tour

TSB Arena, Wellington

Tuesday 13th March 2013

This counts as the third time that I’ve seen Neil Young live, the first pair of times being in the mid-nineties at music festivals. (Once backed by Pearl Jam, whilst touring the ‘Mirror Ball’ LP, once with a more non-descript backing band).

I grew up with Neil Young being a regular entrant into my parent’s country rock soundtrack, usually as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or Buffalo Springfield.

It’s clear that for much of the last forty years of his career, Young has been trying to put these and his first couple of solo albums, (‘Neil Young’ and ‘Harvest’) behind him, periodically releasing challenging LP’s and touring gruelling, noisy live sets.

On both occasions I’ve seen him before, I was bored by Young live.

I actually got to know Young’s solo material better later on, so ultimately realised that I was probably to young myself to “get it” on those occasions.

Young has a bit of a pedigree of curve ball opening acts; clearly accepting the media’s ‘Godfather of Grunge’ tag by taking out Sonic Youth at the turn of the nineties (just as he’d been accepted and accepted back the punk crowd ten years earlier on the ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ LP’s ‘Live Rust’ tour).

I was therefore interested to see who he’d selected for the Australasian leg of his tour.

Being strongly in the “elder statesman of rock/living legend” camp, Young has no need to take out hip bands-of-the-moment to sell tickets, so one can only assume booked Melbourne’s The Drones because he likes them. So, what about them?

Never has a band looked so emphatic whilst sounding so ordinary. They’re like a bad Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, without any of the songs or charisma. Without doubt (and I’ve seen a lot of bands live) one of the worst bands I’ve ever seen.

So onto the main attraction. First however; Jawas.

Neil Young famously has his road crew dress in different outfits for each tour (his stage set for the aforementioned ‘Live Rust’ tour in the late seventies was set up by Jawas. It must have been really something to anyone in the audience on hallucinogenics).

The Crazy Horse stage set (with massive mock flight cases at the rear of the stage) is on this tour being set up by a mixture of mad professor types and hard hat/hi-vis motorway vest wearing workmen.

After the flight cases were lifted from the gantry to expose their huge mock Fender combo amplifiers (something that have been a feature of Neil Young gigs for donkeys years but was later ripped off by Ryan Adams whilst touring with The Cardinals) an enormous fifties style microphone descended from the ceiling and the band (including Young himself) came on and stood respectfully whilst the New Zealand national anthem was piped over the PA.

I’m aware that Young’s work with Crazy Horse features extensive improvisation but unless you are an absolute uberfan – ten minutes or more of guitar soloing over literally every tune starts to pale.

Yes, I know that he doesn’t want to repeat his early country/folk-rock orientated material and a couple of new tunes from ‘Psychedelic Pill’ are memorable enough to make it out of the mire (third track ‘Born In Ontario’ and ‘Walk Like A Giant’ are two of the most anthemic notes of the night) but the three hour set is fairly short on audience favourites.

'Waging Heavy Peace': wibbling like a stoner

Perhaps I should have been less naiive about this inability to self-censor from reading his recently released memoir, ‘Heavy Peace’ during which he intersperses tales about his early career and life on tour (interesting) with a good 200 pages of wibbling like a stoner about his new high-quality music download format. (A format that really, I would find interesting if written about in a concise way).

Whilst there’s a whole raft of wigging out going on on-stage, there’s not much in the audience. Indeed a young couple dancing fairly innocuously in the stand to the left of us are reported to security by someone behind them. A bunch of security, loom on mass before totally excessively dragging them out of their seats. A goon-sack was then melodramatically pulled from under their seats after they we're thrown out.

Jumbo meathead security? You shouldn't have.

I had never attended a stadium rock show before I moved to New Zealand and I won’t be attending one at the TSB arena again. Ironically, considering the couple were thrown out for disturbing the people around them (a warning to sit down and shut up would likely have sufficed) my night was ruined by this thick necked moron sitting on the stairs to co-ordinate the attack – and it was just that. To the TSB Arena bully boy security team: you should be ashamed of yourselves.

There were a few highlights: a solo-acoustic ‘Heart Of Gold’ gave me something to video and email my Mother and a second to last track, ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ was incredible. (Though some of us may remember Young saying that he’d never play it again live after Kurt Cobain quoted it in his suicide note).

However the lowlights (Nazi security, a weird theatricality that doesn’t fit a band whom plays in plaid shirts and jeans, self-indulgent guitar noodling for a full three hours on a school night) really eclipse them.

One more solo? Yeah, alright then...

The question that has troubled me since is, “would you go and see a non-Crazy Horse Neil Young tour in the future”.

At the moment, I can’t answer it. 

The Stone Roses

Artist – The Stone Roses

Event – Reunion Tour

Venue – Vector Arena, Auckland

Date – Tuesday 26th February 2013

Around 1989/1990, I lived in a pretty rural middle class commuter suburb. I went to a fairly exclusive private preparatory school a few miles a day. In this environment of affluence, the music of the day – commercial American hard rock – provided a suitable backdrop.

During the summer of 1990, I was watching the ITV Chart Show when a monochrome video came up.

The song’s wailing wah wah guitars were driving enough for it to appeal to me as a pre-teen rocker, but their meshing with propulsive dance beats was something totally new.

The song was ‘One Love’ by The Stone Roses. I was immediately hooked.

Soon after, I purchased The Stone Roses eponymous debut on cassette from Our Price Records in Farnham. (Over the years I acquired additional copies and it’s become one of a very small number of records that I’ve bought on multiple formats: tape, CD and vinyl).

On initial listening, (apart from ‘She Bangs The Drums’, which had been re-released as a single in March of that year), I didn’t really like it.

I found its chiming indie guitars and jazzy drumming to be too lightweight.

I persevered however and as I grew up (I was 11 when I bought ‘The Stone Rose’, so I matured into the record as I hit my teens) it became one of (and quite possibly the definite article) my favourite records.

Of particular note was John Squire’s guitar playing and that and his choice of instruments became major influences.

Indeed the LP stayed with me as one of the only UK bands I listened to as I turned into a total Americanophile (I HATED Brit-pop and listened to bands from the US underground almost exclusively).

I was therefore excited almost to the point of spontaneously combustion when I saw the press conference announcing the reformation of the original line up of The Roses.

Most exciting for me is that they genuinely seem to be doing it for the right reasons.

The Roses finally split in 1996 after the departure of Squire and drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren.

Their career was beset with legal problems, poor management and infighting, as legend would have it due to the four members of the band all being on different drugs.

The Auckland show was booked to act as a warm-up for forthcoming festival shows in Australia and on a personal note, was pretty significant as I had chosen the date to propose to my girlfriend (also a huge Roses fan), whom said yes.

That out of the way, the brief warm up tape before the band was a hell of a lot more appropriate than their execrable support act Zane Lowe, whom managed to simultaneously play totally inappropriate music and then talk all over it. The audience (largely greying Brit expats) responded a lot more favourably to ‘Voodoo Ray’ by A Guy Called Gerald and Northern soul offerings from Gloria Jones.

The response to 'Voodoo Ray'

I’ve seen footage of their hometown Manchester show, at which they came onstage, launching into a triumphant rendition of their debut LP’s opening track, ‘I Wanna Be Adored’. The Auckland show opened in the same way. With a bang. (And ‘I Wanna Be Adored’)

Brown’s live vocals have oft been derided but I can’t emphasise how good he was on the night. (Reni wore a boom mike for the whole show and provided harmonies. Additionally the whole band was wearing in ear monitors, so one wonders how modern technology is helping).

The set included almost the entire first LP, virtually nothing of the second and versions of several pre-LP singles (‘Mersey Paradise’ was the second song of the night and they later countered with a blistering ‘Sally Cinnamon’).

Five songs in, my least favourite Stone Rose song, ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ (the second single from their poorly received sophomore LP, ‘The Second Coming’) was aired. Maybe it was the arena setting, but it suddenly made sense in a way it hasn’t before. (On discussion with a friend, he also believes this to be shared with later Kings Of Leon material)

Particular set highlights included a hearty sing-along of ‘The Is The One’ and groovy takes of ‘Shoot You Down’ and ‘Waterfall’.

Bizarrely, the only slightly dodgy point was a 15 minute plus take on stand-alone single ‘Fools Gold’. Either the modern reinterpretation has been transcribed to a minor key, or they were just out of tune. It was also affected by the Vector’s seriously dodgy acoustics. Mercifully, the rest of the set rang out crystal clear.

Often, when you go and see a band you come away talking about how tight they were. With The Roses, the band were unbelievably loose; sitting back on the beat and waiting for Reni to drop back into the beat when he disappeared into one of his Keith Moon-esque tom-tom fills.

The back story with The Stone Roses is that they (and their generation of Manchester bands, such as The Happy Mondays) taught indie kids to dance, playing live at warehouse parties and releasing seminal indie/dance singles (the aforementioned ‘One Love’ and ‘Fools Gold’). That said, ‘The Stone Roses’ is basically a jangly indie-pop LP. However, in a live setting, the band interprets the same material in a much funkier and loose limbed way.

As the show started with the first LP’s first track, after 90 passionate minutes, its closer ‘I Am The Resurrection’ with its breath-taking guitar wig (over a riff stolen from Big Star) was the perfect finale.

The band came to the centre of the stage for a bow and then were gone. No encores requested or necessary.

They may be craggier and greyer than they once were but with new material promised, does this mean that The Stone Roses can reach their potential as the most important British band since The Smiths?

Oh – and most importantly – John Squire’s still got the best haircut in rock music.

Setlist

I Wanna Be Adored - Mersey Paradise - (Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister - Sally Cinnamon - Ten Storey Love Song - Where Angels Play - Shoot You Down - Fools Gold - Something’s Burning  -Waterfall - Don’t Stop - Made Of Stone - This Is the One - Love Spreads - She Bangs The Drums - I Am The Resurrection