The world's only FREE weekly music magazine

Issue 16: 16th November 1998

CONTENTS: The Gossiping Hen: Suede, Portishead, Ian Brown, Rolling Stones, Alan Moore etc

Feature: Nada Surf. News: Manic Street Preachers, Stabbing an Opera Singer, Teenage Witch
Missing Links: Pet Shop Boys, Rottentrolls, Jungle Records
Twitchy the Tramp: Refuses to join Oasis on their next tour (which is almost certainly gonna be shite)
Record Reviews. Athenrye, Roy Harper, The Rolling Stones, Nanci Griffith

EDITED AND COMPILED BY Mr Slutto, Sigsworthy Craggs and Atilla the Hen

Subscribe/unsubscribe at the ISMO website: http://www.members.tripod.com/~ismomag/

(TWO VERSIONS ARE SENT OUT, ONE IN E.TEXT AND THE OTHER IN HTM. WE RECOMMEND THE HTM VERSION BUT SOME SERVERS CANNOT READ IT)


THE GOSSIPING HEN

EACH WEEK ATILLA - OUR INTREPID CAPON - REVEALS THE RESULTS OF A FEW DAYS SPENT HANGING AROUND IN BARS WITH CELEBRITIES, LISTENING AT WINDOWS, AND BLAGGING DRINKS OFF P.R MEN

* The Obligatory Ian Brown bit.......... As we reported last week, he`s back in prison again, but now one of the members of his band is claiming that he has been made a scapegoat because he is famous. Well at ISMO mansions we think that ANYONE who threatens to cut someone`s hands off when he is drunk on an airliner deserves all he gets. Twat!!!!!

* It goes against our deeply held principals to buy anything published by Rupert Murdoch but yesterday`s Sunday Times had an extremely insightful interview wioth Mick Jagger in which herefutes all the recent media bollocks about him `attacking` Tony Blair`s tax policy vis a vis the non appearance of da Stones in the UK on the recent `Bridges to Babylon` tour. He says that he ain`t doing a Jarvis Cocker and refusing to vote Labour again but....

For the record this particular chicken ain`t voting labour again for all sorts of other reasons!

* We were in London over the weekend and caught an appearance by a rather good Mod Band called 'Quant' who, although I don`t know if they have a record out, certainly should do....

* Those intent on searching out the true mysteries of the Universe as well as those who were afraid that they might make the number one slot last Christmas should check out the Tellytubbies Conspiracy Site at http://www.mtattersall.demon.co.uk/tubbies/home.html. We hope that this years' UK Christmas Number One will be the Stupendous `RottenTrolls March` by `The Rottentrolls`. All UK readers are urged to watch Children`s ITV at 4.25 on Wednesday and they will see wot we mean.....

* 'Alan Moore knows the score.......' sang Pop Will Eat Itself a few years back. He certainly does quoth the Gossipping Hen. This bit of news from the Alan Moore Fan Site Newsletter http://www.mindspring.com/~scamper/moore/ confirms that everybody`s favourite comic book bloke is once again going off into interesting new directions.

'Disco Cabala' is Alan Moore's next big record project. The piece is based on the Jewish mystical system and put to a dance beat. Moore isn't writing any text for it, but is instead creating music with Tim Perkins. Presently, he's just finished recording the seventh cycle (the cycle of emotion and feeling). The 2-hour CD should be available next year.

He was recently said to have taken up the practise of magick and is quoted as saying, "One of the reasons I took so long to become a magician was because of some of the people surrounding the occult scene. They have a yawning emotional gulf inside them and bolster it with all this gothic shit. There's a certain sort of Aleister Crowley-ite who's into a middle class view of evil: they're aso into Charles Manson and piercing. I've nothing against romanticism. But there's romanticism and acting like a spaz."

Right on Al!


MISSING LINKS

MISSING LINKS: EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GOTH BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK......

Jungle Records - Old Dairy Mews, 62 Chalk Farm Road, Camden, London, NW1 8AN Tel +44(0)171 267 0171 - Fax +44(0)171 267 0912
http://www.jungle-records.demon.co.uk/. Jungle Records is a London-based independent label, serving up some of the best selections of indie, punk, goth, and cutting-edge dance music, plus much more, since 1982. The JUNGLE label has many associated labels such as FALL OUT, MINT, MORTARHATE, MINISTRY OF POWER, OBSESSION, SKYDOG, MIDDLE EARTH and others.

SAMPLE STOLEN FROM THEIR NEWS PAGES:

WELCOME to Jungle's new website, fully functioning from Fall '98. We hope you find it helpful and informative, whether for researching new or old releases, artist histories or for shopping. We'll be developing and adding to it regularly, so please come back for news, additions and improvements.

FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM are back! Six years after the split, Carl McCoy has concluded his 'Nefilim' project and is reunited with Tony Pettitt, Nod Wright and Paul Wright whose 'Rubicon' project is also finished. Carl and Tony recently travelled to Germany for the Zillo Festival near Hannover, to announce the news. Zillo staged the press conference in a jam-packed 1500 capacity tent, just prior to The Cure coming on the main stage. Interviewed by top German DJ Ecki Steig, and filmed by five TV cameras, Carl and Tony also previewed a 20-minute excerpt of their 'Nephilim' album side-project. We'll see if we can transcribe the interview to post up here. Expect these new recordings on Jungle some time in the New Year - more news soon.

Jungle is pleased to announce a deal with the French label SKYDOG RECORDS, coinciding with their 25th anniversary, to release a selection of it's catalogue of rock'n'roll legends. Founder Marc Zermati hunted down his favourite artists to release - luckily for everyone they were IGGY & THE STOOGES, MC5, NEW YORK DOLLS, FLAMIN' GROOVIES, etc. We've already released the Groovies 'Grease' - the complete Skydog singles collection, next in line is Iggy & the Stooges infamous, notorious 'Metallic K.O.', the Stooges last show where the Iguana confronts and provokes Hells Angels trying to bottle him off. Riots in the Motor-City! 'A masterpiece', wrote Nick Kent. Marc dug out the original 1/4" tapes and we found it was taken from 2 concerts. Digitally remastered, with two extra tracks, repackaged with a 12-page booklet, we will be re-issuing it as a double CD - with one concert on each - around November.

Buffalo's MERCURY REV only issue an album about every three years, probably needing to recover from the shock of the critical acclaim they get each time they do! 1998 is one of those years, it's on Mr. Branson's V2 label, it's called 'Deserter's Songs' and it is of course fantastic - adulatory 5-star reviews everywhere, 'Album Of The Year' in The Independent, etc. So, just in case it's something that's been missing from your life, we're re-issuing their stunning, lauded, landmark debut 'Yerself Is Steam' on MINT FILMS soon. (Melody Maker made it their 1991 '4th Best Album Of The Year'; Nirvana's 'Nevermind' was 5th!) We licensed it to Beggars Banquet along with the band's next two albums, but after being unavailable the past 3 years we're pleased to say this classic album is now back home......

MISSING LINKS: THE ROTTENTROLLS

Check out the greatest piece of children`s TV for years and years and years...........

The Official Rottentrolls Website: http://www.welcome.to/rottentrolls/

MISSING LINKS: PET SHOP BOYS

Hardly Pet Shop Boys: Welcome to the Home of Pet Shop Boys Rewrites. Hardly Pet Shop Boys. Introduction. Welcome to Hardly Pet Shop Boys - the Pet Shop Boys rewrite site. Here: http://www.algonet.se/~ecgn/hardly/

Welcome to Hardly Pet Shop Boys - the Pet Shop Boys rewrite site. Here you will find a collection of the weirdest lyrics possible, written by even weirder people, or so I hope, since you cannot be fully normal if you write this kind of stuff. :) Further down on this page, you will be able to see the latest addition to Hardly. Thanks to Alan Winston (of A Different Point Of View fame) some of the rewrites now have a fake single cover. Check them out; they are brilliant!

This site contains rewrites by myself and a whole bunch of other people, and most of them initially turned up on the Pet Shop Boys mailinglist - Introspective. Many of these rewrites used to be featured on the Pet Shop Boys humour site #1, but when Humorously disappeared, most of the funny rewrites were lost, or so it seemed. If it hadn't been for Rumiko Hoshino of Tokyo, Japan, and David Malthouse of Western Australia, they would have been lost forever. Answering my call for help on this matter they sent me all of the rewrites from Humorously. I'm in debt to you forever! Having collected all the old stuff, I think now is the time to get some new. I can't do them all, you know, so you'd better start rhyming. So, if you have some funny rewrites that you think belong here, send them to me.

Finally a brief history lesson. Q: When and why did this site start out? A: Well, it started quite a while ago actually (late summer/early autumn of '95). I made a silly promise to some of the members of Introspective - I was going to completely rewrite Actually. The reasons for making this promise (or threat if you will) are forever lost in the mists of time, but I suspect that it had something to do with the spur of the moment and the enormous amount of Very rewrites that were posted to Introspective back then.

EXAMPLE:

Once upon a time long ago, there was a rather heated debate on Introspective, whether dogs were considered to be animate or inanimate. The reason was someone mentioning that Neil was using 'it' intead of 'he' or 'she' in I Want A Dog. Soon the list was flooded by people having opinions on the matter. Below you will find my addition to the debate.

What Do We Do To Preserve It?:

I always wanted a puppy,
I only wanted a dog.
I've always loved all that's living.
How are we gonna get through?
How are we gonna get through?

It came here wanting us feed it
Had to have it,
and end up living with us.
Now it's left us with nothing.
Can't take it.
How are we gonna get through?
How are we gonna get through?

We gave it drinks, we fed it flowers,
we read it books and talked for hours.
Every day so many drinks,
such pretty flowers, so tell me:

What do we, what do we, what do we do to preserve it?
What do we, what do we, what do we do to preserve it?
What do we, what do we, what do we...

Since it went away, it's been lying around,
we've been wondering why it's feeling down.
Went away, it should make us feel better, but I don't know.

How we're gonna get through,(What do we , What do we,
What do we do to preserve it?)how we're gonna get through.
(What do we, What do we, What do we do to preserve it?)

You always wanted it to be something it wasn't.
You almost wanted too much.
Now it can't do what we want to, forever.
How are we gonna get through?
How are we gonna get through?

At night the puppies come, not go,
they grow too fast, react too slow.
Chasing them from hour to hour,
I pour them drinks and crush the flowers.

What do we, what do we, what do we do to preserve them?
What do we, what do we, what do we do to preserve them?
What do we, what do we, what do we...

Since it went away, it's been lying around,
we've been wondering why it's feeling down.
It went away, it should make us feel better, but I don't know.

http://memes.com/~tristandcw/timeline/


WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLDMINE

Peculiar music/art news from around the world

THIS IS OUR TRUTH BLAH BLAH BLAH

(Note: I don`t know where we stole this story from - we usually try to credit them but this time we can't)

Friday 13 November 1998 Missing Manics guitarist 'seen on holiday isle'

The guitarist from the Manic Street Preachers who disappeared three and a half years ago has apparently been seen alive and well in the Canary Islands.

Several customers in a bar in Fuerteventura said they recognised Richey Edwards drinking at the Underground Pub. The songwriter for the Welsh pop band was last seen in London in February 1995. Police found his abandoned Vauxhall Cavalier car two weeks later near the Severn Bridge in South Wales and thought he had committed suicide but his body was never found. His passport, credit cards and Prozac tablets were found in his flat in Cardiff.

According to Tracey Jones, a British barmaid who works in the Underground Pub, the drinker was 'just like Richey'. She told Tenerife's Island Sun newspaper: "One of the customers suddenly shouted, 'You're Richey from the Manic Street Preachers'. He just started to run towards the door and within seconds he had gone. We were sure it was just like Richey."

This latest sighting is one of several reported incidents of Edwards being spotted in different countries. In March last year, a college lecturer claimed that he had seen the missing Welsh musician at a market in the Indian beach resort of Goa. Viv Morris said: "He was with some hippies getting on a bus and his name was Rick." A spokesman for the band said, "It seems very strange that all these sightings are in bars at night in high-profile holiday resorts.

"As far as we know, Interpol were involved when he first went missing and I don't think there was an application for another passport so I don't know how Richey could have left the country, if he is still around, if he doesn't have his passport. We just pass these sightings on to the police and let them get on with it but this is all very upsetting for his parents."

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said they welcomed any new information about Edwards, who would now be 30. "Our inquiry is active and ongoing," she said.

The remaining band members have always refused to accept Edwards is dead and have ensured that a quarter share of the millions the group have earned since his disappearance has been left in a trust fund.

BISMILLAH NO!!! (WE WILL NOT LET YOU GO) HEH HEH HEH

'Pagliacci' singer accidentally stabbed during death scene rehearsal
Milwaukee: November 5, 1998

In 'I Pagliacci', Leoncavallo's one-act opera about a traveling troupe of actors, Canio proclaims he is 'no longer acting' when he fatally stabs his unfaithful wife, Nedda, and her lover, Silvio. In a rehearsal of a Florentine Opera Company production Wednesday, a baritone playing Silvio was accidentally stabbed when the blade of the knife used as a prop failed to retract during the scene.

Kimm Julian, 48, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., was released Thursday from Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital Thursday after emergency surgery. Dennis Hanthorn, the opera company's general director, said the show would go on as planned next week, but Julian planned to return home to Minnesota and would not appear in the production. Another performer was taking over Julian's role, Hanthorn said. British tenor David Rendall, 50, who accidentally stabbed Julian, was back in rehearsals Thursday and would appear in the opera, Hanthorn said. The knife had been used safely in a dozen previous rehearsals, Hanthorn said. A safer one was being used from now on, he said.

JAMIE THE TEENAGE BITCH

School suspends 15-year-old 'witch' for casting 'spell'
Baltimore: October 22, 1998

A 15-year-old girl who claims to be a witch was suspended from school this week after another girl accused the high-school freshman of casting a spell on her. Jamie Schoonover, who has been taunted by fellow classmates for her overt adherence to the neopagan Wicca religion, was sent home for the day after an incident that occurred outside Baltimore's Southwestern High School on Tuesday morning, school officials said on Thursday. The other girl heard from a third student that Schoonover had put a "hex" on her. She started crying and ran to school administrators, who later held a two-hour meeting with both girls and their families. Schoonover's suspension slip cited her for "casting a spell on a student." Baltimore schools officials later pronounced the whole thing a misunderstanding and said Schoonover's suspension order should have cited her for making an alleged verbal threat. Schoonover, whose father is a 45-year-old transsexual named Colleen Harper, stands out at school because she wears all-black clothing and is a devotee of gloomy "Goth" rock music, school officials said. Her family says she is also bisexual. Harper, who describes herself as a witch as well, told reporters at the school that this week's incident was only the latest in a series of encounters in which her daughter had been taunted and threatened.


PRICK UP YOUR EARS

THE ISMO FEATURE: NADA SURF


In this week's feature we take a look at Nada Surf and at their new CD...

NADA SURF

"The Proximity Effect"

Elektra 7559-62207-2

****

cd cover
Wow! I really like this band! For a while now (OK since about 1975) it has been de rigeur to state that your influences include the massively obscure US rock band Big Star, which were fronted by ex-Raspberries singer Alex Chilton. Well this band DON'T number Big Star amongst their influences - but by heck they sound as if they do!

Nada Surf have managed to fuse some of the most gorgeous melodies I've heard in a while with some of the most elegantly brutal guitar playing I've heard in even longer. Add to this some wonderfully ridiculous lyrics (like the couplet rhyming 'drunk on Bacardi' with someone walking home 'from a party' ) and you have yourself a band which I wish I`d been hip enough to have heard of earlier. I'm going straight down to the second hand record shop with some of the other shit we've been sent this week in order to trade it in and try and get a copy of their debut disc pronto. - Atilla The Hen

THE PRESS RELEASE

Nada Surf, the band who had the fortune to pen one of the biggest alternative singles of 1996 in the shape of 'Popular' (a rather biting satirical attack on American High School 'jock' culture which became hijacked as an anthem by the 'out crowd' watching MTV around the world) return with their second full-length album for Elektra Records 'The Proximity Effect', released October 19th.

Singer/guitarist Matthew Caws and drummer Ira Elliot are from Manhattan and Queens respectively. Bassist and sometime singer Daniel Lorca is from Madrid, but spent some of his childhood in New York, where he and Matthew both went to a French school. Both sets of parents refuse to elaborate as to why they went there. Ira went to the 'Fame' school where, he will readily confirm, people breakdanced in the canteen and staged musicals during morning break.

Matthew and Daniel formed their first band together when they were 15, and have been playing together ever since. Ira, meanwhile, has been all over the map. He spent his formative years as a member of New York's Fuzztones, co-conspirators in the mid-eighties garage revival, and then did some time in a highly suspect funk-metal outfit, before hitting the road with The Smithereens as a roadie. In 1994, Ira was working in a bowling alley, about to make the move to singing and guitaring, when Daniel and Matthew asked him to join their new band. They threatened to walk out with their bowling shoes on if he didn't say yes.

Of the bands many influences, Caws has this to say - "When we made this record, we weren't trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular; we were just thinking about music in general, how to best get each song across. Obviously things do creep in - a little Beach Boys in 'Bacardi', a little Iggy in 'Dispossession', a little Chavez in 'Firecracker' - but all in all I think it sounds like us."

FOR PREVIOUS FEATURES, RETURN TO MAIN MENU.


CD REVIEWS:
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UNLISTENABLE

More CD reviews are on the ISMO website at http://www.members.tripod.com/~ismomag/

***** Fuck-off Brilliant
**** Pretty damn Good
*** Average but no Cigar, Mr President
** Could do better
* Shite

Agree or disagree with what we have written? Send your comments to us and if they are amusing or contentious enough we will add them to the reviews next time we update the site! Interactive ain`t we? (remember to specify which album you are commenting on!)

Athenrye: 'My Last Farewell' (No label or catalogue number) *****

As anyone who has ever shared a hotel room with me will know, I have a sneaking regard for Irish music, and as anyone who has ever seen me being thrown out of a hotel bar will confirm, I have an especial liking for Rebel Songs. This ain`t the time nor the place to get into a political discussion. There have been many deeds of great bravery - and great brutality perpetrated by people on both sides during the Irish Rebellions of the last two hundred (or more) years, and I ain`t gonna be drawn into entering the political arena. This album, though, by a band of WolfeTones wannabes is a stonker. Consisting of rebel songs old and new played by a stripped down line up of electric piano, mandolin, guitar, bass and drums with the occasional tin whistle this is the real thing. Stand out tracks include The South Armargh Sniper (composer T.R.Heaney must win the prize for the least politically correct lyric of the decade here), and the title track, allegedly setting to music a poem written by Padraig Pearse the night before his execution in 1916. - Atilla the Hen

Roy Harper 'The Dream Society' (Science Friction HUCDO30) ****

Probably the most cheerful outing from the usually grumpy old sod for many years, this album pulls no punches but is a welcome return to song based albums rather than the proggy workouts of some of the records he has put out in the last few years. This has always been a dichotomy in Harper`s work - on one side he is the master of the three minute contemporary folk song and on the other hand he has a habit of producing `epics` which don`t always hit the spot. The love songs are happier than they have been in years and songs like 'Fifty Years' suggest that he has not only come to terms with his break up from Jacquie but is enjoying life as an elder statesman of british alternativeness. - Atilla the Hen

The Rolling Stones 'No Security' (Virgin 7243 8 46740 2 1) ****

Most of the music papers have been reviewing this album with comments like ... `Do they really NEED to do another live album?` and `Why do they bother?` As is so often the case with press discussion of this veteran band (who by the way still sound pretty goddamn good) they have completely missed the point. This may be their seventh live record but it, like so many others of recent years, is one for the fans. Songs like 'Sister Morphine' and 'Memory Motel' are not the stuff of a `going through the motions` LIVE GREATEST HITS set - and guest appearanxces by folk such as Taj Mahal come together to give the fans one fuck off entertaining document. When Tattoo You came out nearly twenty years ago the NME said that there would probably never be another major Rolling Stones album. They were probably right, although Steel Wheels in 1989 came damned close. However, the Glimmer Twins are still consistently entertaining and I have no compunction at all in recommending this CD to anyone interested in hearing an hour of bloody good rock and roll music. - Atilla the Hen

Nanci Griffith 'Other Voices Too (a trip back to bountiful)' (Elektra 7559 62235 2) ****

About ten years ago, the people in charge of the US C&W industry and their counterparts in charge of British Socialism decided that both genres were in need of a severe shakeup. The results were `New Country` and `New Labour` - both vacuous and pointless excercises. Lets face it Tony Blair is only Billy Ray Cyrus in a cowboy hat! Some artists, however, got their shit together mightily and started to do what European folk musicians had been doing for years and assimilating ideas from other genres of what is horribly known as `World Music`. This album is a great example of a contemporary C&W album which is in fact nothing of the sort. This sounds like a weird mixture of Linda Ronstadt and Sandy Denny, and the songs sound peculiarly English. The overall feel is the album that we have given up waiting for Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span to get their shit together and make. Yippee!! - Atilla the Hen

OTHER REVIEWS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE ISMO SITE:

including P.J. Harvey, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Ministry of Sound.


TWITCHY’S DITCH

Reflections on life and music from Twitchy the tramp in his tawdry ditch.

An eventful week this, first of all Oasis contacted me. Apparently they wanted me as support on their latest tour. They believed that having a piss reeking old 'harry ramp' fishing through a mound of filth between the Gallagher brothers would be just the boost their sadly flagging careers would need. They promised me my own cardboard boxes outside all the best hotels on the tour and as much cooking sherry as I could drink. Of course I turned them down, I mean Oasis? Even tramps have some standards!

Siggsworthy Craggs visited me in the ditch. After listening to 'The Very Things' for a couple of hours I decided to go goth!! I formed a band 'Moist Haunches' with some of my fellow vagrants. Slit eye on drums, Tumbling Mary on keyboards, Aunt Bingo on bass, Snuffy Rodriguez on lead guitar, Creeping Tina on backing vocals, and yours truly on lead vocal.

We all scoffed a lot of blackberries then vomited on each others heads, hey-presto black spiky hair. Then we all rolled in freshly laid tar, bingo black clothes (and sealed in for winter into the bargain). Sadly we were not a runaway sucsess, in fact after our first gig we couldn’t get any more bookings. At this first date we smeared leper’s fat over ourselves, fawned and drooled like simpletons and screamed incoherently for 3 hours before showering the audience with flakes of our diseased skin. The landlord threw us out without even paying us our choc ice wrappers and banana skins. Some people just don’t know talent when they see it. Philistines!!!!!!


....AND WHY THE HELL NOT?

Since we began in Cyberspace we have been reprinting a potted history of this project since its roots as a badly photocopied fanzine thingy a decade ago. We can`t be bothered anymore so if you still want to read this stuff you can access it at the archive section of our web-site. If you are heartily sick of it (as we are) you don`t have to.

The archive section for back issues of the mag will be up and running within the next forty eight hours and things are, as they say, going well and looking good!

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