Feature: Nada Surf.
News: Manic Street Preachers, Stabbing an Opera Singer, Teenage Witch
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Issue 16: 16th November 1998
CONTENTS: The Gossiping Hen: Suede, Portishead, Ian Brown, Rolling Stones, Alan Moore etc
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
(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)
* 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!
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.
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......
The Official Rottentrolls Website: http://www.welcome.to/rottentrolls/
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.
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.
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.
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.
NADA SURF |
****
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
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."
***** Fuck-off Brilliant
More CD reviews are on the ISMO website at http://www.members.tripod.com/~ismomag/
**** 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!)
including P.J. Harvey, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Ministry of Sound.
Reflections on life and music from Twitchy the tramp in his tawdry ditch.
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!!!!!!
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