David Shane Smith, 1/1, Ray Argyle at Where...

David Shane Smith hosted another entertaining evening at Where, started in fine fashion by 1/1. 1/1 is 19 year-old wunderkid Michael Marcel Castro, who plays and mixes on a laptop, sometimes accompanied by random drum hits and live drumming... 1/1's music moved from James Bond type spy themes, through Eno ambience to kind of a Lymbyc Systym vibe with the live drummer... Great stuff...

1/1

David Shane Smith continued the electronic theme through the first half of his set, playing 'Additives', 'Miserablism', 'Tarmac' and a great extended version of 'Creatures of habit'... These were accompanied by some freaky dancing and visuals which gave the set a rave feel - or at very least the chill-out room at a rave. The second half of the set was mostly acoustic, ending on a mellow note...

DSS

I saw a few songs from Ray Argyle and band, who sounded very accomplished. The songs had a vaguely Dylan-esque feel...

Ray Argyle

RIP Larry Cassidy

Larry was bassist/singer in Factory Records stalwarts Section 25...

Famous for 15 seconds...

I was in a pilot once, but not in the Frankie Howerd sense...

RIP Gena Dry

It's not often I hear about a death of someone in the music business from my mother, but yesterday she informed me of the unfortunate death of Gena Dry. The news story and a brief bio are here but Gena was originally in the band Colour Noise. Her brother Tim Dry, a well known personality on the 1980's new-romantic scene, was in the music/mime/dance/pop group Shock before becoming half of Tik & Tok and appearing in some Star Wars films!

Anyways, Mum and her sister had become aware of the death as their maiden name was Dry, quite an uncommon last name in the UK... Mum had cousins in Redhill, where apparently Gena and Tim grew up... So possibly they are distant cousins...

Robert James 'Voz Roja'

On 'Voz Roja', James' folky blues is somewhere between the blues of the OC's Parker Macy and the folkier side of David Shane Smith (who is on engineering and production duties on these recordings...)

The 5 solo acoustic songs are underpinned by some ambient background noise like birds in a forest, a typewriter and people drinking in a bar, and these give the songs a certain pathos when combined with James' pained delivery... The centerpiece of the EP is the excellent 'Ain't No One', with some effective backing vocals and panning which pushes the song into Bon Iver territory.

'Voz Roja' (red voice) is certainly an applicable title for this EP as James' firey delivery is never short of passionate. I've seen people play the blues because they want to, but Robert James plays them because he has to...

DSS, Wartime Blues and LA Font at Mr. T's Bowl

DSS started off the evening in fine style with a varied set, welcoming a newly repaired acoustic (a cracked head repaired - insert your own punchline here...) and a freshly fixed volume knob, which was apparently repaired by having a blond sit on it (insert your own joke here...)  The acoustic in particular sounded quite wonderful and was put to great use on the poignant 'The Beach', 'Liquor Store' and set closer 'Civilians'... Of the electronic songs, it was good to hear a return of the Christian Bale sampling 'Additives' and the staccato clicks, glitches and rapping of the August collaboration 'Friends & Family'...

The 8 piece Wartime Blues were on tour from Montana. They had a big tour bus which probably dated from the 70's, so hopefully they make it home in one piece (or eight piece...) The music was alt-country, and although not the sort of thing I would listen to on a regular basis, it was catchy enough - some nice cello touches giving some of the songs an Arcade Fire feel... On the whole, the vocals lacked a little variation and they could learn some storytelling techniques from a band like Richmond Fontaine, who have less people in the band and probably a smaller bus...

I went from hating LA Font to liking them within the space of a couple of songs. Their MySpace page describes them as antagonistic cowpunk, but this is only part of the story. Their best moments push into Pavement and even Television territory, coupled with an anglophilic punky delivery akin to bands like Los Campesinos... Well worth seeing again...

DSS

RIP Dale Hawkins

The rock 'n' roller famous for his 1957 hit Suzy-Q was 73...

RIP Doug Fieger

The Knack frontman, co-writer of 'My Sharona' was 57...

Editors at The Wiltern

I read that Princeton are from Eagle Rock, so I'm guessing they go (or went) to Occidental College - they're far too clean cut to be part of the hipster community south of Colorado (or SoCo as I like to call it...) They are clearly a distant cousin of Vampire Weekend but without the Paul Simon fixation, which is obviously a good thing. However, naming your band after a university encourages people like me to typecast them as students - not an easy image to shake off when the time comes... They were good though...

Or at least a lot better than the self-indulgent pile of festering crap that is The Antlers... I have to thank them though - I was under some misguided notion that everything coming out of Brooklyn was hip and interesting. The Antlers are neither... Proggy keys, some MBV-lite guitar, a drummer who looks (and plays) like he wants to be in Staind and a vocalist who wishes he was Billy Mackenzie. Every song is 8 minutes long, the final 4 of which is an extended playout of cymbal crashes and guitar fx... Bad...

Some of Editors new electronic material veers dangerously into Depeche Mode territory - Tom Smith's rich baritone a dead ringer for Dave Gahan. The Mode do that kind of thing better, although the Editors bass player probably surpasses Andy Fletcher in cheesy stage moves... The songs from the first LP still sound the best and this doesn't auger too well for the future, but for now Editors are still a great live proposition!

Editors

RIP Alexander McQueen

The British fashion designer was 40. He was found hanged in his London apartment just a week after the death of his beloved mother...

DSS at Bolt Barbers

DSS: I'm playing at a barbers shop...
IDM: Did you tell them there was four in the band?

Bolt is a barbers shop at the less than salubrious 5th and Spring intersection of downtown LA... I was offered crack four times between Broadway and Spring - just say no kids...

David played a short set before before threatened off by the compare, who lives in the infamous Rosslyn 'hotel'... Apparently it's not exactly the Ritz, unless the Ritz has turned into a wretched rat infested crack-den... Anyways, I guess it was a comedy night as she slipped into a routine about transients, transients with dogs and being able to hold her breath for 14 floors until she gets to her room in the Rosslyn... I guess you had to be there...

DSS played an all acoustic set which included 'The Beach', 'City of the future', 'Sickness Songs' and the location appropriate 'Liquor Store'...

RIP Sir John Dankworth

The veteran British jazz saxophonist was 82. He composed TV themes such as The Avengers and Tomorrow's World, and was married to jazz singer Cleo Laine.

stanleylucasRevolution at Ferns...

Despite more floods of biblical proportions there was a good turn out for the SLR show at Ferns cocktails in LBC... Ferns looks like it hasn't changed much in 30 years - a dive bar hosting punk bands...

SLR played a short but impactful five song set, the bulk of which will be included on new album Opus 21...

Demolition 45
Lost on the way home
This world...
Leave the light on
We still love them

ExDetectives at Silverlake Lounge

The newly shorn ExDetectives sounded excellent last night at Silverlake Lounge. Unlike Samson, who lost his powers after a haircut, ExDetectives seem to have gained theirs, via rejection of all things hursuit. The guitars were playing together rather than against each other, the bass sounded clear and warm, and the drums were as tight as a nut. All these factors in place provided a rock solid background for Faris and Meriah's fragile vocals to work as intended. A great set...

ExDetectives

Deep Sea Diver is Beck and Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Jessica Dobsons' band. They sound like a female fronted Grizzly Bear - Dobson's reverb drenched guitar right out of Veckatimest. The vocal is like St Vincent or whoever the preferred muso chanteuse of the day is - in other words nothing to write home about. I found their set a little boring to be honest and lacking any emotion...

Deep Sea Diver

Factory opening...

In 2008 when visiting Manchester we checked out the old Factory Records offices on the corner of Princes Street and Charles Street. Most of the early Factory work was done from a house on leafy Palatine Road in the suburbs, but in the middle of the 'Madchester' period Factory setup up offices in central Manchester near the BBC building on Charles Street.

Indeed, timing is everything. When we built the Hacienda, it was too soon, when we built the Factory offices it was too late. It did, however, have a zinc roof, which was very cool, although you could only see it from a helicopter. (Anthony H. Wilson)

It also had a hanging table in the board room that cost 30,000 quid... Sean Ryder broke it!

When we saw the building in 2008 it was empty and somewhat neglected - trash and junk mail filling up the area inside the entry gate...

However, in typical Factory style the story doesn't end there. On Friday February 5th 2010, the building re-opens as Factory Manchester - a live music venue brought to you by (amongst others) Peter Hook and Ben Kelly, the architect behind the original design of the offices and The Hacienda... Hooky has put together a band for the occasion which includes Mani from The Stone Roses and Rowetta from the Mondays. They will be playing songs from Hooky's career, so expect a lot of Joy Divsion and New Order and not so much Revenge... Lets hope the club does well and Hooky won't need to write a sequel to 'How not to run a club'...

Toyko Industries have put together an excellent website here - check out the Blog page which features some excellent video diaries...

Tate of the nation...

Nice little short from our friends at the Tate about Linder Sterling. Sterling is a somewhat legendary and enigmatic fixture in the punk and post-punk Manchester music scene - friend and muse of Morrissey, singer in the band Ludus and designer of some of Buzzcocks most striking images. She also designed a menstrual egg timer for Factory Records which was given its own catalog number - FAC8...