DVD


album classics, and the performances it must be said are indeed faithful, even if the new younger players don’t quite get it. More interesting historically is the addition


of a ’74 Dutch TV special, where the band play a raucous set in what looks like a hotel dining room to long haired beer drinkers (who are probably younger versions of the same people from the ’06 concert). Mick Grabham (guitar) and B J Wilson (drums) are on fire throughout! Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills


THE ZEROS Live In Madrid: 30th Anniversary Tour Munster DVD www.munster-records.com


With candid Super 8 film, part of a 1992 comeback gig, plus a sensational television appearance from ‘77 as extras, Munster have laid on a special treat here.


The Zeros weren’t your average punks,


nor were they just “the Mexican Ramones”. An interview with early manager Phast Phreddie – who tagged them as such – where he expounds on that and much more besides has also been included. But if you’ve already heard The Zeros, who


hailed from Chula Vista, a small town in southern California, then you’ll know they were something of their own making; though enough similarities exist between the two groups to invite comparison. In his liner notes, Lindsay Hutton puts it


down to having ‘an outright ability to transcend the fast, loud exterior with a cool pop edge’. Just one listen to ‘Beat Your Heart Out’, ‘I Don’t Wanna’ and the sublime ‘She’s Just A Girl On The Block’ makes it abundantly clear that The Zeros could do loud, fast and pop, all with natural ease. Whether it’s that amazing ’77 performance


of ‘Don’t Push Me Around’ and ‘Wimp’ on San Diego’s Sun Up television show, or pounding versions of ‘Pipeline’, ‘Black ‘n’ White’, ‘Jenny Says’ and ‘Hand Grenade Heart’ live in Madrid 30 years later, the energy and conviction of The Zeros flows through 100%. Main lead singer Javier has a cool line in


early Jagger pout and sneer, while his ace guitar foil Roberto (more famous nowadays as El Vez) is no vocal slouch either. Like The Heartbreakers, they encapsulate all that is great about basic three-chord punk, snaring the essence, and thereby the true spirit, of teenage rock ’n’ roll. Lenny Helsing


Books FROM BROADSHEETS TO BROADSIDES


A very modern British folk story. By JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS.


THE BALLAD OF BRITAIN: HOW MUSIC CAPTURED THE SOUL OF THE NATION Will Hodgkinson www.anovabooks.com Portico


VARIOUS ARTISTS The Ballad Of Britain Heron CD www.heronrecordings.com


Scotland. The references to acid-folk and being different may have a certain appeal, but this study on British life is told in such an engaging style, is so well researched and balanced that it may well be a contemporary masterpiece. Lady Sovereign, Grime and the ’70s get-it- together-in-the-country generation of middle-class hippies, all in the same book. Read without fail. As The Ballad Of Britain is based on Hodgkinson’s pan-country


The bright-eyed, curly haired Hodgkinson told me himself that to write a book about old music and hippy troubadours it would have to have an angle to maintain any degree of commerciality.And by jove it does have an angle, and any literate reader will find pleasure within its pages. With The Ballad Of


Britain Hodgkinson achieves what Bill Bryson did with the similarly vibed travelogue Notes From A Small Island: that is, to humorously detail the foibles, quirks and character of an entire nation. If what may at first seem like a historical cultural studies book that chronicles the evolution of folk song in the British Isles it soon becomes apparent that it is in fact about the British as a nation and the people that inhabit this diverse landscape. At the centre of all of this is the self-effacing Hodgkinson, whose


Peckham residency and family, his knackered old Vauxhall Astra and time alone behind the wheel brings humour and grounding to serious pontificating on what makes us British, our nation’s people rich and poor, passive and violent, and why the folk song is as evident in 21st Century black working class London as it was in 18th Century


BY THE TIME WE GOT TO WOODSTOCK Bruce Pollack WOODSTOCK VISION Elliott Landy Both Backbeat www.backbeatbooks.com


Another year, another hackneyed anniversary. August this year saw the 40th anniversary of Woodstock come and go, and with it washed up a glut of literature, some worthy, some considerably less so.


By The Time We Got to Woodstock is most


definitely the latter: a badly-edited lazy cash-in presumably aimed at the absolute novice or the highly gullible. More of a rambling random retrospective of 1969 than anything much to do with the events in Bethel New York State, any discerning punter should steer as clear of this as you would the somewhat minimal toiletry facilities that graced Max Yasgur's farm! It's a stinker. Woodstock Vision, meanwhile, is a swiftly


revamped version of a mid-90s coffee table job, with the cynical addition of an "introduction" by


80


Jerry Garcia, who is clearly in no state to issue such material, at least in this earthly dimension! The book also suffers from an overly broad focus, with about half the shots being of events


other than the festival of its title. That said, for those that enjoy such things,


there are some splendid photos here. I particularly enjoyed the Dylan/Band backwoods pieces and the lovely infrared snaps. One for completists only, though, I suspect. Hugh Dellar


HOUND DOG: THE LEIBER AND STOLLER AUTOBIOGRAPHY Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with David Ritz Simon & Schuster www.simonandschuster.com In 1950 Jerry Leiber was looking for a musician to compose for his lyrics. A friend recommended Mike Stoller and thus was born one of the most enduring partnerships in music. Told throughout in alternate paragraphs the


duo tell their tale of being transplanted Easterners, Stoller from Queens NY and Leiber


from Baltimore, who met in LA and found a bond in their common love of Black music. Writing together from day one the duo wrote blues numbers, most notably ‘Hound Dog’ for Big Mama Thornton before Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler enticed them to Atlantic where they returned to NY and stayed for the next three decades.


Here follow descriptions of writing and producing for The Coasters and The Drifters including the introduction of strings and the baion rhythm, nurse maiding a young Phil Spector –“Phil was like a puppy dog except he wasn’t


especially loveable”, tales of Red Bird records and its teams of Brill Building writers and producers like Barry and Greenwich and ‘Shadow’ Morton –“a guy who appeared in the room without you ever realising that he ever walked in. And he was never there when you looked for him”. The demise of Red Bird which George Goldner used as betting collateral to the Mafia is only one of a series of fascinating anecdotes told in a relaxed, humorous and easy to read way.


travels and the field recordings he was making on his digital eight- track it is only fitting that Heron Recordings have issued a companion CD, collecting together all of the recordings chronicled in the book. Portico should have really attached this CD to the inside of the publication, but it’s certainly worth a release in its own context. Songs from genuine folk hero Martin Carthy collide with the unaccompanied songs of unknown hippy travellers and Cornish folk-rocking big city escapees, whilst Alex Neilson, Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, James Yorkston, King Creosote and Pete Mollinari all show how ancient music still reflect our times. The Princes In The Tower (Circulus’s Michael and Will, whose chapter in the book is out of this world) also prove that certain eccentric characters, who exaggerate the core of the English mentality, will forever be Elizabethan courtiers unconcerned by the outside world. The Ballad Of Britain is a compelling read, and a book that perhaps


more than anything puts 21st Century Britain into perspective through a bohemian writer’s road trip and the selected subjects he meets and learns from. Absolutely Astounding.


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