THE STEEPWATER BAND Grace And Melody Diamond Day CD www.steepwater.com


Hailing from Chicago, The Steepwater Band started out covering blues standards 10 years ago and have progressed to the power trio romp they peddle these


days. This, their fourth studio album, is produced by ex-Black Crowes guitarist Jeff Massey, but don’t let that put you off! If your favourite BC album is a compilation you made yourself, without ever wanting to go back to the fillers, this one’s just perfect for you. There’s riff- laden Faces-like swagger a-plenty, with stand- outs being ‘Fire Away’, ‘Lord Knows’ and ‘Healer’. If you dig these, I’m sure you’ll shamelessly keep strumming your air guitar along with the Led Zep by way of Black Keys’ acid blues of ‘VaRoomp!’ and the title tune. The pairing of ‘All The Way To Nowhere’ and ‘At The Fall Of The Day’ is just as bluesy, but in a kind of a Lennon-ish psychedelic way, and ‘One Way Ride’ is a country-tinged pop number, halfway between late ’60s Stones and Creedence. I’d say this is the one ROCK


album you should invest in this year! Goran Obradovic


THE TUNAS We Cut Our Fingers In July Tre Accordi CD www.treaccordi.com


The words of the opening tune are unintentionally hilarious. Just imagine an audience singing along to “Got so ugly that I shat my pants tonight!”.


Actually, ‘Shat My Pants’ is a good anthemic singalong guitar tune –perhaps it sounds better in Italian and something was lost in translation! It would be unfair to dismiss The Tunas because of one funny chorus. In fact this is a good album of driving ’60s influenced guitar pop. The Tunas have a strong melodic streak and their tunes are upbeat and catchy. The soulful vocals on songs like ‘Uptight’ have a mod flavour, although in the liner photos The Tunas sport checked lumberjack shirts for some reason. Phil Suggitt


WAU YLOS ARRRGHS!!! Viven!!! Munster CD www.munster-records.com


As far as the Spanish scene is concerned, I don’t really see why anyone would argue with Wau Y Los Arrrghs!!! being hailed as “the undisputed Kings


of garage punk”. Of course, from the band name itself it’s easy to guess that they take the


78


caveman approach and indeed it’s fans of The Gruesomes, The Miracle Workers or Pebbles in general that will get especially excited about this. Spanish sung fuzz-fest noise, Farfisa organ-isation and an occasional punked-up surfer is all you get, with the content being equally divided between obscure ’60s covers and originals, of which ‘Bli, Blu, Bla (Bla Bla Bla)’ and ‘Dicen’ seem to stand out at least an inch above the rest. The fact that they cover Los Mockers’ ‘Can’t Be A Lie’ (here ‘No Mientas Mas’) earns them a special place on my own shelf. Goran Obradovic


JENNY WOLFE After School Steady Boy CD www.steadyboyrecords.com


There’s no other way I can get you interested in this, so I’ll just start listing covers that make most of this album: ‘I Love You’ (The Zombies), ‘Game Of Love’ (Wayne


Fontana&The Mindbenders), ‘Thirteen’ (Big Star), ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ (Herman’s Hermits), ‘Just A Little’ (The Beau Brummels)… Get the picture? (Not another cover!…I’m really asking!) And Jenny has just turned 16! I mean, if we at Shindig! don’t give this girl the thumbs up, who the heck will? Masterminded by fellow Texan, Freddie Krc, the album also features three covers of Explosives tunes, along with two originals co-written by him and Jenny herself. Of these, ‘Twisted Smile’ is an absolute corker of a 12-string jangle, while the title tune is an equally great Monkees-tribute. And if you’re thinking what a great way this is to start a career, let me just tell you that this happens to be her sophomore effort, after a2007 debut, featuring another mix of originals and covers, none the less cool than these (‘Do You Believe In Magic’, ‘Different Drum’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’, ‘Starry Eyes’, ‘For Your Love’, ‘You Baby’ etc. Goran Obradovic


averted terror as Yes vocalist Jon Anderson nods off behind the wheel of the band manager’s Volvo, recollections of the special hell and intermittently glimpsed heaven which constituted working with the maddeningly inscrutable Robert Fripp of King Crimson, priceless insights into the familial civility of Genesis and the rudderless chaos of Gong. However, the long-awaited autobiography of drummer nonpareil Bill Bruford – the linking factor in all of the above – offers the discerning reader considerably more than this. Bruford’s decision to retire from


performance in January 2009, following a good 40 or so years at the coal face, dovetails perfectly with the release of a book which unsentimentally takes stock of a career rich with achievement if dotted with petty frustrations and momentary derailments. With characteristic honesty, he details his reasons for hanging up his drumsticks; and most dignified they are too. I should add, though, that I saw Bruford perform with acoustic jazz deities Earthworks a couple of years ago in Bridport, and the ensemble playing was on an intuitive plane of accomplishment that went somewhere mere language cannot follow. If Bruford at this point was a man at anything less than the stratospheric top of his inimitable game… well, you certainly could have fooled me. Accordingly, on occasions when


reading The Autobiography one senses an understandable bemusement (if not mild irritation) on Bruford’s part that the work he is best known for arguably displays but a miniscule degree of the capabilities he subsequently unveiled in the respective fields of electric and acoustic jazz. It must feel like revering Shakespeare for learning the alphabet. More than this, however, Bruford’s book ends up being an extended treatise on the nature of music itself; not just his place in the pantheon, not just the manifold trials, tribulations and emotional upheavals of the working musician in a marginal genre, but the very essence. Where it came from, where it is going, how it is disseminated, packaged and promoted, what it does to us and why. Professorial in its remit and


written with a bone-dry wit and an authoritative elegance that will be the envy of many far more high-profile cultural commentators, this might just end up becoming one of the best-informed, most informative textbooks of its time. Marco Rossi


BILL BRUFORD: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks, And More Bill Bruford Jawbone www.jawbonepress.com


You didn’t really think this was merely going to be a breezily anecdotal flip through the yellowing parchment of prog rock’s back pages, did you? There are, for sure, anecdotes aplenty


for prog-hungry hounds: tales of narrowly-


THE EP BOOK: SWEDISH ROCK & POP PRESSINGS 1954-1969 Roger Holegard Premium Publishing www.premiumpublishing.com


First published in 1992 and long since elevated to the status of a collector’s item much like very EPs it exhaustively catalogues, The EP Book was until recently in the habit of commanding collectors’ prices in its own right such was the demand for


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84