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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

CD Review: Lucky Dube - The Best of Lucky Dube


Over the years, I have been privileged enough to witness some brilliant South African music live.

Having recently purchased the Lucky Dube – 'The Best Of' CD, I was struck by a big dose of nostalgia. I have been fortunate enough to witness live performances from seminal bands such as Sakhile, Stimela and Juluka. In fact, Sakhile’s show was the only time I have experienced my hair standing on end as a result of the collective band member’s musical virtuosity. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to see myriad bands come, some stay and others go, some brilliant and some rather average. I have been to concerts by Hotline where a young PJ Powers belted out Led Zeppelin covers accompanied by an awesome Alistair Coakley. I have seen Brenda and the Big Dudes dole out the soulful and funky, and then also witnessed the rise and (in some cases) fall of bands such as No Friends of Harry, Cinema, The Helicopters, Little Sister, Psycho Reptiles, Petit Cheval, Tananas, Dog detachment, Tribe after tribe, Seether (as Saron Gas), Wonderboom, Prime Circle, Henry Ate, the list goes on and on. Some were really good, other just OK and others really bad. What bothers me though is the lack of continuity and permanence of good bands and artists in South Africa. I think that there are probably numerous and complicated reasons for this (one being that people don’t go out and buy their albums), but what is sad is that we have this problem at all.

So it is even sadder when we have such seriously talented artists like Lucky Dube, who has been a relatively successful counterpoint to the inconsistency by becoming hugely popular throughout the world, and especially Africa, and releasing album after album of quality reggae music, who are cut down in their prime by mindless criminals. He has not been the only one, sadly there is a long list of highly talented musicians who have lost their lives to crime in South Africa.

It only takes one listen to this CD to realise that here was a hugely talented individual, surrounded by an extremely talented set of musicians, producing quality music time after time. The reasons for his continuous success is also obvious when you listen to the songs and realise just how good the musicians were, how much care was taken with the production of the songs and how much thought went into his lyrics. These songs are so much a part of South Africa’s radio airwaves that it is hard to understand why some of Dube’s underlying messages of Peace and Social Consciousness have not seeped into our ailing national psyche. Every home should have a copy of this CD, play it loud in your home and in your car, quote the lyrics to each other so that hopefully this contributes to South Africa becoming the beautiful nation that we all want so badly.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

CD Review: Shack - Time Machine The Best of Shack




Shack is a band that everybody should know about, but they probably don’t. Consisting mainly of Michael and John Head, brothers from Liverpool, the rest of the line-up has kept changing over the years. Members trace their roots back to The Pale Fountains and The Strands. Read about them on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shack_%28Band%29 The Head brothers apparently have a bit of an obsession with Arthur Lee and the band Love that comes through in their own writing. In fact when Arthur Lee visited the UK they performed the role of his backing band.

Shack consistently produces quality albums that contain beautiful songs. More often than not, these songs are about everyday occurrences with the skill of the Head brothers being that of holding up a mirror for their listeners to use to look at themselves. My first experience of Shack was when I got hold of the ‘HMS Fable’ album. This album on its own should convert anybody into a Shack fan. Each and every song is a killer. Michael and John, on Vocals/Rhythm and Vocals/Lead respectively, sing and strum away in some of the most evocative songs I had heard for a long time. My favourite song on this album is ‘Daniella’ which I don’t think is the obvious choice but really appeals to me. I next got the album ‘The corner of Miles and Gil’, although ‘Here’s Tom with the weather’ came out between these two albums, which in my view was not as good as ‘Fable’, but still a very strong offering.

Next for me has been ‘Time Machine’: the to-date Best Of offering. As with most Greatest Hits compilations, there is always going to be some debate as to which songs make it onto the CD (I for one cannot understand how Neil Young could release a single CD Greatest Hits compilation, he has enough hits to fill at least 3 CD’s). I think that in Shack’s case, this can be even more heated than usual. This is because their songs work on such a personal level, meaning different things to different people. I just love the track ‘Cup of Tea’.

As always, as it is a ‘Best Of’ compilation, one has to view the offering in terms of completeness as well. In other words, if viewed as a ‘Time Machine’ it must include tracks from all stages of their career in order to be able to transport the listener back in time. From this perspective this is an excellent collection that enables the listener to hear the evolution of the band as they grow from strength to strength. This is not to say that the earlier tracks are not good – they are indeed very good. What changes though is the production quality and the growing use of other elements to further enhance their sounds, such as a strings section (maybe what changed was the budget available to the band when entering the recording studio).

The two songs on here that are most recent do not come from any of the already released albums, and therefore could be seen as providing a view into what is still to come from this great band. I must admit, while they are not bad songs, they do seem a bit too conventional in my view.

Overall, this is a nice snapshot of a very good band that manages to help the listener to identify the beauty in their everyday surroundings. The songs always leave me with my mood improved and uplifted. The message from the band seems to be that: no matter what terrible things happen in your life there is also a lot of beauty around if you look hard enough. If you like this their other albums are sure to blow your mind, I recommend ‘HMS Fable’ first and then move on from there, you will not be disappointed.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

April 2008 what's on the player

The April roundup is a bit delayed, and I blame this excellent web-site: http://www.starwarsorigami.com/. It combines two things I really enjoy, star wars and origami. Have a look, I know it won’t appeal to all rockers out there but maybe some of you will appreciate it.

Back to the music though, and I can report that I finally got the Radiohead CD out of my player although I must admit that I do miss it. I must also point out that I have been listening to Muse HAARP a lot, but will not include it in my summary as my previous posting is dedicated to it.

The summary for the month therefore is as follows:


Paramore – Riot!





Imagine Avril Lavigne as a musically talented individual who can write good songs and sing well. This gets you to imagining what Hayley Williams from Paramore is like. Only she is even better than that. The Paramore album is full of strong rocking tracks that only grow with repeated listening.

Breaking Benjamin - Phobia

In my opinion this is a silly name for a band – it sounds like a boy band. But then, I don’t know, maybe they named it after two obscure blues legends….

However the album really rocks. It is on the heavier side of American type rock with good lyrics and a great overall sound.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Pack up the Plantation: Live.


Listening to Muse – ‘HAARP’ got me thinking about my favourite live albums, which then led me to dusting off my vinyl copy of ‘Pack up the Plantation’ (actually my vinyl does not have much dust on it). I wonder if there is a digitally remastered version of this recording out there – I will have to do some research.

This album, however, is an awesome concert document. Sound quality, crowd participation and band performance are all very strong, and the guest appearance of Stevie Nicks is also truly splendid, especially on the track ‘Insider’.

Queens of the Stone Age – Lullabies to Paralyze
Josh Homme of the Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA) is a truly talented individual, with, a little paradoxically, one of his major strengths being the ability to collaborate. This has lead to great collaborations in his series of ‘Desert Sessions’ albums where he gathers together friends and colleagues (Polly Jean Harvey to name one) and takes them off into the desert somewhere to jam and record. I have got sessions 7&8 and 9&10 and they both rock. Also in his collaboration work, he has recorded with the band Eagles of Death Metal. This is another band with a slightly misleading name. The music is not of the genre death metal – I believe that it is meant to sound like, conceptually, what death metal would sound like if The Eagles played it. I can report that their interpretation of this is some really groovy, funky and skanky sounding boogie rock, with some of the nastiest (and funniest) lyrics around.

Josh Homme is the main member of QOTSA and what underscores all of his projects is the amount of fun he seems to have in doing them. ‘Lullabies to Paralyze’ continues on that theme, with the whole album capturing a unique sound, with plenty of attention to detail given to the tone of guitar sounds. There are immediately lovable songs such as ‘Burn the Witch’ and ‘Little Sister’, as well as songs that really grow with each listen such as ‘Everybody knows that you are insane’.

I love this album, and will try to get hold of their new one too as soon as I can afford it.