The Fat Angel Sings

Proudly outspoken and riotously loud, The Bobby Lees are Ipecac Recordings’ newest signing. The band release their brand new full-length album, “Bellevue”, thirteen tracks of uninhibited rock and roll.

Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Henry Rollins…these are just a few of the punk icons who have shown support for Woodstock, NY based band The Bobby Lees. Sam Quartin [vocals, guitar], Macky Bowman [drums], Nick Casa [guitar], and Kendall Wind [bass] make music that is punk in spirit and soul; unfettered and resolutely honest. To say their sound is wild and untethered is an understatement. It’s the kind of aural exorcism any listener can tap into, something that struck a chord with Henry Rollins who brought them to Ipecac Recordings where Mike Patton and Greg Werckman signed them.

The Bobby Lees initially made waves with full length albums “Beauty Pageant”  (2018) and “Skin Suit” (2020) which was produced by Jon Spencer. They then decamped to Sputnik Sound in Nashville to record “Bellevue”, their debut Ipecac album live in the studio – with producer Vance Powell [Jack White, Chris Stapleton, The Raconteurs].

As feverish and nihilistic as the music can at times seem, there’s always a glimmer of hope at the core of each song. “I named the album “Bellevue” because when I listen back, I hear someone going through that stuff, who is now able to laugh about it and have fun re-telling the stories,” says Sam. “It’s a reminder for me that the most painful and intense things I go through end up being the most rewarding creatively.”

Following on from the success of the “Hollywood Junkyard” EP and their Summer tour dates, the band announce their brand new full-length album, “Bellevue”, thirteen tracks of uninhibited rock and roll.

the new album, “Bellevue”, coming October 7th.

The Who performed on Saturday for a concert at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, ON. Arriving as part of The Who Hits Back! tour, the concert featured the band’s first performance of the “Face Dances” track “Another Tricky Day” for the first time in 18 years.

For The Who Hits Back! the British classic rock act helmed by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend is touring with an orchestra that helps fully realize the guitarist’s classic compositions. The show started off with songs from Townshend’s 1969 rock opera “Tommy”, beginning with the opening “Overture” and including “1921”, “Amazing Journey”, “Sparks”, “Pinball Wizard”, and the album-closing “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. The orchestra also assisted on “Who Are You”, “Eminence Front”, “Ball and Chain” from 2019’s “WHO”, and “Join Together”.

Even with the orchestra, The Who is still a rock band at its core. After shedding the stable of classical musicians, the band went back to the basics for takes on “The Seeker” which Pete dedicated to a late friend. Following “You Better You Bet”, The Who busted out “Another Tricky Day” from 1981’s “Face Dances”, the band’s first album following the death of drummer Keith Moon in 1978. After that, The Who returned to the classics with “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Behind Blue Eyes” before bringing the orchestra back out. 

With the line-up expanded once more, The Who wound down the show with “Quadrophenia”heavy hitters “The Real Me”, “I’m The One”, “5:15”, “The Rock”, and the climactic “Love, Reign O’er Me” before finally finishing the evening with “Baba O’Riley”.

Eight brand new tracks that alternate between the warmest of memories and the reality that what’s past is gone and not coming back. it’s a reckoning with where we’ve come from and what’s ahead. Brothers Angus James and Oliver James formed The Death Of Pop on the South-Coast of England in 2013. Their home-produced songs reflected the dismal summers and repulsive sea breeze of a forgotten seaside wonderland; recreating these thoughts through a broken mirror of 90’s shoegaze, 80’s new wave, paisley underground and sunshine pop.

This record was a huge amount of fun to record and we’re so pleased to finally be sharing it. Excitingly, this is the first of a series of EPs we’ve cooked up for the next year, culminating in a substantial release in late 2023… We may even play some more European shows. But more about that at a later date.

The Death of Pop are:

Oliver James, Angus James, Thom James and Amy Hurford

The 1969 Isle of Wight Festival was held on 29th–31st August 1969 at Wootton Creek, on the Isle of Wight. The festival attracted an audience of approximately 150,000 to see acts including Bob Dylan, the Band, the Who, Free, Joe Cocker, the Bonzo Dog Band and the Moody Blues. It was the second of three music festivals held on the island between 1968 and 1970. Organised by Rikki Farr, Ronnie and Ray Foulk’s Fiery Creations, it became a legendary event, largely owing to the participation of Dylan, who had spent the previous three years in semi-retirement. 

The Who presented their standard set at that time, which included the rock opera “Tommy”, as they had recently released that album and were touring in support of it. The group had just returned from a tour of the United States, where they had performed at Woodstock about two weeks earlier. They opened with “Heaven and Hell”, followed by “I Can’t Explain”, “Fortune Teller”, “Young Man Blues”, and then performed the opera nearly in full, finishing up with “Summertime Blues”, “Shakin’ All Over”/”Spoonful” and two tracks as the encore: “My Generation” and the finale of “Naked Eye”

Personnel:
Roger Daltrey: Vocals
Pete Townshend: Guitar, Vocals
John Entwistle – bass, Vocals
Keith Moon: Drums

A raucous yet reflective look back at the evolution of the music press and the passionate rock and pop journalists who defined the music of the 20th century.

Totally Wired is the definitive story of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic, tracing the rise and fall of the creatively fertile media sector which grew from humble beginnings nearly 100 years ago to become a multi-billion business which tested the limits of journalistic endeavour.

Covering the music press’s evolution from the 1950s to the 2000s, through rock & roll, Mod, the Summer of Love, Glam, Punk, Pop, Reggae, R&B and Hip Hop, Paul Gorman chronicles the development of individual magazines from Tin Pan Alley beginnings and the countercultural foundation of Rolling Stone , the underground press and the 70s heyday of NME , Melody Maker and Sounds . Illuminated by the author’s first hand interviews, Gorman paints a complete picture of the scene exploring the role played by such writers as Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent in the development of the careers of the likes of David Bowie, The Clash and Led Zeppelin, and tackling head on the entrenched sexism and racism faced by women and people from marginalized backgrounds by shining a spotlight on those publications and individuals whose contributions have often been unfairly overlooked.

Evoking the music press’s kaleidoscopic visual identities, Totally Wired is illustrated with rare and legendary magazine artwork throughout. What emerges is a compelling narrative containing conflicting stories of unbound talent, blind ambition and sometimes bitter rivalries which make Totally Wired a rollercoaster and riveting read.

Divorce is the new alt-country and grunge-fuelled project from Kasper Sandstrom, Felix Mackenzie–Barrow, Tiger Cohen-Towell and Adam Peter-Smith.

The Nottingham band arrive at the start of 2022 with “Services” – a massively infectious indie-rock road trip punctuated by stops at grey, clinical service stations which explores the shaky borders between adolescence, in all its glorious excess, the weight of early adulthood, and the absurdity of life in a world turned on its head by late stage capitalism.

As Tiger explains, “Both teenage dysphoria and the reluctant ascent into the chaos of my mid-twenties meet each other in this track. I looked back on the suffocating boredom and the pain of being 16, and how I longed for the simplicity of human closeness and car journeys. I wanted to channel a zeitgeist that we all feel in touch with, pain, trauma and cacophonous emotion; summarised in the mundanity of a service station.”

Following explosive and playful alt-country debut “Services”, with acclaim generated across the press landscape (DIY, So Young, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash), the band turn down a shadier fork in the road with their second single, “Pretty”

4-track EP from Divorce, out digitally on December 2nd 2022 and physically in Spring 2023.

“Services” is out now on Hand In Hive Records.

Metric shared a video for their new song, “What Feels Like Eternity.” It is the third single from their album, “Formentera”, which was released on July 8th.

Upon announcement of the album in April, the band shared the album track “All Comes Crashing,” Then they shared its second single, the 10-minute long “Doomscroller,” which we somehow neglected to post about . Their previous album, “Art of Doubt”, came out in 2018 via MMI/Crystal Math Music.

“Formentera” is named for an island off the coast of Spain, near Ibiza. The island was discovered by the band in a travel book sitting on the desk of their recording studio and inspired them in the midst of pandemic lockdowns, when they couldn’t actually travel there. Metrics newest collection of electro-indie drags you from the abyss that is our current day-to-day, acknowledging the fragile fate of life whilst encouraging you to appreciate the here and now. It’s dark and claustrophobic, but dreamy and imaginative with grand, cinematic synth arrangements. 

“We had been living in our imaginations for a long time, because we couldn’t physically go anywhere else,” explains guitarist and co-producer Jimmy Shaw in a press release. “When you listen to the album from beginning to end, you start with this immediate feeling of tension building, of being stuck in a loop, and then there’s this intense release that happens… you’re swept off your feet into the title track ‘Formentera’ and it’s like you escaped.”

Frontwoman Emily Haines continues: “We came to this realization that it wasn’t even about an actual place anymore, it was about creating an escape for yourself in your mind because you’re powerless over so many things.”

“What Feels Like Eternity” by Metric from the forthcoming album “Formentera“:

Tony Iommi’s iconic riffs, heavy tones, and innovative tunings set him apart from the rest and defined the heavy metal genre. At the center of it all was Tony’s heavily modified 1964 Gibson SG™. Inspired by Tony Iommi’s original Gibson SG, Epiphone is proud to release the Tony Iommi SG Special. This artist model is available in right and left-handed versions and features a two-piece mahogany body, a bound one-piece mahogany neck with a rounded profile, an Indian laurel fretboard with 22 frets, a Graph Tech® nut, Grover® Rotomatic® tuners with contemporary style buttons, and chrome-covered Epiphone PRO P-90 pickups that are wired to CTS® potentiometers and Orange Drop® capacitors. A static cling reproduction of Tony’s “Monkey” sticker is in the included hardshell case. No need to be paranoid, the Tony Iommi SG Special is now available!

“I, for one, am sick of doing sounds that people can claim to have heard before.”

These are the words of Paul McCartney in June 1966, charging headlong into the sonic unknown via the pages of NME. He’s talking about a new track The Beatles have recorded with “electronic effects” and words from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. The track, of course, will soon be unveiled as Tomorrow Never Knows, and its parent album, “Revolver“, will ultimately be understood as where The Beatles consolidated their song writing brilliance while broadening their musical horizons. Now gifted and ambitious bands could go anywhere, try anything, without necessarily alienating their fans.

This month in MOJO we celebrate the arrival of a kaleidoscopic new, expanded edition of “Revolver”. And we also reflect on how The Beatles, so eager to explore a wider world of sound, made a magazine like MOJO possible. Stockhausen “opens your eyes and ears,” McCartney told NME, and Stockhausen figures on the eclectic roster of one of MOJO’s boldest CDs ever – “The Meaning Of Within” – alongside other outré Beatles influences like Ravi Shankar, Timothy Leary, Ornette Coleman, Delia Derbyshire, AMM, John Cage and Nat King Cole.

Also in the issue you’ll find many more radical artists, like Björk, Don Cherry, Black Flag, Dry Cleaning, Big Joanie, , Diamanda Galas and Brian Eno. They might not all be to everyone’s taste, but they all make a kind of sense next to one another, vital parts of our latest monthly tack through music’s wild and diverse expanses.

Plus! A staggering extract from Nick Cave’s new book. Graham Coxon on Blur, Britpop and way beyond. The chaotic last stand of Joe Strummer. Blue Oyster Cult. The Equals. Lewis Taylor. Mickey Jupp. Lee Fields. Beth Orton. Lamont Dozier. The Cult. Musical Youth. And the ‘90s band who could have been the new Beatles (It’s not Oasis).

The Stones and The Who “visibly sat up” when the Beatles played them “Tomorrow Never Knows” for the first time, Paul McCartney reports in 1966. “We also played it to Cilla… who just laughed!”