RPM Online would like to pass on our condolences to the family and friends of Patrik Sjöstrand from Doojiman & The Exploders. Rock in peace brother wherever you may roam.
Popcorn? Check
Spraycan for the walls? Check
Loudhailer to annoy the others within 100 yards? Check
Lager Drink? Check
Cider Drink? Check
It’s only a movie by Dunstan Bruce about his band Chumbawumba and what he’s doing now. with I Get Knocked Down you have warts n all no bullshit untold story of Leeds-based anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba. Founding band member Dunstan Bruce is now 59, and he is struggling with the fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. Twenty years after his fall from grace, Bruce is angry and frustrated, but how does a retired middle-aged radical get back up again? In this punk version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Dunstan is visited by the antagonistic ghost of his anarchist past – his alter ego, ‘Babyhead’ – who forces him to question his own life, sending him on a search for his long-lost anarchist mojo. Following Bruce’s voyage of rediscovery, redemption, and reawakening, I Get Knocked Down acts as a call to arms to those who think activism is best undertaken by someone else.
Set to hit selected cinemas over the next few weeks it’s a fantastic trip down memory lane and some laugh-out-loud clips from their adventures in the gliterry world of rock and roll and a look behind the curtain of the pop world. A wonderful way to while away 90 minutes. The 80s and 90s (like many our age) flew by with a bazillion things to do – pre-internet – pre-social media and Sounds and NME were still a thing and CDs had taken over the world there were still no downloads or mobile phones. Those were certainly the days and the world needed changing and I guess Bruce thought he was gonna change the world and now all these years later with the power of hindsight he did a little bit – well, a little bit more than many pop stars.
I Get Knocked Down is a warm, engaging, and light-hearted look back on his/their time in the limelight. as far as popumentaries go this is a belter, thoroughly enjoyable. Like em or loath them you couldn’t ignore them and their anarchopop – check out this flick and get a warm feeling all over then get out there and fuck the government they’re even shitter than new Labour ended up. If you’re looking for a soundtrack then this is a good ‘un. Leeds punks still have a great sense of humour and don’t take themselves too seriously and this film proves it. Get on it and fly the flag!
- FRI 24 FEB: DUKE OF YORKS, BRIGHTON (**WITH Q&A) TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, ADDLESTONE TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, BANBURY TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, BOLTON TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, BRADFORD TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, CAMBRIDGE TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, NEW BRIGHTON TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, SHEFFIELD TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, SITTINGBOURNE TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, STOCKPORT TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, THETFORD TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, WALSALL TICKETS
- MON 27 FEB: LIGHT CINEMA, WISBECH. TICKETS
- MON 6 MAR: QUAD, DERBY (**WITH Q&A) TICKETS
- TUE 07 MAR: HORSE AND BAMBOO, ROSSENDALE TICKETS
- SAT 11 MAR: BISCUIT FACTORY, READING (**WITH Q&A) TICKETS
- WED 15 MAR: GENESIS CINEMA, LONDON (**WITH Q&A) TICKETS
- MON 27 MAR: CITY VARIETIES, LEEDS
- TUE 28 MAR: ELECTRIC CINEMA, BIRMINGHAM (**WITH Q&A)
- TUE 28 MAR: POCKLINGTON ARTS CENTRE, POCKLINGTON TICKETS
MORE TO BE ADDED…………..SEE www.musicfilmnetwork.com FOR UPDATES
Acoustic solo Tour of the UK
Peter Doherty, the Millennial Jean Genie/Jean Genet, will embark on his first solo acoustic tour in ten years, with a series of intimate ‘Songbook’ shows in the spring. Peter will be performing a selection of nuggets from his back catalogue, including classics from The Libertines, Babyshamble and not forgetting all of his delicious solo projects/records.
Peter promises to take audiences on an unforgettable ride into his strange and fascinating world where nothing is as it seems and life itself is an intense euphoric dream. Friends and special guests are expected to join him on occasion across these seventeen dates. ‘The Battered Songbook Tour’ culminates in a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on the 5th May. Tickets for the UK shows will go on sale Friday 24th Februaryat 10:00am and are available from: https://linktr.ee/peterdohertyofficial
APRIL
13th THU Belfast – Limelight
14th FRI Dublin – Opium Rooms
15th SAT Cork – Cyprus Avenue
18th TUE Glasgow – SWG3
19th WED Stockton – KU Bar
21st FRI Newcastle – Riverside
22nd SAT Lancaster – Kanteena
23rd SUN Hull – The Welly Club
24th MON Norwich – The Waterfront
26th WED Manchester – O2 Ritz
27th THU Liverpool (Anfield) – The Church
29th SAT Bristol – O2 Academy
30th SUN Falmouth – Princess Pavilion
MAY
2nd TUE Oxford – O2 Academy
3rd WED Sheffield – O2 Academy
4th THU Birmingham – O2 Institute
5th FRI London – Royal Albert Hall
Peter Doherty has released ten albums – three with The Libertines Up The Bracket (2002), The Libertines(2004) & Anthems For Doomed Youth(2015); three with Babyshambles: Down In Albion (2005), Shotters Nation (2007) & Sequel To The Prequel (2013); two solo albums: Grace/Wastelands (2009) & Hamburg Demonstrations (2017); one as Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres (2019) and most recently a collaboration with Frederic Lo The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime (2022).
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The Fine Art of Self Destruction came out at a time before punk rockers were picking up acoustic guitars and doing singer/songwriter songs. I wouldn’t want it to be lost that at that time very few people were mixing Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and punk rock or any of that. You either liked one or the other. I believe liking the Rolling Stones was a sin in my circle of friends at this time. The internet hadn’t been there to absolve us of such sins yet.
There were a few people who liked these mixes of genres and took in everything instead of shunning things. They took it all in and received the transmissions that spoke to their hearts rather than thinking of what was allowed or safe. One of these was a guy who once set fire to bars in the Lower East Side, had things tied inside his dreadlocked hair, and fronted one of the wildest punk rock bands since The New York Dolls… And then says he has a singer/songwriter record coming? Mercy on our souls…
The Fine Art of Self Destruction opened up a new room in Jesse Malin’s world. And maybe, unknowingly at the time, opened up doors for many others who would follow in the future, myself included.
Jesse Malin and Ryan Adams were two of the first people in the forefront of showing that you could sing songs on records in a new way for punk rockers. The songs on The Fine Art of Self Destruction were punk in spirit yet broken and delicate in execution. These are beautiful songs about people in an in between, nocturnal world who “moved to Brooklyn”, back when that meant something, and people who “come so hard but their songs are so slow.” Those were the people I knew. That was a lot of people. And they felt like they were my songs, not that I wrote them, or could’ve, but that they belonged to me in my world. Jesse put those characters in songs that could sit with you on the drives next to Nebraska and Closing Time when you drove home at night.
I don’t think without Jesse making that bold move of doing exactly what he wanted instead of what was expected that I would’ve been here doing what I do now. I think there are a lot of people who could say the same. It’s not that we never heard music like this, we just didn’t know “we” could do it too. You didn’t have to be Dylan, or Bruce, or Tom Waits. You could be a punk rocker who knew three chords and had a story to tell and that was enough.
I also believe that there was no better person to produce this record than Ryan Adams, even though he may have cheated by knowing five or six chords to our three, but he knew what needed to happen with this record. He was in tune and tapped into the spirit. There was a magic Jesse and Ryan both caught on The Fine Art… And I think we’re all better for it.
-Brian Fallon
Another Banger from Ms Moon lifted from her debut solo album, ‘Any Other Way’ is all killer and no filler. We’ve been longtime fans of her work and this is another cut from the excellent album ‘Dumb & In Luv’. Buy Here
This new video and single is the light at the end of a very dark tunnel for Mike Peters so lets celebrate this Monday with the brand new video and song off the new album – Take it away MP…
NEXT is the brand new single from The Alarm and is available to listen to now at all DSP’s and online music services. Are you ready for what’s next? 28 February 2023 Subscribe – http://smarturl.it/SubscribeToTheAlarm
“Words cannot express the joy of leaving hospital after a long stay on the wards, especially when it means you have regained your health,” he says, referring to the last year of hospital visits, chemo treatments, and life-threatening pneumonia brought on with the relapse of his leukaemia, which was originally diagnosed in 2005.
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While the single may signal that he’s newly energised from a healthy prognosis and ready to return to what he loves best – recording and performing – the fact is that Peters never stopped doing either of those things. Writing new music and performing it live to hospital staff while undergoing medical procedures to keep his cancer in check, Peters wrote “Next” with his trusty acoustic guitar and an IV stuck in his arm.
“The lyrics of the song were conceived while I was being treated for a leukaemia relapse and a lung that had filled with blood,” Peters explains. “The outcome was uncertain, but the medical and nursing staff did all they could to keep me going and, in fact, were probably the first people to hear what I was working up musically while they did their life saving work. It wasn’t planned, but once the realization hit me that I was going to be in hospital for a long time, I knew I needed my guitar to break the monotony of the isolation. Being able to play music to myself kept me going and I’m convinced that it helped me make the transition back to life.”
As a reminder of what he went through and what he leaves behind, Peters filmed the new video in hospital corridors, a familiar sight in the last year especially. “I wanted to film something that captured the elation of knowing you are going home, moving on, going forwards ready for what lies ahead, for what’s next,” he says. “At night and in between IV sessions, I would walk the very same empty hospital corridors of the North Wales Cancer Centre trying to preserve whatever human strength I could hang on to.”
For those who miss the fun, brash and ballsy, unapologetic rock ‘n’ roll of the early ’70s, fear not, as Gyasi is here to deliver the goods. Following his 2022 album for Alive, Pronounced Jah-See, the Nashville singer/guitarist/songwriter is releasing his new single Baby Blue today, with a full EP out later this month. With heavy riffs, stinging leads and a cocksure swagger, the four tracks manage to tap into the true essence of rock ’n’ roll, while also channelling the flamboyant likes of Bolan and Bowie in equal measure.
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Carol Hodge is a seven-fingered, piano-pounding, Yorkshire-dwelling Singer-Songwriter. Think Regina Spektor meets Billy Bragg, but with fewer digits and a continuous existential crisis. Crass’ Steve Ignorant just about summed up this Northern Lass quite well.
This is her fourth album it’s a dreamy lovingly cool album. Whilst she might have her roots and ethics and moral fibre bourne out of underground punk rock it doesn’t sound much like ‘Feeding OF The Five Thousand’ to be fair. What it is is wholesome piano driven pop (generally) with earthy lyrics that sit comfortably on the sincere and the tongue in cheek. It opens with something of a My Chemical Romance big ballad in its melody with a relaxed vocal that builds for the chorus and a sparce construction as the lyrics unfold.
It’s not a style I generally tend to listen to but it’s not hard to appreciate how well these songs are constructed and how passionately they are delivered. I saw Carol support Ginger sometime last year and her passion and craft shon through as did her wonderfully possitive disposition. It was refreshing and different. Funnily enough her song ‘The Price’ features Ginger and is a really good pop song. At times Carol Hodge reminds me of Eddi Reader and songs like ‘Grayson’ are attention grabbing in its simplicity and delivery. The vocals and piano are intertwined and the lush strings are sufficiently low in the mix to let the story breath.
‘Never Run Out Of Things To Worry About’ has a bit of Depeche Mode meets New Order about its pulsing synths. Clean the Slate’ also features fellow Yorkshire dweller Chris Catalyst as the song “Whigs out” to it’s conclusion. This album is pretty much as far as you can get from, say Crass but thats cool that as an artist she can turn her hand to very different styles and that versatility is a possitive. She should head out on tour with Marc Almond they both do this Torch song style really well and I find it intriguing and alluring and find myseld focussing on the lyrics and the song rather than the style its delivered in often touching and always delivered with quality.
Take a left turn and let some melancholy into your life and give this seven-fingered, piano-pounding talent a go, you might just discover something you never thought you’d like. Punk as fuck see.
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Carol Hodge Shop
Author: Dom Daley
A post punk album for a post pandemic generation – hailing from Cardiff South Wales Can Kicker certainly kick up a fair fuckin’ din. its riotous at times and high tension other times. It’s not for the feint hearted, it’s not polished punk by numbers – it has rough edges and the needle veers into the red at times whilst vocalist Luke Penny has a fine knack of conveying they desperate, fractured nature of hardcore post punk really well. Its attention grabbing and makes you want to concertrate on what hes howling at on the frantic ‘My History Is Not For Me’ whilst the lead guitar scraped out its melody over a rhythm section busting a gut to get to the finish line in one piece.
‘Looking For My Love’ is trying to find its way in the world as it staggers around in your speakers like the Fall on speed. ‘Aimlessly, Continually, Boring’ does exactly what it says on the tin. The vocals sound disinterested not unlike what Lydon has perfected in recent PIL albums. The format is often the same as Can Kicker rage through various stages of post-punk from rapid (‘Sterilised Experience’) to the slower metronome-paced throb of ‘Waking Dream’ again housing Perrys’ drone like vocal. The one thing that stitches the songs of this album together is how fuckin’ loud it all sounds. I imagine (and hope) this was all recorded as loudly as possible. Nowhere better is it exampled that the final offerings of ‘Stupid Game’ part 1 and The final track ‘Stupid Game’ part 2. The first sounds like prime Subhumans whilst part two have acoustic guitars next to a feedback-delayed lead guitar sounding like a post apocalypse soundscape that disappears into a void you daren’t even look into. Noisy as fuck but a whole lot of fun if fun is grey, dark, challenging and loud!
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Author: Dom Daley
It’s loud, rapid, lo-fi punk rock oh and its on Drunken Sailor Records so it must be quality right? Right! Gaffer hail from Perth Australia and play punk rock. Thats it in a nut shell. Its inspired from way back when UK punk 82 hit the streets and bands like Chron Gen, Blitz and Partisans were learning to play punk rock. It’s pretty much twelve songs about life hacked out by a bunch of punks living the dream but with grit and determination and a love for what gets them through and enables them to play and record this. ‘Handcuff’ is punchy, mid tempo pogo pogo punk rock. The lyrics are spat out and the guitars are sharp as they hack and slash through your speakers. Old school from the new school paying respect but doing it their way.
‘Factory’ is slower but no less punchy as they champion Factory life. It is what it is with the one string solo hanging on by a thread its punk rock baby – authentic and enchanting. It draws you in and retains your attention exactly as it should be.
The album lists back and fore from fast punk rock with guts and aggression (‘Wonga’) through the more focussed catchy (‘Hang’) to the swaggering (‘Deadbeat’). You have to love the smash and grab of ‘Generation Gap’ as the cymbals crash and that riff cuts deep. It’s true what they say about the louder you play it the better it sounds. It certainly grabs your attention and whilst its nothing new it is a fresh take on a style long forgotten – whilst many of the originators went forward with a more metallic sound Gaffer stay true to their roots and dish up a fine platter of punk for a new generation. The more you dig into this album the better songs jup out on you from ‘Skin Of Your Teeth’, the excellent ‘Stop’ and the early Buzzcocks of ‘Clean Shirt’ my suggestion is if you’re looking for some fresh blood on an old genre of UK 82 then Gaffer is your one stop shop – Go get some and invite your friends.
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Author: Dom Daley
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