“Junk Planet” is the third single from Michael Monroe’s dirty and dangerous new album “One Man Gang” available to buy NOW on CD, Coloured Vinyl and Digital formats: Here and as special D2C bundles: Here
Recorded and mixed by Petri Majuri at E-Studio in Sipoo, Finland over three weeks in March 2018, the 12-song record was mixed that following Autumn with Monroe and band-mates Rich Jones and Steve Conte on production duties. With stunning presence, Monroe’s vocals blaze their unique trail across catchy, low-slung guitars mixing with saxophones, harmonicas and trumpets, plus a smorgasbord of exciting hooks and melodies. One Man Gang is old-skool strut with rudely fresh vigour.
2019 TOUR DATES
Oct 24 Fryshuset Klubben Stockholm, Sweden
Oct 25 High Voltage Rock Club Copenhagen, Denmark
Oct 26 HeadCRASH Hamburg, Germany
Oct 27 FRANNZ Club Berlin, Germany
Oct 29 La Maroquinerie Paris, France
Oct 30 02 Academy Islington London, United Kingdom
Nov 01 Brudenell Social Club Leeds, United Kingdom
Nov 02 The Craufurd Arms Wolverton, United Kingdom
Nov 03 Engine Rooms Southhampton, United Kingdom
Nov 04 The Mill, Digbeth Birmingham, United Kingdom
Nov 05 The Garage Glasgow, United Kingdom
Nov 06 Manchester Club Academy Manchester, United Kingdom
Nov 07 The Fleece Bristol, United Kingdom
Nov 08 The Sugarmill Stoke-on-trent, United Kingdom
Nov 09 Hard Rock Hell Chapter XIII Vauxhall Holiday Park, Great Yarmouth, United Kingdom
Michael Monroe’s Official YouTube Channel, featuring official videos and music, behind the scenes footage, documentaries, tour diaries and much more! A genuine rock star since birth, Michael Monroe’ place in history was sealed with Hanoi Rocks, but he has never been one to rest on his laurels! Michael Monroe innately knows exactly how to sing, swagger and walk the most glamorous and colourful of walks. Together with Sami Yaffa, Rich Jones, Steve Conte and Karl Rockfist, Monroe takes you on a journey which is all about the fun of Friday nights, seven days a week, letting your hair down (or up!) for a dirty, dangerous, damn good time, and embracing a total escape into the rock ‘n’ roll dream!
Legendary Northern Irish punk rock act Stiff Little Fingers are delighted to announce a full UK tour in March 2020 – The 2020 Tour.
The tour will see the band play their29th consecutive Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom St. Patrick’s Day show as part of their traditional March tour. The band also headline London’s Roundhouse to end the 13-date run.
All the dates will feature support from The Professionals and TV Smith. The Roundhouse show only will also feature a very special guest slot from the Neville Staple Band. With an iconic career of over 40 years, Stiff Little Fingers remain as vital as ever.
The full tour dates are as follows: Thursday 12thMarch 2020 Bristol, O2 Academy Friday 13thMarch 2020 Cardiff, Great Hall Saturday 14thMarch 2020 Birmingham, O2 Academy Monday 16thMarch 2020 Norwich, UEA Tuesday 17thMarch 2020 Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom Thursday 19thMarch 2020 Troon, Concert Hall Friday 20thMarch 2020 Newcastle, O2 Academy Saturday 21stMarch 2020 Leeds, O2 Academy Monday 23rdMarch 2020 Northampton, Roadmenders Tuesday 24thMarch 2020 Nottingham, Rock City Thursday 26thMarch 2020 Portsmouth, Pyramids Friday 27thMarch 2020 Manchester, Academy Saturday 28thMarch 2020 London, Roundhouse
In addition to the dates announcement Stiff Little Fingershave just put out two special ‘Virtual Reality’ videos filmed with a 360 degree camera attached to the drum kit, from this years “Putting the Fast In Belfast 3” show in August. This gives the user, via their mobile viewing device or computer, the option to view whatever part of the stage and or band member they so wish via movement of the viewing device or via a mouse or pointing tool. The two tracks are their iconic punk anthems “Alternative Ulster” and “Tin Soldiers” available via the links below and on the bands own YouTube Page.
Stiff Little Fingers have been incredibly active in recent years, playing some prestigious live shows, including: three years of headline sold-out hometown performance in Belfast’s Custom House Square; London’s Hyde Park British Summer Time concert with Green Day; the 28th traditional St. Patrick’s Day sold-out show at Glasgow iconic venue Barrowland Ballroom.
In addition to the live performances, the past five years saw Stiff Little Fingers release two records: their tenth studio album “No Going Back” in 2014, which showcases a band at the height of their powers, still able to capture the heart of the listeners with relevant topics and honest sound, reaching #1 in the UK charts; and a live album “Best Served Loud – Live At The Barrowlands” in 2017, which immortalises Stiff Little Fingers’ epic performance at their annual St. Patrick’s Day show.
Formed in 1977 in Belfast Stiff Little Fingers were among the pioneers of punk rock. Joining ranks with the likes of The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Buzzcocks, and Undertones they brought in a new era of music and they’re still keeping that spirit alive 42 years on!
Blues is the teacher. Punk is the preacher. It’s all about emotion and energy, experience and raw talent, spirit and intellect. Exciting things happen when these things collide.
Bob Vennum and Lisa Kekaula made the BellRays happen in 1991 in East LA but they weren’t really thinking about any of this then. They wanted to play music and they wanted it to feel good. They wanted people to WANT to get up, to NEED to get up and check out what was going on. Form an opinion. React.
So they took everything they knew about; the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Who, the Ramones, Billie Holiday, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, the DB’s, Jimmy Reed, Led Zeppelin, to name a very few and pressed it into service.
It was never about coming up with a ‘sound’, or fitting in with a scene. It was about the energy that made all that music so irresistible. It was the history BEFORE Led Zeppelin that led them to that point. The Beatles thought they were playing R&B. It just came out like ‘Rubber Soul’. The Ramones were trying to be Del Shannon or Neil Sedaka and out came ‘Rocket to Russia’.
With the BellRays there was no conscious effort to ‘combine’ rock and soul because they didn’t see them as divided in the first place. Blues was teaching. Punk was preaching. The BellRays were always listening.
We’re always open to a first here on RPM Online and we’re a broad church and we welcome a first for sure and that’s some immaculate power poppin rock and roll all the way from Beijing in the shape of the Ramones meets The Boys power pop of The Sino Hearts and a whole bunch of other influential pop tarts thrown in for good measure. It’s primarily the work of Zhong who used to play in Dee Cracks so there is pedigree here. Its got a sprightly production and the tunes are sharp as the smiles on the band’s faces as they hammer out their snotty tunes.
Twelve tunes all with a hefty helping of love from the bottom of their hearts but it’s not all Ramones by numbers (although their influence weighs heavily) I’d say there’s a more modern Green Day feel to the happy go lucky sounds like ‘Vienna’ with a cool verse that flows nicely into the chorus and gang vocals that breakout – its an infectious sound and what it lacks in originality it makes up in quality. The more laid back ‘Long Vacation’ has a great pre-chorus and those sort of riffs are timeless and if you love yourself some power pop punk rock then this is always a no brainer and ticks all the right boxes.
The tracks only break the three-minute barrier a few times which is spot on and they never overstay their welcome (how could they?) ‘Bittersweet’ has a weird ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ (if it were power pop) then off we go with a great melody and riff, wahey! lets rock and roll some more before ‘Juan’ fires up the T rex side of power pop songwriting with some beach boy bv’s then to close off the record they break out with their native tongue which is great and something we totally approve of round here showing how rock and roll is indeed the global language and translates no matter where you are from if you get it then you just get it! even though the English version makes more sense to me ‘Long Vacation’ is a great track no matter how its sung.
The Sino Hearts have swagger and style and play power pop-punk rock n roll and do it perfectly well. Let’s all leave the world behind and just fuckin’ dance! Maestro 1-2-3-4 let’s go!
Taken off the band’s recent album ‘live & Lewd’ Reviewed Here ‘Army Of Losers’ has had a video made by the band for your viewing and listening pleasure. click the video and throw a circle pit wherever you are Christmas is coming!
The Mission’s Wayne Hussey launches 2nd half of ‘Salad Daze’ UK tour with Evi Vine
After a successful tour of mainland Europe and earlier UK dates, Wayne Hussey of UK alternative rock legends The Mission will be playing a new wave of UK dates with London-based dark ethereal artist Evi Vine. Hussey is touring in support of his recently released autobiography ‘Salad Daze’. Evi Vine is supporting her new album‘Black Light White Dark’.
Evi Vine contributed backing vocals on The Mission’s 2016 album ‘Another Fall From Grace’, which hit the UK top-40 album chart. In 2016-17, she toured with Wayne Hussey and The Mission as featured vocalist for their 30th Anniversary Tour.
Wayne Hussey’s book ‘Salad Daze’ was published on May 23 by Omnibus Press, chronicling Wayne’s life from childhood to his days with The Mission. A confessional, engaging and explicit account of life in the eye of rock’s storm conveyed with warmth, humour and laugh-out-loud moments, each chapter is accompanied by a specially curated playlist (via YouTube and Spotify) featuring artists as diverse as Elvis, Radiohead, Suicide, Frank Sinatra, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, David Bowie, Television, T-Rex, Cigarettes After Sex, Iggy Pop, and Telly Savalas.
“My autobiography was recently published and, to celebrate, I’m going out on a mammoth tour of Europe. Having been in solitary confinement and chained to a desk for the last year or so I thought it was time to go and make some music and be a little sociable with the world. Hence, I’m playing 50 plus shows in just over two months visiting the UK, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Greece, & Sweden,” says Wayne Hussey.
“It’ll either kill me or make a man of a me at last. For the UK shows I am delighted to have Evi Vine as my very special guest. Evi, who recently released a third solo album ‘Black White Light Dark’, sang onstage with The Mission in 2016-17 on our ‘Another Fall From Grace’ tour. I am also hoping to persuade Evi to maybe join me onstage each night to sing a few songs together. It was always one of the highlights of the Mission show for me when Evi and I got to perform one acoustic song, I always looked forward to that moment.”
Born in Bristol and raised as a Mormon, Wayne had his epiphany as a young boy while watching Marc Bolan and T-Rex on Top Of The Pops. Seeing his destiny in a blinding flash of glitter, mascara and dark curls, he decided he was going to be a rock star. After moving to Liverpool, Wayne eventually gained recognition and notoriety as lead singer and principal songwriter in The Mission after putting in time as a guitarist with Sisters Of Mercy, DeadOr Alive, and Pauline Murray’s Invisible Girls.
Most recently, both Wayne Hussey and Evi Vine have been collaborating with LA-based supergroup Beauty in Chaos, spearheaded by Michael Ciravolo and also involving members of The Cure, Ministry, Cheap Trick, King’s X, The Offspring, Van Halen, Marilyn Manson and Bauhaus, as well as Ice T, Tim Palmer and Rolan Bolan, among others.
The ‘Salad Daze’ Tour with Evi Vine runs until November 8 at Stockholm’s Nalen Klubb. His final UK date is November 10, when Wayne appears at the Louder Than Words book festival in Manchester.
TOUR DATES (all dates with Evi Vine, except where indicated *)
Oct 22 Southend-On-Sea – Chinnery’s
Oct 23 Bedford – Esquires
Oct 24 Manchester – Night People
Oct 25 Blackpool – Bootleg Social
Oct 26 Newcastle – Cluny
Oct 27 Glasgow – The Audio
Nov 2 Whitby Pavillion – Tomorrow’s Ghosts Festival * (with The Divine)
Nov 5 London – Nambucca
Nov 6 Bath – Komedia
Nov 8 Stockholm – Nalen Klubb
Nov 10 Manchester – Louder Than Words book festival *
“He is one of a kind, and whether he likes it or not, he’s an absolute legend, and I can’t think of anyone on planet Earth who has a better story to tell” – Gary Numan
“I toured a lot with The Mission and Wayne was much too bright and nice a guy to be in the rock business. He always had a sense of humour” – Iggy Pop
“After years and years of living with repression and religious guilt, I had finally shaken off those shackles to become the clichéd licentious, degenerate, promiscuous rock star – everything that my mother feared I’d become” – Wayne Hussey
* Photography for ‘Salad Daze’ poster by Jill Furmonovsky
* Wayne Hussey photo by James Bacon of Sheffield Lens
Imagine a record that manages to capture the sounds of prime time Pulp and some alt bands from yesteryear like XTC and that hard to pigeon hole post-punk and you pretty much have cornered yourself some Slumb Party. The songs pretty mu7ch all feature a throbbing bass some angular jarring guitars and some coooool synth licks and to round it all of there are also some really jazzy saxophone stabs like the fantastic ‘Shingles Bells’ I’d imagine these guys n gal have in the past (or present) been influenced by The Fall and the likes of XTC and the X-Ray Spex and bands like Buzzcocks and magazine. It’s fair to say at times they have a splash of colour like the Briefs. I love the vigour and runaway train that is ‘Time To Stop’ that rumble of the bass with the rapid snare beats is fantastic against that vacant synth lick but the vocals are shaking away like they’re trying to shake themselves off the record. In contrast, the next track is a vacant bored slice of desperation entitled ‘~Existance’ that throws up comparisons of the likes of Cabbage.
‘Back Stabber’ is like an indie Stooges and the saxophone is majestic as is that funhouse bass pinch n slap. this would give Julian Cope a run for his money and in a tight club, I can imagine the walls would be sweating along to the screams of this jazzy little number. Who would have thought Nottingham would throw up one of the alternative albums of the year with the East midlands turning up trumps again with the likes of RPM favs The hip Priests and TV Crime hailing from this neck of the woods or should that be forest?
I was wracking my brain to think who it was who the vocals and some of the tunes reminded me of and when ‘Sound Off’ sped through my speakers The name Richard Hell sprang to mind and sure on the more punky end of the scale there is certainly an element caught up in the tunes. Even though it’s quite the eclectic album there is a cohesive thread throughout the album and the quality is high and the songs are engaging throughout without ever getting too experimental or jazzy.
Right down to the last number – the title track with that saxophone howling I’m impressed and the B52’s chanting of the vocals is really appealing. Slumb Party deliver a really excellent album of alternative music songs like the one in the video below made me dig out my International Noise conspiracy albums because I love that garage keyboard sound theres more to this than greets the ears. check em out!
TONY HARNELL & THE MERCURY TRAIN will release their album ‘Round Trip‘ on a limited edition on white vinyl and limited to 500 copies worlwide on November 29th, 2019 via Livewire / Cargo Records UK. The album will also be available on all digital platforms. It’s the first time on LP, it was originally released on CD in 2010.
This is a masterful and critically acclaimed acoustic retrospective of Tony Harnell’s prolific career. With new arrangements and a stellar production, these great songs sound fresh and vibrant with a new spark breathed into them by some of New York City’s finest musicians. This is a very special record: a stripped down, reinvented retrospective of Tony Harnell’s past classics originally recorded with his previous bands TNT, Westworld and Starbreaker, with one brand new song “Anywhere But Here” recorded especially for this release. The idea of re-recording some repertoire classics came about after Tony performed some low key shows in New York in late 2008, with some talented and accomplished musicians that were not part of the Metal/Hard Rock scene. The desire was to breathe new life into the songs with new arrangements, key changes and added parts, it’s like listening to songs you know in a whole new way.
Happy Monday folks. who cares if it’s raining or not it doesn’t matter a toss when the rock and roll videos are from bands as good as the Cavemen, Backstreet Girls and the Wildhearts. All three bands have recently released records and are on tour or going on tour. So check out these bad boys starting with the awesome Cavemen who would go down really well as the house of commons house band none the less. they’d get the likes of Boris and his cronies behaving themselves or else.
With a brand new album full to burstin’ with Bad Boy Boogie out on the shelves, how about the new video from Oslo’s finest Backstreet Girls as they pose the question of the day…
Finally with another round of tour dates done and dusted and a new EP to celebrate and a review just up on rpm have yourself some wildhearts to round off this Rainy Days & Mondays videos
It’s been a year since they released their debut album ‘Speed’, and would like to celebrate by announcing the release of the fifth and last single from the album
They went big this time. ‘GOT NO BRAIN’ is a 12 inch, 45 rpm maxi-single, containing three more songs which are exclusively released on vinyl. The three songs are in the same spirit as ‘GOT NO BRAIN’, fast and short!
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