Music never stops surprising.
I was a fan of The Kills at their beginning. I had listened to one of their single on TV and, quite impressed but skeptical about a duo with a rhythm section built on laptops’ software, I bought the debut album Keep on your mean side to experience the entire thing.

Listening to Alison Mosshart -alias “VV”- singing (and guitar) and Jamie Hince -alias “Hotel”- guitars (and singing), I went haywire. I hated and loved the CD at the same time for the very same, simple reason: it sounded a PJ Harvey clone.
For someone (me) who loved Rid of Me and PJ’s most abrasive attempts, a bit of electronica and a drum machine were not enough to differentiate enough those guitars and that singing to avoid plagiarism.

Nevertheless, loving that kind of music, I could not deny Kills‘ debut was a very catchy album for exactly the same reason. Keep on your mean side is the album PJ hasn’t been recording for almost a decade.

While PJ Harvey’s fans in need of her darkest depressed mood were left orphans of those songs, she was enjoying a self-confidence period. Fullfilled with the optimism of alternating a New York residency with English seaside, she wrote a bunch of bright pop songs that ended up in the Mercury winner album, Stories from the city, stories from the sea.

The Kills arrived to provide a fresh supply of tunes for those fans. The added bits of electronica, in fact, showed that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I had to satisfy my curiosity and see them live. At that time, I guess somewhere around 2004 (my memory isn’t as strong as it used to be), they gave me the impression of tasting a new unripe fruit, however the ardor they put on stage was so involving that it was clear the fruit was going to turn sweet very soon.

About a year later, surprise, PJ Harvey came out with Uh Uh Her. I wouldn’t want to go as far as saying that the master was influenced by the pupil, but it is difficult to not notice that she brought her music, her voice and her artwork back to the bone, back to Steve Albini’s era, quite close to the territory being just walked by the Kills.
It was a slow grower on me but Uh Uh Her is a brilliant album. Sounding like a home recorded 4 tracks demo, it is built on the same raw passion that emerges from Kills‘ debut.
Has a competition started? Did PJ wanted to clarify who was the owner of that sound in rock music?

I’m not sure, but if it was a competition, the Kills accepted the fight but lost it.
In No Wow, their second album, they went even more radical. So primitive to turn monochrome. A sort of “Black and White Stripes” without the red, the Blues and Jack. The abrasive guitars are present and surrounded by minimalist bits of computer sampling. A direction I didn’t quite like mainly because it lacks nice ideas yet it contains their best song so far: Rodeo Town.

I confess I ignored the Kills since. Including Midnight Boom, their third release out this year.
My 2008 has been a mainly an alt-folk, often acoustic affair. Dedicated to the baroque listening coming from the wilderness of the northern states, I didn’t have space for “Hotel” uncompromising guitar and “VV” sexy lyrics.

Back after 2 weeks away from UK, I fortuitously read that the Kills were coming to (Cambridge) town.
I decided to go. Because I knew how brilliant they are live, because I wanted to photograph them and, why not, to give them another chance.

When Jamie “hotel” Hince and Alison “VV” Mosshart (Does anyone know the origin of these nicks, please?) walked the Junction stage it has been instantly clear that was going to be one of those night.
Masters of the situation they delivered an enthralling performance that nailed me and few hundreds people to the stage for the following 80 minutes.

Both totally absorbed. Completely immersed into the music to ignore the rest of the world.
The closer a rock concert can be to a sexual intercourse. A carnal triangle between the band, their songs and the audience.
Pure sex without physical contact. Sensuality without any flirting. Detached but so intimate you feel their breath.

A 80 minutes affair of sweaty “sex’n’roll”.
Jamie with his Lou Reed-ish leather jacket, is dominating his guitar. Alison, so attractive by her aloofness, is dominated by the songs. The audience, defenseless, is subjugated by their charisma.

I haven’t seen a show so full of passion since Jon Spencer got distracted by experimenting third millennium rockabilly with Heavy Trash and stopped exploding the blues.

Jamie guitar does not cut only the venue smoky atmosphere. Each riff scratches Alison heart with no harm. From the wounds a melodic soul pours out to remind everyone why we love rock music.
It’s just an hour when they walk out but after such an emotionally intense gig I experience the 3 songs of the encore more like a gift than a due act.

Modern alt-folk baroque harmonies clearly distracted me through 2008, I have the feeling I am going to rock my 2009.
A gig so lo-fi, so real, so uncompromisingly pure that I could tolerate listening to a drum beat without seeing a drummer on stage. The day that a drummer will materialize, we will be witnessing one of the best live experiences rock music can offer.

Retrospectively, I decided to get Midnight Boom. 34 minutes of brilliant songs and
the competition with PJ is finally over.
She spent the year playing a piano wearing a white dress, the Kills must have found a virtual coloured pencils box in the hard disk of recording studio computers.
Their once minimalist, black and white music now shines in multicolour splendour. Coarse guitars are almost disappeared to give space to electro-pop songs with their characteristic unrefined edge. From U.R.A. Fever opening duet through the TV hits Sour Cherry with his annoying chorus to the closing ballad Goodnight bad morning lights; positiveness emerges.
The two are clearly enjoying life, likely Jamie is having a great time with Kate Moss.

A band which started cloning PJ Harvey depression is now inhabiting Santogold liveliness. A band that in the space of three albums manages to deal with such different musical backgrounds still maintaining a coherence thanks to a true love for what they do, must be applauded.

If you don’t know The Kills, you have good chances to catch them sooner or later considering their incessant touring to promote their music. Keep an eye on their official places, as usual start from their [myspace] and [website].

Photo tip

When there is not a drummer on a rock stage, my music patience is severely tried but photography has a clear advantage.

A drummer sitting behind his bulky kit on the back of the stage is visually accepted as a (loud) presence at live shows and, despite often intrusive, is tolerated as an unavoidable figure on live music images.

To isolate a musician on the front with a drummer on the rear a telephoto coupled with a wide aperture is the most obvious option. Unless you opt for a side shot or kneel down for a lowered point of view against the ceiling.

When the drummer is not there, there is a chance for that rare opportunity to use a wider lens, allowing you to get closer, and include a part of the stage that will look neutral without the imposing, distracting majesty of the drummer and his kit.

If these conditions happen, don’t deny yourself the pleasure of portraying the artist live with the full stage. The photos will be real and more spontaneous of anything you can achieve simulating a live gig with a fake studio setting.

When I wrote about the only other Italian artist to have appeared on liveon35mm so far, Vinicio Capossela, I had been so stunned by a Neil Young concert that, incapable to talk about contemporary rock music, I moved to something a bit different.

Curiously enough, just few days before I was leaving to Nepal to follow one of my “photo reporter dreams”, Franco Battiato, another Italian artist was playing a London date at Koko.
Now, just back, to write about Brit pop or alternative rock after experiencing Nepal, believe me, it is a very hard task. Thus, instead of waiting for a new inspiration I am going to introduce you to Franco Battiato, something quite different from the usual liveon35mm.com stuff.

It is quite fashionable for Italian musicians, usually followed mainly by Italian fans, to play London (or Paris or New York). Fact is that nowadays these cities have more Italian residents than an average Italian town. Famous artists, such as Battiato, Capossela and many more quite easy can fill up venues with Italian migrants.
A night abroad surely has a different feeling from playing home and, as a plus, add a couple of lines on their CV. A London sold-out looks quite appealing.

Some of these artists, as Umberto Tozzi, Zucchero “Sugar” Fornaciari or Eros Ramazzotti, have spent a big part of their promotions strategies seeking to be considered in a more valuable “artistic facet”, definitely more than they deserve, “simulating” a worldwide success.

Umberto Tozzi started this trend 20 years ago booking the prestigious Royal Albert Hall to record and publish a live album easily titled: The Royal Albert Hall aiming to build up credibility at home. I have no idea if it worked.

Zucchero did worse.
He came out with a Live at the Kremlin album, a location cleverly selected a year after the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet bloc.
He also spent most of his budget throughout the years (I have to admit cashed on a couple of derivative but good LPs at his beginning) paying prestigious artists to collaborate with him. I remember attending a Zucchero concert in the early nineties with Eric Clapton appearing on stage in the mid of a song to play a 2 minute guitar solo and then walk away. The likes of Bono, Brian May, Sting, Joe Cocker, B.B. King, Solomon Burke and even Miles Davis duetted with him.
It paid off, unfortunately he is one of the few Italians pop musicians known beyond the Alps.

Eros Ramazzotti -a good reason to be ashamed to be Italian- nevertheless the most successful Italian artist abroad, has produced two live albums recorded outside Italy (no one will ever specify “in front of Italian audiences”). They contain collaborations with the usual “buyable” people: Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Luciano Pavarotti. He even managed to book Paco de Lucia and Jon Spencer (YES, him, Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion) to play on some of his songs.
There is nothing money can’t buy.

Such a long intro to say that Franco Battiato at least is different. As Vinicio Capossela, he would deserve more attention. He neither has sold his soul to the market nor cares of using tricks to boost his popularity.

Born and proud Sicilian (you can say he is from Catania just looking at his face!) he is a clever example of how the Italian melodic tradition can mix up with Mediterranean influences and classical heritage to revise popular music and develop it into something different.

It hasn’t always worked, and this was quite clear throughout the London show, but some of his best music has nothing to envy to the kind of stuff that made Peter Gabriel famous.

Spanning his entire career in a greatest hits set (during which I was wondering how happened that I knew so many tunes having never been too much into his music) the concert had some highs and lows.

It began with some technical nuisance; Battiato couldn’t listen to his band (!) due to problems at the mixer. He was quite pissed off, but the sound engineer, Pino, a name and a face that speaks Sicily in a wink, “quickly” solved the situation …erm, well…let’s say… after about 5 songs into the set, not too bad after all. Italians are not famous at engineering, are we?

Problems solved, the gig managed to have a proper take off. Battiato finally relaxed, started enjoying the night. He played his famous cover of the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday arranged with strings and orchestral sound. He finally stopped speaking English probably someone told him that the only English people in the venue was Koko’s security.

Battiato characteristic is that he can play any musical genre, and he did. From Opera to electro pop, from Italian song-writing to political statements, from hermetic lyrics to a sort of Arabic influenced world music he is able to do that maintaining a very recognizable style.

As any attempt to “I-know-it-all-ism” some of his things are disappointing and some surprising.
When he introduces and sings quite frankly Povera Patria (translatable somewhere around “Poor Country” a text referring to Italian corrupted politicians) I feel a mixed emotion of happiness (of being away from Italy) and anger (of not really having the power to change it from here).
Try to imagine having your prime minister greeting Obama election with a comment that went something as “He is young and tanned I can give him many suggestions” and you would know what I mean.

When Battiato adventures in his odd, hermetic (untranslatable) lyrics I am perplexed. He gives the idea of using an obscure language to give himself a sort of literate, intellectual, erudite look more than really believing what he sings. Questioning contemporary poetry is hard, when we enter the field of pop music lyrics becomes impossible. Anyone is free to believe if that he is “the real thing” or just a cleverly hidden semantic exercise.

When after 2 hours of music we got out of Koko to realize that the first snow of the year whitened Camden high street, I must admit my mind was only looking forward to leaving this country to Nepal blue skies.

Now, back to rainy, grey, cold English (almost) winter I have a nice memory of that evening spent among Italians listening to one of the few examples of good Italian music.

If you are curious enough to venture yourself into Franco Battiato you can start exploring his fans club [myspace] or his official [website].

Photo Tip

There is one thing that you can spot from the moment a concert begins: whether the artist likes photographers or not. You understand it from body language and stage presence.

Franco Battiato clearly doesn’t like cameras.
For the first three songs when we were allowed to stay in the pit, he did spend his time sitting on the back, headphones in his head, a music stand in front of him and being quite annoyed anytime he sees us shooting him.

Sitting performers are the most difficult to portray. They are static and most of the images are likely to look similar. You have to count on unusual shooting angles, interesting face expressions, any particular (Battiato as any Italian gesticulates and uses a lot his hands) that is a variation of a monotone theme.

Interferences are indeed another hassle: microphone poles hiding the face, the chair, the background staying the same and in this case even a pair of bloody headphones that were not working!

With a sitting performer is almost impossible to include other musicians or the band in the shots.
With a sitting performer most of the dynamism is lost.

For all these reasons, best suggestion is to go for a telephoto. It cuts out disturbing interferences, blurs the background and can give interesting close-ups.

There are also positive things, in fact. Usually there is a clear spotlight pointed onto your subject that lit him up enough to minimize problems with darkness. Being sit, your man doesn’t have a lot of room to move, dance or jump around. The two things combined, good light and immobility, work synergistic with the telephoto which requires a quick shutter speeds and has short depth of field.

From a lover of wide-angle lenses and blurred moving images, trust me, If you are in front of a sitting artist time has come to pull out that 80-200mm from your bag. Good luck.

An easy way to guess the kind of music a band plays without listening to it, is to see how the musicians get dressed.
If this is generally true, it becomes a certainty when the band comes from California.
The place where you expect to see any kind of frills to go along with the substance, sometimes even without any substance, is Los Angeles.

Plain clothes, t-shirts, denim, or a cheap cotton shirt from a LA band are an unambiguous example of California indie-rock. Pavement anyone?
Indie-music dress code doesn’t accept any concession to draw attention towards aside from music.

That is why the occurrence of Los Angeles alternative rock scene his historically as frequent as Jamaican Olympic skiing squads. Wendy Fonarow, knows it at her expenses. She is a UCLA anthropologist but to write Empire of Dirt, her essay about indie-music rituals and my favourite book about this argument, she had to travel to UK countless times.

We travelled to California just once. Driving up through the curvy slopes of Mulholland drive to follow David Lynch dream, we parked midway through for a quick hike on a dusty city park pathway that led to the top of a hill.

At the car park, a charming owner of a cabriolet BMW stopped next to us. A dog was sitting next to him. The animal, dressed and looked after as a blonde Hollywood star, glanced at us as if we were two exotic aliens polluting his area. “People are strange, when you are a stranger…”, Jim Morrison jingle reverberated into my head.

We walked to the top of the hill. The view from there is at the same time breathtaking and scary.
On the left the “Hollywood” sign with its huge white letters is blurred by a grey smog that arises from millions of cars swimming in an bondless sea of reinforced concrete, asphalt and sporadic green spots. You stare up at the sky and it is blue, on the horizon it is dark grey.

A very young couple dressed as if they were just out of the Beverly Hills TV series, was flirting on a bench paying no attention to us.

We were just few hundreds meters from that celebrity heaven glorified as Beverly Hills. So close to the villas of the greatest rockstars that the risk to stumble upon Madonna or Bon Jovi and be devastated acknowledging their real existence was genuine.
Facing that intimidating, overwhelming, uninviting view, impossible to choose as a place to settle, I wondered why Morrissey took so much to move to Rome. L.A. confidential.

No Age did not exist at that time. No Age music would have been my perfect soundtrack to that experience.

No Age is a L.A. pair of vegan friends in love with rock music. They formed at the end of 2005. Randy Randall, guitarist, and Dean Spunt drummer and singer.
In few months they have quickly become from Los Angeles one of the most talked about bands of the whole underground scene.

Coming from an hardcore background, quite inevitable from a place that gave birth to the best hardcore bands, No Age don’t play hardcore but pick from it the most peculiar aptitude: to put together trashing noise without being disturbing.

Truth is that behind that noise, produced just by a guitar and rumbling drums, there are in fact several layers of American music.

Signed by Sub Pop after few EPs, it is not surprising that some Seattle sound, as Mudhoney adoration for the Black Flag, permeates their music.

Randy Randall studied well his heroes.
Thurston Moore bouncing strums are mixed with the constant use of strident, coarse feedback kindly offered by Kevin Shields. A rich starter to remind everyone that alternative music wouldn’t exist without Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.
Then abrupt jangly guitar riffs of Stephen Malkmus heritage are served on a contemporary plate to give the songs a Pavement restyling to adapt modern California.
A sound that seem designed to make Pitchfork cry (92 out of 100) of joy.

Dean Spunt maltreats his simple drum kit and, in the mess of the beat that he produces, he surprisingly finds a space to sing. What he sings is beyond my English understanding but the “melodic lines” of his voice naturally match the reckless clamour they generate.

Nouns, their debut album made of 12 songs running just over thirty minutes, is absolutely essential. No space for useless decorations.
An outstanding album that explains several points. Noise-punk can be very catchy, Los Angeles exists beyond glamour and plastic, a duo can go beyond garage-blues or electro-dance and outlive the absence of a bass guitar.

Live their set last longer than the CD and expands the songs beyond the recorded version without losing charm. Noise arrows flashe out of the Marshalls to show how abrasive modern rock can be. A very young audience physically appreciates, dances and surf-crowd along the protracted choruses.
They have found a Sub Pop record to love. Beyond the erudite folk produced at their Seattle headquarter, Sub Pop offices in California clearly spot a band that is ready to lead a sonic wave from the Pacific Ocean to the world.

With Radiohead’s Colin Grenwood touring with a No Age T-shirt on, you can be sure they won’t lack support and success.
If you are after some clever noise-rock, get used to No Age on-line. Their music is on [myspace] their life on this [blog]

Photo tip

High stages in small venues are best for the fans. They can see well even from the back. They are a bit of a problem for photographers standing in the pit.

At festivals (those are very high stages) you see photographers bringing together with their cameras a ladder to step up and a long telephoto to step back.

On a small venue the situation is quite different. With a stage about 150cm tall and the performer less than a meter from you the conditions are not straightforward. You are too low and prone to point the camera up.

Telephoto lenses help to compress the perspective minimizing the effect you get shooting from a lower position.
They are a solution but often you are so close that close-up portraits are the only kind of image you can get, especially if using a not-full-frame camera.

The use of a wideangle helps to include more action but emphasizes the perspective. It is good if you want to magnify a performance, as a musician soloing, but is not right if your idea is to portray a star down to earth.

One handy and forgotten option, which works better on auto focus cameras, is to raise your gear above your head. Put a wideangle on and try to shoot without pointing through the viewfinder.
If you are digital (I know you bloody are!) you can’t go wrong with the burst mode and the live-view option that allows you to see the frame from the screen.
A very useful tool to avoid the main problem you encounter, cropping the subject involuntarily.

Another option, if it is there and security is not picky, is to step on the barrier that divide the pit from the audience. Usually there is space to stand on and it is high enough to minimize the difference in height. Your balance won’t be great and fans won’t be happy. Be quick and ready to be pushed down to the pit by the front row!

USA alternative music scene has never been so fervent. The East coast is as creative as the golden age of CBGB. The rocky north west mountains are inspiring Seattle again with a mix of rock music and popular roots.

New music is coming from where it never was. Have you ever heard of Florida producing an indie-rock band? Their name can be quite banal, but the Black Kids album is pure party-dance-pop and I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You is without contest the best title of the year and a song so catchy that I can see all their retired neighbours dancing during the rehearsal in a Jacksonville garage.

Film School from San Francisco don’t have a great name either, but they do play quite amazing music. Yes indeed, shoegaze from California!

When the topic is California reality and common thinking coincide.
California is sunny, optimistic, fake, pop, plastic, pumped, tan, healthy, sporty.
California is celebrities, Hollywood, stardom, cinema, fiction, porn, surf, dollars, free love…freedom.
California is about excesses: huge breasts, huge cars, huge beaches, huge landscapes, huge houses. Hugeness.

California mainstream music has constantly reflected this mood. From the Beach Boys to Red Hot Chilly Peppers, from Guns’n’Roses to Metallica there has always been a mix of happiness and muscles, make-up and body building trying to cover the reality of life.

California underground music, often maintaining an optimistic twist, painted a different picture.
Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin sadly proved on their bodies. Rage against the Machine and Living Colour have managed to tell their audiences.
Punk-hardcore, which had its birth and its best in these places is another visible sign.
The endless list of punk legends born here, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, Minutemen, Social Distortion screamed it out loudly and angrily.
There is a world beyond surf, girls and rock’n’roll, there is an invisible dark side of bright California.

Californian alternative rock has a pivotal band for of the entire American alternative rock: Pavement.
If you want to play guitar rock, you should confront with them and their music. If you are from California, you must.

Film School moved it a step further. They worked with members of Pavement, recorded an EP with Scott Kannberg’s label and played hard for years before being signed by Beggars Banquet.

Film School two Long Playing came out in few months. Self titled Film School and Hideout sum up the experience gathered in several years of underground passion.

Structurally their music moves into standard shoegaze territory. High volume, lot of noise, the guitarists waving their pick-ups close to the ampli to seek sustained feedback.

On Hideout, My Bloody Valentine’s Colm Ó Cíosóig appears as a guest but they are still not from Dublin.
New Order electronica sometimes echoes out from the keyboard but they are still not from Manchester.
Some gloomy singing reminds of Interpol but they are still not from New York.

Film School are from San Francisco, California.
The heat wave counteracts to calm the sonic wave that the guitars borrow from the Pacific Ocean.
San Francisco adds bits of its look and memories of its psychedelic history. The hippie-ish hair-band of the pretty bassist to the long instrumental break they improvise in the middle of the songs disclose that the bay area heritage is part of their DNA.

British Sea Power allowed them to bring their music to audiences who are used to appreciating. I bet it is going to be a long love story with this old, cold world. Hopefully they will bring some sunshine along with the music.

If you are after some shoegaze with an optimistic side, if you want some feedback guitar but you also need some nice songs, check Film School [myspace] and [website], you may discover they are not playing far from you.

Photo tip

Horizontal or vertical?

It has always been such a difficult choice that I ended up finding my personal way. I tilt most of the frames.
I hate to cut guitar neck and, worse, to cut musicians’ heads.
The tilted option helps me fitting both and often can be used either ways which is handy.

Composition rules state that you have to use the format that follows the subject shape.
So said, if you are going for a portrait your choice should be vertical. If you are after a full stage wide angle shot best if you go horizontal.
It is a useful rule of the thumb and will work most of the times. Don’t apply it strictly, though. Give yourself permission to violate the rules. You will be surprised to discover that where you broke it the most interesting frames appear.

With a more professional consciousness you also need to consider which the final target of your pictures is.

If you are commissioned by a magazine, keep in mind they prefer vertical shots. It is the magazine format and the most accepted format for a cover or a full page.
Horizontal shots can be used half page. Rarely they join two adjacent pages, great opportunity but in that case you must use an image that doesn’t have the subject in the middle. The pages’ junction distorts that part of the image and should be neutral.

Newspapers have similar requirements but being their size bigger, full page images not so frequent, they are less strict and can adapt either horizontal and vertical shots.

If you are working for the net, electronic webzines requirement are exactly the opposite to paper magazines. Monitors are horizontal and horizontal images work better filling the entire screen or following its borders ratio. A vertical frame is either to small or can’t be seen in full without scrolling, which is not pleasing.

So, Is this it? Apparently it is.
Dirty Pretty Things announced their split. What was, until few days ago, just another tour from Carl Barat & Friends to promote their second album, it turned out to be their last.

One thing is for sure. Barat - Doherty and the entire world revolving around them - have the best PRs in UK.

In these weeks that have seen the death of Rick Wright, the news that Michael Eavis and bloody Kings of Leon denied his wish to play a last Pink Floyd concert at Glastonbury, the split of The Long Blondes due to guitarist Dorian Cox health problems, I sincerely find quite difficult to be touched by Dirty Pretty Things split.

The media got the news with such a perfect timing. Days before the start of a tour that didn’t do very well in presale, with an album that hasn’t sold, cynics saw in these revelation a last attempt to cash some more money before it is too late.

When From Waterloo to Anywhere came out a couple of years ago I was pleasantly surprised. Songs worked quite well. Carl Barat is intelligent and Gary Powell majestic enough, they looked the ones destined to carry on the Libertines legacy leaving to Pete Doherty just the role of tabloids’ buffoon.

The formula was simple, effective and well tried out: three minutes songs, fast rhythms, jangling guitars and Barat’s voice to remember everyone he was a Libertine. Rossomando gave an edge to guitar parts that Doherty clearly couldn’t and The Cooper Temple Clause bassist (how I miss this band?) was much more present than the anonymous Libertines‘ bassist (Who was him?).

Things aren’t as rational as my scientific mind would like. A brilliant production and a better guitarist helped the second Babyshambles album to come out quite good and, despite they are still a pretty unreliable live band, Doherty charisma his enough to pay out in these recession times.

Dirty Pretty Things second album, Romance at a short notice, suffers of a wrong production and failed both critically and on CD sales.
The new songs aren’t any close from the previous which were not brit-pop masterpieces nevertheless I find it quite enjoyable.
On Romance… tempos slow down, guitars are not sharp and bright as you would expect, the sound isn’t spiky and direct. It is actually quite round, big and clumsy.

I wonder such a “big sound” was aimed to conquer the USA. Live tonight they reminded me of some stoner rock from California desert or Seattle golden age.
Whether it was planned or a coincidence, it didn’t work. Not only they haven’t got in the USA but they have even lost London. English fans are more implacable than English music press. The number of new bands is so high that one is ready to step forward at the first sign of someone’s weakness.

The split was obvious and as much obvious was the start of the rumours about The Libertines reunion. Will this be happening?
People talks about it, band members deny strongly. To me is a good sign, two faces of the same coin.
The main problem will be to convince fans that it is a credible and authentic comeback. Indie fans can tolerate many things, even bad songs, but they will never accept something that smells of a marketing operation lead by NME.
We know their PRs are among the best you can have so I wouldn’t be surprised to see they found a key. Summer festivals are quite far, there is time to prepare a strategy.

So far, the news of the split, if it was a trick, worked just partially. Cambridge Junction almost sold out but the band didn’t seem to have that injection of vigour coming from the announcement.
Dirty Pretty Things looked more like a “dead band walking” that someone happy to close a period in style.

When I saw them on the debut tour there was plenty of reciprocal enjoyment, they worked for the songs and for the fans. Tonight the band is disunited, more than a group they are four individuals playing a bit bored. They looked more like employees seeking a new job that rockstars. More of an audition than a concert.

Brit indie-rock isn’t living its best epoch but curiously it has the best drummers.
Gary Powell, with Bloc Party’s Matt Tong and the Arctic Monkey Matt Helders, belongs to a tradition of drummers with a certain Keith Moon as granfather.

A band as the Dirty Pretty Things, doesn’t need drum kit that seem to come from the Yes line-up circa 1973. When you are so skilled and sit behind such a monster, the risk is to overdo.
Gary Powell on his pedestal uses the drums up to the last cymbal. His drumming is hedonistic. Rollings, pauses, accelerations emphasize more his technical skills than the songs. It’s too much, it’s out of place. I wonder if he is after the Porcupine Tree’s drummer position.

Barat and Rossomando guitars, instead of containing him, follow Powell in a sort of ghost competition without a finishing line.
Didz Hammond takes a lot of singing parts, everyone do share singing actually. Sometimes it is interesting but most of the times is disorienting for who recognize Barat as the distinctive voice of third millennium swinging London.

The band on stage is still genuine. I always liked Carl Barat, he looks a nice guy with a sincere smile. He gives everything on stage and tonight they played in fact almost any song in repertoire.

The concert starts with Wondering, one of their best tunes from the debut. The set flows with most of the anonymous new tracks in the middle and towards the end it peaks again. Deadwood closes the “official” night.
The band comes back quick for an encore which is the best moment of the night.

A nice version of Nirvana’s in Bloom, unscheduled in the printed setlist fits tonight’s guitar sound well. Thid homage to Cobain’s distorsion is followed by B.U.R.M.A.
Anthony Rossomando picks his trumpet to play Bang Bang You’re Dead intro. With tonight circumstances the songs explodes in a riotous moment which at the same time is their hymn and their swan-song.
Less than two minute of You Fucking Love It salute the fans.

When you have two CDs published, you tour the second but your concert opens, close and encores with 5 songs from the debut and a Nirvana’s cover; with the new album left in the middle of the set … there is not need of a clearer message.

Dirty Pretty Things story comes to an end. They become a small part of Brit-Pop history. They were the perfect soundtrack for a journey in the Tube now they are just four guys getting off the indie-rock train and waiting for the next.

Listen to Dirty Pretty Things here, while we wait to see what next is going to be. [myspace] [website]

Photo tip

I don’t know if Dirty Pretty Things intended to use smoke machines as a metaphor. The band fades on stage as a symbol of the split. I doubt, but the gig was characterized by a foggy stage who made photographers’ work quite challenging.

Smoke machines can be an interesting way to produce creative images.
The most appealing aspect is the ability to erase noisy background.
The main problem is that you don’t control it and you can just adapt. You must be very quick and able to recognize the right moment.
Unfortunately the most frequent situation has just a bit of smoke that partially covers the action. That is disturbing. Images with a bit of smoke come out bland with low or no contrast at all.

Best is when the stage is fully saturated in a thick white smoke. Concentrate on the ghostly figures or be quick to catch them when they come ahead and materialize.

The approach you want to use is the same you would in a foggy day.
To start, avoid the presence of front lights, they don’t help. A flash makes things even worse.
The best pictures are taken when there are backlights, diffused by the smoke particles, they create a dreamy, white, cloudy background.

Try always to include a source of light in the frame. It gives the image an edge, a full range between highlight and dark shadows.

Digital photographers will find it quite normal, but another good suggestion is to shoot a lot. Don’t save any because you cannot predict how the smoke interferes, changes, moves. It is normal to have a large number of useless shots so keep shooting and be ready to work hard and very severe in postproduction. You have to select the very best few shots out of the myriad of useless crap.

For the film photographers’ there is a pro as well. Smoke, behaving as fog, comes out brilliant on quick films. Grainy B&W images of fog are unsurpassed on B&W high sensitive film. Try shooting from 800 to 3200 iso. Best if you push an old B&W emulsion as Kodak Tri-X or ILFORD HP5 to 800 ISO or above.
To stress it develop the films emphasizing the contrast using a warmer temperature with a shorter time, a more concentrate developer and a lot of agitation. Print on contrasted paper (or filter from 4 to 5) and don’t forget to let me see your results!

It doesn’t happen everyday to go to a rock concert and come back knowing something about the British sea life.
This is what British Sea Power do, and this is why they are the most peculiar band in UK today.

While people was waiting for the concert to start, while I was standing in the photographer pit, we were entertained by an old black and white documentary about seahorses biology projected on two big screens. From the subtitles and the aged images I learnt that is the male seahorse to deliver his hundreds of babies. Did you know that? I didn’t.

Movie fades, lights are set to darkness, the five band members enter the stage with the pleasant addition of a violinist, seahorses are back to the sea. Something Wicked from their debut opens the night and set the lyrics code to mysterious.

“Where the ancient oak leaf clusters grew
The deaths head hawk moth flew
Something wicked this way comes…”

Either you have a phD on British history or you’ll struggle to decode them, is it just me?
Atom and Lights out steps into the new album, Do you like rock music? beyond the title, a brilliant work.

A quite long set, spanning their 3 albums career, entertains the crowd. A lot of instrumental sections tonight that occasionally go along additional B&W films shown on the two screens.

The band uses its set of nonlinear, structured songs; literate, hermetic texts about First World War, British Navy, nature and natural history are soundtrack for the videos in an interesting multimedia approach to rock concert. Everytime it happens, the concert has its peak.

Not surprisingly, it is the same sort of thing used at the beginning of last century. Films where silent and a piano player entertained the audience playing along the images.
The piano player is evoluted into a classic rock ensemble with the addition of a violin (at this pace violins will become more common than guitars in rock music) a trumpet and the use of some other weird instruments as this out of ordinary tool that produces a mayday siren, don’t ask me its name, below you have the thing.

The whole idea works pretty well. The band has some beautiful songs, they blend them with an interesting use of set design, Navy colours hanging from guitar amplifiers, a couple of (fake) owls on the top of the bass head, millions of fishes swim and birds fly on the 2 big screens.
British Sea Power texts, to my English knowledge, are as hermetic as trying to understanding the singing of a cuckoo reading it from a bird watching manual, or getting how hard it was to fighting the First World War on the Brit Navy viewing a BBC documentary.

It is ok, what makes this show great are the arrangements of the songs, the music “seascapes” they produce along the videos, the capability of bringing the audience into a different space: from a rock venue we are moved to a ship navigating a cold northern sea. An old age, from modern, credit-crunched England to the glorious era of the British Empire…just before its decline.

The Decline of the British Sea Power is their 2003 debut. Well received by the press and the public, their music didn’t impress me and surely wasn’t any close as the sophisticate sounds they produce today.
I saw them that year. They supported The Strokes in a celebrated concert at Alexandra Palace. Probably due to my excitement of seeing The Strokes live at the peak of their career (since then their popularity crashed quicker than Dow Jones index) left me unimpressed by British Sea Power supporting slot.

Still unripe music didn’t fit with their image. The stage was already decorated with trees, birds and naturalistic paraphernalia. On it they seemed a band out of place, with an effective look but a sound that didn’t pair with it, not yet.

The second album Open Season left me still in a kind of limbo. In the meanwhile, I also came across The Brakes and I was quite excited by this kind of Brighton side project involving someone from BSP. Give Blood their brilliant debut contained some pearls and I enjoyed it so much that I wondered if British Sea Power was declining.

In music today everything changes quite quickly. If you are lucky do be signed by Rough Trade you are sure to have one more chance, even if you haven’t got a top ten with the first two album. Do You Like Rock Music?, British Sea Power third album, got ecstatic reviews and excellent public reception.
It tooked me a while to get through my scepticism and listen to it but I must admit that finally the sound merges with their image, what I missed five years ago.
Do You Like Rock Music? is their best selling album even before it was Mercury Prize shortlisted. In the end of a tough fight Elbow won, but this LP is among the top five British releases of 2008.

Some lazy journalism had quickly filed it under the Arcade Fire folder, the usual obsession to classification that automatically ends up in misleading simplifications.
Do you Like Rock Music? enriched band’s sound, clearly gets closer to the kind of orchestral multifaceted rock of their Canadian fellows but there is much more (and some less) to the Arcade Fire arrangements to be considered.

Their obsession to natural and British history stays there and permeates everything, from the album design to the set design, from the lyrics it bounces onto the music. Proud of such a strong national heritage, their boat sails quite far from Canadian shores. I picture them as cruising the Channel with seagulls resting on their battle cruiser searching for fish. Everything staged many years ago.

During the concert those same black and white seagulls fly into the screen. A boat struggles to survive among big waves during a storm. Waving Flag is the hymn that comes in the middle of the set to leave space to another video with even bigger waves. The Great Skua with its dark trumpet in evidence is a perfect soundtrack.
A grand sound erupts from the amplifiers covered in British Navy flags, it follows the dance of a naked woman, likely filmed in the 30s. The concert closes with a long wonderful version of Spirit of St Louis, the band jams from minutes before vanishing leaving the stage to a giant bear.
They come back to salute the crowd with Lucifer and Lately on a nice encore.
It’s the end, The end appears projected on the screens. The movie is finished, the live soundtrack they composed for it too.

A must see live band. A band that brings on stage all their passions (and instruments) to build a perfect synergy among video, lights and music.
British Sea Power ideal venue is not the Brixton Academy or the Hammersmith Apollo but it would be the main hall of the Natural History Museum.
If I were these guys manager, I would start seeking for the permissions and asking the dinosaur whether he agrees.

You can enjoy some of the British Sea Power music on [myspace] [website]

Photo tip

Photographing videos projected behind a band is rewarding. Unfortunately, at this gig videos were used after the three songs and I was sent out of the pit to photograph any!

Music and Video, from a photographer’s perspective, have something in common .
Keith Jarret hates being pictured while playing. Years ago, he stopped a gig at “Umbria Jazz festival” after a flash lamp. It said to the audience: “Why do you want to stop something that flows?”. Apparently, he made a good point.

I reflected about it to reach the conclusion that I disagree. I believe it is possible to stop “something that flows”.
Photography freezes moments, it is in inner nature, you can’t avoid that. Even a landscape is not the same half a hour later. What music photography does is to extrapolate an instant out of hundreds. It gives the viewer the impression of what is happening. A single image can vehiculate emotions as well as a concert. Think at the Clash’s London Calling cover or Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar. You don’t need the music to feel it, do you?

Now, is it possible to photograph a video? I don’t think it would make a lot of sense on its own, but it can be a nice complement to an image if it is framed with a band who make use of them. Imagine Pink Floyd live.

Technically the difficulty of photographying a video is balancing the lights.
Usually videos are much brighter and best experienced in darkness. So to expose them right will give you a band too dark or, to get the band correctly, you end up with a white rectangle on the back.

The ideal trick would be to use flash. It lights up the band without interfering with the screen image. When the flash is not allowed, I’d suggest to wait for the moment a bit more of light, even a single spot, is projected on the band.

Put attention on what is screened. Often the single image out of a film is meaningless if you pick the wrong frame.

To start try using a moderate wideangle in order to shoot the band as you would do in normal condition, and frame the video screen on the back.
It’s challenging but you’ll be surprised by some amazing shots, guaranteed. If I only were allowed at this gig…

When a joyous Guy Garvey received the Mercury Prize a month ago he said something like “after 18 years…” implying the time his band spent together. I thought my English failed again, “did he say eight?” I went to Chiara, “no eighteen” she replied. “I can’t believe, that’s not possible”.

Wikipedia confirms Elbow, in their different cycles of rebirth, have been playing Manchester scene since the Stone Roses wanted to be adored, even if first LP and first Mercury nomination are dated 2001.

Perseverance pays back. 4 EPs lost in some small record shop; then four more LPs all excellent examples of the second wave of British pop; not a single top ten single. Music for the love of music.

Mercury Prize is regularly debated. The best record of the year is not chosen by general public but a selected jury formed by people in the music business, the mysterious figure of experts.
Panel changes every year and, if not from the shortlisted which usually span the entire range of British music, it is evident from the list of winners. Who chose Klaxons over Amy Winehouse can’t be the same than the one who preferred Elbow over Burial.

In its hall of fame there are great names as Primal Scream and PJ Harvey, key debuts as Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys but even promising artists that didn’t deliver as Ms Dynamite and M People and legends left out as Radiohead and Oasis.

2008 jury made the right choice. Elbow’s deserved the prize, for their work and for their endurance. Awarding The Seldom Seen Kid over Burial’s Untrue could be seen conservative, and a confirmation of the growing wave of Tories renaissance, but Elbow’s album is definitely the strongest of the British LPs, together with the other Mercury nominated, Do you Like Rock Music? by the British Sea Power. I should add that the best 2008’s music has been sailing the wind of change on the other bank of the Atlantic.

Indie philosophy is based on some dogma which you can’t betray if you don’t want to see your audience turning their back on you. Authenticity and credibility must belong to an independent band as much as showing off and stardom must be minimized.

Elbow embody all of this, genuinely. When Guy Garvey enters the stage to introduce the support, Jesca Hoop, as “one of my favourite American songwriters”, he knocks up a good score. He is applauded and perceived as a humble person who uses his celebrity to favour another artist. Authentic and credible.

About a hour later Gurvey is back on the stage supported by the rest of the band and a string quartet that takes also backing vocal duties. The back is effectively decorated with their “Rubik’s cube” like logo which is also on the cover of the winning album.

It is their first gig after the prize, probably the last tour in small venues. Wembley arena is already booked for 2009. Expectedly the setlist is centred on The Seldom Seen Kid; it’s its tour and more important it is their best release to date.

It is routine that a tour supports the latest album, what is rarer is that this is a desired thing. Anyone who attended recent U2, Red Hot or Primal Scream concerts knows what I mean. Standing there waiting for the best tunes to arrive. Hoping egos leave space to hits. Tonight’s high is that Elbow best songs are indeed in Elbow latest album. The packed venue is treated with the best and the best of the rest.

In a smooth rotation, ballads leave space to electric guitars, orchestral suites flirt with old melodies.

The acoustic tunes emphasize the excellent songwriting and Gurvey’s big voice but is when the volume raises, the guitars take the place of the violins, the drums stress the harmonies that Elbow give their best and let the magic happen.

Eighteen years playing for the pleasure of it bear fruits. The solidity of their sound is impressive. No space for solos, it is from the fusion of singularities that the gig takes off.

Elbow don’t play three minutes three chords. The songs are structured. Long instrumental suites take place, percussions and guitar overlaps, violins add melody and romance.
What in classic rock was the place and the space for solos, in contemporary rock is left to group interplay. From a sort of selfish wanking to a choral act of mutual love.

When during Ground for Divorce the guitar riffs enters, with the closest Jack White’s sound you can listen in UK, it is not the guitarist personality but the reciprocal understanding of the entire band, including Gurvey abusing a weird metal bar as a percussion, that their best song becomes a wall of sound able to silence the entire venue in adoration.

Older tunes mix up among the lines of a setlist that will clock two hour. There are some weaker points but never long enough to bring the excitement down. Then the highs are vertiginous, Mirrorball scatter its melody in millions of notes and a mistery song which I will never know the title seems to be penned by Roger Waters when totally obsessed by his father ghost.

Before the encore, the gig closes with One Day Like This. Keane could kill for “a song like this”. A tune so perfect to bring the entire venue to sing-along the chorus, everything is so flawless to be close to sugariness. OK, this is me that I am always after an imperfect balance between melody and transgression.
Elbow have indeed found the perfect balance between writing good music and achieving a deserved success.

Even with such a pleasant multi-course dinner, Elbow come back for a dessert that is so tasty noone has problem to enjoy to the end. Back from the debut, Newborn sees the band transforming in a brass ensemble, screaming trumpets interlude through the song drawing a loud and brass landscape. Some would write experimentalism a word so overused to become synonym of “I don’t have a clue why they put this noise here so they must have experimented“. Fact is I would define experimental some works by John Zorn or Einstürzende Neubauten while recently I found it paired to latest Oasis and Coldplay CDs! Scattered Black and Whites is simply the other perfect tune missing to close the perfect night…and not, not because of the title!

Without doubts amongst the best acts UK can offer today, ways beyond Coldplay, Oasis, Verve and Travis recent releases. If Brit-pop has a name today that name is the most sensuous word in the English language: Elbow. (cit. The Singing Detective)

Meet Elbow an their music on their [myspace] and a beautiful [website]

Photo Tip

Backlights are a pain “in the back” for concert photographers. A lit up logo “on the back” can instead be a great photographic opportunity.

Elbow’s cube was continuously lit by various lights coming from different angle.
The intensity was constantly changing, offering a different balance between the backlight and the band.

When this is the situation, the first thing to do is to avoid automatic light measurement unless you are perfectly aware of how your camera works.

A homogeneous light on the backstage misleads the exposure meter and quite easily will underexpose your subject unless the light techinician is so photographer friendly to dose exact the same amount of light on both.

It is not going to happen so don’t be that excited to read that finally you can shoot f5.6 1/125s because the best you will end up is a nice silouhette!

In this occurrence, work manually, spot measure the light on the band member you want to shoot and I ignore the luminosity of the design on the back.
It will come out most of the time OK, what is much more important in a photo is the subject. A nicely exposed back definitely add value to the image but if it comes with a poorly exposed artist it is quite improbable the result will be of any use.

I love this virtual world where you can invite to your virtual party, to celebrate the first year of Live on 35mm, the most important artist to have appeared on the English scene after the Beatles: Morrissey.

“A jumped up pantry boy
Who never knew his place
He said “return the ring”
He knows so much about these things
He knows so much about these things

I would go out tonight
But I haven’t got a stitch to wear
This man said “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care”
Na, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man …
Na, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man …”

[The Charming Man – The Smiths]

Indie philosophy linked a community that socially identifies around a music for more than 20 years. As Wendy Fonarow describes in her wonderful book “Empire of Dirt – The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music” it is a proper british phenomenon, radicate and influencing society beyond music and up to fashion, design and journalism.

“Existence is only a game
And I’m, Not sorry for, For the things I’ve done
And I’m, Not looking for, Just anyone

And I’m, Not sorry for, For the things I’ve said
There’s a wild man in my head, There’s a wild man In my head”

[I’m Not Sorry – Morrissey]

Morrissey since he appeared on Top of the Pop with a bunch of gladioli singing This Charming Man obtained a godlike status within UK. As any God, he speaks his Word and the words he uses are always so effective to storm debates that question the inner nature of being British. A country split between worshippers and people who cannot stand him.

“Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I’d like to smash every tooth
In your head

Oh … sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be
Bludgeoned in your bed

And now I know how Joan of Arc felt
Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
As the flames rose to her roman nose
And her Walkman started to melt

Bigmouth strikes again
And I’ve got no right to take my place
With the Human race”

[Bigmouth Strikes Again – The Smiths]

He synthesized in 4 lines the indie manifesto. Before Panic we were looking for a holy grail, after we found it. A music about emotions, against technique and show-off, a music that speaks about us.

“Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life”

[Panic - The Smiths]

We have our clubs and our nights, we are beautifully lonely in our own depressions

“Take me out tonight
Where there’s music and there’s people
And they’re young and alive
Driving in your car
I never never want to go home
Because I haven’t got one
Anymore

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine

…

Oh, there is a light and it never goes out”

[There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths]

“There’s a club, if you’d like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home, and you cry
And you want to die

…

You shut your mouth
How can you say?
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does”

[How Soon is Now? - The Smiths]

I don’t know who was the target when wrote Get Off the Stage song, but is reinforcing the point. The addressee must have stopped playing, since authenticity and credibility, the two key features of any independent artist (cit. Wendy Fonarow’s book again) are missing.

“Oh, you silly old man
You silly old man
You’re making a fool of yourself
So get off the stage

You silly old man
In your misguided trousers
With your mascara and your Fender guitar
And you think you can arouse us?

But the song that you just sang
It sounds exactly like the last one
And the next one
I bet you it will sound
Like this one”

[Get Off The Stage - Morrissey]

There is a never-ending struggle with England and the rest of the world, a sense of impatience and discomfort about places is recurring in the lyrics

“Oh ! Take me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the train for London Town,
Take me anywhere,
Drop me anywhere,
Liverpool, Leeds or Birmingham

…

Farewell to this land’s cheerless marshes
Hemmed in like a boar between arches
Her very Lowness with a head in a sling
I’m truly sorry - but it sounds like a wonderful thing

I said Charles, don’t you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Mother’s bridal veil ?
Oh …
And so, I checked all the registered historical facts
And I was shocked into shame to discover
How I’m the 18th pale descendant
Of some old queen or other

Oh, has the world changed, or have I changed ?
Oh has the world changed, or have I changed ?

…

Past the Pub who saps your body
And the church who’ll snatch your money
The Queen is dead, boys
And it’s so lonely on a limb

…

Life is very long, when you’re lonely”

[The Queen is Dead – The Smiths]

Few years living in LA and is America’s turn.

“America your head’s too big, Because America, Your belly is too big.
And I love you, I just wish you’d stay where you belong

In America, The land of the free, they said, And of opportunity, In a just and a truthful way.
But where the president, is never black, female or gay, and until that day,
you’ve got nothing to say to me, to help me believe

In America, it brought you the hamburger. Well America you know where, you can shove your hamburger.
And don’t you wonder, why in Estonia they say, hey you, you big fat pig

Steely blue eyes with no love in them, scan the World,
And a humourless smile, with no warmth within, greets the world.
And I, I have got nothing, to offer you
No-no-no-no-no, just this heart deep and true, which you say you don’t need”

[America is not the World – Morrissey]

A farewell to California settled him in Rome, Rome? why Rome? Something I’d love to know, Is any hint hidden here?

“Pasolini is me
‘Accattone’ you’ll be
I entered nothing and nothing entered me
‘Til you came with the key
And you did your best but

As I live and breathe
You have killed me
You have killed me
Yes I walk around somehow
But you have killed me
You have killed me

Piazza Cavour, what’s my life for?

Visconti is me
Magnani you’ll never be
I entered nothing and nothing entered me
‘Til you came with the key
And you did your best but

…

And there is no point saying this again
there is no point saying this again
But I forgive you, I forgive you
Always I do forgive you.”

[You have Killed Me – Morrissey]

Mancunian fans petitioned to close any butcher and burger shop if he moved back to his neighborood, he opted out for the Eternal city

“…and the flesh you so fancifully fry
Is not succulent, tasty or kind
Its death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder

And the calf that you carve with a smile
Is murder
And the turkey you festively slice
Is murder
Do you know how animals die ?

Kitchen aromas arent very homely
Its not comforting, cheery or kind
Its sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder

Its not natural, normal or kind
The flesh you so fancifully fry
The meat in your mouth
As you savour the flavour of murder”

[Meat is Murder - The Smiths]

A big chapter. Beef eaters aren’t Moz only target, he creates much more of a storm when he talks about his country. The ambiguous facets encountered in his lyrics, reinforced in interviews, have created several discussions that reached serious questions about his and English intolerance today. I can’t stand for him or against, because I can’t read the inner side of such lyrics, English is a tricky language when you are not English…

“No no no
he does not want to depress you
oh no no no no no
he only wants to impress you
Bengali in platform
she only wants to embrace your culture
and to be your friend forever
Bengali, Bengali
oh shelve your Western plans
and understand that life is hard enough when you belong here
A silver-studded rim that glistens
and an ankle-star that…blinds me
a lemon sole so very high
which only reminds me, to tell you
so I break the news gently
I break the news to you gently
“Shelve your plans”
Bengali, Bengali
its the touchy march of time
that blinds you
don’t blame me
don’t hate me
just because I’m the one to tell you
that life is hard enough when you belong here
life is hard enough when you belong here
shelve your western plans
life is hard enough when you belong here”

[Bengali in Platform – Morrissey]

The one that didn’t seem (to me) to leave much space to interpretation from the title to the chorus, apparently does

“David, the wind blows
The wind blows …
Bits of your life away
Your friends all say …
“Where is our boy ? Oh, we’ve lost our boy”
But they should know
Where you’ve gone
Because again and again you’ve explained that
You’re going to …

Oh, you’re going to …
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
England for the English !
England for the English !

…

National, ah …
To the National ..
There’s a country; you don’t live there
But one day you would like to
And if you show them what you’re made of
Oh, then you might do …

…

National
To the National
To the National Front Disco
Because you want the day to come sooner
You want the day to come sooner
When you’ve settled the score”

[National Front Disco - Morrissey]

To reignite the question a fight caught him, NME, the journalist Tom Jonze, the national press and some solicitors busy for weeks about a year ago…all was around an interview with few sentences “The gates of England are flooded. The country’s been thrown away”. He denied and accused to be manipulated by NME, one thing is for sure, his thought about the music press was clear even eighteen year before

“Journalists who lie
Stealing the money
Prospering with spite
Hate-In-A-Hurry

They’re only trying to make their name
By spreading Biz myth-lies
About the ones who’ve made their name
Stick in the knife
Stick in the knife

Journalists who lie
The truth is, it happens
Praise, then crucify
Just follow this pattern
And see how :

They’re only trying to make their name
By spreading sickening lies
About the ones who’ve made their name
Mate, give us the knife
Give us the knife

Journalists who lie
So happy in malice
Rock star - out of line
So happy in malice
Oh …

…

They’re only trying to make their name
With unprovable lies
About the ones
Who’ve made their name

In the black hole
Of your soul
Still bargaining away the Truth
So easily
Truth

Journalists who lie
Stealing the money
Prospering with spite
And Hate-In-A-Hurry

Journalists who lie
The truth is, it happens
Praise, then crucify
Just follow this pattern

Journalists who lie
So sick and belaboured
They want to be favoured
They only want to be favoured”

[Journalists who Lie – Morrissey]

Journalists are in good company, the record industry was already an enemy at the times of The Smiths

“At the record company meeting
On their hands - a dead star
And oh, the plans they weave
And oh, the sickening greed

At the record company party
On their hands - a dead star
The sycophantic slags all say :
“I knew him first, and I knew him well”

Re-issue ! Re-package ! Re-package !
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra Track (and a tacky badge)

A-list, playlist
“Please them , please them !”
“Please them !”
(sadly, THIS was your life)

But you could have said no
If you’d wanted to
You could have said no
If you’d wanted to

BPI, MTV, BBC
“Please them ! Please them !”
(sadly this was your life)

But you could have said no
If you’d wanted to
You could have walked away
…Couldn’t you ?