Major/Minor playlist

Fun night at the Flying Duck. All went well, apart from my haunted turntable, which decided to speed up to 45 rpm of its own volition. I was powerless to act and had to hastily crossfade to another tune! Heavier on the beats than any set I've played before, and all the better for it. Thanks to Stewart and Caroline for having me. They asked me to write down my playlist, so here goes:

Pastels/Tenniscoats - Vivid Youth
The Chills - Pink Frost
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Interesting Results
Pocahaunted - Chains
Kode 9 - 9 Samurai
Astral Social Club - Caustic Roe
Zombi - Spirit Animal
Zomby - Where Were You In '92?
Jakes & TC - Deep
Glass Candy - Computer Love
Telepathe - So Fine
Omar Souleyman - Leh Jani
Gang Gang Dance - First Communion
The Honeys - He's A Doll
Belbury Poly - From An Ancient Star
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Tropical Hot Dog Night
Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath - Nick Tete
Xiu Xiu ft Michael Gira - Under Pressure

---- Skeleton Bob solo set (nice Del Shannon & Cookies covers!)------

Vivian Girls - Where Do You Go?
Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
Raincoats - No One's Little Girl
Joe McPhee, The Thing & Cato Salsa Experience - The Witch
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent

---- Blood Of The Bull set ------

Secret Chiefs 3 - Akzamachamarei
The Bug ft Tippa Irie - Angry
Flying Lotus - Gng Bngr
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Theme De Yo Yo
Joker - Do It

Beard makes a public appearance

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Been incredibly busy working on my Masters dissertation and preparing for a PhD interview. Outwith academia, I've been seeing Ornette Coleman at the Royal Festival Hall, Evan Parker's Double Quartet in Glasgow, and working my way through all five seasons of The Wire. All utterly amazing.

Anyway, I'm playing some records at my friend Caroline's lovely pre-club Major/Minor at the Flying Duck tonight. If you're a regular listener to Beard Radio then you'll have an idea of what to expect: jazz, hip-hop, dubstep, punk, psych, funk, indie, Turkish psych, Syrian party bangers, country, metal, Balkan beats, general nonsense and fluffed cues. What's not to like? Live music comes from Fence chaps The Red Well, Divorce guitar slinger Hillary Van Scoy in her Blood Of The Bull guise, and Skeleton Bob's Jode Henderson playing a solo set. Nice!

Amazing week of gigs ahead: the mighty Team Brick is playing Glasgow tomorrow. His long-awaited album Alogon is out now on Geoff Barrow's Invada label and it's an incredible mix of prog, doom, drone, Middle Eastern psych, jazz and modern classical. If I had more time to blog I'd be writing a lengthy review of this. Look out for Joseph Stannard's take in the forthcoming issue of The Wire. Then on Tuesday I'm going to my first stadium gig in 14 years. It can only be Springsteen. Yeah!

Steven Wells RIP

Saddened to hear of the death of music press legend Steven Wells. My earnest teenage self was infuriated by his demolitions of whiney indie bands, but I eventually saw the funny side and realised that he was often right. As he says in his final column, why do society's most privileged feel their story is one worth telling? This rant for the Quietus may pick on an easy target (the egregious Los Campesinos) but the wider point about twee's political and cultural conservatism is bang on the money.

While Britpop/Cool Britiannia was in its ghastly back-slapping, self-deluding pomp, he was one of the few NME writers calling bullshit on the whole enterprise. He understood the importance of politics to culture, and his punk rock socialism and impassioned championing of multi-culturalism has had a big impact on me. Only last year, he wrote this funny, but angry, defence of immigration. In the light on BNP election gains, his piece is sadly all the more relevant and necessary.

While it's probably true he ran out of new things to say about music, it was still entertaining when one of his rants would wind up morons on the Guardian blog. I recall an amusing anti-guitar piece he wrote recently that suggested that the world's greatest guitarist was Richey Manic, 'cos his guitar wasn't plugged in. Cue "that doesn't even make sense" comments from humour-bypass idiots.

His accounts of his cancer treatment stand as his finest achievement: brutally honest, funny and touching. RIP Swells. Hope you're enjoying a ginger ale in heaven with Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer.

Stopgap, or a few notes on the state of Noise and the Glasgow underground

The final Beard radio of the term should be with you soon. Just waiting on the Subcity IT bods to fix some technical issues. We're going to be doing the odd podcast over the summer, however, so watch this space for further information.

I had a lovely time at Le Weekend. The hottest weekend of the year so far, expeditions up Dumyat, and some damn fine sets from Evangelista, Trembling Bells and the improv trio of John Edwards, Steve Noble and Alex Ward. Full review to follow this week.

This is a good opportunity to share some links. David Keenan doesn't quite declare Noise dead, but his impressions of the No Fun festival in New York are of a scene that is split between power electronic fundamentalists and more inventive artists who are taking Noise off in different directions. This has been going on for some time, with some quarters denouncing the post-Wolf Eyes wave of Noise, or even latter-day Whitehouse (laptops? How could they?). I enjoy a bracing Noise onslaught as much as the next man, but it's probably true that the all out approach of power electronics has had its day. And personally, I find that scene's nihilism and obsession with "transgression" to be tedious at best. In my Plan B review of Glasgow Implodes I barely mentioned any of the power electronics acts, simply 'cos they were pretty shit. A bloke sticks one hand down his pants and gropes the audience with the other, while his mate grimly crouches over some pedals = zzzzz. Vomir's set at least stuck to its anti-music/anti-performance principles - we were given black bin liners to put over our heads while a static scree played out - but other than make us feel a little claustrophobic, what was the point? Some sheep skull wielding doom metallers went down well, but I found them to be generic and uninspired, neither heavy nor seething enough. Doom acts like this are to Sunn 0)) and Asva what Slaughter & The Dogs are to PiL and The Slits. The stuff I did like at GI was the least power electronics oriented. While Atomized's set up was essentially power electronics, their twisted takes of 80s pop hits, where dying synths could be heard crying out amidst the blast furnace roar, made for a funny, but unsettling experience. Glasgow's Vom do heavy, hypnotic space rock better than most, while Skullflower, although very much part of the original noise/industrial scene possess a heady, psychedelic sensuousness that's a million miles from the stunted grunts of your power electronics conservatives.
At the risk of raising the "our music always had a dance element" spectre, one of the more interesting developments in noise is the incorporation of electronic music. Louis Pattison's review of No Fun in the current Plan B describes Carlos Giffoni's set as bordering on acid house, while Frances Morgan, in the same issue, wonders if the laptop damaged cut ups of John Wiese have more in common with Venetian Snares than orthodox noise. Meanwhile you have Astral Social Club's psychedelic techno excursions (this year's Octuplex is a monster) and Leslie Keffer tentatively dropping in a thumping house beat to her set at Colour Out Of Space last year. While some noise fans will no doubt turn their noses up at such notions, noise and electronica share an interest in texture, dynamics and repetition, so these mutant strains make perfect sense. Another interesting development is where noise sidesteps aural assault to focus on atmosphere and disorientation: Aaron Dilloway's tape manipulations being an outstanding example. All this is to me is far more exciting than grotty noise tapes with black metal artwork. Bring on the noise/techno/bass music mutations!

Finally, an article I've been meaning to post for a while: Craig Woods on the Glasgow Underground from the excellent Paraphilia Magazine. The Scottish media has a tendency to root for anything Scottish. On one hand this is understandable - it seems mean-spirited and counterproductive to shit on new acts - but on the other it can lead to a frustrating lack of debate. So it's refreshing to read Woods write of:

the lamentable status quo that has paralysed and debased Glasgow‘s underground music scene
to the extent that the term ―avant garde is now applied (evidently without irony) to the flaccid
fetidity of Frightened Rabbit and the terminal tedium of The Twilight Sad.

Good to see somebody finally putting the boot into Frightened Rabbit and Twilight Sad's dreary "anthemic" indie rock, as well as the glut of maddeningly conservative indie-pop bands that seem inescapable (on that point, how utterly pointless and charmless is Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl? Belle & Sebastian's magpie tendencies used to be cute - Dog On Wheels steals from Love's Alone Again Or with Nancy & Lee's Summer Wine to delightful effect - but they've long since descended into immaculate but characterless soft pop pastiche) Just in case you think he's dismissing Glasgow music outright, he cites a number of fine bands from the past few years (Park Attack, The Royal We, Errors et al) but points out they are too disparate to constitute a "scene" or "wave". Until now...

With a combination of experimental originality and a frisky passion for original Punk values, these
few acts have worked swiftly and indefatigably to redraw the margins and assault Glasgow with an
enthralling trash-art sensibility which has finally given this city the kick up the arse it has long required.

He cites the ferociously good Divorce, and young bands like Ultimate Thrush (spazzed out noise punk) and Plaaydoh (noisy Deerhoof Casio pop) as examples of raw, trashy and playful bands who have been fuckin' shit up. Having also attended the Megafest event at the Flying Duck in February (wish I'd blogged it!) I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that this night felt like the start of something, as well as a culmination of the previous few years of underground DIY. As Woods writes, "This is the night that Glasgow‘s revitalised underground unites and coalesces before a suitably awestruck audience". Discussing the article with Craig, we agreed that DIY promoters Nuts & Seeds have played an essential role in cultivating the new scene by bringing weird, noisy and fun underground acts to Glasgow and getting local acts to support, and presenting it all with great artwork and ethical ideals. They've helped create an atmosphere where incredible, uncategorisable bands like Tattie Toes (still my favourite local act) can reach new audiences. There is of course more to Glasgow than guitar bands, and what makes things particularly exciting just now is the vibrancy of its club scene. Numbers and Lucky Me have blurred the boundaries, both musically and socially, between hip-hop, bass music and techno, while Curious Curious continues the eclectic spirit of Optimo, albeit with more of a cosmic disco bias. The more all these different scenes communicate the better.

I'll end on a little music. Wonderful LA psych/drone/dub duo Pocahaunted are on tour this week, playing Glasgow tonight. Here's a jam from their magical Island Diamonds platter.

Beard Radio 25 May

After much delay (technical difficulties, no fault of my own) last week's Beard radio is finally online!

Featuring a lovely new jingle recorded by my granny!

Lindsay Buckingham & Stevie Nicks - Crying In The Night, Buckingham Nicks (Polydor)
The Thing - Hidegen Fujinaka Szelek, Bag It! (Smalltown Superjazz)
Betty Harris - Mean Man, Saturday Night Fish Fry (Soul Jazz)
Evangelista - The Blue Room (Constellation)
John Prine & Iris Dement- In Spite of Ourselves, A Date With John Waters (New Line)
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - Note I love You + 100, II (Eskimo)
Link Wray - The Swag, Pink Flamingoes Soundtrack (Vomit)
Mount Vernon Arts Lab - Hobgoblins, Seance At Hobbs Lane (Ghost Box)
Afrirampo - Track 1, Sutto Breakor (P Vine)

Back next week with our final Subcity show of the term. However, we have plans afoot for some Beard podcasts throughout the summer. Watch this space...

Stag & Dagger Glasgow review pt 1

Mika Miko & Black Lips: Classic Grand, Glasgow, Saturday May 23

It's tempting to mythologise Mika Miko, portray them as the super-cool LA girl band from some imaginary '80s teen movie. And certainly, they're perfectly happy to humour such notions, asking us if we've seen Valley Girl, starring a young Nicolas Cage. I haven't, but then it wasn't a big hit over here, despite having a ridiculously awesome soundtrack, including Sparks' 'Eaten By The Monster of Love' and Josie Cotton's 'Johnny Are You Queer'. Truth be told, though, Mika Miko have more in common with California punk and rrriot girl than the poppy New Wave. Having last seen them two years ago in a Glasgow basement bar, I wasn't sure how their energetic punk show would translate to the larger, and altogether more plush, Classic Grand. Not to worry: these chicas shred it. Jennifer Clavin and Jenna Thornhill's vocals strike the perfect balance between dead-eyed punk yow and hyperactive teen yelp, finding a tone that's simultaneously knowing and party righteous. An underrated guitarist, Michelle Suarez spikes her power chords with angular Wipers riffs and mutant rockabilly X licks, while the rhythm section drives it all forward with an infectious groove. The slam-dancing bozos down the front don't quite it, but Mika Miko make punk rock to dance to. Clavin and Thornhill have some good moves: twisting on one foot and flapping their arms like Ari Up doing the funky chicken, and a hybrid hop-skip that's both charming and so utterly right. Towards the end, Thornhill whips out a sax for some Lora Logic skronk action, and me, I couldn't be happier. My only question: what happened to the telephone mic?

After all this Black Lips prove to be rather charmless. Their joyless simulacrum of '60s garage and '90s grunge makes you want to hit them over the head with the Nuggets boxset, or better still, a Billy Childish album. This is how it's done, bozos: catchy riffs, barely contained sexual tension, biting lyrics and infectious beats. Black Lips bludgeon when they should swing, plod when they should stomp. The atmosphere turns slightly unpleasant when bassist Jared Swilley stares out a stage jumper. “One of us is gonna get hurt and it's not gonna be me,” he whines while giving the over-excited punter the evil eye. What humourless, macho nonsense. Get me outta here!

Plan B R.I.P.

I'm very sad to hear that Plan B magazine is to close. As others have pointed out, it wasn't the web that necessarily did for Plan B: the advertising recession meant it was no longer possible to keep the magazine going without cutting staff, pages and print quality. They did the right thing to quit while they were ahead: nobody would want something as special as Plan B to fall into terminal decline like Melody Maker or other magazines. It's a serious blow for music journalism. Plan B allowed its contributors the kind of freedom that had all but disappeared from the mainstream music press, and its passion, wit and intelligence was a joy to behold, even when you disagreed strongly with a writers' opinion. It looked amazing too, with beautiful photographs and illustrations that captured the personality of the music.

This feels like the end of an era. I first picked up Plan B's predecessor, Careless Talk Costs Lives, when I moved to Glasgow to study journalism in 2002. Increasingly frustrated by the NME and a bit bored of Mojo's dad rockness, I needed something that directed me to the world of possibilities I sensed was surely out there. Meeting my Beard co-conspirator Neil Jacques, and discovering Stephen Pastel's then recently opened Monorail record store were important factors in my awakening, but CTLC played a huge role in my exploration of unknown realms. At first it seemed infuriating. I'd never really been a big Melody Maker reader, so I was perhaps unprepared for Everett True's wildly opinionated and personal writing. This was not how we were being told to write in journalism class! But I soon came to love the magazine's approach, and came to trust its writers' integrity and passion. CTCL tore the retrogressive bullshit of NME's trumpeted New Rock Revolution to pieces, all the while pointing me to the good shit. The magazine also had a strong sense of underground music history, and with Neil's record collection and a shop like Monorail at hand, it wasn't difficult to access the likes of Daniel Johnston or Jad Fair - indeed, both artists performed wonderful shows in Glasgow during the summer of 2003. CTCL was the first place I read about Peter Brotzmann, thanks to a free jazz roundup by the excellent Jon Dale. The striking illustration (apologies, I don't have a copy at hand to credit the artist) of a walrus 'tasched bezerker made me think, 'I wanna check that crazy motherfucker out'. I didn't actually get round to that for another few of years, but a seed was planted.

Plan B continued what CTCL had started, but thanks to the direction of Frances Morgan, developed its own personality. It was broader in scope, perhaps a little less cranky, but still hugely characterful. While indie-rock focused, it had the confidence to cover grime, techno, dubstep, noise, metal, experimental music and pop in a passionate, knowledgeable manner. As a poster on the Plan B forum put it, a magazine that can write about Keiji Haino alongside Britney is right up my street. I'm really proud to have contributed to recent issues, albeit in a minor way, and have my modest efforts placed alongside pieces by such intimidatingly great writers as Frances, Neil Kulkarni, Everett True, Joseph Stannard, Petra Davis, Kicking K, Lauren Strain, Miss AMP, Richard Stacey, George Taylor, Nicola Meighan, Daniel Barrow, Euan Andrews, Louis Pattison, John Doran, Matt Evans, Melissa Bradshaw et al.

The CTCL and Plan B forums have been lively and friendly places over the years, helping me through several crappy temp jobs and various episodes of personal angst. The forums introduced me to all kinds of amazing music, books and films, and, most importantly, to some wonderful people. It began for me when a few of us Glasgow posters realised we were all going to the same gigs. A meet up was surely in order. Good times and great friendships ensued, and various ATP's, Green Man's and other festivals brought posters from further afield together. We even ended up meeting some of the Plan B staff, who turned out to be as generous, friendly and righteous as their writing suggests. This open and good natured spirit continues. It's no great exaggeration to say that CTCL and Plan changed my life.

As the staff have pointed out, this is not the end, but an opportunity for new beginnings. I can't wait to see what its staff and contributors get up to next and wish them all the best for the future.

Finally, let me direct you to some excellent posts by Everett True, Daniel Barrow, Jon Dale and Ned Ragget.