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- New music exclusive: The Go! Team – Buy Nothing Day
The Go! Team are back with more giddy cut'n'paste pop. And this time they've got a little help from an indie-pop friend
It's been more than three years since we last heard from genre-splicing Brighton sextet The Go! Team. And while we can't say we were counting down the days, it's good to have them back. It's especially nice that they've enlisted Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast on this first taster of their forthcoming third album, Rolling Blackouts. Buy Nothing Day rattles along at a brisk pace, all giddy drums and American teen-movie guitars, but it's Cosentino's sweet, world-weary vocal that steals the show.
Buy Nothing Day is out on 24 January
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Behind the music: Joe Strummer's spirit lives on through his charity
Eight years after his death, the former Clash frontman is still a driving force behind new bands thanks to Strummerville, a foundation set up in his name
I once had the good fortune to meet Joe Strummer. About a decade ago on a flight to New York, I sat next to his band, the Mescaleros. I didn't know who they were at first, but by the end of the flight we'd been playing each other our music and they'd introduced me to Strummer, who was sitting a few rows back. He asked how I was getting into the city and offered me a ride in his limo with him and his wife. He also invited me to a gig he was doing for Spin magazine along with Run DMC the following night, with a backstage pass on top. I found him unassuming, gentle and passionate. He was incredibly generous with his time and resources – especially considering I was an unknown songwriter he'd just met. His death a year or so later came as a complete shock.
So I was impressed when I came across the charity set up by his family and friends after his death, because the words I've just used to describe him pretty much describe the work they do, too. Strummerville started out by supplying a rehearsal space at the Roundhouse in London, charging £1 an hour. Eight years later the charity has become a force of nature, with numerous rehearsal spaces available for that same price, including two in Belfast.
This year, it has helped put more than 40 bands in the studio (EMI Music Publishing and Metropolis donate studio time). To give bands the chance to hone their live performances and gain exposure, it organises "campfire sessions" at festivals such as Glastonbury, where they can perform. The organisation has brought bands over to the SXSW music conference in Austin, Texas – and even has a Strummerville tour bus they can borrow.
The charity is run by Trish Whelan, who once worked for Island Records. "We used to have a real culture of developing acts at Island," she says. "Managers and labels used to be happy to take a chance on acts. They can't afford to any more." This is how bands such as Pulp were able to develop, she says, adding that she believes it afforded them greater dignity. "I believe in DIY, but I also realise that's not enough."
Strummerville provides practical help, as even smaller costs can be debilitating when you're trying to carve out a career in music while working for minimum wage. "When we went to SXSW, much of the attention seemed to focus on the tech part of the conference. They were all talking about creating apps," says Whelan. "The guys I deal with don't even have money for pay as you go." She says the charity tries to help everybody. "We don't judge. We give them the freedom and support to do what they want."
They also support Billy Bragg's charity Jail Guitar Doors, which takes its name from the B-side of the Clash's 1978 single, Clash City Rockers. It provides instruments for inmates, helping them use music as a means of rehabilitation – and also functions as a platform when they get out of prison, with a number of former prisoners playing at their SXSW gig. The Strummerville website has a DIY section where bands can post free MP3s, with a top 10 list of the most downloaded ones. When Mumford & Sons started out, one of their tracks became the site's second most popular download. Now the band often get Strummerville artists to open for them. "There's a sense of family among the bands," says Whelan.
Meanwhile the list of projects the charity is involved in keeps getting longer. It has helped put together an anti-knife crime record for murder and manslaughter support organisation SAMM, and recently started a project in Detroit turning derelict buildings into rehearsal spaces. It has built a music centre in an orphanage in Malawi. The lead singers of two Strummerville bands are about to visit the space and to hold songwriting workshops for 40 orphans living there. The charity has also provided a full kit and rig for the country's Abatonga Vibes band.
So how does Strummerville fund these projects? Its biggest donor is the artist Damian Hirst, who was a friend of Strummer's. Hirst says that if it wasn't for the Clash frontman he wouldn't be an artist in the first place, and he has auctioned a number of pieces to raise money for the organisation. There are frequent fundraising concerts around the world, as well as a donation page on the site.
This year sees the eighth anniversary of Strummer's passing on 22 December 2002. If he was still alive today, I bet Strummer would be doing exactly what his foundation does: reaching out to people in need and giving them the tools to fulfil their dreams through music. Strummerville is proof of how one man's passion can live on long after his own untimely death.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - The dark and brilliant world of Gaggle
A reworked 1969 cantata documenting history through the eyes of women, from the middle ages to military rape in the Congo? Not a problem for this Gaggle ...
Anyone who's seen riotous 24-girl choir Gaggle perform this year will already know just how blindingly original they are. Yet it's their appropriation of an old idea that could bring them to wider prominence.
Last week I went to the ICA to see Gaggle perform their radical reworking of The Brilliant and the Dark, a 1969 cantata originally commissioned for the Women's Institute by Malcolm Williamson and Ursula Vaughan Williams. It was first performed by 1,000 female volunteers at the Royal Albert Hall that year.
It's not just the music that has been reworked but the visuals, too – the band studied archive footage and photographs of the 60s costumes, then set fashion designer and ex-Gaggle Schwa and current Gaggle Angela the task of redesigning the unnerving rhombus-shaped hats, skull masks and unitards of old.The original libretto documented history from the middle ages to the second world war through the eyes of women, via characters including witch-hunters, plague victims and war workers. Gaggle's version has a more contemporary resonance by adding recent issues such as military rape in the Congo and female circumcision. "The idea," says Deborah Coughlin, Gaggle's leader, is to "keep updating the original work, keep telling the history of women through song. It's a history that often goes untold, or at least isn't told by women."
So far the band have reworked and performed 24 minutes of the original performance, showing the material at the Women's Library this summer and then touring Europe before airing it again last night. Next time they perform they want to play more of the music, recruiting singers from the original cast (some of whom have seen the new version performed already), with Deborah "aiming for the Albert Hall again, recruiting more and more voices as we go".
Despite the most recent show, neither the artists nor the band see this as a project that's concluded, but one that will evolve and run parallel to their other creative pursuits. It's this that is most exciting. Gaggle's revival of The Dark and the Brilliant is an ephemeral, revisionary, consciously political music-making process – and it's one that's being undertaken without a finishing line in sight.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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