The Revenge of Charlie Watkins

Well now, there's a thing! I'm sat watching the Freeview broadcast of Dave (sorry "David") Gilmour's recent Radio 2 gig (nice to find something worth watching on Freeview) and there, stuck at the back of Mr. G's impressive array of backline gear, are two whopping great WEM speaker cabs! It must be a nod back to his early Floyd days, when the band was one of the great champions of Charlie Watkins' amazing PA systems.

And that thought touches on John Moore's recent post about interview overload. I've had an interview on tape with the wonderful Charlie Watkins for over a year now and only managed to publish one small section of it (in a, sadly defunct, Pro Audio magazine). Mr. Editor Moore has been threatening me with the thumbscrews to extract the best bits from the hours of tape I recorded of Charlie's memoires that I didn't use in the Pro Audio piece, for Music Mart. I keep promising I will... after just one more visit to the great man, to coax a few more stories from him - not to mention a few more of the endless supply of chocolate digestives provided by his delightful wife, June!

Charlie Watkins is a remarkable man. Somehow surviving the Second World War on the notorious Atlantic convoys (average life expectancy about three tenths of a second), in the 1960s he virtually invented modern PA - and a fair bit more besides. Now in his 80s, he is overdue for major recognition and acclaim as one of the music equipment industry's great pioneers.

I really must take Mr. Gilmour's lead and do something positive. Watch for a Charlie Watkins special in the mag at some stage!

There. I'm committed now.

Oh - and damnit - isn't Gilmour one of the finest adverts for what a Fender Strat can do in gifted hands? Tonally, it's hugely more versatile than most manage to make it sound. Whatever one thinks of him, his music or anything else - David Gilmour has to be one of the Strat's finest living exponents.

Interview Overload...

Y'know, sometime all your chickens come home to roost.

And sometimes that can cause a few problems...

I'm immensely excited to say that we're sitting on interviews from; Ginger Baker re Blind Faith, Tim Friese-Greene (Talk Talk, great producer), White Rose Movement, a whole host of the best new Scottish bands, Robert Wyatt, Mark Gardener, Sine Star Project, Mystery Jets, Brakes, Broken Social Scene, and Mogwai... And we have a couple more that look likely to happen imminently.
The only problem being that that'll fill the magazine for about the next three months.

Mmmmmm... Decisions, decisions. Still, it's a good position to be in.

This weekend will be dedicated to completing my PC re-build that started in last month's magazine... The hard drive is finally here! Yay... I'll be back making music by Sunday night! I hope... Huzzah!

Got a great amp in for review from Sheldon Amps yesterday... It's a Truetone Junior finished in Denim... Crazy buggers. The headline? Well, if it's any good it's gonna be hard to resist Jean Genius, innit?

Here's a playlist for the weekend... Have fun you guys.

Broken Social Scene - 7/4 Shoreline
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion
Feist - Mushaboom
Princess Superstar - My Machine
Wild Knights - Beaver Patrol
The Band - Stagefright
Mark Gardener - To Get Me Through
The Idle Race - Days Of The Broken Arrows
Super Furry Animals - The Boy Don't Give A F***
Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen (Justice Remix)
Mystery Jets - The Boy Who Ran Away
Plan B - Kidz (Acoustic)
Final Fantasy - This Is A Dream Of Win & Regine
Tommy Tucker - High Heel Sneakers
Flower Travellin' Band - Satori No. 1
Nouvelle Vague - Teenage Kicks
Alan Hawkshaw & The Mohawks - The Champ

For pure funk pleasure you can't measure...
The Mohawks LP has just been re-released... Go, now...

Have a good un'... Later

Sometimes They Come Back...

I met one of my real heroes yesterday, Mark Gardener of the criminally underrated Ride... Who came to prominence as part of the Creation records stable in the early nineties.
His band wrote the first thing I ever learned to play on guitar - the opening riff to Drive Blind, and they're also responsible for several other tunes that I can't imagine never having heard - and that had an influence on my life that is hard to quantify; Chelsea Girl, Taste, Dreams Burn Down, Nowhere, Seagull, Leave Them All Behind, OX4, 1000 Miles, Let's Get Lost... The list goes on and on and on...

Mark's got a very good new LP out called These Beautiful Ghosts, some of which you can hear on his myspace page... And whilst that's the point of this blog entry, I'd also like to use it to thank him for a fascinating and frank interview - which you can read in April's issue of the magazine... Here's a bit I've transcribed already...

I take it that – in the beginning – you weren’t to technically minded… So you picked your guitars because they looked cool? I mean, I associate you with the Rickenbacker…
"The first guitar I bought for the band was a Fender Jaguar, ‘cause it just seemed to be a noisy guitar…"

Well, it was the one associated with that scene – the Valentines et al…
“Yeah, exactly… But beyond that, I heard this Radio show, on Radio One or something, that told the story of the Rickenbacker – and I realised that so many bands that I absolutely love - The Byrds, The Beatles – used them. The guitar sound that I associate with them is the Rickenbacker.
"It also does that trashy 60s thing well too… So I decided that the guitars I’d buy from then on would be Rickenbackers. We actually ended up with a deal, where we’d get them from Rickenbacker in California, and they were making them to our request… So I was like; ‘this is great’ (laughs)… And I still use them. I have this 12-String with the John Lennon body but instead of the ¾ neck it’s a full-length neck. That was on a load of the big Ride recordings. They make a great noise as well, a really trashy, tinny sound…
“It’s funny, ‘cause I met Johnny Marr in New York recently, and he was on that documentary… We sat and talked about it… He’s another of my heroes.”

The Moral: Even Your Heroes Have Heroes... And sometimes they turn out to be top blokes :-)

New Music Mart In The Shops

Hey Guys and Gals, just to let you know that the new Music Mart is in the shops today... We feature a guide to converting your PC for life on the road – making all those softsynths and backing tracks available for your live sets, there’s an overview of the best budget SPL meters, an assessment of what Value For Money really means when you’re buying a guitar as well as looking at some of the best new kit around in our Performance, Production and PC Musician review sections.

In the Backstage Bar - as you can see from our front cover - we’ve got a great interview with Peter Gabriel – where he talks about some of his unusual concepts for touring, the future of recording deals and internet betting. We also chat with Richard Hawley, who’s Coles Corner LP has put him firmly on the musical radar in the last year, ex-‘Stone Bill Wyman – who guides us through his severely under-rated solo career and talks about what began his obsession with bass guitar and we chat to Coldcut about the long-standing tenure as chief innovators in electronica, sample manipulation and Audio-Visual integration.
We’ll also be looking at the best gigs, LPs, DVDs and Books coming up in the next month, as well as listing our favourite new music in the Podblasting section.

Meanwhile in the office, my inbox is bulging with April's magazine - Petra's just mailed in Mystery Jets and Brakes interviews, David's gone DVD review crazy, Mogwai are in the bag courtesy of Gal... So everything's shaping up nicely.

And I'm quite happily listening to the majestic Sigur Ros... God, I'm looking forward to their gigs next month. Have a good weekend one and all. See you next week.

Or maybe I'll post a playlist for the weekend later...

John.

Catch this if you can!

Music Mart Unhinged
I'm still trying to get the hang of blogger.com's err...."unusual".... software, so apologies if I mess this up - but here's a news alert (and a fine example of something a blog can do that a monthly mag can't!).

This weekend, BBC 4 is running a series of historical overviews of the British Folk scene since the 1960s. Folk may have a pretty ragged image (bad sweaters and goatee beards), but trust me - there's some excellent musicianship on display. For example, late Saturday night/Sunday morning they are broadcasting a recording of the long-defunct band, Pentangle, featuring (among others) Bert Jansch on Guitar and Danny Thompson on bass.

Other highlights have included the remarkable playing and singing of Martin Carthy and they've even unearthed clips of Davey Graham - possibly the most influential acoustic guitarist of his generation (ask Jimmy Page!).

BBC4 repeats programmes quite regularly, so even if you've missed an episode (even if you've missed the entire weekend) keep checking as it might well come round again.

Whose Round Is It?

Excellent idea from Mr. Editor Moore, this!

I hope, once Music Mart readers get to find us, that we can develop the blog into ... err... a lively forum!

I'd certainly welcome feedback - as would my friend the Pub Genius!

Thanks for the link to my site, incidentally. Readers are more than welcome to root around there and I'll cross-link back to here.

Must dash - the PB is just about to deliver a lecture on the history of Mongolian nose-flutes, about which (of course) he is an authority.

--
Gary

The Majesty Of Flash Animation

I'm not sure I should be posting this but... It's brilliant.

Later

Some Good Stuff You May Not Know...

Some good bands I've played with recently... For no other reason than they deserve a little exposure... Isn't MySpace kewl?

Jack Of Hearts Band
Misterlee
Ist
Kevin Hewick

March-ing On Together...

At the moment, we're putting together the March issue of the magazine - and just to give you a taster, you may want to know that in this issue we have interviews with Peter Gabriel, Bill Wyman, Richard Hawley and the wonderful Coldcut...

Fact fans, or just fans, of Richard Hawley will probably know that he has a long musical history as a member of the excellent Longpigs, and also as a latter-day member of Pulp... And also know that it has taken three solo albums to garner the success he deserves with the excellent Coles Corner.

Regular readers will know Gary Cooper, the sage man who provides insightful comment and regular news for Music Mart... And goes a long way towards keeping me sane. Before I get too gushing in my admiration, I'll let you know that he has a website, where his sage words can be read amidst a very nice layout. Give it a go...

Finally, Oh. My. God. Download Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Later guys.

Podblasting Explained...

Hello all and welcome to the Music Mart Blog...

From time to time, either myself - or another of the Music Mart writers hope to be posting here to give you information on the magazine, background on music or equipment recommendations and generally letting you know what's going on in our geeky little heads... Cool eh?

But firstly, as you may or may not know, every month in Music Mart we run a column called Podblasting - which allows us to recommend our favourite tunes for the month - well, hopefully we'll be able to illuminate those decisions a little in this space.

Currently impressing us are;

* Misterlee especially Magnesium Horses
* Jenny Lewis' LP with The Watson Twins, you can see her perform my favourite - Melt Your Heart - here.
* Anything by Justice, even this...
* Also we're feeling Okkervil River's new LP, of which you can hear samples online and Futureworld by Trans Am - which - despite being over seven years old still sounds fresh as a daisy, and kinda like Kraftwerk jamming with The Chemical Brothers and Editors...

But at the moment, I'm rocking out to Ca Plane Pour Moi by Plastic Bertrand - it's about the only thing that's made me smile on an otherwise dull monday morning... Still, Peavey kindly delivered their sweet Valveking amp for review, so that should be fun... Should? who am I kidding, it'll be fun...

Later guys...