Showing posts with label muisc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muisc. Show all posts

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Emeli Sande Oran Mor 2007


I first took images of Emeli (then Adele) at her EP launch gig at Glasgow's Oran Mor venue. Emily was in the same medical course as my daughter then and she usually won the talent show at her uni course each year. 
She had an accomplished energetic rock soul band with her and performed a few upbeat songs. Then she took to the piano on the left of the stage and sang some Nina Simone songs. She had big hair back then!  She showed even then her unique passion in her voice. She had three backing singers too which surely showed how seriously she was being taken in 2007 by the industry.
I started this blog in 2007 while I wasn’t taking the blog as seriously then. Little did I know!. and if I might have imagined big things lay ahead. We all thought her voice was strong but it is impossible to be sure about anything in this fickle music business. What I hadn’t figured on was her drive and commitment which are certainly key ingredients.

I posted the photos from the gig and her PR contacted me about photos for her Aberdeen gig flyers and posters. I met her PR guy at a few events he had me along to shoot at.
Her manager phoned me about photos from London, which was really very exciting.  I started to pursue my music photography seriously in 2007 after I got some fun shots at a few gigs in 2006 with a small digital, and I purchased a SLR camera.  

Over this time she was very busy working on her uni course during the week and travelling to London on weekends to write songs and work on her music. She had a few hit songs – one with Chipmunk and another with Wiley.

Then in 2011 she played King Tuts…everything was being carefully planned. I met Emeli at her sound check there and she kindly signed some prints for me. 
At King Tuts she said she wanted to do "soul with a rocky edge." She is genuine and sincere and she appeared incredibly motivated. She sings of the wonder and beauty within all of us. I love the positive and true vibes of her music. She is excellent live and her voice has a moving resonance.


I believe that the successful artist have a purpose in their art – a message they need to convey and that they believe is important.
In July 2012 Sande performed at the London opening and closing ceremonies.This May 2013 Emeli won two prizes at this year's Ivor Novello songwriting awards for her hit song Next To Me as best song music and lyrics, and also most performed work. Her album Our Version of Events beat a record set by The Beatles for the most consecutive weeks spent in the UK's Top 10 by a debut album. I’m so happy for all her successes. 

We all left the Oran Mor (and the Albert Hall all those years later!) full of that feel good energy she exudes on stage.  
I look forward to the next chapter!

Friday 10 May 2013

Tom Waits waits in the shadows


Brian Appleyard on American singer songwriter Tom Waits, good piece! : )) One of my favourite writers too, some truly great photos and some of my favourite music images too by Anton Corbijn - http://bryanappleyard.com/tom-waits-growling-through-the-grain/ 

Wait's journey is the car and movement and the open American highways, mine is the Scottish and Irish shorelines and the docks at Newhaven and Leith. 

Tom Waits has some great lines - on his  marriage, “if two people know the same things, one of you is unnecessary.”  “She opened my eyes, she’s a real trapeze artist. She’s my headlamp and my road map and my hood ornament, my sunglasses and my spotlight, she’s all that.”  The dividing line for Tom is not an album, a song or a change of label, it is a wife. He met Kathleen Brennan on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s film One from the Heart. She is a musician but, for Coppola, she was working on scripts. It was love at first sight.

He was a beat, a child of the Fifties ... formed by reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Some of his most moving songs — notably Ol’ 55 and (Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night — are all about cars, about movement.  “Kerouac? God, yeah, sure. I wanted to be on the road. I wanted to be famous like Robert Frank’s photograph of Highway 85 going through New Mexico: a dramatic black-and-white photo with the highway going to a vanishing point. It was like a sign for me. If I’d seen that when I was 16 I would have decided to drive a truck for a living. Yeah, away is the place to go for me…He divides his songs into bawlers and brawlers: the first sweet and lyrical, the second defiant, wounded, and often sung in an epic, throaty growl...
“My favourite highway recently is the Interstate 5. It runs through Oakland and all the way to Los Angeles. It’s just flat and really dramatic, it’s so empty, it’s like being in the middle of the ocean. I’ve been driving a lot lately. I don’t like to take planes because I have too many things in my pockets and it’s too confusing in the airports. I have a lot of things in my pockets they disagree with in security.”

Quotes from -  Tom Waits: Growling Through the Grain Sunday Times, 15 April 2013

The dividing line for Tom is not an album, a song or a change of label, it is a wife. He met Kathleen Brennan on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s film One from the Heart. She is a musician but, for Coppola, she was working on scripts. It was — I hate to say this, but in this case it’s true — love at first sight. They married at a 24-hour wedding chapel and, ever since, at any opportunity Tom finds new strings of metaphors to describe her glory. I got my own special instant poem. After he met his wife Kathleen - things changed.  She introduced him to the work of Captain Beefheart, rock’s most avant-garde star, and Kurt Weill and, together, they produced the wildly odd album Swordfishtrombones. They have worked together ever since.
Their collaborations can be startling, both intimate and improvised. There’s a song called Pontiac in which, to the sound of traffic noise, Tom acts the old guy, recalling every car he’s ever owned. It’s about Kathleen’s dad and she recorded it as they were driving along and Tom had slipped into one of his idle, improvised riffs. This guy, as I find when we speak, sings when he talks.
He divides his songs into bawler and brawlers; the first sweet and lyrical, the second defiant, wounded and often sung in an epic, throaty growl, not unlike that of Captain Beefheart. Simon Schama, the historian, says Waits’s voice is “one of the great sound instruments of American art”, and describes the growl mode as “the raspy ruins of a voice that is itself like a building shattered by shellfire and coated with befouled sand”. “I guess I only have two categories,” Tom says in less elevated terms, “I need you and leave me alone.”
Hmmm. I try a Bob Dylan quote he’s fond of, “Fear and Hope: always sounds like a comedy team to me…”
Though he was exactly the right age — born in 1949 — he was never, you see, a hippie. He was a beat, a child of the Fifties rather than the Sixties, who had first been formed by reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the beat bible. Some of his most moving songs — notably Ol’ 55 and (Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night — are all about cars, about movement.
Some of his most moving songs — notably Ol’ 55 and (Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night — are all about cars, about movement.  “Kerouac? God, yeah, sure. I wanted to be on the road. I wanted to be famous like Robert Frank’s photograph of Highway 85 going through New Mexico: a dramatic black-and-white photo with the highway going to a vanishing point. It was like a sign for me. If I’d seen that when I was 16 I would have decided to drive a truck for a living. Yeah, away is the place to go for me…
“My favourite highway recently is the Interstate 5. It runs through Oakland and all the way to Los Angeles. It’s just flat and really dramatic, it’s so empty, it’s like being in the middle of the ocean. I’ve been driving a lot lately. I don’t like to take planes because I have too many things in my pockets and it’s too confusing in the airports. I have a lot of things in my pockets they disagree with in security.”

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Celtic Connections festival Review 2013

It’s always exciting when the Celtic program arrives each year – who are the big names, which big concerts are there, who is at which venue…
The Concert hall was quieter this year with no Open Mic or Late Sessions, due to renovations at the hall.

I missed
The Roaming Roots Revue of new indie artists. It would have been nice to have made more events, if that was only possible. I also missed the Big Burns Night. I never made the Old Fruitmarket venue which I love at Celtic – for some reason I was more excited by those performing at the ABC venue. 

A highlight this year was the concert for Dundee singer songwriter Dundee Michael Marra.
I have seen Marra live several times and he was such an engrossing and interesting artist. We were very saddened by his passing last November. Michael's two children Alice and Mathew Marra were perfoming with their band The Hazey Janes and I got a nice photo with three Scottish legends on stage together at this concert -  Dougie MacLean, Eddi Reader and Rab Noakes.  
Alice Marra
This year I saw English folk band Bellowhead and American singer songwriter Aimee Mann at the ABC O2;  Cara Dillon and The BBC Scottish Symphony orchestra at the City Halls;  and The Transatlantic Sessions at the Concert Hall; and also the Celtic Connections 20th Celebration concert with some of the cream from the Scottish folk scene - Eddi Reader, Julie Fowlis, Phil Cunningham and Rod Paterson.

In the past few years I have seen several exciting new artists at Celtic – Manran, Rura, Rachel Sermanni, and this year I caught memorable singer Genesee at the Danny Kyle Open Stage. She was one of the winners in 2013.
There are several well known musical partnerhips/couples in the folk world – Donald Shaw and Karen Mathieson, Karine Polwart and Mattie Foulds, John McCusker and Heidi Talbot, Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman, Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal.,,, and more I am sure!
The festival Celtic Connections 2013 ran from Thursday 17th January – Sunday 3rd February and comprised concerts, ceilidhs, talks, workshops, free events and late night sessions taking place over 18 days in various venues across Glasgow -  Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, O2 ABC, The Tron, Òran Mór, The Arches, The Mitchell Theatre, City Halls, Kelvingrove, The Barrowland Ballroom, St Andrews in the Square and festival fans’ favourite the Old Fruitmarket all played host to Celtic Connections events.  

This is my sixth year covering Celtic Connections festival and now I am showing others where things are! I enjoy the buzz. It is also wonderful to have such excellent concerts at this cold time of year. It’s the ideal setting for musicians to get together to collaborate and I look forward to next years festival!

Thursday 18 October 2012

Karine Polwart Oran Mor 19th Sept 2012




Polwart is one of Scotland’s best loved songstress with her beautiful voice and relevant moving songs. 

Many folk artists fill the folk clubs but not so many can fill halls the size of the Oran Mor church auditorium. Her pure softly soothing voice captivated the full house in the clear acoustic church setting with its ornate stained glass windows and with Scottish artist Alastair Gray's colourful mural ceiling.
. 
Karine sang the flowing harmonies and melodies of her story-telling and honest songs. She had her usual two backing musicians, her brother Steven on guitar and Inge Thomson on accordion, plus for this larger event - percussionist Iain Sandilands who added depth and energy to the new songs along with a wind section that included flute and clarinet.
She performed songs from her well received third album Traces - Strange News, We’re all Leaving, Tears For Lots Wife, Salters Road and Sticks and Stones.
One highlight was a lovely duet of the song Solstice with the guitarist Craig from the Scottish band Unwinding Hand. Another set highlight was a haunting solo song from Inge Thomson. 

The set included songs from Polwart's new album Traces. The song Tinsel Show was written about the lights of Grangemouth which shone in the night sky near to where Karine grew up in East Lothian. Karine also included a few of her classic well loved songs from previous albums - Daisy, Rivers Run.

She spoke of her fascination with birds and how many of her songs reflected this. One stand out song from Traces was the song King of Birds. For an encore she sang Follow The Heron. Her new album has her classy songs and a more intricate depth to it.  

Karine said that as she wasn’t an Indie artist she wouldn’t simply come on and play the album songs and leave and that as she had come up through the folk circuit she would play two full sets with an interval and a raffle! 

I’ve heard Karine at several of those smaller folk venues, as well as her leading a Celtic Connections concert on Scottish songs at the Glasgow concert hall. This was another perfect setting for her intimate songs. 

I have met Karine a couple of times and just a week later at the Lake of Monteith Hotel Bar the night before my son's wedding!  She recognised me by name which made me feel just that little bit famous!. She is such a genuine person and this reflects in her music. 

I recommend checking out Karine Polwart's fourth studio album 'Traces' - http://www.facebook.com/karinepolwart/

Friday 23 March 2012

Music Unites Us

My Musicfootnotes blog is about art and music but I also occasionally post letters about politics and social concerns. I was thinking of the issues around Scottish Independence and about what is ‘Britishness’?  This then led me to thinking how music offers one voice and brings us together.

As the debate heats up around Scottish Independence, it led me to wondering what ‘Britishness’ means for me. English people, or rather those in London, should realise Scottish people don’t support the English teams at sporting events – why? Well the great rivalry is as strong as ever. However Scottish independence would offer many mutual benefits, a better partnership and renewed respect I feel. 

There are globalization fears as gigantic business conglomerates attempt to take over control. 
(Europe tried this one size fits all Euro which I always wondered seemed a half baked idea.)
I’m not enthused by a ‘one size fits all’ homogenised, faceless worldwide culture – where every city has its corner Big Mac and Nike trainers on display no matter where I travel, 
While I do believe in freedom of thought and speech – in One Young World and in voices of truth such as the Dalai Lama…and I don’t believe in tribalism or religious divides. People have advised that we shouldn’t speak of religious or political thoughts, this seems a terrible thing and I believe in good, healthy and informed debate…I believe in democracy whatever that means in today's world? 

It is more important than ever to keep our divergent heritages alive. I believe strongly that Scotland needs to move on now and to feel a renewed sense of confidence over it’s own 'identity' and not to feel 'dependent' on the decisions of a few in London. London is interested in its financial institutions, civil servants, media and more – and it is not interested in business opportunities elsewhere.

Today more than ever the individual voice matters. I believe in de-centralized government above all as I saw first hand in America - where each State runs its own affairs and the federal government runs the roads and military. Scotland has its own education system and Scots Law.

Scottish independence is a ‘positive’ debate and it is not about ‘divides’ or about old rivalries, but about a healthy and respectful ‘partnership’ in which Scotland no longer feels second-rate but able to stand on its own two feet as many other small countries do. 

When I wandered abroad many years sometimes I would hear the pipes of Scotland call me back home.  So I include a haunting Gaelic song that finished with those pipes - '' Crucan na bpaiste' and the 'Drummers of England'. I was born in England to Irish parents and grew up in Scotland - so yes I believe in Irish and English heritage too!  I had a songbook of National songs and we sang Irish and Welsh songs too. That's why I love the Celtic festival here in Glasgow - it is one big melting pot that celebrates many cultures through the medium of music.Celtic celebrates our differences while the music also brings us together.
MY SCOTTISH PORTRAITS  -  http://www.pkimage/scottishportraits

This blog has become also about music! 
Even In our world of mass communications it is harder and harder to get heard amid all the large corporate controls. Therefore it is important to maintain our heritage even more than it ever was. 
We must never believe that our voice cannot be heard.  

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Brits 2011



Late February - and Awards ceremonies time yet again began with the Baftas and the lavish Brits this week. Often I have to admit to complete boredom with the samey brash American dancing girls, and wonder is this awards ceremony really about music at all.. On the other hand perhaps awards help us to reflect on the past year. My year always starts with Celtic in January. Then I enjoyed Mumford and Laura Marling in March 2010. I noted that Mumford had a terrific gig response at the summer festivals - and the packed audience at the ABC was certainly bouncing through their set.

BRITS 2011:  Mumford won - British Album, Laura Marling - British Female Solo Artist,  Plan B - British Male Solo Artist, Take That - British Group.  Arcade Fire - International Album.  The lovely Adele sang her 'Someone Like You' - I am sort of impressed this year.  The Brits

I even wrote up a little poem (!) last April to  -   
Mumford and Marling in Mombai
Along with
Winston, Ben and Ted Twane, 
Our English countrymen,
We find India.

A place of exhilarating colours, confusions and contradictions..
We perform at Bandra Fort
Where the seats are grass steps.
We crossed those lines, sought
Refuge in high stars and strange crowded pathways.

In Delhi, we caught the feared Delhi runs
Where cows and naked children run free -
In the bustle and chaos of street markets
We wander.
We do the Dharahar Project
With Indian songs over 500 years old -
And that's when our English folk feels oh so new. 

Monday 5 April 2010

Fyfe Dangerfield ABC Glasgow Celtic Connections 20th January 2010



Fyfe was FUN! That's the first thing to say. He really puts so much into his performing. His songs are quality, and he draws from the Beatles, but with is own personality stamped on them. I really enjoyed this gig - from the heartbreak of 'Barricades' to the joy of 'Faster than the Setting Sun'.

Dangerfield stormed the ABC Glasgow as part of the Celtic connections festival with his latest solo album 'Yellow Moon'. He is a vibrant, energetic and expressive performer, who brought the audience with him with fun and interactive chat. This is an album of love songs, that covers all the high euphoria and depths of feeling that the first rush of love can bring. Fyfe plays guitar and also for several songs he had violin strings with him as he played piano. With Fyfe on piano he performed a tear jerker called 'Barricades' which moves the heart with stirring emotions. Other stand out songs were the light guitar song 'Livewire'; the very quiet 'Firebird' that sings of 'that bicycle made for two'; the comforting lyrics of 'my memories ring like telephones' in the sunshine feel of 'She Needs Me'; and the instant feel of 'Don't Be shy' with lyrics such as 'Ask her to sing for you, adore you.'
For the rock song 'Faster than the Setting Sun' Fyfe used a foot pedal and managed a truly tight professional sound.