Haim, worth checking out!

I heard this girl band from LA on Jools Holland the other week - HAIM - and I thought they were excellent with fun rhythms and vocals. I took photos of another cool American girl rock band called Warpaint a few years back. No cool Scottish girl bands around though... oddly?    


The band's releases include the EP "Forever" and the single "Save Me" 2012.  They were announced as winners of the BBC Sound of 2013.

Haim is a group formed in 2006 in Los Angeles who first released in 2012. The band consists of sisters Este Haim (born 1986), Danielle Haim (born 1989) and Alana Haim (born 1991), along with drummer Dash Hutton. Most frequently compared to Fleetwood Mac, their sound has been described as "nu-folk–meets–nineties–R&B" and "music that sounds like it was written on a lakeside retreat attended by Stevie Nicks, John Waite and En Vogue"

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.”

‘Love Music’ Glasgow Record Store day 20 April 2013 –

 We had great fun with rock Viking metal band Viking Galaxy who launched their album First Contact at a packed out Independent Record store day at Love Music Record shop Glasgow.  Indie bands performing were -Young Aviators, Viking galaxy, French Wives, Fake Major, Wooden Box, Three Blind Wolves, Washington Irvine, Glasvagas, 

‘Record Store Day’ was started in the States in 2007 by record store employee Chris Brown as a backlash to the cheap and low quality sound sent out over the internet. The compression of MP3s only carry percent of the music. Online is a good means of discovery these days but – as with those hardback books - the hard copy vinyl or CD has that something collectable and to treasure.  They also offer the artist’s artwork, lyrics and more. Some of us can remember the booths with the headsets in the record shops in town where we could check out new albums. The joy of discovering new music.
This yearly event celebrated physical records, counter-culture, grassroots labels and local community. The record shops offered special limited editions and exclusives. This year's Scottish Record Store Day highlights included vinyl, tapes and treats from Orange Juice, Biffy Clyro, King Creosote, Admiral Fallow, Adam Stafford, Randolph's Leap, Frightened Rabbit, Mogwai/Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells, The Twilight Sad and more.  

Scottish Independent Record Store Day
Up North - Groucho's in Dundee (Nethergate) had performances from Silent Nothing, Colour Coded and General Judgement. Inverness's fab Imperial (Academy Street) from Sara Bills and the Hasbeens and Willie and Tabs Macaskill.  Stirling, Europa Music (Friars Street) houses Scotland's largest vinyl collection and they hosted live in-store appearances including local indie tearaways FRANK and Miniature Dinosaurs along with James Grant of Love and Money.  

GLASGOW. Love Music (Dundas Street, Glasgow) had live sets from Glasvegas, Woodenbox, French Wives, Three Blind Wolves, Washington Irving, Fake Major, Viking Galaxy and Young Aviators, and also a tea stall, classic rock cake and a pinball AC/DC pinball machine.  Monorail (King's Court, Glasgow) hosted Subway Sect's punk renegade Vic Godard with Davey Henderson's art-pop firebrands The Sexual Objects. Other live highlights include Ela Orleans and alt-rock radicals World Peace.
Oxfam Music (Byres Road, Glasgow) held a Record Store Day party helmed by pop collective TYCI. Rubadub (Howard Street, Glasgow) stocked danceable exclusives and deals on vinyl, while guest DJs and live acts included electronic diviner Dam Mantle, Trevino and Silk Cut. 

EDINBURGH. Underground Solu'shn (Cockburn Street, Edinburgh), had dance and electronic action with a day-long vinyl DJ sets from Fryer, House of Traps, Colvin Cruikshank, Fudge Fingas, G-Mac and EH1. Folk wonderland Coda (The Mound) held live in-stores from songstress Karine Polwart and Jenna Reid, Elvis Shakespeare (Leith Walk) welcomed Saint Max and the Fanatics and Oi Polloi, and Avalanche (Grassmarket) had in-stores from Glasvegas and Admiral Fallow. The Bow Bar (West Bow, Edinburgh) had special cask ale, Sid 'n' Nancy IPA. 
VoxBox Music and Last Word Saloon (St Stephen Street, Edinburgh) celebrated Auld Reekie's thriving grassroots community and teamed up with local labels Gerry Loves Records and Song, By Toad that featured Magic Eye, Mike Heron Band, Rob St John, Adam Stafford and Honeyblood, and Fence Records alt-pop Kid Canaveral (aka Kid Canaverowl).

There was also Song By Toad's inspired Beer vs Records  – ‘Why do we resent paying £12 for a record, when we'll happily fork that out for a round of drinks?’
Support your local artists and record shops/ We all pay far too much to the giant Apple Empire, who give nothing back to the artists!  

RECORD STORE DAY SEES ALBUM SALES RISE BY 60%
Record Store Day album sales soared by 60 percent compared with last year, official figures have shown. Read more: http://www.m-magazine.co.uk/news/record-store-day-sees-album-sales-rise-by-60/

Edwyn Collins and his band at the O2 ABC

Still rockin in his soul, even if his body has failed him at times.

Edwyn Collins, Scottish musician, best known for his song A Girl Like You and also for the song Rip It Up with his band Orange Juice, rocked a gig ABC Glasgow 18th April 2013. 

  

Understated, the title of his new album suits him well. Here's man who rocks deep inside with a generosity of spirit and soul. He's unassuming and sincere and there was a lot of love in the room for him at this gig and some nostalgia for a few no doubt. He performed songs from his 2013 album Understated as well as some of his back catalogue songs. Collins had a band of quality musicians who seemed to enjoy playing with him.

Songs: Ghost of a Chance; Understated; I Never Met a Girl Like you Before.  

For an encore he sang Home Again, searching for my soul again, and Simple Life – simple choice makes the world a better place. Seven years after his two strokes the indie veteran has produced another excellent album.