LTW newsletter 108!

Hail warriors!

I am fresh back from Istanbul, so a mite jet-lagged! I was in Europe’s biggest city (22 million people!) to do an event for Radio Eksen which is the big alternative radio station in Turkey who flew me out to talk about Oasis. 

The other speaker was Dave Rowntree from Blur who has just released a book of photos of early Blur. Initially they wanted some kind of Blur v Oasis panel but fantastically Dave looked on that whole episode with a beautiful detached bemusement that appreciated the spotlight moment helping to make both bands huge but not having any involvement in the shenanigans. 

There is a great alternative music scene in Istanbul and I saw some good local bands . Hip Turkish youth still hold British pop culture in high regard, and it’s still one of the UK’s most valuable exports and one of the things we are really good at for some reason, and we should celebrate it and celebrate it we do with all these weeks' adventures on LTW.

Dave Rowntree’s photo book is a brilliant snapshot of early Blur with their shiny youthful faces pitched out on a world tour before they have really made it. It's all jolly japes and high expectations and great fun that is one part the thrilling adrenaline rush of being a bunch of mates breaking out, and on the other, the exhausting no sleep till Hammersmith existence of a young band on the make.

The big album in the last week has been Suede’s ‘Antidepressents’ which sees the reformed Britpop pioneers still forging ahead with new career highs. Few bands have managed to reform and found the fire again and somehow Suede seem to have turned into something firebrand and thrilling from their intense high energy life shows to their impatient creative overdrive that sees the songs pour out of them. Perhaps concentrating on the music and not the attendant rock n roll has done them a power of good? Who knows whatever it is they sound better for it.

Speaking of rock n roll the Lemonheads erratic live shows seem to stagger from high to low but maybe that’s part of the attraction/risk/tightrope of what makes them? You never know what you are going to get - maybe it’s like panning for gold in the Yukon in the 19th century where it’s mostly silt and grains of sand but every now and then it’s a ’eureka!’ moment and there is the flash of gold. 

Our other album of the week was from American metal vets the Deftones who have somehow managed to keep reinventing themselves and kept an element of surprise in their high octane. Have they becoming the thinking persons metal band? It sure seems like it.

It was great fun to be at the last festival of the summer (for us) at Krankenhaus in the Lake District. The great micro festival put on by Sea Power is as idiosyncratic, inventive and off kilter as you would hope for and with a great line of quirk and wonk bands. With Stewart Lee lurking at every nook and cranny of the event, it is an event full of surprises and musical twists and turns. Its location, way up in the back corner of the Lake District, is a joy as well. 

Ideal was one of the great TV experiences a surreal and dark comedy series that ran for several seasons, built around writer Graham Duff’s extraordinary vision. Its dark energy take on a bedsit drug culture in Salford was full of shadows and laughs, and a cast of dangerous yet oddly lovable characters. 

The series was dropped typically by ham fisted TV bosses before it ended by Graham brought it back as a stage play with what could have been the last episode that never got made and its chaotic energy and sterling cast made for a mesmerising evening’s theatre. 

The dark troubadour Nick Cave has announced. A huge live show in his former home town of Bright to take place next summer. It’s his biggest UK event to date and will be in the town’s Preston park.

The worlds biggest virtual band Gorillaz announced a return with a brilliant new song featuring LTW faves Sparks - its a genius combination that is as great as you would expect. 

Chamber-pop maestro Neil Hannon shows his sombre side on his first standalone studio album of the 2020s. It’s an affecting set of well-orchestrated songs that can bring consolation to the gloomiest hours. Robert Plummer seeks shelter from the storm.

Phil Manzanera, legendary Roxy Music guitar player, whose style not only melted sound but also all guitar tradition, melded with the rest of the band to create the groundbreaking backdrop for Bryan Ferry’s extraordinary pop crooning, talks to John Robb about his new album. ‘Soho Live’