LTW Newsletter 123

Welcome warriors,

It’s been a very busy week here and we have just about recovered from the rigours and excitement of putting on our very first Louder Than War festival. The inaugural event went very well and every band on the bill excelled. It was a great line of bands which included Sea Power, Pale Blue Eyes, Benefits, Evil Blizzard, Immersion, Mouth Ulcers. The Sick Man Of Europe, The Empty Page

We enjoyed the festival so much that we have decided to do it all again next year! Please register for free on the link below for news of early bird tickets and bands as we book them.

Barely having the time to recover from the weekend I’m back into organising my own next tour which will be a spoken word tour going round the UK supporting my up and coming ‘Punk Rock Ruined My Life and Other Stories’ memoirs. Each night features a different special guest including…Dave Rowntree, Gaye Advert, Stuart from Mogwai, Pauline from Penetration, Steve and Paul Hanley, Adam from Pop Will Eat Itself and Holly from The Lovely Eggs - all tickets and details and link to order pre signed copy of the memoirs are in the link below…

This coming Monday in Manchester there is a great looking punk photo exhibition from photographer Spike Waltze.  His brilliant action, time and vision shots really catch one of those frenetic periods in time when music culture moved through a youthquake that changed fashion, music, life and even the way photographs were taken.

The Empty Page seem to have spent years as one of our hot tip new bands and were one of the big hits at the LTW LIVE fest. It can only be a matter of time before everyone catches up with their firebrand rush of melodic punk rock grunge. And their new single is arguably their best yet!

Wire were one of the great post punk bands who somehow found a sweet spot between post punk, art school shape shifting, punk’s love of wilfulness with a dash of great melodic pop. Somehow they have never really charted despite a series of great releases but their rerelease of ‘23 Years Too Late’ spotlights a slightly lesser known period of their many decades long journey and yet one that was just as high quality. The release comes out for the upcoming Record Store Day and is one of the key releases for many on that most hallowed of days.

At the other end of the scale Blur somehow turned those same sort of Art Rock sensibilities into pure pop and were one of the dominant bands in the Britpop era which they came to define for many despite not being part of its original shenanigans. When Britpop first erupted in 1993 neither Oasis who were still unsigned and Blur who had already released two albums and were a band seeking an audience were counted in. Decades later and bassist Alex James has put together a Britpop musical that is selling out theatres across the UK with its mixture of classic cuts from the time delivered in an almost musicals style with more than a twist of his much documented love of cheese.

Big LTW faves House Of All are surely the most productive band in the UK and their forth album in as many years is yet another trip into their twisted lyrical Lovecraft world. Musically it’s  gritty bass line driven missives that perhaps sound like the Fall - but then that is no wonder as the whole band, including their three drummers, were all former members of that mighty band.

The superlative deconstruction of the live experience by David Byrne in his series of shows last week has many people reconsidering what a live gig can be. Reinventing the wheel his mix of theatricals, political and social intent and great songs from his extensive back catalogue reimagined the live spectacle and made this far from a tired old trip through the hits.

Another much loved LTW fave, Evil Blizzard not only played one of the great sets at the Louder Than War Live festival last week but have also released a new single that is yet another Great Leap Forward for the masked marauders. Now with increasingly prominent guitars pushing aside their four bass chassis they still have the infernal dark post punk groove like a rubber masked Killing Joke and are currently the only band close to filling the gap left by that mighty bands end.

Bassist Melissa Auf der Maur had a first-hand view of what it was like to experience two of the biggest rock bands of the 1990s: Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins. Her ‘Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir’ memoir gives readers an intimate glimpse of one of the most influential decades in rock and what it was like to come of age in the middle of it.