Review - William Elliott Whitmore at Borderline

About a decade ago a band limped on to the scene, hung around for a bit and then promptly disappeared, although they stayed together and still release albums and tour.

They were instantly recognisable for singing style of Tom Gray. It was a husky, smoke infused drawly growl which peppered such hits as Whippin Piccadilly and Get Myself Arrested. It was a subtle voice which fitted nicely into their rag tag multi instrumentalist line up evoking a sound more entrenched in the American South than South Bermondsey.

Tom Gray was in his early twenties at the time and had the voice of a 70 year old lifetime smoker and it just oozed from his lungs coating the songs in Americana.

William Elliott Whitmore is into his thirties and whereas he is a Jack Daniels swilling Iowan he sounds much less convincing.

I was taken in by it initially on record and was struck by the stark instrumental use and husky bark which contrasted to great effect.

I was convinced that he was black and knocking on heavens door. When I found out he was only 30 something and white I thought, nice idea.

Then the idea started to grate with each listen but I had already bought tickets for the Borderline gig.

Whitmore is a very personable young man. Bearded and wearing a pork pie hat he was every inch the musician as he wandered around mingling with the punters. He remembered people from previous gigs and spent a fair amount of time with each fan who wanted a chat. If this job doesn't work out he should consider a position in customer service.

Taking to the low, intimate, wee Borderline stage he opened a full bottle of JD and handed it to the audience to polish off. Another nice touch.

His playing style is bold rhythm strokes, be it on banjo, or less successfully on acoustic guitar. The songs are solid and stand up well as solo accompaniment but the playing is rather rudimentary and it all got a bit samey after a while.

He can hold a crowd well and everyone was rapt, but I got a little bored and went back to meet Allan Jones the editor of Uncut.

Another bottle of JD got opened and passed around and he left the stage to huge cheers and I admit the gig improved after the obligatory encore.

The voice, oh the voice. It sounded better and less contrived than on record but it is so put on it sometimes sounds like he is swallowing frogs and trying to regurgitate them again.

Will he be around in a decade? I'm sure he doesn't know anything else, but he won't be on the radar round these parts unless he changes his style as it was just a little tedious.

Review: Bronson

I still don't have a purpose in life. I want to be successful, happy, have kids, a loving marriage, yada, yada, yada.

When I was 14 I wanted to be a music journalist, and I still do, although the goalposts have changed dramatically. Still, it's an ambition of sorts. I'll take it.

Michael Peterson wanted to be famous for being a thug. A violent, indiscriminate hooligan. And, by jove, he's done it. By changing his name to Charles Bronson, growing a Victorian wrestler's moustache and being bald as a coot, he is infamous. 

Played on screen by the raw talent that is Tom Hardy, Bronson isn't so much brought to life as set in stone. His crimes and temperament are legendary anyway, so being able to visualise it, rather than imagine it is no great achievement. 

The man spent 30 years in solitary confinement. And they said the Watchmen was unfilmable. Why did the director Refn try this of all biopics? The key lies in its execution and place in the film sphere.

It is an arthouse film. Refn's use of theatre, addressing the camera, panto, cartoon and lighting all serve to make a potentially boring 90 minutes utterly engrossing.

Much has been made of the lack of answers the film gives as to why Bronson is the way he is. That is not the point. Bronson is a buffoon, a cross between a Forrest Gump and Ronnie Kray. He has no point and to create this film, Refn has demonstrated that you don't need a conclusion. Just tell the pitiful story of this contemptible, mindless idiot. But tell it well.

And Hardy and Refn combine to leave you, not asking questions, but clapping your hands at a job well done. Hardy's unflinching, bulked up performance ranks alongside Stuart: A Life Backwards and I look forward to him making continually demanding and brave choices.

It is a film I will gladly watch again. Even though I find the character of Bronson so utterly vile and wanton, I can somehow ignore that and just watch a beautifully crafted film. I will not waste one second thinking about his plight, his aims, his point, I just wait with baited breath to see what the team will produce next time.

Review: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Stewart Lee, 41st best stand up ever! A great, original comedian who is back on our screens tonight in his own show.

Chris Moyles's literary ambitions get rightly, roasted as does Dan Brown. Radio 4 grasping popular culture and its comedy content, all a precursor to an attack on the autobiography of Asher D also hits the spot - brilliantly.

The supporting sketches, none of which will be repeated with catchphrases as nauseum, are the right length and give the show a depth and makes it even more likeable.

Can Lee do any wrong? Not in my eyes. I am a snob, like him and despair of the pit of thickness people are happy to wallow in. Being a bit clever seems to be taboo nowadays. Ask the University Challenge types who accepted their disqualification with utter dignity. 

His rambling, descriptive, deadpan style is a great antidote to the sketch cockery of Little Britain, Tate, Corden and Horne. I say deadpan, there is always a knowing smirk at the corner of his mouth and for those of us who are in on it, it's an added plus.

Will the dumbing down of society and culture desist in the wake of this show? No. But we can feel that bit more smug, and we don't care.

Rolling Stones - Cocksucker Blues

This film has been banned, ever since its conception in 1972. There is a court order, which still applies today, stating that no-one may view the film without the director being present. With that in mind, I present a review based on spurious speculation....

Presented in black and white and colour, the film follows the Glimmer Twins and the rest of the Stones (Mick Taylor era) on tour to promote the awesome Exile on Main Street album.

 Interspersed with intimate footage of Mick and co are up close and equally personal moments of the band performing. The cameras get so close to the action, even when they are playing to thousands of fans. And this less than three years after the murder and mayhem at Altamont.

But there is a reason for this blase attitude and that is the copious amounts of powder flying about. One of the reasons it's banned is because it shows the touring party, including Jagger, openly sniffing the marching powder backstage.

A lengthy passage showing Jagger in a trance performing Midnight Rambler is spellbinding, as he crawls around and stalks the stage. This is in glaring pinks and shows the band romping in its full majesty. This then cuts back to the entourage talking about and experiencing the joy of cocaine, once more.

Then the film takes a darker turn as Richards and a couple of pals go straight for the horse. It is no wonder they never wanted this shown. While he is strung out in one part of a room backstage, Ahmet Ertegan, founder of their legendary record label is just feet away. It truly is a different era.

The cast of beautiful people also includes Stevie Wonder, Andy Warhol, Biance Jagger and Tina Turner, all of them just players in the main story of the kings of their world, Mick'n'Keef. "Anything to get away from those 39 people" Mick says at one point as they are driving down a freeway. It's clear that touring was tedious business at times, even among the drugs, mayhem and nakedness.

The live bits are gloriously loose and ramshackle. Without the sheen of trained camera angles and Scorcese being coerced by Jagger into how to do his job it shows the band at their best. Wonder joining them onstage for Uptight and Satisfaction is a mess but so uplifting and Jagger and Keef combing for a raucous rendition of Happy is brilliant.

It is after this Keef vehicle that we cut to a naked groupie with her legs open, covered in cum. This opens up a whole section where groupies dominate proceedings, handing out spliffs, jacking up and being naked. This is the part of the tour you only hear in articles, but it's all there.

If you can get yourself a copy of this film and can get a sit down with the director to see it, I urge you to do so. I hear it's very, very good...

Wire- Are all things with this name excellent?

How have I missed it? For so long, I have been searching for a magazine to take me to the next level. I want superior, no-nonsense journalism, which entertains and, more important at the moment, educates.

I have stagnated in the past for the past three years. Mojo magazine has been my Gideons Bible for the past 10 years. Other titles died, some became unreadable, populist pap and the rest were just glossy lists masquerading as music journalism.

Wire magazine, like its Baltimore based namesake TV show elevates a dying trade to a level previously unseen since whichever heyday you can relate to. It's on issue 301, I have a lot of catching up to do.

At 100 pages, it is slim, classy, attractive, uncluttered and oozes quality writing from its pores. I have always sought new music but, obviously, Mojo is not really where to look. Even the Fleet Foxes, who were championed across the board, are household names, leaving no room for the seasoned music Nazi to cock-a-snook.

In the next 2 weeks I will be seeking out the possible pleasures of Andrew Cyrille, Joe Morris, Kong Nay and Menace Ruine. The only thing that connects them is their independent spirits and originality. I will even try my ear at jazz once more. Never got my head around it before and this is the last time. But the magazine makes it sound so fascinating. I am excited about music again.

And I haven't felt like that for years. 

Las Iguanas - Eat Latin, Big Breasts

At night, the South Bank transforms into a sight London can be proud of. Its shafts of light and subtle neon and electric signage pump a life blood through the concrete carbuncles, which in the stark honest daylight deflate any sense of pride.

Circling the Royal Festival Hall are shops and restaurant chains which come from the accepted higher end of the retail and dining spectrum. A Giraffe nuzzles alongside a Strada beneath the old Hall, and Ping Pong forms an Eastern Bloc with Feng Sushi on its west side. In prime position, jutting out on the corner of the top deck is the vibrant and colourful Las Iguanas.

Imploring you to ‘Eat Latin, Drink Latin’, and if you could get a table, you would more than likely love to. We visited at 9pm on a Wednesday evening and had to wait half an hour to get seated. To the bar, then!

It is a small, functional bar, which serves the whole restaurant and the two guys whizzing up cocktails and cracking open ice cold bottles of Cusquena coped admirably. We weren’t allowed to get our drinks on a tab, even if we were eating. With the bar area right by the bar, this seemed reasonable.

We were seated at a cute corner table, which was right by the stairs (apart from the odd clumpy footed office type it wasn’t noticeable) and scanned the A3 sized menu. The delights on offer were plentiful and straightforward to follow and we ordered from the 3 for £12 tapas option for starters and had a risotto and xinxim for mains.

The drinks were a mixed bunch. My caiprinha was, and always will be superb. It’s a very hard drink to get wrong and all about the cachaca, which at Las Iguanas is their own brand. Made at their own plantation in Brazil, it has a simple, pleasant taste – as you would expect from a drink made with only sugar cane and water – and the trick is to keep mixing the ice and the lime in the glass while you enjoy it.

The passion fruit and orange cooler for my tee-total wife, however, was a wash-out. Essentially £3 for an orange juice. No zing, no zang, and no repeat sale. The tap water was excellent.

As the calamares, chorizo and quesadilla starters swamped our little table for two, my wife decided to point out the big, perfectly formed breasts, which would be in my line of vision for the duration of my meal. Not hers - a blonde floozy who, because of this corner seating thing, was not 6 feet away and with no-one to obstruct the view. I will try and remember the food though.

The chorizo in a rioja jus, was tasty, although a little stingy with the sausage. If they are going to scrimp, maybe better to put them in a smaller dish. The quesadillas were stuffed with giant portabello mushrooms and topped with creamy brie, fired up by a beautiful, chunky salsa. The calamares come drizzled in a light aioli dressing, which used to be spicy but alas, no longer. They are small crunchy pieces that melt in the mouth. The breasts – “Are they real?” my wife enquired. I was trying to concentrate on the food, honestly.

The xinxim, a creamy chicken and crayfish concoction, is tangy and fragrant and served with green beans and plantains. The green beans are always difficult to keep warm and I don’t think they have ever reached my table above around 10 degrees. The broth itself is a guilty pleasure but there was too much of it and the poor bits of chicken looked lost. A bit like a pair of small hands cupping giant breasts.

The wife – oh there you are – was a tad disappointed by the seafood content of the Bahian risotto, which was also a bit dry and needed pepping up with some of my surplus xinxim lake. The flavours in both are fantastic and you can get every one of them in spades, however, the balance of ingredients is a bit lopsided. Unlike those perfect breasts, pulsating across the way.

We skipped the desert. A mass of naughty chocolate puds being devoured in the flightpath of zeppelin one and two may have edged me into Bill Clinton territory. The service was friendly and unobtrusive, the prices, more than reasonable for a sell-out South Bank eatery and the funbags truly….OK this has got to stop. Recommended
Price for 2 including 2 cocktails and glass of wine and service - £50
Food – 7
Drinks – 7
Atmosphere – 8
Breasts – 36DD

Review: Morrissey - Years Of Refusal

His recent activity on our shores have caused the legions of fawning fans to rise to the surface once more, defending their fay hero to the hilt.

It seems our Moz would do anything rather than stay in this country. It seems he is less loyal to his loyal following than, I'm sure, they would like. He is no better than Phil Collins really. Stay in the U.S. or Italy, anywhere, just not Britain. Just nip over, raid their manbags and purses and flee like Raffles into the night.

Before he starts his biannual theft of the nation's overdrawn bank accounts he has dropped another one of his much hyped solo albums. The man who railed against the record companies so effectively on 'Paint A Vulgar Picture' is doing the rounds, laughing at Wossy's gags on his chat show and looking very uncomfortable. The credit crunch truly must be universal. He has even resorted to a strip with his band to try and shift a few extra units. Sellout? Well let's look inside. 

It's a hairdrying, furnace blast opener in 'Something Is Squeezing My Skull'. He sounds positively masculine, barking the names of prescription drugs out against the howling tsunami of his full-on band. It has the light thrash of a limp Therapy? under his Manc-Irish Proclaimer-lite chorus. 500 miles?

The next two bang along in a similar fashion, like Spector has burst in to the studio and told everyone to play like there were 50 of them at gunpoint. 'I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris' takes the foot off the pedal in a Stranglers on the Bontempi kind of manner. 'All You Need Is Me' is fine, it has a great lilting verse but the chord changes are somewhat pedestrian.

The Spanish clippity clop of 'When Last I Spoke To Carol' is a welcome respite from the unnatural tone of the album and provides one of the highlights. It's playful, and shows the humour that Morrissey used to display so well and in such abundance. He also manages to stray of the lyrics and 'wo-wo' giving the tune an air of spontaneity.

Halfway through and I am just crying out for a lead guitar line or a frickin' piano or something to break the monotony. The beautiful bass of Andy Rourke is a very distant memory and this very tiring album wears thin very quickly. Even when the Spanish trumpet reprises for 'One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell'.

'It's Not Your Birthday Anymore' and to be honest I am not looking forward to it if someone is going to get me this half-arsed, one-trick pony of an album. I'm going to get my copies of Strangeways and Vauxhall and pour myself a Baileys. Hopefully next time Morrissey deigns to darken our shores he can come bearing finer gifts than this.

4/10

Twitter - Bandwagonesque

It's been a long time since I have jumped on a passing bandwagon. And not just that, I have embraced Twitter with gusto and even bored my friends to death championing it.

I have never been a social networker and hate the very thought of faceless chat rooms. I didn't really use my natty MacBook for much more than selling a few CD's on ebay and writing essays for university. 

When Stephen Fry, the archdeacon of Twitter started to bleat on about it I actually sat up and took notice. It's Stephen after all. I have sat up and followed his career since the mid eighties when I understood very little of what he said and laughed mainly at his use of the word Cuntyblast. I know Pip Schofield is also a Twitterer but I stopped following him when he left the broom cupboard. he held little cultural capital for me once he dropped the gopher.

So I gingerly dipped my toe in the sea of Twitter and found the site to be uncomplicated and very take it or leave it. I have mostly taken it. The simplicity and unadulterated, dare I say it, fun, of Twitter is immediate and charming. It has little of the vitriol found in chatrooms and if you choose who you follow carefully enough, you are usually guaranteed a chuckle a day. 

There really are some very amusing 'ordinary' people out there. I don't think it's any coincidence that top writers and journalists use the site. the pithy one-liners they can pilfer for their jottings or sitcoms are endless. The fact that the comments usually have no surrounding context leaves the reader with a laugh and a lot left to his or her own imagination.

On the more academic and serious sides, Twitter has become a networking tool, linking me to media types as well as newspaper websites updating me on the breaking news. But we can get so much more than what the big guns want us to count as stories. We have a new method of providing the news and creating an agenda. twitter is even becoming a news story in itself which is like them watching us watching me watching you watching them and so on.

In a nutshell, as I keep telling the non-believers, it is what you make it. you 'follow' who you want to follow and the experience can be a very rewarding one. It is a glimpse into the future of journalism in a way as newspapers struggle for air, people turn to the net and create their own news agenda by picking and choosing from a wealth of information and tailoring it to their day-to-day needs.

You don't have to follow the celebrities, you don't need to know what Will Carling ate after his bike-ride, but it can break up the Twitterverse you create and provide a welcome distraction before you dive in once more to glean the gen you want, when you want.

Carluccio's restaurant review

Kilburn High Road used to be the hub of a thriving music scene. Before the Blockheads, Ian Dury called his group Kilburn & The High Roads. That was over 30 years ago and the road looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since. Littered with old man pubs, old men and litter, the place has more than its fair share of drunks and homeless. The shops are a jumble of bric-a-brac, charity and pound shops; Woolworths, is now closed and boarded up and was one of only a few name brands. In some ways this was quite endearing, the refusal to have a Starbucks next to a Gap next to a Starbucks lent the road a sense of grubby nostalgia, always yearning for the days of strikes and a struggling economy. its food outlets are uniformly poor. Greasy spoons and greasier chicken shacks vie for the credit crunch quid with dimly lit Italian family-run joints which are only good for taking Lefty Bompansero to get whacked. However, off the High Road, about 5 minutes walk away from The Golden Cock (it’s there, look it up) is the Little Bay restaurant and this was only 30 seconds from where we lived. This gem of an eatery is one of just five and I was fortunate enough to live only five minutes away from their Croydon outlet when I was unfortunate enough to live there. They offer well-cooked fresh ingredients for an unbelievable price and the quality is nearly always excellent. Two of you can whip in there, have three courses each, a bottle of wine and escape with change from £30. The wife and I went as often as we could and that was when the economy was bouncy and we all had thirty credit cards each. We since moved to the more affluent suburb of Earlsfield before the fat cats in the City got found out and ruined it for all of us. Earlsfield is the polar opposite of Kilburn. Instead of bearded men shouting at the traffic the streets teem with runners and hockey players jostling past suited and booted young professionals. Instead of Dev’s Bargain Basement, you will find independent wine shops and posh charity shops where you can pick up a second hand Dolce & Gabbana blouse. Instead of the Texas Chicken Lickin’ Shed you can dine out at Mel’s, Hannah’s or Willie Gunn’s, but you better take one of those credit cards (if the bank has let you keep any). When a poorly run bar shut down in October Carluccio’s sprung up in its place, almost overnight it seemed. We peered in the window and thought, ooh another pricey, posh place for Earlsfield, then we looked at the menu and the prices and thought, ooh, we may be able to eat here. So we did. While not as cheap as the inimitable Little Bay (nowhere is) Carluccio’s offers authentic Italian plates, mostly for well under a tenner. Apparently, they have been around since 1991, but they have always slipped under my radar. Maybe it’s like that phenomenon where you hear a word for the first time, then you never stop hearing that word. Maybe its not. I have walked past their places loads of times and just never noticed them. Maybe they should change their exterior to leap out at me a bit more. Come to think of it, they shouldn’t. They are always never less than full. The restaurants are light and spacious with simple chairs and tables, which echo the simple yet effective cooking they serve. We started with calamari and rice balls. The squid was competently fried and served with a simple lemon slice and lettuce, which, to be honest, is all it needs. I abhor the acidic white paste it usually comes with. Squid is a very delicate flavour and the last thing it needs is to be lost in an overpowering tartare sauce. The rice balls were firm and held together on the fork well, a creamy mozerella filling oozed from one and the other a deep, rich ragu and served with a red pepper sauce which was well justified, adding a zingy flash to the palette. I had just time to swoosh with a mouthful of fresh mint tea when the mains landed. The wife had a large plate of fresh linguine pasta, tossed with plenty of clean, fresh frutti di mare, garlic, herbs and a hint of chilli. I demolished a cold duck breast salad with firm green beans and potatoes. Generous plump green olives brought the whole dish together beautifully. There was a little too much of the olive oil and balsamic dressing but it’s a minor quibble. It is Italian cooking you don’t find on these shores very often. Keep it simple and fresh. It really is that easy. Throw in such reasonable prices and maybe we can sign the rent agreement for another year.

More Miles

Another week, another Miles Hunt gig. This time it was just him and his violinist and partner (?) Erica Nockalls. In the intimate back room of the Half Moon Putney, it was the perfect place for Miles to hold court.

After the pretensions of the previous week, being kind and polite to everyone in the Birmingham Town Hall, he was back to his sweary, loutish best. The songs were peppered with forthright profanity-strewn anecdotes and most of the audience lapped them up. There was a small group of Wonder Stuff fans who chatted throughout the opening salvo of new material.

"If you lot shut the fuck up, it makes my job a lot easier. Why don't I come to where you work and talk like cunts while you try to do your work?" He volleyed forth.

Indeed, I had fallen out of touch with Miles' solo material since his earlier 'depressing trilogy' of the 90's. But the new stuff is better, enhanced as they are by the superb playing of Nockalls. Her talent is unquestionable. It would just be good to see her get a bit more involved in the stories as she is in most of them. A bit of patter between the two would make the 'act' gel and Miles can truly be part of duo as it states on all the promo material.

The anecdotes included tirades at Bono, en erstwhile target, and usually included Miles getting a bit miffed at something or other. Great story about a blowout on a California highway and a good Stuffie story about their radically different tastes in music introduced the subject of the dearly departed bassist and drummer, Bob Jones and Martin Gilkes.

The new album "On sale tonight, with other lovely souvenirs" is well worth the investment to further explore the duo's take on folk rock as is their last effort, Not An Exit.

The audience was filled with late thirty to forty-somethings and a fair few of them were very pissed indeed, stumbling around the venue, possibly imagining being in the Melody Maker tent at Reading circa 1992. But the atmosphere was genial and had an air of old school reunion.

Miles' voice is getting better with age and has lost some of its early naive charm. Bottles and bottles of red wine and thousands of fags later, he is becoming a great draw on this circuit and if the songwriting stays at this level, he will be able to shout at and harangue his ageing fans for years to come.

Review: William Elliot Whitmore - Animals In The Dark

Listen to Whitmore for the first time and your head will fill with questions. Why haven't I heard him before? How old is he? Is he black or white? And most importantly, is he touring?

The first track on this remarkable album is Whitmore accompanied by a military shuffle on a snare drum. And that's it. It's raw and naked and utterly compelling. Singing with a throaty yarp you reckon he's been around a bit. Maybe another Seasick Steve. Well the colour is accurate, this weather beaten voice belongs to a white guy and not a Leadbellyesque troubadour. The whiteness is betrayed by a slight vulnerability to the voice which pokes its head above the cotton fields from time to time. 

The most surprising thing about this guy is that he is just 31. A goatee bearded, skater looking hick. Born to Iowa farm owners he sings from the red and brown earth of the land and is always only sparsely accompanied. Slide guitar and footstomps, banjo or just a well-picked acoustic, it all serves that voice.

With songs like the aforementioned 'Mutiny', 'Hard Times' or the sprightly yet funereal stomp of 'Old Devils', the album just reeks of hardships and struggles. Moonshine, prison and stolen souls, Southern landmarks and sin. It sounds like the musical of Robert Johnson's life. And I would sell my soul at the crossroads for this album.

9/10

Review: Grand Duchy-Petits Fours

This collaboration between Black Francis and his partner Violet Clark sees the former Pixie on fine form. 

It really is a partnership to rival his sparring with Kim Deal on the Pixies efforts. On Fort Wayne, for example the backing melody could have been the deal herself. Clark's voice doesn't have the American drawl that typifies Deal's performance and she is more reminiscent of Kristen Hersch/ Tanya Donnelly, and that, if you cast your mind back to the early 90's, is no bad thing.

Black's contribution is strangely muted, taking the back seat on the majority of tracks. The songwriting is strong and the use of electronic gadgetry on some tracks is most welcome, adding another, sometimes dreamy, wistful, air to the tunes. His growly trademark, off key guitar lines are ever present and reminds you of the Pixies heyday. But the songs, while looking forward and sounding modern will always have one foot firmly in the past due to the unmistakeable input from Black.

Seeing Stars is a highlight, using all of the above ingredients to great effect. When the going gets a bit more rocking, (Black Suit) it is closer to his solo efforts than the Pixies but the ever present presence of Violet take the edge off.

It's a varied, surprising album and if you have become a bit bored with his output of late, this should give you the jolt to put a little black back in your heart.

7.5/10