With a triennial legacy of video's capturing Placebo's appearances, this one video of 'Special K' from Rock am Ring 2009
simply captures their newly invigorated energy, with the addition of a
violinist/keyboardist and a new drummer Steve Forrest. Headling the
dual concert venues of the 'Rock at the Ring' and 'Rock in the Park' in
Germany this weekend, their enthusiastic response to their warm
reception by the young German audience, despite the cloy damp
conditions, is clearly demonstrated.
Many of the tracks from the as-yet-be released album 'Battle for the Sun' were also featured to a sold crowd of some 150,000+ at Rock am Ring's Nürburgring's motor racing track in the west of Germany and the alternative location Rock im Ring
which takes place near the Frankenstadion in Nünberg. Between these two
venues, which host all of the same acts, this is the largest annual
Rock Concert in Germany.
Here's the Placebo Setlist, for their appearance at the Rock am Ring on Friday, June 5th , 2009:
In the early sixties,
the Beatles were a relatively unknown band when they first played in
Hamburg. Their first of many shows in the north German port city was at
the Indra Club on August 17, 1960. At the shows in Hamburg, the band
(then with five members) would play for hours, often playing several
clubs in the same night.
Through these early
concerts, the Beatles began to develop the sound that would come to be
their trademark. It was also in Hamburg that Ringo Starr made his first
appearance as the band's new drummer.
Beatlemania
The Beatlemania
museum takes visitors to a time when the Beatles were all the rage. The
walls duplicate the style of the Hamburg clubs where the band once
played, and there’s Beatles memorabilia of all kinds. One room is
decorated to look like the bedroom of a young Beatles fan, filled from
top to bottom with Beatles collectables.
Visitors can marvel
over the original version of the Beatles' first record contract, which
was signed in Hamburg, or read postcards sent by Ringo Starr to his
grandmother in Liverpool, in which he sings the praises of the German
city. There are even womens’ stockings with a Beatles logo woven in.
Further on in the
museum, visitors can sneak a peak backstage at a Beatles concert, or
sit in a theater filled with a recording of hysterical screams from
Beatles fans. The famous Abbey Road studios in London have been
recreated, and trips with Captain Fred aboard the Yellow Submarine
depart all day long.
The museum is
anticipating around 200,000 visitors per year, and Beatlemania will
certainly add to Hamburg’s attraction for Beatles' fans. There's a
constant stream of questions coming in from people around the world
wanting to know more about Hamburg’s links with the Beatles. But one
question remains: why was Hamburg the city where the Beatles got their
start? That’s a question Uwe Blascke, one of the museum's founders,
feels no need to answer.
“That question
answers itself,” he says. “If a band has a museum, we don’t really need
to discuss how or why they got so big. You just have to listen to one
of their records.”
And if the music
isn’t enough, you can always visit the museum gift shop and pick up a
Ringo Starr coffee mug, t-shirts with Beatlemania logos, Beatles beer
coasters – even a Beatles umbrella."
BACKGROUND: "Battle for the Sun" is the title of the forthcoming sixth studio album by the alternative rock band Placebo. This transcription is based on the 'Fan Playback' at http://www.placeboworld.co.uk/battleforthesun/ released on Friday, 29th May, 2009. If time permits I'll follow with a TAB of the lead riffs and possibly the bass riffs which are intriguing, inventive and highly melodic. The album sounds fantastic, with fascinating musical, darkly humorous and ecologically bleak lyrical legacies, aside from the main and notable feature tracks, as previously released, ...like "Kings of Medicine" and "Breathe Underwater". I eagerly look forward to securing a copy.
TEMPO: Adante
CHORDS: C ========== 332010 F7 ========== 131211 G ========== 320003 Dm ========== XX0231 Gm ========== 355333
Intro: C | G C | G
Verse 1: C F7 Cast your mind back to the days, F7 C When I pretend' I was OK. C G I had so very much to say, G About my crazy livin'. C F7 Now that I've stared into the void, F7 C So many people, I've annoyed. C G I have to find a middle way, G C A better way of livin'.
Riff: C | G C | G
Verse 2: C F7 So I haven't given up, F7 C That all my choices, my good luck... C G Appear to go and get me stuck, G In an open prison. C F7 Now I am tryin' to break free, F7 C In a state of empathy. C G Find the true and enemy, G Eradicate this prison.
Chorus 1: C G No-one can take it away from me, C G And no-one can tear it apart. Dm F7 'Cause a heart that hurts, F7 C Is a heart that works. Dm F7 A heart that hurts, F7 Gm C Is a heart that works. Dm F7 A heart that hurts, F7 C Is a heart that works.
Chorus 2: C G No-one take it away from me, C G No-one can tear it apart. C G Maybe ' an elaborate fantasy, C G But it's the perfect place to start. Dm F7 'Cause a heart that hurts, F7 C Is a heart that works. Dm F7 A heart that hurts, F7 Gm C Is a heart that ...works.
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Hamburg, hit by declining tourism figures, is calling on the Beatles to ease
it through the crisis. Or, as the Fab Four would have put it: Help!
“John Lennon used to say that he was born in Liverpool but grew up in
Hamburg,” says Ulf Krueger who has been pushing the port to brand itself as
a Beatles city for more than 20 years.
The moment has come: a five-storey Beatles museum, complete with a life sized
model of the Yellow Submarine and a mock-up of the Hamburg clubs where they
played, was opened today to a Ringo Starr-like drum roll.
Around the corner, a square has been renamed Beatles Platz, shaped like a
gramophone record, with John, Paul, George, Ringo in stainless steel — and a
fifth Beatle, who could be either the sacked drummer Pete Best or the
bassist, Stu Sutcliffe.
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From Beatles Platz there are now Beatles tours that take visitors around all
the grubby corners of the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Red Light district, where
the group played and partied before becoming famous.
But does Hamburg know what it is letting itself in for? Recreating the group’s
life in the north German city might be a little too strong for sensitive
21st-century tourists.
“They were like five wild animals in those days,” recalled Horst Fascher, who
was a manager and bouncer at the Star Club and the Top Ten where the Beatles
astonished the Germans with their innovative pop. “They didn’t really know
how to live away from home — they didn’t know how to go out to a restaurant
or wash their clothes.”
The bulky, bearded Mr Fascher — speaking at an opening-night party attended by
transvestite bar owners and a scarred man reputed to be the main pimp on the
Reeperbahn — said that his mother had saved the band, cooking them stew and
doing their laundry.
Lennon, Mr Fascher remembers, used to urinate out of the window of his
mother’s apartment on to the street below. It is not clear whether this will
part of the Beatles Experience.
The Beatles came to Hamburg in the summer of 1960, earning more than in
Liverpool but under the toughest of conditions: 48 nights in a row playing
four-and-a-half-hour straight sets on weekdays, six on weekends. They lived
in a cinema storage room in two bunk-beds, next to the womens’ lavatory.
They had to use the water from the bowl to wash and shave.
“It was a pig-sty,” wrote Lennon later.
When they moved on from the Indra club, the impresario denounced George
Harrison to the police — he was 17 and therefore not allowed to work — and
he was deported. In protest Paul McCartney and Best nailed a condom to the
wall of their room and set it on fire. They, too, were arrested and
deported.
However, Hamburg was formative. The Beatles grew up — mixing with strippers
and gangsters, coshed by one manager’s strongarm boys after destroying an
amplifier — and learnt to play together in front of large crowds. The Star
Club could accommodate 2,000 people, most of them Reeperbahn low-life.
They were told to move around on stage and they could improvise as never
before, Lennon appearing dressed only in his underwear and a lavatory seat,
or mimicking a Hitler toothbrush moustache. Pete Best was replaced by Ringo
Starr, who was playing in another Hamburg club. And Stu Sutcliffe fell in
love with a photographer, Astrid Kirchherr, and stayed on to study in a
Hamburg art college before dying of a brain clot.
It was Ms Kirchherr who became the German muse of the Beatles, taking
atmospheric black-and-white photographs of them, getting her mother to
arrange stay-awake Preludin drugs for the band and, according to legend,
persuading them to have their hair cut in moptops.
“Her then boyfriend Klaus Voormann borrowed the idea of a floppy hairstyle
from the French Existentialists,” said Ulf Krüger, who acts as Ms
Kirchherr’s agent and manager, “and since Klaus’s ears stuck out she advised
him to let the hair grow over the sides. Then Stu wanted it, then George
Harrison.”
That became one of the Beatles early trademarks and one floor of the new
museum, packed with Beatles kitsch, has a place of honour for moptop wigs.
Ms Kirchherr, now 71, was at the opening yesterday in the building that used
to house the Erotic Arts Museum, but was saying nothing about the stormy
1960s. And Klaus Voormann, who went on to play sideman with Lennon on the
album Imagine, let his pictures speak for themselves. In a series of
oils and sketches he shows Lennon asleep face down in a plate of bacon and
eggs, Harrison in his police cell and McCartney picking up his pep pills
from Rosa the lavatory attendant. Those were the days.
The great bulk of tourists to Hamburg are from Britain, many of them now put
off by the weak pound. And the Reeperbahn is no longer the draw it once was
for stag parties: sado-masochistic clubs are being converted into harmless
chill-out clubs and respectable hotels are replacing the brothels. Now the
hope is that the Beatles will act as a magnet for those who are still
nostalgic for the 1960s.
“It was time that Hamburg paid tribute to this talented band,” said Ole von
Beust, the Mayor of Hamburg, who nonetheless stayed away from the opening
party. Which was perhaps just as well: shortly before the museum threw open
its doors, police arrested a suspected fugitive kidnapper, described as the
most-wanted man in Germany, in a Reeperbahn side street.
John Lennon would have relished the spectacle and it is a safe bet that he
would have been yelling at the police.
I've just been watching Jeff Beck ...performing this week aka 'Live at Ronnie Scott's'.
And in the amassed supporting talent of Vinnie Colaiuta on Drums, Jason
Rebello on keyboards (featuring guest artists: Joss Stone, Imogen Heap
& Eric Clapton) driving much of the wailing and sonourous mix of
pure unfettered guitar is the young Tal Wilkenfeld's (from Sydney, Australia) spirited and supporting tonal backbone.
Jeff's interpretation and homage to the Beatles in A Day in the Life and Rollin' And Tumblin'
(with vocals by Imogen Heap) are a stand-out performances, mixing and
contrasting much of the musical styles and textures he employs
throughout the tracks on this DVD taken over five nights in-residence
at the vintage Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
in Soho, London. Tal's erstwhile Bass thunders and dances through these
many changes of time and intensity with blissful ease. The
reinvigorated Jeff Beck website and The Jeff Beck tour of the US and Canada is obviously drawing a new legion of fans, as indicated by the fan blogs.
In the interviews Jeff confirms that these performances were at first
avoided than undertaken 'on a whim' to satisfy a promise to sax-playing
friend, Leo Green, made in a Soho coffee-shop. This venue and
subsequent post-media productions more than filled this timely
blank-spot on his touring itinerary. To undertake this venture it's
obvious, from a straight listening, that it was extremely draining as
it was a very close-proximity low-ceilinged club in which they had to
tone-down their usual high-dB sound aimed at filling rock and roll
concert halls and stadiums.
Jeff explains
his first meeting and immersive jamming with Tal ...saying that "...she
looked 12 but was 21!" (and is 23 this year). In the interviews Jeff
demonstrates a distinct pride in having seen Tal's innovative talent
maturing within the context of the band and the influence of the many
artists, they've performed with.
In the performances do lookout for ...Jon Bonjovi, Jimmy Page and Brain May who are visible in the audience.
I seriously look forward to Jeff Beck and his Band's
return performances in Australia. This recent DVD is a stunning,
uplifting, intimate and enjoyable musical venture, which Jeff
understandably (from the peer pressure applied from Ronnie Scott's
intimate knowledge of the 'Jazz Greats' performances) confirms that he
...doesn't want to repeat again! :-R
-------------------------------------------------
TAL WILKENFELD (BASS)
Widely
hailed as "the rising star of the bass guitar," Tal Wilkenfeld first
picked up a guitar at the age of 14, in her native Sydney, Australia.
She later switched to bass and in May 2006 Tal recorded her first solo
album, "Transformation." She was 20, and had been playing bass for only
three years. At just 21, Tal accompanied jazz giant Chick Corea on his
tour of Australia. One month later, Jeff Beck asked her to join him on
a European Summer Tour. The Beck tour culminated at Eric Clapton's
Crossroads Festival. Most recently, she was invited by Warren Haynes to
participate in his 20th Annual Christmas Jam, in Asheville, North
Carolina. There, she performed with the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't
Mule, Ivan Neville, and Robben Ford.
Perhaps Tal's remarkable
musical gift is best summed up by Jeff Beck, who enthused, "What can I
say about Tal Wilkenfeld? How does one describe an astonishing talent?
The answer is, you don't. You listen, and watch, as 45,000 people did
in Chicago at the Crossroads Festival 2007. I have witnessed special
moments in my time, but to see all those "died-in-the-wool'" blues
fanatics and guitar freaks go berzzzzerk half way through her solo left
me emotional, and that is an understatement. The word proud is barely
adequate".
'Coachella's' clear skies welcomed in Day 3 of the Festival with a
variety of namesake and indie performers who were notable for their
unique performances. From afar the standouts were both 'Public Enemy'
and 'The Cure'.
'Public
Enemy' brought their passionate, funky and trusting hip-hop
performances (with 'moshpit sailing' into the audience on three
occasions with microphone attached in-hand) to a climax after
rolling-off the long years of black-struggle through their songs like
like 'Race' as well as commenting on the violence and paranoia that
they too ...were the target of government agencies tapping their
phones, through to the current rise and ascent of Barack Obama. I can
really see where 'Rage Against The Machine' gets much of it's stylistic
inspiration.
Their
frontmen reiterated their political beliefs to the audience in chants
that you gotta "...Pay attention! That's most affordable thing ...that
you can do!" and completed their set with 'Don't Trust the Power'.
'The
Cure' ...looking like a hybrid of 50's rockers in bike boots and
goth-archetypes in high-heeled black & white dancing shoes,
produced a very long and sustained set. It left the largest audience
I've seen over the three days, ...totally immersed in their wailing and
sonourous sounds and in my case, desperately trying to grasp those
muffled lyrics. Unlike the past two nights with the final sets by 'Paul
McCartney' and 'The Killers', with their visually stunning displays of
glamour and pyrotechnics, 'The Cure' gave everything-they-could in
spirited musicanship. And as a comparison, we were ...all 'a little
richer for the experience'.
For
the die-hard fans 'The Cure's' set lasted 2 1/2 hours, in duration.
Notably, 'The Cure' continued to play till 12.43am through their
monitor speakers despite the Coachella's stage team having 'pulled the
plug' ...after midnight. Actually, the planned set list for 'Coachella'
2009 (see follow-on posting) would have been ...3 1/2 hrs in it's
entirety! The set list was a cornucopia of ' The Cure's' musically
diverse landscapes, through their timely legacies. There were echoes of
Blues, Rock, Joy Divison and New Order, with some 'heavy-metallicly'
lustred songs that could have been authored by another generation
...but none slipped out of 'The Cure's' own personally rich, dark and
sombre tones.
Not
being totally familar with 'The Cure's' lengthy musical history I
acknowledge that I was 'grasping-at-straws' to to name each track,
despite having a 'pre-release' set list, which I'll post in a
follow-on. Notably, I really did like their attention to musical
details and their hallmark cross-blending of their trademark rhythmic
backbeats, pounding cymbals, haunting bass riffs, shreiking licks and
'etched-in-the-ear' lead riffs ...all definitely left me spell-bound.
Their
equipment choices alone, said a lot about their individul musical taste
and personalities, hence I'll feature this is a future post. So watch
this space ...there is more to come!
I'll seek out some matching
music and post further animated photo-shots from the 'Coachella'
webcast by AT&T (who have to be commended for bravely embarking on
this global transmssion on the web) to add to the high-res graphics,
that are on these pages.
If you've enjoyed the visual posts from 'Coachella 2009' please let me know at... grosserr@gmail.com.
This article is more sympathetic to the spirit of the 'Coachella 2009
Festival' than any of the mainstream news and blog articles ...I've
reviewed. :-R
"You can believe in this or not, consider it flowery hokum or fervent faith –- doesn’t matter.
Either
way you’d really need to have spent time enough out here in the desert
before you can draw your own conclusion — determine if you, too, feel
something deeper than you can explain.
But I’ll say it again: There is often reason to believe that spirits are sometimes summoned to Coachella.
Kurt Cobain’s ghost has been roused more than a few times. Jimi Hendrix turns up whenever Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante cuts loose. Joy Division’s iconic suicide Ian Curtis –- large parts of the 2005 festival, especially sets from Bauhaus and New Order, felt like a prolonged séance to reach him.
We had some more visitors Friday night, during the late-night end of this beautiful 20th day of Coachella, also the opening of the three-day 10th annual music and arts gathering in Indio.
Very esteemed visitors, actually … John Lennon, outspoken as ever … George Harrison, at his most romantic … and, hovering most angelically, incandescently, was Linda McCartney, the wonderful activist and photographer, on this the 11th anniversary of her passing from breast cancer.
Their
souls –- their accomplishments, their significance, their lasting
inspiration –- were all delivered to the Empire Polo Field via an
immensely moving, nearly three-hour performance from Paul McCartney.
The
memory of the first two giants we half-expect the Beatles’ bassist to
evoke. His tours this decade often have featured tributes to Lennon
(the longing and sadness of “Here Today”) and Harrison (a charming ukulele rendition of “Something”).
But at Coachella McCartney took his homages one step further. For Harrison’s loveliest song, which Macca dedicated to his widow Olivia (in attendance not only for this but son Dhani’s Saturday set under the moniker The Newno2),
Paul didn’t just stay precious on the uke -– halfway through he
returned to the proper version of “Something.” Adding a second round of
the bridge, he elicited one of the night’s biggest sing-alongs, tens of
thousands of people wailing “I don’t knoooow-oh-ho, I … don’t … know.”
For John, he cobbled together a terrific take on “A Day in the Life” that, when it tumbled out of its woke-up-got-out-of-bed bridge, shifted to Lennon’s chant “Give Peace a Chance.”
Reminding that he, too, was and is an idealistic (and more realistic)
dreamer, Paul smartly followed that with an inspired reading of “Let It Be.”
The
simplicity of the two statements side by side -– so wise, so inarguably
universal –- was fairly breathtaking. If the world could really adhere
to such basic tenets of peace and goodness, I’d stop being an agnostic.
Don’t
go getting the impression that Macca’s set was all somber and elegiac,
though. Hardly. Still spry, still winkingly cute — if also
mistake-prone this night, as he missed a cue on “Helter Skelter,” doubled up a line on “A Day in the Life,” flubbed a chord or two on “Blackbird”
— the most successful songwriter in the history of the English
language, soon to be 67, managed to dish out 35 songs in all by the
time 1 a.m. struck.
Two were from his optimistic new album Electric Arguments, issued under his pseudonym the Fireman. Several came from throughout his solo career, from a wow-inducing, fireworks-strewn “Live and Let Die” to the chugging rocker “Flaming Pie,” as well as almost all of Side 1 of 1973’s Band on the Run.
And then there were 20, count ’em, 20 Beatles classics.
“Drive My Car” and a jubilant “Got to Get You Into My Life” early on. “The Long and Winding Road”
and “Blackbird” in the middle, the former surprisingly touching thanks
to a backdrop of desert scenes that spoke to both Linda’s love of the
region (she passed away on McCartney’s ranch in Tucson) and longtime
Coachellans love-hate relationship with the location’s extremes.
Starting with “Back in the U.S.S.R.,”
however, came an hour-long-plus run of one great song after another:
“I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Paperback Writer,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Lady
Madonna,” “Helter Skelter,” “Get Back.” “Hey Jude,” of course, was every bit the massive field-wide chant you’d imagine it would be.
Yet it was the songs for Linda, steeped in love and affection, that really hit home the most.
“It’s
a very emotional night for all of us,” Paul noted before clearing the
lump in his throat to play a version of that most reviled song, “My Love,” that was so heart-wrenching it left tears in my eyes. The refrain of “Calico Skies” later in the set was also bittersweet: “I’ll hold you for as long as you like / I’ll hold you for the rest of my life.”
But there were happier moments as well: I suspect the inclusion of so much Band on the Run material – including remarkable versions of “Let Me Roll It” and “Mrs. Vanderbilt” –- has to do with the recording of that album being such a crazy yet memorable time for the couple.
“(Linda)
loved the desert,” McCartney added of his irreplaceable wife, “she
loved music, she loved rock ’n’ roll.” Later: “As I said, it’s an
emotional night –- but that’s good. That’s OK.”
At times, you
gotta admit, he seemed a little, well, odd. Daffy. Spacey, like when he
used to get high-high-high in the midday sun back in the ’70s. His
between-song banter, frankly, has gone from cute to kinda doddering,
sweet but silly.
And yet it very much seemed as though McCartney needed this performance –- this memorial, really. Now, perhaps we know why Coachella was really moved up a week this year –- to enable such a special set.
I
wanted him to have one of his best shows ever in Southern California.
Honestly, it’s still hard to know if he really achieved that. Until a
collective “awwww” fell over the crowd when he explained why Friday was
such an important occasion, you could sense some indifference to his
decidedly mainstream choices early in the set. Clearly Paul came with a
certain show in mind, and this hipper-than-everyone audience arrived
hoping for an entirely different one.
Ultimately,
however, they got what they wanted –- the Beatlemaniacs had to have
left satisfied –- and Sir Paul got to commemorate “The Lovely Linda” in
grand fashion. She must be smiling somewhere. Let’s hope she sticks
around for the rest of the fest. (Continued in Coachella ‘09: Leonard
Cohen sings ‘Hallelujah,’ Moz gets sickened.)"
Great highlight of the Day 2 afternoon of the funky energetic punk-reggae set from 'Michael Franti & Spearhead 'was Michael Franti bring two very young teens on stage with guitars to add to the solo riffs of one of the final songs.
'Beirut' with their tex-mex blend of east-European and mid-western bright and sometimes dirge-like sounds were an interesting and unique, surprise inclusion.
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