Category Archives: Miscellaneous

DAVID BOWIE (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016)

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davidbowieFew figures were as influential within popular music as David Bowie. He not only knew how to pen distinctive songs, oft delivered with an even more distinctive vocal style, but he understood more than most that, to survive, constant reinvention was utterly necessary.

Pretty much no-one would have guessed that from David Jones’s first musical steps with R&B and his bands The King Bees and Lower Third, he would soon reinvent himself as a flippant music-hall act on his much overlooked ‘David Bowie’ debut of 1967. There’s even less there to suggest that the glam rock starman Ziggy Stardust’ was lurking around the corner preparing himself for world domination.

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Real Gone’s End of Year Round Up 2015

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We’ve reached the end of 2015. It hasn’t been as thrilling a year for new music as 2014 had been, but there has been plenty to entertain. We’re still waiting on the proposed deluxe edition of Prince & The Revolution’s classic ‘Purple Rain’ (we could be waiting a long time) and those promised UB40 deluxe editions. Another year has passed without the arrival of Real Gone favourite Mick Terry’s second album. Lots of people in the UK have been (over)-excited by Steven Wilson’s ‘Hand.Cannot.Erase.’, but most of what’s impressed us the most at Real Gone – as is so often the case – is often just a little more underground.

Here are our year’s top picks…

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Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015)

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“I don’t do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It’s too late for regrets. You’ve already done it, haven’t you? You’ve lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.”
– Lemmy

From his breakthrough with Hawkwind in the late 60s, Lemmy was a man who lived with little to no compromise, reinvented how the bass could be played and gave us music that would endure the ages. While his formative years with Hawkwind would shape him as a musician, it was with his own band Motörhead he would change the face of rock music. Black Sabbath had laid the foundations of metal with heavy monolithic riffs, but Lemmy bought speed and no-nonsense aggression, without which we would never have had any of the 80s thrash or hardcore metal that followed. In Lemmy’s vision, of course, it was all one thing: rock ‘n’ roll. He just played it faster and louder than his heroes and predecessors and set a new benchmark in the process.

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Five For Silver: Real Gone meets Daniel Tashian

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The Silver Seas released their third album, ‘Chateau Revenge!’ in 2010. It quickly became one of Real Gone’s favourite albums of that year…and indeed since. …And to think we’d discovered the album almost by accident, off the back of another release which was actually one of the worst things we’d been sent for review that year! The band’s retro pop talents did not go unnoticed by others either, since they were also championed by a couple of legendary figures from the world of UK radio. From then on, we kept a close eye on things happening in the Silver Seas camp and plans were made at the end of 2014 to catch up properly with their frontman Daniel Tashian. Busy schedules meant that the proposed interview did not happen straight away and, in fact, it would be almost a year until we could actually sit down and have Daniel spill the beans with regard to any future plans…but in December 2015, he joined Real Gone for a look back and a look forward to all things musical.

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Palm Trees & Picnics (A Real Gone Sampler)

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It’s been a proper mixed bag for music this year. In 2014, Real Gone had a definite metal bias, to the point where we actually managed to issue an album length sampler of purely metal based acts.

This year, there has been metal, but more of the best music coming our way has been even more of a power pop or indie variety. That, of course, is reflected in our sixth freebie.

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