It’s become somewhat of a tradition at Real Gone to round up tunes we’ve enjoyed throughout the year and then share them in the hope of opening some new ears for independent bands. 2014 is no different – in fact, this year, we’ve got two samplers together!
This first instalment is a testament to the amount of great metal that’s passed through Real Gone Towers during 2014.
Ten tracks, fifty six minutes, riffs aplenty. Crank the volume and enjoy!
In 2010 Real Gone gave coverage to a debut album by Swedish power pop sensations, The Genuine Fakes. Like most sites, we found the album – although not perfect – had lots of lovable material and the band’s commercial potential was pretty big.
We heard little from them after that. Kool Kat Records issued a hard copy of ‘The Striped Album‘ (previously only a download) and included a bonus disc. Real Gone included a non-album track on our first full length sampler in December 2011. …And then nothing.
In the summer of 2012, math rock/alt-metal act Wot Gorilla? really impressed us with their very technical third release ‘Kebnekaise’.
Many live shows followed the release of the album and the band really built up a following. With this in mind, we expected to hear more from them – maybe hints that a new album was imminent by the end of 2014, given that a new track ‘Joints’ was posted on their Bandcamp page in July.
Sometimes it can be easy to feel like the corporate giants are repeatedly flooding the market with expensive repackages of classic albums, hugely expensive box sets and the like. Truth is, while we all have our “classic albums”, music fans still need something completely new to discover and thankfully, we now live in a world where there’s more music than ever before at our disposal. So much, in fact, that much of it is in danger of being overlooked. There are literally thousands of underground bands and hundreds of DIY labels and you often have to put in some hard yards to find them, but we live in very exciting musical times. On the eve of the their first anniversary, a few faces from King Pizza Records – one of the US’s most no-nonsense DIY labels –met with Real Gone to give us the skinny…and, man, they had an impressive amount of enthusiasm!
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Legendary keyboard player Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan passed away on 3rd December 2014 following a stroke. He was 69 years old.
Mac was a well loved musician throughout a career spanning several decades. He first came to prominence as a member of Small Faces, before becoming an integral member of the Rod Stewart fronted Faces. Later work saw Mac performing with The Bump Band, with Faces bandmate Ron Wood in The New Barbarians and as a full-time member of Billy Bragg’s backing band The Blokes.
Mac also lent his talents to many sessions including recordings by Frank Black and Izzy Stradlin.