With a new album on the horizon and classic frontman Joey Belladonna firmly back in the band, Anthrax seem pretty solid. Even with Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser substituting for guitarist Scott Ian (who is missing the band’s summer festival shows, as his wife is due to give birth), they sound pretty tight.
Their complete set for their performance as part of the ‘Big 4’ show in Ullevi, Sweden on July 3rd, 2011 can be seen below.
Alternative rock heroes Incubus played a storming set during their 55 minute appearance at the Hurricane Festival in Germany on Saturday June 18th. The set, prior to the release of ‘If Not Now, When?’, marks an early appearance of the track ‘In The Company of Wolves’.
Setlist:
Anna Molly
Are You In?
Nice To Know You
Drive
Pistola
Love Hurts
Circles
In The Company of Wolves
Punch Drunk
Quicksand
Wish You Were Here
Megalomaniac
Watch the complete performance by hitting the play button below!
The work of Bruce Springsteen seems almost omnipresent. Only yesterday whilst out shopping, I heard ‘Cover Me’ and ‘Dancing In The Dark’ playing in two different locations. Most of us know the hits. While Springsteen’s throaty growl can be seen as an acquired taste, the musical arrangements of his songs are meticulously crafted, thanks to his regular band of musicians – The E Street Band.
On Saturday 19th June 2011, that band lost, perhaps, it’s most important member. Saxophonist Clarence Clemons lost his life after suffering a stroke. His stroke followed surgery between 2010-2011 for two knee replacements between 2010-11. A strong man, he joked that he was now “almost totally bionic”.
A member of the band since 1973, first appearing on Springsteen’s often overlooked debut ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ’, Clarence’s sax contributions were often pivotal to the end results. Think about ‘Born To Run’ – that huge solo, with its hugely rousing, fiery delivery; it’s the number’s most notable thing after Springsteen’s story telling. Few, if any, musicians would have played the part with even half the gravitas that Clemons bought to it; the same goes for the almost cinematic sax work featured during the epic ‘Jungleland’. Better still, take 1978’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’. As an album, it’s a little light on brass contributions owing to a sometimes darker nature, but when Clemons is there, he’s spectacular, his horn cutting through the arrangements like a beacon in the fog.
The E Street Band will never be the same again.
Outside his work withthe E Street Band, Clemons was also highly prolific. In addition to a solo career – spanning five studio and two live albums – he also performed a number of Zucchero albums, as well as sessions for Aretha Franklin, Todd Rundgren, The Four Tops, Roy Orbison, Joe Cocker and many others. His last recorded work can be heard on Lady Gaga’s 2011 release ‘Born This Way’.
Goodbye big man. Bill and Ted were so right when they proclaimed you to be one of “the three most important people in the universe”.
June 2011
It’s Eurovision time again! With the 56th contest and Graham Norton’s enthusiastic commentary looming on the horizon, it seemed like a good time to celebrate Eurovision’s “unique brilliance” with a few clips. Here are Real Gone’s favourite ever moments.
In reverse order:
Odd Børre – Stress (Norway 1968)
With a brilliantly orchestrated arrangement, occasionally lapsing into sub-par Burt Bacharach-isms, this could have been superb. It’s still kind of enjoyable, though we’re not sure why…
Guildo Horn – Guildo Hat Euch Lieb (Germany 1998)
An ageing rocker treating Eurovision with the tongue-in-cheek approach it really deserves: singing a song about himself, served up with ridiculously brilliant theatrics. Of particular note are his attempts at embarrassing male members of the audience, some cowbells and an impressive leap on to a high platform in huge platform shoes. Fabulous.
Jahn Teigen – Mil Etter Mil (Norway 1978)
This is the gold standard of how not to do it. So bad, in fact, Norway scored the famous nul points for Teigen’s performance. It was the cause of their being associated with nul points for several years afterwards. Bizarrely though, Teigen was invited back to represent Norway in 1982, where he finished in 9th position.
The golden moment here is the huge wail at 1:30, which appears to be followed by similar over-the-top wailing and a cockney knees-up. Allegedly Jahn Teigen hated ‘Mil Etter Mil’ and sabotaged his own performance in protest. We’re not sure we believe him, since a clip of him singing the song during the pre-contest heats is only slightly more restrained at the end.
May 2011
Often seen to be a figure who ushered in punk feminism, Poly Styrene (aka Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) has lost her battle with cancer. She revealed she had been diagnosed and had been receiving treatment for her illness in February 2011.
Styrene will be best remembered for her work with X-Ray Spex, a band whose debut album ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ (released in 1978) is seen as one of the greatest albums to stem from the British punk movement. The album was preceded by a single, ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours’ (arguable the band’s best known track, although it was not included on the original album release). The album itself spawned three other singles – ‘Identity’, ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’ and ‘Germ Free Adolescents’, all of which were successful, breaking into the UK Top 40 singles chart. The band broke up prematurely, after Styrene suffered hallucinations on stage. She was originally misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, but was much later diagnosed as being bi-polar. The band reformed seventeen years later and released a second album, which was not a commercial success.
Outside of X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene stayed largely out of the spotlight, but released solo material sporadically, none of which ever gained the level of success achieved by X-Ray Spex. Her last work ‘Generation Indigo’ was released on March 28th 2011.
Poly Styrene remembered in video:
X-Ray Spex – Identity (promo video)
X-Ray Spex – Art-I-Ficial (Old Grey Whistle Test)
Oh Bondage! Up Yours! (Punk In London documentary)
Poly Styrene – Virtual Boyfriend (official promo video, 2011)
Poly Styrene talks about her 2011 album, Generation Indigo
April 2011