In 2010, London based singer-songwriter Mick Terry released ‘The Grown Ups’, a debut album with a personal quality. Its creation came as a surprise, since Terry wasn’t especially planning on recording an album after returning to music after a family-raising break. Since 2012, he’s been working on a follow-up. Real Gone caught up with him in January 2015 to find out if it’s almost finished…
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London’s Midnight Playlist are a four piece alternative pop-rock/pop-punk band, who bring a strong sense of good times and youthful spirit on their debut EP ‘Built To Break’. There’s a real energy present from the very beginning of the opening track: a door slams, voices chatter, an amplifier buzzes…and with that, the quartet burst into life. That opener ‘A Year In Hell’ mixes pop-punk guitar chords and an alternative rock spirit, like a DIY collision between early Sum 41 and Don Broco; it’s a performance on which drummer Atish really excels. Twin guitars chug and thrash in classic punk-pop style – even making room for a couple of lead flourishes – while lead vocalist Aaron cries each line with confidence, all the while happy to let his natural accent through, despite the attempts of a few vocal filters to make his voice sound more generic to the musical style. You’ll have heard this sort of thing a thousand times before, but there’s an energy and tightness here – even obvious despite the limited recording budget – that makes this tune very enjoyable all round.
US singer-songwriter and cult power pop performer Marshall Crenshaw will be performing at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, London on 20th November 2014. The gig marks his first performance in the UK for almost two decades.
The intimate live show ties in with the release of new material, beginning with an EP via Lojinx Records.
Full details – including a pre-order link for the EP and link to obtain tickets – are below.
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Winger have had more than their share of knockers in the past. In the early 90s they were blasted on an almost weekly basis by cartoon misfits Beavis & Butt-head; members of high profile rock bands weren’t any kinder with their childish jibes, while the music press were often too quick to write them off in the face of a changing musical tide. Such things surely would have hurt, but it doesn’t change the fact that the first three Winger albums are top-notch melodic rock affairs – albums that have aged better than those of some of their peers. Nor does it change the fact that Winger were – and still are – a superb live act.
In their original lifespan, the Dan Reed Network left the world three albums of superb funk rock. Poppy yet sophisticated, the band’s best work – though very of the period in which it was conceived – remains much loved by their cult of fans. During those seven years, the band also released a string of should’ve been hit singles, though rarely troubled the charts. Why DRN never really made it past cult status is a mystery – a multiracial act with a magazine-friendly image; backing from a major label; a tour with The Rolling Stones…surely they should’ve had the world on a plate. Most importantly, though, they had those songs: so accessible, so hooky and yet so overlooked. Following their split in 1993, frontman Dan Reed ventured into with acting, appearing in a Red Shoes Diaries production and a couple of other things (including a self-written movie named ‘ZigZag’, which may or may not have started life as a project called ‘The Ocean’) and also owned a nightclub. He dabbled with music, too, recording an album with Adrenaline Sky – including members of defunct funk-rock band Maggie’s Dream – and later released solo works, though nothing quite hit the heights of the Network’s peak.