The UK’s most rocking outfit, Jim Jones revue, has announced a farewell tour before a planned October break-up. Seven years, three studio albums and a compilation of their singles will culminate in a sweep through France, Spain and Amsterdam before a lap of honour of the UK that winds up at The Forum in London on October 4.
Why? is anyone’s guess as the band isn’t going into detail. Here’s their last single “Where Da Money Go?”, from the 2012 album "Savage Grace", to see them out.
Ex-Stooge Jimmy Recca (picured at the left in the 1971 photo) continues his return to stages on Friday with a gig at Empire club (formerly JAXX) in Springfield, Virginia, with plans for more US touring and a European visit.
Talks are underway to team Recca with confrontational vocalist Texas Terri and her band in Germany later this year, and a US tour is in the works for October with an ex-member of The Doughboys.
To celebrate the release of their new album "Incantations" and their pending European tour, here's Bob Short's take on some songs the New Christs have played, taught us, reminded us of or otherwise desecrated. In a nice way.
The debut album “Party Girl” made it blatantly apparent that London soul-rockers The Dustaphonics had it all over their competition on a couple of fronts. Not only did they have a killer vocalist in San Franciscan expat Kay Elizabeth but a consummate engine room to drive the songs. Album Number Two finds them with a new singer and an interchangeable rhythm section.
So it’s goodbye from them. After 12 years of playing gin places, late-night dives and boltholes all around Australia, a US tour, two EPs and two albums, with one final lap of honour, Sydney's Hell City Glamours will be no more. “Deux” is the farewell long-player and it’s a pretty good way to go out.
This mob seem to come from Perth, a town which seems to live in several weird time warps all at once. The convict past and the glorious fuck-you-we’re-suddenly-rich '80s, and all the other sorts of odd pockets of Australiana you can imagine.
The Meat Puppets are an outfit I’ve been looking forward to seeing ever since I heard they were coming.
There are a few similarities with the last outfit I saw recently, The English Beat. Old band touring, only two original members, no set list. No encore because of curfew (Fowlers is right next to a huge block of student accommodation; you only rarely see the occasional student at Fowlers, and their sense of dislocation and disgust is visible).
But the gigs are very, very different, and not just because of the style of music.
It was an unusual night. First, I was comp’ed quite unexpectedly and had no time to do any research on the current state of play on The Beat (as I still think of them).
Slightly giddy after a long day concentrating old and fragile papers (don’t ask), I found myself examining many things in considerable detail.
People, f’rinstance. We all kind of make our own fantasy of what we’re really like, and try to live it. Sometimes someone comes along and, unbidden, flings open the French windows and lets a bit of air and light in.