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RETURN TO THE SOURCE

Hugo Race plays the Festival au Desert.
Photographer: Chris Brokaw

We’re in the backroom of the Djembe Bar, Bamako, Mali, over on the northern edge of town where the streetlights thin out and the shadows gather. A hip young audience hangs out here, tuned into the hard-edged urban sounds of extended jam sessions with rock instrumentation, rhythmically based on complex Malian syncopa¬tions. Relentless drum and bass dance beats laced with African electric guitar: soulful, electrified. The vocalists come and go, singing the praises of the big shots and beauties in the room, angling for a cadeau or reward in return.

These songs are delivered with murderous at¬titude through a PA system cranked deep into the distortion zone, and I’m digging it big-time. Tomorrow we’re flying out of Mali, but for now the night’s running hot. The club promoter, figur¬ing we were passing through from the Festival au Desert, has asked me in the French lingua franca if we’re a band.

Well, as a matter of fact …

The African musicians hand us their instruments with curious smiles – Chris Brokaw, the drum kit with its loose hardware and cymbals; Chris Eckman, the subsonic bass; me, a local Fender Strat copy, with the MC, wearing a jungle suit and a quizzical expression, holding the single battered microphone so I can sing into it, for there are no mic stands in this place. We segue from our ‘Still Running’ into a slow African blues and Brokaw switches to double time to keep the vibe up. The MC and I exchange looks and he takes the mic, singing in Bambara, the beginning of each syllable delivered like an icepick to the heart. Tall, thin men in sharp suits and women with beehives are chilling out on couches in the smoky air.

Our band is Dirtmusic, and this is where we belong.

Chris Eckman raised the dream of going to Mali while we were touring in central Europe. Later, he made it happen.
We arrive separately from Warsaw, New York and Melbourne and meet up in the transit lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport with our guitars and yellow fever certificates.

A mixed bag of African businessmen and Euro¬pean tourists and adventurers board the packed Air France flight to Bamako. I sit with a posse of mid¬dle-aged Spaniards heading off for an African safari, their stained denims, brandy breath and drooping moustaches vibing postcolonial decadence. A Raj-era Englishman has swapped seats with me so he can sit with his wife. She glances at my copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and turns to her partner.

‘Well, look,’ she says, ‘he’s reading On the Road – you read that once too, didn’t you, dear? Years ago?’

This is the only incoming flight tonight at Bamako airport and beyond the perimeter a gentle chaos mills around under huge palm trees. Masses of luggage are thrown higgledy-piggledy onto a rubber belt and X-rayed by a security guard, whose inter-mittent gaze is unlikely to unscramble the images seething across his screen. Two elderly porters pull my luggage and guitar away in the general melee of the arrivals hall, and I hang on akimbo lest the bags disappear into scenery.

In the end, it’s two teenagers – ‘Boss, donne-moi une travaille!’ – who stake their claim as we exit into the roiling humidity of a parking lot where four-wheel drives and taxis mill around in the dim chaos of bodies, vehicles and bags.

We climb into a LandCruiser and drive through the Bamako sprawl. Few Western style big city lights here. The tallest building is a Sofitel installed in a Stalinist cement high-rise, harking back to Africa’s ties with the Eastern bloc before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The pensione is on a flat red dirt road. Huge trees tower overhead, waxy leaved and succulent: palms, eucalypts. You sense the equator is near. The clustered minarets of a mosque watch over a vacant lot the size of a stadium; shanties proliferate across the packed-dirt terrain between hairdress¬ing kiosks; fruit stalls and wrecked automobiles stacked in sculptures of rusted iron. A galaxy of smells – spiced meat cooking on roadside grills, mixed-fuel exhausts, open drains and the pervasive smell of burning African grass, part perfume, part mosquito repellent and part narcotic.

On the nearby strip of bars and clubs, bootied-up girls and sharp-dressed guys throw back cocktails before bundling into taxis for clubs and parties un¬known. The night is hot and young, and I haven’t yet got a clear idea of what this vast alien city is about, although one thing rapidly becomes clearer as the night goes on: if Bamako ever sleeps, it’s only for a brief catnap between four and five in the morning. Families sit outside dim cement-box homes around a television, a Peugeot crawls by raising clouds of dust, a stray dog takes a dump in a puddle and the mosquitoes are zeroing in on my body heat. The dark is deep here after sundown; it’s too easy to get lost. I head back to the pensione and crawl under the mosquito net, but sound floods the room from several directions: the distant thud of street djembes, the saccharine soul of Lionel Richie from the karaoke club across the way and the orgiastic guitar solos of Santana from the bar below.

A delirium later, I’m packing my bags for the trip to Essakane. The call to prayer rises like an air-raid siren from the neighbourhood mosque and the last taxis roll down Rue 254 in the temporary calm before Bamako reanimates at first light.

Dawn is breaking over the serpentine oscillations of the Niger River, flashing off the surface in daz¬zling shards of raw light. We’re cruising overhead in a Mali Air DC10 and the terrain recalls the moon’s magnetic fields or the saltpan country of the Australian dead heart. The massive river cuts a winding circuit of oxbows and alluvial islands around the southern edge of the Sahara desert, bringing the water of life to the many peoples scat¬tered throughout the interior. It also signifies the last frontier before the high-alert terrorist zone into which Western governments strongly recommend their citizens refrain from travelling.

That is why the Festival au Desert is located out here. The dunes and scrub beyond the Niger were, through the 1990s, the frontline of a guer¬rilla civil war in one of the poorest countries in the world, fought between nomadic Tuareg desert tribes and the Mali government. The Festival au Desert was created as a meeting point for Tuareg people dispersed by war and by the confiscation of nomad lands into the camps along the Malian border, particularly in Mauritania and Algeria. It symbolises peace, unity and regeneration after crisis – a meeting of the tribes.

The desert beyond the oasis of this festival is, however, still volatile. East, across the border with Niger, French and multinational corporations are mining uranium. Even further east lies the Sudan and the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. In neighbouring Mauritania, the Lisbon–Dakar stockcar rally has this week been cancelled because of four French tourists executed by Islamofascists, and the shooting of three soldiers investigating three days later, while two French journalists are currently remanded in Niger after reporting abuses of the population and the environment in the mining zones operated by the Areva corporation.

On the ground at Timboctou, we negotiate the chaos of the arrivals hall as local guides search for their tour parties, and taxi drivers, their unmarked four-wheel drives parked outside with engines running, hustle for clients. I’d heard rumours of unlucky Europeans bailed up by their drivers in the wild dune country beyond Timboctou but we’re fortunate enough to meet Many Ansar, the charismatic festival director. He soon has us in the back of a four-wheel drive, with a member of the Malian musical collective Tartit riding shotgun in coloured robes and designer sunglasses.

In the arid, medieval desert city of Timboctou, bizarre columns and facades are silhouetted against the whitening sky, and women and children sell dried banana skins and fish scales on the shoulder of the packed-dirt road. A skinned pig drains from a meat-hook nearby the facade of an evangelist church mission, reminder of a not so distant past in which missionaries, slavers and mining companies ‘explored’ Africa and sent back home the wealth of millennia.

At the single red light we encounter traversing the city, an ancient woman extends one withered hand for foreign alms, her face cast in shadow by a veil.

Past graffitied mud brick walls and prehistoric mining derricks, onto a kind of gravel highway, red dirt spraying out from under the wheels. The vegetation is thinning out as our driver turns off at a hand-drawn sign reading ‘Essakane’. Tyre tracks lead away into the rough terrain and several other LandCruisers are nearby – it appears we’re forming a convoy for some cross-country scrambling.
Brokaw is talking to a mature-age American couple and the woman says, ‘Oh, you guys are a band? Maybe you heard of my son’s band – they’re called the Dandy Warhols?’

The temperature’s high by the time we enter the Saharan dune country for real. We’re fishtail¬ing all over the place on the loose white sand, and nearly sideswipe several trees as our driver whips the steering to stop the Toyota from rolling – a prospect I don’t want to consider, with our gear loosely strapped onto the utility tray. The trail has deteriorated to nothing, we’re idling in deep nowhere and the driver appears lost in thought. But our guide from Tartit has an intuitive sense of direction and she steers us around through the fields of sand right up to the stone gates that command the entrance to the site.

The Festival au Desert spreads out across the dunes in a labyrinth of white tents, distant stage scaffolding silhouetted against a cobalt-blue Saha¬ran sky. Continuing on foot, we meet the friendly French-speaking organisational crew and, after signing in and collecting our security passes, we relocate our vehicle and driver – bogged in loose sand a half kilometre away. The dry heat has risen to around 30 degrees by now and, as we carry our personal load of 40 kilos each across the waves of soft, fine sand, it begins to cook our brains. A young African in robes standing on an elevation a few metres away asks: ‘Puis vous aider?’

My response is automatic. ‘Mais oui!’

Our helper summons a few friends out of no¬where and we’re a team lugging under the noonday sun. The guy turns back and looks at Brokaw who’s hampered by guitars, then yells out in perfect Eng¬lish: ‘Hey you, hurry up!’

We find ourselves billeted facing the tent of a young Tuareg band called Tamikrest. There’s a US Vogue photoshoot taking place, using the extended Tamikrest tribe as a picturesque backdrop (and musical soundtrack) for a lithe American model clad in poverty chic. The Vogue team sets up and breaks down with lightning speed but the ten or twelve guys and girls of the Tamikrest group seem indifferent, with nomad desert cool.

I’m talking with some of the Tamikrest crew from their hometown of Kidal about a djembe player to guest with Dirtmusic tomorrow night. These mana¬gerial cats are organised and come prepared with business cards and, even despite my rusted French, we’re figuring stuff out at speed.

Brokaw grabs the dobro and wanders over to play cross-legged in the sand. All around there’s a sense of movement, expansion, as several thousand people converge on the campsite and the sun rapidly sinks behind a sine-wave horizon. Something’s going to happen here now.

Vieux Farka Touré, the son of Ali, is one of to¬night’s big-name acts. I walk with Baba, the band’s djembe player, who introduces me to the spread of the Festival au Desert after dark. We drift past the inner core of kiosks and administrative and artists’ tents and across the sands: people talking around campfires, conversations floating in the dark in Afri¬can, French and English, as well as Spanish, Italian, German and more. All around the tourist camps, the Tuaregs are riding in out of the desert on their rangy camels in groups of two or three, draped in robes and turbans with only their eyes showing and long, curved swords hanging by their sides.

The Tuareg camps spill further out across the wilderness of Essakane – women swathed in black robes, roaming children, woodfires, goats, teth¬ered camels, a profusion of cooking smells. Above the scattered trees, the stars begin to appear in a quantity I haven’t seen since the electrosmog-free Australian interior – but with the equatorial Afri¬can sky displaying the constellations in a different orientation. Orion is high over the dunes and, on its heels Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest in the sky, described thousands of years ago by the Malian Dogon people as a twin-sun solar system – a fact only recently confirmed by Western science’s high-powered astronomical observatories.

Accurate Do¬gon knowledge of the galaxy actually extends much further than this and in tribal performance Dogon drummers beat on spherical calabashes with metal¬lic fingers, gyrate and somersault masked in orbital dances to the rhythm of abstract mathematics. It gets me thinking about the origins of homo sapiens in east Africa, not so far from here. We’re near the source, and these are the stars they saw back in the beginning of human time – year zero …

I’m sitting near a fire when a Tuareg guy in his robes and sword sits down and strikes up a con¬versation. He says he’s far from a far-away town; I ask where, and he points over the dunes.

‘How do you navigate in the desert?’

‘Les étoiles’. He gestures at the stars then says, in English this time, ‘The seven sisters’, pointing at the Pleiades.
I try to explain how in Australia the constella¬tions are inverted, and he shakes his head and laughs and offers me a cigarette.

Several thousand people have gathered at the main stage. The temperature rapidly drops, and they pull on coats, scarves and headwear against the cold. A thin wedge of waxing crescent moon hangs low over the dunes, the full lunar orb silhouetted by an astral halo.

The sound in front of the speaker stacks is a little confused but, as you wander the sandbowl amphi¬theatre, it morphs and mutates. Eventually I find a sonic sweet-spot high on the rear sand dune about 700 metres from the stage. The view is great, too, even if the cold gets into your bones after midnight. Vendors stroll through the crowd carrying trays of thick, sweet Tuareg tea and selling Dunhill Reds, bottles of warm beer and soft drinks. The commu¬nal feeling is warm and high even during the early evening’s European acts. By the time the Africans take the stage the mood is electric.

Tamikrest, transformed under lights by their traditional Tuareg robes and turbans, lay down a set of amplified desert chants and drones that resonates off the cooling sands. You wouldn’t know their av¬erage age is around twenty. The regal Noura Mint Seymali fronts a traditional Mauritanian band in her robes and tiara; the long hypnotic tracks shifting tapestries for her extraordinary voice, as if Bessie Smith fronted a North African funk orchestra. Vieux Farka Touré et les amis d’Ali are road-honed sharp, executing a funk’n’roll of such power and precision it makes you reconsider what it means to be musically tight. The fact that Vieux is the son of Ali, and carrying on the tradition of Mali desert blues, assures him a spectacular reception from the crowd here at a festival closely identified with his legendary father.

The early start and long journey from Bamako, the desert’s crushing heat and the night’s clean chill, the excitement of these astonishing sights and sounds has worn me out: I hit the sack back in the Dirtmusic tent and drift away listening to the pounding of distant djembes and the oceanic hiss of campfire voices.

The first thing I saw was him standing in a darkened room, complaining to some shadowy figure about having his knees slapped.

I thought to myself, “That’s strange…”

Then I found this was backstage in a church! Well, I say “backstage”, it must have been the vestry, or something.

I thought, I’m going to have to delve a little deeper.

So, then I discovered that he’d been on holiday…in Portsmouth (!)…and decided to do a gig in a church- where he got his knees slapped…!

Well, I had to take this under consideration!

Then it came to me.

Freemasons.

Now, you see, in a  bid to resurrect his career, he obviously became attached to that most shady and shadowy of secret societies, the Freemasons!

Oh, now, I had to sit down amidst the unpleasant carvings of my imagination and ponder this.

“Why”, I asked myself, “are they shady? Why are they shadowy?”

“It’s because they like the shade”, I replied.

“But why do they…”, I started- and then it came to me!

Albinos.

That’s right- he’s become involved with that most dangerous of shady secret societies, the Albino Freemasons!

Well, now, it all started to come together. Gigs in religious buildings in coastal towns- typical modus operandi. Next will be, say, a synagogue in Bognor, then a mosque in Scarborough…and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a stone circle in some port somewhere.

Now, just imagine if you had a stone circle in your back garden (after all, gardens in seaside resorts can be very big), and your name was Stanley (highly likely), and you woke up one morning and looked out at it. And you might see that it was rather dusty, after an unusually dry summer, so you decided that you’d give it a rinse.

So, there you are, standing in the kitchen with a bucket and sponge, about to go up to your back door to clean your ring, when a pale hand comes tap, tap, tapping at your front door.

“Well, who can that be?”, you ask yourself. And you go and open the door, and there’s a pale face looking up at you.

“Guten morgen.”, the pale voice says. “Ve vould like to use your circle…for entertainment purposes.”

Well, what would you do?

Dimitris Antonopoulos spoke with The Charlatans and they told him many interesting things, as you can see below:

1/What should we really expect in Greece from such a great band like the Charlatans in the live show that approaches?

Hi! Well we are really looking forward to playing in Greece its been a very long time.Our preparation for every gig is pretty much the same, we try to put a set together that represents the way we are feeling and the way we feel we want to be represented at this moment in time. I expect this set in Greece to be a true representation of how we are feeling.

2/Your relationship with your audience is rare an special throughout all these years. A solid value. Tell me about it and the way this grows in time.

Well our audience has been patient with our moodiness and I mean that in the best possible way.the charlatans are quite contrary in our musical taste(s) so we like to jump from genre to genre in our heads, though in sound we always sound like us.

3/Your last album Who We Touch had many airplays on my radio show, and I think it is a mature and at the same time fresh album. Tell me a few words about this really good work.

It was fresh and strong about deranged love /relationship s

4/How are things in the UK today? Is there anything that sounds new?

My favourite new bands are factory floor, joseph coward, and I am very much looking forward to the new horrors record

5/While talking with Tim Burgess on my radio show about a year ago, he mentioned Kraftwerk as a band he really likes. In fact the question was Beatles or Kraftwerk? and he said today for sure Kraftkerk . Quite recently a great band from the 70s, the legendary Wire were in Athens for a live show. Which names from the British Punk, Post-punk scene do you really find important?

I absolutely love Wire, and had a very long interesting conversation with Graham Lewis last time they played rough trade east, in London.I would say that Wire are as relevent today as they ever were

6/How do you feel today about one of the most beautiful songs that was ever written? I am talking about ‘The only one i know’. What do you remember from it’s recording?

I remember us all arguing, laughing, arguing and laughing again….guess we were just passionate about the recording.

7/Are there any plans on a new album within this year? Or is it maybe too soon? What are your plans for the future?

There will be the beginnings of a new album this year think we are all just getting ideas together xx

8/If we had a time machine and just for one hour you could enter and travel to the past. Where would you like to go and why really?

I have to say growing up in the 80s in Manchester was pretty amazing I always remember being 15/16 in 82-83 sitting outside liquor stores in manc listening to the cure, new order, the clash drinking fizzy wine and cider and smiling at girls but perhaps growing up in NYC  in the 80’s may have been even better with the NO Wave scene and the paradise garage and madonna or London in the 60’s beatles stones pink Floyd etc

9/And for the end. 5 of your favourite albums..? For today at least..?( laughs?

I had to do 6 sorry  xxx hahaha
Jim o’rourke Eureka
Lambchop damaged
Ariel pink’s haunted graffiti before today
Arthur Russell the world of Arthur Russell
Laetitia sadier the trip
High llamas talahomi way

Thank you very much

Dimitris Antonopoulos

Very good. Always been a very professional band, and the new additions (Jennifer Denitto, drums, from Scarlet’s Well) and John Paul Moran (keyboards) work extremely well. Everything is very comfortable- serious, but fun.

I feel relaxed on stage…and much of what I’d forgotten is coming back to me. A bit like King Theoden, but with tighter trousers.

> 2 You are coming back to Greece for the third time few days before your performance in one of the greatest festivals, the Primavera Festival in Spain. How do you feel about this?

Well, for me, the most important thing is to play to fans, and make new ones. Obviously, a big gig is nice, but ultimately it doesn’t matter how big or small the gig is…

It’s very exciting to play Primavera, as it will be the first time TMS have ever played Spain- and of course, it’s a very famous festival. I hope that we can play other cities (Madrid, obviously) later.

With Piraeus…well, I love coming to Athens…

> 3 Your live concert in Sporting almost 30 years ago, is a very vivid memory for many people here…Do you remember the feeling of that night? The audience?

I don’t really remember too much…just that it was a big place! Festivals can be impersonal things. I do remember that when they picked us up from the airport, it was in a very flashy coach, and when they took us back, in was in a small dirty truck, ha-ha.

> 4 I have always wanted to ask you about your relationship with Lester Square, two talented musicians in the same band… Tell us about this relationship

It has been of mutual benefit, and recognised as such by both of us…we influenced each other in songwriting and guitar playing. Most importantly, we never fell out…so many early line-ups split up, and often the bands’ sound becomes less interesting as a result. Of course, I worked on Scarlet’s Well and other projects, but it never distracted from the special nature of TMS.

> 5 Even though we are in 2011, we see many groups of the Monochrome set generation like the Wire, the Fall, Gang Of Four, to release fantastic new albums! Do you consider getting in the studio for a new album? Is there any chance?

Oh, yes…a month after coming out of hospital, I wrote some songs, and I’ve just gone back to them now. We’ll look at them in the summer, and maybe record a new album at the end of the year.

> 6 If you could enter a time machine, to which Rock n Roll period would you like to go back to for 24 hours and why?

I’d like to go back to 1980, and tell myself not to leave my guitar in the boot of a car outside a Chinese restaurant (it was stolen).

I really don’t know what the best for music was…somewhere between early 60s and early 80s. But I don’t know if I want to actually experience those times again…

> 7 Do you agree that the sound of words is maybe more important than their meaning in a song? Have you really ever written something instinctively…something that does not appear to make sense but the words just got there in row?

Both are important, but the sound of words can carry many meanings…so there’s the fundamental difference between lyrics and poetry.

I often write instinctively, and make sense of what I’ve written afterwards. But, imagery is usually involved- it’s not just words. And the more words you know, the better your unconscious is at writing!

> 8 There are so many groups that were influenced by the sound of the Monochrome Set; names like the Smiths etc.What would you like to say to a new artist that begins now the journey in the music industry?

It’s going to be very, very difficult. There was only a short period of time, maybe the 70s, when bands could make a living while not being commercial- now it’s impossible. I feel very sad for young musicians now…they must have a hard life.

> 9 He’s Frank is the first single I ever bought…and for this it is my favorite..Few years ago Iggy Pop did a cover of it. How did you feel listening to your first single after all these years covered by Iggy?

Well, you know, Iggy Pop is only about 10 years older than me (although he looks 763 years older), so to young people, we’re both ancient. But, when TMS were starting Iggy was one of the two “giants” (with Lou Reed) that loomed over punk/new wave, and I could never have imagined that, many years later, I would play a part in feeding the poor old man.

> 10 Listening your appearance on the Marc Rilley’s radio show, recently in an incredible session, I can tell that the band sounds better than ever…What should we expect from you performing in Greece?

It’ll just keep getting better, slowly. Many little things to add and refine.

> 11 I was in the Roky Erickson show here in Athens, and it was one of the best shows I have ever attended. I know that you love the 13th Floor Elevators. Tell us a few words about your love for their music..

Oh, yes, they were a special band who went off on their own bizarre road. I had all their albums, and an original Easter Everywhere.

>12 Any special memory from the famous Peel Sessions with the Monochrome Set. How did you really feel?

Umm, I didn’t really feel anything…I mean; I just thought it was normal. A lot of bands did it…but the sessions were good to do, and gave us experience of a pro studio…and of course, it’s where we met Bob Sargeant, who produced Strange Boutique.

> 13 And for the end, you recently performed in the legendary ’100 Club’  in London and people really enjoyed it. How was it playing after all these years in such a historic club Bid?

Well, Scarlet’s Well already played there a few years ago…but it was the first time TMS was there. Mmm…it was ok…

Today Jez Kerr from the legendary A CERTAIN RATIO (and of course it’s our honour) writes exclusively for the column. Martin Hannett (one of the 4-5 leading producers of all time), Factory Records, Tony Wilson and youthful dreams drew souls forever … Dimitris Antonopoulos

My memories of  Tony and Factory Records are all fond memories. A Certain Ratio had played several gigs at Band on the wall, which were organized by ‘The Musicians Collective’. Many Manchester bands started in this way – Joy Division, Vini Reilly,The Fall, Manicured Noise, The Distractions,The Passage. At this point ACR didn’t have a drummer, the band consisted of Simon Topping and Peter Terrell the 2 original founders, and myself and Martin Moscrop.
Rob Gretton (Joy Divisions manager) saw us play there and asked us to play at the new ‘Factory’ night at the Russell club in Hulme, so that Tony could see us play. We played, and that night Tony asked us to do a single with the newly formed ‘Factory Records’.

After 6 months or so as a 4 piece, and after the single “All night Party/ The thin boys”  we wanted a drummer,and it was Tony that found Donald Johnson (the funkiest drummer).
This was now the line-up and Tony, along with Alan Erasmus, were managing the band.

The albums, ‘The Graveyard graveyard and the ballroom’, ‘To Each…’, ‘Sextet’, ‘I’d like to see you again’, and ‘Force’ were all recorded for Factory.

I remember the excitement of recording our first single, (All night Party) produced by the gifted and talented Martin Hannet, and recorded at Cargo studios in Rochdale.  Martin made the two guitarist play their parts over and over and when they asked why he replied, ” i want you to play it faster, but slower..” Also great memories of the Factory offices at 86 Palatine road, where the musicians on factory physically made and put together the first ‘Factory Sampler’

It was Tony who really believed in the band, he used money which his mum had left him to finance our first trip to New York and the recording of our first Studio Album “To Each” in East Orange, New Jersey. Martin Hannet was producing the album and also doing our live sound at the gigs.

It was Tony who found the loft apartement in Tribeca, on Hudson street, through a friend of Robert de Niro’s, Chuck (who played Mori in ‘Goodfellas). We stayed on the first floor for a month, (De Niros place was on the top floor) while we recorded the album and did various gigs.

There is a film of our time there called Tribeca, made by Michael Shamberg. While we were filming and playing percussion in the loft, Harvey Keitel knocked on the door and told us to keep the noise down. It was in New York that we saw our first Samba bands and were heavily influenced by the power of percussion.

Tony really helped us as a band, without his influence we would have had a much less interesting early career. He is sadly missed.
Jez

Hawkwind live @ Gagarin 205 Live Music Space

7 May 2011

Would Monster Magnet or artists like Rob Zombie exist if the Spaced Out- progressive rockers the legendary Hawkwind did not exist?  Hawkwind were formed in 1969 by Dave Broke (leader, guitarist, vocalist to date).

Psychograndmammas the amazing dj team that for 10 years to date is making our Thursday nights interesting at Mo Better club will deliver a great pre-show set full of heavy rock sounds … ”After all it’s a satanic drug (and rock’n'roll) thing, you wouldn’t understand it….” More acts to be announced soon…fasten your seatbelts!

Tickets presale: Τicket House,  Metropolis, www.123merch.gr,  www.ticketarena.gr &  www.ticketpro.gr

]]> http://dimitrisantonopoulos.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/hawkwind-plus-psychograndmammas-live-7-may-2011/feed/ 0 dimitrisantonopoulos hawkwind 2011 a3 http://dimitrisantonopoulos.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/fm-to-web-nashville-story-by-dan-stuart/ http://dimitrisantonopoulos.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/fm-to-web-nashville-story-by-dan-stuart/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:33:57 +0000 Dimitris Antonopoulos http://dimitrisantonopoulos.wordpress.com/?p=1093 ]]>

Authentic Rock & Roll is Rock & Roll of the street, always full of stories. So today Dan Stuart (GREEN ON RED) lets us take a look behind the curtain….

Are you sure Hank;

The clichés were just too real.

Like rolling into Nashville on an empty tank. Clawing between the seats, not enough change to buy a gallon of gas.

We called the promoter who brought us a full can. He was a crazed looking fellow about thirty years old with long red hair and a Stetson. I liked him immediately. We followed him to the club which was a converted diner.

It all looked pretty right.

While we unloaded he played an ancient pinball machine over by the bar.

“Hank Williams fired up this baby.”
“No shit?”
“He’d play it for days high on speed.”
“Wasn’t he born with a tail?”
“Yeah, Spina Bonafides.”
“You mean Bifida.”
“Well he was a bonafide nut, that’s for sure.”

He asked if anyone wanted to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame and hands went up. I stayed behind to smoke a joint and take a nap on the scuzzy backstage couch. I awoke to a darkened club and the sound of metallic bangs and clanging bells. I went to take a look…

Hank’s pinball machine was all lit up and playing itself.

I wish I was lying.

My hair stood up as the fellas rambled in and hit all the lights. The promoterwandered over and took a look at me and the demonic machine.

“Happens all the time man, you wanna drink?”

He went behind the bar and grabbed several cans of Bud then poured a couple of shots of Beam. Chez got busy sorting through take out containers from the local cafe: catfish, dirty rice and whatnot. Strings got changed, amps checked, the usual shit. The promoter downed his shot and sighed.

“I’m as bad as Hank, crazy for me to drink with my colonic crumbs and all.”

“C’mon, pour another one.”
“This town turns fuck-ups into us all… why couldn’t I’ve been born in Memphis?”
“I thought you two hated each other… like LA and Frisco?”
“No they hates us but we love Elvis and just want to dance, that’s the God’s honest
truth.”

What did that blues harp player say back in Memphis?

I’d rather have a sister in a brothel than a brother in Nashville…

This Saturday on RockZone at Kanaliena.gr |90.4 FM  at 20:00-22:00 (Athens Local Time)

I have the pleasure to host an interview of Mr Will Sergeant (founding member and guitarist) just few days before their live concert in Athens.

Listen to the interview below:

Part I

Part II 

Part III 

Click here for live radio streaming

An American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, a soundtrack composer for film and television, and an international recording artist with over a dozen solo albums to date.
He has been described as “one of the best and most original guitarists in America” (David Fricke, 16 Nov. 2006, Rolling Stone); a “legendary leftfield guitarist” (The Guardian, 24 Dec. 2005); “the thinking man’s guitar hero” (The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2007), “perhaps the greatest living electric guitar player” (Daniel Levitin) and one of “the most innovative and challenging guitarists playing today” (fRoots, March 2002).

GARY LUCAS & GODS AND MONSTERS – THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY

Is the brand new album and it is just brilliant!

Listen to the interview here:

Tune in on RockZone at Kanaliena.gr | 90.4 FM (22:00-23:00 Athens local time)

Click here for live radio streaming

Also read:

FM to Web: Lou Reed,Nick Cave,Jeff Buckley,Captain Beefheart by Gary Lucas