Mahalia Jackson: Queen of Gospel

“When did I first begin to sing? You might as well ask me when did I first begin to walk and talk. In New Orleans where I lived as a child, I remember singing as I scrubbed the floor. It would make the work go easier.”

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the words of the undisputed Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson. You see, Mahalia came from a time and place where the physical abuse, abject poverty and racial tension sent you early to one of two places, to the grave or to the lord.

We all recognise that true soul can be the product of true hardships, true suffering. Well the Good Lord chose to lay that shit on thick with Little Mahalia Jackson. Born in to a three roomed household that sheltered her 13 strong family, her early life in early 1900’s New Orleans certainly provided her with enough inspiration to find any kind of solace she could. She developed bowed legs and her mother died when she was 5, leaving her at the mercy of her cat-o-nine tails wielding Aunt, who took the leather to her if she hadn’t sufficiently scrubbed their dilapidated dwelling spotless. The family was so poor that as a child, Mahalia would have to walk barefoot to school before she was pulled out by her aunt for a young life of domestic chores that would only end when the sun quit the southern skies. The solace that she finally found was in the house of God, where Mahalia opened her mouth to reveal a voice that legendary gospel songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey described as “...a voice that nobody ever had or ever will”.

At sweet sixteen, she made the well trodden migratory trip north to Chicago with only her voice and her faith to see her safe. When her body was returned to New Orleans in 1972, over 60,000 turned up to show their respects for the lady who had escaped poverty to become the first superstar of gospel music. Her impact on the world of Gospel Music was underscored by her influence on the world of Soul Music, and ultimately, Black American History. Her breakthrough song ‘Move On Up A Little Higher’ sold over 8 million copies, she mentored a young Aretha Franklin, she stood and sang at the side of Martin Luther King Jr’s during the 1963 ‘March On Washington’, and above all stood firm to her faith, refusing to sing secular music, regardless of the greater wealth that she would have been able to wade in to.

There’s no need to go deep in to the details of Mahalia Jackson’s career, I just wanted to highlight that from nothing, she became everything. Did I need to tell you, or should I have just posted this song? The voice, it holds it all.

Kasabian: Vlad The Impaler

Kasabian tend to divide opinion of those with fully operational hearing capabilities. The flimsy and floppy haired indie kids hate them because they remind them of the scary lads down the pub who stand by the bandit and drink pints of cider with Blue WKD chasers. The scary lads down the pub like them because they’re not pretentious indie kids, and they’re a good alternative to Oasis who, and lets be fair, took their eye off the ball years ago.

Regardless of what camp you’re in, you’ve got to give Kasabian their props for their video for ‘Vlad The Impaler’. Directed by the super talented Richard Ayoade (of the  Warp Films stable), we get Noel Fielding charging around the moors, driving a huge iron spike through the sternums of various unsuspecting damsels and dudes. It’s dark, it’s camp, there’s blood, hot chicks and a fine moustache.  It’s so awesome that I’ve seen it about 20 times without ever paying any intention to the song in the background. Anybody know if it’s any good?

Kasabian - Vlad the Impaler from Kasabian on Vimeo.

The Dead Kennedys ‘Pull My Strings’

It’s kind of hard for a band to ‘stick it to the man’ these days unless they’re content with playing in workingman’s clubs to Jethro fans for the rest of their lives. You’ll find it hard to sell out; pretty much because, in theses foul two thousands, you’re born sold out. The man, he is everywhere, everything. But let’s not throw ourselves in to the Sarlacc’s pit that is the multinational global hegemony debate, it’ll devour us all. Instead, come with me on a stroll back to 1980 San Francisco, where one of the greatest Hardcore punk bands of all time, The Dead Kennedys, are about to take the stage at the preposterous Bay Area Music Awards.

The Dead Kennedys were part of the youthful US Hardcore scene of the late 70’s/early 80’s, but stood apart from their peers due to their thrash-surf guitar, acerbic wit, Bukowski-drawl and satirical politico-baiting songs. Tracks like ‘California Über Alles’, ‘Kill The Poor’, ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ and my personal childhood favourite ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ were phenomenal slabs of brutalised sarcasm that would stoke the ire of the Regan Right Wing and attract the blind violence of the ‘Bombs and Jesus’ crowd for the remainder of their days.

But in 1980, the DK’s were still very much embryonic, with one underground hit to their name, the superb ‘California Über Alles’. It was the underground success of this track that brought the band to the attention of the Bay Area Music Awards’ (or Brammies, apparently) organisers, who wanted to include a ‘New Wave’ band on the bill to add some credibility to the show. When the Kennedys got wind of this, they decided that they would write a new song to play in place of the requested ‘California Über Alles’.

So, taking up their instruments in front of an auditorium packed with industry bigwigs, and decked out in white shirts with black ‘S’s embossed on the front in spray paint, they thundered out the intro to ‘California..’, before collapsing the song, swinging black ties from around their backs to create $ signs on their chests, and breaking in to one of the finest guerrilla attacks on the corporate music culture (and The Knack!) ever committed to tape. Luckily, someone was recording this one off performance. Listen below and sing along to the lyrics HERE

Brit Soul Rebels

As we waved goodbye to another year, the first new month of 2010 was dominated by lists and reviews, charts of the year and not-so-bold predictions for the oncoming 12 months. It’s been universally trumpeted that 09 was the year Lady GaGa broke open a coasting international popscene; Beyonce cemented herself as an unparalleled global superstar and Rhianna stepped out from behind Chris Brown’s strong Pimp Hand to become a hybrid of the latter and the former.

But on the UK Top 40, a more organic movement has started to emerge, one that’s unlikely to create any ripples across the pond just yet, but has performed powerfully domestically over the last year. A new wave of black British soul and R’n’B acts for the 21st century, led by a few old hands, have been chewing up the charts on Sunday afternoons, and not before time. Look back over the last 4 years of MOBO Nominations and try to tell me that apart from Dizzee Rascal, that there was anything exciting likely to emerge and capture the hearts and pocket money of a switched on but culturally starved British urban youth populace?

The popular British Music Press’ short-lived fascination with the (equal parts) exciting and terrifying Grime scene in 2003 cut a path for Dizzee Rascal to follow out of an underground and in to the public consciousness. His debut ‘Boy In Da Corner’, which featured just enough big pop promise amongst the bleak, stuttering beats and estate horror stories, took the Mercury Music Prize that September and found itself everywhere from kids bedrooms to the coffee tables of the bourgeoisie. By 2004 the NME had closed its doors on the British Grime scene, with only the Rascal, his mentor Wiley, Kano and Lethal Bizzle managing to escape, but finding themselves out in the wide world of the mainstream, these acts quickly acknowledged that they would need to diversify or die. Pop was the answer to some sort of chart longevity and it was that man Dizzee who really benefitted from a lighter and less aggressive lyrical and musical turnaround. Yeah, Wiley still releases at least one party banger a year (Rolex, Take That), but Kano’s making tunes for the government these days and Bizzle is nowhere to be found.

Fast forward to 2009 and The Guardian’s Jude Rogers calls Dizzee Rascal “Britain’s first black male superstar”, following a summer of storming festivals around the UK. I don’t agree on the “superstar” tag, but what Jude Rogers is struggling to get past the plum in her mouth is that Rascal has at last fully embraced pop music to the extent that his Hip-Pop is now safe enough for little girls in their bedrooms and your boss at the office party to dance to; and in no way is this a criticism.

It’s this embracing of pop that’s allowed other black urban artists to break their way in to the mainstream over the last year. Artists like Chipmunk and Tinchy Stryder had serious breakthrough albums in 2009, while producer/performer Taio Cruz continued to show his skills both on and behind the music. These three artists have scored 4 Number 1 singles between them in 09, alongside further Top 10 hits and strong showings for their albums. Rascal himself scooped 2 number 1 singles with the superb ‘Bonkers’ and ‘Holiday’. Add the success of X Factor discoveries JLS (Number 1 album, 2 x Number 1 singles) and Alexandra Burke (Number 1 Album and Number 1 Single) and Leona Lewis (Number 1 Album) and you’ve got a year where young black British R’n’B artists have spent a large portion of ‘09 bothering the big American imports at the summit of the Official UK Top 40.

Of course, the likes of Leona, Burke and JLS have achieved their success off the back of the marketing juggernaut that is the X Factor, but their talents as young black recording artists are undoubtable and regardless of marketing budgets, they have all found themselves at the forefront of a new movement in Black British Pop Music. It’s been a long-time coming.

The Knife:’ Tomorrow in a Year’ Streaming

Sweden’s finest electro-siblings The Knife have wrapped up the recording of their opera ‘Tomorrow in a Year’. The band have been working with Mt. Simms and Planningtorock on the opera, which has been produced for Danish dance crew Hotel Pro Forma. Based on Charles Darwin’s ‘On The Origin of Species’, the recordings are the first new work from The Knife since ‘06’s ‘Silent Shout’ album.

Yeah, I know you all wanted a proper new album from Karin and Olof, me too! But since they’ve been kind enough to stream it for free, let’s give them the respect that they’re due and soak it up. The album is playing below. If you want a hardcopy, it’s out on the 1st of March.

AC/DC: From Maximum Overdrive to Iron Man 2

Photo by Rennie Ellis Photography

Iron Man director John Favreau has announced that he loves AC/DC so much, he’s going to stock the whole of the Iron Man 2 soundtrack with tracks from their back catalogue. Yeah, there’ll also be a score released (by John Debney, for those interested), but the official soundtrack will be made up of 15 classic tracks featuring  ‘Back in Black’, ‘TNT, ‘Let There be Rock’ and ‘Highway to Hell’.

As AC/DC have always resisted issuing a best of album, some desperate journo’s out there are hailing this as their unofficial greatest hits. Those fools must be smoking the rock to think that any AC/DC best of would be issued without ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’ sitting in the tracklisting!

Some people think Favreau has lost his marbles, including me. But he’s not the first director to be so hung up on Australia’s greatest export that he’s decided to turn the whole soundtrack to his movie over to them.

Back in ’86, horror scribe Stephen King decided to try his hand at directing one of his own stories. The result was the awesome Maximum Overdrive, starring Emilio Estevez as the leader of a group of average Joe’s trapped in a truckstop cafe by fleet of murderous trucks sent wild by a mysterious green mist that envelopes the Earth for 24 hours.

The film is fantastic, featuring some superb machine vs. human battles including steamrollers, lawnmowers, vending machines and the leader of the fleet that terrorises the diner crew, the Happy Toyz Co. Truck, which has a giant Green Goblin mask fastened to the front grill.

King also hit upon the idea of shoe-horning his favourite band in to the project, with the subsequent soundtrack released as the AC/DC album ‘Who Made Who’.

But looking back, it really seemed to work. Probably because the 80’s was the decade of anything goes, but also because you believe that Stephen King really did want his favourite band to soundtrack his first movie. Favreau bringing them in from nowhere to soundtrack what is likely to become one of the biggest movie franchises’ in years?  There’s a deal been done somewhere alright. While it may line everybody’s pockets, it’s cheapened one of the greatest rock bands in history.

Don’t agree? Check out the album cover.

41st & Central: The So-Cal Black Panthers Let It All Out

41st & Central, a two part documentary series, follows the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party from its glorious Black Power beginnings through to its tragic demise. Despite the Party’s formation of free medical clinics and a successful breakfast program for children, the L.A. chapter was also known as the most violent Black political group in the United States. 41st & Central explores The Black Panther ethos, its conflict with the L.A.P.D. and the US Organization as well as the events that shaped the complicated and often contradictory legacy of the L.A. Panthers.

41st & Central contains interviews with former Black Panther Party members along with archival footage detailing the history of racism in Los Angeles, including the Watt’s uprising from the perspective of the participants who “engaged with the L.A.P.D.” 41st & Central is the most in-depth study ever of L.A. Chapter founder Alpretice “Bunchy Carter”, with the Party’s formation told by the original surviving members and an eyewitness account of Bunchy and John Huggins murder at U.C.L.A. in 1968. The film includes exclusive interviews with Black Panther Party leaders Geronimo Ji Jagga and Elaine Brown about their membership in the L.A. Chapter and the U.C.L.A. murders. Also featured are L.A. Panthers members Ericka Huggins, Roland & Ronald Freeman, Wayne Pharr, Jeffrey Everett, Long John Washington, Muhammad Mubarak, former L.A.P.D. Chief Bernard Parks, US Organization member Wesley Kabaila, U.C.L.A. Professor Scot Brown, and many others.