WNEW | Where Rock Lives

Radio 1's Live Lounge: Highly Recommended

Radio 1's Live Lounge, Volumes 1 and 2 are a collection of live acoustic tracks played on Jo Whiley’s Radio 1 show in the UK.

Most of the albums I highly recommend are 60s or 70s classics and certainly don’t contain covers of Gnarls Barkley or James Blunt tunes, but these recordings, released last October, are truly phenomenal, taking songs by popular artists and getting them covered by another popular artist, usually acoustically.

Among the highlights:

-The Kooks, Crazy (original by Gnarls Barkley)
-The Automatic, Gold Digger (original by Kanye West)
-Boy Kill Boy, Maneater (original by Nelly Furtado)
-James Blunt, If There's Any Justice (original by Lemar)
-Natasha Bedingfield, The Scientist (original by Coldplay)
-Sugababes, Living for the Weekend (original by HARD-Fi)
-Will Young, Hey Ya! (original by OutKast)
-Keane, With or Without You (original by U2)
-Franz Ferdinand, What You Waiting For? (original by Gwen Stefani)
-The Futureheads, Hounds Of Love (original by Kate Bush)
-Jamelia, Numb (original by Linkin Park)
-My Chemical Romance, Song 2 (original by Blur)
-Amy Winehouse, Valerie (original by The Zutons)
-Biffy Clyro, Umbrella (original by Rihanna)
-KT Tunstall, The Prayer (original by Bloc Party)
-The Pigeon Detectives, Girlfriend (original by Avril Lavigne)
-Avril Lavigne, The Scientist (original by Coldplay)
-Paolo Nutini, Rehab (original by Amy Winehouse)
-Arctic Monkeys, You Know I'm No Good (original by Amy Winehouse)

The BBC Sessions: Lesser Known Sounds From Rock Heroes

Overplayed Axis: Bold as Love or Led Zeppelin 4?

Kill someone if you have to hear Purple Haze or Stairway to Heaven one more time?

Try something new from the heroes of rock and roll with the little known BBC Sessions.

The BBC Sessions are a series of albums released from 1997-2000, consisting of never before released, but often bootlegged live tracks from these four giants of rock. They make for some pretty amazing listening!

The Led Zeppelin album was the first live set since The Song Remains the Same more than twenty years prior, consisting of music from three live events recorded for the BBC. It includes standards like Heartbreaker, Black Dog and the Immigrant Song but the most interesting tracks are those that had never before been heard. The full version of Robert Johnson's Travelling Riverside Blues is an example, freed from the constraints of The Lemon Song with the most excellent slide guitar. Eddie Cochran's Somethin' Else also features with a total of 24 tracks on the double album. This is almost as good as the other live set released after the break-up of Led Zep: No Quarter, Plant and Page Unledded. Check out the magical acoustic version of Kashmir on this album, complete with Plant's Bedouin pals. One of the most glorious 12 minutes of live music ever.

The Hendrix BBC Sessions includes recordings from Top of the Pops (a British TV show) and live radio. The legend Alexis Korner provides an introduction, there is Stevie Wonder on drums and a revelation, The Beatles' Day Tripper. You can also hear two tracks that formed part of Hendrix's early repertoire, Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor and Dylan's Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window. These are little known gems of Hendrix in his heyday.

There is also a Yardbirds album and a Who one.

The first has 26 tracks recorded between 1966-68 just after Clapton left the band with the line up including Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Again you hear all the standards but also covers of the Beach Boys, Dylan and Chuck Berry.

The Who album includes Shakin' All Over, Good Lovin' and Dancing in the Streets.

These albums provide a remarkable glimpse into what it might have been to hear these four incredible bands live: they are less produced than their other live albums, sound more spontaneous and bring new life into tracks we thought we had heard before.

These are highly recommended albums that deserve a place in any rock lovers collection.

Move Over Amy Winehouse

It’s pretty hard to explain, but in the past five years, England has been the source of plenty of white girls who sound like black girls. Not like Beyonce or Rihanna (that’s not real music) but complete masters, soul-blasters, like Anne Peebles, Billy Holiday or Aretha Franklin.

The first was Joss Stone, a young girl of 16 who belts out Supa Dupa Love like she was raised in the Harlem Church.

Amy Winehouse, the female Pete Doherty, captures the sound of Motown in a way that makes you wonder why it has never been done before.

White imitating black is, of course, at the heart of the development of rock and roll, not like the Black and White Minstrels of old, but as a mark of respect and desperation. Elvis and Jerry Lee bring the music of the fish-fry while John Mayall brings the blues.

Well, get ready for some new acts emerging from behind Amy Whitehouse’s beehive:

1. Adele Adkins (known as Adele), a chain-smoking, straight-talking Londoner with a voice to match making music from the 70s in 2008. She cites Etta James, Roberta Flack and Karen Dalton as her influences. Cockney beauty!

2. Aimee Duffy (known as Duffy) sounds like a blend of Lulu and Ronnie Spector, old-school soul and 60s pop. Apparently she learned to sing this way because she lived in the country, so far away from the record shops, in fact, that even at 15 she had not heard of Joy Division or the Smiths (in England that’s quite a feat). Her album Rockferry will be released April 5.

Laura Marling, another teen, while not sounding black punches way above her weight with a sound that reminds you that you haven’t listened to your Joni Mitchell albums in too long. Keeps her English accent and makes you wish you were still 18.

So PLEASE stop listening to that bloody Umbrella song.

The Kooks: The Best Band Ever

New Musical Express is a British magazine (sorry, the British music magazine) that tells the likely lads of England what bands to listen to, the best haircuts, the latest thing. Think Liam Gallagher’s haircut, thin 80s ties, shoegazing, the clothes worn by the Wombats...

The only problem with NME is that they see Mick Jagger and the Kinks around every corner in the hope that we can have a new British Invasion every month of the year. The harsh reality, however, is that few bands survive the hype and many go back to their normal lives as Liverpool plumbers, fish and chip shop attendants or bus conductors.

The real advantage of NME is that they serve as a critical test for British bands, a rite of passage! If you can survive the hype and make a second album it’s possible that they just might be right.

One band that has definitely survived this test is the Brighton band, The Kooks (others recent ones are Reverend and the Makers, Jack Panate).

Their name is actually taken from a David Bowie track of the same name, off 1971’s Hunky Dory. Bowie is certainly not their main influence, however, ("We're musical whores!") as they cite the Stones, Dylan and Chris de Burgh (what the?) as their influences and definitely capture the catchy side of 90s Britpop in their music.

They won best new act in the 2006 Q Awards, supported the Stones on their Bigger Bang Tour and played at Glastonbury in 2007. Their second album, Konk, will be released on April 14, 2008 (their first, Inside In/Inside Out sold 2 million). Konk is named after Ray Davies’ (The Kinks) studio in North London where the album was recorded.

If you want to be cool buy the latest album in NME.

If you just want great music, buy the Kooks!

Top 20 British Invasion Songs Ever

Britain has always had a massive influence on rock, from the Blues Explosion of John Mayall, Rory Gallagher, etc, to Punk, from the beginning of heavy metal (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin) to the New Wave of Heavy Metal in the early 80s (Saxon, Iron Maiden) and Brit-Pop in the 90s (Blur, Suede, Oasis)

It all started, however, with the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, pioneered by the Beatles triumphant arrival in New York in 1964 and their deafening appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

These events released an avalanche of artists selling back rock and roll to its homeland in a completely new form.

What would rock be now without the anti-Beatles, the Rolling Stones, without the Who (My Generation is arguably the first punk song and Tommy the first rock opera), without the Animal House sound of the Kinks, the lazy chaos of the Small faces, the cartoon antics of the Monkees, the Moody Blues, Them with Van Morrison... need I go on?

This onslaught created a paradigm shift in U.S. rock, turning folkies electric and serving as the bridge between 50s rock and roll and the tidal wave of 70s rock. No British Invasion = no Dylan at Newport!

Here is my list of the top twenty British Invasion tracks of all time:

1. Ticket to Ride - The Beatles
2. Get Off My Cloud - The Rolling Stones
3. What I Like About You - The Kinks
4. Ferry Across The Mersey - Gerry and the Pacemakers
5. My Generation - The Who
6. What’cha Gonna Do About It - The Small Faces
7. Wild Thing - The Troggs
8. She’s Not There - The Zombies
9. Shapes of Things - The Yardbirds 
10. Itchycoo Park - The Small Faces 
11. Pictures of Matchstick Men - Status Quo 
12. Catch the Wind - Donovan 
13. When You Walk into the Room - The Searchers 
14. Go Now - The Moody Blues 
15. Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo) - Manfred Mann's Earth Band 
16. We Gotta Get Out of This Place - Eric Burdon 
17. Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore) - The Walker Brothers 
18. Here Comes My Baby - The Tremeloes 
19. Love is All Around - The Troggs
20. Sunday Afternoon - The Kinks