lefreeakblog

Around this time last year I started a small piece to mark the 25th anniversary of Billy Mackenzie's death, the former lead singer of the Scottish post-punk band The Associates who died on 22nd January 1997, leaving us with short but stunning legacy, all wrapped around an incredible four-and-a-half octave voice. I regrettably never published it at the time and with the sad news a few weeks ago of the passing of Alan Rankine, Mackenzie's co-founding Associate colleague I thought I best to revisit it and finish it off (so here we are :D). My reaction to the news reminded me of the kind of group The Associates were in their first incarnation - uncompromisingly single minded, esoteric and alas quite brief; a brilliant 3 albums - if you include their singles compilation Fourth Drawer Down - in a little over 22 months. And all the music written and recorded by Alan Rankine, every last instrument, solo, electronic synth and guitar riff.  A quick glance online backs up their cult stat...

  IT was the year that a pandemic allowed geeks the chance to shine. Amidst a severe restriction on live performance,  super-fans were busy viewing, cutting and editing together film of their favourite artists and readying them for blockbuster release, funded  by an ever increasing demand and driven by competition from the streaming wars.       With time to kill, we were allowed to indulge ourselves in a number of gems, with Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back" , Questlove's  "Summer of Soul"  both on Disney+ and Todd Haynes'  "The Velvet Underground"  on Apple TV+ all released to great acclaim.       Each of these documentaries covered the late sixties, part of the analogue era when very little film was actually recorded, in sharp contrast to today where it is so ubiquitous. And it looks we will see more and more as super-fans endeavour to unearth rare footage and bring fans young and old upto date with classic ar...

            A few months ago it was the 40th anniversary of Joy Division's seminal post-punk masterpiece Closer and then last month the 30th anniversary of New Order's great World Cup Italia '90 song World In Motion, which got me thinking....has there ever been a better 10 year musical arc than this? In 1980, on the eve of the release of  Closer,  Joy Division's second and final album on 18th July 1980,  it would have been inconceivable that the same band - for that is what Joy Division and New Order effectively are - would have written a bright catchy pop song with a house beat and a rap less than a decade later but that is exactly what happened when  World In Motion, was released on 21st May 1990:        Closer is just about as far away from World In Motion as you can get, a melancholic and powerful thought-provoking album. It proved to be their swansong but of course they didn't know it at the time; nine gre...

Being in lockdown has given us an opportunity to explore the arts more and there has been a variety of things available for discernible listeners in music. We've had the One World: Together At Home concert, new album releases, new documentaries, various musicians playing online and #timstwitterlisteningparties. The Charlatans' lead singer Tim Burgess started hosting listening parties on Twitter whilst in self-isolation and they caught on:every day he picks an album and everyone listens together, with commentary from the chosen artist. What seems like quite a geeky exercise comes into its own in this current climate of self-isolation. So last Thursday I earmarked Oasis' third album  Be Here Now  as an ideal place to join in; how would it play 20 years later? As an event, it was really good fun and felt like a moment as thousands of people joined in. It reminds you of what listening to a whole album is like and also brings with it a sense of nostalgia, all great feeling...

It's four years yesterday since Prince Rogers Nelson, commonly known as Prince , passed away on 21st April 2016. Undoubtedly he was one of few true popular music icons of the last 40 years, who's creativity was unparalleled in modern music, the like of which we may never see again. The world including the Grammy's and such celebrity fans as Usher, Beck, John Legend and Questlove have been celebrating his music and his life and I'll be writing my own feature on his Purple Highness at some point, but for now let's enjoy the genius he left behind; I've put together two playlists on Spotify, one of Deep cuts and one of Party classics, with hit after hit after hit.  Enjoy: PRINCE Party playlist PRINCE deep cuts playlist