Author: Nils van der Linden

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Interviews Music

Fatboy Slim is big on beats

“Dance music isn’t at its peak at the moment,” Norman Cook says, rather wistfully, from his Brighton beachfront home on the south of England.

“Five years ago it was breaking rules and turning people on who didn’t like dance music – rock bands wanted to get involved, and people were excited.”

“Since then we’ve kind of lost our momentum a little bit. When big beat came around in the ’90s it gave dance music a kick up the arse, with groups like Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers,” adds the man better known as Fatboy Slim.

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Interviews Music

Karen Zoid living in the present

“It was the best time in my life – I was so carefree,” remembers Karen Zoid of busking on Melville’s streets as a teenager. It certainly beat her grade 10 weekend job as a Mr Delivery call centre phone operator, earning R3.20 an hour towards an amplifier (“Nobody ever knows what they want, they always change their mind!”).

Out on the pavements she could perform to an audience, playing Rolling Stones tunes to 50-somethings, Smashing Pumpkins hits to students, sad Tracy Chapman ballads to loners.

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Music Reviews

James Blunt calls ‘All The Lost Souls’

Poor James, he’s had a tough life. At the posh Harrow School he was called a rude word that rhymes with “Blunt”. After training at Sandhurst (the very same academy that would later welcome Princes Willy and Harry) he was sent to keep the peace in Kosovo – virtually single-handedly – as every press release is sure to remind us. And even when the singing soldier’s debut album ‘Back To Bedlam’ was bought by 11 million people (allowing him to buy a villa in Ibiza), he was derided and ridiculed by millions more.

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Music Reviews

Bruce Springsteen creates ‘Magic’

There are two Bruce Springsteens. One, let’s call him Bombastic Bruce, went through 15 months and marathon 16-hour recording sessions to produce just eight overblown rock tracks. The other, Bare-Bones Bruce if you will, made some bitter, morose songs at home with just a guitar, harmonica and his old tape recorder before bunging them on an album as is.

Both Springsteens are hugely talented – ‘Born To Run’ and ‘Nebraska’ aren’t considered rock classics for nothing. But you only need two fingers to count the number of times they’ve actually met up to share a bottle of whisky. There was ‘The River’. And now there’s ‘Magic’.

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Interviews Music

Bernard Binns: an outsider looking in


Wannabe drummer. Englishman in Vereeniging. ’80s pop star. Marketing-communications company boss. And now, over 20 years after breaking onto the South African music scene with his band The Helicopters, Bernard Binns is back with his second solo album.

Recorded in England, where he now lives following a brief French sojourn, ‘Outside Looking In’ finds the musician in a reflective mood, his new songs recapturing the indie-pop sensibilities of his ’80s calling card ‘Mysteries and Jealousy’, while evoking the melancholy Englishness of Tears For Fears or The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie.

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Interviews Music

Vusi Mahlasela lights the way

“I wish politicians would realise that they can change the world if they work together like musicians collaborating, the world would be very different place,” sighs the man who has teamed up with the likes of Dave Matthews, Josh Groban and now Soweto Gospel Choir.

Vusi Mahlasela should know — for the past 30 years, he has embraced political and social messages that celebrate the importance of reaching out to others. Themes of conciliation and forgiveness run through his songs like the proverbial river through the desert.

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Music Reviews

Tori Amos forms the ‘American Doll Posse’

Twenty-three songs. Four alter-egos. One batty musician. But for all its multiple personalities, bizarre high-brow concepts, and sheer overkill, the new Tori Amos effort adds up to one of the singer-songwriter’s best.

Staying true to the concept album format she’s favoured recently — so far we’ve had cover songs performed by different female personae, a woman’s journey through America, and something about bees and hives — ‘American Doll Posse’ finds the wacky woman getting political through four characters each representing different traits of her character.

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Cars

Honda CR-V: smooth cruiser

2007 Honda CR-V

Refined. It’s a word you’d use to describe afternoon tea at the Mount Nelson, a performance by the London Philharmonic, or one of those overly groomed men on the cover of GQ. Despite the recent technological advances, it’s still not really a word you’d even use in the same sentence as “diesel engine”. And yet there’s no better way to sum up Honda’s newly arrived 2.2-litre i-CTDi mill doing duty in the CR-V.

Gently pushing memories of noisy tractors, smoky Golden Arrow buses and smelly generators out of your mind, the oil burner surreptitiously gets on with its job: powering the SUV in such a way that you almost glide along. A refined engine for a refined vehicle.

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Interviews Music

Springbok Nude Girls break the peace

They were hard to ignore. Their buzz-saw guitars and frenzied trumpeting kicked you between the legs. The cocky singer had a thing for loud halers and goggle sunglasses, like Bono used to wear. Lines like “I’ve got bubblegum on my boots today” were as difficult to get out of your head as an axe.

They arrived with a bang. But by the end of 2001 Springbok Nude Girls went out with a fizzle. The band broke up. Maybe. Various line-ups got back together for periodic “final” shows. Followed by more “final” shows.

What the hell was going on?

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Music Reviews

It’s ‘The Best Of What’s Around’

Over the course of six albums, Dave Matthews has achieved so much more than success. The South African born singer has proved that an average-looking, everyday-kinda guy can compete with the image obsessed waifs on the charts. He’s brought back the improvisational jam band after the demise of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. He’s introduced the world to Vusi Mahlasela. And he’s given the flute its rightful place on the top 40.

But while the mainstream popularity of Matthews’ folk-jazz-blues-rock might still be surprising to some, ‘The Best Of What’s Around’ reveals just why the Durban boy has hit it so big: he and his band have produced some genuinely good songs — musically ambitious but irresistibly appealing.

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