The video for U2’s ‘Window in the Skies’ is a montage of vintage clips, cleverly edited so that veritable icons like Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, The Clash and Johnny Cash appear to be singing the words. Cheeky maybe, but take one listen to ‘U218 Singles’ and it’s easy to hear why these four Irishmen have joined that pantheon of rock royalty.
“Gimme a martini,” demands a flustered James Bond.
“Shaken or stirred?” asks the barman.
“Do I look like I care?” Bond snaps back.
It’s hardly what we’ve come to expect from the debonair super spy – but, then again, ‘Casino Royale’ is hardly what we’ve come to expect from the 007 franchise.
They appeared as if from nowhere (the cultural wasteland that is Las Vegas) to became the brightest young things of 2005. Their irrepressible songs that nicked the best of Duran Duran, New Order, Depeche Mode and vintage U2 became so ubiquitous that their lyrics “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” even infiltrated Robbie Willams’ Live8 set.
Some bands cope with such early success by repeating the formula, recording a difficult fuck you album to kill off the fan base, or just imploding. But these four boys from Sin City did the only thing they know how: go bigger. In every way.
It’s back. After battling for more than a decade to make even a halfway decent film, Woody Allen has stumbled across his talent again. And for the New Yorker who has made his career, and slowly undone it over the past ten years, with New York films about New York people, it was lurking in the most unlikely of places – London.
While Bob Geldof was convincing David Gilmour to regroup with the rest of Pink Floyd for Live 8, the guitarist played him the music he was working on. Geldof’s typically blunt response: take some speed, man.
Now, just about a year later, some of those songs appear on ‘On An Island’, an album as tranquil as the title — and Geldof’s appraisal — suggest. But like those classic blues albums that make ideal Sunday morning listening, this 10-track collection is anything but bland, forgettable background muzak. Being quieter and more personal than anything in the Pink Floyd canon only makes it more arresting than such mass consumption bombast as ‘Another Brick In The Wall’.
We’re standing on a beach; fossilised sand dunes towering to the left, the clear water of the Indian Ocean lapping gently on our right. Looking ahead, there’s nothing but pristine white sand and the distant rocky outcrop of Gericke’s Point rising from the ocean spray.
“This,” says Mark Dixon, stretching out his arms, “is my office. And I love it.” Spend just an hour with Dixon and you’ll know that ‘love’ is something of a euphemism, and that the Garden Route is more playground than office.
“Pain and suffering in various tempos” declares the sleeve of ‘Playing the Angel’ proudly. Business as usual then for the boys from Depeche Mode? A handful of critics seem to think so, having derided the band’s first album in four years as “the same old stuff with some new bleeps and blops”. But they’re wrong.
Yes, it does draw musical inspiration from their landmark albums ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs of Faith and Devotion’ — and the lyrics are preoccupied with sex and religion, as always — but the trio’s latest offering is no cash-in nostalgia trip.
“Qatar,” says the Lonely Planet guide, “is best known for being unknown.” It’s a small consolation – I do feel slightly less like a geographically clueless American – but it doesn’t shake the sense I’m heading into the great unknown.
So I do some more reading. It’s small – a tiny peninsula (160 kilometres from north to south). It’s in the Middle East – on the Arabian Peninsula; crammed between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It’s hot – average summer temperatures of between 38 and 42. It’s got a real rags-to-riches story – once a rough backwater eking out an existence in the pearl and fishing industries, the discovery of oil and gas have made it ridiculously wealthy.
There’s more to London than a giant clock, that bridge from the nursery rhyme, the Queen’s humble abode and a few famous churches. Home of the 2012 Olympics, London is one of the world’s most cutting-edge cities with a host of lesser-known attractions that are a great reflection of the city’s present – and future – rather than its illustrious, but very well-trodden, past.
Hard to believe, but a band with a saxophonist and violin player in its lineup, a band that plays a hybrid of funk, bluegrass, jazz and world music (usually in the same song) is the biggest rock band in the USA. Their guitars aren’t even electric for chrissakes.
But listen to the live bonus disc on ‘Stand Up’, the Dave Matthews Band’s latest album, and you’ll understand why the quintet have sold some 10-million concert tickets. Their prolonged freeform jams, mentioned in the same breath as those of the Grateful Dead, ensure that every night punters are guaranteed one helluva show.
Nils van der Linden