Sunday 21 May 2017

DON BRYANT - 'HOW DO I GET THERE?' (2017)


Here, straight outta Memphis, Tennessee, is Don Bryant with your Sunday sermon, ‘How Do I Get There?’

Don has cut a phenomenal amount of records – dating back to the late 50s with Willie Mitchell, to his soul sides for Hi Records in the 60s, before taking a backseat as a staff writer for the label in the 70s where his benefactors included Otis Clay and wife-to-be Ann Peebles.

This month, aged 75, Don has a new album, Don’t Give Up On Love, out on Fat Possum Records and it should rejuvenate his career in much the same way as fellow soul survivor William Bell's This I Where I Live did last year. It's an album in that bracket and that's praise.

Many thanks to congregation member @IanPople1 for bringing this home.

Monday 8 May 2017

THE TRUTH at the 100 CLUB, LONDON



With a face like a bowl of mixed fruit Dennis Greaves was few teenager’s idea of a pop star but in 1983 there he was, kicking balloons skyward on Top of the Pops and splashed across the pages of Smash Hits as The Truth infiltrated the charts with their first two singles, ‘Confusion (Hits Us Every Time)’ and ‘A Step In The Right Direction’.

In the summer of ‘83 The Truth played an under-16s matinee show at the Marquee on Wardour Street. It was the first gig I ever attended. Not only was it a great gig, with the band giving it everything they had even though they had a ‘grown up’ show to do after, but the way they mingled and signed autographs for us kids beforehand left a lasting impression.

Despite Greaves’ claim “You won’t find our audience wearing parkas or Jam shoes” that’s precisely what you would have found them wearing. With a following born from the cooling ashes of the mod revival or, as I like to think of it, the lit match of a new post-Jam modernist movement, The Truth found favour with a young fan base searching for a fresh band to pin to their lapels. Ill plead not guilty to the parka, guilty to the Jam shoes.

After that initial success, they unfortunately released the limp ‘No Stone Unturned’, deservedly a flop in ‘84. Dropped from their label, increasingly keen to distance themselves from anything mod, they lost their way and their audience. By the time debut album, Playground, was released in ’85 it was too little, too late. The production was flat, there was no spark, the songs sounded tired and the bright happy faces of their early days had given way to the dark, cold, miserable looking scowls that adorned an uninviting album sleeve. Things then got really shit but let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s go back to 1984 and the second gig I ever went to, The Truth at the 100 Club on the night they recorded their Five Live EP, with a new rhythm section and where, a mere 33 years later, the band returned at the weekend. It’s a risky business, this nostalgia. Some things are best left in the past, memories intact, untainted by retrospective analysis, but this was reaffirmed everything I felt as boy. I didn’t get everything right but The Truth were, then and now, superb.

Their live shows always far outshone their records and they’d lost none of it. Swirling, snappy, bobbing and weaving Brit-Soul played from the heart. I’d love a new band like this to exist now. The Truth didn’t studiously examine Motown records and attempt to recreate them in sterile, laboratory-like conditions; they had a crack at them – both through covers and originals – in their own style, infusing them with vibrancy and earthy, geezerish charm; their frequent call and response exchanges less Detroit church and more London terrace.

The set was strikingly similar to those old shows – ‘From The Heart’, ‘Exception of Love’, ‘Second Time Lucky’, ‘Nothing’s Too Good For My Baby’, ‘Is There A Solution’, with a few later additions such as ‘Playground’ and ‘Spread A Little Sunshine’ thrown in. Plus the hits of course. No new songs. Dennis Greaves and Mick Lister led from the front, trading harmonies, keeping energy levels high, keen on audience participation. ‘I’m In Tune’, ‘Ain’t Nothing But A Houseparty’, ‘I Just Can’t Seem To Stop’, and ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’ were always big frenzied favourites but the more measured ‘You Play With My Emotions’ was stunning. Perhaps because it wasn’t one to jump around to I’d never fully appreciated how good that song is, real depth, and Dennis’s vocals packing a mighty punch.

The audience were less exuberant than 30-something years ago but despite not leaping around in a seething mass of sweaty teenage boys I enjoyed this just as much as I did as a pizza-faced 15-year-old in Jam shoes.  

Sunday 7 May 2017

THE PRIMITIVES - NEW THRILLS EP (2017)


I once asked Paul Court what he did when not occupied with Primitives business. Paul’s a quiet man of few words anyway but he appeared particularly stumped by this question and I didn’t get a straight answer, more a feeling that he didn’t actually do anything if he could help it.

"I like to sit around” he sang tellingly on the Primitives ‘Working Isn’t Working’ from their 2014 Spin-O-Rama album, “I just want to sit doing nothing”.

It’s a theme the former Lazy recording artists continue on ‘I’ll Trust The Wind’ the storming lead track from their brand new 10-inch EP, New Thrills. ‘I think that I’ll just trust the wind, it might seem aimless but I’ll get there in the end”, sings Tracy Tracy before bursting into a typical buoyant Prims do-do-do-doo hook. Led by one of Paul’s sharpest razor guitar riffs and a thumping rhythm section ‘I’ll Trust The Wind’ will blow a gapping hole through many people’s Top 5 Primitives songs. It’s two and a half minutes of infectious fizzy, fuzzy fun. An instant classic.

'Squeak ‘n’ Squawk’ follows in the same manner and is sure to be a highlight in their live sets; Paul gets his usual quarter of lead vocal duties on the gently rocking ‘Oh Honey Sweet’; and ‘Same Stuff’ is Tracy back with a bang and a sugary twang.

Whatever Paul Court and the Primitives method of working, or not, it is working for me. This EP is as good as anything they’ve done. The only slight disappointment is this is an EP and not the first four songs on an album but who knows how long that would take so let’s not quibble about being gifted these ten minutes of new thrills.

New Thrills is out now on Elefant Records. The Primitives play the 229 Club, London on Friday 26 May 2017.