DOUBLE BREASTED - ISSUE 9

Small yet perfectly formed, Double Breasted once again demonstrates the art of quality fanzine production. Snappy articles on the current mod scene stretching from Edinburgh and London to New York and Berlin give issue nine a strong international flavour. The highlight though is an interview with Ronnie Jones who talks about fronting the Night-Timers and playing the likes of The Flamingo and The Marquee in the mid-60s.

I couldn’t help but chortle at one question posed to a 44-year old be suited fellow sat astride a lights and mirrored SX125: “Do you think there’s such a thing as a ‘Mod Life Crisis'?” Someone should write a book on that.

Double Breasted issue 9 is available now, priced £3. Find it on Facebook or MySpace.

SPOTIFY PICK #4: MONKEY PICKS OF 2010

Every man, woman and blog is doing their end of year “best of” list so here are my favourite 20 songs from 2010. They aren’t in order of preference but sequenced for your listening pleasure. Spotify users click on the link at the bottom.

Oh, if I had to pick only one "Heartbreaker" by Girls just edges "You Are Not Alone" by Mavis Staples. Roky Erickson wins best album for True Love Cast Out All Evil.

The Jim Jones Revue – High Horse
The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)
Frankie & The Heartstrings – Tender
Girls - Heartbreaker
Roky Erickson with Okkervil River – Ain’t Blues Too Sad
The Silver Factory – The Sunshines Over You
Race Horses – Cake
The Black Angels – Telephone
Demon’s Claws – At The Disco
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – No Place To Fall
The School – I Want You Back
Belle and Sebastian – Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
Mavis Staples – You Are Not Alone
Pete Molinari – Streetcar Named Desire
Paul Weller – Fast Car/Slow Traffic
Gil Scott-Heron – Running
The Coral – Two Faces
The Clientele – Minotaur
Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Say No To Love
Manic Street Preachers – Golden Platitudes

Click Here for Spotify Playlist: Monkey Picks of 2010

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BEAT SCENE - ISSUE 63

Beat Scene has a cover price of only £4 but each quarter plays havoc with my finances due to its coverage of the latest books by or about Beat Generation writers and associates.

Bill Morgan’s The Typewriter Is Holy (featured last week) is covered in detail including an interview with it’s writer; William Burroughs’s Queer has come out again including a new introduction by Oliver Harris who is also interviewed and along with his recent talk in Hackney compels me to buy it once more; John Clellon Holmes – author of the first published beat novel, Go – is subject of a new book by long standing biographers Ann and Sam Charters who – you guessed it – say their piece too, alongside a lengthy Holmes article by Jaap Van der Bent.

Loads of other stuff squeezed in its 64 advert-free pages.

Buy Beat Scene

FRANKIE & THE HEARTSTRINGS at the BETHNAL GREEN WORKING MEN'S CLUB

My finger is nowhere near the pulse of up and coming bands. My hand stays tucked in my pocket, nice and warm and cozy, only occasionally poking for life in the chilly outside world that left me behind over a decade ago when I hung up my “indie DJ” headphones.

But now and again a band cross my radar and catch my attention. Frankie & The Heartstrings are one. To start with, I like their name - it has a ring of Wigan Casino about it. I like they mention Mike Leigh’s Naked in one of their songs and watch Ken Loach films on their tour bus. I like their forthcoming LP is named after Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. I like they are from Sunderland, free from associations with the usual tired cities. All these things score heavily in my book without them even playing a note.

I’m conscious I’m twice the age of most of those here to see them. Predicting this would be the case I shaved before leaving the flat, removing the festive white whiskers from my stubbly chin. It took weeks off me. As I hover around the edges of the club I’m hoping the hip young scenesters think I’m the cool mysterious head of Pieface Records. Instead I bet those even seeing me think I’m the bass player’s – hopefully groovy - Dad. Maybe I could pass for the guitarist from a half remembered Brit Pop band? “I used to be in The Bluetones don’tcha know.” On second thoughts, “that’s my son up there”.

Up there, the Heartstrings and Frankie do their thing and do it well, mixing infectious twitchy pop with epic torch burners. Singer Frankie Francis adopts two stances: a camp spasticated dance that’s less Ian Curtis and more Freddie Garrity for the bouncy songs, and the pained furrowed face of the crystal meth woman for the wounded soul numbers. The later style is more impressive. Not the face but the thoughtful romanticism of “Fragile”, “Ungrateful” and the brass backed “I Want You Back” which elevate them above the latest Orange Juice obsessives. Edwyn Collins’s son is manning the t-shirt stall, which makes perfect sense. It’s all good yet falls short of being exceptional or offering anything unique or inspiring – they’re simply a decent pop band. Nowt wrong with that, and one or two "make it" for a brief moment, but I’m not going to sign them to Pieface. Without a huge investment I can’t see where I’d get my money back (although having Steve Lamacq, Simon Price and Ryan Jarman among the hundred people in attendance on a freezing Monday night suggests they’re being backed by someone). Even megabucks Peter Jones got his fingers burned with Hamfister on Dragons’ Den.

Fortunately for the Heartstrings they’re signed to Pop Sex Ltd/Wichita and don’t need my investment, so I’m out. I shall invest in their album though and play it through the spring when I’m doing the washing up and sing along, annoying Mrs. Monkey with my tuneless caterwauling and incorrect lyrics. I’ll spot them on Later With Jools Holland and go all sniffy because I saw them ages ago and they were better then. In July they’ll open for Pulp in Hyde Park and all us Heartstringers will claim them as our own. Then they’ll get forgotten about, eventually knocking out a second album that I’ll never listen to. Finally, before you know it, some old git is saying “I used to be in Frankie & The Heartstrings don’tcha know” and no one will be any the wiser.

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THE BLACK ANGELS - TELEPHONE (2010)

One of my songs of the year. Taken from the long playing gramophone record Phosphene Dream.

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THE ROLLING STONES (1974)

Four Texas gigs from ’72 edited into one show/film with little fuss or razzmatazz: dark lighting, no props, no audience shots, little chit-chat, just the extended Stones band getting their rocks off to the best of Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street and Beggar’s Banquet.

A glittery eyed Stella Street Mick pouts and preens with one hand on his hip and claps and clucks like a chicken. Snaggle-toothed and panda-haired Keef throws shapes, wears a mean pair of Cuban heels, and cackles that he’s “Happy”. No one pays Bill any mind. The Bobby Keys Soul Revue blows a new arse through “Brown Sugar” and “Bitch”. And Charlie propels them down a straight road allowing Mick Taylor to zigzag along it. I’m not one for guitar heroes but when Taylor lets fly – not with solos but with winding lead lines - in, for example, the often overlooked “All Down The Line” – it’s arguably the Stones at their absolute peak.

Ladies and Gentlemen had a fleeting cinema run in ‘74 but has stayed undercover for much of the time since. It’s no Gimme Shelter or Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus but with extras including a rehearsal of “Shake Your Hips”, “Tumbling Dice” and an improvised jam - playing together in a tight circle – plus Jagger interviews old and new, it’ll keep the royalties trickling in for a bit longer.

Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones is released on DVD by Eagle Vision.

THE TYPEWRITER IS HOLY by BILL MORGAN

The jacket of Bill Morgan’s book proudly boasts as being “The complete, uncensored history of the Beat Generation”, which asks two questions: can any biography be considered complete and if this is uncensored, what has previously been censored?

Morgan pulls off an impressive feat of editing the lives of its key protagonists: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac, plus their associates, into just 250 pages that zip by. He manages to combine their overlapping lives with conciseness yet provides clarity lacking in similar works, not shying away from Allen’s orgies, Bill’s drug use or Jack’s drinking.

Morgan has studied the Beats for over forty years and that knowledge shows itself in some of the extra detail and correcting of previous misinformation. For example, the killing of their friend David Kammerer: I always thought he was stabbed to death yet he died only after his body was dumped in the Hudson River. Also the death of Neal Cassady’s girlfriend Natalie Jackson after slashing her wrists and jumping off a building is given extra background detail. Cassady, as ever, doesn’t come across in a good light.

The Typewriter Is Holy focuses on their topsy-turvy lives, from the 1940s to the end of the 60s, rather than their works, and as with the stories above can be read as a stand-alone introduction into what can seem a confusing myriad of characters. It’s as complete and uncensored as you’ll need to start picking through the addictive Beat universe.

The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation by Bill Morgan is published by Free Press, priced $28.