A fitting tribute to the late John Peel, showcasing an impressive collection of diverse bands, all of whom featured on the legendary broadcaster’s show at some stage – a testament to the Radio 1 DJ’s tireless promotion of new music.
Described as a one man sonic assault from Detroit, Jawbone lives up to his hype on this fearsome two-pronged attack on the blues. Roger Miller and Johnny Cash respectively get a good going over but you expect that both would have approved, as did John Peel who once spent the majority of a Jack White interview telling him how great this guy was. Download it from www.loosemusic.com.
The songs of Laura Cantrell are steeped in the timeless values of American country rock. But Cantrell, a former Wall Street banker, is a thoroughly modern artist.
Radio Ulster’s Donna Legge ensures there’s no punching below the belt as she and two of the north’s other leading DJs - Maurice Jay and Johnny Hero - come together to discuss the local music scene, on-air rows with James Galway and prank calls to Sellafield.
Laura Cantrell – investment banker by day, respected nu-country DJ by. night – gained a dizzying reputation with her two previous albums. A degree in economics and, by country standards, suspiciously comfortable upbringing (no rags-to-riches back story here) proved little hindrance as she made the Americana a-list. Her debut, Not The Tremblin’ Kind, was judged an instant classic by the alt.country cognoscenti. John Peel declared it his favourite album of the last ten years.
In the new Hot Press, Peter Murphy picks his 20 highlights from the last 35 years of home-grown alternative culture (in strictly chronological order!). Take a look and then have your say on the indie moments that rocked in your lifetime...
A decade of
decadence down the line, and Limerick popsters the hitchers show no signs of going away. Frontman
niall quinn yes, really talks to Kevin Barry.
melys are more than just the latest Gorky's soundalikes or Super Furry Animals copyists to emerge from the wilds of Wales, according to an enthusiastic nick kelly.
Acclaimed music writer Simon Reynolds has revisited the post-punk era with a fascinating set of interview transcripts. He talks about prising choice quotes from Phil Oakey, David Byrne and, after a tense stand-off, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas - and explains why the internet has taken some of the fun out of music
John O’Neill of legendary northern rockers The Undertones talks to Colin Carberry about the creation of their most famous hits, becoming godfathers to a new generation of garage rock heroes, and why the band won’t be happy until they’ve written a multi-million selling album.
They dress as surgeons on stage and punctuate their records with spoken-word monologues. You could say indie electro oddballs Clinic are determined to do things their own way.
The Smiths: the band who helped re-write the book of guitar rock, the indie darlings who became mainstream legends, the dream of a group which gave the world the unique reality of Morrissey. guitarist Johnny Marr recalls the thrilling heyday of Manchester’s finest.
THE FRAMES RECEIVED a very special pat on the back last week when Brian Eno described their London Borderline gig as the best he’s been to for five years.
Having previously traded as shoe-gaze darlings The Catchers, Northern indie-poppers The Sleeping Years are back with a new record – and a rather handsome sleeve
English folk singer KATE RUSBY has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. She tells Colm O'Hare about sad songs, her Bon Jovi phase, and attracting praise from Blur s Graham Coxon
They redefined the parameters of contemporary music, creating weird, eerie and magnificent soundscapes. Now, as they prepare to release a career retrospective, Massive Attack talk about their choice of collaborators and why they agreed to soundtrack a porn movie.
THE UNDERTONES have played a series of triumphant gigs since reforming. GEORGE BYRNE met the Derry punk legends, now augmented by Today FM producer Paul McLoone on vocals
...And the kids just keep on comin’, as Hot Press investigates another assortment of motley crews with songs in their hearts and stars in their eyes, and concludes that the future is indeed so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades.
FLEXIHEAD, MEXICAN PETS, THE GLEE CLUB, IN MOTION
Formed in Cork in 1980, Microdisney brought the wildly different talents of two of the city by the Lee’s most legendary musical sons, Cathal Coughlan and Sean O’Hagan, together in the one band.
Almost unheralded, in "Raintown" Scotland's Deacon Blue have made one of the year's outstanding albums. Despite extensive critical kudos, however, the first two singles from the album - "Dignity" and "Loaded" - failed to make any inroads into the charts. A third single, the excellent "When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring)" looks as if it might enable Deacon Blue to prise open the door. Nevertheless the band must be perturbed at their relative lack of success to date.
After enjoying spectacular success in the early 1970’s, Gilbert O’Sullivan suddenly found his career brought to an involuntary halt by legal red tape that took five years to unravel. The Waterford singer–songwriter managed to survive those dark days, though, and is now back doing what he loves best – playing live and making records.
By rights that should make him a happy man, but, as Joe Jackson discovers when he locks horns with the former ‘Bisto Kid’, there are certain aspects of the past that are hard to reconcile.
Annie Nightingale on BBC Radio One is Dance Music s fixture for insomniac clubbers. But for the BBC s first-ever female DJ this is just the latest incarnation of a career that began, sort-of, by insulting John Lennon. ANDY DARLINGTON reads the book, sits in on the show, and even finds time for an interview.
This issue, Hot Press magazine comes with a stunning cover mount CD. Here’s your track by track guide to this exclusive collectors’ item, featuring the winners and headline acts from Murphy’s Live 2007. Click here to buy the mag and get your free CD!
You'd have thought that 12 consecutive top 40 hits would have earned them the key to the executive bathroom but, nope, before the ink was even dry on their Guinness Book Of Records entry, THE WEDDING PRESENT were shown the door by their record company. Unperturbed, everyone's favourite indie popsters found a new label, a new bass player and a new studio accomplice who's helped them produce their best album since the classic George Best. A slightly battered and bruised DAVE GEDGE gives a blow-by-blow account of the events to our ringside reporter STUART CLARK.
One of the most familiar faces and voices in Irish broadcasting, Dave Fanning has interviewed just about every rock and movie star worth knowing. But here Olaf Tyaransen goes behind the public image to unearth some of his more secret history: working with the disgraced “Captain” Cooke; nude interviewing with U2; getting ripped off by the nanny; and much more.
Jackie hayden meetsjournalist turned PR guru, Tony O Brien and speaks to him about his rock n roll adventures with the likes of U2, Michael Stipe and Bruce Springsteen.
Promoter Jim Aiken, who passed away recently, was a hugely important and universally admired figure in the Irish music scene. Here, leading industry representatives pay tribute. (free content)
As The White Stripes prepare to unleash another work of scuzz-bucket genius, frontman Jack White talks about his Catholic upbringing and explains why, as a teenager in blue collar Detroit, he fell hopelessly in love with the blues.
Or not without crediting your sources at any rate! Their first three Top Ten singles sampled Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Phil Oakey. Here modernist electric dance crossover ???? Utah Saints argue the morality - as well as the aesthetics - of sample-theft, explain its problems, name the guilty men, and then glimpse a vision of the future playing support to U2 in Portugal. Interview: Andy Darlington.
Edwyn Collins, late of Orange Juice and whose third solo album was recently released, gets all acidic about the state of the music business. Interview: Patrick Brennan.
1 guitar + 1 drum kit + 1 boy + 1 girl = The White Stripes. In other words, sweet, sweet noise meets the best brother and sister penned pop since The Carpenters. Eamon Sweeney meets Detroit's finest, who play Dublin Castle on Saturday, May 4th as part of the Heineken Green Energy Festival
And that s just the band! Galway s finest, The Stunning, take time out from sticking pins in themselves as their debut album Paradise In The Picturehouse finds itself perched atop the Irish charts to explain the secret of their success to an attentive Michael O Hara, who undergoes a road to Damascus experience en route.
If you want to make a demo that won't be used to blackmail you a few years down the road to fame and fortune, there are a few things you should know. Here, the experts tell Niall Crumlish what they are.
It's time to lock up your sons, daughters, pet poodle and drinks cabinet, as eight of Ireland's top bands descend on the venue, london, for the first major Hot Press-sponsored musical event of the year.
A flyover near the old Harland & Wolff shipyard was the starting point for a remarkable three months that has seen Franz Ferdinand challenging U2 and Coldplay for the title of ‘Biggest Band In The World'. Daredevil photographic exploits completed, Hot Press jumped on their tour bus and got the lowdown on Snoop, Bono, Kanye West, Natasha Bedingfield and nights of debauchery with the Scissor Sisters.
The fourth series of RTÉ Two's highly-acclaimed Other Voices, presented by John Kelly, was recorded over an extraordinary eight days during the madcap run-up to Christmas, in the thoroughly invigorating coastal environs of Dingle. Hot Press reporter Craig Fitzsimons was there to soak up the phantasmagoria, as some of the hottest talent from Ireland and abroad descended on the tranquil Kerry town to make heavenly music.
When Rory Gallagher hits the stage at this year's Macroom festival gig, it'll be his last appearance in Ireland, a year that has seen him forgo some of the spotlight he's enjoyed over the previous ten years in Britain and Ireland in particular.
Stuart Clark, whose middle name is “Intrepid”, recently spent 48 hours on tour with PET LAMB, grindpopcore merchants extraordinaire. His liver and tympanic membranes survived intact, and after a mere six weeks recuperation, he filed this report.
They’re a band who seem split in two – one half intent on making fairly average, mainstream American pop rock, the other half interested in what can best be described as, well, weird shit.
Long before boomtime Ireland there was boomtown Ireland, a country where the national symbol was not a tiger but a rat. to coincide with the release of the best of the boomtown rats, Bob Geldof looks back to the tepid Irish scene of the mid-’70s from which the rats emerged, biting, snarling and laughing, to take on the establishment, Britain and, almost, the world.
When Pulp released the obsessively carnal This Is Hardcore, it was widely touted that the band's main mover, Jarvis Cocker, had lost the plot entirely. But Pulp are back on the road now and Cocker is in fine form - as eloquent when talking about pornography and sex as he is reflecting on the vagaries of the press and his relationship with his father. Interview: peter Murphy.
When Pulp released the obsessively carnal This Is Hardcore, it was widely touted that the band's main mover, Jarvis Cocker, had lost the plot entirely. But Pulp are back on the road now and Cocker is in fine form - as eloquent when talking about pornography and sex as he is reflecting on the vagaries of the press and his relationship with his father. Interview: peter Murphy.
Exclusive: Kevin Shields, the missing presumed lost genius of Irish rock, re-emerges to tell the truth about sandbags and barbed wire, the making of Loveless, early Dublin days with Gavin Friday, Liam O Maonlai and U2, and his Bafta-winning work on Lost in Translation.
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
Interview: Peter Murphy
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
Interview: Peter Murphy
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
Interview: Peter Murphy
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
Interview: Peter Murphy
With the release of The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, it's obvious that someone's been rummaging around in the grim annals of ol' Nick's extraordinary back catalogue. But who?
Interview: Peter Murphy
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has granted a Classic Rock licence to Radio Nova 100, a new station which will be available in Dublin and the commuter belt.
It seems that supergroups just aren’t what they used to be. These days the term can apparently be used, albeit prefaced by the ‘indie’ clarification, for a band featuring two members of The Electric Soft Parade, someone from The Tenderfoot and Eamon Hamilton, the Canadian percussionist with British Sea Power and head honcho for the project. Blind Faith it ain’t.
Tonight, Stipe looks like The Riddler – pipe-cleaner thin, all legs and hips and frozen Ka-Pow poses; while around the eyes, a thick smudge of face paint completes the effect. For a forty-something, he sheds years like his lyric sheets.
Purveyors of some of the fattest riffs on planet rock, The Datsuns, on working with Led Zepplin’s John Paul Jones, dangerous video making and how to frighten the horses.
IT'S BEEN a bit grim up North since Ash became chart regulars. True, The Divine Comedy have made the top 30 a better, more decent place with their pop whimsy, but in terms of cheesegrater riffs there's been little to float one's boat.
Bill Clinton has written to the organisers of the Good Vibrations Records anniversary concert to commend the label, along with boss Terri Hooley, for their support
A previously unreleased BBC Sessions CD and a video of the man in concert in his hometown, form the latest chapter in the posthumous story of the great RORY GALLAGHER. COLM O HARE has the details.
To mark the 30th Anniversary of the launch of Hot Press, this issue comes with a free reprint of selected material taken from the magazine's first six months in 1977. It offers a unique insight into what was a seminal moment for Irish music and culture.
'The Irish Are Coming' was the banner headline for a two-night musical extravaganza held at The Venue in London, organised in conjunction with Hot Press, that showcased some of the most promising Irish bands. Gerry McGovern gives a behind-the-scenes account of the weekend that was...
The Great Record has visited some fine places over the past year or more. Now we ve finally wound up in Limerick, plumbed the depths of both city and county and emerged in one piece to tell the tale.
It may be miles off the beaten track, but Connolly’s of Leap has become one of the best-loved live venues in Ireland. Now with the launch of Rescue Music, the man behind the Connolly’s phenomenon, Paddy McNicholl is embarking on an exciting new phase of activity. Report: Jackie Hayden.
RTE2 have plenty of live music action to keep us placated for the next few weeks - here's the line up of bands and when to catch them. For more about the Other Voices series, click on the link at the very bottom.
