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When I think of funk, this is the sound I hear in my head. The fat bass (is that the “phat” bass?), the hissing hi-hats, the waka-waka guitar licks, the muffled exhortations of the vocalist… put it all together and that’s The Fatback Band.
Last night I went to see the Fun Lovin’ Criminals… at least I thought I had. They had their name spelled out in huge letters across the stages But their main man, Huey, was no longer in the band.
I’ve just discovered that my 12-inch copy of Cristina’s scandalous take on an old classic is a collector’s item. Apparently her new lyrics for a tune about the mundanity of life, and the need to “break out the booze and have a ball – if that’s all there is”, so offended the songwriters, Leiber and Stoller, that they successfully sued to get it withdrawn – at least for a time.
With a jazz background, a love of 1970s soft rock and a voice like Thom Yorke, former Midlake front man Tim Smith has always been hard to pigeonhole. A decade after quitting the band, the famously perfectionist Smith releases his first album as Harp – a new project with his wife, Kathi Zung.
I’d never say we were really friends, and we came from very different backgrounds. But as fellow punks of the same age (he was born on Christmas Day just 16 days before me) Shane and I had an acquaintance.
When I first heard them 40 years ago, I thought the Jesus And Mary Chain were the most exciting new band I’d heard since The Sex Pistols. They still sound great in 2023.
Kid Creole and the Coconuts were a breath of fresh air when they came along at the start of a new decade with their zoot suits and Panama hats and spats – and their tropical take on disco.
The Royal Hotel is a slow-building mystery thriller about two female backpackers who find themselves at the mercy of Aussie men at their worst after taking a holiday job behind the bar of an Outback watering hole, in Australian film-maker Kitty “The Assistant” Green’s second feature-length assault on toxic masculinity.
Merry Clayton is best known for her gospelly backing vocals on the Stones’ anti-war anthem Gimme Shelter, wailing in harmony with Jagger. But there was much more to her than that.
RIP Terry Venables (1943-2023)
Footballer, manager, writer, singer, Dagenham boy Terry played for Chelsea, Spurs, Queens Park Rangers and (briefly) Crystal Palace between 1960 and 1975. He then managed Palace (winning the Division 3 and 2 titles in successive years), QPR (winning Division 2), Barcelona (winning the Spanish league title) and Spurs (winning the 1991 FA Cup). He took over England in 1994 and guided them to the semi-finals of the Euro 96 tournament, where they lost on penalties to Germany.