Livemusic HQ is based in East London, if you are a fellow resident and want to swing by our Livemusic Sessions give alex@livemusic.fm a shout. We're a stone throw from the murderous alleys and hunting grounds of the Kray twins and Jack The Ripper - not that I mean to put you off, these cats are long dead. But if we flick through the leafs of history there is evidence the blood of Dickensian prostitutes and violent hitmen collects in viscous, incarnadine pools in the gutters surrounding our office. From our window we can see Hawksmoor's Hermetic church shimmering in the wet horizon, an oily shadow from the Ten Bells pub slips up its lower left side and the caterwauls of Jack The Ripper victims screech with car horns and foxes. London is a home to 8 million people and has provided as a settlement for over two millennia. Its energy and excitement have proved a vital muse for uncountable artists and musicians. We've tried to cherry pick the corkers and deliver the indispensable 'Top 5 Songs About London' - so here we go…
"The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river"
This 1979 classic finds itself on the upper end of any respected alt-rock poll. It evokes images of a nuclear haze settling over the River Thames and melting icebergs from far off dystopian horrors surging to flood the city. Portents of zombies are taunted to 'draw another breath' as the sea approaches eye level. There are no peak instances or highs, except those with an inevitable misery concluding with 'yellowy eyes'. It's all gone to pot but music can save us. Sonic mewls can align the stars and balance the scales of justice - this is the beauty of The Clash. They prove a pile of shit can be 'nicely lit', this is not meant to demean the band - but what Susan Boyle is to Jedward, The Clash are to Duran Duran.
At the time Joe Strummer described the band's relationship with the world, which they saw in crisis: '"We felt that we were struggling about to slip down a slope or something, grasping with our fingernails. And there was no one there to help us.'"
London has fortunately not befallen a tsunami or 'nuclear error', polar bears haven't taken over starbucks and Maggie Thatcher maddens in the recesses of dementia. But this song still resonates with a poetry that can tell us about the potential hazards of social and spiritual mismanagement. Relevant as ever - The Clash peeps!
"Up from the cellar depths to shimmering Victorian avenues, murk jewelled with phosphorus, ambiguous dusk, the eastern steams and perfumes of a street bazaar. The city’s pleasure hill, its Venus mound, venue for lost weekends, atilt over the sexual edge, gin-blur and brothel frenzy, an erogenous zone shades into the twilight zone."
The comic book savant and artist collaborated on a series of musical odes to the city. In this collection Moore attempts to administer a type of sonic 'voodoo CPR' on Highbury & Islington. The piece is made up of "eight monologues which excavate the bland face of Highbury to raise up its forgotten secrets, pains and glories. Art as archaeology; he raises the horse goddess worshipped by the Romans when Highbury was a garrison of the empire, and also the horse that fell into the pit on that spot and died when sewers were being dug over a thousand years later: Joe Meek, the troubled Phil Spector of England, and Aleister Crowley, the untroubled Great Beast of Cefalu."
When Moore and Perkins touch on Epona the Roman horse goddess, it is a perfect example of the beauty of this work. The construction of histories allows the city's forgotten past a new lease of life. Moore kicks off the yarn describing the death of a coalman's horse in 1913. When the foundations for Highbury stadium were being dug in 1913 a horse and cart fell in, the horse 'poleaxed' and was immediately buried with backfill: "A bone mare, rattling loose beneath the Arsenal ground. Beneath the seated and sedated stands it lopes along the clay bed at a graveyard canter, nothing holding it together but a cartilage of mystery, its funeral hoof beat ringing in Bazalgette’s sewer bore, kicking up sparks on the Victoria line."
Moore then draws a parallel with the area's more distant past: "A skeleton horse. It will be ridden by Epona, underworld horse-goddess, worshipped by glum Gallic cavalrymen at Rome’s Highbury garrison".
Some tiles - possibly Roman or Norman (now lost) - were found during the 1781 building of Highbury Manor. It has led many to believe Highbury was a summer camp for Roman soldiers. These soldiers may have worshipped Epona - a Gallo-Roman goddess of fertility and protector of horses. She is famed for carrying around a fuck-off horn filled with goodies like nuts, flowers, sweets and other valuables (cornucopia). Any song that touches on dope shit like this has definitely earned its place in the Top 5!
"They lost eyes in old city streets
Where the funeral pyres burned the last of the meek"
This track, from British folk singer Johnny Flynn, comes with an accompanying lo-fi video featuring multiple shots of London's various landmarks. The title alludes again to the northern area of Holloway, whilst the video takes us from east to west and beyond. The lyrics are an enigma, like the babbling of Enoch, glossolalia and esoteric poem. But with all successful poetry it's that that we don't understand that moves us, it is the distance inbetween.
Theologian Karen Armstrong describes this relationship between the divine and poetry: “Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.”
Yes, we are basically saying Johnny is a form of musical God. Like it or lump it, this cat is special - go and buy his back catalogue by jumping inside this fish: <o)))><
"Her green plastic watering can
For her fake Chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself"
This song was taken "straight" from Thom Yorke's head, in an automatic scrawl which had him belly laughing at the preposterous lyrics he conjured. 'Fake Plastic Trees' refers to the clinical topiary in the new business district of Canary Wharf. Yorke sees this strange superficial foliage as a metaphor for our abandonment of nature. Our embrace of the pseudo-cosmos masks the penalties of 'leaving the garden' and we disintegrate into machine fetish.
The song comes from The Bends('95), a record which helped the Oxford troupe attain world infamy. Whilst Yorke was writing this album he was going through a particularly tough time mentally. The poor bugger made the school-boy error of boshing 19 fat freddies, he spent the next six months thinking he was falling through the ground whilst enduring the traumatic knowledge that time didn't exist. Fortunately the slope-eyed ginger chap has pulled his shit together and delivered a truck load of experimental electro-indie, and doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Well done dudes - apt winners!
'London Town, down, down, down'
These London cats have got bags of talent. They are war-bound super villains with modern Suggs in their sights. Their colloquial rap-stats are off the charts, if you wanna check our two-part video shoot with the band jump inside this fish: <o)))><
Man Like Me are the perfect menhirs for today's London; exceptionally fashionable, more idiomatic expressions than the Urban Dictionary, dance moves, beats and balls. Well done boys - we salute you!
Source: Livemusic.fm
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