Kano vs Wiley

Taken from volume 2 of the 'Lord Of The Mics' DVD series of improvised microphone battles between the best of the London grime scene from a couple of years back. Anything on either DVD is worth watching (and now seems to be all over YouTube) but this particular pairing is definitely a highlight.

While I've got plenty of respect for Wiley both as a rapper and - even more - as a producer, I reckon Kano wins this one (or should I say merks him!!) hands down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCZUSAvzVIs

The Best DJ Set Ever

These things are always hard to pin down but one that always comes back to mind whenever anyone asks is Jeff Mills at Sonar in Barcelona 1998.

Here's some footage - his classics techno piledriver 'The Bells' - from the show on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yub6XcRCoeE&feature=related

Mills played the 3am-6am slot to a hero's reception. When the sun came up about 5am and a single ray of sunshine crept between the curtains of the massive sports hall, falling diagonally across the audience and getting the biggest cheer of the night.

Onion TV

Well, that's the US election and the monarchy seen to, courtesy of Onion TV...

Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viVAAy_qkx0&feature=user

Queen Will Leave Behind Long Legacy Of Waving
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5pkDB7zEeo

Jungle Drummer vs Fu

Just been chatting with Jungle Drummer, former amazing drummer (you guessed it) with drum and bass outfit London Elektricity and now doing an even more incredible drums vs decks live show with Fu. I caught one of their warm up shows down at The Hub in Plymouth - Jungle being a Plymouthian and all that, and a mate of Script MC and Bassfunk's Bossa. There'll be a big interview in the next ATM mag, but in the meantime here's a taster...

Jungle Drummer va Fu live at Truckfest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N93-r8m7rYo

Bassfunk myspace
http://www.myspace.com/bassfunkuk

Script myspace
http://www.myspace.com/scriptmc

One Last Thing

before I disappear to the Queen Anne,

Three lesser spotted Chris Morris clips - and one incredibly brief Noel Fielding in 'Nathan Barley' favourite...

Chris Morris vs The Time The Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ecxW3KPUD4

Chris Morris vs The Sun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEGE2ohMnh8&feature=related


Bishop Slips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm1y6_t2Eyw&feature=related


And finally, one for the ladies

Nathan Barley: Where’s The Ice Cream?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAB9kFDJyBw&feature=related

Three Acid Greats

If you’re in the mood for some original acid squelch…

Chip E: Time To Jack (The Acid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXqcdNp7dcQ


Baby Ford: Oochy Koochy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Mo-rAzb50


PLUS: something to show the new skool can hold its own acid-wise

Squarepusher: Fat Controller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UiD86nt6Jc&feature=related


These three are like floss for your ears...

OK I Admit It

I like Cardiacs - you might as well know now. About as trendy in music biz circles as catching herpes

Never has a band infuriated so many people - and yet throughout the 23 years since discovering them for myself I've kept coming back to them and they usually deliver. This track 'Come Back Clammy' http://www.cardiacs.com/resources_non_cms/Cardiacs_Come_Back_Clammy_Lammy.mp3
from the 'Guns' album (I think) is a new one on me but as thrilling as ever, mixing up punk with Zappa-style mentalness and all delivered through the Alice In Wonderland-like production filter of Tim Smith's psychotic genius. Brian Wilson, Beefheart and Aphex Twin all rolled into one.

I Wanna Go To Jailbait

Hmmmm - not because of the underage girls I promise - because I reckon it's about the just only club in the world where you can hear Pendulum and Jeff Mills in the same evening. After Shy FX & UK Apache's vintage jungle classic 'Original Nuttah' made an appearance in the first series, the club features in episode 7 of the new one. Sign on to the 4OD service - especailly recommended if, like me, you tend to roll in from the pub after all the good TV's been on - at http://www.channel4.com/ and watch it for free.

Ukulele wonders

Ukulele mania is all over the shop!

If you're a Morrissey fan then you'll know all about Perrecy - the German ukulele-playing Moz tribute - loving that version of 'Half A Person' especially
http://www.myspace.com/perrecy07

Or try the uke punks Ukulele Gangsters
http://www.myspace.com/theukulelegangstas

Funny Photos

Some amusing photos of Spiky's finest - well, Slang and Honk (aka Patrick from R.O.C. - he's the one doing that amazing gurn!) - in action at Offline, the benefit night for Brixton website www.urban75.org

http://www.urban75.org/offline/offline45.html

Von Sudenfed: Fledermaus Can't Get It

Rubbish video, but check the music - Mark E Smith with Mouse On Mars aka Von Sudenfed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG-CLFPU6RY&feature=related

We'll See Groove Ride Again

It’s been grim news all round for drum and bass DJ Grooverider. Sentenced to four years in a Dubai jail for possession of a small amount of cannabis and porn, plus all the other repercussions. His Radio 1 slot looking distinctly dodgy and promoters everywhere reaching for their lawyers’ phone numbers.

It’s desperately unlucky, especially considering Grooverider or Raymonde Barr to use his real name is by no means a chronic partier, certainly compared to some of his peers. It’s also ironic, considering when I interviewed him for the biography for his only ever artist album ‘Mysteries Of Funk’, he told me in the very early days of pioneering d&b night Metalheadz Sunday Session he and Goldie would personally throw crack users and dealers out of the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, East London to immediately distance themselves from the crackpipe associations that had haunted jungle.

Neither has there been little sympathy shown for the plight of the DJ and father from Purley in South London. Some news outlets have merely used it as an excuse to remind us of the grisly drug fuelled demise of Kevin Greening. But even in the usually slavishly adoring drum and bass forums seemed to have had a sudden moral outbreak, and one d&b press officer told me: “these DJs think they’re above the law.” It’s true that shortly before the smoking ban last summer another big DJ from the genre travelled two hours out of London only to refuse to play – while still demanding his full fee – because the bouncers at the club admonished him for lighting up a spliff.

But then I also know a big music industry name who genuinely flew to New York on a work trip with a gram of coke in the top pocket of his jacket, his complete ignorance of its existence until he reached his hotel in the Big Apple no doubt helping him sail through customs unmolested. Considering the court accepted Grooverider hadn’t intended to bring the drugs into Dubai, in truth the worst insult you could hurl at his actions is reckless dopiness.

Of all the countries to try and enter without checking your pockets before entering, you couldn’t have picked many worse than the United Arab Emirates. Having lived there as an 8-year-old child in the 70s, where by my parents fed me and my brother terrifying stories about the floggings and amputations that awaited shoplifters and other petty offenders, I’ve known it for a long time, but it’s hardly a secret. As a globally-travelled professional DJ as well as someone who, due to his colour, must have inevitably suffered more rigorous customs and immigration examinations than his white counterparts, you’d have thought he’d have had a little more of a clue.

But if this writer has anything to say on the matter it’s that despite the various reports of the demise of his career, we haven’t seen the last of Grooverider. Physically imposing and tough as nails from the years he spent growing up in the estates of South London, where he also cut his DJ teeth as one of the first generation of acid house DJs, he’s about the last person on earth you’d want to pick a fight with and it’s hard to see prison breaking him either physically or mentally.

The fact he’ll be well into his 40s by the time he’s released if he does serve four years, has absolutely no bearing on that either. Grooverider’s fame is not based on youth anyway. A vast proportion of the thousands of people who’ve seen him play in recent years are under 25, but his status in d&b circles is as a legend, a godfather figure who has been there from the very start. A populist who plays the very latest dubplates, definitely, but also a direct link back to the original vibe of d&b’s roots in rave and jungle.

While more mainstream news outlets will probably interpret the loss of his Radio 1 slot as a cataclysmic blow, the reality is he’ll always earn more money DJing around the world, something which might become more difficult but by no means impossible. Even if the worst happens and his appeal fails, with a reputation that stretches back 20, it’s hard to imagine he won’t still be a massive pull in 2012.

All the same, don't let that put you off signing the petition for his release!
http://www.petitiononline.com/gr00v3/

Check his '94 tune 'Kindred' on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6ZM3nhgZk

Bad Guitar Playing

Just a quickie before The Simpsons is on.

My thanks to Patrick of R.O.C. fame for this - ironic, considering the bad guitar playing of mine he's had to listen to in rehearsals!

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/02/watch-the-parod.html

Castlemorton and (n)me

Hi - I wrote this recently for a conference in Seattle on the Criminal Justice Bill. Journalist Todd Burns asked me about NME's involvement covering the Criminal Justice Bill and my thoughts on how the bill had changed music.

It seemed a waste not to use it as an article - and as the story of how I got into the world of music journalism it should work well as an introduction...

I also discovered this great footage of the event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amMvs-_-GU


My personal involvement with NME is down to the underground rave scene - the biggest illegal rave of all time, or so I'm led to believe, was at Castlemorton in Worcestershire in May 1992. At the time I was a rookie reporter aged 22 on local paper the Malvern Gazette, the local paper for this remote spot some 90-100 miles away from London.

The circumstances which led to a crowd of 20,000 people gathering to dance for three days could and never have been repeated. The gorgeous sunshine played a part. The new alliance between ravers and new age travellers who already had their circuit of summer festivals, previously inhabited by hippy bands like Hawkwind and Pink Fairies. The completely inadequate response from the police, already overwhelmed by the initial turnout on the Friday night of some 7,000 people. In fact it was rumoured that But the news reports on Saturday lunchtime that were effectively free national advertising led to a massive swell of numbers by the early hours of Sunday morning, to around 20 sound systems and even a big top.

The centrepiece was definitely Spiral Tribe's covered wagons-style arena, the speakers and vans bearing the strange, neo-cryptic slogans and patterns and indeed this is probably why the police tried to pin the event's 'organisation' on this sound system's members, eventually spending £5m of taxpayers money in a vain attempt to have them jailed.

In fact I was told on good authority that in previous years this festival (the Avon Free Festival) had taken place in neighbouring Gloucestershire and that this county's police were so determined not to have to deal with in 1992 that they turned up on a layby with petrol for the travellers' convoy and directions to Castlemorton, just over the border. Indeed in the police area it happened in (Upton, Worcestershire) was immensely proud of often boasted the lowest crime rate in the country, only to see it skyrocket as all manner of drug possession and other crimes suddenly blotted their copy book!

Environmentally there was much fear the common land would be ruined - or needle infested - but the travellers even went as far as having clean up squads go back on the Monday to pick up litter. I have returned there many times and you would never know the event had happened.

Anyway, I covered the arrest and subsequent trials of those accused for NME as well as my local paper, and through that got editorial work leading to an eight year career at the paper. I continued to cover the CJB marches, one of which in Hyde Park was particularly scary, with the police chasing protesters out of the park with truncheons.

We visited one traveller park near Stonehenge and interviewed traveller families. One even pulled out a clutch of cuttings of CJB articles I'd written from NME - one of my proudest moments ever.

In terms of the music there were obvious moments - Criminal Justice by D*Note on Dorado - sadly not a hit, but the 'Free Nelson Mandela' of the issue, definitely. Autechre's non-repetitive beats, Orbital including a 'Criminal Justice Bill' mix on one of their singles that was completely silent by way of protest. But for me the biggest legacy musically is borne out of the music I heard at Castlemorton - with DJs like Roni Size and Optical playing a music that was barely evolving out of hardcore rave into the darker, more insane rollercoaster ride of jungle. I believe it was the sheer audacity of those times - as well as the defiance that illegality brought - that gave birth to jungle/d&b.

Too Good To Be True

It seems that not only has the installation of my BT net coinnection been a breeze, but so has signing up here. So now I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago and started a blog. It can't be this easy - something's got to go wrong!

For those who don't know me, I'm Ben Willmott. The word Spiky? Well, that's because as well as being a writer - which is how most people probably know me - I run a record label called Spiky, www.myspace.com/spikyrecords
although the name has graced everything from fanzines to club nights. Although, as I never could resist the temptation for a daftly named night, you might have graced the dancefloor of Scum Dancing, Nappy Hardcore, Cyclorama (including the first ever live gig by Mike Paradinashttp://www.planet-mu.com/), House of Nuts (live debut of R.O.C.http://www.rocmusic.com/) or one of any number of other forays into club promoting.

You may even have heard my music. Alongside comrades Ben Crosland and Tony Lee in Slang and acting alone as Slangton, I've been released on K7, Little Star as well as, obviously, Spiky. I love DJ too - you may have seen me spinning anything from drum and bass, breakbeat, electro to chill out at some time or another.

But moan and whinge is what I do best, at least it's given me a living so far. And, obviously, bringing some of the best hither undiscovered music that comes to my attention.

Anyway, as they say in Spinal Tap, "enough of my yacking", let's roll.