#anyway a song I love that is about that is Saturday Night by the Coup it's a BOP go check her out she feels like winning

[statementlou]

So I see folks pointing out that Louis' circle A tattoo is more likely an aesthetic choice than an announcement of a political commitment to anarchism, and saying basically that that maybe makes him a bit of a poser and I mean- I GUESS. But I don't like to look at things that way and I don't think it's useful. As I see it the subversive sexiness of the symbols of resistance have ALWAYS been gateways for people who are drawn to the struggle in vague ways and that's GOOD. Aligning yourself with those values is good no matter the reason, in my book, especially given the wretched options available out there, but also the journey doesn't necessarily stop there. Gatekeeping queerness victimizes people who are just trying things out and starting to discover that it may run deeper than just trying on a new look who should instead be welcomed and helped along their path, and I fail to see how gatekeeping political affiliations is any different (plus how counterproductive to actual movement building is that?)

ANYWAY. What I really want to say about Louis is that while I KNOW that Louis is probably not secretly a theory reading anti-state communalist anarchist, I think that actually Louis' optimism and idealism (and his unwavering commitment to allying himself with the working class and embracing those roots) are a perfect fit for the philosophy and always have been. I know that anarchism is mostly understood as being about throwing molotov cocktails and fighting the state (and the allure of its symbols are that they signify this, a terrific aesthetic for him to choose to sign on with in my book), but that's honestly largely cartoonish stereotyping that comes directly from anti-anarchist state propaganda. That resistance is necessary in this hellscape of oppression we live in and is super important, but in its heart anarchism is only about the state in that the state and capitalism currently stands in the way of its goals. The whole point of anarchism is that it's NOT about the state! It's about being able to imagine something better than a state, it's about how we live and about how we SHOULD live, it's about HOPE and picturing something utopian and something free of the ways capitalism pits us against one another! What could be more Louis than that?

"I need you and you need me and I love that" is as beautiful a way of talking about the cornerstone of anarchism that is mutual aid as any long winded essay I've read (even if what he meant was contextually different), and I think when he talks again and again about how special the space fans have made around him is he is expressing an intuitive understanding of the importance of autonomous zones, places and moments outside of the shitty life imposed on us by the system (also a huge part of anarchist thought). Maybe I'm just being an optimist but I think that Louis DOES understand that caring for people and wanting self-determination and freedom for all and allying himself with the working class involves a certain amount of resistance to and positioning yourself in opposition to the state. Thinking the symbols of smashing that state are cool isn't meaningless; it's a CHOICE. There are other cool symbols out there and I just happen to think that feeling a resonance with certain ones is something in and of itself, even if at this moment he does not choose to start a fight with the media about it all.

[hmel78]

In conversation with Doogie White ...

Circa 1994, when it was announced that guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was reforming Rainbow, rumours flooded the music community regarding who might feature in the line-up, but ultimately it was a collective of relative unknowns who made it onto the new record, and the tour bus ...

The album, “Stranger In Us All”, was issued under the name “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow” in August 1995, and features Paul Morris on keyboards, Greg Smith on bass, John O’Reilly on drums, Blackmore’s Night’s Candice Night on background vocals, and fronted by Doogie White, the singer was an inspired choice; a huge fan of Ritchie’s career in both Purple and Rainbow, the singer formed a strong writing partnership with the guitarist. The album includes a reworking of The Yardbirds’ ‘Still I’m Sad’, which had been recorded for Rainbow’s debut, 20 years earlier ; Ritchie’s classical flights of fancy are truly achieved on his arrangement of Edvard Grieg’s ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’, and tracks such as ‘Wolf To the Moon’, ‘Hunting Humans (Insatiable)’ and ‘Ariel’ proved themselves to be worthy additions to the Rainbow catalogue. When it came to playing live, songs from both Rainbow and Purple were revisited, and fans are lucky enough - on the re-issue of “Stranger In Us All” -  to be presented with a unique live recording from a 1995 Swedish concert, of ‘The Temple Of The King’ - it also features a radio edit of the single ‘Ariel’, plus the song ‘Emotional Crime’ that has previously only been released in Japan.

Accompanying the extensive liner notes is a personal account from singer Doogie White, plus plenty of artwork and memorabilia from Doogie’s own Rainbow collection.

Doogie White has had a pretty extensive career as a singer / songwriter since his days with Rainbow - We caught up with him whilst on a train to Mannheim to find out more ...

HR : Having been a fan of Rainbow prior to joining them in 1994, how did it feel to suddenly have such a prominent role in the band?

Doogie White : It was a huge moment for me in every way.   There I was, a cheeky upstart who had long admired all that Ritchie did, being personally asked by him to come to America and join his band. He knew nothing about me and I thought I knew all about him. We hit it off straight away from the first notes we played together. We played old Purple and Rainbow songs and some bar band standards and jammed a few ideas just for him to see what I could do on the improvisation front.

I was only supposed to be there 4 days but he asked me to stay for a week. We discussed what kind of album we wanted to make. We played football. He did some magic tricks and we jammed for hours.

We had a good and healthy working relationship and a fine friendship. I knew my place and was happy to be part of his new adventure. He shared his hopes and fears. He trusted me.

I think we made a fine album with some good songs and a couple of real Rainbow classics. There were a couple we compromised on and we did have better ideas but we never finished them so that they could not be released as “bonus” tracks at a later date. I know how much he hated the re released Purple stuff with alternate takes.

I have hours of material but it’s in the Loft ...

HR : Despite the sudden nature of the break-up in 1997, was the overall experience of those 3 years a positive one?

DW : Yes!  Even at the very end when I decided it was here and no further,  it was all good and positive. It was sad of course as I felt there was more work to do and I had given him a tape with 6 song ideas for the next album. Some ended up on Cornerstone’s HUMAN STAIN and another on a TANK album. I treated my time in Rainbow like Ali treated the Heavyweight Crown.   It was the wrong time for the kind of music we were doing but we did it anyway.

Despite what Ritchie says, or in most cases does not say, we got on well until we did not.  His choice not mine. HR : To me it has always seemed strange that it literally ended over night - like a political coup d’etat! - Especially as You seemed to fit Ritchies criteria perfectly ; with what you contributed as both performer and writer. There are many citations which suggest that through Your input, there was a wider range of material that could be performed live, and also Ritchie stated [at the time] that Stranger In Us All was the best thing he had recorded to date - does  that reflect how You felt whilst working with him and Rainbow?  

DW : I don’t think Stranger In Us All is the best thing he did. I don’t even think it’s the best thing I have done. That’s just him promoting the album. It has its place and that is for others to judge. It was a good album though!

I just followed his lead. If he wanted to go off and jam some blues of folk or silly songs I was there as were the rest of the band (Greg Smith, John O’Reilly or Chuck Burgi, Paul Morris, and others) to back him up. He knew that we knew what was required, and also knew what I could bring to the party - he exploited that to the max some nights! He has said he does not like fun and that music is a serious business, but for anyone who saw that ‘95 tour you know that there was some serious music and some serious fun on stage! We were enjoying each other and pushing each other. He’s quite talented like that.

Then others got his ear and were feeding him negative stuff, whispering’s, designed to disrupt him, for his ears only and that was unhelpful - but it suited their agenda and just made him more suspicious, which he had never been with me before.

No one in the band was doing anything other than enjoying being in the band and RAWKin on stage every night. There were no egos just a happy band doing the best they could every night,  and those who saw it knew it was good. I did say if he had a problem with me, for him to come to me and we could sort it out - But that is not his nature and he never did. So when it came down to it he was prepared to believe what he wanted and what he was being told and have things done in his name that were quite frankly beneath the man. When his management were being obstructive I wrote directly to him and he honoured all his commitments to me and made sure that his management paid what was due at the time. That’s how it should be.

HR : And that’s where it stopped  - until now ... “Stranger In Us All” has just been re-released and given a new lease of life?

DW : Yes they have pumped out the frequencies and it really sounds lot better than the flat linear sound of the original.

We should have added some of the extra tracks I have of the demos. But there are far too many hoops to jump through and it would mean new agreements between him and I. That’s not a path he wants to walk. HR : No, understood - but going back to when the original album was released - Obviously you were unaware of the fact that it would be the only recording that Rainbow would make at the time (possibly the last ever one?)  - does it change the way that you feel about it? Do you ever listen to it?

DW : I don’t listen to it at all. I don’t listen to anything I have done other than a couple of times when I get it. Occasionally something will pop up randomly on my iTunes and and a wee nostalgic smile passes my lips. But actually with SIUA - I remember every ounce of effort ; every change of lyric, key, tempo - So it has a different flavour for me than for others. I am proud of it, yet I know that we could have done better. But I was new to the big spotlight and while I stood my ground for a bit every now and again, it was Ritchie’s band and he got to do what he wanted.  Pat [Regan] was producing it and had his instructions on how to guide me.   I was just happy to be waking up every day knowing that today was going to be a new adventure.

I had so much fun all the time. Even when the dark clouds were hovering as they kinda did for the last while. His management did go out of their way to make band, and on the road, life a little less inclusive or welcoming ... But It was that 90 mins on stage that made anything worthwhile.

From what people have told me it’s a shame he now has such a distorted view of our time together. But it’s not my business and I don’t care what he thinks about it or how he feels about me.  I have seen some of the comments attributed to him that people send me. He really does re write his own history and I always have a good giggle at some of the nonsense he comes out with.   He loved it at the time, but to be fair it was a long long time ago and perhaps NOT the most important endeavour he has done musically. I look back at it slightly differently because it was VERY important to me. It was the best of times and will never be repeated for him, or for me.

HR : Well thankfully it didn’t deter you from carrying on! You have been involved with many great artists and projects during your career - have you any particular favourite memories?

DW : My memory palace is overflowing with errr memories from my times with LA PAZ  and CORNERSTONE, YNGWIE and SCHENKER, through TANK and beyond. I have a wonderful life and I am having a wonderful career - And if I am honest, really honest, my career would have been very different had it not been for that one tape I passed to Colin Hart who passed it to Ritchie Blackmore,  who made that fateful call one Saturday night in April 1994. I am forever in his debt and do you know what? He will get no joy at all from me saying that, and that is kind of pleasing!

HR : [laughs] Now I don’t mean to offend you by comparing you to a musical nomad, but you do seem to have moved around quite a bit -  If you could have settled for any greater length of time, or even permanently with one of those bands, who would it have been?

DW : I always have plenty to do recording and writing and performing. There is no dirt on the back of my shoes.

I was with Ritchie for 3 years, Yngwie for 6, Schenker now for 5. I would have been happy to do another album with Ritchie but he had a time machine and went away to his beloved middle ages with all the comforts of the 21Century.

With Yngwie we had run our course but remain friends, if not in touch much.

With Michael I hope to continue our successful partnership. We needed time away to do other things after the 4 years of intense touring/recording - Just to get some fresh experiences and know what side the bread is buttered.

HR : That’s always a bonus! What about future plans? Any more solo work or new collaborations in the pipeline?

DW : I am doing an album with a Bulgarian metal band called John Steel. (Blaze did their first) I will be finishing it when I am back from my short run of solos shows with my band WHITE NOISE (Italian Chapter).

I am always working. Sometimes under the radar sometime soaring like an eagle. Its all good and its all fun.

HR : You always look content to be on stage, and just take it all in your rock stride! Ha! What’s the strangest gig you’ve ever played?

DW : With La Paz in the 80’s at a place called ‘Roots of Cleghorn’ run by a lad called “Chicken George”. It was farming country and George was the only black guy for 100 miles. We played to a farmer in a bunnet and his sheep dog,  and George was the door man collecting the money! HR : Haha! No way!? Well from ‘Roots Of Cleghorn’ to Stockholm Circus -  If you could take a ‘dream’ band on the road, who would be your line-up, and what songs would make it to the setlist?

DW : I would just want to be backing singer for David Bowie, and cover  anything from “Love you til Tuesday” to “Blackstar”.

[asaphq]

Guess all our plans went away after all...

Well it was fun and I will miss u dearly, i can't thank you enough for everything you have done for me being in my life and you will always have a place in my heart.

I pray that you find someone who will treat you even better than I did, who is willing to give up everything for you and you know actually lives nearby lol

Enjoy your life

Edited: 5th Nov 17

The first time I ever cried in church playing the drums, there's a song Waymaker by Sinach that triggered me ig. Yesterday my mum noticed there was something wrong in like 2 minutes of her waking up in the morning, I haven't told her yet I haven't told anyone but I'm sure I will when I get home.

7th Nov

I still check up on you, still look to see if uve messaged me, still look to see if uve come online on any social media, still look to find out if anything is wrong. I can't get you out of my head and it feels like I never will. I hate that I can't have you, what we have to become, I feel like the world keeps punching me in the balls, reminding me "you have to settle for this". Wtf even is this...

I'd be lying if I said I enjoy this bc I don't. I enjoy talking to u and being with u in the sense, spending my day with u just chatting and doing whatever. When you go, I'm just left sad, I'm just losing over and over again. Maybe it is bc I'm still heartbroken, maybe it's bc I haven't found a way to deal with, to coup, maybe it's bc I don't even want to try.

What I had is gone, one day I'll be forced to accept that.

8th Nov

Ur hurting me. The fact that I still love you is hurting me, talking to you hurts me, just seeing ur name pop up sends another shot through my chest. What am I supposed to talk about, what am I supposed to say? Why does it feel like I'm always the only one hurting...

I hate what I've become, I feel so helpless and I'm not in control. I had no control when it came to you and this is what has happened to me, I couldn't help but believe we had it all and that you and I were going to prove everyone wrong. I did that to me. I normally keep myself to myself but now I don't want to. You changed me. Now that I want to talk I can't, now that I want to be around I can't. Not right now I'm sorry

10th Nov:

Well it's basically Saturday cause I'm about to sleep or whatever, I keep thinking about you obviously and everything that's going on and now I can only wonder how ur feelings. Like lol I'm struggling to process this change myself, you were a massive part of my life, you're the only reason I'd be up so late at night, I'd stopped going out, even stopped going to uni on occasion because you were upset about something or I'd just stay in bed until midday until you woke up. Basically lived in USA. But that's all me, this is everything that's changed for me so I wonder what about you? What do you feel? How is this affecting you? Does it change anything?

11 Nov: Saturday

Different, woke up and for once for once this week I had a bit of energy so I decided to use it by calling some ppl at like midday which is pretty for most uni students (I'd know from my past life lol) anyways I knew I was gonna go home and so I chilled with my friends for awhile before they left and then I took I shower and did the same. Pretty uneventful journey despite the fact that I got off at the wrong stop and took a different route but ended up at church ok. After " my uncle " dropped me home, got to see my family again, mum always cheering me through the door and singing these song my grandma made when I was just a baby, one I will never forget because my mum sings it all the time lol. Then mimi came through demanding affection as per usual. Anyways point of this one was that I told my sister about our breakup and the more I was talking about it and the circumstances, the more upset I got and what surprised me was how upset she got, like we were just watching tv as we were talking and she got up to hug me cause she was so sad, fortunately I didn't start crying myself. "Right girl, wrong time" was the punchline of our talk, apparently she really like you and I must of been talking about u in such a nice way in previous talks to feel that way towards you. Obviously there were the jokes like there's plenty more fish in the sea etc but I could tell she didn't mean it. Of course I'm still upset and god knows I will be for a long time, my feelings are still here and will be basically forever, but we stopped because we had no choice and at some point I will get that. I still have a lot of stuff to think about in regards to you coming to England so there's that too. But yh that's what happened today, now we think about what to tell the parents. Proverbs 4:18

19th Nov:

Did we do the right thing? So what if we can’t see the future right now I mean we still have plenty of time don’t we?

I was talking about this for hours with my brother about why we broke up, how we didn’t see a future, that no one wanted to move etc etc. After awhile of serious conversation he told me he thought that we just ran into a brick wall and was up to us to choice to climb over together or go round separately. This problem has been with us the last 2 years regardless and we didn’t exactly care before, we always thought we could beat the odds, that we together were different. So what changed? Where did that future go? If u didn’t see a future then why does it matter now? What about now? If we still love each other why did we stop?

Or is this just the excuse?

I think we need to talk...

21th Nov:

Well that was fun, I was completely off. I guess it’s true, uni changes everyone cause i don’t know who the fuck I talked to just then. What’s shit was that I saw it coming months ago, its was sooooo predictable yet I was just too blind to see / believe it. That’s what I get for be ignorant. But I’m also happy I did. I’m learning. I put my all in and that came out. Lol I probably sound bitter or something but I promise I’m not, I don’t break those.

What happens now is even more predictable this time I might just listen to it, you can only be ignorant for so long .All I know is that I definitely got my answer.

[ricardosousalemos]

Massive Attack: Mezzanine

“Trip-hop” eventually became a ’90s punchline, a music-press shorthand for “overhyped hotel lounge music.” But today, the much-maligned subgenre almost feels secret precedent. Listen to any of the canonical Bristol-scene albums of the mid-late ’90s, when the genre was starting to chafe against its boundaries, and you’d think the claustrophobic, anxious 21st century started a few years ahead of schedule. Looked at from the right angle, trip-hop is part of an unbroken chain that runs from the abrasion of ’80s post-punk to the ruminative pop-R&B-dance fusion of the moment. 

The best of it has aged far more gracefully (and forcefully) than anything recorded in the waning days of the record industry’s pre-filesharing monomania has any right to. Tricky rebelled against being attached at the hip to a scene he was already looking to shed and decamped for Jamaica to record a more aggressive, bristling-energy mutation of his style in ’96; the name Pre-Millennium Tension is the only obvious thing that tells you it’s two decades old rather than two weeks. And Portishead’s ’97 self-titled saw the stress-fractured voice of Beth Gibbons envisioning romance as codependent, mutually assured destruction while Geoff Barrow sunk into his RZA-noir beats like The Conversation’s Gene Hackman ruminating over his surveillance tapes. This was raw-nerved music, too single-minded and intense to carry an obvious timestamp. 

But Massive Attack were the origin point of the trip-hop movement they and their peers were striving to escape the orbit of, and they nearly tore themselves to shreds in the process. Instead— or maybe as a result—they laid down their going-nova genre's definitive paranoia statement with Mezzanine. The band's third album (not counting the Mad Professor-remixed No Protection) completes the last in a sort of de facto Bristol trilogy, where Tricky’s youthful iconoclasm and Portishead’s deep-focus emotional intensity set the scene for Massive Attack’s sense of near-suffocating dread. The album corroded their tendencies to make big-wheel hymnals of interconnected lives where hope and despair trade precedent—on Mezzanine, it’s alienation all the way down. There’s no safety from harm here, nothing you’ve got to be thankful for, nobody to take the force of the blow: what Mezzanine provides instead is a succession of parties and relationships and panopticons where the walls won’t stop closing in.

The lyrics establish this atmosphere all on their own. Sex, in “Inertia Creeps,” is reduced to a meeting of “two undernourished egos, four rotating hips,” the focus of a failing relationship that's left its participants too numbed with their own routine dishonesty to break it off. The voice singing it—Massive Attack's cornerstone co-writer/producer Robert “3D” Del Naja—is raspy from exhaustion. “Dissolved Girl” reiterates this theme from the perspective of guest vocalist Sarah Jay Hawley (“Passion’s overrated anyway”). On “Risingson,” Grant “Daddy G” Marshall nails the boredom and anxiety of being stuck somewhere you can’t stand with someone you’re starting to feel the same way about (“Why you want to take me to this party and breathe/I’m dying to leave/Every time we grind you know we severed lines”).

But Mezzanine’s defining moments come from guest vocalists who were famous long before Massive Attack even released their first album. Horace Andy was already a legend in reggae circles, but his collaborations with Massive Attack gave him a wider crossover exposure, and all three of his appearances on Mezzanine are homages or nods to songs he'd charted with in his early-’70s come-up. “Angel” is a loose rewrite of his 1973 single “You Are My Angel,” but it’s a fakeout after the first verse—originally a vision of beauty (“Come from way above/To bring me love”), transformed into an Old Testament avenger: “On the dark side/Neutralize every man in sight.” The parenthetically titled, album-closing reprise of “(Exchange)” is a ghostly invocation of Andy’s “See A Man's Face” cleverly disguised as a comedown track. And then there’s “Man Next Door,” the John Holt standard that Andy had previously recorded as “Quiet Place”—on Mezzanine, it sounds less like an overheard argument from the next apartment over and more like a close-quarters reckoning with violence heard through thin walls ready to break. It’s Andy at his emotionally nuanced and evocative best.

The other outside vocalist was even more of a coup: Liz Fraser, the singer and songwriter of Cocteau Twins, lends her virtuoso soprano to three songs that feel like exorcisms of the personal strife accompanying her band’s breakup. Her voice serves as an ethereal counterpoint to speaker-rattling production around it. “Black Milk” contains the album’s most spiritually unnerving words (“Eat me/In the space/Within my heart/Love you for God/Love you for the Mother”), even as her lead and the elegiac beat make for some of its most beautiful sounds. She provides the wistful counterpoint to the night-shift alienation of “Group Four.” And then there's “Teardrop,” her finest moment on the album. Legend has it the song was briefly considered for Madonna; Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles sent the demo to her, but was overruled by Daddy G and 3D, who both wanted Fraser. Democracy thankfully worked this time around, as Fraser’s performance—recorded in part on the day she discovered that Jeff Buckley, who she’d had an estranged working relationship and friendship with, had drowned in Memphis’ Wolf River—was a heart-rending performance that gave Massive Attack their first (and so far only) UK Top 10 hit.

Originally set for a late ’97 release, Mezzanine got pushed back four months because Del Naja refused to stop reworking the tracks, tearing them apart and rebuilding them until they’re so polished they gleam. It sure sounds like the product of bloody-knuckled labor, all that empty-space reverb and melted-together multitrack vocals and oppressive low-end. (The first sound you hear on the album, that lead-jointed bassline on “Angel,” is to subwoofers what “Planet Earth” is to high-def television.) But it also groans with the burden of creative conflict, a working process that created rifts between Del Naja and Vowles, who left shortly after Mezzanine dropped following nearly 15 years of collaboration.

Mezzanine began the band’s relationship with producer Neil Davidge, who’d known Vowles dating back to the early ’90s and met the rest of the band after the completion of Protection. He picked a chaotic time to jump in, but Davidge and 3D forged a creative bond working through that pressure. Mezzanine was a document of unity, not fragmentation. Despite their rifts, they were a post-genre outfit, one that couldn’t separate dub from punk from hip-hop from R&B because the basslines all worked together and because classifications are for toe tags. All their acknowledged samples—including the joy-buzzer synths from Ultravox’s “Rockwrok” (“Inertia Creeps”), the opulent ache of Isaac Hayes’ celestial-soul take on “Our Day Will Come” (“Exchange”), Robert Smith’s nervous “tick tick tick” from the Cure’s “10:15 Saturday Night,” and the most concrete-crumbling throwdown of the Led Zep “Levee” break ever deployed (the latter two on “Man Next Door”)—were sourced from  1968 and 1978, well-traveled crate-digging territory. But what they build from that is its own beast.  

Their working method never got any faster. The four-year gap between Protection and Mezzanine became a five-year gap until 2003’s 100th Window, then another seven years between that record and 2010’s Heligoland, plus another seven years and counting with no full-lengths to show for it. Not that they've been slacking: we've gotten a multimedia film/music collaboration with Adam Curtis, the respectable but underrated Ritual Spirit EP, and Del Naja’s notoriously rumored side gig as Banksy. (Hey, 3D does have a background in graffiti art.) But the ordeal of both recording and touring Mezzanine took its own toll. A late ’98 interview with Del Naja saw him optimistic about its reputation-shedding style: “I always said it was for the greater good of the fucking project because if this album was a bit different from the last two, the next one would be even freer to be whatever it wants to be.” But fatigue and restlessness rarely make for a productive mixture, and that same spark of tension which carried Mezzanine over the threshold proved unsustainable, not just for Massive Attack’s creativity but their continued existence.

Still, it’s hard not to feel the album’s legacy resonating elsewhere—and not just in “Teardrop” becoming the cue for millions of TV viewers to brace themselves for Hugh Laurie’s cranky-genius-doctor schtick. Graft its tense feelings of nervy isolation and late-night melancholy onto two-step, and you’re partway to the blueprint for Plastician and Burial. You can hear flashes of that mournful romantic alienation in James Blake, the graceful, bass-riddled emotional abrasion in FKA twigs, the all-absorbing post-genre rock/soul ambitions in Young Fathers or Algiers. Mezzanine stands as an album built around echoes of the ’70s, wrestled through the immediacy of its creators' tumultuous late ’90s, and fearless enough that it still sounds like it belongs in whatever timeframe you're playing it.