SUMMAT 'N' NOWT

Snow Patrol

2012-01-27T06:55:00.000-06:00

January 2012

GARY Lightbody. Frontman and chief songwriter with Snow Patrol. A band which has produced chart-topping records, sold ten million albums and written songs with more airplay than most could dream of. And yet Lightbody doesn’t see himself as much of a ladies’ man, despite all that.

If you believe what you read.
In advance of a chat with the 35-year-old, I found this quote attributed to him on Twitter:
“I have the gift to make women mad. Not like Tom Jones does, but rather so that they go to the kitchen and pick up a knife.”
What did he mean?
“What was this quote?” says Lightbody, clearly confused.
I repeat it.
“Not like Tom James?”
Tom Jones.
“Oh Tom Jones. I won’t have said that. But I’m sure there is plenty of stuff I’ve never said... which is why I don’t go looking on the internet.”
He’s not one for Twitter. Probably a good job as I sent a tweet for questions to ask him and had a cascade of anti-Snow Patrol messages: “Happy Shopper Coldplay” and the like.
It wasn’t all bad. One woman said that if she had three wishes, one would be to meet Lightbody.
“Wow, what a waste of a wish,” he deadpans.
He’s in London and it’s been an easy day so far; a run in the park, lunch with a friend... but it’s a well-earned rest day after a spell in the US. The band has been promoting latest album, Fallen Empires, with a series of network TV appearances. It included The Ellen Show, where fellow guests were Meryl Streep and Ricky Gervais.
“I didn’t get to hang out with Meryl Streep but I met Ricky Gervais for the first time and he was lovely,” he says.
“I’m a big fan of his. Meryl Streep we were just all too intimidated to speak to. I can’t walk up to someone like that and go ‘oooh, hellooo’. I’m too much of a fan.”
Starstruck pop stars? You must meet plenty of famous folk?
“If I’m sitting at a table with them at an awards thing or something like that I’ll talk to them but I wouldn’t go out of my way to go and bother someone.”
Lightbody is from Bangor in Northern Ireland but formed Snow Patrol while at university in Dundee.
It is 15 years since their first EP release but nine since one of their records had any impact.
Final Straw, their first album for Polydor, which produced the major hit single Run, went on to sell three million copies.
The follow-up in 2006, Eyes Open, sold double that – the best selling UK album of that year. That and the single, Chasing Cars, propelled Snow Patrol to international fame.
They are now on album number six, their first since the best of compilation, Up To Now, two years ago.
The album shows them breaking new ground, echoing LCD Soundsystem, U2 and Arcade Fire.
“We wanted this record to be different,” says Lightbody.
“Musically different and lyrically I wanted to broaden my horizons. I’ve written about relationships now for... forever. To then want to talk about family and the world and my journey and the people that I’ve met along the way... it took a while to get me in the right mood.
“It’s still centred on relationships but it’s very different to what I’ve done before.”
He adds: “And it was a challenge, which is what we wanted. We’ve been 17 years together and it’s easy to enter a period of treading water. And you’ve no one else to blame for that but yourself.
“So attacking things in different ways is a really good way of jarring yourself loose.
“And going to Malibu helped,” he laughs.
“We set up in a house there rather than a studio. I think the record company thought it was going to bankrupt the company but it didn’t cost much more than any other record.”
He adds: “It gave us more time because we went in to that environment. We took the longest we’ve ever taken over a record.
“We had complete freedom to do anything. To scrap the song completely or take it in a different way, going from country/folk to dance music. If there is any kind of graph that charted this album, it wouldn’t make any sense to scientists.”
Being in California also meant they could call on a few guests, including Troy Van Leuwen from Queens Of The Stone Age and LA Inner City Mass Gospel Choir.
“People would just call in. We’d get them to sing, to play guitar. A few friends came in and formed a choir for a few of the tracks. It was much more relaxed than ever before.”
And more fun?
“After I got over the writer’s block I had a ball.”
Writer’s block?
“Before we started recording I was writing for a bit... well, I wasn’t writing. I was rocking back and forward like a patient at Arkham.
“But once we were all in the studio we were absolutely rocking it. It was a really pleasurable experience. Lots of great ideas were being thrown around. It’s definitely the best way to make records.”
So that’s how you’ll do the next one?
“I don’t think any of us would be particularly averse to doing exactly the same thing again but it isn’t the place you are, it’s the place that you are in your head.”
So you may well have the urge to record it in a garden shed in Nottingham?
“Absolutely, Nottingham next.”
He adds: “I think the last time we played there was Rock City and I remember that being awesome. I’m really looking forward to getting back and doing a bigger show.”
Actually, their last visit here was to the Arena three years ago.
You see, you can’t believe everything you read...

Snow Patrol play the Capital FM Arena on Wednesday February 1 from 7.30pm. Extra tickets recently went on sale priced at £22.50 and £32.50. For availability visit the box office, call 08444 124624 or go online at www.capitalfmarena.com

Rebecca Ferguson

2012-01-23T10:29:00.000-06:00

January 2012

TEND to have my weekends back in Liverpool. Home will always be Liverpool. I’ve got a place up there but I’ve got a place in Surrey now as well for when I’m working during the week.

The weekends are chill-out time for me. When I’m not on tour I go back up there and see friends and family. I go for lots of dinners. Sometimes I’ll have a night out.
I’ve got two children, a boy and a girl, who are 5 and 7. I take them to a place called the Yellow Submarine, which is like a big play area.
Or we’ll go to the pictures. I get to see lots of kids’ films. I’m like ‘can’t we go and see this one?’ and they’re like ‘no mummy.’ I wanted to see Puss In Boots but they’d already seen that with their dad, so I had to go and see Alvin and the Chipmunks.
A lot of the time I just like to be a normal mum. We just sit in and watch films. We love that. We get the Disney films on and slob out all day in our PJs.
We watched Charlie and The Chocolate Factory the other day. It wasn’t the Johnny Depp one, it was the original one (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) and we really liked that.
When they’ve gone to bed and I get a chance to watch what I want, it’s Desperate Scousewives. It’s so funny. It’s not true to what we’re like but it’s hilarious, so I have a good giggle on a Monday night watching that.
And I love Judge Judy. She’s a proper strong woman.
But most of the time I’ll watch a film on the laptop. Recently? Elizabeth: The Golden Age. And I downloaded Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt. I like the old films. I love the classics, like Marilyn Monroe films.
The music on my iPod is really random. I’ve Swedish House Mafia, Lisa Gerrard, Bombay Bicycle Club and loads of classical music. I don’t get the chance to go and see anyone in concert but me and the kids went to a panto over Christmas at Richmond Theatre and that was good. It was Cinderella, with that blonde woman off Loose Women. I can’t remember her name (Jenny Eclair).
I’m a good cook. I make a roast on Sunday and the kids help me with that. And we all make pasta together. But I don’t always get time to cook any more though, which is a shame.
No I don’t go to McDonald’s! I never go to McDonald’s. No, I’m lying, I so do, on a drive-thru. But the kids and me, we do eat quite well. Although if we go out for the day we do end up in Pizza Hut or something.
And if we order a takeaway it’ll be an Indian; korma or a tandoori chicken.
How do I keep fit? Two kids. That’s literally it. I’ve actually got a gym in my house and I don’t go in it. But you know what, if you’ve got two kids and you’re running around and you’re working, it does keep you trim, I think.
I’m starting rehearsals for the tour at the end of the month but no-one is telling me to get fit. You’re joking, aren’t you? Can you imagine?
I’ve been to Nottingham before on the X Factor Tour (in 2010) and do you know what... I went on a ghost tour. It was at the place facing our hotel (The Galleries of Justice). It was spooky. Me, Mary (Byrne), Katie (Waissel) and Cher (Lloyd) went there and it was proper scary in the crazy dungeons. Maybe I’ll try the shops next time.

Rebecca Ferguson appears at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday February 27. Tickets are £19.50 to £32.50 from the venue, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk. She releases Too Good To Lose, her second single from her top ten album, Heaven, on February 26.

Steps

2012-01-20T15:41:00.000-06:00

January 2012

THE chirpy pop quintet had 14 consecutive Top 5 hits and sold 15 million albums before internal squabbles split the group. A decade later, Claire Richards, Lisa Scott-Lee, Faye Tozer, Lee Latchford-Evans and Ian ‘H’ Watkins reunited for a TV show. Since then there’s been a number one album and a UK tour will come to the Capital FM Arena in April.

Was it a surprise that The Ultimate Collection went straight to number one?

Faye: Absolutely. To tell you the truth, when we first started talking about getting together to support the album and then doing the TV documentary, we thought it might trickle around the Top 20. We never imagined it would go to number one. And then stay in the top ten. We assumed that everyone had everything by us already. The demand is out there and we’re blown away by that.

When you talked about getting back together, did you worry that no-one would really care?

H: It was a strange one to gauge, really, because we had got on with our own lives and we all have our own careers. I was very apprehensive and scared about going on this journey. But you have to remember it was never meant to be this full blown reunion. We agreed to come together for the TV show to talk about things that happened in the past. But then it became a number one album and a sell-out tour. That really has taken us by surprise. It’s just been phenomenal.

One imagines that a lot of your original fans want to relive their youth by seeing you again.

H: And they’re not afraid to say it. Back in the day people were closet Stepsfans but now they are loud and proud, which is amazing.

How real was the TV documentary in terms of the tantrums and tears we saw?

Lee: Very real. There was no script. We had a couple of questions thrown at us and went from there, basically. They filmed that and edited it into a great drama.

What can we expect from the live show?

H: It’s very exciting for us because a lot of the ideas we had ten years ago we couldn’t actually do but technology has moved on so much so things are actually achievable. And more. We’ve been told to think as big as we like.

Claire and Lisa aren’t with you today, so you’ve obviously fallen out with them already.

Faye: Absolutely. We’ve dumped them and we’ve gone off as a three-piece now.

Do you have more control over what you are doing these days?

Lee: We had more control before than people thought. Especially over our tours. We were directors of our own company, we sat in the boardroom and had the meetings to decide what we wanted to do, looked at the financial side of it, that type of thing.

What is the next step for Steps, after this tour?

Faye: Last time around it was such a massive whirlwind. We ended up getting on the treadmill and not really being grateful for it or enjoying it. This time, because we don’t really know what’s around the corner, we want to really sit back and enjoy it. We’re not talking about a new album or new music until the tour is done. We need to gauge what people want and more importantly what we want.

What experiences have you had of Nottingham in the past?

H: I did Joseph at the (Theatre Royal) and there’s a beautiful bar opposite with a funky chandelier. And I did panto. Myself and Stephen Mulhern shared Aladdin. It was amazing. I love Nottingham. I used to go the (Alea) casino opposite the theatre. That was cool. We socialised quite a lot even though the panto schedule was jam-packed. I think I lived in Nando’s for most of my stay.

Faye: The glamour!

H: Yes it’s glamorous.

Faye: And there’s also good shoe shopping in Nottingham.

H: Why do we associate every city with shopping?

Faye: I actually did my first ever musical and opened it in Nottingham in 2004 called Tell Me On A Sunday. So Nottingham is quite an important place for me.

Who: Steps
Where: Capital FM Arena
When: Wednesday, April 11
Tickets: £35, 08444 124624
Web: www.capitalfmarena.com

Russell Kane

2012-01-14T08:24:00.000-06:00

January 2012

MY house is in Westcliffe-on-Sea, that’s my four-bedroomed dream home but I’ve been so busy with working in London that I had to rent it out.

It was just getting too tiring driving to and from the Essex coast each day, so I’ve taken a flat in North London.

It’s just me, the two cats Keith and Wayne and a new arrival - Captain Colin, the pug. I just like the traditional working class, 70s and 80s names.

And I must admit my new girlfriend does stay over very, very often but maybe we’re in that denial phase.

I would say my weekends are more Monday and Tuesday really. If I can get a rare Friday night off then there’s no question I’ll be down the pub to see some friends. Then ideally there’d be a bit of dancing and a curry. That’s my perfect night out - drink just a little bit too much, go a for a chicken tikka masala, then put a heavy science fiction movie on until four in the morning.

It’s not always science fiction. I can happily sit and watch Love Actually with my girlfriend. And I can turn on the man switch and watch Pale Rider, Carlito’s Way, Goodfellas or Goldfinger, which I got the other day and had an awesome afternoon watching that on blu-ray with surround sound.

At heart I’m a reader. Novels are my thing. At the moment I’m reading Philip Roth’s My Life As A Man. I recently read everything by Evelyn Waugh, then went on Mastermind with the specialist subject of Evelyn Waugh and won. So I love a bit of Brideshead Revisited.

I quite enjoy reading about social spheres that are the opposite of mine. So, Jewish New Jersey or ultra upper middle class 1930s London. It’s almost like science fiction because it’s another world.

I can’t be fussed to keep fit although I try to do a minimum 60 push-ups and 100 sit-ups a day. But it bores me. I can’t think of anything more boring than facing forward and running.

Music? If I’m about to go on stage or I’m trying to gee myself up I’ll go for Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Tinie Tempah, Example... stuff like that. But if I’m cooking then I might stick a bit of French pop on. If I’m really unwinding it’ll be Shubert or Beethoven.

I don’t go to gigs as much as I’d like to but I barely go to the shops to pick up potatoes as much as I’d like to either. I do love gigs. I was in Norway recently and I had a night off so I went to see The Wombats. I loved it.

But usually if I get a day off all I want to do is sit on the couch and stick Octopussy on.

I’ve done Nottingham loads of times: Just The Tonic; the Playhouse; The Maze; and one of the hardest theatre names to pronounce in England - the Djanogly Theatre (at Lakeside). It was named by Princess Margaret when she was (drunk).

This time I’ll be at the Theatre Royal with a new show called Manscaping. It’s based on the truth. I had a bit of a tough start to 2011. I split up with my missus and it was the first time I’d ever been single. I was like a kid in a sweet shop but I was atrocious at (sleeping) around. I was emotionally ill-equipped. It was really pathetic and seedy and I hit a low point. I cut my hair off, lost some weight... I lost my way a little bit.

I looked in the mirror one day and thought, write a show about that. It led off to analysing men and the different shapes we take along life’s path.

A perfect weekend? I think I had that last month. I met all the friends I grew up with on the Friday night, had something really light to eat and something not so light to drink and we ended up dancing like idiots. Then I went home with the girlfriend and watched a movie.

On the Saturday we went to Champneys (spa hotel in Piccadilly), where I’d never been to before. We put some white dressing gowns on and had massages, facials and Jacuzzis. On the Sunday we drove to a pub for lunch, came home, watched Dog Whisperer and fell asleep cuddling.

Russell Kane brings Manscaping to the Theatre Royal on Monday February 6. Tickets are £17.50 from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk

Rob Green

2012-01-14T08:22:00.000-06:00

January 2012

THE actors in the video to accompany Rob Green’s song, Cardinal, are familiar faces from film and TV, among them Aisling Loftus (The Borrowers), Joe Dempsie (Skins, Game Of Thrones), Georgia Groome (Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging), Chanel Cresswell (Trollied, This is England) and Ladene Hall (A Room For Romeo Brass).

So how did he do that?

“I already knew the actors,” says Rob.

“We attended the Television Workshop together here in Nottingham, so making the video felt like a family affair.”

Rob, who grew up in Chilwell, Wollaton, Gedling and Aspley, where he attended Trinity School, recently returned to the city after studying for a degree in Leeds.

“To have so many Workshoppers take time out of their manic schedules to come and be part of Cardinal was an honour. These guys were some of my earliest supporters.”

Cardinal is released on the Outlaw label, which is managed by Greg Lonsdale and Jack Curtis, who directed the video.

Says Jack: “The actors are all friends who I know from the Television Workshop. It was a real group effort.

“And they all said how honoured they felt to have a helping hand in Rob's career.”

He adds: “Aisling Loftus, who starred in the Christmas rendition of The Borrowers on BBC One, alongside Stephen Fry, managed to find time in between rehearsing for her latest play in London to come back to Nottingham for a night to film her scenes.”

The video was shot in the city during October and is set in the back of a London cab, bought especially for the shoot.

“I've been involved in making films for years but this is the first music video I've directed,” says Jack.

“From a filmmaking and storytelling perspective, the prospect of making music videos doesn't usually excite me very much. I think all in all they can be very samey.

“I tried to steer away from the traditional music video by creating something with more of a narrative. I actually see it as more of a short film than a music promo.”

Cardinal, which has already been played on BBC 6Music, is the lead track on Rob’s EP, Parlour Tricks.

His band were put together by keyboard player Christella Litras, who has worked with the likes of Jamiroquai, Corinne Bailey Rae and Beyonce.

“She’s my mentor,” says Rob.

“She’s a professional songwriter and composer and last August she asked me to write some lyrics for a song she was working on for ‘someone’.

“A week later she told me that song had been for Motown legend Martha Reeves.

“Martha rang Stella's house from the US at 3am wishing to speak to me; she wanted to tell me in person that she loved the song, my voice and that she wanted to meet me when she comes to England this year for her tour. I was speechless.”

For more information about Rob Green and to watch the video for Cardinal in full visit www.robgreenmusic.com.

Ronika

2012-01-14T08:14:00.000-06:00

January 2012

My Nottingham

I LIVE in “Costa-del-Carrington” these days. I moved here quite recently after an 11-year romance with Sneinton.

I was born in Sherwood, although I can’t remember this myself – I take my mum’s word for it.

On Friday nights I might allow myself a trip into town to Broadway Cinema or for some tea at Lee Rosy’s, then maybe a gig or some comedy.

Tea is the drink of the Gods and although I’ve never bumped into any in Lee Rosy’s, it’s still a great place to hang out, listen to some good music and knock back some cake.

Broadway always has nice vibes too and I like to run across the road between the two places all night in a state of mild confusion.

I recently sang with Swimming at the Broadway for a headphones-only gig which was pretty special.

We performed in a secret room while everybody watched on a screen in the Café/Bar and listened through headphones.

For clothes shopping in Nottingham I go to Cow and Vintage Warehouse where I buy vintage sportswear. My style is pretty much 1983 PE kit.

Mimm, on Broad Street, sells the best non-vintage stuff, and Colwick car boot is also a favourite. You can usually spot a few blurry-eyed musicians wandering around on a quest for the Moog holy grail (rumour has it somebody found an old Moog synthesiser there for £20). I’ve never found a Moog but a few nice Casios.

Friday night is also good for dancing and the best place to do this, of course, is on the steps of the Council House completely alone. What? Just me then?

There are loads of great nights on in Nottingham – highlights for me last year were Wigflex at Stealth, where I caught Kode 9 and Floating Points, and Soundhism at The Bodega for Alex Nut and Fatima – not forgetting the P-Brothers night at Spanky’s, where they played disco, 80s groove and old school hip-hop treats.

When I get a takeaway it’s a lunchtime curry from the Indian Community Centre on Hucknall Road.

I’m trying to cut back to only going there five days a week. I sometimes go in disguise as it’s starting to get a little embarrassing.

I do go to the gym or for a run most days. Normally I go running in the park where I like to bark at dogs and wink at old men.

I listen to The Beat on BBC Radio Nottingham with Dean Jackson. Dean’s always played loads of Nottingham music and it’s always a joy to be on his show.

I started DJing at house parties when I was about 18 and have been playing spots around Notts and the UK since.

I play a mix of old and new and like to mix things up so I’ll play house, disco, boogie, electro-soul, Italo, hip-hop... all sorts.

Nottingham clubbers are the best – we are resistant and will dance through anything. You can drop in The Smiths and we will carry on with hands to the ceiling.

My favourite place to go in Nottinghamshire is Go Ape in Sherwood Forest, which is like doing the Krypton Factor up in the trees.

I’m also a big fan of libraries and can be found hiding my CDs in the self-help section on Angel Row.

Boating on the university lake is a lovely day out in summer and I will happily sit back eating strawberries and flirting with the ducks while you do the rowing.

Ronika’s next Nottingham show is at The Bodega in Pelham Street on March 23.

Follow Ronika on Twitter – @ohronikagirl

Nottingham music 2011

2011-12-22T04:15:00.000-06:00

December 2011

DESPITE a consistently rich local music scene, chart success has been, to say the least, disappointing. You have to go back decades to find the last time a homegrown band or singer made any impact on a national or international scale.

And even then it’s hardly credible: Su Pollard, Paper Lace, erm, Alvin Stardust. It’s perhaps only sixties blues rockers Ten Years After who you’d really want to shout about.

There have been others but the connections to the city start to hang by a thin thread. Stereo MCs moved to London before they were Stereo MCs. Ditto Tindersticks. And yes there was that bloke from Air Supply... it’s hardly Madchester.

But this year has seen a real change in the fortunes of our music scene.

Even The Guardian wrote about it with the feature: “Nottingham’s music scene: soon to be heard?”

“The most exciting thing about the successes of 2011 are the implications for 2012,” says Mark Del, a champion of local music who set up Nusic to promote Notts artists.

“With Dog Is Dead, Jack Bugg, Natalie Duncan and Shide Boss all signed to majors I predict at least one top-ten album and maybe even that hallowed number one.”

He adds: “I think girl power will continue. There’s a growing momentum behind Nina Smith and Opie Deino. And I will be dumbfounded if Ronika and Harleighblu don’t make some serious moves in 2012.”

Following all the names familiar to local music fans are the new kids, such as Kappa Gamma and Kagoule, who won the chance to support Dog Is Dead at Rock City last weekend, plus Great British Weather, Frankie Rudolf, Rob Green, The Bystanders, Saint Raymond and Boots Booklovers.

Says Mark: “There is a lot of talent in the colleges and cul de sacs of suburban Notts.”

He concludes: “2012 will quite simply be the most incredible year of all time for the Nottingham music scene. Sorry about sitting on the fence there.”

Here are the ones to watch...

DOG IS DEAD
AT the weekend the South Notts indie quintet played a headline show at Rock City at the end of a year that has seen them sign to Atlantic Records (the home of Bruno Mars, Plan B and Ed Sheeran), support Bombay Bicycle Club on their UK tour, play major festivals such as Latitude, Bestival and Leeds/Reading, get airplay on Radio 1 and despite the free Burberry clobber look scruffy at Milan Fashion Week. A follow-up to their debut single for Atlantic, Hands Down, is expected within weeks, with the album due in the spring, following a headline UK tour.

JAKE BUGG

THE 17-year-old from Clifton was another major label signing for Nottingham this year, snapped up by Mercury Records, who flew him to Nashville last month to record his first single for the label. His single Someone Told Me was playlisted on Radio 1, he was at Glastonbury for BBC Introducing and last week he opened for Example at his sold-out Rock City show. Jake, whose influences include Donovan, Don McLean, Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. continues his residency at the Glee Club from January 13.

SAM BEETON

HIS song Under The Fence was played on Radio 2’s Graham Norton Show – twice! And yet he’s as yet unsigned to a major label. Instead the 23-year-old from Carlton has been self-releasing his music through his own Record Club, which has over 2,000 paying subscribers around the world. And he’s continued to model for Burberry, hanging out with the likes of Paul Weller and Kanye West. He will release Under The Fence as a single on January 9 – and a Radio 2 playlisting is imminent.

RONIKA

SHE has been dubbed “the Madonna of the Midlands” with three EPs this year of 80s-influenced dance pop that has earned her attention from the Mirror, the NME and the Guardian who described her as “destined for pop greatness in 2012”. This year Ronika, who lives in Carrington, has played Madrid and New York. Her next local gig is at the Bodega on March 23.

SPOTLIGHT KID

ANOTHER band self-releasing material – their second album Disaster Tourist came out in the autumn – and yet they earned a slot at Glastonbury, were playlisted on Radio 1 and had the Guardian writing about them this year. And they’re one of only a few bands in the UK making music rooted in the “shoegaze” movement of the early 90s.

LIAM BAILEY

STARTED the year at the head of the pack contributing vocals to the Chase & Status Top 5 hit Blind Faith, while already signed to Polydor Records. Prior to that the Beeston soul man had released singles on Amy Winehouse’s Lioness Records label, 2am Rough Tracks and So Down, Cold. But after just two singles, You Better Leave Me and It’s Not The Same, he and Polydor parted company. The album, Out Of The Shadows, which he’d recorded with Salaam Remi (producer for Lauren Hill, Nas, Amy Winehouse), was never released.

But Liam’s not finished just yet.

His single When Will They Learn? was played on Radio 1 just last week. He’ll be at the Bodega on Wednesday for Soundhism’s Christmas party, 9pm-3am.

NINA SMITH

THE 25-year-old released her debut EP this year, Lonely Heart Club, a collection of acoustic soul/pop tunes. Lead track I Won’t Forget You was played by Tom Robinson on BBC 6Music and on Absolute Radio. A dance remix of Lonely Heart Club by Kumarachi had a few airings on BBC 1Xtra. Nina has also supported Finley Quaye and Alesha Dixon this year.

She says: “It’s been a great year for us. We’ve seen so many acts get signed, perform on the festival circuit and get, well deserved, national recognition. For me supporting established acts, getting national radio play and receiving great press for my first EP has made it a wonderful year. Bring on 2012!”

Nina joins Liam Bailey, Royal Gala, 1st Blood and others at Soundhism at the Bodega on Wednesday.

NATALIE DUNCAN

LIKE Bailey, moved to London before being signed to Verve Records, the home of Jamie Cullum, DJ Shadow and Diana Krall. She was featured on the BBC 2 three-part series Goldie’s Band: By Royal Appointment, in which the drum’n’bass star put together a band of unsigned musicians to perform for Prince Harry. This week she started work on her debut album.

SHIDE BOSS

AFTER winning Channel 4’s Hollyoaks Unsigned Music Show, a spin-off of the teen soap aimed at finding Britain’s best new talent, the 22-year-old was signed to Karman, part of the Sony group.

“We entered the show on the last day with no real aim but to get our song It’s Alright out there,” he says.

His debut EP, Ni Sohniye, a mix of pop, R&B and Asian beats, is out now on iTunes.

Dog Is Dead

2011-12-17T06:17:00.000-06:00

December 2011

IT has been quite a year for Nottingham music with major label deals, a Top 5 single, national radio airplay, major festival slots, support slots on big name UK tours, coverage in the national music press and even an appearance in a teen soap.

Leading the charge are Dog Is Dead, a five-piece from West Bridgford, who will round off their impressive year of success with a headline show on the main stage at Rock City this weekend.

The indie band have been steadily gaining momentum in 2011, beginning the year by signing to Atlantic Records.

Since then they’ve supported Bombay Bicycle Club on a UK tour, played major festivals such as Latitude, Bestival and Leeds and Reading, had airplay on and played sessions for Radio 1 and BBC 6Music, and appeared on the Channel 4 soap Skins.

We meet in the boardroom at DHP’s offices in Talbot Street. DHP is the company which owns and runs Rock City, the Rescue Rooms, Stealth and The Bodega, books bands for Splendour and promotes numerous UK tours. Three years ago they turned to music management and signed up Dog Is Dead.

At the time they’d been together just a year.

Rob Milton, Joss Van Wilder and Lawrence ‘Trev’ Cole had met at West Bridgford School.

“Me and Rob were in our first band when we were 13,” says Joss, their keyboard player.

“Then me and Trev were in probably the greatest band ever, doing Kings of Leon and White Stripes covers that were better than the originals.”

Trev, as he became known to save confusion with original drummer Lawrence Libor, nods in agreement.

Continues Joss: “We played a Tollerton event and had to stop half-way through because we were drowning out the steel band.”

“And when we came back on and played two songs, I realised by the end of the second song that I hadn’t plugged my bass in,” laughs Trev.

The band were called Oh Henry! - which is very West Bridgford.

“No,” insists Joss, “it’s taken from the Canadian chocolate bar.”

Eventually Trev, Joss and Rob started playing together and played an end of year show at school.

“But our first proper gig as Dog Is Dead was when our friend had a mini-festival in his back garden for his 16th<” says Joss.

“That was a great gig because it was packed out with all out friends. After that we experienced the real world of gigging playing to two people.”

By now Trev’s ability with a saxophone had meant Rob was now playing bass. Trev had learned the piano from the age of six but the sax became his primary instrument at the age of 10.

“When I realised that the piano and cornet weren’t very cool,” he says.

Adds Joss: “And when they realised I couldn’t play guitar they got Paul in.”

“I knew Trev from a play we did when we were both 15,” says Paul Roberts, who lives in Stapleford.

“He was with the Playhouse Youth Theatre and I was with the Arts Theatre.”

Paul appeared in ModCrop at the Theatre Royal when he was 16 but under his real name of Rob White. Like Trev he changed it for Dog Is Dead in order that there be only one Rob in the band.

They have been together properly as a band for four years. After finishing their A levels, they decided to take a year out to see how things developed.

Not that they were really giving up university places...

Joss admits: “We weren’t really concentrating. We were more intent on trying to become rock ‘n’ roll stars. So we didn’t really do very well.”

Adds Trev: “I definitely flunked my A Levels.”

Within the year they were playing Splendour and DHP came on board.

Eventually they’d all work at DHP venues.

“It was so we could get time off whenever we needed it,” says Joss.

“It made doing the band a lot easier.”

Naturally Dog Is Dead were given prime slots at Splendour, opening the main stage two years running. This year they were higher up the bill on the second stage.

They were all able to quit the day jobs once they signed to Atlantic in March.

Say Paul: “Before that we’d do the odd London show and support slots were at DHP venues. But since Atlantic, we’ve toured with Bombay Bicycle Club.

“We were playing 2000 to 3500 capacity venues on that tour,” says Rob, Dog Is Dead’s singer, bassist and chief songwriter, who rolls in late, complaining of a dodgy eye.

“That was my first real set of gigs,” says Daniel Harvey, who joined the line-up in August when their original drummer quit to study drama at university.

At 19 he is the youngest (the rest are all 20) and the only outsider (he’s from Doncaster).

“It was through a mutual girlfriend I had with Paul,” he says of the connection.

“Not a shared girlfriend. Our girlfriends are friends so it happened that way. I’d just finished my first year at Leeds uni where I was doing maths. I left uni to do this.”

Quips Trev: “And moved to the university of rock n roll.”

“We thought we’d break him in nice and easy,” laughs Rob.

Says Daniel: “Actually my first proper gig was at Fashion Week in Milan.”

Milan?

“We played a set for Burberry,” says Trev, “and they said we could pick two items of clothing from their exclusive range. Together they were probably worth £500 or £1000 and we still felt underdressed. The place was just full of beautiful.”

Laughs Joss: “The girls could tell we didn’t belong there. I wear my shirt all the time but the trousers... I can’t get into the pockets.”

“You can always trust Joss,” sighs Rob. “No matter what he gets given he’s the first with a list of complaints.”

As if to prove a point he proceeds to moan about his bobbly designer jumper. We all agree it’s supposed to be that way.

Dog Is Dead don’t really fit in with fashion weeks or swanky private parties

“It was a laugh because it was so flashy,” says Trev, about a record label do in the summer.

Agrees Paul: “It was this big posh building with a swimming pool on the roof. It was free beer and free wine but we all wanted Jägerbombs and they were like a tenner each!”

They are more at home messing around amongst themselves, posing with imaginary washboards for publicity photos and TV interviews.

“It’s from the Fast Show with the bloke ‘Where’s me washboard?’,” says Trev, by way of explanation.

Following last month’s debut single for Atlantic, Hands Down, they’ve just put out a Christmas single as a free download, a cover of The Waitresses Christmas Wrapping.

On New Year’s Eve they play Club NME in London, then go back to recording their debut album with producer David Kosten (Everything Everything, Bat For Lashes)

In February Dog Is Dead will embark on a 24-date national UK tour but the immediate focus is on tomorrow’s gig at Rock City, their biggest hometown show and the biggest ever by a Nottingham band at the venue.

“Anyone who grows up in Nottingham and is in a band hopes to one day play the main stage at Rock City,” says Rob.

“It’s our biggest headline show here by a long way and there’s a lot more pressure on us to make it special. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Dog Is Dead play Rock City December 17 supported by Kagoule and Kappa Gamma. Doors 7pm. Tickets are £7.50, www.gigantic.com/nottinghampost

Bill Bailey

2011-11-19T14:42:00.000-06:00

November 2011

LANDING a role in the next Doctor Who Christmas special is not such much a career high as a personal one for Bill Bailey who describes it as: “like getting knighthood.” It’s fair to assume he’s always been a big fan of the show.

“Well, I was small for many years,” he quips then admits: “I was terrified by the Cybermen. For a long time I had an irrational fear of being in a lift in case the door opened and there was a Cyberman standing there. I’ve just about got over that now.”

So how did he get the gig?

“It was just one of those things. They phoned up and said do you want to do it. And I said ‘oh yes I do.’”

Any storyline for a Doctor Who episode is a closely guarded secret so one assumes he was given the third degree about no revealing any details?

“No they didn’t although I subsequently found out that that’s the prevailing culture. I did tweet about it saying that I was going to do it and there was this tsunami of tweets of people saying: “You going to be in it?” “Have the BBC said you’re going to be in it” - it went absolutely mental.

“I didn’t really realise how obsessive and fanatical people are about it. But I can see why.”

Prior to that Bailey is finishing off the remaining few dates on his Dandelion Mind tour that started 18 months ago and has since been across Europe, Australia and the US.

It includes a date at the Capital FM Arena on Thursday.

“I’ve played Nottingham many times,” says Bailey, whose debut at the Edinburgh Fringe 15 years ago earned him a Perrier Award nomination.

“I used to do Just The Tonic quite a bit and it was great fun,” says the West Country musical comedian and actor.

“I had some great gigs there. And I played the university a few times. I remember that for one of the university gigs my car broke down. And the accommodation I was supposed to be staying in was overbooked, so it was all going a disastrously wrong.

“We all ended up in some student digs drinking cherry brandy at three in the morning. So, you know, rock n roll! That’s what I say.”

Since those days he’s gone from Never Mind The Buzzcocks to Black Books to the Top 10 in Channel 4’s greatest stand-up of all time poll to a British Comedy Award. Along with his own shows for Channel 4 and BBC2 he’s appeared in Spaced, Jonathan Creek and Skins, been a regular on Have I Got News for You and QI and even presented wildlife programmes Wild Thing I Love You (Channel 4) and Bill Bailey’s Birdwatching Bonanza (Sky1).

On the big screen you may have seen appearances in Saving Grace, Hot Fuzz, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Chalet Girl and Burke and Hare.

“It’s another world now,” he says of his current standards of lodging when on the road.

“I’ve got a swan carved out of ice; I demand that everywhere I go. I get a Toblerone, I’m carried to the gig in a sedan chair... it’s all changed.”

Bailey was one of the first UK comedians to play arenas and he admits it was initially a daunting prospect making the leap from the comedy club to the big stage.

“I learnt an awful lot about what to do and what not to do,” he says.

“I’d built it up in my head so much about what a big deal it was... and it was a big deal but now I’m a lot more relaxed about it. I just see them as gigs. It’s like doing a gig in a club except there are a few more people there.

“Initially I spent hours thinking how it had to be a spectacle and I was fretting for months about the number of pixels on the screen and where people would be able to see it, was the sound right?... I drove myself mad over it.

“I started from the point of it being for arenas and that coloured my judgment in a way. I was writing songs and material thinking I’M GOING TO HAVE TO SPEAK A BIT LOUDER! and punch the air at the end of each joke.”

He adds: “I wrote this show completely the other way. I started in the tiny venues in the Highlands of Scotland, in community centres and little halls and let it expand into arenas.

“Obviously there are bigger screens and more sound equipment now I’m playing arenas but nothing really that significantly different.”

He’s also taken it to Australia, the US, Canada and Europe.

But isn’t playing an arena a wholly different experience?

Peter Kay, John Bishop and Lee Evans have all introduced songs and dance numbers for their shows this year, as if conscious that they have to fill the space. And their shows lacked that interaction with the audience that can make each gig unique.

“Practically that is more difficult because if you ask: ‘Has anyone here swam with a dolphin? And there’s someone towards the back of the arena in another postcode going: ‘Yes, I’ve dad did a doldin’ you spend ten minutes asking: ‘What did he say?’ So it can turn in to a session of Chinese whispers.

“But you are close to the people in the front rows, so you can talk to them. You just have to be quite clear about what’s been said and relay the conversation to everyone.

“In fact, it was in Birmingham where I was playing this alpine horn and the end fell off. I picked up the end of the horn and there was the manufacturer’s number inside with a number to ring in Switzerland, so I phoned them up and put the phone to the microphone.

“I got the audience to shout: ‘the horn’s broken!’ You have to allow things like that to happen so it’s less formal, so the audience don’t feel so much that they aren’t involved and they’re just observing a spectacle.”

The same kind of ad-libbing found its way into the show the last time he was in Nottingham at the arena.

“I was on just before the Dalai Lama,” says Bailey, who played the venue four years ago on his Tinselworm tour.

“We ended up with a routine about the songs the Dalai Lama might end his show with, which was good fun.”

Aside from the ad-libs, this show will be significantly different from the live DVD of the same name that was released last Christmas.

“If you think up new ideas you’re almost compelled to put it in the show to see what the reaction will be. I can’t help myself. So it’s always changing.

“I’d say most of the material is different to when I started out in Scotland.”

Aside from the filming of the Doctor Who episode, which will be set during World War II and also star Alexander Armstrong, Outnumbered’s Claire Skinner and The Fast Show's Arabella Weir, the tour is Bailey’s only focus. That’s how he has to work.

“Sometimes I’ve got in to states where I’m doing a TV show, writing something, doing a tour... you just drive yourself mad.”

Bill Bailey brings his Dandelion Mind tour to the Capital FM Arena on Thursday starting at 8pm. Tickets are £29.50 from the venue, call 08444 124624 or visit www.billbailey.co.uk

Parade

2011-11-19T14:36:00.001-06:00

November 2011

My weekend: Bianca Claxton

ALL this week we’ve been doing Blackberry's Live And Lost. They dropped us in a cave on Sunday in Buxton and since then, every day we’ve had to get to a different location to undergo a challenge.

We’ve been using Twitter to appeal to fans to give us lifts and food and somewhere to sleep each night.

They gave us each a Blackberry and we’d just say “We’re stuck in Ipswich and we need a lift to Broxbourne; can someone give us a lift?” Whoever helped us would set a challenge once we’d reached each destination.

We had to play netball for one, which was really embarrassing. I hadn’t played since school. Another one had fallen out with is friend so we had to write a jingle and then sing it to her. She wasn’t very impressed, to be honest.

The worst was feeding creepy crawlies and lizards. Me and Sian were just a wreck.

We finished last night with a gig in London and it’ll all be shown on Channel 4 on Sunday.

Rizzle Kicks, Chipmunk, Professor Green, Example and The Wanted have all done it in the past. We were the first girls to do it so I think they expected us to be completely useless but we dealt with it quite well.

The hardest thing was not eating. We’ve been starving hungry. We normally eat a lot of carbs. And a lot of cake. Everyone always says how surprised they are at how much we do eat but because of the dance routines we do on stage, we need to keep the energy up.

Because we haven’t been able to do that this week, we were all quite ill, full of coughs and colds yesterday.

It’s been a bit crazy but we’ve had a laugh.

We wanted to have a sleep but we’re off to Blackpool today to do a signing for our album which was released this week. We’re really excited to have it out, finally.

It has the singles Louder and Perfume on it and the rest of the tracks have all the same kind of energy. So they’re girly anthems, not taking ourselves too seriously. But there are a couple of ballads on there as well as a clubby track. It’s a good old pop album.

Tonight we’ll be doing a gig in Blackpool for Children In Need, which should be a good one.

Tomorrow we’re doing another signing in London and Birmingham.

On Sunday I think we’ll be back home in London finding out how well ouralbum has done in the charts.

All five of us still live together and we’re still really enjoying it.

The only times we do argue are what to watch on TV. Jess watches MTV Base and all those car-bashing programmes and I can’t deal with them. They drive me mad. I always Sky+ Glee, America’s Next Top Model and X Factor.

I watched the Lion King on DVD the other day and had a good cry at that. It wasn’t the 3D version. I think that might freak me out.

We don’t get to see many gigs although me and Jess went to see Wretch 32 the other night. Most of the time we only see other acts who are performing at the same gig as us. So last Sunday in Ireland it was Jedward, The Wanted, JLS and we went on stage with Westlife.

So far we’ve supported Shakira, Alexandra Burke, Ellie Goulding and Black Eyed Peas at Alton Towers, which was amazing. We’ve also played with Shayne Ward, Boyzone, Westlife and at the weekend we did a gig with Jedward – and we love Jedward.

Next month we’re doing two shows with Mel C and I’m dead excited about that. We are all huge Spice Girls fans. They were just the best girl band.

Hopefully we’ll be doing our own tour next year.

At the moment our fans on Twitter are saying that we should support The Wanted on their arena tour next year. But I don’t think I could tolerate The Wanted on tour. They trashed our dressing room again when we were in Dublin. And of course it was Jay (McGuiness). It’s always Jay because he’s from Nottingham and that’s what we do.

Parade’s self-titled debut album is out now. You can see how Bianca and the girls fared with Live and Lost on T4 this Sunday or visitwww.blackberry.com/liveandlost

Journey's End/France

2011-11-10T13:36:00.000-06:00

November 2011

IT is raining. Heavily. Again. But when you are stood in a cemetery where tens of thousands of young men were buried following World War I, it doesn’t seem fitting to start complaining. That the downpours have muddied the original trenches next to the cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette, the French National Monument to those who died in WWI near the town of Artois, adds to the sense of empathy for the soldiers who were here nearly a century ago.

The trenches were preserved really by accident, the owner of the land not bothering to fill them in before letting his livestock graze here.

It’s still the case today. When visitors aren’t around the field is used by sheep. And there’s, shall we say, evidence scattered underfoot. There are original guns, shells, shelters, ladders and barbed wire scattered around but it’s far from a sophisticated or fitting memorial to those who fought and died here. There are no signs, no walkway and nature has filled in the trenches over time so they are shallower than they were by two feet. One has been dug out to recreate how it would have looked when Allied troops faced their German enemy less than 100 feet away.

The site helped Journey’s End director David Grindley with his production, to imagine what it was like for R.C. Sherrif, who wrote of his experiences of WWI in his play.

His experiences weren’t here but 80 miles south at St Quentin, in the days leading up to Operation Michael on March 21 1918, the last great German Offensive.

“It was their belief they could win the war if they could smash the British army before the Americans joined the war,” says Grindley.

“In some cases the British were outnumbered by eight to one and although they were pushed back up to 30 miles in some areas, they held the Germans. And this was incredibly important in terms of the outcome of the war.”

On that day more than 38,000 men died.

Sherrif created a fiction based on his experiences which tells of how a company of officers prepare for a daring raid across No Man’s Land to gather intelligence. Raleigh is just 18 when he joins a besieged company of soldiers in the British trenches. There he finds his new comrades being led by old school friend Stanhope but he is very much changed from the boy he knew.

It celebrates humour and courage in the face of certain tragedy. Many consider Sherrif’s work an important reminder of the horrors of war and the real, un-romanticised heroes who fought it.

Grindley’s production first opened in 2004 and has since picked up a Tony Award and been nominated for an Olivier Award.

After a run in the West End earlier this year, Journey’s End is now touring the UK and comes to the Theatre Royal next week.

“In 2003 myself and the production designer visited various sites mentioned in Sherrif’s story to get an idea of what the men went through,” he says.

“And I believe it had a lot to do with the success of the production.”

He adds: “I think the reason Journey’s End remains such a resilient piece is that these men aren’t professional soldiers. They are ordinary men who were encouraged by Kitchener to sign up at their local town hall to assist with the war effort.

“Sherrif was actually an insurance agent from Surrey, who saw frontline action for ten months in 1916 until he was injured and returned to the UK.”

He wrote the play a decade later.

“Sherrif suffered from survivor’s guilt. He felt that he didn’t deserve to be alive and felt the need to commemorate those he knew who had died.”

Journey’s End was first staged in 1928 with a young Laurence Olivier.

“It became a sensation around the world,” says Grindley.

Two years after its run in the West End a film adaptation was released, starring Colin Clive, David Manners and Ian Maclaren. A German remake, Die andere Seite (The Other Side) came out a year later. And the 1976 British film, Aces High, starring Malcolm McDowell, Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward, was based on the play.

“It’s probably fortunate that it’s raining so heavily,” says Grindley, as he walks us in to one of the trenches at Notre Dame de Lorette.

“You can get an impression of the sort of conditions these soldiers were enduring. They’d be wading through water now. And trench foot was a major concern because their feet would be literally rotting in this water. They’d be in wool uniforms that, when they became damp, would be a breeding ground for lice. And the dug-outs would be overrun with rats.

“Although it’s very green now, it would have been just mud. There would have been no colour. Sherrif talked of ‘mud churned up like the sea’. And there would be no birds, just a very eerie silence punctuated by moments of extreme violence.”

We also see the Vimy Ridge Memorial, Canada's largest overseas war memorial which maintains original tunnels, craters and unexploded munitions - many areas are cordoned off for obvious reasons.

The trenches here are less authentic, having been dug out and lined with white stone to make it easier for visitors to walk around.

And the site of Loos Battlefield, where one of the major British offensives was mounted on the Western Front in 1915. The Loos Memorial commemorates over 20,000 men who fell in the battle and have no known grave.

“What I wanted to emphasise with my production of Journey’s End was that these soldiers served on the front line for just six days at a time. This really surprised me when I first started working on it.

“It was only six days but they would have been the scariest six days of their lives.

“A lot of that time would have been quiet with little or no fighting. But there was an unbearable tension that at any moment something could happen.

“To deal with it, each of the characters in the play has a very active displacement activity, in order to take their minds off their situation. Trotter reads. Stanhope drinks and works. Osborne is the father figure and listens to the problems of the others. Mason the cook is trying to do 101 things with bully beef.

“Hibbert is the only one who really can’t disguise his fear and is consumed by it.”

He adds: “I think the ongoing success of the play is that the audience knows that these were just ordinary men and there’s a real sense of ‘what if it had been me? How would I have behaved?’”

Journey’s End runs at the Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday. Performances at 7.30pm, with matinees on Wednesday at 2pm and Saturday at 2.30pm. Tickets are £12-£26 from the venue box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk

Joe McElderry

2011-11-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

November 2011

THE first date on the tour is tomorrow in Rhyl. I’ve been rehearsing in the theatre this week. I could go on stage tonight I’m that excited. I can’t wait.
It’s like two separate shows. You get the pop stuff first with a bit of the X Factor stuff that takes you on the journey before Popstar To Operastar. Then the mood changes and you get the classical stuff.
Tonight I’ll still be rehearsing like crazy for that first show and there’ll be no time for any playtime. It’s hard work because I want that first show to be perfect.
If I wanted to have some time off tomorrow before the show I probably could but I don’t want it because I want to polish everything up and make sure it’s totally perfect.
There’ll be plenty of time for that after.
On Sunday I’ll be travelling to the next show in Margate.
Although I’m busy this week rehearsing every day from 9am to 6pm, it’s been the first week in a long time where I’ve had time to myself in the evening. So back at the hotel I’ve been able to catch Coronation Street and EastEnders. I haven’t seen them for ages.
I like watching Friends and Will & Grace but I love Brothers and Sisters. I’ve got the box sets and I watch them on my laptop.
I went to see Tintin (bottom right) last week at the cinema. It’s really good. Really funny. I tend to go when I’m back home in South Shields where people are used to me being around so it’s not too bad with them wanting autographs and photos. I throw a hoody on and sneak in when the lights have gone down.
I love living up there. I’ve got my own place now. I bought it after the X Factor.
I don’t get home as much as I’d like to but even if it’s only for a couple of days, it’s worth it.
I’ve managed for the past two years commuting to London and it’s not been a problem so I don’t think I need to move there.
I’m not a cook. Not in the slightest. Me mam or friends come round and make me dinner. Or if I do it myself it’ll be scrambled egg and beans. I like scrambled egg and mushrooms for breakfast. I tend to be out for the rest of the day so I’ll grab a salad or soup wherever I am. I try and eat healthy but I’m in different places every day pretty much.
I sing at least one song every day so the voice is always in good shape. It’s a muscle, so it’s like going to the gym. If I don’t sing for a week it takes a couple of days to warm my voice up.
I like running to keep fit. I’ll run three or four times a week.
I don’t read books. I find it really hard. The only time I’d read one is in bed and I’d fall asleep straight away.
I have probably the weirdest music taste ever. Especially since doing Popstar To Operastar. It’s classical, pop, country music, Beyonce, Rihanna... all sorts. I went to see Rihanna (far left) two weeks ago. That was a really good show.
I went to see Live At The Apollo as well recently, which is the (BBC) comedy thing. They did pick on me but in a nice way. I was dreading it but it wasn’t horrible. It was Alan Carr and Micky Flanagan.
If I had a weekend to myself and I wasn’t working I’d chill out with friends and family, go to the pictures, go out for food, go for a run... I’d probably have a house party.
I was in Nottingham for the X Factor tour and we were there for two nights so I had time to have a look around.
We went to the dungeon or is it the old jail? Yes, the Galleries of Justice. They opened it for us after the first show and we had a look around there. It’s quite spooky and very strange.

Joe McElderry is at the Royal Concert Hall on Thursday, from 7.30pm. Tickets are £27.50 and £29.50, available from the venue, by calling 0115 989 5555 or via www.trch.co.uk

Stephen Merchant

2011-11-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

November 2011

HE may have a mantelpiece full of awards but it’s done nothing for Stephen Merchant’s sex life. And his many years of continuing failure is the focal point of Hello Ladies, his very first stand-up tour. Not that it’s going to help him find a woman.
“This is not a show that will attract women to me,” he admits.
“I am pretty grotesque by the end of it. So maybe I haven’t thought this through at all.”
Merchant is quick to point out that he’s not really trawling the UK looking for a wife.
“That idea was always tongue-in-cheek. I just like the idea that there will be a lot of people in the audience that will relate to it.
“I’ve always found it to be very funny subject matter. I love it when a mate of yours comes in the pub and says ‘I’ve just had the worst date ever’ or ‘I can’t believe my luck, I’m so excited.’
“What I love about comedy is when there’s something at stake, when there’s a jeopardy. And with romantic pursuit everyone knows what’s at stake.
“Everyone recognises the embarrassment when it goes badly. So I think everyone can relate to it.
“It’s what I always responded to in comedy when I was growing up in Bristol, listening to Woody Allen. It was that feeling that there is another pitiful soul in the world.”
The stories in his show, which comes to the Royal Concert Hall next week, are true, in the main.
“I may have exaggerated here and there but not much. They are pretty much true, unfortunately.”
Merchant started out as a stand-up comedian but quit when the TV partnership with Ricky Gervais blossomed, first with The Office, then Extras.
In the meantime their podcasts with Karl Pilkington featured in the Guinness Book Of World Records for being the most downloaded internet show of all time, clocking up a staggering 280,000,000 downloads. Their conversations were subsequently animated for a HBO series called The Ricky Gervais Show.
“It was going fine,” he says of the stand-up.
“The TV stuff started happening and it just seemed too much effort doing both. It all seemed too exhausting. And I never got enough of a buzz from stand-up to warrant doing all that so I just stopped.”
Although Gervais made his stand-up debut in Nottingham at Just The Tonic, Merchant has never appeared in the city before.
“I didn’t travel very far when I was doing stand-up. Probably through nerves or laziness. The only time I’ve been to Nottingham was when my sister graduated from the university there.”
Although he did appear at the Edinburgh Fringe with Gervais (who he’d met working at XFM), Jimmy Carr and Robin Ince in a show called Rubbernecker.
He admits: “I’m very poorly travelled all over the UK, actually. That’s one of the good things about this tour.”
So when he’s exploring various cities across the land between shows, what does the man in the street want to know?
“Most people want to know about Karl Pilkington,” he says of the star of An Idiot Abroad, a travelogue series which sees Merchant and Gervais sending the dour Mancunian around the world.
“He seems to be the thing that intrigues people the most. Is he real or is he an actor? Do we write all of his lines for him? Does he really have a head like an orange?”
The live show has been earning Merchant – who, at 6’7”, is the same height as Peter Crouch – some great reviews.
“It’s had some good reviews,” he says modestly.
“I have been surprised by the kind words people have written. And the audiences have been applauding and laughing, which is the most you can hope for.”
The modesty is in contrast to his brash and critical comedy partner. It’s as if Merchant is happy to be in his shadow.
In the two series of The Office he made a brief appearance. But in Extras he was a regular on screen, playing the hopeless agent of Gervais’ character, Andy Millman.
Was that due to a growing confidence in front of the camera?
“I never felt the urge to rush to be on camera. I try and do good work rather than hurrying along. And I hope that’s what I’ve done.”
As both The Office and Extras have earned him and Gervais Emmy, Bafta and Golden Globe awards, that’s probably the case.
“I’m not very brave,” he admits.
“I’m quite a risk averse person. I need to do everything at my own pace.”
He adds: “With The Office, the fact that I was co-writing and directing the show was more than enough for me. If there had been a role I’m sure I would have done it but there wasn’t. I wasn’t itching to be on camera.
“Then, with Extras, we were a bit more confident and I felt that I could step in front of the camera. And I got other opportunities to perform after that.”
They included the films Tooth Fairy with Dwayne Johnson, Hall Pass with Owen Wilson and cameos in Hot Fuzz and Run Fat Boy Run alongside Simon Pegg.
He and Gervais co-wrote and shared directorial duties for the film Cemetery Junction but their next project is back on the small screen.
Life’s Too Short, which starts on Thursday on BBC2, is a sitcom starring Warwick Davis, the 3ft 6in actor who shot to accidental fame in Star Wars and went on to become a fixture in the Harry Potter series.
“He appeared in Extras and we kept in touch. He talked to us about doing a sitcom starring a little person and at first we thought it was a bit gimmicky. But the more we talked to him the more we were fascinated by his stories. Then we created a character for him and that really opened things up. It wasn’t really about him being small. It was about self-worth and pomposity and how you define yourself in the world.
“It’s a little bit like Extras in that there are celebrity cameos in it. Johnny Depp and Sting pop up but the main thing is Warwick who is so funny and warm and charismatic. As far as I’m concerned they should just post the Bafta to him now.”
There are no concrete plans but the idea is for a third series for Sky1 of An Idiot Abroad. The first series saw Pilkington, their former radio show producer, giving his less than enthused view of the Seven Wonders of the World. The current series sees him enduring a Bucket List.
Says Merchant: “We like the idea of fool’s gold, where we give him a million quid and he’s got to make two million. But I don’t think he’s going to do it.
“Ricky lobbied long and hard to get him to do the second series. He had to work very hard to persuade him.
“So I’ll be very surprised if he does another one. He’s vowed never to do it again.”
Merchant has no other plans after the current tour is finished.
“The idea of doing anything else ever seems so daunting to me. I’m so exhausted after this year. I’ve just been working constantly. And I really didn’t get into showbusiness to work this hard. I thought it would be a lot easier than this.
“And I thought there’d be a lot more sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.”

Stephen Merchant is at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday November 7 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £27.50, call 0115 989 5555 or visit www.trch.co.uk.
A live DVD of the Hello Ladies tour will be released on DVD and Blu Ray by Universal Pictures on November 14.

Dog Is Dead

2011-10-30T05:29:00.000-05:00

October 2011

A NOTTINGHAM band could soon be snapping at the heels of music’s biggest stars in the UK charts.

Dog Is Dead today released their first single for Atlantic Records, one of the world’s biggest record labels.

The West Bridgford indie-pop quintet signed to the label, home to Plan B, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran, earlier this year.

Hands Down was recorded at the famous RAK studios in London and today went on sale in shops across the UK and through all the key download sites.

But singer and songwriter Rob Milton is cautious about being over optimistic.

“We are confident we can get in the chart but we’re talking about the top 150, which would be ridiculous for a band at the stage we are at,” said the 20-year-old.

“We don’t want to push it too hard, we just want to see how people react to it.”

The band have already released three singles on their own Your Childhood record label. Glockenspiel Song, Young and River Jordan have been played on Radio 1, Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music. They’ve also been featured in the NME, appeared at Glastonbury and even had a small role in the Channel 4 teen drama Skins.

“Even though we’ve been doing this for three years, getting signed to Atlantic felt like the start. And this single is really a first step. It’s not going to get to number one but we want to steadily build our fanbase.”

Rob met Joss Van Wilder (keyboards) and Lawrence ‘Trev’ Cole (bass/sax) at West Bridgford School. They formed Dog Is Dead with Paul Roberts (guitar) in 2008. Drummer Daniel Harvey joined this year.

“I wanted to make a song with a Motown feel that had a really positive message,” he says of Hands Down, which will be included on their first album for Atlantic, expected in the Spring.

“We’re still working on the songs for that,” said Rob.

“It’s a bit of a free-for-all at the moment which is quite exciting.”

They recently supported Bombay Bicycle Club on tour.

“That was probably the time of our lives,” he said.

“We were playing to two or three thousand people every night. The crowds reacted to us amazingly well.”

Dog Is Dead will play the main stage at Rock City in December, the biggest gig by a homegrown band in decades.

“It feels like it’s going to be a big show, not just for us but for Nottingham.”

Local music champions Nusic have been running a competition for an unsigned Nottingham band to open the gig.

“This is a life-changing opportunity for any musician serious about pursuing their musical dream,” said Nusic’s Mark Del, who will be choosing a shortlist tonight along with a panel of judges.

Added Rob: “We just want someone who is really entertaining. I wouldn’t necessarily want a Dog Is Dead tribute band.”

Dog Is Dead are leading the charge for the local music scene which has seen the likes of Jake Bugg, Ronika, Liam Bailey and Spotlight Kid gain national attention on the radio and in the press.

Dog Is Dead, who were signing limited edition seven inch vinyl copies of the single at Fopp yesterday, play Rock City on Saturday December 17.

Tickets are £7.50 from the venue, call 0845 413 4444 or go to www.alt-tickets.co.uk.

Hands Down is available at all record shops and to download through iTunes and other websites. The video for the single is available at dogisdead.co.uk.

Dodgy

2011-10-30T05:18:00.000-05:00

October 2011

AFTER rising to fame with Britpop anthems Good Enough, In A Room and Staying Out For The Summer, Dodgy slowly drifted off the radar. After a decade apart they’re back together and free of squabbles, says drummer Mathew Priest.
“If anyone is having a problem with their husband, just ditch him for ten years,” he laughs.
“It was a lack of communication. Nigel (Clark, singer and bassist) had two kids in quick succession during the mid-90s when it was all going crazy. And we didn’t understand what that was like. Andy (Miller, guitarist) was off with Denise Van Outen and Lisa Faulkner and I was off partying and what-not. We were enjoying the trappings of fame in London. And Nigel didn’t understand it. He didn’t like the fame part of it.”
After the split Priest played with Lightning Seeds, Electric Soft Parade and Ian McNabb before moving into band management.
Two years ago they got back together.
“It’s great now,” says Priest. “We’re wiser and we’re better at what we do. And after we’d done the nostalgia thing we started writing songs and thought ‘this is as good as it ever was’. And we think this new album is the best we’ve ever done.”
They’ll be playing tracks from Stand Upright In A Cool Place (out in January) and the hits at the Palace in Newark next week.
“In the early 90s I had a mate who lived in Newark and he ingratiated himself in the Nottingham music scene. I used to go up and visit him. A mate’s sister was at the university in Nottingham as well so I’d use the opportunity to see how far I could get with her,” he laughs. “I got as far as the pub. We used to go to the Arboretum, which was great.”

He adds: “There was a period of about a month while I was in between flats in London that I lived with my mate in Newark, so I got to know the place really well. He used to put bands on at places like the Narrowboat,” he says of the iconic pub demolished for the redevelopment of Castle Wharf. “It was a beautiful old pub, although the top floor where the bands played was an absolute bombsite. The only band I remember seeing there were the Screaming Marionettes. But I remember the lock-ins. It was the first time I’d ever witnessed one. So I’d go back down to London and say ‘Nottingham’s ace, you can drink until two in the morning!’”
He adds: “I remember we went to see Chubby Brown at the Palace Theatre and I thought at the time what a grand old theatre it was and how one day we could play there. At the time we’d just got the band together. And here we are. We played Rock City a few times but never Newark.”
Priest lives in a village west of Salisbury, so remote that his heating is oil fuelled. He’s just taken a delivery when I call.
“I took me a while getting used to it, moving here from London about eight years ago. I wasn’t fed up of the big city at all. We had a small boy and the missus made her mind up. Her mum and dad live out this way. So it was a case of arguing with her and staying in Stoke Newington with her in a mood or giving in.”
The first time he saw the house she’d chosen was the day he moved in.
“It took me two years to get used to it. It’s like a tanker. You can put the brakes on but it takes 50 miles to stop.”

Dodgy play the Palace Theatre in Newark on Thursday November 3. Tickets are £12 on 01636 655755.

Kasabian

2011-10-30T05:11:00.000-05:00

October 2011

ONE of their roadies is looking worse for wear and it’s noted by Serge Pizzorno when he walks in the room. He delivers a rally of expletives to describe his appearance to me. To paraphrase, he had a skin-full last night.
That’s not the case for Serge, now a father of a one-year-old boy. He’s toned down his rock’n’roll hedonism.
Or not.
“There are no rules on tour,” says the Kasabian guitarist and songwriter.
“At home I’m a pillar of society. I look after that little lad as well as I can.”
It’s been the case since Ennio, named after composer Ennio Morricone, was born last summer.
“When you’re getting up to do the milk in the morning, you don’t want to be out of your mind, do you? I’m not going to be doing that around a little boy. There’s more at stake than music.”
Then adds: “But when I’m on tour... and we’re on tour now so...”
And the missus accepts that?
“Absolutely! Well we’ve been together all these years...”
He and Amy were childhood sweethearts.
“We used to go down the park on our BMXs, yeah,” laughs the 30-year-old.
Has fatherhood changed him?
“Yeah massively I think,” he admits, although he struggles to explain how exactly.
There are grunts and pauses and the occasional “erm” before he settles on: “All the things people tell you about being a dad, you’ve no idea what they’re talking about until it happens.”
All of Kasabian are fathers. The band have been together for 14 years and despite four No. 1 albums and sell-out tours, they remain in Leicester.
“We didn’t escape down the M1 like most bands,” he says.
So who has the biggest house? You’re the songwriter so will have the most money – it must be you?
“Yeah, I suppose,” laughs Pizzorno, who, it turns out, lives in a farmhouse.
Unlike during the last few years of Oasis, there has been no sign of the rest of the band wanting to contribute to the songwriting process.
“That’s how it’s been from the start,” he insists. “And it’s worked.”
Indeed it has. Their album and ticket sales qualify Kasabian as one of Britain’s biggest bands, picking up the gong for Best British Band at last year’s Brit Awards.
The current tour, which comes to the Capital FM Arena for two shows in December, follows the success of their fourth album, Velociraptor!
“Velociraptors used to hunt in packs of four,” he says of the title.
“They stuck together, they were the rock’n’roll band of the dinosaurs. There is something about the power of four – if you stick together, it’s unity.”
The idea must have come to him a while ago as the four-piece became five when Jay Mehler, the band’s former touring guitarist, became a full-time member late last year.
When their self-titled debut was released in 2004, many accused them of making thuggish music for loutish fans.
“It was annoying,” admits Pizzorno, whose influences have always been more avant-garde.
“Even when we were talking about Tangerine Dream and Silver Apples, people kept banging on about how we were inspired by Happy Mondays. We love Happy Mondays, but it’s easier for people to put you in the box they want, than for them to listen to what you’re actually saying.”
He adds: “Anyone who has ever written us off, even with the first record, looks a bit silly now.”
That said, it was only after the release of their second album, Empire, in 2006, that the band started to take things seriously and ease off on the drugs and alcohol.
“With the first two albums, it was the most exciting time,” he says.
“We didn’t know what was going on. We were just young and crazy. It was when we were starting (third album) West Ryder, that we thought about it seriously. What we were doing was amazing and I didn’t want to mess it all up. I wanted to get to work.
He adds: “As for the drugs thing, well that got taken out of context.”
He wrote the latest album in between paternal duties at home.
“I was writing when I was doing night feeds,” he explains. “I thought I’d just be writing lullabies or maybe be too tired to write at all but it focused me. I didn’t have a lot of time to myself so I’d think ‘I’ve got three hours, let’s get back in the cupboard and knock some tunes out’.”
The cupboard, as he calls it, is his home studio where Velociraptor! was recorded.
“It’s just a bedroom with a load of synths and beat-up amps. I kind of like it that way, so I feel like I’m not at work. I’ve always been like that.”
Not always but since he was turned on to the idea of becoming a rock’n’roll star in his teens – just after he’d quit football.
Between 11 and 13 he was a Forest Junior, alongside Jermaine Jenas and Andy Reid.
“I always dreamt of playing for Leicester but it never happened,” he recalls.
“I had a trial at Forest and did pretty well so I got signed up. Frank Clark was the manager at the time.”
And he’s back again as chairman.
“Is he? He’s a nice chap.”
Although Pizzorno never met him, he later admits. And he just missed Brian Clough.
“Clough had just left but there were some amazing stories still lingering on about how he used to run the team. He was such a legend of a bloke, man.”
The stories that Pizzorno used to play with his Leicester City socks under his Forest kit? They’re true.
“I had to. You know what it’s like. And no one ever noticed.”
But he fell out of love with the game while at Forest.
“I remember in one of the games toe-poking a goal and I got a right (telling off). As far as I was concerned a goal’s a goal. As soon as the manager said ‘don’t do that’ I thought ‘this is not for me – how are you ever going to breed creative players?’ They just wanted tanks who’d run through brick walls.”
The incident signaled the end of his football dream.
“That was it for me,” he says.
“One day I just stopped. I thought ‘I can’t handle that.’ One morning I decided I wasn’t going training. I just played with my mates after that. I had some good times there, though.”
He adds: “So it was a case of ‘OK, I can’t be a footballer, all right I’ll be a rock’n’roll star.’ The fear of having to get a proper job drove me.
“I remember getting a guitar and I felt like this was what I wanted to do. It changed my life.”

Kasabian play the Capital FM Arena on December 2 and 3, supported by Miles Kane. Tickets are £30 from the venue. Call 08444 124624 or go to www.capitalfmarena.com.

The Saturdays: Rochelle

2011-10-16T03:15:00.000-05:00

October 2011

WE were in Nottingham last week actually on a radio promotional tour. Vanessa and I went shopping. I bought a coat from Zara and then we went to Pret (A-Manger). We had a few people say hello and take our picture. It’s funny because once one person does it, you get quite a few more doing it.

This weekend I’ll be packing because I know we are away next week on a promotional tour. I’m not sure where we’re going to be honest. It could here, it could be in Timbuktu. But that’s typical really. I quite like it.

If I’m at home at the weekend I like a healthy mix of staying in and going out. A lot of it depends on what sort of a week I’ve had.

I love @The X Factor. @I think the groups and the girls are the strongest this year but I think@ Frankie @will win. I like@ The Risk@ and@ Misha B.@

I don’t think of them as possible competition for us. We’ve not actually got any competition at the minute as there are no other girl bands around. I’m not complaining but it’s nice to have a bit of healthy competition. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be rivals and hate each other.

I’ve heard of @Parade@ but I haven’t heard their album yet. I don’t think it’s out yet (it’s released on November 14). But we’ve met them a couple of times and they’re sweet girls.

At the moment I’m loving @Beyonce’s@ (right|) latest album and I still love @Adele’s album.@ When we were recording our new album I was consumed by that and didn’t really listen to anyone else. You get a bit OCD about it. Just in case you hear a new drum beat or something.

The album’s out on November 21 and it has taken us about a year to finish. I’m excited for everyone to hear it now. It’s nice when you are creatively involved. There are 12 songs on the album and we wrote seven.

It’s a pop album, a mixture of ballads and uptempo stuff. We don’t shy away from pop, we’re proud of being a pop band. It’s what we enjoy and what a lot of other people enjoy.

I’m reading a book about Madeleine McCann (@Madeleine by Kate McCann@) at the moment but I keep stopping and starting. All of our down time is when we are in car and I get so car sick when I try and read. Even texting while in a car gets me going. So I tend to sleep most of the time. Even 15 minutes is better than none at all. It does me good. I’m back on form after a nap.

We’re always on the go and dancing when we perform so I keep fit that way. I hate the thought of getting into a gym as well as what we already do. So I don’t. I probably should.

It goes in phases, really. You join a gym in January and go for a few weeks and then don’t go again until the next year.

The last film I saw was @The Inbetweeners@ (above). I love The Inbetweeners anyway and yes it was good. It’s just like The Inbetweeners on holiday.

Eating on the go drives me insane so we make sure we sit down and have time to eat properly. Even if it’s just half an hour. On the road you can end up eating a lot of bad food. But there are a lot of Marks & Spencers and Waitrose now so you can have something that’s good for you.

I love cooking. If the girls were coming round for dinner I’d do something easy because I don’t like doing the timing. One thing’s always cold. So it would have to be a chili con carne or something like that.

I’d love to do@ Come Dine With Me,@ although I don’t like the idea of people snooping around your house.

I’m with The Saturdays all the time and they are like my four best friends but for a perfect weekend I’d like to spend it with my mum and my family and other friends from home.

The Saturdays play the Capital FM Arena on Monday December 12. Tickets are £19.50 from the venue, call 08444 124624 or visit www.capitalfmarena.com. Their new album, On Your Radar, is out November 21.

Cliff Richard

2011-10-16T03:08:00.000-05:00

October 2011

AN industrial park somewhere between Wakefield and Doncaster is an odd place to find Britain’s most enduring pop star. Particularly one who spends most of his time at his home in Barbados. Or at his second home in the Algarve surrounded by 16 acres of vineyard.

It’s even odder that soul legend Percy Sledge should be sat nearby enjoying a plate of rice. Sipping a bottle of water behind him is Lamont Dozier, part of the legendary Holland–Dozier–Holland songwriting team responsible for more than 50 No. 1 hits for the Motown label.

To the left a door swings open and we see a cavernous room where 25 people are on a stage. At the centre is Sir Cliff Richard, 71 today, the boss of a project that sees him performing alongside a cast of soul music veterans, under the banner of Soulicious.

They’re all here to rehearse for the tour, which opens in Nottingham tomorrow night.

“It was all David Gest’s idea,” says Cliff, during a break for which he’s dressed down into a casual denim two piece.

“He’s a good friend of Gloria Hunniford and I got this call from her saying ‘I’m with someone you know’’ - I’d met David a couple of times. She puts David on the phone and he says ‘I think you should do a soul album. I can put it together for you’. And he started naming all these folks.

“And I said yes, if you can do it I will have died and gone to heaven.”

He gestures to the people sat alongside him and adds: “So I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Along the table are Percy Sledge and Lamont Dozier, plus Freda Payne, The 5th Dimension’s Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr, James Ingram and Jaki Graham, the only Brit on the tour.

The Soulicious album, which was at number ten in the mid-week charts, was recorded earlier this year in Memphis and New York.

Along with those joining Cliff on this tour, it also features Candi Staton, Brenda Holloway, Dennis Edwards of The Temptations, Peabo Bryson and Billy Paul.

The album was co-produced by Dozier.

“He was the boss,” says Cliff, which prompts a chuckle. “In our industry there are roles for lots of people. In this case David’s role was like an executive producer. I didn’t have any contacts in America but David knew everybody and was able to draw it together.

“But in terms of the musicality, Lamont was in charge, for 11 of the 15 tracks.”

It’s clear that Cliff is steering the ship for this tour. He does most of the talking.

And later, when they’re back rehearsing, he’s leading the cast of around 30 performers. It’s an impressive set-up. Giant screens flank the tiered stage, which is packed with the band, backing singers and dancers.

The tour was Gest’s idea.

“I felt that I shouldn’t go on tour this year. That I’d rather spend time promoting the album. It doubles the pressure. But we are having such a good time.”

He’s in a good mood, even managing a joke. As a TV crew mic him up before an interview he quips: “I’m wired for sound.”

During the interview he occasionally stands up to make a point.

“I still can’t get over why people spend money on downloading MP3s when the quality is a third of what a CD is... (rises from his chair)... my stuff is only available on the best.”

Much guffawing ensues.

As it does when he, rather oddly, says he won’t reveal what the format of the show will be.

“I can’t tell you what the show’s going to be like, that would be giving it away. If anybody thinks they know what it’s going to be like, it won’t be. I change my shows every single tour.”

Eventually he reveals it will feature duets from the album but also past Cliff hits and solo spots by his guests, performing their best-known songs. Which means you can expect When A Man Loves A Woman (Percy Sledge), Band Of Gold (Freda Payne), Up, Up And Away (Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr), Yah Mo B There (James Ingram) and Ain’t Nobody (Jaki Graham).

Lamont Dozier had the trickiest task of them all trying to pick a few songs from his huge back catalogue of hits for Martha & the Vandellas, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Isley Brothers. He’s also been a solo artist and a member of groups, hitting the US charts with What Goes Up Must Come Down and Why Can’t We Be Lovers.

“Why are you looking at me?!,” laughs Jaki Graham, when I ask who’s likely to be the troublemaker on tour. At 55 she is the baby of the group. As she and James Ingram point at a grinning Percy Sledge, Cliff misunderstands and responds as if I’m asking about egos.

“I don’t work with troublemakers,” he says, to much laughter. But he means it.

“You can’t afford to have musicians who are prima donnas. It’s got to be a great big team. We are all on stage together night after night. It doesn’t work as well if there is even one thorn in the flesh.

“I’ve not met anyone yet who doesn’t want to be here. So we won’t have any troublemakers.”

Then he joins in the fun and turns to Sledge: “Wll we Percy?”

“Not me,” laughs the 69-year-old.

“I’ll just sing my tearjearker and that’s it.”

Sledge’s track with Cliff on the album, I’m Your Puppet, is his first duet in a career that started in the sixties.

Says Cliff: “And of all the people in the world he chose me.”

“So many times different singers have asked to duet,” he grimaces behind his dark sunglasses. “But I’m Your Puppet is a song that I grew up with and I love it.”

There’s a general discussion then about the enduring appeal of Cliff, throughout which he looks suitably bashful. The conclusion seems to be that he’s a grafter.

“I watched him today for an hour and 15 minutes on stage with no stopping. My hair would grow back if I could do that,” jokesJames Ingram.

“This man is truly iconic and his work ethic is incredible,” says Billy Davis Jr. “This is the best work vacation I’ve ever had,” he adds, to much laughter.

He and fellow 5th Dimension singer Marilyn McCoo perform the Edwin Starr hit Oh How Happy with Cliff, who hadn’t realised that the former Nottingham resident died in 2003.

“Oh, he’s no longer with us? Oh no,” he says.

Adds Davis Jr: “I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

As the interview wrapped up, I ask Cliff what he’ll be doing to mark his 71st birthday today.

And it seems he’ll be avoiding anyone who wants him to celebrate.

“I’ll be in Nottingham relaxing. The tour starts there on Saturday so I’ll be getting ready for that by having a quiet day.”

Then he adds with a grin: “And avoiding any of these who want to party.”

Cliff Richard opens the Soulicious UK Tour at the Capital FM Arena on Saturday October 15 2011. Tickets are £60 to £70 from the venue, call 08444 124 624 or visit www.capitalfmarena.com

Paddy McGuinness

2011-10-16T02:56:00.000-05:00

October 2011

HIS career started playing a doorman on his buddy Peter Kay’s hit Channel 4 comedy Phoenix Nights. These days Patrick McGuinness is a prime-time TV show host, occasional This Morning presenter, adventurer, author and stand-up comedian.

“It keeps me out of trouble,” says the 37-year-old, who admits that it’s the ITV show Take Me Out that has been his biggest gig so far.

“It usually attracts between four and seven million people, which is mad,” he laughs.

Even though he’d been on our TV screens for around 15 years, he noticed a significant change in the amount of attention he was getting after the first series of Take Me out.

“I’ve been used to it around where I live in Bolton but when it started happening in London, that really hit me.”

Why has he never made the move to London?

“Yes, it’s where the work is so you’ve got to go down to London but it’s only two hours on the train. You can do your work and be back for teatime.”

Unlike Kay, when McGuinness left school he had ambitions to be a lab technician.

“The subjects I was only any good at in school were science but I did a diploma at college and realised it was the most boring job ever. So I worked on a building site, I was a silver service waiter, in an engineering factory, a bread making factory, leisure centres...

“You learn a lot of good life experiences doing jobs like that so I’m glad I did all that.”

While still doing odd jobs around Bolton, his school friend recruited him to appear in his series of comedy dramas for Channel 4 called That Peter Kay Thing. That led to two series of Phoenix Nights.

After its huge success, he and Kay co-wrote and co-starred as the club doormen in the spin-off series, Max And Paddy’s Road To Nowhere.

Rumours that Kay had finished writing two more series of Phoenix Nights are, as far as McGuinness is concerned, false.

“These rumours come about because Peter starts them for his own amusement,” he jokes.

“I know nothing about that.”

Since then McGuinness has mixed stand-up comedy with a varied career on the small screen.

He’s fronted an advertising campaign for Greggs, appeared on Sky’s The Match and Inside Wayne Rooney, played the lead in E4’s Chuck Stryker: The Unknown Stuntman, guest hosted The Paul O’Grady Show and This Morning, presented Raiders Of The Lost Archive on ITV1, joined Rory McGrath on a roadtrip for Rory And Paddy’s Great British Adventure and even partnered Keith Lemon on Let’s Dance For Comic Relief.

But nothing has given him as much exposure as Take Me Out.

“I even get a game of Take Me Out going on stage during the show,” he says of his latest tour, which comes to the Capital FM Arena on Friday.

“Because they are big venues I want it to be visually good to look at, so it’s a bit special in that respect.”

Such as?

“Let’s just say there are a few tricks up the sleeve.”

It’s his biggest tour and he admits the nerves are there.

“If you’re not nervous then there’s something wrong.

“On the last tour I did about 60 nights and when I went on stage totally relaxed I just couldn’t remember what I was saying.

“Once you lose that nervous energy you can become a bit complacent. It’s good to be nervous.”

He married Liverpool model Christine Martin in the summer but resisted the magazine deals which were offered.

“Some things are private,” he says, simply.

“And you can’t tell your nan that she can’t take a photo because of the contract you are under, she wouldn’t understand.”

He adds: “Although one magazine did superimpose our heads on to someone else’s bodies at a wedding for their front cover.

“So a lot of people will have thought ‘Oh they’ve done a magazine deal’”.

It was a big family occasion in Cheshire and married life is all right with him.

“Everything’s just the same, really. I don’t feel any different. We’ve been together for years.

“The only real difference is the ring on the finger. It’s nice. I like it.”

The Paddy McGuinness Saturday Night Live Tour comes to the Capital FM Arena on Friday October 14. Tickets are £25, call 08444 124 624 or visit www.capital.com

Phill Jupitus

2011-10-16T02:52:00.000-05:00

October 2011

Phill Jupitus is the only original member of the Never Mind The Buzzcocks team. For 16 years he’s sat on the panel as team captain, out-lasting hosts Mark Lamarr and Simon Amstell, and opposing team captains such as Sean Hughes and Bill Bailey.

But that’s not all he does.

Nearly 30 years ago he quit the JobCentre (where he worked) and became a ranting poet, quickly rising to prominence supporting the likes of The Style Council, The Housemartins, The Who and Madness.

He has been a radio presenter, firstly with BBC Greater London Radio, latterly with 6Music. He regularly appears on QI and Radio 4’s News Quiz.

Two years ago he starred as Edna Turnblad in the West End production of Hairspray and has since played King Arthur in the UK and Irish tour of Spamalot. Then there’s the book, Good Morning Nantwich – Adventures In Breakfast Radio.

But he’s just returned to his first love, stand-up comedy, after a ten-year break.

“It was when I wrote the book that I realised I shouldn’t have quit stand-up,” he says.

“It made me think about why I’d gone into radio. That was because I absolutely adore radio. But I looked at the disadvantages as well and that made me think about how much I missed doing stand-up.

“It’s an incredible skill and very useful to have in your tool kit. But you do have to keep match fit. It’s like being a footballer.”

Does he feel like he’s missed out on the comedy boom, where comedians these days regularly play UK arenas?

“I don’t want to do the arenas. The thing I love about stand-up is the intimacy. If you go beyond 1,000 people in a room you’re losing that. I’m with Stewart Lee. He recorded his live DVD at The Stand in Glasgow and I completely see why.”

He adds: “If you are bantering with the audience in an arena, those in rows A to M can hear what’s going on but everyone else in the room is kind of ‘what!?’ I think the person who has cracked playing arenas is Lee Evans. I know I couldn’t do it.

“I did Wembley Arena once for Eddie Izzard’s Amnesty gig and I had a great time but it’s very weird seeing a laugh roll up the room. It’s like doing a gig to the sea.”

The other eureka moment that promoted his return to stand-up was a call from one of Britain’s biggest comedy names.

“Eddie Izzard phoned me up saying ‘I hear you’ve quit stand-up’. I said ‘I haven’t done it in ten years but I haven’t quit’. And he said ‘well it sounds like you’ve quit to me.’ He kind of berated me for not doing it. That in tandem with thinking I’d missed it encouraged me to do it again.”

Jupitus dived in feet first with a run at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. He brings the same show to the Glee Club on Sunday.

“I refer to a couple of jokes I used to do to show how things have moved on. For example, I did material about my kids, when they were six. And they’re both at university now.”

One is studying anthropology in Tokyo, the other is at drama school.

“The youngest is fascinated by performance and stand-up. I think it’s wonderful that she’s thinking about it but obviously there’s trepidation because I don’t want her to be judged by her father in any way. I said ‘do it but changing your name might be an idea’. If she does stand-up I’d suggest she take her mum’s name.”

Which is McIntyre.

“(Laughs) Beautifully done.”

Aside from the comedy, Jupitus also performs in a couple of bands.

“I know Neil Innes and when the Bonzo Dog Doo Da Band did a one-off 40th anniversary show at the Astoria and with Viv (Stanshall) being dead there was a huge space to be filled. So it was filled by Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Ade Edmondson and me. We all took it in turns.

“Then the guy that put the Astoria gig on said he’d got interest in there being an anniversary tour. Me and Ade were the only ones free to do the whole tour. So we got to play at being Viv Stanshall for two weeks.”

Edmondson continues to play with his band the Bad Shepherds.

“They’re amazing,” says Jupitus. “There is a very large frustrated musician living in Mr Edmondson and that beast is now being more than fed by the Bad Shepherds.”

So is there a frustrated musician living inside of him?

“Funnily enough I’m in a band with Ade, called The Idiot B*stard Band. We play our favourite comedy songs by Flight of the Conchords, The Bonzos, They Might Be Giants, John Hegley...

“It’s me, Neil Innes, Ade and Raw Sex, who were Roland Rivron and Simon Brint, but Simon very sadly committed suicide last year. So the whole thing is on hold while we cope with that – he was such a driving force. We were going to do something next year but we keep having dinners wondering ‘should we even do anything?’ But maybe next year. Who knows?”

For now he’s got the stand-up tour to finish, in between recording episodes of the current series of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

After Simon Amstell quit as host at the end of the last series, it continues to have guest hosts. So far the likes of Jack Dee and David Hasselhoff have kept Jupitus and opposing team captain Noel Fielding in order. Or tried to.

“I don’t know if they are even thinking of having a permanent host again,” says Jupitus.

“Me and Noel would like Wogan to do it if we were going to have anyone full-time because he treats it like a real quiz and he makes you behave yourself. Having guest hosts is a bit like having a substitute teacher. And that’s what I like about Buzzcocks at the minute. It’s the unpredictability of the guest host.”

Phill Jupitus is at the Glee Club on Sunday October 16 2011 from 7.30pm. Tickets are £15 and £10, call 0871 472 0400 or go to www.glee.co.uk

Ronika

2011-10-06T14:50:00.000-05:00

October 2011

"A stranger shouted out their car at me “You sad *@&%***!!” – which made me proud to be a Notts girl."

I LIVE in “Costa-del-Carrington” these days. I moved here quite recently after an 11-year romance with Sneinton.

On Friday nights I might allow myself a trip into town to Broadway Cinema or for some tea at Lee Rosy’s, then maybe a gig or some comedy.

I’m a gig-goer and a comedy-goer. I’d like to be a theatre-goer but that’s just too much goer-ing for me.

The last couple of gigs I’ve been to were Swimming supporting Love Inks and also the relaunch party of the Rescue Rooms with Dog Is Dead, Kirk Spenser, Yunioshi and You Slut.

Friday night is also good for dancing and the best place to do this, of course, is on the steps of the Council House completely alone. What? Just me then?

I normally spend the weekend working on music – writing, recording, producing, making videos and mixtapes, practicing – I don’t often have many days off just to do nothing.

I’m not even sure what nothing is or how you do it, but I do like to have friends over and spend quality time with my cat – Chairman Miow.

In terms of TV I’ve been watching the latest series of Shooting Stars, which I love. My guilty pleasure has been Made In Chelsea, which I love for all the wrong reasons.

I try to go to the cinema at least three times a day if possible but most days this isn’t possible. The last film I saw was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at Broadway. I thought it was brilliant but it made me glad I wasn’t a secret agent as it’s a bit stressful.

I don’t cook much any more. And I eat a bit like a chimp – lots of bananas and leaves. Today I ate four bananas, lots of lettuce, two milkshakes, some rice and two dates. Yes, chimps do drink milkshakes.

I also powerfully resisted a Hula Hoop which was offered to me.

If I do get around to cooking or rather baking then it would be a banana-related pudding – banoffee pie or banana cake.

My favourite food at the moment is juicy nectarines or mangos but not the rock-hard ones from the supermarket.

When we get a takeaway it’s a lunchtime curry from the Indian Community Centre on Hucknall Road.

I do go to the gym or go for a run most days. A couple of days ago I was running on Mansfield Road and a stranger shouted out their car at me “You sad *@&%***!!” – which made me proud to be a Notts girl.

The book I’m currently reading is Donald Barthelme’s Sixty Stories. I like surreal or funny books that confuse me.

Radio? I sometimes catch up with Benji B’s and Annie Mac’s shows on the BBC iPlayer and, of course, The Beat on BBC Radio Nottingham with Dean Jackson.

I listen to loads of different music at home. Lately I’ve been digging up lots of old and new disco for when I’m Dj-ing. Some all time faves are Chaka Khan, Prince, Tom Tom Club, Shannon, early Madonna, Arthur Russell and a more recent favourite is Dutch producer Shook, who just remixed a track off my new EP.

My favourite place to go in Nottingham is Go-Ape in Sherwood Forest, which is like doing the Krypton Factor up in the trees.

Friends and pudding would also have to feature heavily. I could live on pudding alone. If you make me a cake I will be your best friend – it’s that simple.

Ronika’s new EP, Only Only/In The City, was released on Monday through RecordShop and is available to download on iTunes. You can find her on Facebook, MySpace and follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ohronikagirl

Spotlight Kid

2011-10-06T14:45:00.000-05:00

October 2011

AFTER earning themselves a slot on the BBC Introducing Stage at last summer’s Glastonbury Festival, Spotlight Kid were on the way, picking up a distribution deal for their debut album and a booking agent for their next tour.

Not only that, the band were playlisted for a week on Radio 1. But that’s not all it’s cracked up to be, says singer Rob McCleary.

“We were inbetween Beyonce and The Wanted at one point,” he laughs.

“I listened to those shows every day that week and after an hour I’d lost the will to live.

“We felt like we’d infiltrated the masses a bit but I don’t think the Radio 1 audience is our audience at all.”

Still, Radio 1 airplay for an unsigned band is impressive.

“Yes, it looks good on your CV.”

The reason their music doesn’t sit well with R&B divas and boy bands is because Spotlight Kid have a sound that is rooted in the shoegaze movement of the early 90s, under the influence of bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and Lush.

“Our only worry with that is that the younger ones won’t know what shoegaze is anymore,” says Rob.

“It was around in the 90s but there are very few bands playing that sort of music today.”

He’s not altogether happy with the label.

“We use a lot of reverb and a lot of delay but we write songs. There are verses and choruses, something that the original shoegaze bands were never interested in.

He adds: “Our ambitions are massive. I want to see us in the charts.”

And they’ve being doing it all by themselves. They are yet to have a record deal, releasing their next album, Disaster Tourist, on their own label. Major distributors Pias are on board to ensure it’s widely available and both the album and tour are being backed up with regional and national PR.

“We’ve paid for it all ourselves,” says Rob.

“We’re looking at management next. We’re taking our time with it. We had a long and boozy night with the Joy Formidable and they said we should be patient and not lose our integrity.

“And it’s important for us to be big in Nottingham because if you can’t break your own city, you’re not going to break another one.”

He’s aware of how healthy the competition is in Nottingham.

“Ronika’s in the NME every week, Dog Is Dead were in the NME last week, Jake Bugg is signed to a major label, Swimming are doing great things, Frontiers are supporting Jane’s Addiction... it is really strong right now.”

Rob was a member of alt-rockers Model Morning and electronic dance band Bent, as was singer Katty Heath, who is also one half of the Herb Birds. Drummer Chris Davis was in 90s nearly-rans Six-by Seven. It was Davis and Heath who recorded the first Spotlight Kid album, Departure, five years ago.

“The rest of us only joined a couple of years ago so it feels quite new,” says Rob, who admits that Model Morning split because “it wasn’t happening for us” (although Model Morning’s one and only album has recently been made available as a free download on Bandcamp).

The rest of Spotlight Kid are Karl Skivington, Chris Moore and Matt Holt.

“I didn’t realise it at the time I joined the band but I soon found out when I tried Googling it,” he says of the band’s name which is taken from a 1972 album by Captain Beefheart. “It was Chris’ idea because he’s a bit of fan but Beefheart was way before my time.”

Limited-edition copies of the Disaster Tourist album will be available to buy at the gig, as a download from Monday October 17, and as a CD from November 14.

Spotlight Kid, I Am Lono, Richard Warren

The Bodega, Pelham Street

Friday October 14, 7pm-10pm

£6, 0845 413 4444

www.thebodegasocialclub.co.uk

Dave Gorman

2011-09-30T14:48:00.001-05:00

September 2011

MY weekend is shaped by my work because I’ll usually be gigging and doing my radio show (for Absolute Radio) on Sunday mornings. So I don’t have particularly lairy Saturday nights anymore. Not that I would anyway because I’m a married man of 40.
I’m on air from ten which means I leave the house around 8.30am.
In fact my perfect weekend would still include my radio show but I’d want to somehow merge that with one of the local Sunday markets that go on in London near to where I live. There’s Columbia Road flower market, Brick Lane, Spitalfields... they’re all really vibrant. Ideally they’d happen on a Saturday morning, then I’d go out for a really nice meal on Saturday night with my wife and do my radio show on Sunday morning. I’d be a very happy boy. I’m not demanding.
I’m often gigging each weekend. Tonight I’ll be in Shrewsbury. All I know is what I’m doing today. I have to look the rest of it up.
When I come off stage I walk straight out front to meet people. I don’t even hit the dressing room. I walk out of the venue and into the foyer to greet people if they want to have a chat. They’ll chat about all sorts of things. I was told an amazing story earlier this week in Norwich. This guy was in the Royal Navy and he had two months’ leave. He bought one of my books called America Unchained, which is about a road trip and he said that after he’d read it he decided he wanted to do that himself.
So he flew to New York. But the first night he was there he met an Australian girl who decided to cross America with him. They drove from New York to LA together. They now live in Norwich and are planning on getting married next year. How amazing is that? My tiny part in that, I feel ridiculously touched by.
After I’ve had a chat with the audience I’ll go for a meal and have a drink or we’ll drive over to the next city. There are three of us on tour together.
I don’t eat meat so that helps me eat healthily anyway. There’s no moral reason for it.
It’s partly so I do eat healthily. It becomes so easy to grab a sloppy burger when you are on the road. You have a rider at a gig, that you are paying for anyway, and you make sure there is some fruit and veg.
I won’t drink before a gig and I’ll only have a couple afterwards. If I drink too much then my voice gets wrecked and that’s no good when you’re facing a paying audience.
I have DVD box sets on tour with me and at the moment they include Arrested Development and 30 Rock (pictured left).
When I’m at home, we will watch X Factor but only because Twitter has changed X Factor. I could never watch it before because I hated it so much but with Twitter it’s like watching it with other people who hate it. Twitter makes it funny.
Although it does bring out the snobs in people. If I tweet that I’m watching X Factor I’ll have all these people coming back with “How dare you watch that, I thought you were better than that!” They don’t say that when you tweet about Newsnight.
I go to see live comedy at the weekend if I can make the time. I don’t go to arena gigs. I’ve never been to one. I’m not interested. I prefer small clubs where there are comedians that I don’t know. It’s how I found Jay Foreman, who is on tour with me. When I saw him he blew me away.
I also go to music gigs. I love Misty’s Big Adventure and I’m a big fan of Half Man Half Biscuit (below). I got my hands on their new album this week.
I’m looking forward to coming back to Nottingham although it was where I died on stage for the very first time.
I was 19 and I’d only just started doing stand-up. It was about my third or fourth gig. A promoter phoned me up and said “Do you need the money because you will die? They always kill the first act.”
The idea of being paid was exciting and yes, I did need the money, so I said yes. It was at a nightclub called The Hippo (later The Bomb in Bridlesmith Gate). Before I even got to the microphone to say hello the entire audience was chanting “eff off”.
And I died for the whole 20 minutes. I was even being heckled by the bar staff.
When I came off the promoter said “Why did stay on there for the whole 20 minutes?” I was so naive that I assumed that if I didn’t do the whole 20 minutes I wasn’t going to get paid.
I’ve had many fond memories of Nottingham since then, I hasten to add.

Dave Gorman appears at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday October 24. Tickets are £20 from the v www.trch.co.uk

Tom Stade

2011-09-24T07:38:00.000-05:00

FOR most of today I’ll be recuperating from last night’s birthday party. I was 41. One year over the hill. I was in Cardiff. I never really get to spend birthdays at home because I’m always working. People come down and see me wherever I am or I sit alone in a hotel room drinking.

I’ve been in the UK for eight years. I live in Edinburgh now with my wife and two kids. They are 15 and ten.

The last time I saw them was about a week and a half ago.

I’ve been on the road longer than the Rolling Stones. I don’t care what Keith Richards says. At least he’s had a couple of months off here and there. For the past 23 years I think I’ve only had two weekends off.

You’ve got to live with a pretty strong lady to be able to do that. We’ve been together for 16 years and she knows the score. Most women would have left me by now but she’s crazy.

When I do see them I spend a load of money on them. When they see dad, everybody gets new stuff. I’m helping this recession by seeing my kids. When Tom ain’t shopping the economy just sucks.

Tonight I’ll be doing another show in New Town, wherever that is.

It’s after each show when I’ll do my writing. When I’ve just come off stage I’m at my most creative. You’ve just had a good show, you’re feeling funny and everything that comes into view you can make fun of. I don’t take it too seriously. I’ll sit and have a few drinks and laugh at the world. Right now I’m writing for the next tour. I’ve been on this tour since the spring. I don’t see the morning until the early afternoon. The early bird may get the worm but the afternoon guy punches him and steals his worm.

The first thing I do when I get up on a Saturday morning in the hotel room, is I’d check my Ladbrokes betting tickets to see if I’m a millionaire. I don’t do it a lot, I just pick a couple of horses now and then.

After I’ve been to collect my winnings – or not – I’ll have a bit of breakfast then maybe check out a flick. The one that I saw recently that was really good was Conan The Barbarian (left). I’m a big comic book fan. The first couple of X-Men were OK but the last one (top right) was wicked. Conan was the one for me. You’ve got kids cutting off people’s heads. You can’t get any better than that.

I’ve become very British with the TV I watch. I want to know how much my stuff is worth. Not Antiques Roadshow, no, the Roadshow sucks. Everyone knows that. That’s for old ladies. I’m talking Cash In The Attic, Flog It, Dickinson’s Real Deal (below), Bargain Hunt – those are the ones. That’s where you find out what your stuff is worth. Have I found out that I have anything worth much? I’m Canadian, we have nothing old. Here’s a piece of wood that was brought over from England a hundred years ago. How much is that worth? Nothing.

I take DVDs with me when I’m on the road. At the moment I’m watching The West by Ken Burns. It’s about how the American West was taken over. The British, you guys didn’t really own much of America. I didn’t realise that. Or that Texas was a country for a little while.

On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be heading to the next show on the train. I don’t know where I’m going yet, that’s too far into the future to think about.

I never go and watch another comedy show. When I get a day off I’ll do anything but comedy because you’ve got to get it out of your head sometimes.

My perfect weekend would be one spent with the kids in a hot and sunny place where my pound is worth 800 billion of their dollars. I’d go to Somalia right now if I could.

Tom Stade appears at The Glee Club on Tuesday September 27 as part of the Nottingham Comedy Festival. Starts at 8pm. Tickets are £13.50 and £14 from the venue, call 0871 472 0400 or visit www.glee.co.uk

Alan Carr

2011-09-16T12:29:00.000-05:00

WHEN Alan Carr returns to Nottingham he’s always reminded of one of the worst gigs of his career. It was a New Year’s Eve show at Just The Tonic, then housed at what was the Old Vic (now Escucha) in Fletcher Gate.
“It was me, Ed Byrne and Justin Moorhouse – and it was just awful,” he says, sat in the lounge at Birmingham’s Malmaison, a hotel for “pleasure seekers and total exhibitionists” according to the glossy brochure I pick up from reception.
Alan Carr is both, although today he’s more of a distracted celebrity. Throughout our chat he often looks away and waves as members of the public recognise him and demand an acknowledgement. At one point he beckons a trio of ladies over for a photograph.
Carr isn’t being rude, just loving his job.
Once his attention is back on the task in hand, he gives me a broad grin and insists: “Right love, hit me with it!”
Nottingham? That appalling gig?
“Well everyone was paralytic. Darrell (Martin, the club’s boss) told me to give out some party poppers.
“But I gave them out too early and they were all popping them while Ed Byrne was on stage trying to do his set.
“So I got in trouble for that,” he adds, admitting that he ended up in tears after his own set bombed and the crowd chanted “you throw like a girl!”
It’s such a significant incident in his early career that Carr included it in his autobiography, Look Who It Is! My Story.
The book recalled his childhood in Northampton (although he was born in Dorset), where his family were obsessed with football. His dad was the manager of Northampton Town, while his grandfather played for West Brom and Newcastle.
After legging it to London to study drama, Carr made his stand-up debut in a pub in 1997 but it was after relocating to Manchester that he was spotted by Johnny Vegas’ agent coming second to Justin Moorhouse in the city’s annual Citylife stand-up competition.
Since then he’s become one of Britain’s biggest comedy talents but has been unable to tour for the past few years due to other commitments.
There’s been the Channel 4 chat show, Chatty Man, now in its sixth series, and his Saturday afternoon radio show for Radio 2 that he co-hosts with Melanie Sykes.
“I think me and Mel just really click,” he says.
“And she’s got the dirtiest sense of humour. I thought I was bad with double entendres but she sees stuff when they’re not even single entendres and she’s killing herself laughing.
“She comes out the studio after the show looking like Carrie, because her eyes are red with laughing so much.”
Added to that is his first arena tour that includes two dates at the Capital FM arena next month.
And he’s nervous about it.
“I definitely still get nervous,” he says.
“Even when I’m doing Chatty Man I spend the day swallowing sick, but I need that nervousness.”
Many comedians who’ve been to the arena this year, including Peter Kay, Lee Evans and John Bishop, have incorporated musical numbers, as if they are aware of the big space they have to fill.
Carr has no such plans.
“I’m quite a physical comedian anyway. I’ll probably be knackered by the end of the show anyway so I won’t have the energy for a song and dance routine.
“I’ll be eating a barley sugar off a St John’s Ambulance person.”
It’s his first tour in four years, since Tooth Fairy.
“I just needed to tour because Tooth Fairy is on every night on Channel 4... well, it feels like it... and I thought if I leave it any longer it’ll become a comeback tour.
“But I’ve never been away. I’m always on the telly.
“I suppose I’ve been a victim of my success really. They asked me to do The Friday Night Project but I didn’t realise we were going to do nine series of it.
“Then Chatty Man keeps getting recommissioned, which I love but it stopped me touring.”
And he wants to remind people that stand-up comedy is how he started.
“It’s what made me. My Edinburgh shows were critically acclaimed.
“I got chosen to go to Montreal to represent England and I’ve held my own against Daniel Kitson, Johnny Vegas and Lee Mack. I don’t want people to think I’m this gay, squawking stereotype.”
He’s in Birmingham when we meet up because he’s on a short tour of warm-up shows.
“You have to do them,” he says.
“I’d rather die on my (bottom) in Barrow-in-Furness than in front of 16,000 people in Nottingham.
“And people who don’t like arena gigs can see me at one of the warm-up shows. There are only 200 people in there.
“It’s ideal if you want to see me sweating, mumbling and getting jokes wrong.”
The 35-year-old, who now lives in London with his red setter Bev, has ambitions to write a sitcom and even act – whenever he can find the time.
The arena tour is 35 dates and his publishers are badgering him for another book.
“I don’t want it to be a bitter book,” he says.
“I’ve read a few of those second autobiographies and a lot of the time it’s them saying ‘that didn’t happen’, ‘so and so’s an (armpit)’, ‘BBC One are like this’... it’s like airing your dirty washing.
“I think the first book was so upbeat and optimistic that I don’t want the next one to be miserable.
“And unless I break America or get a terrible disease, it’ll all be about work, work, work.”
Again he is approached by a fan wanting his autograph and he obliges.
Once she’s out of earshot he admits: “My fans are lovely. They knit me jumpers and make me jam – oh and I get kisses in the street.
“Most of them are mingers but you get the odd good-looking one!”

Alan Carr brings his Spexy Beast UK Tour to the Capital FM Arena on October 4 and 5. Tickets are £30 from the venue, call 08444 124624 or go to www.capitalfmarena.com

Review: Lee Evans, Capital FM Arena

2011-09-11T02:26:00.000-05:00

HE has come a long way since playing to a handful of indifferent nightclubbers in a Nottingham cave.
Around 20 years ago, Lee Evans was a jobbing comic playing anywhere that would have him. And that included The Hippo, the club on Bridlesmith Gate later known as The Bomb.
He once recalled to the Post how he’d struggled to be heard over the noise from next room, every time someone opened the adjoining door.
Now everyone is hanging on his every word at an astonishing five consecutive sell-out shows at the Capital FM Arena. That’s 7,500 people every night.
And the Roadrunner UK tour, which runs at the venue until Monday, is his fourth jaunt around UK arenas. You do the math.
Lucky then if you were among those who caught his ‘secret’ shows at The Glee Club earlier this year where he was trying out material for this tour.
Fair play to the sweary, self-deprecating and sweaty stand-up, he’s worked hard at honing his craft since those days of The Hippo - and the first time I saw him, at the Theatre Royal in the mid-nineties, which still remains one of the best comedy gigs I’ve ever seen.
The material is nothing particularly original. He complains about shopping with his missus of 28 years in Ikea, in a deafening HMV (“I’m turning into me dad”) and the “jumble sale shambles” of Sports Direct.
He complains about air travel (“as soon as the plane gets off the ground it turns into a shop”).
And he complains about British TV shows: Embarrassing Bodies, Time Team, Cash In The Attic and The Jewellery Channel (a hilarious routine).
But then again other British comedy heavyweights like Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre do much the same.
It’s all about the delivery. Few could get a huge laugh impersonating a duck dealing with a slice of bread.
There are three huge screens for us to catch those bodily jerks and facial expressions, which are an integral part of a Lee Evans show.
As are the sound effects, from speeding cars to the broken video link to a news reporter in Libya. And be prepared because it’s LOUD. The rumble of the bass on his entrance music, the bombastic Also Sprach Zarathustra, as used by Elvis Presley during the seventies, is enough to shake the change from your pocket.
And when he voices the sound of trainers on a basketball court the woman next to me had her fingers in her ears.
The stage set is, for whatever reason, some kind of ice cave and there animations and interval videos to dress the stand-up show that runs for nearly three hours (with a 25 minute break).
There’s a new and purposely unfunny song to close the main set with an old favourite for the encore.

Extra tickets were released for all his Nottingham shows. Call 08444 124624 for availability.

Nina Smith

2011-08-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

August 2011

WHEN friends asked Nina Smith to break into song at school, she’d lock herself in a toilet cubicle and let them listen outside.

“It’s true,” laughs the 25-year-old from Bakersfield.

“I was too shy. I’d recorded music at home on my computer and put it on mini-discs but I didn’t have the confidence to actually stand in front of anyone and do it.”

Despite that she is now among the most talked about musicians on Nottingham’s music scene and expected to follow Liam Bailey, Dog Is Dead and Jake Bugg by signing a deal with a major record label.

She has supported everyone from Finley Quaye to Alicia Dixon and appeared on Radio 1. Strange then that Nina never harboured ambitions to be a singer as a child.

“No-one in my family is really musical at all,” she says.

“My dad was a lorry driver and he also worked on the canals. My mum worked in retail. But she did play a lot of music in the house, like Tina Turner, Simply Red and Robert Palmer and I used to mimic them. I’d try really hard to get it exactly the same.

“I didn’t think ‘I want to be a singer’ I just enjoyed it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

She wasn’t a particularly big fan of music either.

“The first song I ever bought was Mr Blobby on a cassette,” she laughs.

“I liked Destiny’s Child, Justin Timberlake and the Spice Girls but I didn’t really go to gigs. I was more into clubbing.”

Her first conscious move towards a singing career came at 17 when she dropped out of college to work on her music at CRS, the community recording studios in St Ann’s.

“They took me under their wing and developed me. It was where my confidence as a performer grew. I dropped out of college to concentrate on that.”

Her soulful pop style was in contrast to the studio’s largely hip-hop stable.

“There were people there who were getting played on Radio 1, like Scorzayzee, C-Mone and Shifty Spirit. They were mostly rappers. But I’d start to sing on their tracks, feature choruses.”

It was a session with Scorzayzee at Maida Vale that gave Nina her Radio 1 and 1Xtra debut 18 months ago.

Soon after she as supporting Finley Quaye in London.

“I walked in on him on the toilet,” she laughs.

“This was before I’d even met him. And foolishly when he came out I asked for a photo. It was all a bit uncomfortable to say the least.”

Earlier this year she opened for Alicia Dixon at the opening of Best Buy at Castle Retail Park.

“It was the strangest gig I’ve ever done. The first day I was performing on the Best Buy bus in Birmingham. Then the second day was outside the shop in Nottingham with Alicia Dixon and there were hundreds of people there. I gained some mega fans from that gig but it was strange.”

There have been offers from record labels but not the right ones as yet.

“I think one label wanted to shove me out on stage in a short outfit with a dance act and I wasn’t ready for that.

I wanted to see what I could do first.”

Which is why she will be releasing her debut EP, Lonely Heart Club, later this month.

“It’s very exciting in Nottingham at the moment. There are a lot of artists getting recognition like Liam Bailey, Ronika, Dog Is Dead and Jake Bugg. And there are others on the way like Royal Gala, Natalie Duncan, Cecile Grey and Harleighblu.

“And everyone is supporting each other.”

Liam Bailey, who is signed to Polydor and hit the Top 5 with the Chase & Status single Blind Faith, is a friend.

“Liam has the potential to go all the way,” says Nina. “Although he can be embarrassing sometimes.

“When we were at the Bodega once we met Mat Horne from Gavin And Stacey. I introduced myself properly but Liam grabbed him in a headlock and started messing his hair up. He just doesn’t care.”

Nina Smith plays The Waterfront Festival tomorrow.

Lonely Heart Club EP is released on CD and through iTunes on Monday August 29.

Jimmy Osmond

2011-08-19T09:16:00.000-05:00

August 2011

The Osmonds are bidding farewell on their next UK, including a show at the Royal Concert Hall. “It’s kind of bittersweet for me,” Jimmy Osmond tells SIMON WILSON

DESPITE running the family business for the past two decades, when his older brothers told Jimmy Osmond that they want to tour for one final time then call it a day, he could little to persuade them otherwise.

“This is the legacy that my brothers have created and this is their wish,” he says.

“I think we could have gotten another ten years out of us, I know the demand is there,” he says.

“So it’s kind of bittersweet for me.”

The Osmonds will bid farewell on next year’s tour which comes to the Royal Concert Hall in April.

“It’s not a scheme, to say come see us while you can,” he laughs.

“I’m kind of in denial that it’s the last tour because I love working with my brothers.”

As a group, The Osmond family have been touring for over 50 years. They have sold more than 100 million albums around the world and in the UK their hit singles included Let Me In, Love Me For A Reason, Crazy Horses and Jimmy’s 1972 UK No. 1 Long Haired Lover From Liverpool.

The latest line-up includes just four brothers: Jimmy, Wayne, Merrill and Jay. Donny, Marie and Alan continue to work on their own projects.

The 50th anniversary tour two years ago featured all seven siblings performing together for the first time in over 25 years.

“It’s a big job, particularly for my older brothers, to be in a different city every night, like we’ve done for most of our lives,” says Jimmy.

But he’s been brand controller for years. Can’t he tell them to carry on?

“I’ve done what I’ve done not based on me monetising their brand but what they wish to do. The only reason why I’ve had so much authority to make deals is because they’ve allowed it.

“They were happy for me to be in charge.

“I don’t own the Osmond brothers brand. I only control what Jimmy does.”

Jimmy is the youngest of the nine siblings at 48. The eldest brothers Virl and Tom never performed with the group due to hearing problems. Alan is the eldest of the Osmond singers at 62.

“It might be misleading in some ways to say this farewell because you can’t really split up a family. But my brothers have been performing for over 50 years, with 45 years for me. And they thought it was time to call it quits.

“I betcha there’s going to be one-off dates here and there. Just no more touring as a group.”

To make the most of this tour, they’ve booked into theatres rather than arenas.

Says Jimmy: “We’re playing the smaller venues because we want it to be... well, we’re calling it Up Close & Personal. We chat more to the audience and I think people prefer that. We could have played half as many dates in bigger venues.”

It’s 50 dates in the UK alone.

“This a pretty gruelling tour. I hope it doesn’t kill us,” he laughs.

“We’re going to make the most of it and have fun together. It’s a celebration. Then try new things after this.

“I will continue. I’ve always had my own thing going on anyway. After the tour I’ve already booked some more dates for a show I have called American Jukebox which is a retrospective of all the great hits of the past.

“And if Jay or Wayne or Merrill want to join me then they can, like they have in the past.”

He adds: “I’m going to do panto again this year. My families history is from Wales and it’ll be nice to go there to do Aladdin in 3d.

“I think I’m one of the only Americans that really gets it.”

Do you really get it?

“Oh yes I do,” he chuckles.

“I have a young family and they really like the whole Christmas experience, flying over to the UK and seeing the panto.”

But for now he’s working on making the show the best he can for the fans, one last time.

“There are so many fans in the UK and we are really blessed to have them. And they’re used to going to more than one concert. You’d hop in the bus, look behind and there’d be a car procession a mile long.

“That’s not going to happen any more after this.”

Has there been a negative reaction from fans about the farewell?

“Yeah, we’ve had a lot of people really upset but we just have to get on with it.”

What: The Osmonds Final Tour – Up Close & Personal

Where: Royal Concert Hall

When: April 4

Tickets: £29.50, 0115 989 5555

Web: www.trch.co.uk

James

2011-08-14T16:02:00.000-05:00

August 2011

IT is an idea that came about by accident and will lose them money but when James return to Nottingham in November it will be with a 22-piece orchestra and 16-piece choir.
The band, best known for a string of hits including Sometimes, Sit Down, Born Of Frustration and Laid, will be performing them and others with the Orchestra Of The Swan and the Manchester Consort Choir.
“It happened by accident,” says singer Tim Booth.
“We were invited to play a charity gig in Manchester two years ago and the BBC Orchestra offered any of the bands who were playing the chance to team up with them. We rehearsed for about three hours then played in front of 15,000 drunken Mancunians,” he laughs.
“That was nerve wracking. And it went well. But we didn’t enjoy it because it was so rushed. I couldn’t relax enough to get any pleasure from it.”
Joe Duddell, the orchestra/choir conductor, agreed that they should do it again.
“So last summer we got together with the orchestra and choir to workshop it, to see if it worked. And it was fantastic.”
James followed The Smiths out of the Manchester indie scene and for years were often-dubbed “a second class Smiths” until their anthem Sit Down broke them in to the mainstream.
“I did expect us to be very successful but we had to wait seven or eight years for the success to come,” he says.
“We paid our dues, we learnt how to be great musicians. I think that enabled us to survive for so long.”
Is he surprised to still be doing James a quarter of a century on?
“Yes. I don’t think anyone starts in a band and expects it to be around even three or four years.”
Since the release of Sit Down in 1991, James have sold more than 20 million albums worldwide.
“Sit Down is a wonderful song. I wouldn’t call it an albatross. It’s the song that broke down the doors for us in England but in different countries it’s a different song: Laid in America, Getting Away With It in Greece and South America, Born Of Frustration in Portugal and Sometimes in Spain.
Booth has been living in California for the past four years, in Topanga Canyon.
“It’s like national park. It’s got cayotes and rattle snakes and mountain lions... that’s what attracted me.
“Whenever I went to America I always loved the wilderness. It’s so huge they haven’t had time to ruin it like we have. It isn’t civilised to death.
“Los Angeles is quite nearby but I don’t like Los Angeles. It’s a good resource. Once a week we’ll go there to get what we need, then we’ll go back up our mountain.”
It sounds like a desolate place to be bringing up kids?
“No, there are other families up there. It’s a great community.”
Booth also has a home in Brighton, where he’ll be based during the tour.
“We are getting more and more experimental,” he says of the rehearsals. By the time we get to October we’ll have taken some songs quite far away from the original creation. Other songs will be much closer just with great orchestration and choir.”
And there are plans to record one of the concerts for a live CD and DVD.
“The shows will have songs from all the different generations of James. It’s going to be real mixture from the past 30 years.”
Taking an orchestra and choir on the road with them is going to cost, he says.
“We’ll lose money doing this but that’s fine. It was an artistic decision.”
‘Getting more experimental’ James, with Tim Booth in the centre.

Who An Evening with James with the Orchestra Of The Swan and The Manchester Consort Choir

Where Royal Concert Hall

When October 27

Tickets £22.50-£45, 0844 811 0051

Web www.gigsandtours.com

Only Men Aloud

2011-08-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

August 2011

IT’S the middle of August, so let’s talk Christmas. “I’m having a mince pie to get in the mood and I’ve a reindeer under my left arm as well,” says Wyn Davies, of Welsh choir Only Men Aloud. There is a reason we’re having to be unseasonally festive.
The Classical BRIT Award winners have announced their third annual Christmas tour.
Wyn says: “With our Christmas shows what we try and do is mix in some of the favourites from our first and second albums, with a strong festive feel. So, it’ll be carols and pop songs done in the special Only Men Aloud way. So you should be feeling Christmassy by the end of the concert.”
It’ll be their fourth UK tour since winning BBC One’s Saturday night show, Last Choir Standing in 2008. Since then they’ve had two hit albums and their own TV series.
“We’ve been recording our second television series and our third album,” says Wyn. “And we’ve been playing a few concerts in smaller venues, so it’s a hectic few months. I’m not really complaining because it pays the bills. And it’s fantastic to be able to do what we love for a living.”
When was his last holiday?
“After the tour last Christmas actually,” he laughs. “And I spent it eating copious amounts of turkey and being snowed in.”
Although the leap into the mainstream was three years ago, Only Men Aloud have been together for a decade.
“We’ve been touring for ten years and performing in gradually bigger and bigger venues over here and abroad,” he says.
Have they suffered any kind of snobbery from other choirs about their success?
“You definitely do have that snobbery in the music business but it’s from both sides. Whether you’re a classical artist crossing over into the pop world or vice versa.”
To try and encourage more young people to take up choir singing, Only Men Aloud launched Only Boys Aloud earlier this year.
“It’s a scheme for 14 to 19-year-olds to join choirs across South Wales. We’ve been getting them engaged in singing. One of the ways is by introducing a more modern repertoire. A bit of Cee Lo Green, some Take That...”
Any heavy metal?
“The rockiest thing we’ve done is Total Eclipse Of The Heart with Bonnie Tyler,” he laughs. “We’ve not quite moved into heavy metal yet. As soon as the voices start to get a bit rougher we may well do that.”
Only Boys Aloud is aimed at keeping the tradition of choir singing alive in Wales.
“There’s a such a wealth of history of male voice choirs in Wales but it’s been dying out. Of course, it was born out of the mining community. But now there are some many other distractions.”
Talking of distractions, has he a woman on the go?
“With the schedule that we’ve got it’s very difficult to maintain any strong relationships.”
How about groupies?
“(Laughs) We have a fair few people who follow us. And we have some avid Twitter followers.”
Some of their biggest fans are from Nottingham, he reckons.
“The last two tours we’ve done there... it’s been one of my favourite venues. The hall itself acoustically is one of the best places I’ve ever sung in.
“And the audiences have been fantastic. The last time I think was on the Friday of a bank holiday so lots of people have been in the pub in the afternoon and come along to the gig being quite rowdy, which was great fun.”

Who Only Men Aloud

Where Royal Concert Hall

When December 5

Tickets £32.50/£26.50/£19.50, 0844 811 0051

Web www.gigsandtours.com

Lightning Seeds

2011-08-14T15:54:00.000-05:00

August 2011

The Lightning Seeds will be headlining the Headstock Festival in Nottinghamshire next month. Frontman Ian Broudie tells Metro about his typical weekend...

I have homes in Liverpool and West London. It’s hard to say which feels more like home. I think I’m lucky to live between the two.

I bought a place in London a long time ago. My son lived there so I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. He’s 20 now and he’s at university but he also plays guitar in my band. So he’ll be with me at the Headstock Festival next month.

I haven’t done a tour this year. Last year I went out with Squeeze and I remember we came to Nottingham.

But I’m only doing festivals this year and I’ve been playing loads of hits. It’s good fun playing songs that everyone knows.

I am planning a tour in February where I’ll be playing a few new songs. I haven’t been writing for a long time but recently I’ve written quite a few so I’ll be recording them later this year just to see how I feel about them.

If I’m in London I’ll go out for a few drinks with friends on a Friday night but I certainly don’t go clubbing anymore.

On a Friday night in Liverpool I’ll normally be in the studio until quite late. Then at about 11pm I’ll go into town and have a couple of drinks.

When it’s the football season, Saturday will be all about watching that, wherever I am. I’ve got a season ticket at Liverpool.

I tend not to just turn the telly on. I try and only watch a specific programme or series. Usually the American dramas and comedies that HBO produce, like The Sopranos (right) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (far right). I try to read books more than watch the telly. I like autobiographies and they’re usually related to music and entertainment. Andrew Loog Oldham’s is pretty cool. I’ve got Ronnie Spector’s to read. I read Tony Hancock’s this year as well.

I wish I did go to the cinema more because I love the experience. There’s a cinema in Liverpool round the corner from where I live that’s very old fashioned. You know, stopping the film half-way through and bringing around ice cream. That’s great. And there’s a similar one in West London.

I tend not to go for the blockbusters although I did go and see Harry Potter (above right) so I can’t say that really can I? It’s very grown-up. I don’t mind a bit of science fiction. I used to read a fair bit of that.

The last film I watched was on DVD: Animal Kingdom, an Australian film. It’s good but it’s a strange film. It’s about this kid whose mum dies, he has to get in touch with his grandmother and his uncles. He finds out they’re all really horrible, big criminals and he gets drawn into that world.

I like to cook. I haven’t eaten meat for a long time but I do eat fish sometimes and I can make a nice tuna pasta dish. I hate gyms. I find them really boring but I probably do need to join one. I prefer to play football or tennis. And I used to do a lot of boxing to keep fit but I got an injury so I had to stop.

I’m going to try and do a lot more cycling but I don’t like cycling in London because I feel like I’ll be hit by a bus at any moment.

Sep 9-11, Headstock Festival, Newstead and Annesley Country Park, £60 weekend £35 day (concs available). Tel: 0845 413 4444. www.headstockfestival.com

THePETEBOX

2011-07-29T15:16:00.000-05:00

July 2011

THE Sampson family is among the leading players in Nottingham’s music scene. Brothers Pete and John play in Swimming – who The Times described as “an indie hovercraft powered by amphetamine guitar” – and are in talks with labels to release their second album but already have a US deal for their next single, Sun In The Island.
John’s wife Ronika is hotly tipped by the NME and The Guardian to take her retro eighties pop to the masses.
Meanwhile, Pete also performs as a solo artist, beatboxer The Petebox.
“My mum used to make me play the piano when I was a kid but then I picked up a guitar and discovered Nirvana,” says the 35-year-old, who played in bands with his brother while at school.
“I started playing the drums because he kept being in bands that couldn’t do it properly,” he laughs.
“Beatboxing come much later on. Initially I was fascinated by the mechanics of it. You’d hear someone do a particular sound and you’d obsess over it until you’d learned how to do it.”
The idea came from his cousin.
“He was doing this, shall we say, rudimentary beatboxing but I didn’t think much of it until I heard Rahzel. That was when I realised it could be deeply skilful and musical.”
He adds: “I was quite obsessive about it, I was compelled to do it all the time.”
Which meant annoying the family by walking around the house making odd noises?
“Yes,” he laughs. “An awful lot.”
Pete won a Channel 4 Talent Award, then the title of Radio 1 Beatboxing Champion.
At the time he was running workshops for Notts County Council, teaching young people beatboxing skills in schools and youth clubs, but for the past two years he’s been too busy performing around the world, including Europe, Africa and Mexico.
As we speak he’s at Birmingham Airport boarding a flight to Aya Napa.
From the initial beatboxing tricks, he developed his performance to create a full show using loop pedals and guitars.
“Making sounds wasn’t enough,” says Pete, who has another musical brother, Ross, who composes film scores.
“I wanted to turn what I was doing into music. So I’d do a 50 Cent tune or, for example, Drop It Like It’s Hot and that would get an instant reaction from a crowd. That was very satisfying at first but eventually became unfulfilling – as a musician, I suppose.
“That’s when I got the loop pedal. That saved my relationship with beatboxing because I was getting bored with it.”
He had a taste of how popular the mix of beatboxing and guitar could be when his cover of the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? topped more than one million views on YouTube.
Earlier this year he toured the UK with Diversity, the dance group from Britain’s Got Talent, beatboxing as part of their arena show.
“On the last tour I actually danced as well. Well, it was a series of moves rather than actual dancing,” he laughs.
He’s appeared at all the major UK festivals such as Glastonbury, Bestival and V but Splendour is a special one.
“There’s something about playing your home city. The first time I played Splendour it turned into a mega show. The whole Courtyard was full. I didn’t realise anyone knew who I was.”

Tastebuds

2011-07-29T15:13:00.000-05:00

July 2011

IT was close. One per cent was all that divided The Money and Tastebuds in the Future Sound of Nottingham competition at Rock City earlier this month. While The Money went on to enjoy their prize at Splendour – opening the main stage in front of thousands last weekend – runners-up Tastebuds were licking their wounds back in Sutton-in-Ashfield.
“It was quite upsetting,” says singer and guitarist Simon Broomhead.
“In a way it would have been easier to handle it if we’d lost by a big margin. But to know it was just one per cent... it tormented me for about a week. That said, it was a mind-blowing gig. To play on the main stage at Rock City and do a really good job, that was an incredible feeling.”
To snap out of the gloom, last weekend Tastebuds played their first show in London, at the legendary Hope & Anchor in Islington.
“It was amazing,” says Simon. “It’s a tiny place but the rock ’n’ roll heritage is quite humbling.
“There were posters on the walls of all the bands that have played there over the years: The Who, U2, Joy Division...
“The gig started off a bit dodgy because the first band didn’t turn up, so we went on earlier than we’d planned. And when we started there was one guy in there.
“We thought we’d made all this effort to play for one bloke. But then halfway the first song all these people appeared and it was rammed.”
They have a strong following around the Mansfield area but the Hope & Anchor crowd were all locals.
“There were girls screaming, so we definitely hit a nerve.
“We all agreed the next morning how much we loved it and that we’d have to do it again.”
He adds: “We also all agreed that coming back to Sutton was quite depressing.”
The band formed three years ago when keyboard player Anna Kerr was asked to live in a 52-room disused nursing home to deter vandals.
“It became the perfect base for the five friends, who had all played in various covers bands around the area, to write and rehearse.
“We had a room set up where we could leave all the equipment and if we had an idea we could walk into the room and just play.”
That lasted for 18 months before the place was reopened as a nursing home.
“It’s quite surreal driving past it now,” says Simon. “We’ve wondered what it would be like if all five of us ended up in there in 50 years’ time, still playing the same tunes.”
Since getting together as Tastebuds they’ve won Battle of the Bands competitions, played the Ashfield Show with Sugababes and appeared on bills with Ade Edmondson’s The Bad Shepherds, Alvin Stardust, James and The Holloways.
Says Simon: “We’ve got a friend who works in the music industry in London and her advice after the gig at the Hope & Anchor was to get a following around Nottingham.
“Bands that make a noise in their home cities are more likely to attract the attention of record companies. So we’re planning to do that.
“In a way that’s why we were gutted not to have won the Splendour gig because that would have made our name in Nottingham.
“Then again, before we did the Future Sound of Nottingham competition, few people in Nottingham knew who we were. We’ve had a lot of coverage since then so we’re on the way.”

Tastebuds play in the bar at Mansfield Town FC tonight, from 8pm with Funksaw, then the Wire & Wool Min-Fest at The Alley Cafe, Canon Court, Long Row West, Nottingham on Thursday with Just James, The Afterdark Movement, Nightmare Arcade and others.

Nina Smith

2011-07-29T15:11:00.000-05:00

July 2011

I’LL be performing at an event in Leicestershire tonight where there’ll be acrobats, planes, fireworks and all sorts. I’m opening for a Pink Floyd tribute band. I don’t sound very Pink Floyd. My music is more soul pop.

And I’m performing again tomorrow at Nottinghamshire Pride with a beatboxer called Motormouf.

I normally play with my band, who are Robert Harris (guitar), Dick Fontain (bass) and Phil McGough (Cahon box drum) but this time it’ll just me, my guitar and Motormouf. It’ll be stripped down, more raw than usual. We’ll be playing I Won’t Forget You, which is the lead track on my new EP, Lonely Heart Club.

I don’t just perform at weekends. It can be during the week. In the past month I’ve done shows around the country, supporting (Nottingham beatboxer) The Petebox.

I work a lot at the weekend. I’m a service centre assistant, responding to people trapped in lifts. We cover the whole country. If you’re stuck in a lift and you press the service button for help it will come through to us. I’d say 90 per cent of them are distressed. To calm them we keep them talking, ask them what they do for a living, their family...

I’m actually scared of lifts.

And airplanes. Which is why I only go abroad every ten years. I’m also scared of bees and spiders... everything really.

If I’m not at work then I’ll be working on my music, either writing or rehearsing with my band. So I get very little free time.

Last weekend I was at Splendour, which I love because it’s very family orientated and they support a lot of Nottinghamshire music there. I have played it before but this time I was just there to enjoy the music, all the Nottingham acts like Harleighblu, Royal Gala, Swimming and Jake Bugg.

The only thing I’ve watched on the TV recently is Sirens, which is a black comedy about paramedics.

It’s the same with the cinema. The last film I saw was Inception. In fact, I saw it twice. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I don’t read a great deal. If I do it’ll be music biographies.

And I don’t make any effort to keep fit. I stay in shape because I’m busy. I’m always on the move. And I eat a lot of fruit. I do eat junk food the more excited I am. If I’ve had a really good gig I’ll go to the chippy without even thinking about it.

The sort of music I listen to at home is a lot like the music I write: Zero 7, George Michael, Justin Timberlake, Lewis Taylor... and I like the Spice Girls.

On a perfect weekend, for starters I wouldn’t be at work. There’s nothing special I’d want to do, it would just be a case of spending time with friends and playing music.

Nina Smith appears at Nottinghamshire Pride at the Forest Recreation Ground tomorrow on the Acoustic Stage at 5pm – see page 7.

Her debut EP, Lonely Heart Club, is available at gigs, from Mimm Clothes Shop in Hockley and from iTunes.

Liam Bailey

2011-07-15T15:36:00.000-05:00

July 2011

ON a Friday night I’ll usually go to a mate’s gig or the pub and both will end up with us jamming and listening to music until the early hours of the morning. So, on Saturday I won’t get up until around two o’clock, I’ll do myself a fry-up and then go out again.

On Sunday I’ll have a Sunday dinner or if I’m in Nottingham I’ll go and see my mum.

I’ve been living in London the past few years. I live on my own but the girlfriend is around a lot.

I might be doing a gig myself at the weekend, of course. This weekend I’m off to Germany with Chase & Status. That’s on Sunday. I toured with them earlier this year and now it’s the festival season, so we’re going all over Europe. We’ve already been to Denmark and Belgium, we did Wireless, T In The Park and Oxygene. I was in Spain yesterday for Benicassim. There’s even a gig in Japan coming up.

Tonight I’ll be at my mate’s hip-hop night, then on to a warehouse party in Hackney. So tomorrow I’ll be recovering then flying out to Germany.

I was supposed to be doing a few festivals on my own but I cancelled them to promote my album which is out next month. It’ll be regional radio interviews and things like that.

I got a complaint from the neighbours the other day. The landlord phoned me up and said they’d heard me shouting at the telly. I wasn’t even drunk, I was sat on the sofa watching that BBC programme about songwriting (Secrets Of The Pop Song, BBC2). Nothing soulful comes out of the studio when you’re sat there with a pen going “I don’t think we should say ‘with’, I think we should say ‘and’”.

I like watching Channel 4 News for some reason. But I generally like to watch the stupid stuff, like Undercover Boss and Come Dine With Me – that cracks me up. I’d love to go on it. I’d do a fry-up. I’ve had some posh fry-ups in London, you’d be surprised what you can do. Put spinach on it, make it look nice.

I’m alright in the kitchen, thanks to Jamie Oliver, he taught me well. I’ve got his book, 30 Minute Meals. Obviously it takes me about an hour and a half. He’s got one of his restaurants around the corner, I might go in and have a moan.

I’ve been to Jamie’s Kitchen in Nottingham and it’s all right in there. It’s not too expensive.

The last time I went to the cinema was to see Attack The Block, which was funny. I only went because the girlfriend wanted to go. It’s about these aliens that come down and try and take over a council estate in South London but there’s all these kids, the ‘you get meh’ crew who are like ‘What you sayin’ bled!? We’re gonna kill these aliens.’ It’s funny.

I’m reading a book about Quincy Jones. He had an interesting life. And Bob Dylan’s Chronicles... that was like reading the Bible. It’s a great book. Really interesting. And I’ve got quite a short attention span.

The music I’m loving at the moment is Hudson Mohawke, Tyler The Creator and Radiohead.

Of course I don’t keep fit. I need to do. At one point I put on about a stone and a half which made me laugh because a girl I know, she’s a singer, you’d know her... well, the label put her on meals on wheels. Delivering the food she’s allowed to eat. They couldn’t do that with someone like me, there’s no point. And it’s different for blokes. I’m not that kind of artist anyway. If I was in a pop group it’d be different.

My perfect weekend would be good music, good people, good wine, good weather... if you’ve got good people around you it doesn’t matter where you are.

Liam Bailey’s It’s Not The Same EP is out now on Polydor Records. It includes an acoustic version of Blind Faith, the Top Five single he recorded with Chase & Status.

Roger Daltrey

2011-07-01T15:32:00.000-05:00

July 2011

ONE assumes it is the question that has been dogging the 67-year-old for decades. Pete Townshend may have written the words but it was Roger Daltrey who sang ‘I hope I die before I get old’ on The Who’s first major hit, My Generation, in 1965.

It was a Mod anthem but also one embraced by youth culture as a rallying cry. Live fast, die young.

But before I can even ask the obvious, Daltrey jumps in.

“I’m working on it,” he says bluntly, closing that particular subject.

He’ll be performing My Generation among a number of Who classics at the Royal Concert Hall next weekend but the bulk of the show will be Tommy, the hit album and subsequent 1975 film, that starred Daltrey, alongside Oliver Reed, Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret, Elton John and The Who’s Keith Moon.

The album sold more than 20 million copies and included songs such as Pinball Wizard, The Acid Queen, I’m Free, See Me, Feel Me and We’re Not Gonna Take It,

Daltrey’s idea to bring Tommy back to life was originally just as a one-off for his annual Teenage Cancer Trust Concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

“I was short of a show to put on so I thought I’d better step up to the plate,” he says.

“And it was so well received and sounded so fresh so I thought I’ve got to give it a try out on the road.

“The way we play it is in some ways more faithful to The Who than ever The Who actually played it on stage. When The Who did it we didn’t have the backing vocal ability and there was a lack of instrumentation; We didn’t have horns, it was just guitar, bass and drums. And we never played all the songs.”

He adds: “There’s nothing like it out there at the moment. It’s unique.”

For the gig he was joined by Pete Townshend, so why not for the tour?

“He knows that he’s welcome to join me anytime. But of course if he did then that would be The Who and a whole new ball game. In some ways I’m glad this isn’t The Who because it allows me to play small, intimate venues, places The Who couldn’t possibly do.

“But in other ways, if this was The Who, I could do so much more with it. I could afford to have my visuals with me. Everything seems to be going through the roof in this country in terms of costs.

“When I take it to America I will have the visuals. There’s some fantastic animation....”

We don’t want to know if we’re not seeing it.

Townshend, who is busy writing his long-awaited autobiography and working on a Quadrophenia album reissue, has given his approval to the tour, saying: “‘Roger has my complete support. He is touring his unique concert version of Tommy using his faithful presentation of the original work as the backbone for a set of wider material. It is wonderful to hear the way Roger and his new band re-interpret the old Who songs. I will be there in spirit.”

Daltrey’s band includes Frank Simes (guitarist for Don Henley and Glenn Frey), Scott Deavours (drums), Jon Button (Sheryl Crow’s bassist), Loren Gold (keyboards) and guitarist Simon Townshend, Pete’s younger brother.

“We just love to work together,” says Daltrey.

“And being as the music industry is in such dire straits at the moment, anything you can do to give musicians work is fine by me.”

Bizarrely, this short UK tour is his first ever solo outing in the UK.

“I’ve done loads in America but never in England, apart from charity stuff.”

Why?

“I’ve never been interested. My solo career has always been a hobby.”

The Tommy show is all about the music.

“It’s not theatrical. It’s not me leaping around in my underpants. There are no baked beans, no fire...” he laughs.

“We do some of the classic hits. We have to, they’re such fun to play.”

My Generation?

“Not in the way The Who do it. Sometimes I do a blues version of it. We also do some of the rarities that The Who never played live, like Going Mobile. We do stuff from Live At Leeds. I do a couple of my own and depending on the kind of vibe in the audience, we might even do a Johnny Cash medley. I love to sing Johnny Cash because I was a sheet metal worker and because we didn’t have radio in the factory we’d spend hours thumping out rhythms. Johnny Cash rhythms were great to thump out.”

Daltrey grew up in West London and went to school in Acton, where he met Pete Townshend and John Entwistle.

He now lives in Sussex on a farm with his second wife, where he paints and builds for pleasure. The couple have three children but he’s a grandfather to... many.

“By my close family I’ve four. No, six - because I count my first marriage in that. But I’ve got lots of children that kind of came from the sixties, before I was married. And they have grandchildren now. They’re all great and wonderful. I see them all but I can never be a father to them. It can’t be like that.

“It’s a difficult scenario to describe,” he adds, laughing heartily.

It’s been along time since he’s been to Nottingham but he can remember enjoying it in what he refers to as “the old days.”

He says: “They were all pleasurable experiences because of the male to female ratio. I don’t know if it’s still the same but it was wonderfully low.”

It’s a recurring theme. Another legend you might say. As far as outsiders are concerned Nottingham means Robin Hood, Brian Clough, DH Lawrence, Lord Byron and a 3:1 ratio of women to men. It’s a figure that has been whispered up to 8:1.

“Really,” laughs Daltrey. “You lucky buggers.”

Not as lucky as starring opposite movie pin-up Ann-Margret in Tommy.

“(Laughs) I had to reign myself in every day looking at Ann-Margret and having to pretend she’s my mother. That could very easily have slipped in to an Oedipus syndrome, I tell you.”

Tommy also starred The Who’s wild man drummer Keith Moon and the equally hedonistic Oliver Reed. So who was worse?

“Keith, if that’s possible. Keith actually did, just after we’d finished Tommy, drink Ollie Reed under the table. I think he’s one of the only people ever to do that.”

He hasn’t sat through the film in a long time.

“I’ve always had problems with it because it’s hard to watch yourself.

“And I think Tommy got boring once he was all right,” he guffaws.

It was his first lead acting role and sparked a passion for film, TV and the stage. Daltrey has since appeared in everything from the movie McVicar to Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, The Bill, Highlander: The Series, The New Adventures of Superman and The Simpsons. Some were more successful than others.

“I fell in love with it doing Tommy but then realised I knew sweet FA about it. So I had to make all my mistakes in glorious technicolor.”

Why does he think Tommy was such a success?

“When people sat down and listened to it there was something in themselves that they identified with being deaf, dumb and blind. It’s that isolated feeling you have when you’re young. Music takes you to a difference space and it is like feeling life through vibrations.”

He adds: “I always felt that the characters were metaphors for part of the human condition.”

If there will be any more of The Who he’s not committing either way.

“I had a bit of a scare on my voice 18 months ago. Since having it sorted out and it’s all OK and better than ever, I’m just enjoying singing. And I want to make the most of it because I know that it’s not going to go on forever.”

Who: Roger Daltrey

Where: Royal Concert Hall

When: Saturday July 9, 7.30pm

Tickets: Tickets are £40/£45, 0115 989 5555

Web: www.trch.co.uk

Q&A

Ask him about his cruise on the QE2 with Chris Difford (nottinghamropes Dave)

"I was a guest with Diffy. I was doing a songwriting thing on it. I went along as one of his guests. I’ve always wanted to do the Atlantic on a boat. God knows why. I was so damned bored I ended up doing anything to keep myself amused. I was playing at parties, playing in a bar... anywhere just to have a laugh. It was good fun. He’s a lovely guy. He’s trying to get these songwriting things going on board as activities during the day and God knows they need them.

I’m so glad I never bought myself a small fking boat - cus even the Queen Mary wasn’t big enough for me."

He once did backing vocals on a song for Barry Gibb back in the 80s. How did that come about, are they mates? Does he remember..? (Steve McGill)

"I was just on vacation in Miami where they were recording, I went down and he said stick something on this record."

Is it true that as a child you swallowed a rusty nail? (Bob)

"Yeah. I had an iron deficiency. It didn’t go down very well though"