Gilles Peterson was recently in Brazil to play at Boiler Room with the Sonzeira Reconstructed project, as well as working on the sophomore Sonzeira album. Whilst he was in Recife and Rio, Gilles found time to do some record shopping, and here are some of the highlights!
Robyn Hitchcock on the current crazy of pop culture nostalgia
Has the current craze for pop culture nostalgia had any impact on what you do or how you think about what you do? Are you finding that you get called upon to be a “nostalgia” guy more than you used to?
Robyn Hitchcock: As they say, “Nostalgia’s not what it used to be.” Pop culture is now about the same age as I am. I was born in 1953, and rock ’n’ roll seems to have bubbled into being around the same time. Not many people around now actually remember when it started.
People measure their lives out in fashion and in pop culture. They have since World War II, since there’s been no enormous eruption to shatter everything. And everything has been recorded and then re-recorded or adapted to be on a new format, so sound recordings would go from being on a 33 1/3 LP to being on a cassette to being on a CD that came from the quarter-inch tape. But it keeps getting upgraded; you can listen to it on LP again now. It’s just that there’s now so much of it — people’s lives are measured out in, “Oh yeah, do you remember the Specials?” “Oh, right.” “Cyndi Lauper.” “Oh, I lost my virginity to ‘Time After Time’.” I mean, I didn’t personally, but you know, somebody probably did. Or “I had the best hangover of my life after going to see Blur.” You see people feeling about the Stone Roses the same way that I felt about the Jefferson Airplane, and you see those people also getting older. I look around at the punks now, who are a few years younger than me, and they’re all coming up 60. There was a time when punks made me feel old, because I was such a determined Class of ’67 guy and I couldn’t really embrace ’77 fully.
It’s the currency. My parents’ generation had the war, my generation just had drugs, the next generation had irony, and the ones after that have got climate change. [laughs]
I’m not called on to be anything, particularly, in this environment. We’ve all got our period that we get excited about. Mine’s probably from ’64 to ’70. Music you hear as a teenager, or when you’re a young person, just stays with you much more intensely than what you hear afterwards. You’re a much more impressionable organism, and if you want to feel young again you put on a record that you first heard when you were 13. If I want to rush upstairs without running out of breath I’ll listen to Revolver. It’s just how it is.
Is everything swirling around the bowl before it actually disappears? What’s interesting is that there’s been very little change in fashion in the last 20 years. I saw a movie set in 1995 and I didn’t realize it was set in 1995 until I saw people smoking indoors. The things that have changed the most now are people’s cell phones and their laptops. After the eighties, and the big hair and the shoulder pads, fashion seems to have settled down into an all-purpose zone. If you want to be a hipster, you can have a checked shirt and jeans, and you can have a beard or not have a beard, or you can have a leather jacket. There are maybe more beards around than there were 10 years ago, but the result is to make a lot of people look like it’s 1974.
I wonder whether life has accelerated so much between 1950 and 2000 that what we’ve seen this century is people simply trying to catch up. All this music was churned out, all these clothes came out, all these movies came out. If you’re coming up now as a 15-year-old, there’s so much to draw on, assuming you’re even interested in music or movies and don’t just want to play online games. It’s different. There aren’t the generation gaps there used to be. There aren’t the fault lines that say, “You don’t belong here.”
Bono’s Isolated Vocals From U2’s “Every Breaking Wave” In Concert
U2 isolated tracks are rare so it’s cool to find this Bono-only live vocal from “Every Breaking Wave” recorded at a live acoustic performance. The song was originally released in 2014 on U2’s Songs of Innocence album.
The last company that still makes VCRs is set to stop later this year
Even after they’re obsolete, technologies can take a long time to fully die out. It was only in 2011, after all, that the last typewriter factory shutdown. And now, at long last, it appears the videocassette recorder is suffering the same fate: Funai Electric, the last company known to make VCRs, is ceasing production.
Funai has a long history with the VHS format and VCRs. In 1980, it launched the CVC Player, the first ever compact cassette recorder, which attempted to compete with the more popular VHS and Betamax formats. Funai’s website notes that the CVC “attracted a great deal of interest when Japanese television broadcasters used these for a program on climbing Mt. Everest,” but they were no match for the more popular formats. In 1983 Funai started making VCRs of their own, applying technology used in the CVC, and haven’t stopped until the end of this month.
Vote For This Government: “Our secret weapon will be the Rolling Stones!”
Finally, a great campaign song and a party platform I can get behind!
A Mix Tape? Pfft. How About A Cassette Tape Coffee Table?
There was a time when a friend’s mix tape, a sonic love letter from a crush, or a cassette played endlessly in your parent’s car could forever change you.
Pause, rewind, and let that happen again with a company called Altar Furniture. The ‘Great Tape’ collection of tables is a line of 1:10 scale copies of compact music cassettes functioning as furniture. With conversion kits available, the purpose of the same cassette is variable between coffee table, dining table and desk.
These items have been designed and built by hand to bring back that exciting and nostalgic feeling of discovering music. Our designs are being inspired by many things related to tapes: Legendary demos, classic albums, bastardly bootlegs, mixes (comps) making a statement and also more contemporary influences for those looking for something really special.
It’ll set you back by about $2,100, but that’s the price for being a music fan, right?
Check Out Youth From Killing Joke’s New Project, Hypnopazūzu
Hypnopazūzu is the duo of none other than Martin Glover aka Youth (Killing Joke) and David Tibet (Current 93). A long time in the making, Create Christ, Sailor Boy is their new album, an elaborately-packaged 3-sided LP (with a laser etching on side 4). It contains ten songs bringing together spheres and planets for the ultimate Hallucinatory PickNick.
You can now bring the noise home with the Public Enemy Action Figure Set
Kings of Hip Hop and inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Public Enemy’s “first action figure as a set” featuring four of the central members from the 80’s. Members are: Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, and Terminator X.
Both the dolls and the packaging are designed by Ed Piskor, author of the New York Times Best- Selling and Eisner Award winning comic series: Hip Hop Family Tree. You can get them here.
Nick Jonas and Sun Life Financial provide select members of the diabetes community to meet their pop icon
Sun Life Financial Inc. is teaming up with BEYOND TYPE 1 to provide select community members of the Canadian Diabetes Association and JDRF Quebec living with diabetes the once in a lifetime chance to meet singer/songwriter Nick Jonas.
“I’m thrilled to join forces with Sun Life Financial in the fight against diabetes and encourage people living with this disease to follow their dreams and live beyond their diagnosis,” said Nick Jonas, co-founder, BEYOND TYPE 1. “Since I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 13, I’ve learned how to properly manage my disease to not only live, but live well. Although type 1 diabetes is not preventable, 90% of people with diabetes live with type 2, which in many cases can be prevented or delayed by identifying risks, eating well and staying active.”
Throughout the summer of 2016, Sun Life Financial, the CDA and JDRF Quebec will be joining Nick Jonas on the road for the Canadian leg of his world tour. With stops in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, select community members of the CDA and JDRF Quebec living with diabetes will have the opportunity to meet and speak with Nick Jonas and enjoy his concert free of charge.
“We want to inspire these people to continue to manage their disease effectively and, like Nick, lead full and successful lives,” said Paul Joliat, Assistant Vice-President, Philanthropy & Sponsorships, Sun Life Financial. “Diabetes is a global epidemic and rates continue to rise. That’s why, at Sun Life, we’re committed to the prevention of diabetes and its related complications and want to remind Canadians that knowing their risk level is simple yet vital.”
Sun Life Financial is encouraging Canadians to visit here, get screened for their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and take the proper steps to help prevent it or manage its onset.
“Eleven million Canadians are living with diabetes or prediabetes. That’s why learning your risk for type 2 diabetes is such an important step to take charge of your health. The CDA works with Canadians affected by type 1 and type 2 diabetes to help them better manage the disease and to try to prevent new cases of type 2 diabetes whenever possible. We are thankful to Nick Jonas, Sun Life Financial and BEYOND TYPE 1 for helping us get this important message out,” said CDA President and CEO Rick Blickstead.
Springsteen Manager: “Bruce’s next record is a solo album”
Next up for Bruce Springsteen is a solo album, which Landau calls “a very different kind of record” from Springsteen, says manager Jon Landau. As for a release date or supporting tour, “it’s premature to say much about it,” Landau says. “It’s a wonderful record, and we’ll see how the next year unfolds. We’re terrible planners. You have people who know where they’re playing 18 months from now and have all of next summer’s festivals booked, and we just have a knack for not planning that far ahead. That’s our way.”
Landau did provide a little insight into Springsteen’s creative direction. “All I can say is that there is a solo record — and when I say solo record, I’m not talking about an acoustic record,” he says. “It is, in fact, a very expansive record, a very rich record. It’s one of Bruce’s very creative efforts. Stay tuned, and we’ll see exactly how that shapes up next year.”