etnobofin

Magic Wands – Black Magic [iTunes]

Dang, the weather’s too hot now for anything but instant pop music. Here’s a song that arrived in my inbox last week, and I’ve been loving it.

The Magic Wands are a Nashville-based duo, a guy and a girl called Chris and Dexy. They’ve only been making music for about a year, but already toured to the UK (I didn’t see them). One of their publicity photos was taken at the Rollright Stones, which is just up the road from me in northern Oxfordshire.

There’s some low-level buzz out there about these guys, whose music reminds me a little of post-punk bands like Delta 5. They even played a side stage at Glasto this year, and apparently an album is in the works. Their first single Teenage Love is kinda cool too.

The Wurzels – The Combine Harvester
From The Finest ‘Arvest of the Wurzels: EMI [Buy]

There was a lot of music at Camp Bestival that I unfortunately missed – DJ sets by Nigel Godrich and Gilles Peterson, as well as a special Kids Disco curated by Jon More of Coldcut (funk’n'soul versions of childrens’ songs – it must have been chaos). Oh, and Kate Nash and the Dulwich Ukulele Club. But I did hear a lot of other music:

Pete Budd of The Wurzels

The Wurzels provided the most unexpected block-rocking beats of the weekend. Most of kids pogo-ing to The Combine Harvester weren’t even born when it was #1 in the UK popcharts for two weeks in 1976. (Even I wasn’t around then…)

Some would argue that Billy Bragg is an incarnation of a certain type of Englishness – and not only that, he’s an astounding performer, who took the whole crowd along with him during his afternoon solo set on the main stage. Who says that punk ain’t folk music?

When I told people that Chuck Berry would be playing, their reaction was “Chuck Berry? You mean he’s still alive?” Not only still alive – but still playing, sort of. His Friday night headline slot was sloppy and unfocused, but that hardly mattered since most of us were there to pay homage to a legend, not to hear great rock’n'roll.

Hercules and Love Affair

Most of my jazz friends didn’t get Beardyman‘s cheeky solo beatboxing set, and neither did they join me up the front for the boutique disco inferno operated by Hercules and Love Affair. Danced me pants off I did.

Stayed up the front for Black Kids, to see if all the hype is remotely deserved. They’re a good-natured band live, and it was a lot of fun, but my impression is that they’re still scenesters lucky enough to have written a couple of good songs. I hope I’m wrong, but somebody’s making money off them, I’m sure.

All the excitement on Saturday evening was about The Flaming Lips, who delivered a typically oracular spectacular. Suffice to say that Wayne Coyne arrived on stage in a bubble out of a castle. And even if the Lips’ schtick (hoho) is more about seeing than hearing their show, it was fun singing along to Yoshimi as the full moon rose behind the main stage.

The Hot Potato Syncopators

But of course, this is Camp Bestival, so most of the memorable moments happen a long way from the main arena. It was impossible not to bump into The Henry Brothers playing their bluegrass and murder ballads just about anywhere there was room to swing a guitar.

And finally the Hot Potato Syncopators ripped apart the Come Dancing tent on Sunday evening with little more than ridiculous posh accents, a couple of ukuleles and a slide whistle. Super funny, super silly, and tip-top entertainment for all ages. Video here.

Undoubtedly, the past weekend at Camp Bestival at Lulworth Castle in Dorset was one of the most extraordinary since I moved to England. The festival was, to use a very English adjective, completely bonkers.

I’ll mention the musical lineup in a separate post, because in many ways, the music was almost a sideshow – something that you listened to accidentally in between learning how to dance the Charleston, singing campfire songs and making giant piñatas. Camp Bestival was all about grown men in dog costumes blowing enormous soap bubbles and wheelbarrow races involving kids dressed as Oliver Twist and Alice in Wonderland.

The weather was extraordinary. England has suffered a typically crap summer in 2008 so far, but finally we got a dry weekend of passing cloud and sunshine with mild temperatures – between 18 and 22 degrees. Warm enough to be pleasant, without having to remove your tweed jacket, top hat or Dalek costume.

It was an idiot-free zone. Everyone was in a good mood, relaxed, and spontaneous happenings abounded across the campsite. In the course of a single day, you could play old-time jazz on an outdoor piano in the middle of the Magic Meadow, play Scrabble in a yurt and listen to convicted felon Howard Marks read the Three Little Pigs in the Kids Field.

Perhaps most importantly, Camp Bestival was a family event, almost to a fault. There was no part of the site where kids weren’t allowed – so they infested every part of the festival: running around the bars, dancing in the Balearic tent to DJ Derek, in the front row of the “mosh pit” or staging swordfights among the baby buggies parked up for the Flaming Lips.

There’s something about having so many children around that makes us grown-ups behave differently. What a blessing to spend a weekend with 10,000 people who could drop their pose, shelve their attitudes, paint their faces like tigers and remember how to have fun.

The Hot Grits are a large-scale funk/afrobeat band that sprang from the same Auckland funk’n'soul scene as one million dollars. They’ve finally got around to releasing their first full-length album, It’s Too Drunk to Be This Early.

The Hot Grits occupy the red corner of the funk arena, exponents of straight up-down afro-funk with not a few overdriven guitar solos and a sprinkling of politics added to the stew. Apart from anything else, they are great live band.

Their first video for the song Headlights is worth checking out. A great concept well-executed, and a good example of how you can make an entertaining video with a limited budget.

Australian TV Show The Gruen Transfer asked a couple of advertising agencies to come up with a campaign to promote a military invasion of New Zealand by Australia.

Quite amusing really, we didn’t know the Aussies cared so much about us! A hi-res version of the second ad is online at www.invadenewzealand.com

Hat tip to Duncan MacLeod.

Crowded House have an “ace up their sleeve” for the wet, final night of a music festival. They can cheer up the crowd by opening their set with a singalong about the weather.

And so with a rousing rendition of Weather With You led by Neil Finn, Crowded House pulled the audience out of any depression brought on by damp socks and muddy trousers, and provided a great closing act of Cornbury. (The song was filmed by salsbury15 and posted on YouTube.)

“The sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring…”

In contrast to Paul Simon the night before, Crowded House was definitely there to give the people a good time. Neil Finn knows how to create an experience of “the moment” that goes beyond just hearing all the hits on a rainy Sunday evening.

At one point, a giant soap bubble drifted across the stage, and Neil stopped the band mid-song, saying “Oh wow, check out that bubble!”. And 7,000 people looked up and watched a bubble float above their heads. You had to be there.

More Crowded House fun was had a week earlier at Glastonbury, (but without the rain). Watch the band lead tens of thousands in what was likely the best public singing of the festival. And the best mexican wave…

So yeah, Crowded House played all the favourites: Don’t Dream It’s Over, Four Seasons in One Day, World Where You Live, Distant Sun, Fall At Your Feet… they are unashamedly a popular band gathered around an expert writer of popular music. No pretension, just great songs and good times.

A welcome addition to the band for their 2008 summer tour of Europe is Don McGlashan, who augmented the music with a menagerie of instruments including ukulele, euphonium, toy piano and pocket trumpet.

The few kiwis in the crowd were hoping that Don would step up to the front with his guitar for a Mutton Birds or Front Lawn number, but it never happened. But perhaps there is no more typical Don McGlashan performance than to stand at the back of the band, tinkling on a glockenspiel on someone else’s songs…

Paul Simon – short, and blurry.

The past weekend was spent at Lord Rotherwick’s rather lovely deer park at Cornbury in west Oxfordshire, getting wet in a tent, catching up with friends and watching a few bands play. The Cornbury Festival is a relaxed family affair, with most of the crowd travelling from the local Oxfordshire area.

It was funny to (literally) bump into Conservative Party Leader David Cameron (the local MP for West Oxfordshire) in the VIP loos. He said “sorry”- but whether that was for bumping into me or for being an Old Etonian, I wasn’t sure.

A rueful David Cameron at Cornbury, shortly after apologising to the author
(Photo: BBC Oxford)

Music at Cornbury is generally oriented towards happy artists with established pedigrees (10cc, The Bangles, Toots and the Maytals…). The only indie kids to be seen were those tagging along with Mummy and Daddy in their Range Rovers. So Paul Simon fitted the bill perfectly.

The question to ask at a Paul Simon gig is “Which songs is he NOT going to play?” Because, like Dylan or the Beatles, Paul Simon has written so many great songs that it’s not possible to include them all in a single concert.

When you’re Paul Simon you can flick off a perfunctory Mrs Robinson as the third song in the set, not even play Still Crazy, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover or Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the crowd will still return happy to their tents.

His new songs sounded good too, and I got some funny looks singing along with How Can You Live in the Northeast, a personal favourite off the 2006 album Surprise.

Overall, it was a good gig, but Paul Simon didn’t really acknowledge the crowd that much – you got the impression that he was going through the motions. Everyone was elated with the stomping version of You Can Call Me Al that closed the set, but if the band had really put some effort in, it would have been a very memorable evening indeed.

Muxtape is a good way to waste an hour or two. Basically, it uses mp3s to make the sort of mixtapes that were the common currency of friendships/relationships in the long-lost days of the analogue teenager.

Nick Hornby documents the tortuous rules of mixtapes in High Fidelity (a great summer read BTW, I remember consuming it in less than 2 days in a tent in between tropical cyclones at Mount Maunganui). One hopes that mixtape construction is not totally a lost skill…

I’ve put together a Summer Muxtape. Hopefully the mix is a little brighter and warmer musically than the weather’s been so far here in England. It’s a little all over the place stylistically (Common, Sharon Jones, Wilco, Vampire Weekend…), but it might just work.