Ellie’s story can be seen as a modern tale of overwhelming talent being discovered while travelling America. This led to a whirlwind courtship by the US entertainment industry including being signed by Atlantic Records, taking meetings with Rap mogul Russell Simmons, Billboard Magazine describing her music as “the perfect marriage of melody, rhythm and words” and appearing on Ellen DeGeneres’ hugely popular TV show where she explained, “I play her music over and over again in my house…I predict she will be the hugest, hugest star.”

Ellie Lawson – Lost Without You by Cannonball_PR

The tide turned, the industry changed and Ellie decided to respond to a call to work with leading trance DJs like Richard Durand and Ferry Corsten in Holland by co-writing and adding her vocals to some of 2010/11s biggest European dance tunes, including ‘Safe From Harm’ with 4 Strings which was #1 on Beatport for 5 weeks consecutively and ‘Wide Awake’ with Richard Durand which was #1 in Music Week’s Cool Cuts Chart in January 2011.

Ellie has decided that now is her time to come into her own and enjoy the sort of success in the UK she undoubtedly deserves. This self released EP is a great place to hear what all the fuss is about and with another EP planned for next year with acclaimed Communion Records co-founder and super producer Ian Grimble (Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Everything But The Girl, Manic Street Preachers) Ellie clearly has a big year ahead of her.

The rock stars referred to by Wendy O’Connor (Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) died in a short period of time in the late 60s, and Cobain died in 1994.  Amy Winehouse confronted her demons in the glare of the ubiquitous and unforgiving instant news culture of the new millennium, where any dodgy performance is only a smartphone away from worldwide exposure.  Even Cobain’s death was pre-internet; we all knew it was going to happen, but our updates only came every 7 days in the music press.  The 60s deaths came as a complete surprise, because drug habits were kept within the performer’s inner circle and only became public property when the performer died.

Amy Winehouse’s problems were probably with her from the start of her performing career at stage school, but became increasingly public as she became more successful.  Her first album “Frank” was critically and commercially acclaimed, but the problems really started with the success of “Back to Black”.  The album was hailed, quite rightly, as a modern classic and Amy Winehouse was thrust into a spotlight which she found increasingly difficult to deal with.  The pressure came not only from the music press but from every imaginable direction; television, radio, newspapers (tabloid and broadsheet) and of course the internet.  Any step out of line immediately became public property and each exposure seemed to raise the stakes.

This isn’t an attempt to sanctify to Amy Winehouse but it’s time to stop the demonization process which the British media launched after the success of “Back to Black” in 2006.  She made the same mistakes that people everywhere make every day; she listened to the wrong people, she got romantically involved with the wrong people and she thought that she could find the answers to her problems in drugs and alcohol.  Unfortunately, she made those mistakes very publicly and in the spotlight of a censorious, prurient and unforgiving media circus.

In the light of all of her long-standing problems, it wasn’t surprising to hear of Amy’s untimely death on Saturday, particularly after the ill-advised European tour which ended with the much-publicised recent appearance in Belgrade.  She should have been one of the UK’s greatest ever jazz and soul singers but she only leaves a legacy of 2 albums released so far.  Stick “Back to Black” in your CD player or find it in your media player and listen to it.  That’s how you should remember Amy Winehouse.

Onyx are here playing Fabric Aug 4th with special guests and DJs for what will be a very special night for Hip Hop in London.
 
Considered to be one of the greatest hip hop acts of all time from their explosive entrance onto the rap scene in the early 90s on Def Jam with tracks like ‘Slam’ through helping launch the career of 50 Cent, Onyx are an act that need to be seen if you like your rap real and dirty.
 
This will be a rare treat for all fans as Onyx have not played in the UK for several years.
 
Tickets are on sale and more details on Facebook here.

Only 2 members of Springsteen’s E Street Band were there from the start; bass player Garry Tallent and Clarence Clemons.  They both played on “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” and both were still around when the line-up crystallised around the time of “Darkness on the Edge of Town”.  Clarence Clemons was never a bit-part player in the E Street Band; he was always right up-front as the Boss’s right-hand man and he even got a mention in the lyrics of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” on “Born to Run”, where he featured in the cover shot.

The “Born to Run” album cover is one of the most iconic in rock history.  The album was intended to be the breakthrough for Springsteen and no detail was overlooked in producing the perfect packaging.  The black and white photo which spread over both sides of the gatefold sleeve showed 2 musicians with different skin colours but with an obvious bond which transcended these differences.  It could only work with the Big Man in the picture.

Clarence Clemons wasn’t always involved in Springsteen’s studio work because, like Neil Young, the Boss needed to do things differently sometimes; there isn’t a lot of scope for happy horn parts on “Nebraska” or “The Ghost of Tom Joad” but the E Street Band live would always need the Big Man and he would always be there.  Springsteen has played shows (the Super Bowl for example) where he uses a 4-piece horn section, but the Big Man was always there on his right side.

Most of Clemons’ work with the E Street Band was in competition with a standard rock line-up plus 2 keyboards, an extra guitar (or 2) and the drumming of Max Weinberg which meant that at times he seemed to be trying to blow the keys off his saxophone to cut through the wall of sound with his solos but there was much more than that to his playing.  On “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, he slotted in perfectly well to a brass quintet while on “Spirit in the Night” on the first album, he carried the main riff of the song with a very gentle delivery.  If you want to hear the best of the Big Man, you should really listen to the “Hammersmith Odeon 1975″ album.  It sounds like a bunch of musicians at the top of their game playing for fun and having a great time.

Clarence Clemons suffered from a variety of serious health problems involving major spinal and knee surgery over the last 2 years but none of these setbacks stopped him from turning up to the day job (even, at the Super Bowl show in a wheelchair).  It’s a tribute to the man’s presence to say that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the E Street Band without him.

RIP Big Man.

You can hear the band’s first recorded song here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI1TsYGm874

We might look a little dodgy until this is all finished, please excuse the mess!

It would have been even warmer, had the audience known what a show they were about to witness. Kicking off with the opening staple “After Hours”, frontman Tyler Spencer (aka: Dick Valentine) had everyone in the palm of his hand. This set the tone for the rest of the night.

“Everything you do here, you do the correct way!” Valentine claimed at one point, to enormous cheers from all. It seemed the same for him onstage: during the guitar solo on “Infected Girls”, he assumed a power stance and didn’t move a muscle until the vocals returned. This delighted the audience.

However, the band’s success in winning over the crowd not only resided in Valentine’s charisma. The songs themselves had people moshing, pogo-ing and chanting, with their hit, “Danger! High Voltage”, bringing the venue to an even higher excitement level. In between songs, the band burst into a short cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and during the encore almost ended up playing the Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”, a moment of comic genius much appreciated by the Scottish audience.

The songs’ delivery was reminiscent of the Ramones with many of them lasting less than three minutes. They were pumped out fast and plenty and Valentine even seemed to be tallying them as they went. “This seventh song goes out to all the ladies! Sorry guys, but everything we do is pretty much all for the ladies.”

It must be pointed out that Dick Valentine is not the only member of the band worth mentioning. While he may have had enough character to be shared out among everyone onstage, the rest of the sharply-dressed rockers were just as charismatic. Guitarist Christopher Tait (aka: Tait Nucleus?) donned an all-white suit with a tartan tie and carried a cooler-than-thou persona, occasionally offering the hint of a smile from behind his white sunglasses. Drummer Mike Alonso (aka: Percussion World) often found himself in a drum battle, locking eyes with Valentine as the latter pounded the timbales. He even finished a song with a Bonham-esque drum solo, the crowd cheering him along.

Despite the group’s stellar performance however, the night was not even a sell-out. The venue was a small one and it was a surprise to see such a fantastic live act performing to such a small audience. It seems that the band has missed some sort of trick over their fourteen year career: despite having released seven albums Electric Six’s fan base is fairly modest. However, this has obviously not affected the way they treat live shows: these guys could up the atmosphere at any event and frankly if anyone is missing a trick, it’s festival organisers. While Electric Six are not headline act material, they are exactly what headliners want as a warm-up act. They certainly stormed the ABC Glasgow.

First, there are too many of them. In the 70s, you only had Reading (Glastonbury didn’t really take off until the 80s). Now, if you look in the NME in any week during what we call the British summer there are dozens of them; and what’s a boutique festival supposed to be? And what idiot would arrange a major outdoor event which relies on good weather in this country during the summer?

And the toilets; you pay a small fortune to go to an event with toilet facilities that wouldn’t have been acceptable in the Middle Ages. I’m with the Manics on this one; take your own bog and don’t let anyone else use it. Next time you’re queuing to use a fetid stinkhole at a festival, ask yourself if the facilities backstage are the same; they’re not and you’re paying while they’re paid to be there (or freeloading).

At the other end of the digestive system, we’ve got festival food (and drink). The combination of inadequate toilet facilities and frozen junk food cooked too quickly is a recipe for a dysentery outbreak. Visit Leicester Forest East services on the Monday after Download and you see hundreds of Lord of the Rings extras looking for the first solid food they’ve had in a week. It’s not a pretty sight.

What about bands reforming to milk the festival circuit for huge amounts of money after years spent saying they would never work together again? You know who you are, and it’s not just The Libertines.
It’s difficult to beat Guns n’ Roses tribute band performance this year as an example of how to alienate your own fans. You take the stage an hour late with a band full of lookalikes and throw a strop when the stage crew stick to the curfew and cut the power on time. Taxi for Mr Bailey.

If you want to see your favourite band close up, forget it. You could get up at 4 in the morning to position yourself 100 yards from the stage (behind the press and TV pit and the freeloaders) or watch your heroes on the obligatory video screens from about a mile away with a warm, over-priced pint of lager in each hand. Still, at least it should sound good, shouldn’t it?

Guess what, the answer’s no. At festival gigs, the bands don’t get a soundcheck, so at the start of every set the sound engineer is frantically trying to create a perfect mix outdoors with no chance to move things around or tell the singer to listen to his monitors. As most of the sets are about 40 minutes, the sound is probably about right by the end of the set – if you’re lucky. And then there’s the festival set; all of the light and shade and dynamics of the usual set is lost in an attempt to shoehorn in as many anthems as possible. And the 2 bands that you really wanted to see are on at the same time on stages separated by half a mile of unwashed humanity.

You could always watch it on TV at home, of course, because just about every festival’s televised now. Good bar prices, drinks chilled to perfection, ice for your JD and Coke and clean toilets (possibly); isn’t that much better? Surprise, surprise; no, again. You’ll hear the bits that you really wanted to hear as muffled background noise while BBC4 feature an acoustic performance from some over-hyped nonentity before cutting back to inane presenters or an interview with some wacky festival casualties.

Roll on winter.

JAN 26: SOUTHAMPTON, Joiners – 0238 8022 5612 / www.joinerslive.co.uk
JAN 27: CARDIFF, Clwb Ifor Bach – www.ticketweb.co.uk
JAN 28: LONDON, Borderline – 08448 472 465/ www.ticketweb.co.uk
JAN 29: NOTTINGHAM, Rock City – 0871 3100 000 / www.alt-tickets.co.uk
JAN 30: BIRMINGHAM, Academy 3 – 0844 477 2000 / www.ticketweb.co.uk
FEB 01: SHEFFIELD, Academy 2 – 0844 477 2000 / www.ticketweb.co.uk
FEB 02: LEEDS, Cockpit – 0113 245 4650 / www.lunatickets.co.uk
FEB 03: MANCHESTER, Night & Day – 0161 832 111 / www.gigsandtours.com
FEB 04: NEWCASTLE, Digital – 08444 771 000 / www.yourfutureisdigital.com
FEB 06: GLASGOW, ABC – 08444 999 990 / www.gigsinscotland.com

Mitch Winehouse’s new series on Liv continues to challenge the celebrity world as Cabbie Mitch sounds off about  X-Factor Favourites, Alex Reid’s cross-dressing, Robert Pattinson and others. The whole rant can be viewed in its entirety in Mitch Winehouse’s Showbiz Rant, on LIVING’s new online channel Liv on Thursday 5th November.

Liv can be retrieved through LIVING’s own website at www.livingtv.co.uk and also through an array of other websites and social networking areas (including YouTube and Facebook).