Hugs and Kisses #19: Everett True Frightens a Crowd, Discovers Amy Winehouse

Posted by Camille Dodero at 4:27 PM, November 12, 2007

Plan B publisher Everett True is done sorting through his desk. This week, he's written to tell you about how he fell off the wagon (sort of), baffled an entire Cardiff club, and just discovered Amy Winehouse. Apparently, this UK-based author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press) is magically impervious to the tabloids. A rare specimen, indeed.

Hugs and Kisses

The Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Everett True visits Cardiff in the company of a few genial antifolk types

Larry Pickleman was the man.

It wasn’t like the venue was heaving at the edges, anyway. To help celebrate the inaugural Welsh SŴN festival in Cardiff, Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens had asked Plan B Magazine to put together a (British) antifolk bill – as recently championed in its pages – and it was perhaps not so surprising that the audience rarely bothered double figures when the headliner was, um, myself (doubling as my alter-ego, kill rock stars/Creation/Sub Pop recording artist The Legend!). Unsurprising perhaps, but there were still a few hardies in Clwb Ifor Bach sheltering from the chill night air, charmed by the delinquent schoolboy, post-Daniel Johnston, naïve expression of Winston Echo (sample heckle: “Is there an Echo in here?”) and his tales of unrequited love and Dracula’s disco party, Crayola Lectern’s surprisingly tanked-up mixture of crazed English eccentricity (sample lyric: “Merry fucken Christmas everyone” – a deliberate echo of Mr Billy Childish’s forthcoming Christmas single) and gentile, lilting English post-Robert Wyatt harmonising, charismatic local Le B’s stripped-bare and bewitching medieval-style folk, and mertle’s one-minute, three-chord, deadpan beautiful tales of an ordinary housewife, albeit one that steals blue bicycles and spits on butchers’ windows. (Her ode to her new washing machine is over in a tenth of the time it takes Kate Bush to finish one line of her recent tumble dryer-inspired confection; and is 30 times more poignant…although I’ve got to say I’m rather fond of La Bush’s song as well.)

But Larry still managed. As he ploughed through his songs – bedecked with wrong-sized guitar and a homemade mixing desk guaranteed to fuck up even the sturdiest of microphones, and songs about "midgets" sticking up the bank and people walking by on the other side of the road, screamed full-pelt like an Irish Republican skinhead engaged in running skirmishes with the police over quirky bouncy tunes that bring to mind (Thurston Moore-beloved) hardcore obstructionists Whitehouse fronting a battery of Oompa-Loompas – he managed to clear the club of even these few hardy souls: reducing the crowd to a severe rump of, um, the other antifolk performers and Louis’ perverse mate. It was an inspired performance, entirely out-of-keeping with the surroundings: the fact that his wife (mertle) had provided such a mesmerising, sweet and downright cuddly view of hometown life only helped to increase the feeling of awe. “Well, you’ve watched everyone else,” he grinned as he took the stage. “And it’s up to me and Everett to save the evening.”

Well, fuck. I tried. My crowd rose from around one person to over a hundred in the space of 10 minutes, as folk started to pour in for the club afterwards: I raced from my sure-fire alienation number (“There’s a man going round taking names/There’s a man going round taking names…Death is the name of that man”) into a rant about how“This one goes out to my 23-year-old self, fucked up on alcohol,” repeated rapid fire, changing the age each time, right into the one about, “How I woke up one morning to discover that my girlfriend had changed into Courtney Love…now, this wasn’t so strange in itself, but what was odd was that Courtney Love had now changed into the living personification of evil,” then into a quick AA rant about how all my friends deserted me a long time ago (pointing to an imaginary bottle of whiskey in one hand, and an, um, real bottle of vodka in the other – my first drink in three years) and then stopped momentarily, not really caring or heeding what sort of storm my sole band mate Chris might or might not have been blowing up on saxophone. And there was absolute fucking silence in the venue. No one was talking. No one was applauding. And the place was rammed. Everyone – just everyone – was staring stage-front in shock.

“Guess I’ll have to give you that one Everett,” commented Larry afterwards.

HUGS AND KISSES TOP 5

Some songs that Everett True has listened to recently

1. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, “Chores” (from the Domino album Jam). A Modest Mouse for hipsters. This is a good thing, I’m given to understand.

2. AMY WINEHOUSE, “Back To Black” (Island single). This is my song of the year, in case anyone particularly cares…I have no real idea who Ms. Winehouse is [Editor's note: Or ], or what her other songs sound like. I’m absolutely bowled away by the emotion invested in the trite-est of lyrics.

3. GRINDERMAN, “No Pussy Bues” (from the Mute album Grinderman). Feral, deprecating and rocks like a mutha. What more could you possibly want from yr rock music?

4. HIGH ON FIRE, “Fury Whip” (from the Relapse album Death Is This Communion). Trust in Jack Endino.

5. TAP TAP, “100,000 Thoughts” (from the Stolen album Lanzafame).
Can you tell we’ve been voting for our favourite records of 2007 at Plan B recently? Whatever. This still kicks YOUR ass.

Hugs and Kisses, the Outbursts of Everett True: Antifolk, Part II

Posted by Camille Dodero at 6:18 PM, August 20, 2007

Late Monday means another SOTC dispatch from Everett True, publisher of Plan B. A while back, he wrote about antifolk, not anti-folk. This week, he's writing about it again. Send him more things to write about at everett@planbmag.com. Read all his Sound of the City columns here.

photo by Cami D

The Outbursts of Everett True

This week: More on antifolk, the movement that’s not sweeping a nation

I played an antifolk fest the other night.

Antifolk (UK), that is—not to be confused with anti-folk (US). One is shamelessly a rip from the other; but oddly, the other is at least several years past its sell-by date. Isn’t that always the way: cultures borrowing from other cultures and reinvesting with meaning something that long since ceased to be relevant. (As a great ‘for example’, look to the Eastern Bloc’s appropriation of rock music as a tool of revolution during the Nineties—something that the kids of America and Britain always aspired to, but never managed.) So anyway, to recap: antifolk (UK) is filled with misfits and outsiders, folk who want in but know there’s no earthly way they’ll ever be allowed so they might as well start their own party and hope that someone, anyone, turns up. They nicked the word antifolk cos at least it seemed to be in opposition to something, and yes, it also implied that musical ability wasn’t a pre-requisite.

Anti-folk (US), on the other hand, is the establishment, more or less. Nothing wrong with that: I just want to call it as I see it.

I digress. So I played an antifolk fest the other night, in London. Man, I was bummed to be there, no disrespect to anyone present, but the previous evening I’d shown up, half-delirious (through lack of sleep) to a Brighton antifolk night in a pub I never even dreamed would countenance live gigs (most the clientele sported piercings dating from the Seventies) and. . .

Well, here’s the deal. Most my colleagues at the Plan B office suspect (I suspect) that antifolk is nothing more than a bunch of folk musicians trying to sneak back in the zeitgeist’s back door, under a thin veneer of respectability. I say there’s nothing wrong with that—but that’s anti-folk (US). That’s certainly not what the antifolk shows I’ve seen in Brighton have been about: my main man Larry Pickleman is a former Belfast lad, brought up in the bad part of town, who matches sweet plinky-plonky Oompa Loompa (Willy Wonka) tunes to PC-baiting misanthropic lyrics, a sampler and a tiny electric guitar played with alarming venom. And if that’s folk, or anti-folk, then I’m Morrissey. And, trust me, I’m not Morrissey.

Joining him on stage that night was his wife mertle—sure, she sings minimalist songs about everyday situations (washing machines, butterflies, spitting on the butcher’s window as you ride by on your stolen bike) over rudimentary guitar; but if she took a step sideways and found herself supporting The Gossip or Scout Niblett, you could easily see her feted as the new…I dunno, who’s a singer you love who’s got a crush-sweet voice and so-sweet lyrics?

Jimmy from drunken Scots twee-mongers Bobby McGees also got up to growl his way through an admonitory tale in a voice so un-musical, seagulls died. And even our token Londoner Tom from David Cronenberg’s Wife sounded like Mark E Smith wishing he sounded like whoever it is in those David Lynch movies who wishes he sounded like Dick Dale.

All good clean entertainment, sure—and I love the fact this random collection of people have decided to appropriate a definition (anti-folk) that so clearly shouldn’t be applied to them. But, folk musicians trying to sneak in the back door while the rock establishment is out enjoying a quick bevy? I don’t think so.

So, back to the gig in London: now, don’t get me wrong, I love seeing drunken people make a fool of themselves, and I love drunken people wielding guitars making fools of themselves, and I especially enjoy seeing drunken people sporting size zero frames making such a fool of themselves they have to stop several times in the same song to check to see what they’re playing (thank you Lucy Joplin), but—man, everyone was playing guitars and being all trad in their inebriated way, and even though there was a massive support system going on amid the crowd in the tiny 12 Bar venue, there was no one busting the conventions. Well, except me, I guess: still steadfastly refusing to use anything but a mic on stage, um, cos I can’t be bothered to rehearse; and of course those loveable hot puppies Wet Dog went on after, and played a blinder, but they’re a band and everything.

Um. I can't quite remember my point now, except…antifolk. It's ace.

HUGS AND KISSES TOP 5

1. VERA NOVEMBER, “Our Last Night Together” (from the Rough Trade EP Four Songs By Arthur Russell). A stunning piece: spatial, delicate piano and beautiful, yearning voice, courtesy of Electrelane’s Verity Susman.

2. THE ROYAL WE, “Back And Forth Forever” (from the Geographic album The Royal We). Glasgow’s 2006 ‘it’ group capture the spirit of early Go-Go’s and Orange Juice, via LA, Manchester, Sunderland…Every town should have one.

3. SCOUT NIBLETT, “A Song” (from the forthcoming Tomlab album David Shrigley’s Worried Noodles). Niblett does Shrigley, part two: this is the song that replaced the song that she lifted for her own album. Same music, from the sound of it—great, at that —but different words.

4. JENS LEKMAN, “A Little Lost” (from the Rough Trade EP Four Songs By Arthur Russell). Swedish troubadour Jens Lekman is the man behind the EP; and the compiler’s warm, kalimba-tinged contribution is a fine contribution indeed.

5. TAKEN BY TREES, “Make 1,2” (from the Rough Trade EP Four Songs By Arthur Russell). …and a third; another spectral, haunting piece from the former Concretes singer, coloured with gentle clarinet.

Hugs and Kisses, The Outbursts of Everett True: Antifolk

Posted by Camille Dodero at 2:20 PM, July 16, 2007

Back to those weekly columnists. Returning again for his second installment is none other than Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press)—like anybody really needed another book about one of the most overrated bands of the Nineties—and publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. Last week, True said goodbye to Punk Planet. This week, he says hello to antifolk. E-mail Everett at everett@planbmag.com.

Antifolk bloke Filthy Pedro, who is coincidentally playing a show tonight at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn.

Hugs and Kisses

There's a new movement in town.

It’s British, predominately. Wouldn't translate to the States or Europe, let alone any of those countries where they object to the cultural hegemony of a bunch of rich white corpulent complacent war-mongering tastemakers. It's too rooted in the humour of the culture: the ways it is and isn’t acceptable to express (male, mostly) feelings within that culture. It exists on that weird crossover point where laddish working-class male humour meets downwardly-mobile public (US: private) school banter: it’s not below taking pot-shots at itself (in fact, it frequently does) and it's both pissed off and alienated by the current prevalent mainstream, both at its reliance upon NME-sanctioned guitar bands that ceased to have any resemblance to being a tool of the revolution in about 1982 (and yet still fucking pretend that they are!), and its reliance upon pumped-up elongated talent shows where cynicism and the ability to bully someone in a less fortunate situation than yourself are seen as pluses.

This new movement is called antifolk—and it should not be confused with its far more refined, stylised and effete American and Continental counterpart, anti-folk, which is basically people who are folk singers by any other name (albeit with a smidgen of punk attitude thrown in, whatever the hell that is supposed to be in 2007) singing with acoustic guitars and a semblance of melody. Sure, it’s a relation of the other genre. . . the sort of relation you only ever talk about in subdued murmurs and scandalised whispers at weddings when your mother’s back is turned.

It’s quite a small movement: as far as I can ascertain the scene only really exists in a couple of places—London, mostly centered round the West End's minuscule 12-Bar Club, where inebriates…sorry, I mean initiates…are encouraged to get up on stage and cunting swear at every available opportunity; and in my hometown of Brighton, where the PC-baiting eccentric Larry Pickleman's Sunday Sermons hold sway.

Antifolk's participants don't, musically, seem to have much in common on first sight: beyond a propensity to get up on stage and yell and swear and drink and maybe sing or use some form of rudimentary electronic backing (see the schoolyard humour of LOOK LOOK (dancing boys), or mandolins (see the excellent, we’re-more-twee-than-you Bobby McGee’s, with their self-pitying paeans to loser-hood and loneliness), or a drum machine—whatever it takes to make an impression.

In the Plan B offices, they’ve taken to calling the music ‘truecore,' in honour of my own fondness for winding folk up from on stage (although if that was the only point of clambering up there it would get tired pretty quick). And sure, I have sympathy with these people – Irish talisman Jinx Lennon with his quick-fire verbal sorties, the diminutive blagger Spinmaster Plantpot (office manager at the Houses of Parliament: now carving out an alternative career as a TV’s resident mouthy short-arse), the foul-mouthed Filthy Pedro, 12-Bar stalwarts David Cronenberg’s Wife, the Dolly Parton-sampling Milk Kan (like a less subtle version of Mike Skinner’s Streets), former Country Teasers The Rebel, the incredible and wired London-based, Dizzee Rascal-covering acoustic rapper Stuart James, Winston Echo (North England’s own answer to Daniel Johnston)…There’s such a range of wit, such a willingness to put themselves on the line that is so rarely encountered amid their better-known, more acceptable peers, the rock’n’roll (yawn) bands.

There’s a great compilation album out now, AFUK & I (Vol 1): Up The Anti! On AFUK. I’d recommend you track it down.

HUGS AND KISSES TOP 5

1. OLD TIME RELIJUN, "Indestructible Life!" (from the K album Catharsis In Crisis) . The spirit of old school avant punks the Pop Group and Captain Beefheart is channelled via Calvin Johnson's fabled Dub Narcotic studios in Olympia WA, courtesy of equally-fabled Seattle producer Steve Fisk and ferocious lead singer Arrington de Dionyso.

2. PETE AND THE PIRATES, “Knots” (from the Stolen Recordings compilation album Stolen Recordings Compilation). The spirit of Flying Nun Records’ peerless guitar-led roster from New Zealand in the Eighties (The Bats, The Chills) is channelled courtesy of four young kids from Reading, England.

3. FABIENNE DELSOL, “Bluebirds Over The Mountain” (from the Damaged Goods album Between You And Me). You may have heard of East London's Toe Rag Studios (Billy Childish, Holly Golightly), thanks to The White Stripes' patronage (Elephant was recorded there). Delsol is Toe Rag engineer Liam Watson’s other half—and this album is as detailed, delightful and out-and-out analogue as you’d hope, the spirit (and sound) of Sixties girl pop perfectly transported.

4. KARL BLAU, "Heatherwood" (from the Marriage album Dance POSITIVE: The Songs Of Bret Lunsford).
Lunsford is best-known for being one-third of Beat Happening; and also as the main inspiration behind both Blau and fellow D+ member Phil Elverum (Microphones, Mount Eerie) formative musical careers in their native Anarcortes. It’s a real treat to hear Blau pay tribute to his gentle, chiding, naïve magic.

5. TOM WAITS, "Diamond In Your Mind" (from the Anti-compilation Healing The Divide) Backed by the Kronos Quartet, and in a rare affable mood, Waits leads the audience in a tear-stained, bluesy singsong at some sort of live tribute to His Holiness The Dalai Lama. And why not, dammit?

Filthy Pedro plays a show tonight at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn.

LAST WEEK
HUGS AND KISSES: Everett True on Punk Planet and Careless Talk