Music
NEW YORK WAS DEVELOPING ITS OWN FREE-FORM, MUTATED TAKE ON PUNK AND DISCO Hitlist THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK*
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✽✽ The Big Tent This year’s eco-friendly Falkland weekender features Rosanne Cash, Tunng, King Creosote, FOUND and Nuala Kennedy. Falkland, Fri 23–Sun 25 Jul. (Rock & Pop, Folk) ✽✽ Wickerman Festival The other burning man festival. See preview, page 64. East Kirkcarswell, Dumfries and Galloway, Fri 23–Sat 24 Jul. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Young Fathers, Kobi Onyame, Gav Livz and Stanley Odd For fans of hip hop made in Scotland. King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Sun 25 Jul. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Jakob Dylan Bob’s son brings rootsy Americana, from recent album Women and Country. The Arches, Glasgow, Mon 26 Jul. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Dum Dum Girls and Jesus H Foxx Dee Dee, Jules, Bambi and Sandy Vu, (above) or the girl group responsible for the sublime indie summer number, ‘Jail La La’, return. Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Tue 27 Jul. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Lizzard Lounge 2010 A one-off revival of Edinburgh’s seminal club. With live sets from Mercury nominated Ty and club co-founder Joe Malik. See Clubs preview, page 37. The HMV Picture House, Edinburgh, Fri 30 Jul. (Edin Jazz & Blues Festival) ✽✽ Electric Frog Street Carnival See preview, left. SWG3, Glasgow, Sun 1 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Wu Tang Clan See Five Reasons, page 69. 02 Academy, Glasgow, Sun 1 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Scotsman Talks: What Makes Django Special? A discussion around the work of the innovative gypsy jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt. The Hub, Edinburgh, Sun 1 Aug. (Edin Jazz & Blues Festival) 22 Jul–5 Aug 2010 THE LIST 63
Liquid assets
With seminal New York post-punk band Liquid Liquid headlining, the Electric Frog Street Carnival is not to be missed, Jonny Ensall suggests
T he ‘end of Optimo’ we called it when DJs JD Twitch and JG Wilkes finished their Sunday night Sub Club residency in April. And yet here they are, curating one of the line-ups of the year for the Optimo (Espacio) stage at the SWG3-hosted Electric Frog Street Carnival – a bill headlined by the band who gave Optimo its name (after one of their tracks), Liquid Liquid. Clearly nothing’s been dropped from the Optimo mission statement.
NY disco renegades Liquid Liquid disbanded in 1983, but a surge of interest in their music – due in part to Optimo’s championing of the early 80s NY post- punk and no wave scenes of which they were a part – made a reunion inevitable. They played their first ever UK show at Optimo in 2003. Seven years later, with only one other UK date in between, it’s another astonishing coup to have them back in Glasgow. A fourpiece comprising drummer Scott Hartley, bassist Richard McGuire, singer Salvatore Principato and marimba player Dennis Young, Liquid Liquid were originally signed to 99 Records, a tiny label operated by Ed Bahlman out of his Greenwich Village record store. The label put out only a handful of releases, notably by ESG, Y-Pants and Glenn Branca, but its story is hugely important. At the time New York was developing its own free-form, mutated take on the musical styles – punk and disco – that had gone before. Artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were rubbing shoulders with Talking Heads, Suicide and a yet-to-be-famous Madonna, creating music and art that was both cerebral and kinetic.
Within this Liquid Liquid were pioneering a dance
sound they called ‘body music’ – a chugging, percussive mix of bongos, cowbells, stuttering vocals and iconic basslines that has been used as a template for many current post-punk and disco revivalists; LCD Soundsystem most obviously. Unluckily for Liquid Liquid, hip hop picked up on this winning formula first, and exploited it. Grandmaster Flash lifted the bassline and vocal rhythms from Liquid Liquid’s ‘Cavern’ for his smash hit ‘White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)’. 99 Records eventually won a landmark legal battle against Flash’s label, Sugarhill. But when Sugarhill filed for bankruptcy, no money was collected and the strain on the band and the label put a sad end to both projects. Liquid Liquid got a raw deal (although some royalties were picked from Duran Duran’s cover of ‘White Lines’), so it’s all credit to Optimo that the band have been persuaded back to Glasgow, where they can be afforded the recognition they deserve. Beyond the headliners, the rest of Sunday evening’s bill features angsty noisemakers Factory Floor, German acid house duo Alter Ego and a live set from Brit electro kingpins Simian Mobile Disco. Prolific DJ/ electro enthusiast Felix Da Housecat will headline the second stage, supported by Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems live project. Electronic music old and new, and uniformly excellent, united at one of Glasgow’s best venues – the story ends well after all.
Electric Frog Street Carnival, SWG3, Glasgow, Sun 1 Aug, 3pm–11pm. www.electricfrogcarnival.com