To celebrate the amazing, lump in the throat miners’ rescue in Chile, I’m sure I could come up with some insightful supply chain piece today about the copper market or managing complex projects in emergency situation.  (My emotion may have been amplified because my maternal Grandfather worked as a miner, underground, for 51 years in the Durham coal field.  From the age of 14 to 65.  He was promoted to be a foreman, but still underground.  And he had some scary stories, including losing his best friend in a rock-fall).

Back to Chile…my wife suffers from claustrophobia, so we were talking about the horror – for her- of coming up in that capsule (let alone the being stuck underground bit).  I said, I would be fine if I could have my iPod with some good music to distract me for the 20 minutes or so.

So that led into thinking of a light-hearted soundtrack for the playlist for the emerging miners or perhaps the inevitable film that will be made!  And this is what we came up with;

Going underground             The Jam

I want to break free            Queen

Freedom                             George Michael

Super massive black hole   Muse

The only way is up             Yazz

Anything by Tight Fit.  Or Hole.  Or the Red Hot Chile  (sic) Peppers….

There are, I’m sure , many more…

The Ting Tings (of “That’s not my name” fame) have been away for a while but they are back with perhaps the first great post-recession song; “Hands” (with a killer chorus of ‘clap your hands if you’re working too hard’). I would have liked the lyrics to perhaps focus more strongly on the supply chain implications of over-stretched manning levels amongst the vendor community, but I can guarantee – from personal experience – that if you listen to this twice it will worm it’s way into your brain, probably forever.

Now… you heard it here first. This lot – the Vaccines – might just be huge by this time next year. Influenced by the likes of the Ramones, Babyshambles, Jesus and Mary Chain.. and apparently good live too. Here is their first imminent single; 81 seconds of pure Rock ‘n Roll. What more could we ask for? Great stuff.

Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) by The Vaccines

Yes, I learnt how to embed YouTube into the blog today! Thanks Chris (my IT guru….).

So as an experiment, and because it is Friday, here’s a couple of music videos; the first is the latest from OK Go, ‘White Knuckles’,  who have a history of truly amazing music vids (look up the others if you haven’t seen them before).

And what may be the best music video ever made on a driving range; anyone else think this guy has a pretty good swing for a pop singer?  This song will be top 10 in November, and you wil hear more of Ed Drewett.

Tempting though it is to become a music blog, now I’ve cracked the technology, I promise it will be back to more serious procurement matters tomorrow.

Hurts and their debut album Happiness have split critical opinion; art-school poseurs or synth-pop geniuses?  Well, a bit of both probably; in mathematical terms, if you imagine the set which consists of the intersection of three other sets;

1. 1983 electro synth pop (Depeche Mode, Ultravox, Tears for Fears)

2. Darker electro indie (Joy Division, Interpol, White Lies)

3. Gary Barlow

then Happiness sits snugly in that intersection. It is all, at times, a little too glossy, glittering and po-faced for me; but the songs are very strong, often bordering on the classic pop / rock  (Stay, Better than Love) – hence the Gary Barlow comparison.  It is at once totally derivative yet also absolutely contemporary, and you’re going to hear it coming from every boutique, hairdresser and wine bar for at least the next 6 months, so you better get used to it.  A grudging 7.5 /10 from me in appreciation of serious songwriting talent.

I mentioned Robert Plant and Band of Joy last week.  This is a hugely impressive and enjoyable album, with elements of country, blues, folk and rock brought together in a harmonious album by the coherent production and Plant’s voice.  You still want him to let rip in a Whole Lotta Love style, which never happens, but his voice has a warmth that has come with age.  He has chosen songs by some less famous but not unknown artists such as Richard Thompson, Low, Townes Van Zandt and Los Lobos (and that is a great list in itself for further checking out if you’re not familiar with them).  From the first moments of Angel Dance, with its swampy bass, mandolin and great vocal, the whole album works at every point.  The way the tensions builds in Monkey (one of the two Low songs) like a more controlled Pixies… and Harm’s Swift Way is beautiful, but listen to the heartbreaking lyrics (Van Zandt’s last song before his death).  9/10.

Now three brief notes on albums purchased on the basis of seeing these bands at Reading.

Yeasayer and Odd Blood; clever indie / experimental / dance, I preferred them live where the harmony vocals, energy and musicianship were tremendous but the album is still very good.  The first track is probably the weirdest so don’t just listen to that on Spotify and give up! Tracks 2 through to 5 provides a run of songs as improessive as any I’ve heard for a long time.  A good 8.5/10.

Two Door Cinema Club and Tourist History; young Northern Irish band with bright, lively indie pop; “like the Foals but easier to listen to” according to my wife.  Touches of Vampire Weekend afro-guitar work in there, and occasionally a faint touch of Haircut 100 – type early 80’s funk/pop! Strong, hook-y songs; a short album (32 mins) but we’ll forgive them that VFM failure….  8/10.

Stuck on Nothing from Free Energy – never mind the cliche about young bands getting influenced by their parent’s record collections, this lot must have raided their grandparents’!  T Rex, Mott the Hoople, the Stones, the Raspberries, Thin Lizzy; with a bit of Tom Petty and Springsteen thrown in… catchy tracks such as “Dream City” which is the great lost follow up to 20th Century Boy…the album starts superbly and fades somewhat, but the first three tracks show their potential.  7.5/10

And finally.. a talented young US (but with a British dad)  singer songwriter, Tristan Clopet, has made contact with us and I am happy to recommend his YouTube version of what is going to be the big chart hit of the Autumn:  Cee-lo’s F*** You.  (WARNING – very much not suitable if you are easily shocked. But an amazing Tamla type tune.)  Tristan has a truly stunning voice and his cover of the Arctic Monkeys is pretty cool too! It’s a tough world for a young singer-songwirter but good luck Tristan….

I’ve mentioned the tremendous NPR (National Public Radio) website before and their habit of offering free streaming of some tremendous new albums before release.  It truly is one of the gifts of the Internet….

I was planning to do a full music review next weekend, and as such was listening on NPR today to the new Robert Plant album – Band of Joy.   And it is tremendous.  The overall feel is somewhere between the folkier side of  Zeppelin and his ‘Raising Sand’ (with Alison Krauss) country / blues album; even on first listen I prefer it to the latter, and it is right up there in my album of the year chart already.  Let’s not anticipate the full review too much; but it is only available on NPR till its release on the 14th, so have a listen this weekend! Try and listen to the whole thing – it is one of those rare albums that has a flow, a warp and a weft to it rather than being a collection of random songs arbitrarily stitched together.

NPR have some other pretty good stuff on there at the moment – just listened to a couple of Walkmen tracks from Lisbon, their new offering (good, underrated band) and they sound very strong (listen to Juvenile for a typical Walkmen track and  Stranded for something a little different).

The Guardian reports a rush to bet on Paul Weller for the Mercury Music Prize.  His odds have dropped to a frankly ridiculous 1/10 on.  Which probably goes to show the imperfections of markets…

Anyway, despite this (below) from my post on July 30th , it wasn’t me distorting the odds over the last couple of days, promise!

Paul Weller:   PS rating 8;      Betfair odds (approx) 30 – 1;    PS odds 6-1

A very strange but often quite wonderful album. As I said when I reviewed it here; “one of the most interesting and occasionally perplexing album I’ve heard for ages”.  If they want an established artist doing something brave and a bit mad, pushing the boundaries after 30 years in the business…this is it.  A good long shot.

Always thought 30/1 were daft odds though… and yes, I did get a piece of that on Betfair so I will be delighted if he comes through!

If you’re not a music fan, you may want to look away now…but before we get into the review, let me give a plug for Ticketmaster; far better than See Tickets, who finally delivered Reading tickets two days before the event!  And Viagogo, the authorised re-seller, has a somewhat complex process (to protect buyer and seller) but very effective website and it all worked fine when we had to sell a couple of tickets late in the day.

SO…we had mud, sun, torrential rain accompanied by close to gale force winds.  And freezing cold later in the evening.  But it was still great in general….so onto the bands; I’ve 4 categories to report. I won’t give the MySpace links to save time but this BBC page is an excellent way to check out all and any of the bands.

Highlights of the weekend

Mumford and Sons.  It seems crazy that a ‘folk / bluegrass’ band with mandolins, accordions and a stand up double bass could draw 20,000 people; packing the huge Radio 1 tent and every inch of the surrounding space.  Even more incredible that most of those were 16-21 years old and were singing along (even to album tracks), dancing and generally going wild.  All for 4 young men playing what I thought when I first saw them 2 years ago was entertaining but very much a minority musical style!  The band looked overwhelmed at times and it was a pretty amazing experience even as a spectator.

The Joy Formidable

Why this band from North Wales isn’t huge and why Ritzy Bryan isn’t as big a star as Hailey Williams from the over-rated Paramore I don’t know. This is a wonderful band who make a huge, grungy, fuzzy noise (Dinosaur Jnr and Sonic Youth being the obvious influences) , overlaid with lovely melodies and Ritzy’s delicate vocals.  (To me, this is pretty much what rock music should sound like).  But she’s also a guitar hero, a great lead / rhythm player (it’s a three-piece band)  and as a special for Reading she demolished her guitar a la Peter Townshend. Wow.

New (to me anyway) bands we enjoyed

• Free Energy young US band with touches of the Stones, Tom Petty; unselfconsciously retro, catchy, rockin’ and very entertaining.
• Funeral Party indie / emo / rock (think Cribs, Libertines, Strokes) with a lead singer whose vocals tend to the tortured, but enough melody and energy to make it worthwhile.
• Freelance Whales multi instrumentalists, lovely harmony vocals and interesting quite complex songs (at their best, comparable to Arcade Fire).  Their first album is a little twee in places but their second could well be a classic.
  
• Egyptian Hip Hop much tipped UK indie / dance band.  Need to work on stronger songs perhaps but lots of promise.
• Kassidy; Scottish, incredibly hairy young guys with Eagles feel and harmonies, country at times but also a blues / rock edge.  Could be UK-grown Kings of Leon?  Really good considering they were first band on in the small tent on Sunday -  went down very well.  Playing the Borderline in October so watch out for details of the Procurement Excellence night out….
• Chief more hairy guys, this time from the US.  Quite similar to Kassidy, maybe more country and less blues (Band of Horses style).  But excellent again.  Great harmony vocals and playing.
• Foxy Shazam mad glam rock throwback – fun!

Established bands who did well

• Arcade Fire; just brilliant and the new songs stood up well to comparison with old classics.
• Dizzie; the biggest crowd of the weekend! The man is a star.  Headlining next year? He could do it.
• Weezer; a good performance with audience engagement and one of the better in terms of good sound quality.  ‘Buddy Holly’ is still a classic!
• Blink 182; better than I expected.  Good audience engagement and you forget how many hits they had.
  
• Libertines; started slowly but got into it.  I’m not a huge fan but far better than I expected!
• Maccabees, Mystery Jets, Lost Prophets, Biffy Clyro; all did pretty well considering they were playing the main stage earlier in the day which is difficult.
• Yeasayer; apart from Mumfords, perhaps my favourite performance.  Their album is good but they are better live; clever, danceable, engaging….would see them again like a shot.
• Band of Horses; a surprisingly large and enthusiastic crowd for their country tinged sadness and introspection (which I love).  “Funeral” was a classic moment with a huge singalong.
• Two Door Cinema Club; ‘dancier’ than their indie pop album suggested and good live performance.  Kids loved them.
• One Night Only; trying to move out of the teeny-bop category and did so very well. Their singer is a bona-fide star (and Emma Watson’s boyfriend just good friends).

Established bands who did not do well

Guns and Roses.  What an idiot.

That was about it in terms of real disasters.  Phoenix were a little disappointing, and suffered in comparison to Yeasayer who were on before them and are somewhat similar in style.  Modest Mouse didn’t really work somehow.  Wild Beasts were good but a little disappointing for me.  I love the album (still my favourite of 2009) so much and the live performance didn’t add anything really for me.

I missed Foals, QOTSA, LCD Soundsystem and the Klaxons so can’t comment; saw Pendulum from a distance for a few minutes and they appeared to be ‘rocking the place’ as we young people say…

Well, that’s it for another year.  Tickets already purchased for 2011…

We’re off to Reading Festival for the next three days (not camping – just day trips.  The campsites are pretty horrific unless you’re 17, very drunk, or preferably both…and given the rain, trench foot is going to be a real issue.)

If anyone else is going and wants to meet up and discuss procurement between bands (!), drop me an email  (psmith@procurementexcellence.com) the evening before as I won’t be on line during the day, or call / text 07717 734601.

No point commenting on the top headliners but my tips to watch:

Great lesser known bands I’ve seen before;  Joy Formidable, Los Campesinos are brilliant

Bigger bands who are particularly good live – Maccabees, Gaslight Anthem, Mystery Jets, Gogol Bordello, Mumford and Sons, Yeasayer, Foals, British Sea Power, Wild Beasts and of course the incomparable Arcade Fire..

And some bands that sound good on MySpace that I don’t know: The Cheek, Summer Camp, Yuck, Free Whales, Chapel Club, Kassidy, Sunshine Underground, Egyptian Hip Hop, Amy’s Ghost (from Reading), Foxy Shazam, Sound of Guns, Fools Gold.

Good looking bands: The Like (girls), One Night Only (Boys)

If you haven’t been before; wear wellies / boots even if the rain has stopped, take something plastic to sit on, get some serious sitting down done early in the day before it gets too crowded / dark / messy to do so;  and it gets cold after dark!  REALLY cold according to the forecast…. Oh yes, drink beer at lunchtime, use the loos early before they get too disgusting, dehydrate later….

Arguably the biggest album of the year for rock fans was launched unusually in August (traditionally a dead time)  – Arcade’s Fire The Suburbs.  I’m a huge fan – ‘Funeral‘, their first amazing album, is one of my top ten albums of all time probably, and their gig at Brixton 3 years ago one of the best I’ve ever seen.

But their last album, Neon Bible, is one of those that has declined somewhat in critical reputation since it was released 2 years ago, and I admit I don’t actually play it very often. It tended to the bombastic and was somewhat hectoring at times, whereas Funeral was an emotional listen from start to finish.

I’m not going to go on about the ‘concept’ of The Suburbs (as many of the reviews did); all about returning to the suburbs blah blah blah. The lyrics seem ‘good enough’ to me, quite interesting in places, but with the rare exception (Dylan basically), I’m more a music rather than lyrics man.

The good news is that The Suburbs is without a doubt the most listenable of their three releases. That doesn’t mean to say it is dull or simple; but you don’t ever feel “I wish they would stop shouting at me” or “can’t they just stop emoting wildly for a second” as you could occasionally with the previous offerings.  It is not exactly stripped back, but there is more space, light and shade than we’ve seen before.

‘The Suburbs’ and ‘Modern Man’ sound at first amongst the most straightforward rock songs the band has done. Good songs mind you, and with clever touches of instrumentation or detail that only start coming through after a couple of listens (Modern Man keeps slipping from 4/4 time signature into 5/4 unless I’m very mistaken.  I knew O level music would come in useful one day…)  And then there are some instant hits.  “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains)” channels Blondie’s Heart of Glass into a cast-iron Arcade Fire classic and will be brilliant live, whilst the two tracks at the centre of the album (Half Light I and II) are just beautiful songs, anthemic and affecting at the same time in the tradition of Wake Up and Windowstill. Two of these three standout tracks feature Régine Chassagne’s vocals in a major way; an interesting progression from the previous albums.

It is a long album – over an hour – and while it doesn’t drag, you do feel that a couple of songs might have been chopped without any real affect on the overall enjoyment. But it is an excellent achievement overall. Will it push Laura Marling off my Album of the Year (so far) podium? I’m not sure at the moment. Let’s call it a 9/10 and leave a little room for it to grow in my affections!

Just a couple of other brief reviews as I’ve gone on a bit here. This has been a great year for female singer songwriters, and if you’ve liked the Mynabirds and Lissie from my previous recommendations, you should like Caitlin Rose. A little more out and out country (Patsy Cline?) than those two, but strong voice and songs. Not sure it is quite the five stars the Sunday Times awarded, but a good 7.5/10.

The Goodnight Loving from Milwaukee make powerpop / punk / blues /surf-pop and sound like that great bar band you always hope you’ll discover in some back street tavern one dark night in a strange town (and never do). Their fourth album, The Goodnight Loving Supper Club is good unpretentious fun.  It is being streamed (when I last looked) at PunkNews.org, which is of course one of my favourite websites… 7.5/10 again I think.

Owing to a booking mix up (we are still going) , we have two spare tickets to the Reading Festival, August 27th to 20th.  3 day tickets with camping.  Great line up – Arcade Fire etc.

Available at cost price – £185 each.   No reverse auctions please…..!

London / M4 / M3 corridor preferred so we can meet and do the physical handover next week before the event.

email me on psmith@procurementexcellence.com if you’re interested.