Bukowski has that good one where he says if something is a struggle just stop and wait
Posted in General on 02. Sep, 2010
“Bukowski has that good one where he says if something is a struggle, just stop and wait.”You can hear Jack Kerouac’s influence on the vignettes that form many of the Fratellis’ songs, beginning with “Creeping Up The Backstairs” on the limited EP released in April. Then there is the forthcoming single “Henrietta”, about a follower of the band who could get them into trouble because her “husband might cut them up”.”She’s not a groupie,” Jon says firmly. “She’s older, a mother figure.” Mince cracks opens his second can of Irn Bru. “In our practice rooms, there was a lady that made tea and that. We’d like her back.”There is plenty more in that vein still to come, from exotic dancer “Chelsea Dagger” to the troubled participant of “Knickers In A Handbag”. Alongside the motley cast of characters, the trio cast their musical net widely from glam-rock stomp to blues shuffle.”We’ve stolen the best bits from the best people It’s the way to do it now,” Jon says by way of explanation. “There’s nothing new, just variations on a theme.”Judging from the album sampler, every one of the tracks is distinctive – something that the band have striven hard to achieve.”We’re not a style band, so we have to have something more,” he says.
“When you see pictures of us, you don’t think: ‘Oh, they look great.’ We have to be a bit cleverer.”Of course, playing in a wedding band would be an ideal education for this style of magpie thievery and giving them an open mind. The boys are keen to find out if the Billy Joel musical is still running.Mince learnt his chops from a blues-musician father, who was one of the top harmonica players in his home city. Barry has been in and out of bands since he was 14, sneaking into venues so that no one noticed how young he was. Jon, too, has had to grow up in public.”I was stealing from the wrong people for a while. I began writing like Bowie, but then I realised I had to sing in a Bowie-esque way You just end up sounding ridiculous. I like to think now we sound like Dylan’s conversation pieces.”Otherwise, the Fratellis are coy about their primary sources.
At least they make clear the band’s central mission – they have come to entertain us.’Henrietta’ is out on Monday on Island. However confused its imagery, Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (with Flowers in My Hair)” taps into the nostalgia many feel for the halcyon days of rock Symbolically, so too does the Isle of Wight Festival. At its peak, Britain’s oldest rock gathering could boast slots from The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell in the course of one weekend. Glastonbury has its Tor and Creamfields its superstar DJs, but only the Isle of Wight Festival can claim to have been Britain’s Woodstock. Bizarrely, the event that would draw more than half a million people in 1970 had begun, two years earlier, as a fundraiser for the Isle of Wight Swimming Association. A member of the said body, Ron Smith, set aside £750 to develop a rock festival, and preparations got under way on 100-acres of stubble corn.
The inaugural Isle of Wight festival began at 8pm on August 31, 1968, and ended at 8.30am the following morning. Some 10,000 music fans had paid £1 5s (£1.25) for tickets, the late John Peel among those enjoying sets from acts including Tyrannosaurus Rex and Fairport Convention.
“One fragile [girl] was crying because her feet were so cold,” the DJ recalled “Overcome with lust, I gave her my socks. She skippety-skipped away and that was that.”The 1969 event was a much bigger affair, the festival relocating to Godshill village, expanding to three days, and attracting a crowd of around 250,000 people. News of Bob Dylan’s first UK performance since his 1966 motorcycle accident had swelled ticket demand, and there were also sets from the Who and The Band. Despite its quantum leap forward, the festival retained something of the Aquarian hippy innocence documented by Peel. A local Scout troop supplied tents for the temporarily homeless, while a provincial newspaper report from the period reports communal pots of baked beans passing amongst docile folks dressed in “tattered jeans and headbands.”It was the mixed blessings of the further-expanded 1970 festival that saw it become the stuff of legend. Described in a Melody Maker headline as “Five Days That Shook The World”, the gathering drew a crowd that The Guinness Book Of Records later verified as being in excess of 600,000.The musical riches on offer were all but unprecedented: Sly and the Family Stone singing “Dance To The Music”; Joni Mitchell singing “Woodstock”; The Who premiering Tommy; and loads more class acts besides.