The News Review:
- Tamar-kali: A Punk Artist with Soul
- White man’s blues
- Pop and Rock Listings
Tamar-kali: A Punk Artist with Soul
NPR – Mar 30, 2007
It’s part of New York’s small but strong black punk and hardcore music scene — captured in the recent film Afro Punk. In her lyrics and her own personal style she blends feminist politics and afrocentricity in a way that gives her hard rock sound a soulful edge. Her latest CD is 5ive Piece. A veteran frontwoman for bands Funkface and Song of Seven she has toured Europe recently and spoke to Cheryl Corley from London. Among the topics of conversation: How did a black woman from Brooklyn — who grew up listening to a lot of hip-hop — come to head her own rock band in New York? And what does the punk look with its Mohawks piercings and such compare to images of life in Africa? Related NPR Storiesct.
White man’s blues
BBC News – Mar 30, 2007
But then the lyric takes an unexpected turn into gonzo reportage with a cast including Robin Hood Paul Weller and Adolf Hitler. What it’s “about” depends on who you ask: the death knell of punk? A call for racial unity? An attack on gun culture?This ambiguity was unlike punk’s previous stark messages – Tom Robinson saw it as The Clash realising that they could “afford to admit the contradictions that we all face. Certainly there’s disillusionment and fear of futility in there. The Jam take a pasting for their off-the-peg jackets and “turning rebellion into money” (a barb some thought was literally rich from a band signed to CBS for £100000) and the new “solution” proposed (“Why not phone up Robin Hood and ask him for some wealth distribution?”) strikes the same ambivalent note as the various versions of The Beatles’ Revolution. What makes it fun?There’s ambivalence too about violence. n the one hand the White Man is isolated and scared of guns – “please Mister leave me alone”; on the other Strummer took to ad-libbing “and good for you” after the verse about UK punk rockers “fighting for a good place under the lighting” – at least until sideman Mick Jones persuaded him that the band had hosted one too many skinhead invasions-cum-bloodbaths… ¡La lucha continua! – solidarity over time – as the South American Strummers say. The wrecking ball is still headed for the Palais though – and with the London Astoria going the same way there’s a lot less space for a certain kind of gig: the kind between the pub backroom and the pocket-emptying stadium event. Punks may be cheered that (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais will echo around the shell for a while following a farewell gig from The Good The Bad And The Queen with The Clash’s Paul Simonon on bass. Don Letts is DJing Mick Jones is expected – and Joe Strummer? He won’t be there for obvious reasons but perhaps he’d have had more fun at this concert than at the one that spawned the song. Smashed Hits is written by Alan ConnorSend us your comments using the form below:The last gig at the Palais is actually by the Fall on Sunday; the true inheritors of Strummer’s mantle. Albarn’s supergroup venture would have left him cold I suspect.
Pop and Rock Listings
New York Times – Mar 30, 2007
(Sisario) ANTI-SCIAL MUSIC (Wednesday) The final frontier for weird rock is classical music. Anti-Social Music a collective of 11 New York musicians who play in various pop and new-music bands including some big ones like the Hold Steady is one of a handful of groups that go boldly into this realm playing works for strings woodwinds and the like. Skeptics note: it can get pretty rowdy… (Sisario) ★ BLC PARTY ALBERT HAMMND JR. (Tonight and tomorrow night) With spiky but melodic guitars and agitated dance beats Bloc Party revives the nervous punk-funk of bands like Gang of Four. Its latest “A Weekend in the City” (Vice) is a concept album about life in London after the 2005 transit bombings. With Sebastien Grainger.