Lissie/Bad Romance feat Paramore, Lissie and 30 Seconds to Mars

Lissie caught my eye a couple of weeks ago on Jools Holland. Since then she's cropped up in conversation quite a lot so I thought I'd delve a little deeper. Below are a cool couple of videos for you to enjoy.

Lissie feat Ellie Goulding


Here is a cover of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance by Lissie. It's a great pop song, and I've found a couple of different cool versions from various artists who each make it their own.

Lissie - Bad Romance Cover


Hayley Williams (Paramore) - Bad Romance Cover


30 Seconds to Mars - Bad Romance Cover

John Mayer/Ellie Goulding Live @ Wembley Arena

I am still feeling blown away from last night's show at Wembley Arena. First up, Ellie Goulding played to a half-empty arena (the expectations of most support acts) but was great all the same. Her cool electro-pop was not wasted on those there early and, yes Scarlett Music Lovers, she played The Writer!

John Mayer was fashionably late, but played a blinding set nonetheless. I wanted to hear Assassin, but most of all Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. Unfortunately though, when I looked back over his set-list archives, it seems he hasn't played Slow Dancing on this tour at all. I wasn't expecting a miracle, but after a short speech about working his way up to playing Wembley after coming to the UK for ten years, the band strode into the song and I couldn't believe it! The whole gig was amazing, with an incredible drum solo too, and I got to hear everything I wanted to! Here's the set-list:

Heartbreak Warfare

No Such Thing
Vultures
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Perfectly Lonely
Assassin
Who Did You Think I Was
Free Falling
Waiting on the World to Change
All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye
Belief
Half of My Heart
Why Georgia > Message in a Bottle

Who Says

Gravity

Possibly my Favourite Quote

"When you have a song that becomes a part of people's lives, forever making memories, it's nothing sort of magic. It's the closest thing to immortatlity we'll ever know"

- Jon Bon Jovi

yojohnnycowpunk Video

You may recall a week or so ago I featured an interview with the creator behind yojohnnycowpunk; the album of which I contributed some drums to. Well, you lucky people can now hear one these songs, as its founder has created a video of the contributing musicians (including my good self) and some cool graphics.

The song is called Jewel of the Ocean. Enjoy!

New Artist Alert: Gemma Mewse

Photo Credit: John Patrick, London

Summer is finally upon us. The top's down on the car, the picnic blanket's out and people are relying on Radio 1 for a soundtrack to their summer. What'll the trend be this year? Do you yearn for the previous mockney-stylings of Kate Nash or Lily Allen? Or how about something similar, fresher, a true London diva? Enter Gemma Mewse, the South-London songstress who's infectious latest song 'Numpty' is currently stuck in my head.

Mewse has spent months "debuting her hard hitting, socially aware pop/rock songs" in and around London and, with her debut album planned for public consumption in the Autumn, is looking to get out on tour further afield. She's also signed up for the 2010 'Camden Crawl' Weekend thanks to her winning best new song at the ETAs. Phew, a busy girl. And definitely one to look out for.

Numpty, available to hear in full on her Myspace page, tells the tale of a cheating partner; "on your bike son, leave now, don't let the door hit you on your way-out", and gives a great flavour of her wicked voice and cheeky lyrics. It's a really funky acoustic-guitar driven track which showcases the versatility of Mewse's voice and I can hear its rousing chorus rising high above the fields of Pilton at the UK's prestiguious Glastonbury Festival (surely) next year.

You can catch Gemma on the road:

2 Jun 2010 - REGAL ROOM @THE DISTILLERS, London
17 Jun 2010 - THE LOUNGE, Bromley
2 Jul 2010 - WOODLANDS, Salisbury
7 Jul 2010 - THE HORN OF PLENTY, St Albans
8 Aug 2010 - SKYLARK SHOWGROUND, HELP FOR HEROES FESTIVAL, Cambridgeshire
10 Aug 2010 - RONNIE SCOTTS CLUB, London

Or visit her on her Myspace to hear the full-EP version of Numpty plus snippets of the other 3 tracks here.

Bon Jovi Inked Part 2 of 3 - Link Share

You can read part 2 of 3 of Glenn Osrin's Bon Jovi Inked article here. There are some more cool Jovi tats plus an excerpt of an interview between him and me about my Bon Jovi tattoo :)

Bon Jovi Inked: Link Share

Courtesy of Glenn Osrin from the National Examiner, my Bon Jovi tat has featured in his article entitled Bon Jovi Inked: Fans Show Their Colors With Tattos. You can see my tattoo, among others, in part 1 of 3 here and enjoy the archival articles; he's a great writer!

You can follow Bon Jovi Examiner Glenn on Twitter @ Wizardofosrin.

In other tattoo news for fans of the ink, on a personal note my sleeve is well underway and taking shape and will hopefully be finished soon!

Want to open for Bon Jovi at the o2?

Calling all UK bands, wanna open for Bon Jovi at the o2? Now's your chance!

Q&A with yojohnnycowpunk

Over two years ago now, I contributed to a friend's album, performing drums as a session musician on a handful of tracks. Finally the finished copy is in my hands; a really professional looking package as I excitedly peel back the plastic to reveal the physical representation of six years' of hard work from birth to now. I manged to gain an interview with the creator and artist behind yojohnnycowpunk, which you can enjoy below.

Knowing it's been a long time in the process, how long have you actually spent with this project and how does it feel to finally get it done?
Well, it must have taken me 6 years from thinking it would be a good idea to release an album to having 500 copies delivered to my house. I first met a chap called Tabla Tom and he recorded some of my guitar trax to a click. Unbelievable, I was so out of time. That was a long weekend! One thing recording work has done for me is it has taught me to play in time (although others might disagree with me)! It was a lot of work as I'm not in a band. The other people who appeared on the album were mates (such as your good self!) helping me out. I've had to do it all myself, working to pay for a sound engineer to record me, and to help me with the mixing. But I've loved it.

As a new artist, what are you doing to 'get yourself out there'?
To be honest, I enjoy making music far more than 'getting myself out there'. I have sold 29 c.d.'s, my mum bought 3! But you're right, I do need to do something, anything. It cost me a small fortune to get this done, so much so that I have started recording my next album by myself, on my Mac book using Logic 9. What an amazing tool (no, I'm not being smutty!). I have fallen in love with Audio manipulation! But back to your question, my answer would be; not-a-lot. Does anybody have any ideas what I could do?

Where do you take inspiration from when writing music?
Inspiration comes and finds me and gives of itself freely! Sometimes I'm not expecting it and it arrives, I could just be walking down the lane and I get a melody or a line of words....my latest line of words (which came when I was doing some housework) is...."if you ain't gonna do what you say you're gonna do, then you'd best to say nothing at all"....catchy? I was pissed off with someone at the time. But other times I get myself all ready for an idea; studio set-up, guitar in hand, pencil and paper at the ready and in it flows.

Yo JohnnyCowpunk is a great name! Where did that come from?
Its 'yojohnnycowpunk', all one word, no capitals although I sometimes forget and put a capital 'y' at the beginning and when I've woken up after drinking too much vin rouge I sometimes spell it joyohnnycowpunk, but I digress. I'm not sure where it came from, but I like it, I think it describes the music well.

Your album covers quite a mix of styles, was that important to you and why did you choose to do that?
Those were just the songs that got finished first. But I like many different kinds of music so maybe the cd reflects that too.

How do you feel about the music industry in general at the moment? Are you excited or anxious for its current state and future?
Whilst it is always good that people can make a decent wage doing what they enjoy doing, I know very little about that side of things so I have no opinion. What I do know is that music is there for peoples enjoyment, always has been, always will be. And that is a cause for celebration (make mine a double bartender!)


What does the future hold for yojohnnycowpunk?
Really get to grips with Logic 9, at least another 3 albums, the next's gonna be a bit more consistently bluesy rock, the one after that hardcore/ punky and the one after that headmashingly experimental! I'd like to get a band up and running too.

Finally, can you tell us a secret?
Yes, fave bands and artists: Career Suicide, Mastodon, JJ Cale, Sonic Youth, Charlie Parker, Alabama 3, Melt Banana, PRE, The Stooges and many more!



Thanks, it was a pleasure.

New Artist Alert: Alice Avenue

The young and fresh blues trio named Alice Avenue have been born, hailing from Southampton, UK. Be sure to visit their Myspace page to check out for yourself their infectious bluesy delights.

Saturday Night: Live and Acoustic

The exclusive premier of the live acoustic version of Someday I'll Be Saturday Night was yesterday released to Tagged.com. Personally not a favourite song of mine, but you can check it out here.

When We Were Beautiful - Music Video

So the namesake to this blog's music video has been released by the band, and you can watch it here. It's not a particularly imaginative video, filmed solely in a live setting without any surpassing story-line and, as Jon tends to favour, the vocals are live but the music is taken from the album. More for fans of the song than those looking to be wowed...

Weekly Jools Bit

I guess this is turning into a regular feature to the blog when Jools is on TV...I realise it must be quite annoying if you actually watch the show, but remember my opinions are exactly those and hopefully it will open you up to at least one new artist worth checking out every week!

Mumford & Sons undoubtedly stole the show tonight, I want to see them live so bad! Their passion and energy when they play is unmatched; it's just so raw and true.

Hole, frounted by Courtney Love looked more like an attention-seeking experiment in the vain of 'I used to date one of the World's most famous rockstars so someone get me a band'. The 'singing' fits the feel of the music but it certainly isn't note perfect...having said that the overall product was quite interesting and groovy.

Joanna Newsom sat alone with her harp and sang beautifully; her vocals were obscure and child-like but the one song she performed was really beautiful and perfectly suited as she accompanied herself with the wonderful instrument that is the harp.

Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo and her rhythmically-brilliant African band had something really great to offer, as did the foot-tapping retro-rock n roll from Ian Hunter and his Rant Band. A much more enjoyable show overall this week!

In other news, my John Mayer tickets arrived this week and I'm very excited for that show, where he is to be supported by the great Ellie Goulding at the end of the month. One more week of Uni and I'm done for the summer, the gig went really well this week and my personal band project auditioned a fantastic singer yesterday so hopefully I'll be able to share with you some of my own music soon. For now though, enjoy the weekend :)

David Bryan misses MY show.

I'm really not happy about this. David Bryan is missing my show at the o2 on the 13th June...to go to an award's ceremony. Sure, it's a Tony, and Musical Theatre is really important to him. But more important than the band he's devoted his life to with his 'brothers'? The band who's gig he's missing, after claiming he waited "two days to bury my father because I had two shows to do".

OK, it might seem that I'm a little more bitter just because it's my show. But if I read that it was for the show before mine, I'd be thinking 'I'd be really pissed off if that was my show'. And so I am, because it is. When people are paying £75 a ticket for, let's face it, not great floor seats, and in excess of £1000 to stand in the pit and have a pre-show party with a nobody DJ, the least you'd expect is for the whole band to show up. It's not like Richie battling his demons in rehab, this is David choosing not to record a message to send with his apologies in case he wins, because he happens to be playing in the middle of a run of London shows. Really very disappointed.

Later with Jools Holland - This Week

Unfortunately I was really disappointed with Jools' show this week...The Gorillaz were the main act and were, to be honest, completely boring. The band create such a media hype whenever anything new is released but in my opinion they are overrated and were so uncomplicated it was just boring, not clever and effective as I would have hoped. In an interview, Damon Albarn said that The Gorillaz were spawned as a backlash from him watching an MTV music channel back in 1999 at there being nothing 'good' in the charts. So 11 years on, it's depressing to think that not much has changed...

Drive By Truckers were cool and groovy and reminded me of Bruce Springsteen, and there was also a drummer/singer with a DJ whos name I don't even care to mention it was that bad...his singing was just moany and wailing, and the drumming honestly sounded like an amateur child after a couple of lessons.

Fortunately the show was saved from complete disaster by Laura Marling, who just last week performed here in Southampton, UK. I hope the charts aren't sparking a full-on new-wave folk movement considering herself and Mumford & Sons creeping in of late because I'm enjoying the subtle fringes they currently occupy. I believe Marling is probably being replicated in clubs and universities up and down the Country, but there's definitely something about her which earnt her her record deal and I can see her being around for a couple of years.

I'm not in a bad mood, although this post does sound rather moany! Uni finishes next week, then I've a summer of gigs to look forward to. Have a good week all :)

I told you, it's the rule

Jon Bon Jovi: "Love's the only rule".
Billie-Joe Armstrong: "True love is the rule".

Great minds think alike :)