JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 70th anniversary of Joe Strummer’s birth.
Category: Video
Throwback: Happy (Belated) 53rd Birthday, Nate Dogg!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates the 53rd anniversary of the birth of Nate Dogg.
Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, KRS One!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates KRS One’s 57th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 74th Birthday, Robert Plant!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Robert Plant’s 74th birthday.
Live Footage: Creedence Clearwater Revival Performs “Fortunate Son” at Royal Albert Hall 4/14/70
When the members of Credence Clearwater Revival stepped onto the stage at London‘s Royal Albert Hall on April 14, 1970 — coincidentally, just days after The Beatles announced their breakup — the California band had arguably just become the biggest rock band in the world. In the preceding year, CCR had five Top 10 singles and three Top 10 albums — Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys — on the American charts, outselling The Beatles. They had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and played to over a million people across the country, including Woodstock.
The band’s Southern fried, “swamp rock” sound” permeated global airwaves throughout 1969: “Proud Mary,” “Green River,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Down on the Corner” were in the Top Ten across Europe, North America and Australasia, while “Bad Moon Rising: hit #1 in the UK and New Zealand. The band managed to be both commercially and critically successful: Rolling Stone named them the “Best American Band.” The band started out the next year (and decade) with a hometown show at the Oakland Coliseum. Less than four months later, in April, CCR embarked on their first European tour, an eight show run that included stops in The Netherlands, Germany, France and Denmark.
The members of CCR considered their two sold-out London shows to be a test of sorts, to measure the success of their first European tour. The first night of the two-night run, they opened with “Born on the Bayou.” And as they closed out the show with “Keep on Chooglin’.” the band was met with a 15-minute standing ovation from the the crowd. The next day, they received rave reviews from The Times and NME, who at the time, wrote “Creedence Clearwater Revival had proved beyond a doubt that they are, in more opinions than mine, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. In their capable hands, not only is the true spirit of rock music alive and well, but it is kicking like a mule.”
Just two years later, the band split up. But speculation around a live recording of the Royal Albert Hall show began to permeate through their fanbase in 1980. That same year Fantasy Records released a live album by the band, mistakenly titled The Royal Albert Hall Concert. But it was quickly discovered that the audio was from the Oakland Coliseum show a few months earlier. The label was forced to quickly sticker the album with corrections — and then they renamed the the January 1970 show, The Concert for later production runs.
Interestingly, those rumors about a long-lost recording of the Royal Albert Hall show are indeed true. Craft Recordings will be releasing the long-awaited live album Credence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall on 180-gram vinyl, CD and cassette tape on September 16, 2022. Select retailers will offer a variety of exclusive color variants on vinyl — Walmart will sell “Tombstone Shadow” colored vinyl, while Target will sell “Green River” colored vinyl. The album will also be available across the digital platforms. including in hi-res and Dolby ATMOS immersive audio formats. After spending almost 50 years in storage, the original multitrack tapes were meticulously restored and mixed by the Grammy Award-winning team of producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell, who have worked on The Beatles’ 50th-anniversary editions of Abbey Road and Sgt, Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and countless others. The LP was masted by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios using half-speed technology for the highest-quality listening experience.
The live album presents the Royal Albert Hall show in its entirety while capturing CCR at the apex of their career. Of course, the set features their now, classic hits like “Proud Mary,” a rollicking, live version of “Bad Moon Rising” and a furiously breakneck, live rendition of “Fortune Son,” a song centered around hard-hitting and incisive social commentary that still resonates 50 years after its release. It shouldn’t be surprising that bands like U2, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Rise Against, and countless others have covered it.
Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall will also be released concurrently with the Bob Smeaton-directed documentary concert film Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall. Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges, the film takes viewers from the band’s earliest years in El Cerrito, CAthrough their rise to fame. Featuring a treasure trove of previously unseen footage, Travelin‘ Band culminates with the band’s Royal Albert Hall show — marking the only known live concert footage of the original CCR lineup. So to build up a little buzz for the album and the documentary, the label and the director shared some live footage of Credence Clearwater Revival’s original lineup performing the song at Royal Albert Hall.
By the way, on November 14, 2022 both the album and the film will be released in a Super Deluxe Edition Box Set. The 2-LP/2-CD/1-Blu-ray collection includes Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall on two 45-RPM 180-gram vinyl LPs as well as on CD. A second CD features music from the film, including formative recordings from the band’s earliest incarnations (including Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets and The Golliwogs). The Blu-Ray offers the complete documentary film, plus the digital album in hi-res and Dolby ATMOS immersive audio. Limited to 5,000 copies globally, each individually numbered set is housed in a 12″ x 12″ box, with embossed gold foil detail and includes a reproduction of the original 1970s tour program, a 17″ x 24″ and a 16-page booklet, featuring an excerpt of Bridges’ voice-over script.
The pre-order for the album and the various packages is here: https://craftrecordings.com/pages/creedence-clearwater-revival-at-the-royal-albert-hall
New Video: JOVM Mainstay James Chatburn Shares a Woozy, Classic Soul-Inspired Jam
James Chatburn is a rising, Sydney-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and producer. Since relocating to the German capital back in 2015, Chatburn has carved out a reputation for being a highly in-demand singer/songwriter and producer, who has collaborated with acclaimed Aussie hip-hop outfit Hilltop Hoods‘ certified Gold single “Higher,” rum.gold, Jordan Rakei, Noah Slee, Sedric Perry, and a growing list of others. As a solo artist, the Sydney-born, Berlin-based JOVM mainstay has developed and honed a sound that meshes elements of soul, blues, electro pop, neo-soul and psych pop with the release of his full-length debut, 2020’s David Tobias co-produced Faible.
During the lead-up to Fabile‘s release, I managed to write about three of the album’s singles:
- “In My House,” a warm and vibey, two-step inducing bit of soul, centered around introspective, earnest songwriting, reverb-drenched guitars and thumping beats.
- “Jewellery and Gold,” one of the album’s more tongue-in-cheek tracks, featuring a narrator looking forward to a future, where he’s flush with cash, and as a result, any of the major issues of his life being settled with that newfound cash — because dollar dollar bill y’all.
- “The Hurt,” a ballad that saw the Aussie-born, German-based JOVM mainstay express longing and heartache in a way that reminded me quite a bit of Nick Hakim.
Chatburn’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Late Night Howling officially dropped today. And if you’ve been following this site over the past month, you might recall that I wrote about “Do You Wanna Live Like That,” feat. Noah Slee, an expansive and mind-bending take on neo-soul and pop centered around a unique and woozily dynamic song structure that rapidly shifts in tone, time signature and instrumentation: The song’s introduction begins with twinkling pianos in a Latin jazz like tempo before quickly shifting to tweeter and woofer rattling trap beats and then shifting again to a vibey 70s neo-soul-inspired coda.
Lyrically, the song is intimate and introspective, with its narrator vacillating between self-doubt, analysis, progression and gratefulness. “‘Do You Wanna Live Like That’ is a track I created which ended up kind of being a few different tracks in one, inspired by people like Tyler, The Creator with just these sudden drops and Sault with this vibe – simple not perfect, but just perfectly imperfect,” James Chatburn explains. “Noah Slee and I have been friends basically since we both moved to Berlin, it just took 7 years but we finally got around to releasing a track together.”
Late Night Howling‘s latest single “Some Kind of Fool” sonically is indebted to Quiet Storm-meets-classic, late 60s-mid 70s psych soul as it’s centered around an arrangement of shimmering Rhodes, supple and sinuous bass lines, some metronomic time keeping, squiggling bursts of funk guitar and a soaring string arrangement serving as an ethereal and brooding bed for Chatburn, who fittingly adopts a yearning and heartbroken falsetto for most of the song. Although the song’s narrator is heartbroken and deceived, they have taken some degree of power back by clearly calling out someone, who has manipulated and exploited them.
“This song is about noticing being taken advantage of by other people and manipulated, but taking power over that situation by noticing it and calling out the behaviour,” Chatburn explains. “When producing and performing this song I wanted to land somewhere between Cleo Sol, Shuggie Otis, and Curtis Mayfield, I was like fuck it, I love it, I am going to make one of these songs.”
Directed by Dhanesh Jayaselan and featuring set design by Shari Annabel Marks, the accompanying video for “Some Kind of Fool” is an ethereal, fever dream that features an entirely black-clad Chatburn with his entirely white-clad backing band performing the song in a mistily lit, loft space. Local dancers — Nino Benito Marks, Kandi Alum and Lara Scheiber — perform some free, floating movements to the song’s slow-burning groove, and it gives the entire affair a woozy and floating feel.
Live Footage: Genesis Owusu Performs “GTFO” at Splendour in the Grass
With the release of his debut EP, 2017’s Cardrive, the acclaimed and rising Ghanian-born, Canberra, Australia-based, artist Genesis Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly established a reputation for being a restless, genre-blurring chameleon with an ability to conjure powerful and deeply personal storytelling.
Cardrive EP garnered an ARIA Award nomination for Best R&B/Soul Release and praise from Sir Elton John (!), NME, i-D, mixmag and others. Owusu supported the EP by opening for Dead Prez, Col3trane, Sampa The Great, Cosmo’s Midnight, Noname, Animé, Ruel and others in Australia.
Owusu-Anash’s critically applauded full-length debut Smiling With No Teeth was released last year. The album as the acclaimed Ghanian-Aussie artist explains is essentially about “performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly. Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people, who only want to know if you’re okay, if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.”
Each of the album’s 15 tracks can trace their origins back to studio jam sessions with a backing band that features Kirin J. Callinan, Touch Sensitive’s Michael DiFrancesco, World Champion‘s Julian Sudek and the album’s producer Andrew Klippel.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wound up writing about three of Smiling With No Teeth‘s singles:
- “The Other Black Dog,” a mind-bending production that meshed alternative hip-hop, industrial clang, clatter, rattle and stomp, off-kilter stuttering beats and wobbling synth arpeggios that was roomy enough for Owusu-Anash’s breathless, rapid-fire and dense flow. Managing to balance club friendliness with sweaty, mosh pit energy, the song is a full-throttled nosedive into madness that reminds me of the drug and booze fueled chaos of ODB, and the menace of DMX.
- “Gold Chains,” a brooding yet seamless synthesis of old school soul, G Funk and Massive Attack-like trip hop centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, stuttering boom bap beats, squiggling blasts of guitar and the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist’s Mos Def/Yasiin Bey-like delivery, alternating between spitting dense and dexterous bars and crooning with an achingly tender falsetto. “‘Gold Chains’ got me thinking about the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product, and public misconceptions about how luxurious that is,” Owusu-Anash explains in press notes. “Lyrically, it set the tone for the rest of the album.”
- “Same Thing,” a jolting and uneasy future funk banger centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering beats, bursts of Nile Rodgers-like guitar, a propulsive bass line and infectious hook serving as a silky bed for Owusu’s alternating dexterous and densely worded bars and soulful crooning. But at its core is an unflinchingly honest — and necessary — view of mental health struggles.
Last July, the Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay released the Missing Molars EP, a five-track accompaniment to his full-length debut. Recorded during the Smiling With No Teeth sessions, the Missing Molars EP material didn’t make the album — but further continue the soul-baring narrative of the album. “Missing Molars is an extension of Smiling With No Teeth,” Owusu-Anash explains. “A small collection of tracks from the SWNT sessions that take the already established world-building groundwork of the album, and expand that universe into new and unexplored places. These are all tracks that I felt were special in their own right and needed to be shared. This is music without boundaries.”
Adding to a breakthrough 2021, Owusu-Anash went on several sold-out tours, made his Stateside late night TV debut, and went on a successful run of dates across both the States and Europe. Smiling With No Teeth landed on several Best of Lists, including being named triple j’s Album of the Year. The album also earned four ARIA Awards, including Album of the Year, Hip Hop Release, Artwork and Independent Release. And the album was named triple j’s Album of the Year.
Owusu-Anash returns with the woozy and anthemic, Andrew Klippel, Dann Hume and Jono Ma-produced, “GTFO,” the first bit of new material since SWNT — and the album’s highly-anticipated follow up. Beginning with a looped warbling choir, wobbling bass serving as an ethereal and eerie bed for Owusu-Anash’s rapid fire flow, “GFTO” is built around in a alternating quiet-loud-quiet song structure that features a shout-along-worthy chorus paired with a marching beat and explosive cymbal crashes keeping time, and an analog instrumentation-driven hook. While further cementing his reputation for being an artist constantly experimenting with his sound and approach, the song finds the listener being thrown into the JOVM mainstay’s innermost thoughts and opinions with an unvarnished and unsettling honesty.
The rapidly rising Aussie JOVM mainstay has been on the road most of this year, making stops along the global festival circuit with stops at Lollapalooza and Osheaga earlier this year. Owusu-Anash recently performed at Splendour in the Grass with his full live show, which includes The Black Dog Band — Julian Sudek (drums), Touch Sensitive (bass, synth), Kirin J. Callinan (guitar), Andrew Klippel (keys) and Jonti (rhythm guitar, keys) — and The Goons, led by his frequent creative collaborator Bailey Howard. Owusu-Anash shared this incredible live footage of “GFTO” shot during his Splendour in the Grass set — with several hundred thousand folks chanting “Get the fuck out” in unison.
I’ve seen this brother live a few months ago. He’s going to be the biggest fucking thing on the planet, soon. And you can catch him when he returns back to the States to open for Khraungbin for a handful of dates and a handful of September festival appearances.
And for my Aussie friends and readers, Owusu-Anash will be opening for Tame Impala during their Australian headlining tour in October.
New Video: Flossing Shares Sultry and Menacing “All We Are”
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and sideswiped everything, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and musician Heather Elle found themselves thrown from touring with buzz-worthy post-punk outfit The Wants (f.k.a. as BODEGA) and into a dizzying state of long overdue decompression. Aching to artistically progress, Elle felt the need to completely untether from both personal and professional entanglements: They left The Wants and a long-term relationship and quickly began writing and recording songs in their new bachelorette pad.
Elle dug up five-year old songs and song ideas written on the road and unexpectedly wrote last year’s confessional and hedonistic “Switch,” which pushed the Brooklyn-based artist to take their Flossing project further. Elle’s Flossing debut, Queen of the Mall EP was released to critical praise with critics describing the Brooklyn-based artist as a “mischievous pop poet” and the “newly appointed master of psychological provocative.”
Building upon growing buzz, Elle’s sophomore EP World Of Mirth is slated for an August 26, 2022 release through London-based Brace Yourself Records. The soon-to-be released EP continues the Brooklyn-based artist’s for being enigmatic and provocative, while excavating and proving into the self even further than before.
World Of Mirth‘s latest single, the smoldering “All We Are.” Centered around densely layered, tweeter and woofer rattling, Nine Inch Nails-meets-ADULT.-like industrial production paired with Elle’s alternating cooing and howling, “All We Are” is possess a sultry yet menacing quality that’s simultaneously irresistible and uneasy.
“Inspired by binge-watching Steven Soderbergh’s medical drama series The Knick at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — which is set in an ER in turn-of-the-century New York City — the song invokes themes of metaphysics, existentialism, pride, competition, and legacy,” Elle explains in press notes. “‘This is all we are,’ is the final line from the lead surgeon as he operates upon himself in front of a stadium of colleagues and doctors, attempting to outsmart death.”
Directed by Dylan Brannigan, the accompanying video for “All We Are” is shot through grainy VHS fuzz and emphasizes the song’s sultry yet menacing air.
New Video: Night Talks Share Mischievous Visual for Cathartic “Overcome”
Los Angeles-based indie outfit Night Talks — Soraya Sebghati (vocals), Jacob Butler (guitar) and Josh Arteaga (bass) — released their sophomore album Same Time Tomorrow earlier this year.
Recorded between 2019 and 2020, Same Time Tomorrow sees the band firmly establishing a pop rock sound centered around Sebghati’s pop star belter vocals, shimmering guitar lines, propulsive bass, forceful drums and anthemic choruses. The album as the band explains “is a refined rock/pop album with plenty of material to dance, cry and feel to.”
When the pandemic forced a change to their release plans, the members of the band took the opportunity to make its roll out special: They used their newfound free time to give each of the album’s songs an accompanying music video. And each video was conceptualized, directed, edited, costumed, set-designed and colored by the band.
Last month, I wrote about album single “On and On,” which debuted on KROQ’s Locals Only show back in February and since then, it has been in the top five, including eight weeks at #1 — and once you hear it, you’ll see why it’s been topping the charts: Simply put, it’s a big, heart-worn-on-sleeve, pop anthem featuring twinkling synths, glistening guitars, propulsive rhythms, Sebghati’s powerhouse vocals and their penchant for enormous, arena friendly choruses and hooks. The first time I heard it, I could picture a room full of sweaty concertgoers singing along with the song’s chorus — while pointing at a deeper, universal truth within all of our relationships
“The song ‘On And On’ came from my realization that though relationships will come and go throughout your life, they often follow similar paths,” Night Talk’s Soraya Sebghati explains. “The relationships I had with friends and family when I was a kid have changed considerably in my adult life, but they have a lot of the same rhythms. The phrase ‘Same Time Tomorrow’ represents a willingness to show up and put in the work to fix or maintain a relationship, especially when you’re in a rough patch. Things might be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you’re done– it just means that you’ll show up the next day and try again.”
Same Time Tomorrow‘s latest single “Overcome” continues a run of sleek, slickly produced, radio friendly, pop rock built around earnest, lived-in songwriting, and well-placed, rousingly anthemic, cathartic hooks and choruses. While arguably being one of the most defiantly upbeat songs I’ve come across in the past few weeks, “Overcome” is rooted in a heartbreak that’s devastating and all too familiar.
“Overcome is about the dissolution of a friendship. I feel like friend breakups are just as painful as romantic relationship breakups, but it can feel so much weirder,” Night Talks’ Soraya Sebghati explains. “Sometimes you grow out of friendships or grow apart from each other, and sometimes you realize that the friendship isn’t serving either person in a positive or healthy way.
At the end of the day, things did turn out okay. The pain is not permanent and it is possible to overcome the hurt and weird feelings that come from losing a friend.”
The accompanying video for “Overcome” continues a run of mischievous, playful visuals created, edited and shot by the band. Opening with a literal blank canvas, the video explodes into color and is chock full of hilarious visual gags and easter eggs that reveal themselves with repeated viewings.
New Video: Carla dal Forno Shares Hazy and Dreamy “Come Around”
Over the better part of the past decade or so of moving, writing, recording and touring out of Berlin and London, singer/songwriter, musician and Kallista Records label head Carla dal Forno relocated to Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, where she wrote and recorded her third album Come Around.
Slated for November 4, 2022 release through her own Kallista Records, Come Around reportedly sees dal Forno grappling with ideas of home, disorder and insomnia with self-assured, enlightened songwriting and pop hooks.
Come Around‘s first single, album title track “Come Around” is a narcoleptic, meandering, dub-like take on indie pop featuring reverb and delay-drenched guitar and drums paired with dal Forno’s inviting, easy-going delivery. Centered around a seemingly effortless melodic simplistic and an unerring knack for a well-placed, infectious hook, “Come Around” feels like an open-ended invitation to stop by and stay awhile, to make yourself at home . . .
“’Come Around’ was inspired by a guy I used to play in a band with,” dal Forno explains. “I really admired the way he played guitar. He had this laid back strum that was effortless and cool. I was mucking around at home one day trying to imitate the way he played and I wrote ‘Come Around.’” Further adding: ”I wrote the song during a carefree springtime and I loved working on it while recording this album. There’s a lightness and openness to it, which I feel quite liberated by. It reminds me of a life I once had with very few responsibilities.”
The accompanying video by Ludovic Sauvage is red-hued — and despite dal Forno’s clothing, evokes lazy, hazy summer afternoons of daydreaming and hanging out without a particular plan.
