Best of What’s New

Best of What’s New is hitting a bit of a milestone this week with its 20th installment. When I started 20 weeks ago, I didn’t expect the feature would become a weekly series. The fact it has turned into that tells me there’s more decent new music out there than I had previously realized. I also recognize my favorite decades in music, the ’60s and ’70s, are gone and won’t come back; still, at a time when the charts are dominated by music that feels largely generic and soulless to me, it’s reassuring to see not all new music is created equal.

I’m also happy about this latest installment, which among others features a psychedelic prog rock band from Norway. How many bands do you know from Norway? And how many of them play psychedelic prog rock? Or how about a multi-national pop prog rock (gee, try saying that quickly!) outfit from Belgium, the UK and the U.S.? Also, were you aware that in March The Boomtown Rats released their first new album in 36 years? But wait, there’s more. All you need to do to find out is to read on… 🙂

LeRoux/Lucy Anna

LeRoux, aka, Louisiana’s LeRoux, are a band from Baton Rouge, La., which have been around for some 45 years. From their website: Their 1978 Capitol press release read, “LeRoux takes its name from the Cajun French term for the thick and hearty gravy base that’s used to make a gumbo.”  LeRoux’s eponymous first album was a musical gumbo that blended various instruments and music arrangements into a spicy, mouth-watering southern rock sound. In fact, their Southern anthem ‘New Orleans Ladies’, voted Song of the Century by Gambit Magazine, simmered with the laid-back feel of the “Big Easy,” evoking images of Bourbon Street and the bayou…Over the years, LeRoux enjoyed performing with many of classic rocks’ greatest bands including The Allman Brothers, Wet Willie, Journey, Kansas, Heart, The Doobie Brothers, Charlie Daniels, Foreigner, Marshall Tucker, The Outlaws, ZZ Top and many, many more…LeRoux was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame as their 50th inductee. Lucy Anna, co-written by Richard Ferreira and Solomon Paul Marshall, reminds me a bit of Little Feat. The song is from the band’s most recent, eighth studio album One of Those Days, released on July 24 – their first new album in 18 years. I really dig the harmony singing and warm sound. Check it out!

Nick D’Virgilio/In My Bones

Nick D’Virgilio is a session multi-instrumentalist, who according to Wikipedia is best known as the (studio) drummer of American progressive rock group Spock’s Beard, and is a member of Big Big Train, an English prog rock band – admittedly I had not heard of both outfits before, but my exposure to prog rock has been limited. Moreover, D’Virgilio has recorded and toured with artists, such as Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Sheryl Crow. And, you probably guessed it, he also has recorded some solo work. This included an album and an EP that both came out in 2011, and Invisible, his most recent album released on June 26. Here’s In My Bones, written by D’Virgilio. Part of the reason I decided to highlight this tune is the great organ and saxophone work.

Shaman Elephant/Ease of Mind

According to their Facebook page, Shaman Elephant are a Norwegian psychedelic progressive rock band. Ease of Mind is a tune from Wide Awake but Still Asleep, which a review by the blog The Progressive Aspect notes is their sophomore album. Their debut Crystals appeared in 2016. The review also lists Shaman Elephant’s members: Eirik Sejersted Vognstølen (vocals, guitar), Jard Hole (drums), Ole-Andreas Sæbø Jensen (bass) and Jonas Særsten (keyboards). I will say Ease of Mind falls outside my core wheelhouse, but there’s something about it I find intriguing. What drew me in initially is the acoustic guitar intro. Plus, other than synth pop band a-ha, I can’t think of any other group from Norway I know, so I’m happy to feature one here.

Fish on Friday/Mad at the World

On their Facebook page, Fish on Friday (FoF) describe themselves as “a multi-national (Belgium-UK-USA) Progressive Poprock oriented project signed to UK label Esoteric recordings-Cherry Red.” Their website lists their members as Nick Beggs (bass, Chapman stick, backing vocals), Frank Van Bogaert (vocals, keyboards, guitars), Marty Townsend (guitars) and Marcus Weymaere (drums and percussion). Mad at the World is a track from Black Rain, which the website’s “bio” section indicates is the band’s fifth album. Unfortunately, there’s no actual bio there, but a news statement about FoF’s second album points out the band was founded in 2009 “when Belgian Producer and musician Frank van Bogaert and keyboard player William Beckers established FISH ON FRIDAY as a studio-based Progressive Rock project.” The band released their debut album Shoot the Moon in 2010. Apparently, it received stylistic comparisons with the Alan Parsons Project. Having listened to some of the tunes from Black Rain, which appeared on May 15, if anything, I seemed to pick up some traces of David Gilmour/post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd, though not on Mad of the World. That tune may be a little bit closer to some of the previous music by the Alan Parsons Project. It doesn’t really matter – I like it and that’s good enough for me! Based on credits listed on Discogs, the tune was written van Bogaert, who also produced the album.

The Boomtown Rats/There’s No Tomorrow Like Today

How funny is that! I just finished publishing a mini-series to commemorate Live Aid and the next thing I come across is The Boomtown Rats released Citizens of Boomtown in March 2020, their first new album since 1984’s In the Long Grass! As I admitted in my Live Aid posts, other than Bob Geldof’s association with the band and I Don’t Like Mondays (and I should also add Banana Republic), I pretty much know nothing about this Irish band – rats! They initially formed in Dublin in 1975 and released six studio albums between 1977 and their first breakup in 1986. The band reunited in 2013 with a different line-up. But other than a few live records and two compilations, they did not come out with anything new – until March this year. Released on June 12, There’s No Tomorrow Like Today is the B-side to the album’s first single Trash Glam Baby; interestingly, it didn’t make the record. The tune is credited to Geldof, as well as the band’s other members Pete Briquette (bass), Simon Crowe (drums) and Garry Roberts (guitar). It’s a quite catchy pop rocker!

This post was updated on August 1, 2020 to correct information on There’s No Tomorrow Like Today, the above mentioned song by The Boomtown Rats. Bob Geldof-authorized fan site Bob Geldof Fans reached out to note that while the tune should have been on the album as my post had initially indicated, it was not. Instead, it became the b-side to the first single Trash Glam Baby.

Sources: Wikipedia; LeRoux website; Shaman Elephant Facebook page; The Progressive Aspect; Fish on Friday Facebook page; Discogs; YouTube

It Was 35 Years Ago…

“In late October 1984, I came home at about six o’clock in the evening and turned on the television to watch the television news. And I saw something on the screen that put my pathetic personal problems into a horrifying perspective. There in front of me were elegant men and women, moms and dads, holding their children. But they were hardly recognizable humans at this point. They were just about alive. They had the swollen heads and the bloated stomachs of children who are dying of starvation.”

“The thing is you don’t actually die of hunger. You die of a collapse of all your immune system, so you catch all sorts of diseases, but your muscles are so weakened you can’t even make a noise. And all these children were silently screaming at me in agony to die. To die of hunger is to die in complete agony. And here were these mothers and fathers in the last seconds of their children’s lives in utter despair as to what to do. And these people stared at me in my pop star live in Chelsea in London.”

The above is an excerpt from Bob Geldof’s introduction to Live Aid 35, which you can watch in its entirety on a dedicated YouTube channel, along with plenty of footage from the actual benefit concert that took place on Saturday, July 13, 1985 – just a little over 35 years ago. I’m envisaging to commemorate the 35th anniversary in a two or three-part series over the next few days – not sure yet how much time I will have to write.

Organized by Geldof, lead vocalist of Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats, and his friend Midge Ure, frontman of Britsh new wave outfit Ultravox, to raise funds of the famine in Ethiopia, the event featured concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. It was attended by an estimated 72,000 people in London and close to 89,500 folks in Philly. The live broadcast was watched by an estimated 1.9 billion people in 150 countries. I was one of them and still remember it pretty well.

Queen’s performance at Wembley Stadium was one of the highlights of Live Aid

The concerts are believed to have raised around £150 million for famine relief, though the initial numbers included in news reports the day after the event were significantly lower, putting the total between £40 and £50 million. There was also some controversy over the distribution of the aid, including allegations funds had been diverted to the Ethiopian government for the purchase of arms – a truly disgusting thought!

In 2010, the BBC apologized for statements made in a previous investigation, saying there “was no specific evidence [money had been diverted to buy arms] and we’re apologising today to the Band Aid Trust and we’re also apologising personally to Bob Geldof.” I’d like to leave it at that and get to some music.

Live Aid kicked off at Wembley Stadium on July 13 at 12:00 pm British Summer Time. The first act were British boogie rockers Status Quo. Here’s their rendition of John Fogerty’s Rockin’ All Over the World, the title track off their 10th studio album from November 1997, and one of their biggest hits. Perhaps the ideal tune to start a rock & pop marathon!

Of course, in addition to organizing the event, Messrs. Geldof and Ure also got to perform. Here are The Boomtown Rats with I Don’t Like Mondays, their biggest hit, initially released as a single in July 1979 ahead of their third studio album The Fine Art of Surfacing, which came out in October that year.

I’d like to wrap up part 1 with Sting and a great stripped back version of Roxanne, featuring jazz saxophone player Branford Marsalis. Written by Sting, the tune first appeared as a single by The Police in April 1978. It was also included on their debut studio album Outlandos d’Amour from November 1978.

Source: Wikipedia; BBC; YouTube