Win A Limited Edition Rega Research Turntable

To celebrate Record Store Day UK we're giving away a one off, limited edition Rega Research turntable! Enter here.

The turntable is a one-off Rega Planar 1 and RP3 hybrid and will be available to purchase from independent record shops and Rega stockists on the 22nd April.

To celebrate RSD Noel, alongside other artists such as Elbow & Jarvis Cocker, have signed up to 10% of the turntables, which will be allocated to participating stores at random.

To find out more about Record Store Day head over to their site here.

Source: Noel Gallagher's Official Facebook Page

The Story Of Knebworth, By Liam And Noel Gallagher, Jarvis Cocker, The Charlatans, Manics, Alan McGee And More

Today marks 20 years since 125,000 people descended on Knebworth to watch the greatest British rock band of the '90s do their thing on the first of two hot summer nights. Here, members of Oasis, the support acts, promoters and fans recall the momentous occasion.

Click here to read an article that was originally published to mark the tenth anniversary, in the August 5, 2006 issue of NME.

Richard Ashcroft Is Open To Working With Noel Gallagher

The Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft has suggested that he would be open to working with Noel Gallagher, telling NME in a new interview: "in the future who knows what might happen".

Ashcroft speaks to NME in an exclusive cover feature in this week's magazine (available now, free in the UK).

Ahead of releasing new album 'These People' on May 14, Ashcroft bemoaned the current state of the music industry, saying that he's "got no faith in it whatsoever".

He continued: "It’s sold itself up the river, stabbed people in the back instead of trying to create a good, solid British music alternative. Turn left for Cowell, turn right for this. The mainstream consumed our culture."

"You can get as many songwriters in a room as you want for your new talent show contest winner, it’s never gonna sound like a great Noel Gallagher song sung by Liam, it’s never gonna reach ‘Live Forever’, it’s never gonna be [Verve song] ‘Lucky Man’. We know that."

Last year, Noel Gallagher said he’d be interested in making an album with Ashcroft.

Asked whether he would work with Gallagher, Ashcroft replied: "It’s a great compliment for Noel to say something like that, and in the future who knows what might happen. I wish things like this would’ve happened years ago."

Ashcroft went on to speak of his fondness for his Britpop peers, saying: "Even the guys we had a bit of friction with, I look back and wish them luck. If I hear [Pulp frontman] Jarvis Cocker on the radio it gives me a good feeling. He’s waving a flag for culture from that time. We’re not stopping."

Source: www.nme.com

Noel Gallagher On The Art Of Songwriting

The following piece is an extract from the superb book Isle of Noises by Daniel Rachel, a series of in-depth interviews with British musicians about their approach to songwriting. This is just the first half of the interview with Noel and the rest of it is just as good. You can click through and buy the book at the end of the article. It also features interviews with John Lydon, Mick Jones, Madness, Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, Jarvis Cocker, Pet Shop Boys, Laura Marling, Ray Davies, Squeeze, Joan Armatrading and many more. – James Brown

You were once asked but refused to answer this question. Do you recognize the romantic writer in yourself?
I remember that question. Yes, I am romantic. My missus would sit and scoff at this. I can only be romantic when I’m writing songs. I’ve written lots of love songs. I’m fucking shit at remembering birthdays and all that malarkey, buying cards and flowers: absolutely rubbish.

You recognize beauty in simple things, like the weather.

Oh yeah, for five years I was obsessed with the rain. It was raining a lot.

Or shining.

Well, there was sunshine after the rain. Somebody pointed that out to me at the end of the Nineties and said, ‘It’s been raining a lot in your music for the last five years.’ It’s like, ‘I’m from Manchester. It rains. I’m from up north.’

Is it a default when you’re stuck for ideas: rain, shine?

I’m not one of the world’s great thinkers. Damon Albarn said this once in an interview: he can ‘see four black dudes playing cards in a pub in Notting Hill and write a symphony about it’. I could see the same four black dudes and to me it’s just four black dudes playing cards. It’s just how you perceive things in life. I’m not a great reader of books; I’m not a great art lover. What I know is street life and street talk and football and drugs. I was probably the only songwriter in the entire world that hasn’t written a song about 9/11.

It’s unusual for you to write very personally. Did having an abusive father contribute to your reluctance to reveal yourself in song?

All the songs that I like, they’re not written by songwriters pulling the scabs off themselves. All John Lennon’s shit about his mother; I’m not interested in it, doesn’t mean anything to me. All these songs about personal torment, how can it? How can ‘Mother’ mean anything to anybody apart from John Lennon? It can’t, because he’s singing it about his mother, not mine. That’s just my perception of it. It’s never come out in my music ’cause (a) it’s nobody’s fucking business; and (b) it doesn’t make for great music. For instance, ‘Waterloo Sunset’; the sun setting at Waterloo Station belongs to everybody. The abusive father I had belongs to me. I really wouldn’t want to share that or put it into a song. Why waste that three minutes when you could be writing about the sun coming up in the morning?

Read the rest at Sabotagetimes

Check out the current collection from Pretty Green's AW13 collection here.

Noel Gallagher Reveals How He Penned His Songs

You Really Got Me gave Ray Davies the flu and Jarvis Cocker would leave himself voicemails when he had ideas. Britain's finest musicians reveal how they penned the world's best hits.

Noel Gallagher

Biggest hit Don’t Look Back In Anger (Oasis), March 1996 – No 1; 24 weeks in chart

Biggest Album Definitely Maybe, September 1994 – No 1; 177 weeks in chart

I once said that I wrote songs ‘for the man who buys the Daily Mail and 20 Bensons every day’. And I meant that at the time. I’d consider myself to be just an average man in the street who’s been blessed with a talent to write songs. I don’t write songs for the Observer or The Guardian, or for the NME or Mojo. I’m not bothered about pushing the envelope. I wanted everyone to like Oasis, not just some people in Oxford, a few people in Hull and a couple of people in Glasgow.

I learned long ago not to go looking for songs. If it comes, it comes; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’m not standing on the runway waiting for the aliens to appear going, ‘Come on.’ It just never happens, does it?

I only listen to music from, or derived from, the 1960s. I’m not interested in jazz or hip-hop or whatever’s going round at the minute; indie rubbish. I don’t listen to avant-garde landscapes and think, ‘I could do that.’ I’m not a fan of Brian Eno. It’s Ray Davies, John Lennon and Pete Townshend for me.

All that Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory, Be Here Now stuff was written while I was still on the dole. I had the chords, the arrangements, the melodies; just bits of lyrics to fill in. You start off writing songs, you’re not sure who’s going to hear them. Then when I tried to write the next batch, I was like, ‘We’ve 20 million fans.’ Then your records become eagerly anticipated and you start going, ‘Umm, I might go to the pub today.’
If you wrote Digsy’s Dinner (from Definitely Maybe) now, The Guardian or the music papers would destroy you. It’s a song about going to someone’s house for lasagne – you only write songs like that when you’re free of inhibitions.

It’s not natural for me to say to my missus, ‘I’m going to the country to write an album.’ That was Be Here Now. I had all the music but not the words. We were starting in two weeks, so I went to some Caribbean island and I thought I’d do it all in two weeks. I listen to those words now and I just cringe. I was heavily into drugs at that point and I just didn’t give a damn.

All the songs I like, they’re not written by songwriters pulling scabs off themselves. I’m not interested in all of John Lennon’s stuff about his mother, because it doesn’t mean anything to me. How can Mother mean anything to anybody apart from John Lennon? It can’t, because he’s singing it about his mother, not mine. The abusive father I had belongs to me. And I wouldn’t want to share any of that or to put it into a song.
‘Slowly walking down the hall’ (from Champagne Supernova) is from either Chigley or Trumpton. Which is the one with the train?

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Liam Gallagher's Off The Booze! Well, Sort Of

Liam Gallagher says he’s no longer a rock wild man after giving up booze and parties.

Mad for it Liam is bored of late nights and finally feels ready to rid his life of Cigarettes and Alcohol.

But the singer, 38, had a final fling watching hedonistic pals Primal Scream in London at the weekend.

Despite downing a fair few with his Beady Eye bandmates and Jarvis Cocker, 47, afterwards at W Hotel’s swanky new Wyld bar, Liam really wasn’t feeling it.

Source: www.dailystar.co.uk

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