Paul Weller Not Sure If Noel Gallagher Will Be On 'Avant-Garde' New Album

This year's Cool List man talks about the follow up to 'Wake Up The Nation'

Paul Weller has said that his next album will contain some "avant-garde moments", although he's not certain if stand-in drummer Noel Gallagher will make the cut.

The singer-songwriter, who features in this year's NME Cool List, explained that he is pausing from recording to tour, but he should have a follow-up to this year's 'Wake Up The Nation' out early next year.

"I haven't finished the record, I've started it, done eight or nine tracks, maybe a few more than that. It's going the right way, but I don't know when I'll finish it because I'm on tour from now to December," he told NME.

"There's elements of 'Wake Up The Nation' in the sound, but it's moved on again I think. There's a few avant-garde moments, shall I say, some sort of soundscape tracks as well and some pop sounding things as well. It's a mix, really. Just good tunes."

He confirmed that Gallagher had drummed on some of the sessions, but Weller was not sure if he would be on the finished record yet.

"If you're referring to Phil Collins he came down and did a few tracks," he joked. "Nah, Noel just came down as a mate and jammed for a few hours as a mate. Whether he makes the album or not we'll see. He's a very good drummer, people don't realise he's a good all-round musician."

Source: www.nme.com

Former Oasis Guitarist Bonehead To Perform In Crewe With New Band The Vortex

Legendary Oasis guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs is in Crewe on Saturday to perform with his new band The Vortex at Square One.

Bonehead formed the seminal Britpop rockers (then called The Rain) in the late 1980s, while working as a building contractor, before the arrival of the Gallagher brothers.

Bonehead played rhythm guitar on the first three Oasis albums – Definitely Maybe, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now – before leaving the band in 1999 during the recording of their fourth album, Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants.

In his official statement he claimed he wanted to spend more time with his family.

The former Oasis strummer’s latest project will be supported by Terracotta Army and Crewe’s Sumo Kings.

Organised by Control Music, The Vortex will perform at the Mill Street venue, with doors opening at 7.30pm.

Bonehead will also be performing an exclusive DJ set at the end of the night.

Tickets are £8 in advance. To book, phone the venue on 01270 509310.

Source: www.chesterchronicle.co.uk

Alan Mcgee Talks About 'Upside Down: The Creation Records Story'

“Upside Down”, the story of Creation Records, a film made by Danny O’Connor with the assistance of Radio One DJ Steve Lamaq who interviewed former artists Bobby Gillespie and Noel Gallagher, who Danny had persuaded to talk the camera.

For quite some time, there have been trailers of the film appearing on YouTube and FaceBook, with much speculation on when the film will be released. Then, last month Alan McGee starting doing some interviews discussing the film, there was a buzz again

Not only were Creation Records influential in bringing to the fore bands such as Oasis, Teenage Fanclub, Jesus and The Marychain and many more, it is a story of belief, struggle, near financial ruin, success, drugs, creativity and a vision. A label with no master plan, other than to release records they liked, and in doing so, they have left a mark in history

ZANI doubts that “Upside Down” will be superficial and sycophantic, but an insight into what went on behind closed doors, and a study of the crazy world of what was Creation Records.

Click here to read the interview.

Source: www.zani.co.uk
This week's NME has a feature on the film, more details can be found here.

Noel Gallagher: 'We're Not Chavs!'

Oasis man Noel Gallagher tells the Sports Bar about why the new introduction into the family will have no Manchester City garb.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Ex-Oasis Drummer Tony McCarroll: 'I'm Going Up Against A Global Brand By Releasing Tell-All Book'

Sticksman tells NME he 'offered the olive branch' to Noel Gallagher' over controversial 1995 sacking.

Oasis' founder member and former drummer Tony McCarroll has said he feels he is going up against a "global brand" by releasing a book levelling criticism at Noel Gallagher.

McCarroll has written about his time in the band in new book 'Oasis: The Truth'. In it, he recounts countless arguments with Noel until the songwriter had him sacked in 1995. McCarroll told NME he thinks his version of events is likely to jar with the public perception of the band's early years, and of Noel's image.

"There's a lot of things I need to put right," McCarroll explained. "There is another side to the Oasis story which I think needs to be appreciated. Maybe even get other bandmembers recognised for once. It wasn't all about one person."

Noel has repeatedly referred to McCarroll in derogatory terms since he left the band, and McCarroll admitted that his book is likely to cause friction among the band's fans.

"I'm going up against a bloody global brand," he said. "I'm doing this for me, at the end of the day. It's my little opinion, and I'm speaking for the little man."

Asked if he thought he and the guitarist could ever reconcile their differences, McCarroll said: "No way in the world, I can't see it. Noel is Noel at the end of the day. If you get any kind of apology out of that man…"

He added: "Believe me, I offered the olive branch many times. You know, tried to appease things, whatever it was. Whatever these issues were. He wasn't forthcoming in any kind of way."

Source: www.nme.com

Alan McGee - The King Of Indie Who'll Never Look Back In Anger

The story of Britpop is told in a fascinating film about Creation Records and its maverick founder, Alan McGee.

Is it a cautionary tale? Is it a celebration of one of the music industry's most unlikely entrepreneurs? Is it an exercise in Britpop nostalgia? Is it the story of a visionary or the case study of a business run along lunatic lines? All these questions are likely to cross viewers' minds when they see the fascinating new documentary Upside Down: the Creation Records Story (a world premiere at the London Film Festival next week.) The film is as much about Alan McGee as it is about the Creation Records label he co-founded. Creation survived against the odds and sometimes prospered from 1983 until the beginning of the new millennium and brought us (among others) The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, The Loft, My Bloody Valentine and, of course, Oasis.

British film-makers' obsession with the country's recent musical past shows no sign of abating. Julien Temple is developing a film about The Kinks, which will follow on from his documentaries about The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Dr Feelgood as part of his grand project to provide "a mini social history of British rebel culture" through its music. Alongside The Creation Records Story, this year's London Film Festival also boasts new documentaries about Mott the Hoople and Lemmy from Mötorhead. In recent years, film-makers have been as preoccupied by the svengalis behind the music as by the musicians themselves. We've had dramas and documentaries about managers and record producers like Joe Meek, Brian Epstein and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson. McGee is a natural choice to follow them. His story has drug addiction, megalomania and plenty of excess. What also shines through is his reckless commitment to talent – and his uncanny ability for identifying it. Once he signed a band, he was far more interested in enabling the musicians to do the best work possible than he was in lining his (or their) pocket. By the mid-1990s, the combustible, red-haired Glaswegian ex-British Rail clerk was the pivotal figure in British indie music. The major labels saw him as the man who "had the key". He despised them, even if he did sell up to them in the end.

Director Danny O'Connor insists that he hasn't made "a fan's film". His fascination was with "the human dynamic" behind the story. In particular, he hones in on the friendship between McGee and his former schoolmate, Bobby Gillespie (later of Primal Scream). Years ago, when they were teenagers, McGee accompanied the younger Gillespie to his first gig – to see Thin Lizzy.

"It was a story beyond music," O'Connor reflects of what led him to spend five years making the documentary, which was entirely self-financed. "It is about boys growing up, doing their thing, falling out and winning and losing. That was the attraction... this to me was a very dysfunctional duopoly."

He describes Upside Down as a very "male" tale – a film about "how we as men are a bit crap at relying on each other". McGee is the key voice in the documentary. "But he is not the key component. Without Bobby, he is nothing... the one couldn't exist without the other."

O'Connor has assembled a formidable star chamber to look over McGee's career. Starkly shot black-and-white interview footage shows figures including Gillespie, Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain, Noel Gallagher of Oasis and the novelist Irvine Welsh pondering McGee's story. McGee is also on hand too to look back at his younger self.

The director wasn't setting out to judge McGee or to pass his own opinions about the music he helped usher into existence. "The fighting, the egos, the complications, the vulnerability – all those things make a human tale," O'Connor suggests. "There's nothing worse than watching something when you're told what to feel."

At times, the film has an elegiac air. It's not just that the main protagonists of the story are growing so much older. In the documentary, Noel Gallagher argues that Creation Records represented a last stand for the independents. When the label disappeared, so did an old notion of indie rock. This is a thesis that O'Connor partially endorses. "In my mind, what started with Sun Records perhaps ended with Creation," he draws the connection with Elvis Presley's original label. Undercutting his own remark, he points out that he is 44. Older generations are always pronouncing the end of traditions they hold dear. "There is probably someone sitting around who is 18 who doesn't give a toss about Noel or McGee or my film – and why should they?"

There is plenty of comedy along the way. McGee has an air of the artful dodger about him. One of the stranger episodes comes when he belatedly discovers acid house and decamps to Manchester, moving into a £90 a week flat that Tony Wilson finds for him. He is shown being interviewed on Wilson's TV show. As films from 24 Hour Party People to Control have shown, Wilson was a wildly exotic figure but he seems almost straitlaced by comparison with McGee.

It is fitting that Upside Down is premiering at the same time that David Fincher's The Social Network is released in the UK. Nobody is going to mistake McGee for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg but there are obvious similarities between the two films. Like Zuckerberg, McGee was a spiky outsider at the helm of a business that grew and grew. His strategy wasn't taken from any business manual. In his early days of putting on gigs in London, he and his colleagues would drink away profits. He improvised as he went along and ran Creation as a benevolent dictatorship.

The film shows McGee at his most erratic as well as his most ingenious. The Creation boss gives a typically vivid and self-deprecating account of his drug and alcohol-induced breakdown in the mid 1990s. Whatever his foibles, he inspired huge affection and loyalty in his followers. O'Connor is generous in his praise of McGee. "He is very loyal," the director states of the subject of his film. "I adore the man. Not in a 'he taught me everything I know way' but I actually love his fusion of courage and absolute decency. The man would run to the end of the world for the people he values."

McGee left O'Connor to get on with the documentary and didn't try to mould the image the director was presenting of Creation Records. He has since seen the film and given it his blessing – even if he hasn't expressed huge confidence in its cinematic potential. (In one interview, he predicted it would last "two days in the cinema and then do 500,000 DVDs.") O'Connor, at least, is heartened by the speed with which tickets for the London Film Festival screenings have sold. It may be 27 years since Creation Records was founded but it seems the label is in no immediate danger of being forgotten.

'Upside Down: the Creation Records Story' screens at The London Film Festival on 23 and 24 October (www.bfi.org.uk/lff)

Source: www.independent.co.uk

Pretty Green Club Night Tickets On General Release From Today

TICKETS ARE NOW SOLD OUT

Pretty Green is holding its first-ever dedicated club night on 26th November at HMV’s Relentless Garage venue in Islington, North London.

DJS: Andy Bell, Paul Gallagher, Eddie Piller, Jamie Skillz

Playing Live: Exit Calm

Tickets go on general release from today, and are available through www.hmv.com.

Tickets are priced at £12.50 (plus booking fee)

Pre-Order 'Blue Moon Rising' Featuring Noel Gallagher

It's been hailed as so much more than a football film - now you can judge for yourself as the brilliant "Blue Moon Rising" is now available to pre-order.

The highs and lows of being a City supporter are captured with a warmth and humour that reflects the passion of being a Blue and makes it an unmissable treat if you love City.

The “Blue Moon Rising” film is available to pre-order now on DVD or Blu Ray. Or as a special treat for Christmas why not take advantage of the Blue Moon Rising / 2009/10 End of season review box set exclusively available to the CityStore!

Click here to order your copy now, From The Official Manchester City Website.

Noel Gallagher is featured in the latest edition of ManC – click here for more details.

Source: www.mcfc.co.uk