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Headbangers’ Bangladesh: discussing the state of play with Dhaka’s hard rockers, Crunch

  “Let us know when we should be expecting calls for shows in London, then,” bassist Arka jokes. “Our frontman will make you curry if you get us shows,” guitarist Shahed joins in. “He is a brilliant cook.” I first met Shahed in the trenches of retail, selling and shifting furniture for the well-healed and oft ill-mannered denizens of the King’s Road area of London while he was studying for an MBA. I knew he was a metalhead right away, with a serious fondness for the classics. I would walk into the stockroom to take a morale moment and catch him hard at work swinging pallets around, belting out the lyrics to the oldies accompanied by a much-abused radio cranked on Planet Rock Radio. I still own the black Stagg electro-acoustic he sold me with some regret many years ago, the white trim stained yellow from cigarette tar. The smell of tobacco smoke would rise like a phantom from the wooden body when played. Shahed returned to his native Bangladesh and joined the Dhaka based band after a ch
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An Elegy for Meat Loaf

The first album I ever bought, of anyone's, was Bat Out of Hell II. I got it on cassette tape from Our Price in Margate high street. At that point I didn't even have my own system on which to listen to it. I would load it into my dad's JVC hi-fi, insert the impossibly long headphone cable and lie back on the sofa, my eyes closed and mind alive to whatever imagery the music and lyrics conjured in the soft darkness. Some of what Mr Loaf sang went above my head. (I was a lot shorter then.) Some of it was interpreted in theatrical set pieces involving Harley Davidson motorcycles, long hair and creaking leathers. In these little private dramas I felt powerful, something I couldn't feel with my eyes open, staring down the frightening, blaring world.   So it is with misty eyes and heart heavier than the man himself I sit here tonight, listening to his repertoire of croon and growl, whimper and crow, wondering what broke him so completely, so long ago, that the fiend of artistr

Coming Round: what ever happened to Ken Owen of Carcass?

“So, you had the stroke in 1999?” “Yeah. February ‘99, yeah. I was born with an aneurysm in the brain and it burst in 1999.” “And you’d had no idea about the aneurysm?” “Absolutely. No signs there was anything wrong until it actually happened. Totally out of the blue. Unexpected.” “Were you at home, or…” “I was living with my wife at the time in Nottingham and went out with a couple of friends and I bent over to stroke the cat and passed out because the force of bending down brought the blood flow through the aneurysm and it burst. And that was it,” he adds simply. Nut roasticism - dining the insalubrious From the kitchen across the hall of Ken Owen’s well-heated bungalow (one of the health issues he has been left with is the inability to properly self-regulate his body temperature), the sounds of a roast dinner coming together can be heard. We have been invited round for Hallowe’en Sunday lunch. Ken’s long-serving friend, Sally, and the Good Doctor are busily working on the last stage

Approaching Working Musicians in the Wild: a Field Guide for Conscientious Fans

Humans are social animals. At least we were until socialising temporarily became fraught. But even before the pandemic, the etiquette of approaching a working musician in the wild was never truly understood, the boundary between stage and floor being closer to stone circle and leyline than booze-sticky moshpit. So how should the conscientious fan, who has now built up a troublingly deep and complex parasocial relationship with the band, inject themselves into the lives of their heroes for real and pick up their friendship from where the last imaginary conversation left off? In this guide I hope to show what to look out for and the best possible approach, backed-up by sheer minutes of anecdotal research. Obviously we are not talking about those who are immediately whisked off backstage and plied with beer, fresh fruit and fun-sized Mars bars, never to be seen again until the next tour; no, not these, but the hard-working ordinary folk of rock and roll, who lift their own gear in and out

What's the Stink? — An inebriated chat with Dennis Petersen of Slowjoint

Back in March, I made a video call. Eventually I even wrote about it. Here it is. I saw the ridges of disgust rise from their resting places on the North face of that superhuman proboscis of a nose, and knew the Doc was feeling he had walked unwittingly into a sonically noisome scene. “Not for me,” he pronounced in lieu of a greeting before swanning off to begin the business of the afternoon, the details of which are too paradoxically sobering to relate here. You see, I was on a mission. I had been working my way through the unfortunately sized back catalogue of Philemon Arthur and the Dung, the obscure Swedish duo formed in the 60s whose outsider approach to pop and folk is an acquired taste which nevertheless managed to win them a Swedish Grammy in 1972 (which caused its own stink). This was not the pleasure I had imagined it would b