Music Is The Answer #2: Is Music Really Dead?

No doubt over the years you have read the stories in the papers that Music is Dead! Infact, the story is so old that the Pallbearers have aged and are barely able to carry the coffin! 😀

Back in the 1970's Don McLean sang about "the day the music died" in American Pie. Bob Dylan, in 1978 was declaring that "rock and roll was dead". Anarcho punkers Crass were singing "Punk is Dead" and The Knack were belting out "Pop is Dead". "Rock is finally dead," Gene Simmons (Kiss) declared in an interview with Esquire. "The death of rock was not a natural death. Rock did not die of old age. It was murdered," he added.

For all the woe, stays of execution, miraculous coming back to life, and dirt on the grave pronouncements Music is still very much alive and kicking in 2017. Yes the business models might have changed a lot down through the years but as long as we are in the world and are experiencing life with all its joys and heartbreaks, its pleasures and its pain and things that excite us and things that anger us, there will always be a need for music in whatever style it comes!

Three songs that prove to me that Music is the Answer and stll matters and is to valued are:

Music - John Miles

Music was my first love
And it will be my last.
Music of the future
And music of the past.

To live without my music
Would be impossible to do.
In this world of troubles,
My music pulls me through.

Lyrics and Music by John Miles

I Still Believe - Frank Turner

And I still believe (I still believe) in the saints.
Yeah, in Jerry Lee and in Johnny and all the greats.

And I still believe (I still believe) in the sound,
That has the power to raise a temple and tear it down.

And I still believe (I still believe) in the need,
For guitars and drums and desperate poetry.

And I still believe that everyone,
Can find a song for every time they've lost and every time they've won.

So just remember folks we not just saving lives, we're saving souls,
And we're having fun.

And I still believe.

Lyrics and Music by Frank Turner

100% Dynamite - Lulubelle III

I - wanna be around when the needle touches down and it makes a lovely sound
I - when it sinks into the groove, makes your body want to move like it's got something to prove

When the needle hits the plastic, it makes me feel alive
All that warmth and beauty makes me feel 100% Dynamite!

I - nothing can compare to the sound of bass and snare and a finely tuned guitar
I - wanna dance like a fool, like I'm real real cool, like I'm bustin' outta school

When the needle hits the plastic, it makes me feel alive
All that warmth and beauty makes me feel 200% Dynamite!

I got blues, I got country, I got glam rock, I got soul
I got electronic music, I got psychedelia, I got my rock 'n' roll

When the needle hits the plastic, it makes me feel alive
All that warmth and beauty makes me feel 300% Dynamite!

I - why don't you follow me around to the dirty part of town where your troubles can't be found
I - gonna break your mama's heart, gonna break your daddy's heart, gonna break you right in two

When the needle hits the plastic, it makes me feel alive
All that warmth and beauty makes me feel 400% Dynamite!

Lyrics and Music by Ronnie Carnwath

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Land of the Misfit Toys - Lulubelle III Brand New Video Released Today!

Back on 21st March this year I interviewed Ronnie Carnwath regarding the release of the latest Lulubelle III album 'Human Rights and Wrongs'.

I'd mentioned in that interview that I really loved the effort that was put into the videos made for songs of Lulubelle III and one of the things he said in reply was:

 "I’d love to make one for “Land of the Misfit Toys” but my own toy collection isn’t that exciting - maybe if we could find a huge charity shop full of broken toys, we could buy them all and let rip..."

Forward wind to today, November 1st 2015 and he's finally managed to do just that.

Have a Listen to

Human Rights & Wrongs

To Purchase music from Lulubelle III 

Go to their Website Here!

The S4L Interview: Lulubelle III - Broken Limbs Dictate Direction!

Exactly two years ago we published our first interview with Lulubelle III's Ronnie Carnwath. With the release of the third Lulubelle III album 'Human Rights and Wrongs' Ronnie is back to share some insights into the making of the album.

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S4L: The new album has taken awhile to record are you happy with how it's turned out?

RC: Very much so - I feel that the music on this one is better and the production has certainly improved - when we started originally, I would be sending Christopher tracks and he would be saying: “Turn the guitars down - I can’t hear the vocals!” I thought we sounded like The Jesus and Mary Chain but clearly we didn’t. This one has been very rewarding as I think it’s the best album we could have made at the time. We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, so who knows what direction we’ll be heading in next...  

S4L: It sounds a little different to previous releases what inspiration have you had in making the album? 

RC: We didn’t consciously set out to do something different - I had done a synth-pop remix of “Frankie” last year, just for a laugh and we were so pleased with the results that we ended up making a few songs in that style. The demos of a lot of the songs and “For The Birds” and “Long Distance” especially were a million miles away from how they turned out. We both like a lot of different music and I loved the old synthpop bands in the 1980s - Depeche Mode, Ultravox, OMD, The Human League, Gary Numan, Visage… it was so sad when Steve Strange passed away recently - you can feel the march of time catching up. I suppose we wanted to try to make a ‘pop’ album - I’ve always regarded what we do as being pop music but we tried to experiment with the sound and we’re very happy with the way it turned out. The last song, “Two Into One” was a real experiment - it was the only song we wrote especially for the album - the others had all been demoed over the previous couple of years because I had a bit of writer’s block. Christopher came up with the lyrics and it was very wordy - a nightmare to edit as well, so I didn’t bother. We were hoping for that kind of Mazzy Star feel, so when the chords came out, they just kind of had that vibe. I tried to come up with a sound which would make it stand out - it ebded up sounding like Suicide - Spiritualzed - Spacemen 3. We had this idea of building up the instruments at the end like Primal Scream’s “Loaded” and I’m thinking of trying a remix, using the end part where the trumpets come in, as a starting block - I love the idea of doing a 10 minute remix and calling it “Two Into One (Part Two)” - it might turn out like Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”...   

Ronnie Carnwath and Christopher Cowan (Lulubelle III)

S4L: I find a lot of the newer music to almost sound like it should be on the soundtrack to a movie, is that the intention or did it just develop that way? 

RC: It’s interesting that you should say that - “Half Past Dawn” has a little instrumental passage which was originally inspired Francis Lai’s theme from “Un Homme et Une Femme” but it didn’t turn out that way. That’s another one which changed a lot between the demo and the finished song - originally it sounded like a Pretenders song - in fact, had I known that Chrissie Hynde had been working on a solo record, I’d have pitched it to her. I would love to do work for a soundtrack - it’s just another way of getting your music out there, isn’t it? Same as persuading someone to cover your song - for some reason, when I wrote “For the Birds”, I had Manic Street Preachers in mind - the demo was acoustic and I thought it would sound great with James Dean Bradfield singing. His voice is a lot higher than mine so it would have been hard to imagine him singing it. When it was finished, I pitched it to Mutya-Keisha-Siobhan - the original Sugababes, via their label, Polydor but I’ve never heard back. 

S4L: Can you enlighten us a little to the process of creating a new album, I know that you were juggling a working life at the same time as trying to put it together does that have any impact on the way the final product comes out?  

RC: This one has taken a lot longer than its two predecessors, mainly due to our work schedules. Christopher and I both changed jobs in the intervening two years and we had to work around broken limbs - he broke his arm and I broke my collarbone, so the direction was dictated by that. I was off work for two months and during that time, the album was recorded. I was inspired but I couldn’t play guitar as my arm was in a sling. I ended up using keyboards for most of it purely out of necessity, but then I found I liked the sound so I stuck with it. I think every track on the album has some sort of keyboard - even “So Long So Long” has a Stylophone and “Industrial Music”, apart from the Killing Joke-style one-note keyboard running throughout, features a melodica - that counts as a keyboard, right?

My entire working methods have changed - I lived in Belfast and was out of work for the first two albums (“A Saucepan Full of Sequins” and “Foyle Delta Blues”), so I could sit up to 4am if need be, in order to finish a song; nowadays it’s a little more awkward - where we live, we have families with young children on either side, so I only really record on my days off, when they’re at school. 

S4L: Can you provide details of where the new album can be obtained from? 

RC: It’s available through our website, , as are the other two. Additionally it’s available from a couple of shops in Derry - Abbazappa Record Shop and Cool Discs and Dragon Records in Belfast. It can be downloaded off iTunes and all the usual places as well. We aren’t signed to any company, so it’s a real cottage industry - in fact, Cottage Industry would have been a good name for the label. We have no distribution network, so we ended up doing it ourselves. 
 
S4L: With the release of the album what do you hope for with it? 
 
RC: We just want to move people - we’ve had some really good feedback from a few DJs - Stephen McCauley from Radio Foyle and Johnny Normal on Radio Warwickshire both had very nice things to say about it. Obviously we want the stuff to sell, but it’s getting harder to compete in such a crowded market. We both grew up with Top of the Pops and we always had this dream of appearing on it, but that’s not going to happen now. We had hoped Later, but it seems every show is sewn up now - you need to have a major label promoting you or you haven’t a hope of getting on! They like to make out Jools heard this band in a pub and got them on and then their album comes out and you find they’ve been bankrolled by Sony or whoever. It’s frustrating that there isn’t really anywhere for unsigned bands to get noticed. There is a show called NUsic TV, which is on one of the satellite channels, which shows two hours of unsigned music every week but you probably have to sign some Faustian pact to get on it. Maybe some aspiring young director can make a stage and do a video in the style of the old TOTP shows - it’d be a dream come true...  

S4L: Are you going to have an opportunity to do anything live with the new album?  

RC: We hope so - we did try with the last one, but the people in question had no intention of following it through beyond the initial gig, which was disappointing - we sort of saw ourselves as being like The Mary Chain, where Jim and William recorded everything and others joined them to play the songs live, but that’s not so easy. I’m trying to find a way where we can maybe strip the songs down and either go out with a guitar and play like early Billy Bragg or else strip everything back to just bass and drums and go out and sing and play over the top - a few people might get a bit sniffy about that but I don’t really care.  

S4L: Next to your album what other albums are out at the moment that you think are worth investigating? 

RC: I’ve heard a few things on BBC 6 Music which I like the sound of - Royal Blood, Father John Misty, Alvvays… Matt Berry’s stuff is very good - most people know him as a comedy actor from House of Fools and Toast of London, but he’s a proper songwriter and musician. He’s had about four LPs out in recent years and I’m really impressed by him. I’ve been investigating a lot of older stuff too though - so many genres too - I’ve recently been digging out some old Emmylou Harris LPs and stuff by The Passage, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Curved Air…  


S4L: I always love the effort you put into making videos to go along with your tunes - have you got new ones on the horizon? 

RC: Videos are tricky - I tend to regard most of ours as temporary things, just to have something visual to go along with the songs, but some have turned out really well - people can get a real insight into the workings of my mind especially from checking them out - you can see what sort of films I’m into, for example - I like a lot of French cinema and old German Expressionist films. I’m fascinated by Warhol too - not his films though - most of them were deadly dull! I’d like to be able to make interesting videos that we actually appear in but it all boils down to money again. We have some ideas which we think would look great but we need someone who’s happy to do one for the artistry, rather than the financial reward - which would be non-existent…I’d love to make one for “Land of the Misfit Toys” but my own toy collection isn’t that exciting - maybe if we could find a huge charity shop full of broken toys, we could buy them all and let rip...

All pictures provided by Lulubelle III

Alphabet Beats #079: L is for...Lulubelle III

L is for...

Hailing from Northern Ireland Lullabelle III are an Indie Band who have released Three Albums. We  spotlighted them on Soundtrack4Life a couple of years ago and are happy to do so again. The next post here will be an Interview with Frontman Ronnie Carnwath.

 Once Upon A Time.

Albert Ross.

Love Like Hours.

Monkeys.

Unrequited.

Martinez Avenue.

Daylight/Moonlight.

LAZYBONES.

The Harbour.

The 42nd Song.

Frankie (You Can Count On Me).

Arp. 

Slip Away.

Radiant.

This Must Be The Place.

15 Years.

Hitch A Ride.

1000 Eyes.

100% Dynamite.

The Brand New Album

Tracklist

For The Birds.

Long Distance.

Sound of Freedom.

Pleasant Dreams.

Industrial Music.

So Long So Long.

Jack Hughes.

Half Past Dawn.

Musdep.

Two Into One.

Lulubelle III - Human Rights & Wrongs (December 2014)

Get ready...Lulubelle III are about to unleash their Third Studio album in December.

In preparation for the above event click on the links below in order to whet your appetite for what is promising to be a colossal work of Electronic Art.

Nearer the time I hope I can grab a few words with Ronnie Carnwath, until then you can enjoy afresh the conversation we had back in March last year. Click HERE!

Tracks from 'Human Rights & Wrongs'

For The Birds.

Long Distance.

Sound of Freedom.

Pleasant Dreams.

Industrial Music.

So Long So Long.

Half Past Dawn.

Musdep.

Two Into One.

Checkout Lulubelle's You Tube Page for more exciting and danceable tunes.

Lulubelle III - For The Birds

From the forthcoming album "Human Rights & Wrongs"

Lulubelle III - For The Birds

Tidy Tune #80: 100% Dynamite - LULUBELLE III.

Exclusive Interview with Lulubelle III frontman Ronnie Carnwath

Very happy to present an exclusive interview with the amazingly talented and loveable rogue Ronnie Carnwath of the delightful Lulubelle III, Northern Ireland's hottest Indie band destined for world domination (if someone could lovingly buy them some plane tickets!).

S4L:  When did you first pick up a guitar and learn to play? Was there anything or an artist or song that inspired you to do that?

Ronnie: It's hard to say whether anything inspired me initially. We had a guitar in the house which had belonged to my brother, who had recently passed away and the music teacher at our primary school asked if anyone wanted to learn an instrument. It just seemed natural that I'd learn to play. Of course it helped that my music teacher looked like Emmylou Harris! I had such a crush on her at the time! I recently managed to track her down again - I just wanted to say thanks. She was living in Belfast at the same time I was there. We never got to meet up but she has been keeping an eye on my progress.
My first public appearance was at a social club down the road from our house in 1978. My mum was a singer during the 70s and she encouraged me. We sang 'Mull of Kintyre' together. It was easy cos it was just three chords - I guess it could have been 'Blitzkrieg Bop' if I'd heard it at the time...
Around that time, I was getting into music myself and I was loving bands like XTC and the Pretenders. Then Adam and The Ants came a long and it was one of those "Eureka!" moments. You know how all the original punks said they got into bands because of Bowie doing 'Starman' on TOTP or the New York Dolls on Old Grey Whistle Test? I saw Adam and The Ants on TOTP and thought: "That's what I want to do when I grow up!"
It wasn't until The Jesus and Mary Chain came along that I thought it might actually be possible. I then discovered I could play by ear, so it didn't matter that I couldn't remember the names of the chords - if you played it to me once, I could follow it on guitar.

S4L: You've been around playing for quite a while Ronnie, your former band, Honey Ryder were a bit of a legend in Derry. Can you tell us a little about them? Did you put any music out? Play a lot of shows?

Ronnie: Honey Ryder were going in the early 1990s and only really lasted about 18 months. I was the guitarist and we had a female singer, Heather McClean, Colin Wasson on bass and a feller called Ronan Cunningham on drums. We did have another drummer before that, but when we did our first gig, she'd only been playing a matter of months and the poor thing was so traumatised, she sold her kit and never drummed again, so, Cathy Quinn - if you're reading this, whatever we did, I'm sorry...
I was terribly shy at the time, so even though we had all these nice tuneful songs, I didn't have the nerve to sing them, so I'd be standing at the back with my head down. In the bootlegs, I'd sing one or two songs live and I was barely audible! It's only now that I actually have the confidence to sing in front of people.
We were a little bit ramshackle, if I'm totally honest - we never really got to record anything, although I have most of our practices and gigs on tape. I was immensely proud of the songs we did, some of which have turned up on our first CD, 'A Saucepan Full of Sequins' - namely, 'Love Like Hours, 'Lucinda Singular, 'Yesterday', 'Albert Ross' and 'Wishing On You'.

S4L: When did the whole idea for Lulbelle III come about? Did you have a clear vision of what you wanted the band to be?

Ronnie: Around 2009, my friend Christopher Cowan suggested we do some stuff together. I'd been mucking about on his Mac, recording some of the old songs on Garageband - the original idea was to carry on where Honey Ryder had left off. I initially wanted to get the old band back together again, but everyone was living in different cities and they'd all grown up and lives - two things I didn't have at the time - and it wasn't logistically possible. As I said, I was proud of the songs we'd done and I'd been transferring old gigs and practices to CD and thought it'd be nice to have decent recordings of this stuff, so that's how we started Lulubelle III.
The name, incidentally, comes from the cover of Pink Floyd's 'Atom Heart Mother' LP - Lulubelle III was the name of the cow on the front cover. We drew up a "shortlist" of about 50 names, all of which are listed on our MySpace page - if anyone wants to use any of them, they're more than welcome to do so - just drop us a line and let us know... My personal favourite was 'The Adam Hart Motherf*ckers' but Christopher and I both have children and we thought it'd be nice for them to have copies of any records we made - the name wouldn't go down to well at school - and besides, you'd probably have to sound like the MC5 to get away with a name like that...
After a while, it became apparent that the band was going to be something else - we were both inspired to write more as a result of doing the demos. By the time of the first album, we had about 50 songs to choose from!

(Having their cake and eating it!)

S4L: You are based out in Northern Ireland. Is that something that hampers the rise of the band or because of the way things are with the internet etc these days does it not really matter so much?

Ronnie: In some respects, it's not really an issue nowadays - in Honey Ryder, if you didn't live in Derry at the time, you wouldn't have seen us, but technology being the way it is now, we can record a demo and straight away it's on Soundcloud or wherever - it's great to be able to communicate with people in that way. What's also fantastic is that we've had support from the likes of Marc Riley (BBC 6 Music) and Rodney Bingenheimer (KROQ FM, Los Angeles), so people get to hear us without our having to play there. Ideally, we would love to play some more far-flung places, but until we're in a position where we can afford to do so, we'll just have to make do with the internet.

S4L: What inspires you to write music these days? Are you one of those folks who sits down with purpose to write or do lyrics/tunes come into your head as you go about your daily business?

Ronnie: Anything at all during the course of my day can inspire a song. I've gone to bed and the second my head hits the pillow, I've come up with a lyric or a melody! For some reason, the loo and the shower seem to inspire me - or when I'm vacuuming the house - I think it's something to do with the drone of the vacuum cleaner - I always hear tunes...
Shane Macgowan once said that nobody really writes songs - he claimed they're floating about in the air and the trick is to grab them before someone like Paul Simon does. I totally believe that! I understand exactly what he means - how else can you explain how I might come up with a chord progression and a melody, only to have The Mock Turtles or whoever release something very similar? When Green Day released 'American Idiot', I was very concerned that the chorus was the same chords and a similar tune to my own song 'Love Like Hours'. I wondered how they could possibly have heard it - although I'd written the song in 1991, we'd never released it. Then it occurred to me that the chorus was nicked from 'Me And Bobby McGee' by Kris Kristofferson, so I'd best keep my mouth shut!

S4L: You still do some live shows, is that something you enjoy doing or are you happier stuck in the studio creating music?

Ronnie: I love playing live - it's a totally different scenario from fiddling about in the studio, although I love doing that as well. I love creating music, but it's great fun, getting out there and seeing people and we're much more loose and punky live.
I defintely think the next album will be recorded in a more live situation. At the moment, Christopher and I do stuff in our houses, but we've been practicing with a couple of other guys and we sound great live, so it makes sense to try to do it more live next time and include those other musicians.

S4L: Who have been the biggest influences upon your own musical journey and the band's musical journey?

Ronnie: Well, Christopher and I are both huge fans of Pink Floyd, The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit. We also both love The Jesus and Mary Chain and Bob Dylan. I love The Stranglers, Bowie, Eno ... the list is endless - it really is! There are many more elements at play in our music though - there've been songs inspired by Patti Smith, Dick Dale, John Barry, Julian Cope, the Pixies, Teenage Fanclub ...
The thing is, anything can inspire me - I can hear something on the radio like - I dunno, Justin Bieber - and at some point, I'll think: "There should've been a chord change there..." It's like my brain never switches off sometimes ...
In fact, I caught a couple of minutes of a Robert Johnson documentary on YouTube the other day and worked out a typical blues riff within seconds, so I wrote a kind of comic blues song, 'Lazy Day Blues'. When I did the demo, it sounded like The White Stripes covering Robert Johnson with Tom Waits on vocals, which put quite a strain on my voice but it was worth it!

(The debut album by Lulubelle III 

is entitled 'A Saucepan Full of Sequins'.)

LazyBones.

S4L: So, as Lulubelle III you have now released two albums, it's nice that your music is getting the opportunity to be heard and in some odd places as well...how did you mange to get hooked up with the lads mag Nuts who spotlighted 'Frankie' on a Frankie Sandford (of The Saturdays) feature?

Ronnie: That was really funny - we've no idea how that happened! The song itself was a backing track I'd had for several months and when Frankie's birthday came around last year, I posted a Saturdays video on my facebook page and wrote: "I know you hipsters will be quick to diss this, but I know who I'd rather be stuck in a lift with..." It occurred to me, I had a rhyming couplet. So now, what rhymes with "Lift with..." I know - "NewYork-London-Paris-Aberystwyth", so there was a lyrical nod to 'Pop Muzik' by M - one of my childhood favourites.
My friend Alan and his daughter Sarah made the video and we discovered one night it was on the Nuts page as a tribute to Frankie! It was very strange indeed... I don't know if she's ever got to hear the song. We did send a promo over to their managers before the CD came out, along with a little letter, addressed to her, but we never heard back. I guess it takes a while for the courts to issue a restraining order!

S4L: Any more live shows coming up for the band? Do you ever have the opportunity to play outside of Northern Ireland? If not, would you like to see that happen?

Ronnie: We did one small gig before Christmas but I've been really busy with courses recently - I even had to let my radio show go, which was heartbreaking - and we haven't had much time to practice but we're starting again this week. We fully intend to do more gigs and to try out some new songs on an unsuspecting public. We'll just have to see what happens ...

 Lulubelle III Live at the Castle Bar, Derry 21st December 2012

S4L: You got married recently, is your good lady as passionate about music as you and does her presence in your life inspire you when you write? (If so can we expect a Lulubelle III collection of love ballads anytime soon!!)

Ronnie: I did indeed! Martha is very passionate about music - we like a lot of the same bands - in fact, we met through MySpace and through a mutual love of The Chameleons! She does inspire me sometimes - 'Daylight/Moonlight' and 'Seven Days' were both directly inspred by her.
As regards doing a collection of love ballads, I'll never rule anything out - I once dreamt that Louis Walsh rang me and said he wanted Westlife to cover one of my songs and would I play guitar on it? I was on the train in a heartbeat!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I will happily sell out, do Tampax adverts, let Ronan Keating cover my songs, whatever - if it gets my music to a wider audience and makes me some money ...

100% Dynamite - Lulubelle III

S4L: Soundtrack4Life always likes to find out the music that inspires and has been part and parcel of our guests musical journey so can you do the impossible and name 5 songs (or albums) that have accompanied you on your journey and will forever be part of your Soundtrack4Life?

Ronnie: Wow - that's quite a task! Let's see - out of the million or so albums which have soundtracked my life, I choose ...

THE STRANGLERS - RATTUS NORVEGICUS (1977)
PINK FLOYD - PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN (1967)
BRIAN ENO - HERE COMES THE WARM JETS (1973)
THE JESUS And MARY CHAIN - PSYCHOCANDY (1985)
ADAM AND THE ANTS - DIRK WEARS WHITE SOX (1979)

One piece of advice, from Adam and The Ants' 'Cartrouble' which always sticks in my mind is: "And keep your feet off the upholstery, Ronnie."

  The Latest Album Release From Lulubelle III - Foyle Delta Blues

All pictures are courtesy of 

Lulubelle III

 Checkout Lulubelle III on their official website.

Checkout Lulubelle III on Facebook.