The Black Keys took 10 years and 11 albums to finally get mainstream Radio 1 airplay.
Hold on, 11 Albums? There are 8 albums isn’t it there innit. You get meh? OK, you got meh and that like innit. But add to that Dan’s solo effort. Patrick’s Drummers album and The Blakroc hip hop experiment and we can add it up to eleven. It’s really good for some of us to go up to eleven.
Isn’t that really strange though?
I found them at album 3 after actually listening to one of those free CDs you find on the cover of Uncut magazine. Lucky it was at the beginning of the CD or I may have missed it. After a few listens I bought the album, Rubber Factory. It’s a top album with really raw and powerful riff based guitar and passionate vocal delivery. Everything else by them before and since has been really fecking good too.
The pair have been touring for ages and now they’ve finally made it. I’d seen them in the Queens Hall a few years ago. That was the 2nd time they’d been there!
So I saw them again at the Corn (Com? those r and ns really run into each other) Exchange and there was a massive young crowd really digging it.
So why did it take so long for this really great dynamic duo to make it? Twuo reasons.
An appearance on Later With Jools Holland in 2010.
And Radio 1 radio play later with 2011.
I only listen to Radio 1 in the car as I’m not driving yet and it’s not my car. Boom boom. But hey Jeeze they played the El Camino track Lonely Boy a lot. It has been on all the time and the presenters fawned over how great they are. Really nice! The same presenters are now all over One Direction.
I’m incredibly naive. I really hope you are too dear reader as I don’t want to be alone in this.
I thought that radio played the best tunes that were released or discovered that week. Tunes sent in by bands trying to plug their new CD and luckily picked up by a dutiful BBC staffer and passed on to Chris Moyles and co. as a you must play this you awful fat tongued horrible man cause this band made my brain make me shake.
It came as a massive revelation and realisation that radio show presenters don’t call the tunes. Someone else picks the tunes and tells the DJs what to play.
If you can find the right person (‘s penis?), you are in. What is the criteria and who are the people choosing the bands? Some folk who are a little too easily influenced I think. John Peel is sadly missed. The Black Keys did a Peel session in 2003…. After he died in 2004. Nada.
Also wEirDLy enough. Most music is at least tolerable. If you play a song enough you may well begin to like it. (Less likely if you are in in Guantanamo Bay).
There are really weird bits in the 14 minutes of The Incredible String Band masterpiece A Very Cellular Song. Give that a baby a few listens and it can reach a semi religious experience.
So, today. I want to plug Frightened Rabbit. What? Not the String Band?
Who on earth are they? And so on.
Look at wikipedia or their website if you want a bio.
Feart Rubbit are 3 albums into this. Why should we wait till 11?
There are 2 great albums within those three albums. The songwriting is often incredible. Much more and better than Gary Barlow’s lipstick mark upon his coffee cup type of thing.
Think more of a mash of Bruce Springsteen in the 80’s colliding with Blood on the Tracks Bob Dylan.
Yes, it really is that good. True poetry in music.
I’ve been stalking FR’s Scott and Co for a while. I saw them on their Highland tour in Forres. -In a small venue. They shape like the bow of a ship. All are getting beardy like antarctic explorers and they perform as if they are at the prow of the Titanic. A group of musicians not trying to placate the drowning with calming tunes but to try to sweat and sing the bloody iceberg away with the sheer force of will.
On the cusp and Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name. this band really deserves mainstream radio play and one play may be all that they need.