Paul Haine | Tales from the city

Paul Haine | Tales from the city | Music & stage

Hello Mojo

,
Music & stage

Once upon a time, I had an idea for a music website, which had to be put on hold due to the sudden arrival of some employment, annoyingly. That website is still in a state of non-existance, to the extent that I’ve even now lost the domain name, so until that Lottery win comes along, an occasional collection of music snippets will appear roughly here.

Staring at you from over there on the right is Stoney. Mark Stoney is from Sheffield, and he first appeared on my radar with the excellent track Soap in a Bathtub, available to listen to from his website (amongst others). He’s been seen supporting The Futureheads, Alfie, Magic Numbers and Collylogic favourite Arctic Monkeys, so he’s been keeping good company. No album as yet but it’ll be on my wishlist when it appears.

I hadn’t heard of Sparks before hearing their new single Perfume; I later found out they’d been around since the ’70s, but I’m going to pretend I knew that to protect my musical credentials. It seems they’re going to be famous again, and along with Perfume I suggest you try and find their version of This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us, which is nicely glam-rock.

On my watch list is Readymade FC with a new album Babilonia from French musician Jean-Philippe Verdin — this is music to smoke Gitanes to. An eclectic mix of weirdness and poppy folk, I recommend listening to The Only One at the very least.

And the rest…

Also worth a look at are The Kooks, The Crimea and Liam Frost — whose official website I’m not even bothering to link to, so full of browser-chewing Flash awfulness it is. Musician websites…there’s a whole other article in that…

10 Comments so far

  1. Mouis on February 19th, 2006

    Excellent recommendation in The Crimea there. Went to see them last month; absolutely amazing!!

    Just read a glowing review of a Sparks gig in a Sunday supplement. I’d never heard of them either, despite their twenty album back catalogue.

    Thanks for the tips, keep them coming

  2. Colly on February 20th, 2006

    You’d never heard of Sparks?

    So you’d never heard This Town Ain’t Big Enough…? Wow. Hitler plays keyboards. Madness.

    Incidentally, I actually write all the Arctic Monkeys songs, and basically their success is all down to me, but I’m playing it down to avoid being drawn into the hyperbole.

  3. leon on February 20th, 2006

    I was talking about Sparks just the other day, oddly. Their appearance on some music programme or other is actually one of my few conscious memories of the 1970s.

  4. Emma on February 20th, 2006

    Davey (lead singer of The Crimea) used to be in a band called The Crocketts. Personally, I think their songs were better.

    I met him at The Lost Weekend and he liked my top!

  5. matt on February 21st, 2006

    Good stuff. I’m liking Stoney – let us know when there is an album.

    Keep the music stuff coming. I hadn’t heard of Lewis XIV before your site, but I blame the Atlantic for that.

  6. paul on February 25th, 2006

    Louis XIV were in Oxford tonight, it was the first night of their UK tour. I walked out after about half an hour — much as I love their album, they were terrible live; they kept forgetting the lyrics, but that didn’t matter because you couldn’t hear them as their own instruments were drowning them out. They were flying through their songs with barely a gap in between each one — I don’t think they really wanted to be there. Pfft.

  7. matt on February 26th, 2006

    I guess I won’t try and see them on their UK tour then.

  8. Nina on July 1st, 2006

    Update on Stoney. He has released Until You Leave/Hold the Stars in December 2005 (two brilliant tracks).

    Known as Sheffield’s best kept secret, Mark Stoney is set to release his long awaited album July 17, 2006 (downloadable on itunes July 10, 2006).

    http://www.stoney.mu
    http://www.myspace.com/stoneystuff

  9. paul on July 2nd, 2006

    Thanks Nina, I’ll look forward to hearing it.

  10. Nina on August 7th, 2006

    Sir,
    The album The Scene & The Unseen was released 17 July. It was so worth waiting for. Have you heard it yet? You can get it from off his website http://www.stoney.mu or his myspace http://www.myspace.com/stoneystuff or if you need it NOW and not wait on day then you can download the tracks or complete album off http://www.itunes.com – just type in Stoney (is under the Alternative genre).

    I have written a review of the album (cant begin to do justice to it) and also was privileged to go to the album launch at the Plug in Sheffield – wrote a review on that too – tis on my http://www.myspace.com/_Spook.

    Hope you enjoy it. So far all reviews have been positive and it has been very well received. He’s done lots of radio interviews and is doing the Secret Garden festival in cambridge and Leeds Festival on 25th August.

    Hope all is well with you. What you been up to.

    Nina
    x