The Duke & The King is a new band featuring Simone Felice and Robert “Chicken” Burke. Felice, a former New York subway busker, has wowed English critics and fans alike on their first ever tour. Neil McCormack of the London Telegraph called Felice “the greatest singer-songwriter you’ve never heard,” and

“I went to a gig last week as good as any I have ever seen, by a relatively unknown singer & songwriter (and performer) working at the very highest level of his art…It’s a kind of cracked country soul thing, with a dash of psychedelia, and at the heart of it are Simone’s songs which are, honestly, the best I have heard in a while, touching the hem of Dylan by way of Gordon Lightfoot…There is a boldness to Simone’s writing, the fierceness and fearlessness of complete honesty that pushes them into places that simply take the breath away…When he tells stories from his own life he goes to places few artists ever touch…These songs are good enough to be sung by the whole world, if only people got to hear them.”

All I can say is that Felice’s song writing is extraordinary and the début album, Nothing Gold Can Stay competes with anything released this year.

(Thanks Bruce)

This is the original of the letter I wrote to Business Day today.

Sir

Robert Gentle, that busy little cog in the Climate Change Denial machinery, has repeated a downright lie, fabricated within the last months (Beware global cooling, Letters, November 9). He has resorted to quote-mining a talk by Prof Mojib Latif, warning of the very distortions Gentle is now peddling.

In his talk in September 2009, Prof Latif warns that natural variations in the long term warming might be misinterpreted by the media out of ignorance – or malice. What Latif actually said was: “..we all believe this long-term warming trend is anthropogenic in nature, is man made. … [I]t may well happen that you enter a decade, or maybe even two, when the temperature cools, relative to the present”. He then goes on to warn about this natural variation being misinterpreted by the climate-change sceptics. To emphasise his position he says, “I am definitely not one of the sceptics. And if my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be Global Warming”.

No sooner were his words cold than one Lorne Gunter, a US columnist, did exactly that and completely misrepresented Latif’s message, saying that instead of global warming Latif was predicting global cooling. Within minutes this was picked up by Fox News and the lie was spread to the rest of the climate-deniers including, it would seem, Robert Gentle. The interesting thing is that the creation of this lie is well documented by environmentalist, Peter Sinclair. Have a look at his short video Birth of a Climate Crock (Google it). It lays bare the dishonesty of the climate deniers.

Sinclair has this to say: “It is a truism of human nature that honesty, integrity and openness are seen by evil and greedy men as weakness, something to be exploited and used. The only remedy is to keep shining the light and keep telling the truth.”

Here is the video:

Related article:

• Exclusive interview with Dr. Mojib Latif

Paul Simon’s “travelling companion” is no longer nine years old. He’s now 36, and has just released his eponymous début solo album, Harper Simon. And it’s very enjoyable.

Simon – whose mother is Paul’s first wife, Peggy Harper – will of course have to live in the shadow of his musical giant of a father. Yet he seems to have emerged as a talented poetic songsmith in his own right. His songs have an authentic, yet somewhat respectful retro sound. This is due in no small measure to the amazing team (dubbed the “Nashville A Team”) he assembled to record this album in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York. It includes legendary producer Bob Johnston and musicians from every era since the 1950′s. He was also joined by his friend Sean Lennon and of course his Dad.

Some of his songs, such as the exquisite Wishes and Stars, display a style surely learnt at his father’s knee. The song featured here, the romantic Berkeley Girl is far more Dylan than Simon (Paul).

(Thanks Phlatt)

I spent a somewhat challenging day on Saturday when I attended the annual Jo’burg Day music festival with my family and a couple of teenaged friends. The sun blazed unforgivingly to a soundtrack of what amounted to pop karaoke.  Then it clouded over and rained. And rained. I was greatly relieved when the kids asked when we were going.

But then, my cold, miserable daughter and her even more miserable friend vetoed any plans of beating a hasty retreat: Zebra & Giraffe had appeared. And I could see why; good sound, good writing, good performance.

Z&G is Greg Carlin. Yes, there was a full band performing, but Carlin is the self-contained creative force behind the band. He made his debut album, Collected Memories, virtually unassisted. It’s electronic rock that’s got a vaguely 80′s feel to it when – Carlin was probably still in nappies.

Every girl in the audience was mouthing the words to every song in their set, but it was The Knife that seemed to get the biggest response.

My son was obsessively listening to Green Day’s 21 Guns the other day. I was obsessively trying to recall the song it reminded me of. Two-and-a-bit plays later and I was able to irritate the lad with a now-I’ll-play-you-a-SONG interruption. He reluctantly agreed that yes, 21 Guns sounds a lot like All The Young Dudes.

All The Young Dudes was a big hit for British glam rock band Mott the Hoople. Only ever flirting with success, they were on the verge of breaking up in 1971 when David Bowie persuaded them to give it another go and offered his services to produce a new album. He also offered a few songs, among them Suffragette City and Drive-In Saturday. But they decided on All The Young Dudes, and in the summer of 1972 it became the band’s breakthrough hit – in both the US and UK. The album, also named All The Young Dudes, was likewise a hit.

This explicitly gay song became an anthem for the glam rock era. As such it was a fitting song to feature in The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, held at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1992. David Bowie was joined on the stage by Ian Hunter, Mott’s lead singer to do a powerful perfomance of this great song.

While working with a random playlist bubbling in the background, Howe Gelb’s Shiver slithered into my conciousness. I hadn’t heard it in years and was left wondering why. Its simple, folksy melody – with a hook that would make any songwriter jealous – just draws you in and demands that you listen to Chore Of Enchantment a few more times. This album came out under the band name of Giant Sand, one of Gelb’s ever changing vehicles for his prolific songwriting.

It also forced me to get hold of the latest Giant Sand album, proVISIONS. Any fan of Gelb, Giant Sand and his “side projects” (OP8, Calexico, The Friends of Dean Martinez and The Band of Blacky Ranchette) will not be disappointed at all.

Today is International Blasphemy Day. September 30th is the anniversary of the original publishing of the Danish cartoons in 2005 depicting the prophet Muhammed. This led to orchestrated outrage: at least 135 people were killed in the subsequent violent protests, and death threats were made against the cartoonists and their editor.

In this orgy of lies, hate and violence, who did the Pope and the archbishop of Canterbury rush to condemn? The cartoonists, of course! Because one thing these faith-heads have in common is that they dare not allow free thought to question their indefensible pile of absurdity. The idea behind blasphemy is that certain ideas are sacrosanct and off-limits to critical scrutiny. A wall of obligated “respect” has been built around their silly ideas of talking snakes, celestial virgins, personal deities, spiritual realms and bronze-age dogma.

It’s time to break that wall of immunity down, brick by brick. You want to believe an illiterate goatherd with a taste for blood and prepubescent girls is divine and must be worshipped? Fine – feel free. But don’t expect me not to mock this absurdity. You want to believe a tasteless cracker is the actual flesh of your personal voice in your head? Sure. Why not? I respect your right to do that, just like I respect your right to stick needles through your eyelids. But in either case, don’t expect me not to ridicule your sorry ass.

To mark the day, here is a video from the hilarious Louis CK. I don’t know if it’s blasphemous, but it is very funny.

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Olympia, a portrait of his wife Georgette by René Magritte, was stolen from a Brussels museum last Thursday. Magritte is my favourite surrealist and it reminded me of a favourite ballads by one of my favourite musical artists: René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War, by Paul Simon.

Besides its pretentious-sounding title, it is an amusing, touching and joyous piece of surrealism itself. It portrays the couple as secret admirers of the doo wop groups of the 1950′s: The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Orioles and The Five Satins. I love this song.

A video made for this song by Joan Logue in 1984 is unavailable so I pieced together a string of images of Magritte paintings to accompany the song. I think Simon got the mood exactly right, as the resulting video shows.

This beautiful song is found on Simon’s 1983 album Hearts and Bones. Although it was not a commercial success, it is certainly one his best albums – the product of some of his most creative and high-quality song-writing. It even includes a musical guide to songwriting, Song About the Moon – and I have yet to find a better, more practical guide.

Mary Travers, the Mary in Peter, Paul and Mary, has died at the age of 72 after a long battle with leukaemia. Peter, Paul and Mary were probably more responsible for the popularisation of folk music than anyone else. Indeed, my early indoctrination into the wonderful world of folk music came via a well worn and scratchy LP, the eponymous Peter, Paul and Mary. Their version of Dylan’s Blowing In The Wind introduced me to his Bobness, apart from being a worldwide hit.

In choosing a song for this post I plumbed for another trio – not PPM. This trio consists of Travers together with two other iconic female singers: Joni Mitchell and Mama Cass Elliott. They appeared together on a Mama Cass TV show in 1969. All three have very well known, distinctive voices and it’s a delight hearing them harmonise together. Fittingly they sing a Dylan song, I Shall Be Released.

They Might Be Giants, that geeky Grammy-winning duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell, has released a pro-science album, appropriately called Here Comes Science. It’s another of those albums that one would expect to be mediocre at best. But that’s not the case at all – it turns out to be rather good, with quirky, catchy material. It’s unashamedly aimed at kids and I would highly recommend the CD/DVD be shared with children while enjoying it yourself at the same time.

Most of the tunes are very accessible to even young children. Meet the Elements though is just good music – for all ages.

This also give me the excuse to linking to the classic The Elements by the fabulous Tom Lehrer.