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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
 Posted - 03/01/2013 : 19:35:43
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'I’ve achieved what I wanted to'
The Telegraph
Lightning Bolt/Two Fingers....WOW!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lljqw7uEjDA
Jake Bugg fell in love with music after hearing Don McLean on The Simpsons. Now the teenage singer-songwriter is being hailed as the antidote to plastic pop, writes Ellie Pithers.
Jake Bugg is looking shifty. 'These are the first shoes I ever bought,’ he says. 'They’re… uhh… Prada.’
We are sitting in an empty bar in a nightclub in Bristol, and the singer-songwriter with the mop of Burberry-campaign-worthy hair (he has performed for the brand’s online acoustic project) is fending off my allegations that he is losing touch with his working-class roots.
'I only bought them because they’re blue suede and I like Elvis,’ he protests. 'I love my tracksuits as well. I’m from a council estate, so I like old-school Adidas ones.’
Bugg, 18, grew up in Clifton, Nottingham, once the largest housing estate in Europe, but he has had a taste of the high life in recent weeks. His self-titled debut album went straight to number one in October, fending off competition from the X Factor heavyweight Leona Lewis and knocking Mumford & Sons off the top spot.
In the past 12 months he has appeared on Later… with Jools Holland; toured America with Noel Gallagher; supported the Stone Roses, Lana Del Rey and Example; and been widely heralded as the antidote to plastic pop.
He admits he is as baffled by his success as Lewis’s fans are aggrieved. 'The number one shouldn’t have happened. It was my first album, it was guitar music – not very popular nowadays, as they say – and it kept Leona off. I wasn’t expecting it to go anywhere.’
He smiles wryly while recounting details of tweets from angry teenage girls, fuming that first-week album sales of 35,000 were enough to trounce their idol. He is characteristically blunt when I ask him for his thoughts on the manufactured products of The X Factor. 'I think Leona Lewis can sing. That’s about it. You get a couple of talented people, but… excuse my language, but it’s full of s--t.’
Not for Bugg the soul-selling circus of a talent show. Born Jake Edwin Charles Kennedy (Bugg is his father’s name), he spent his childhood 'having a kickabout’ with his mates. 'There used to be a football court in Clifton,’ he says, 'but the council took it away so the kids have got nothing to do. They’re going to just make trouble, aren’t they? That’s what you do.’
His parents separated when he was a child; his mother works in sales and his father is a nurse – he admits it’s not quite the broken home that features in the video for his single Two Fingers, which sees him chainsmoke his way through the streets of Nottingham to escape his drunk, violent parents, 'but it’s not far off’.
Bugg first became interested in music at the age of 12, after hearing Don McLean’s Vincent on an episode of The Simpsons. 'After I’d looked at all of McLean’s music, I really wanted to learn the guitar. My uncle coincidentally came round with an acoustic and showed me a couple of chords.’
Both his parents recorded some songs in their younger days, but he gives me the first of many withering looks when I ask whether their music has influenced him. 'I don’t listen to their stuff. It’s nothing like my music – it’s 80s pop,’ he shudders.
He began playing bass in his older cousin’s band, and around the same time began writing songs, citing the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Johnny Cash and the Everly Brothers as inspirations. By 16, he had dropped out of a music technology course at college and began playing local gigs. On a whim, he uploaded some songs to the BBC’s Introducing scheme in 2010, and by June 2011 was playing the Introducing tent at Glastonbury. A record deal with Mercury swiftly followed.
His debut album is a paean to his upbringing, rife with working-class hero lyrics – 'Stuck in speed bump city where the only thing that’s pretty is the thought of getting out / There’s a tower block overhead, all you got’s your benefits and you’re barely scraping by’, for instance.
Its rasping melodies, sung with a rusty 10-cigarette-a-day lilt, have seen him dubbed 'an East Midlands Bob Dylan’, but he is sanguine about the comparison. 'Bob Dylan’s cool, you know, he’s great, but he’s not a major influence.’
Bugg’s main aim with the record was 'to get people picking up guitars again’. He has taken some flack for too-perfect sepia-toned album imagery and co-writing credits with the professional songwriter Iain Archer, with some critics sniffing the stamp of a marketing team, but Bugg is so grumpy I doubt he’d let anyone tell him what to do.
'They basically signed me and said, “Go away and do your thing.” When I was writing with Iain, we had a fag, a cup of tea, a bit of a play. The way I see it, it’s jamming. Everything has built up naturally – if I was to turn up in a bright fluorescent tracksuit then someone might be having words, you know, but otherwise, I just have to be me.’
Any lingering doubts evaporate when Bugg begins his set a few hours later. Playing to a largely thirtysomething, 350-strong crowd, he mutters a brief welcome before launching into a song called Kentucky. On stage, he is utterly compelling. His band, comprising a drummer and a bass player, bop around, but Bugg is preternaturally still, enunciating carefully and strumming precisely. Most impressive is his solo encore, Country Song, which he wrote when he was 16. It’s less beatnik, more bluegrass; less drone, more drawl.
The all-important second album beckons, but Bugg’s not nervous. 'I’ve achieved what I wanted to do. Got a number one. Met my idols – Don McLean and Jimmy Page.’ Maybe, eventually, he’ll move to London, but for the moment he’s either on the road or at home with his mum. 'They say the only way out [of Clifton] is football or music. It’s a cliche, but that’s because it’s true.’
The single 'Lightning Bolt’ is released on December 24. Jake Bugg’s UK tour starts on February 2
BROKEN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQMq5dO8Vb4
Bugg was born in Nottingham.[3] grew up in the Clifton area of Nottingham and started playing guitar aged 12. He was chosen by the BBC to appear on their "Introducing" stage at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival aged 17, and because of this was given a contract by Mercury Records. His songs were then placed on various BBC Radio play lists and one of them, "Country Song", was selected for use in a national TV beer commercial for Greene King IPA.
Career
2012-present: Debut Album
In August 2012 Bugg was a supporting act for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at Belsonic Music Festival, Belfast. On 22 May 2012, Bugg appeared on the BBC music programme Later... with Jools Holland. On 1 October 2012, he performed live on the BBC Radio 6 Music programme Live at Maida Vale. Bugg's debut album was released on 15 October 2012. [12] Talking about Bugg and his debut Clash hailed the "precocious talent fusing retro folk with blistering contemporary rock riffs".[13] On 21 October 2012 the song "Two Fingers" charted at 33 in the UK while his self-titled album reached number one in the UK charts.[14] On 1 January 2013 Bugg appeared on Jools' Annual Hootenanny on BBC2.
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Jake Bugg, "Jake Bugg", 2012
Jake Bugg is the self-titled debut studio album by English singer-songwriter Jake Bugg. It was released on 15 October 2012 in the UK.[1] The album was met with much critical acclaim, most of it praising Bugg's songwriting.
"Trouble Town" was released as the lead single from the album on 4 March 2012.
"Country Song" was released as the second single from the album on 30 March 2012. The song peaked at number 100 on the UK Singles Chart.
"Lightning Bolt" was released as the third single from the album on 27 April 2012. The song peaked to number 88 on the UK Singles Chart, the song has also charted at number 45 on the Dutch Singles Chart.
"Taste It" was released as the fourth single from the album on 13 July 2012. The song peaked to number 90 on the UK Singles Chart.
"Two Fingers" was released as the fifth single from the album on 7 September 2012. The song peaked to number 28 on the UK Singles Chart.
Commercial performance
On 17 October 2012, the album debuted at number 1 on the Official Chart Update, 4,000 copies ahead of Glassheart by Leona Lewis.[2] On 18 October, it entered the Irish Albums Chart at number 10, before climbing to number 8 in its second week.[3] On 21 October, the album entered the UK Albums Chart at number 1.[4] The album has also charted in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 80/100[5]
Review scores
Source Rating
BBC Favourable
NME 9/10 stars
The Guardian 3/5
Daily Mail 4/5
Impact 4/5
Tellin' Tunes 7/10
Upon release the album was well received by critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 12 reviews, which indicates "generally favourable reviews".[5] Barry Nicolson of the New Musical Express magazine gave the album a 9/10 praising Bugg's 'authenticity' and style of music and 'witt' and how Bugg has taken the sound of influences and made it his own.
Barry Nicolson, of NME gave Jake Bugg a positive review stating, "On 'Two Fingers', Bugg talks wistfully of scheming on the streets of Clifton, where he and his mates would "skin up a fat one, hide from the feds", as though life held no nobler pursuit. You can tell that, up until now, his world has been small, and he might well have spiralled down the sinkhole that swallows so many marginalised estate kids. Eventually, however, Bugg comes to the same conclusion that we do: "Something is changing, changing, changing". If this debut album - rife with uncommon wit, insight and melody - is testament to anything, it's that his small, unremarkable world is about to get a whole lot bigger."[10]
Chris Roberts, of BBC gave the album a positive review stating, "Things feel less derivative when he softens and just lets his voice and acoustic guitar nakedly affect. On the likes of Country Song and Someone Told Me, scepticism is tamed by the purity of the attempt. Fire is unabashedly romantic. That voice, with its hint of Gene Pitney, is a piercing, precise tool which lifts him above the laddish milieu. Ubiquity may beckon".
1. "Lightning Bolt" Iain Archer, Jake Bugg Archer 2:24
2. "Two Fingers" Archer, Bugg Mike Crossey 3:15
3. "Taste It" Archer, Bugg Archer 2:24
4. "Seen It All" Archer, Bugg Crossey 2:51
5. "Simple as This" Matt Prime, Bugg Prime 3:19
6. "Country Song" Bugg Jason Hart 1:49
7. "Broken" Crispin Hunt, Bugg Hunt 4:07
8. "Trouble Town" Archer, Bugg Archer 2:50
9. "Ballad of Mr. Jones" Archer, Bugg Crossey 2:39
10. "Slide" Archer, Bugg Crossey 3:08
11. "Someone Told Me" Bugg Hart 2:36
12. "Note to Self" Archer, Bugg Archer 2:40
13. "Someplace" Bugg Crossey 3:32
14. "Fire"
SLIDE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWOGwSeVQR8
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
Edited by - lemonade kid on 07/01/2013 22:28:10 |
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JAKE BUGG-must hear UK TALENT retro folkrock riffs
