Sheffield’s longest standing live music venue is in the limelight after being nominated for one of the UKs most prestigious music awards, following enduring success.

The Leadmill, which celebrates its 31st birthday this year, has been nominated for a Live UK Music Business Award. The award is one of the industry’s most highly esteemed acclamations, the final ceremony for which is due to take place on the 6th October.

Live UK is the only music industry publication focused solely on live music, read by the industry’s most influential people, and the award is an outstanding achievement for one of Sheffield’s most prided music venues.

The nomination, which came from industry peers, is for Best Major Club Venue (800+) Teamwork and comes after The Leadmill won Best Live Music Venue in Sheffield at the Exposed Magazine Awards in February of this year.

Rupert Dell, General Manager of The Leadmill, said “The Leadmill prides itself on hosting some of the music industry’s most commended acts and ensuring each event is run to the highest standard.

We’re incredibly proud and excited to have been nominated for such a prestigious award and so grateful to everyone who supports The Leadmill. We are ecstatic that people enjoy the venue so much and urge anybody who loves us or has been down recently to vote for us.”

To vote for The Leadmill and help them win this most exciting award for Sheffield, follow the below link:

Vote for The Leadmill

Details of the Top 3 nominees in each of the 21 award categories will be publicised in advance of the event and the winners will be announced at the final award ceremony, which takes place at the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel in London.

This Autumn, The Leadmill are offering one of their strongest ever line ups, putting on gigs from Hard-Fi, Benjamin F Leftwich, The Pierces, Miles Kane, The Twang, Pop Will Eat Itself, Billy Bragg, British Sea Power, The Pigeon Detectives, Death in Vegas and many more.

See here for their full line-up and to purchase tickets or for updates on The Leadmill events visit their Facebook or Twitter pages.

Don’t forget to vote for The Leadmill

The Leadmill Gig Reviews

Old habits Di’ hard | Diana Vickers
Tuning In: Part 1

First things first, this isn’t going to be another article on how Amy has ’ joined the 27 club’ this is no place to group people together and no way to remember the amazingly talented artists that have left us at such an early age.

On Saturday the 23rd of July at 4pm Amy Winehouse’s body was found by police in her Camden flat. The world went into immediate mourning and the tributes began pouring in in celebration of such a talented star.

Amy first hit the scene in 2003 with her debut album Frank when she was just 20 years old. She blew everyone away, her voice was refreshing, her style a breath of fresh air in the midst of all the auto-tuned pop around. The fact she co-wrote all but two of the tracks on her debut just added to her allure.

3 years later Amy released the album that everybody had been waiting for baited breath for. In the upcoming years to the release of Back to Black Amy had started a troubled relationship which saw her take prime place in the gossip columns. The downfall of Amy’s personal life seemed to escalate the rise in her musical career.

Winehouse’s songs reflected her passionate nature, refusing to go to rehab and exclaiming how ‘she was no good’. She never victimised herself, never blamed others. Her songs hit a spot with girls all over the world, simple but honest ‘I cried for you on the kitchen floor’ so simple but still so powerful.

The fact that we were reading all about her turbulent lifestyle made listening that much more interested, her pained voice rang true and belted out with feeling the lyrics she was singing.
Unfortunately Amy couldn’t seem to live up to the infamy that was surrounding her. The music seemed to have been forgotten about and she began being known for the stories surrounding her, whether they were true or false. A follow up to Back to Black was unfortunately, never released although this was rumoured to be in the making. I personally hope any sight of a recording is released. Just so we can get a glimpse into how Amy really was in her final months, as the truth and her feelings came out most of all in her music.

Tributes have been flooding in since the tragic news, radio stations have been playing her non-stop and her album has been once again pushed back to the top spot. I find this very comforting as people are once again listening to her, truly listening to her and remembering the talented singer she was.

Amy Winehouse will live on in her music and will be forever remembered as the girl who broke the mould.

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Elizabeth Taylor: Fame and Films
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Elizabeth Taylor’s passing yesterday, from heart failure at the age of 79, has undoubtedly saddened many across the globe. One of Hollywood’s most alluring leading ladies has long since been a commanding presence on the big screen but continually commanded our attention away from it. Her work on raising Aids awareness throughout the 80s, her 8th marriage in the early 90s, her friendship with Michael Jackson, and her increasingly fragile health all ensured she remained in the public eye until her death. Hollywood’s original and best loved Glamour Queen had no intention of fading away quietly.

Along with Charlie Chaplin, Taylor remains Britain’s most successful and popular export to the Hollywood hills. Only Chaplin’s enduring popularity can match the attention and adulation afforded to Taylor by the American public. Born in London, Taylor was evacuated to California with her parents in 1939, on the eve of WWII. It didn’t take long for the strikingly beautiful child to be signed up by MGM, and she appeared regularly as a child actress before really coming to the fore in A Place in the Sun (1951), which garnished best actor nominations for her co-stars Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters. It wouldn’t take long for Taylor to outshine her illustrious contemporaries, and after another commanding performance in Giant (1956), alongside the inimitable James Dean, Taylor was nominated three times successively for Raintree County (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), before eventually winning for Butterfield 8 (1961). The sultry, seductive brilliance of Taylor in these roles can easily be forgotten amidst the extravagant glamour of her career from the 60s onwards.

By this point Taylor’s tumultuous personal life had begun to overshadow her credibility as an actress. During the production of the infamously extravagant flop Cleopatra (1963), Taylor acquired her fifth (and sixth) husband, Richard Burton. Their glamorous, but troubled, romance would dominate the silver screen as much as the gossip pages over the next decade or so with the couple appearing in no less than 10 films together. However, it is to be noted, that dung this time Taylor won much critical acclaim, to go with her second Academy Award, for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) in which she shed her sex symbol status to play the unflattering role of Martha, a bellowing, bullying drunk.

Taylor’s acting career continued to trail off, excluding a couple of notable performances in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Secret Ceremony (1968), and essentially died completely after a series of unremarkable films in the 1970s beginning with the disappointing The Only Game in Town (1970). Her personal life remained captivating however, and she finally shed Burton for her 7th husband, John Warner, a Republican senator, in 1976. Her continuing presence in the gossip columns was augmented by a stint in rehab for alcohol treatment, another marriage, her continuing Aids awareness campaigning, and her often poor health. The sight of a wheelchair-bound Taylor attending a variety of functions, still clinging on to her glamorous heyday has been the most recent image to trouble the paparazzi rags.

Ultimately, however, Taylor will be remembered as one of Hollywood’s great leading women, alongside Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelly or Lauren Becall. That kind of stardom, the marriage of classical beauty and sultry talent which inhabited the Golden Era of Hollywood, will long be fondly remembered.

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Intoxicated Man — A portrait of Serge Gainsbourg
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Gainsbourg’s commonly acknowledged masterpiece is Histoire de Melody Nelson (example track), a Lolita-esque concept album featuring a brooding Gainsbourg at the height of his creative powers. His own records having declined in sales, Gainsbourg was making money as a song-writer for other artists. This gave him a degree of freedom over his own projects which commercial expectations had previously hampered. Regardless of its high lyrical merits, Melody Nelson remains his most musically distinctive work; featuring a tight and atmospherically focused funk-rock rhythm section and a hugely innovative use of orchestration which fades in and out as the album progresses. Gainsbourg has a massive oeuvre and predates David Bowie on being an aesthetic chameleon; playfully hop scotching from genre to genre, blending into and then contorting popular trends as well as re-inventing himself as a reflection of his time. If you only try one Gainsbourg album, and you would be foolish to try only one, make sure it is Melody Nelson. If you try another, make sure it is Initials B.B.

Prior to Birkin, Serge had an intense but brief affair with France’s favourite sex kitten, the then very married, Brigitte Bardot. During their time together they collaborated on a few singles and Gainsbourg wrote a few songs celebrating her. This information may simply enforce his reputation as a womaniser, but the music contained within the album named after her is more than mere flattery: 1968’s Bonnie and Clyde embraced the sound of swinging London but with a complex rhythm section wholly unlike any records predating it and still sounds incredibly modern. It was these jazz inspired Groove’s which helped craft the cult of Gainsbourg among Britain’s Trip Hop scene and it was the persona the recordings demonstrated which made him a subtle influence on Britpop. One need merely compare the dress sense, the uncomfortably sensual whisper and the lyrical subject matter of one Jarvis Cocker to Monsieur Gainsbourg so see how a band like Pulp were channelling the spirit of the playful provocateur, albeit in a very English way. Although the UK has by no means taken to Gainsbourg with open arms he has certainly found more acceptance here than in America where Melody Nelson was pressed for the first time in 2009, a full 38 years after its initial French release.

Although not recognised as such until nearing the end of his life, in France Gainsbourg is now a national icon. At his funeral in 1991, which brought Paris to a standstill, the then French President François Mitterrand said of him “He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire… He elevated the song to the level of art.” The comparisons here are not with other composers or popular musicians, but with poets and for an artist whose crowning achievements are often seen as his lyrics, his appeal can become somewhat elusive to the non-french speaker. Gainsbourg has several famous fans; Jarvis Cocker, REM’s Michael Stipe, Portishead, Tricky, Placebo and Cat Power to name a few, and several English language cover albums have been released in a variety of styles including performances from some of the aforementioned artists. The translations are, almost in their entirety, redundant; they either cling so violently to a literal representation that they butcher the lyrical and phonetic poetry of the original French, or in an attempt to retain the French rhythms the content deviates so far from the original song that it can scarcely be called a translation at all. Thankfully his interesting choice of subject matter does survive translation; 1958’s Le Poinçonneur des Lilas , musically a jazz tinged Chanson, describes a suicidal metro ticket puncher whose job is so monotonous that he longs for a little hole in his head and to be put into a bigger hole simply so not to hear of holes anymore. Although 1958 was a year full of fantastic rock n’ roll records, this level of dark lyrical wit was something entirely fresh. During the aforementioned decline in his own record sales he wrote numerous songs for popular teenage singers, often criticising or commenting on the singers themselves and their audience. 1965’s Eurovision winning, and Gainsbourg penned, ‘Poupee de cire, Poupee de son’ (Doll of wax, doll of bran/sound) is littered with untranslatable word play which summons up the distortions pop music has made on the outlook of teenagers as well as comparing its singer, France Gall, to a child’s dress up doll as fragile as the vinyl records she produces and who is always under the control of her composer; Gainsbourg. This would be further demonstrated on another Gainsbourg/Gall collaboration; Les Sucettes, musically a rather unremarkable children’s song about a girl who likes lollipops but full of allusions to oral sex. France Gall was unaware of the songs implications, and promptly stopped performing it when she was informed, but the song signalled the controversy which would surround much of Gainsbourg’s later work, culminating perhaps in his infamous reggae version of the French national anthem Aux Armes Etcetera. The album named after the track was also the first French reggae record.

Brigitte Bardot described Gainsbourg as “the best and the worst, a young Russian prince who turned, when confronted with the tragic realities of life, into Quasimodo: moving or disgusting, depending on his, or our, frame of mind.” As a child, Lucien Ginsburg as he was then known, was the son of two Russian immigrants and was born in Paris 11 years before World War II broke out. He spent most of his teens being forced, as a Jew, to wear the yellow star, an experience which, alongside the numerous indignities Jews would suffer, had a profound effect upon him. His family managed to escape, via false papers, to Vichy France in the south where the Nazis had less influence. During his schooling there Lucien was often forced to hide in the woods to avoid identity checks because if discovered it could have cost him and his family their lives. Lucien would later, as Serge Gainsbourg, attempt to come to terms with those experiences through his comic Nazi themed concept album Rock Around the Bunker, a rock n’ roll odyssey which, considering France’s mixed wartime reputation, was viewed as tasteless provocation but simultaneously acted as a kind of personal exorcism. Rock around the Bunker is by no means his best work, but this habit of presenting painful personal subject matter in a grotesquely comic, and often offensive, fashion helps to demonstrate the bizarre conflicts and duality that constituted Gainsbourg’s character.

The recent release of biopic Gainsbourg Vie Heroique cements his legendary status in France and its UK cinema release proves that there is an audience worldwide. Even if the tagline for its English release was ‘the untold story of a musical legend’, at least it was being told. Gainsbourg’s international reputation is finally starting to grow. His earlier records are full of fascinating lyric work but will be of most interest to French speakers and Francophiles and his later albums may indulge perhaps too liberally into his eccentricities for some, but during a period spanning five years (1967 – 1972) Gainsbourg produced a truly original musical vision which has been overlooked for too long.

Top 5 Albums:

1. Histoire De Melody Nelson; His commonly acknowledge masterpiece.
2. Initials B.B.; A compilation of his late 60’s singles and a tribute to lover Brigitte Bardot. Feature’s some of his most rhythmically interesting and melodic compositions.
3. Anna OST; The soundtrack to the first colour film broadcast on French TV. The film is a bit of an intriguing mess, starring Jean Luc Goddard’s former muse Anna Karina as well as a cameo from Marianne Faithfull, but the soundtrack is a minor masterpiece and is often seen as a precursor to Melody Nelson. Now available only as a Japanese CD import.
4. Jane Birkin/Sege Gainsbourg; His most successful album worldwide, not as consistent as others but featuring some beautiful orchestration as well as the controversial Je T’aime…and other hits such as Elisa and the wonderfully named 69 Anne Erotique
5. Jane Birkin – Baby alone in Babylone; A record composed for his ex-lover into which he poured all the pain of his breakup. An often overlooked gem marred perhaps by dated 80’s production.

Others of note; L’Homme a tete de Chou, Gainsbourg Percussions and Aux Armes Etcetera

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The original version of this iconic song was written by Jay Hawkins and released on his At Home With Screamin’ Jay Hawkinsin 1956. At only 2:25 minutes in length, it transformed the way we listen to, and view, music, even making its way on to The Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs Of Our Time, and the song has been covered by every artist imaginable.

It’s hard to imagine what impact it would have had, if Hawkins had stuck to his first decision to record it as a regular blues ballad, but luckily things got crazy in the studio, and instead we were treated with the now ”Screamin” Jay Hawkins’ raw, primal howls. The original version didn’t really make an impact on the charts at the time (some thought it to be cannibalistic) but it sure did get all the attention it deserves, later in music history.

As written above, it has been covered a number of times, most famously by Nina Simone in 1965, where she turned the song into a slow, soulful blues ballad, and even though the song loses the great, sexy rhythm, her voice succeeds in high-lighting all the hurt and obsession of the song.

Other artists from the sixties including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Manfred Mann and The Animals (with a very different, but interestingly so, bass line) covered the song, and it was even translated for Italian singer Caterina Caselli to sing: Puoi Farmi Piangere makes an interesting listen, as she was something of Italy’s answer to Cilla Black, and the song can easily stand up to being sung in a different language: the feelings and sentiments of the song are so strong, you could pretty much do anything to it, and still not ruin it.

The song had a revival in the 90’s, when it was covered in 1993 by Bryan Ferry, and in 1998 by Sonique, the latter making a typical late 90s dance record out of it. Still the song shines through.

More recently the song has been sung by Katie Melua, She & Him (aka Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and was chosen by Shane MacGowan for his Haiti charity single (do check out the video on youtube, as it features amazing talents: Nick Cave, Paloma Faith and a guitar playing Johnny Depp to name a few).

The song has also been used in various films; including the 2009 remake of the musical Fame, the Disney movie Hocus Pocus (sung by Bette Midler, with different lyrics) and 2010’s John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy.

After having listened to countless different covers, it is clear that two versions, or directions, seems to be the norm: Either you keep Hawkins’ rhythm and make for a sexy and raw track “CCR, Shane MacGowan, The Kills) or you opt for a more soulful approach (think She & Him, Joe Cocker, Ray Charles).

Finally, the song’s rhythm has been sampled by a few artists, for example Notorious B.I.G. (Kick In The Door) and The Heavy (Sixteen), and you can hear traces of it in James Brown’s It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World and Frank Sinatra’s The World We Knew (Over And Over).

So where does that leave the song? Well, despite being covered by a wide range of artists, from Buddy Guy to Marilyn Manson, it is my belief that the best version is still the original, done by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and it will always continue to amaze people, with its rhythm, and heartfelt lyrics.

Power, passion, energy, strength, endurance, dedication, showmanship – all of these attributes could belong to a soldier or a marine….. or a dancer. Clogging is the dance form that has been a part of my life for the last 20 years of my 25 years in this world. It is something that defines me as a person and as a professional. I have experienced the up’s and down’s of a dancer’s life from being named to the prestigious All American Team to tearing my tibialis posterior muscle clean away from my shin bone, and I owe it all to my Irish and Scottish ancestors.

Clogging, known as the melting pot of dances, begin during the 1700’s in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. Scottish, Irish, English, and Dutch-German settlers found common ground through dance. Over time, their styles wove together and Clogging was born.

As Clogging spread throughout the United States, other influences, such as Native American and African, found their way into this new dance form.

Traditional Clogging, also known as drag-style Clogging is a percussive dance where a dancer produces rhythmic sounds from steel double taps positioned on the heel and toe of the shoe. The sounds then combines with the rhythm of the music, which was usually fiddle or bluegrass music.

However, today, clogging has evolved into modern Clogging and features influences of Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, and Pointe throughout precision routines. Modern Cloggers do not don the stereotypical crinoline and petticoat that their predecessors once did. Sequins, fringe, and netting are all fair game now. Competitive teams battle it out on the dance floor through the American Clogging Hall of Fame, Clogging Champions of America, and the National Hoedown and Clogging Council competitive circuits in the U.S. and around the world.

No, Clogging is not just an American dance. It can be found all over the globe including Australia, Canada, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, and more. In fact, the Soco Gap Cloggers, one of the first competitive clogging teams, performed for the Queen of England in the early 1900’s.

Recently, Clogging has risen more in popularity as teams such as All That, Dynamic Edition, and the Southern Belles have appeared on TV shows such as America’s Got Talent and America’s Best Dance Crew. Brandon Norris, director of Dynamic Editon, even appeared solo on So You Think You Can Dance.

The traditional drag slide style of clogging is very much respected and remembered in today’s clogging world. While modern Clogging fights for it’s place in the dance world, competitive teams such as American Clogging Hall of Fame national champions, Rhythm-N-Motion of Cookeville, TN, keep traditional drag slide clogging, as well as square dance figures, or mountain figures, alive and well while they perform at fairs and theatres, including the great stage of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN.

For more about clogging and Dorothy — Life’s A Dance