ISLAND 50 RADIO NEWS

The season of nationwide radio programmes dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Island Records kicked off on April 12th, with the GMG Radio documentary on the 50 years of Island, ‘Legendary Record Labels – Island at 50’, narrated by Dan Gillespie Sells.

Meanwhile, further shows air on:

May 23rd: 10.00pm – Radio 2 Documentary on Island Records Part 1 ‘Island Life: the story of Island Records’, narrated by Don Letts.

May 25th: 7.15pm – Radio 4 Front Row Special on ‘Chris Blackwell – The Man and the Music of Island Records’: Chris Blackwell in conversation with Jon Wilson.

May 26th: 2.30pm – 1Xtra thirty minute documentary, ‘Island at 50’, narrated by our very own hitmaking Tinchy Stryder , and concentrating on our more urban history.

May 30th: 7.30pm – Radio 2 Documentary on Island Records Part 2 ‘Island Life: the story of Island Records’, narrated by Don Letts, anchored around the classic 50 list.

Also, from May 25 for one week Absolute Radio will be repeating Island sessions from their archive across BOTH ‘Hometime with Geoff Lloyd’ ( 5 – 8pm ) and Ben Jones ( 8pm – 12am) all that week.

MONDAY 25TH MAY: 6-7PM – SPECIAL MARK RONSON SHOW: “ISLAND IS 50 !!”

TUE 26TH: 7-8PM – KEANE SESSION TRACKS (GEOFF LLOYD) 9-10PM – THE FRATELLIS SESSION TRACKS (BEN JONES)

WED 27TH: 7-8PM – PAUL WELLER SESSION TRACKS (GEOFF LLOYD) 9-10PM – PAUL WELLER SESSION TRACKS (BEN JONES)

THU 28TH: 7-8PM – FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE SESSION TRACKS (GEOFF LLOYD) 9-10PM – THE FEELING SESSION TRACKS (BEN JONES)

ALSO ON SUNDAY 31ST MAY, FROM 8-10PM, PJ HARVEY SESSION TRACKS WILL BE PLAYED ON GEOFF LLOYD’S XTREME SHOW.

Meanwhile, on the week beginning Monday May 25, Q Radio will have a focus on Island tracks as well as giving over a lunchtime show each day, from 1-2pm, from Tuesday to Friday to an Island act.
Tues – The Feeling
Weds – Florence
Thurs – Tricky
Fri – Fratellis

This will also be featured in a 2 page spread in the June issue of Q, which hits the shops in early May.

Happy listening!!!

CONCERT ALERT! Three concerts in the coming months will celebrate the legacy of Joe Boyd’s 1960s Witchseason Productions, each event curated by Joe Boyd) :

May 16 2009, Birmingham Town Hall: Way To Blue, the music of Nick Drake. Rather more than a tribute concert, Way To Blue will feature performances by Martha Wainwright, Graham Coxon, Beth Orton, Robyn Hitchcock, Vashti Bunyan, Boris Grebenchikov and Harper Simon. Kate St John is musical director and Robert Kirby will be on hand to conduct both his original string parts from Nick’s recordings, and some newly written arrangements as well. Legendary bassist Danny Thompson, who played on many of Nick’s recordings will anchor the house band, along with pianist Zoe Rahman, Neil MacColl and Leo Abrahams on guitars and Martyn Barker on drums. Those who attended the Nick Drake panel at the Barbican 10 years ago will remember our special guest, Robin Frederick. Robin not only busked with Nick during the summer of 1967 in Provence, but she now teaches songwriting in California and can explain exactly what makes Nick’s music so brilliant. She will take part in the concert and take part with Joe and Robert Kirby in a seminar after the concert. One of the songs performed during the evening will be by Molly Drake, Nick’s mother, and Robin will discuss her effect on her son’s music. On Sunday afternoon (May 17) at 4.30 in the Town Hall, Joe will share the stage with Robyn Hitchcock. He will tell tales from his autobiography White Bicycles whilst Robyn sings the book’s soundtrack.

July 18 2009, the Barbican, London: An all-star reunion of the early formations of Fairport Convention. Material from the first five albums will be performed.

July 19 2009, the Barbican, London: The second part of Witchseason Weekend will be a tribute to the songs of the Incredible String Band.

Grace Jones, the Brinsley Forde & the I-Three’s (featuring Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths and Erica Newell), Aswad (Brinsley Forde, Drummie Zeb and Tony Gad), Tinchy Stryder and VV Brown will be the featured singers with Sly & Robbie and The Compass Point All Stars on Tuesday 26th May at Shepherds Bush Empire as part of the previously announced Island 50th birthday celebrations. Each of these will perform a song or two (or even three) from Island’s illustrious back catalogue with one of the most famous Jamaican rhythm sections of all time.

Grace Jones signed to Island in 1977 and really hit her stride when Chris Blackwell suggested she work at the Island studios in Compass Point with Sly & Robbie; together they created many of her signature songs including ‘Private Life’, ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’, ‘My Jamaican Guy’ and ‘Nipple To The Bottle’. Aswad, the UK’s most successful reggae group, signed to Island in ’76 and this performance with Sly & Robbie will reunite original members Brinsley Forde, Drummie Zeb and Tony Gad for the first time since 2000. The i-Threes were Bob Marley & The Wailers’ legendary backing singers. VV Brown, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer and fashion darling is a recent signing to Island and will release her debut album “Travelling Like The Light” in June ‘09. Tinchy Stryder, another new millenium Island artist, has come from the underground grime scene to top the charts this week with his third single ‘Number One’ taken from his debut album which is coming out this summer.

As previously announced ‘Island Life’ [supporting Amnesty International and The Oracabessa Foundation (JA)] – a week of live shows by Island artists past and present – will take place at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire week commencing 25th May ‘09. NB There are no headliners at these shows; every act appears with equal billing. The ‘Island Life’ line-up confirmed so far is as follows:

26th May – SLY & ROBBIE & THE COMPASS POINT ALLSTARS featuring GRACE JONES, BRINSLEY FORDE & THE I-THREE’S, ASWAD, TINCHY STRYDER, VV BROWN;

27th May – THE FRATELLIS; STEEL PULSE; BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB;

28th May – CAT STEVENS/YUSUF; BAABA MAAL (SOLD OUT)

29th May – PAUL WELLER; SPOOKY TOOTH; ERNEST RANGLIN (SOLD OUT)

30th May – KEANE; TOM TOM CLUB; LADYHAWKE (SOLD OUT)

31st May – AMY WINEHOUSE; TOOTS & THE MAYTALS; I BLAME COCO (SOLD OUT)

Click here to buy tickets now.

Ticketweb.co.uk also has tickets left which you can access by clicking here for tickets now.

OUT OF JAMAICA

By Chris Salewicz

In 1958 Chris Blackwell, who had been teaching water-skiing at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay, decided to record the young, blind jazz pianist and his band who were playing at the hotel. He was called Lance Hayward. His first recording, an LP of jazz standards released in 1959, was the relatively inauspicious birth of an independent record label destined to have a vast influence on global popular music – Island Records.

Soon after Blackwell had his first hit with a local artist called Laurel Aitken and the tune ‘Boogie In My Bones’; the record made the Cuban-born Aitken the biggest star in Jamaica in 1960.

In 1962 Blackwell moved his operation to the UK, acquiring the rights to the recordings of the Jamaican sound system giants Sir Coxson Dodd, Duke Reid and King Edwards among others, selling them to Jamaican immigrants. So began Island Records in Britain.

Chris Blackwell would personally deliver the records to the shops in the West Indian communities of London, Birmingham and Manchester, driving up and down the new M1 motorway in his Mini-Cooper. Records like Jimmy Cliff’s ‘Miss Jamaica’ and Derrick Morgan’s ‘Forward March’ moved quickly, justifying Blackwell’s decision to move to Britain: a strong title would sell twenty to thirty thousand copies.

Island’s Jamaican 45s also hit a chord with the new mass tribal group of Mods, the most powerful underground force in Britain: the Mods took to Jamaican music and styles, adopting the immigrants’ love of mohair suits and pork-pie hats. In clubs such as the RamJam in Brixton, blacks and whites, both wearing the same uniforms, danced side-by-side to the same sounds.

At The Scene, London’s top Mod club by virtue of its never-ending source of the finest American black music, Chris Blackwell met Guy Stevens, the club’s DJ, believed to have the best R&B collection in Britain. Chris Blackwell offered Stevens the chance to run Sue, a label releasing the hottest American R&B whose first hit was Inez & Charlie Foxx’s ‘Mockingbird’.

But there was another big opportunity. In 1963 a big seller for Island Records had been Roy and Millie’s ska tune ‘We’ll Meet’. Blackwell resolved to record Millie as a solo artist, bringing her over to London from Jamaica.

Five years previously in New York Blackwell had bought a record called ‘My Boy Lollipop’ by the American singer Barbie Gaye. Looking for material for Millie he discovered the tune: it was given a ska arrangement by the great Jamaican jazz guitarist and arranger Ernest Ranglin. ‘It came out exactly as I heard it in my head – it seemed to be a hit,’ said Blackwell. The song, licensed to Philips’s Fontana label, sold six million copies and Millie toured worldwide.

Taking Millie up to Birmingham to appear on the ATV pop show, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Blackwell checked out a local act, The Spencer Davis Group. The singer Steve Winwood sounded, he thought, ‘like Ray Charles on helium – his voice was so high-pitched.’ Like Millie, Winwood was only fourteen years old.

Looking for a hit for them, Blackwell checked another of his artists, the songwriter Jackie Edwards. Edwards had just written a perfect song, ‘Keep On Running’. The hit was followed by even larger successes – ‘Somebody Help Me’, ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’, and ‘I’m a Man’.

When The Spencer Davis Group fell apart early in 1967, it led to the birth of Steve Winwood’s Traffic, released on Island Records; through a combination of synchronicity and serendipity, Island launched itself anew, as the quintessential ‘underground’ rock label. Traffic perfectly captured the spirit and mood of the time, as did its label.

As the dream, in all its liberated, day-glo colours, of the Sixties was realised in the last three years of the decade, so the most creative musical artists of the period clamoured to record for Island.

Click here to pre-order the book today. Released June 1st.

On Saturday 25th April Island 50 will be hosting its own free afternoon party at this year’s Camden Crawl.

The party runs from 1-6pm and will be held at the Constitution pub, 42 St Pancras Way, London NW1.

The event is open to anyone with a Camden Crawl wristband. A canal boat will pick partygoers up from under the bridge on Camden High Street, and take them direct to the pub, which will have an Island 50 bar and Island Records DJs.

There will also be a barbeque and the following live line-up:

UPSTAIRS, Full live sets:
2.00pm – Frankmusik
3.00 – The Rumble Strips
4.00 – The King Blues
5.00 – Innerpartysystem

DOWNSTAIRS, Acoustic sets:
3.30 – Bombay Bicycle Club
4.30 – VV Brown
5.30 – Tommy Sparks

For more information and maps visit: www.island50.com/camdencrawl.

Birmingham Reggae legends Steel Pulse have been confirmed for the line-up of the previously announced Island Life concert festival at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire, which celebrates 50 years of Island Records. Steel Pulse will play on Wednesday 27th May with The Fratellis and Bombay Bicycle Club.

Formed in ’75 Steel Pulse signed to Island at the height of the punk wars in late ‘77. The first Steel Pulse single for Island, ‘Ku Klux Klan’ (a call for resistance against forces of racism) was released in February 1978. Five months later, their debut album ‘Handsworth Revolution’ was released to huge critical acclaim. They went on to support Bob Marley & The Wailers on a European tour in June and July ‘78 and were a crucial part of the punky reggae party Bob Marley sang about as they aligned themselves with the punk movement and played several Rock Against Racism shows with artists such as the Stranglers and XTC and memorably at The Clash RAR show in Victoria Park with Xray Spex and the Tom Robinson Band. They released two more groundbreaking albums for Island – ‘Tribute To The Martyrs’ in ‘79 and ‘Reggae Fever (Caught You)’ in ’80.

Thank you to everyone who applied for tickets to the Island Life shows. The demand was phenomenal so apologies to all those who missed out. There will be further Island events throughout 2009 which will be announced here. Watch this space!

2009 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of Island Records, arguably the most prestigious record label in the history of British music. To mark this milestone the label is collaborating with Island founder Chris Blackwell to arrange the Island 50 festival. The Island 50 festival will kick off in May 2009 with ‘ISLAND LIFE’ – a week of live shows by Island artists past and present, which will take place at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire week commencing 25th May ‘09 Supporting Amnesty International and The Oracabessa Foundation (JA). The line-up confirmed so far is as follows:

26th May – SLY & ROBBIE & THE COMPASS POINT ALLSTARS featuring VERY SPECIAL GUESTS;

27th May – THE FRATELLIS; VERY SPECIAL GUEST; BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB;

28th May – CAT STEVENS/YUSUF and friends, BAABA MAAL

29th May – PAUL WELLER; ERNEST RANGLIN; SPOOKY TOOTH

30th May – KEANE; TOM TOM CLUB; LADYHAWKE

31st May – AMY WINEHOUSE; TOOTS & THE MAYTALS; I BLAME COCO

Fans who sign up to the mailing list at www.island50.com will be able to take part in the exclusive ticket pre-sale from 9am on Thursday 12th March. Tickets go on general sale on Island50.com and other agents from 9am on Friday 13th March.

May 21st ’09 will see the publication of “KEEP ON RUNNING – THE STORY OF ISLAND RECORDS” edited by Chris Salewicz (acclaimed author of recent Joe Strummer biog ‘Redemption Song’) and will include contributions from celebrated writers such as Paul Morley, Jon Savage, Sean O’Hagan, Vivien Goldman, Lloyd Bradley, Robin Denselow, Sylvia Patterson, Richard Williams and Joe Boyd.

The ‘ISLAND LIFE’ Exhibition of Photos, Artwork and Memorabilia, which will run from May 22nd – 17th June, will take place at The Vinyl Factory, Phonica Records, 51 Poland Street, London W1F 7LZ. The exhibition will be divided into a number of themed areas that loosely define the numerous eras in Island’s history – Out of Jamaica, The Pink Label, The Season of the Witch, The Glitterball Years, Island Jamaica, Singular Voices, Global Expansion, World Music, and The New Millennium.

Music retailer HMV will be a key partner in the Island 50 celebrations and will host a mini-exhibition reflecting the history and heritage of Island Records, its iconic artists and recordings at the flagship HMV store (360 Oxford Street, London W1) and will help to celebrate through its instore radio, channel hmv, and its social network site, getcloser.com, which will make a special feature of Island 50 artists in May.

The Island 50 Anniversary activities will be mirrored around the world later in the year. Check www.island50.com for updates and announcements will be made in individual territories in due course.

Chris Blackwell founded the Island label in Kingston, Jamaica in 1959 with capital of just £1000. Relocating to London in the early 60s Blackwell built the most diverse and enviable back catalogue of any independent record label in history. From Island’s early Jamaican roots in ska and rock-steady, through the label’s expansion to become the cutting edge of progressive rock in the late 60s, and then on to the signing of such international superstars as Bob Marley and U2, Blackwell brought to Island a unique vision and passion which still informs the label’s approach to this day.

Says Blackwell: “When I recorded ‘Lance Hayward at the Half Moon’ in 1959 at Federal Records Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, I had no inkling what path this had set me on. It has been an honour and a privilege to work with some of the greatest musical artists of all time. It was always my intention at Island to make records that stood the test of time, and I’m proud that Island is still a potent force in music 50 years since that first release. I’m very excited to be collaborating with the label to celebrate Island’s 50th birthday and I’m particularly excited about the week of shows in London.”

The Island label has been responsible for the careers of some of the biggest stars in music including U2, Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, Traffic, Free, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, Toots & The Maytals, John Martyn, Marianne Faithfull, Aswad, Tom Waits, King Sunny Ade, Third World, Roxy Music, Robert Palmer, the B52s, Sly & Robbie, Melissa Etheridge, The Slits, Steel Pulse, Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Pulp, Tricky, Talvin Singh, and latterly Amy Winehouse, PJ Harvey, DJ Shadow, Sugababes, Keane, The Fratellis, Scott Matthews, Paul Weller, The Feeling, Portishead and Florence & The Machine.

There will be lots of very exciting news about the Island 50th Anniversary being announced over the next few weeks…don’t forget to sign up to make sure you are the first to hear about it !

The history of Island Records is included in the national curriculum for Music/Music Business students during 2008/09, at over 50 UK Universities and Colleges