Drummerobit: Jon Brookes

Horrible news yesterday, with the death of Charlatans drummer Jon Brookes.

As a key member of a major Madchester band and a West Brom fan, Brookes was Baggie twice over.

There's a lovely 1999 interview with Brookes and James Hannah, in which Jon looks back over the Charlatan's career up until Us & Us Only. There's some consideration of the previous tragedy that hit the band - the death of Rob Collins during the making of Tellin' Stories ("I can hear cer­tain con­flicts on there between us all. I think the ascent made us dizzy again. I still haven’t quite digested the songs."), but mostly it tracks a band who rose, fell and rose again, making it up as they went along and doing a pretty good job of it.

Beyond being a musician, Jon was a father and a husband. He was only 44.

The Charlatans kept me going through some grim times. His drumbeat kept my heart going. Thanks, Jon.

Bookmarks: Brother Beyond

Out On Blue Six suggests that "basically, Brother Beyond were Stock Aitken And Waterman's Charlatans."

Is It In You? Brookes has brain tumour

So, that's why Jon Brookes collapsed, then: He's got a brain tumour.

The Charlatans' US tour has been cancelled; UK and other dates will go ahead with a temporary drummer while Brookes gets treatment.

Charlatans: Jon Brookes hospitalised

Waking up this morning to news of Jon Brooke's collapse on stage during The Charlatans' Philadelphia gig.

Apparently he stopped breathing before that old stand-by, a doctor in the house, was able to resuscitate him.

The official line from the band:

"[Jon] has now been transferred to a larger hospital in the city for further tests, although his condition is said to be improving and doctors believe there will be no long-term effects on his health."

It's not clear yet what this means for the Charlatans' US tour. Get well soon, Jon.

The Charlatans: Back to the start

This year, it's twenty years since Some Friendly came out.

Yes, yes, but nobody broke it to me gently, so what do you expect?

The anniversary will be marked with a run-through of the entire album at the Roundhouse in London and some sort of re-releasing/repackaging of the disc. May 31st for the gig.

The audience is expected to contain many people too young to have been born when it came out, as part of a special operation to make you feel ancient. Anyone over the age of about 25 will be routinely asked if they ever saw a dinosaur.

My flatmate had the limited-edition special release in wipe-clean white vinyl sleeve, you know.

[When it was just 19: The Some Friendly weekend]

Between 10th & 11th Weekend: Weirdo

This grew from a line in Tim's notebooks: "Today I am happy, you are a weirdo". And grew and grew, into one of those tracks that - for a while - turned up everywhere as a music bed for sports programmes and drama trails. It's still a bloody great song:



[Part of Between 10th and 11th Weekend]

Between 10th & 11th Weekend: I Can't Even Be Bothered

The only appearance of this track on YouTube is marked with a fan video which only slightly looks like a screensaver. Soothing, though. Soothing.



[Part of Between 10th & 11th weekend]

Between 10th & 11th Weekend: Tremolo Song

This was one of the album's singles - it came in a somewhat pointless double CD set, with one of them coming with an outside, swing-fronted container which never fitted in any CD rack, box, or display device known to man.

This version is live, from The Melkweg in Amsterdam in 2008:



[Part of Between 10th and 11th weekend]

Between 10th & 11th Weekend: Ignition

Not the most-obvious choice for a second track on an album, a song called Ignition. This is the 2008 version of the band playing the track in Sheffield:



[Part of Between 10th & 11th weekend]

Between 10th & 11th Weekend: I Don't Want To See The Sights

So, then, onto the album proper - and one of the band's great lost classics:

Another happy lad with dirty pictures plastered on the wall.
A british beach collection, a classic alcoholic argument.
I don't want to see the sights there is nothing worse,
Thank God I don't have to see the sights.

[Part of Between 10th and 11th Weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: The Charlatans - Between 10th And 11th

Don't worry if you're not a big Charlatans fan - or, indeed, can't stand the lips-and-fringe-and-organ combination at all; I'm probably not going to work through all of The Charlatans album-by-album.

Probably not.

But someone did hope for an illustrated Between 10th & 11th last week, and who am I to turn my back on popular demand?

This, then, was to be the first of what has proved to be an increasingly difficult series of follow-up albums. Having galloped to number one on a wave of popular affection for all things Madchester, the band were now facing a task of building on success while, all around them, the scene they'd helped shape was falling apart.

But you know what? Before we get to the 1992 album, let's take a couple of moments to remember the singles that bridged the gap between Some Friendly and Between..., which signposted a shift to something a bit more atmospheric.

First up was Over Rising:



Then, the gorgeous Me, In Time:



Of course, we all scribbled out the final letter 'e' and giggled back when it came out. We made our own fun back then.

Buy
CD version
MP3 download
Cassette version
And don't rely on dribbles of videos - have Tim Burgess permanently shoved in your slot:
Forever: The Singles: The videos

More to come, when we actually hit the album proper
I Don't Want To See The Sights
Ignition
Tremolo Song
Can't Even Be Bothered
Weirdo

The Charlatans Some Friendly weekend: Polar Bear

I'm sure I've seen more than one Granada TV special where this appears as one of the songs the Charlatans do, but nothing which yet seems to have leaped from VHS to the internet. In the meantime, we'll continue in sound only:



[Part of the Some Friendly weekend]

The Charlatans Some Friendly weekend: Opportunity

There's only something slightly depressing in the realisation that when The Charlatans played Opportunity last year in Sheffield, it was old enough to buy a drink in the bar:



[Part of Some Friendly weekend]

The Charlatans Some Friendly weekend: Sproston Green

One of those songs which earns its place in history by inspiring over-excited young people to steal street signs, this is a hymn to part of semi-rural Cheshire.

This bit, in fact:


View Larger Map

I don't know if the interest in name-pinching ever got so bad the local council had to resort - a la Penny Lane - to painting the name on a wall.



[Part of Some Friendly weekend]

The Charlatans Some Friendly weekend: The Only One I Know

The big hit from the album - although you'd suspect not as a result of investment in the video:

The Charlatans - The Only One I Know
by scootaway

[Part of the Some Friendly weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: The Charlatans - Some Friendly

You don't just do one big splurge of video when it has Tim Burgess in it. (Although we did, once). You savour it, slowly, however much you might want to rush forward to the Jesus Hairdo one where he's smeared in bodypaint. However much that might appeal.

Today, then, just some bits and pieces from the tracks which formed the Charlatans' debut album Some Friendly. Released on their own Dead Dead Good label (Beggars Banquet wearing a hooded top, in effect) the album was a number one debutante. Hard to imagine the band being in that sort of position again, if you're honest.

Equally hard to believe is that there were only two singles lifted from the collection. This is one of them, then, and it's Then, performed on The Word back in 1990. Look! It's Big Brother and Would I Lie To You's Terry Christian and everything:



Buy
You'll have this album, of course. But just in case, Amazon offer it on CD, mp3 and cassette.

More dipping in to the record to come
The Only One I Know
Sproston Green
Opportunity
Polar Bear

Charlatans axe North American tour

Americans and Canadians keen to stand within showering distance of Tim Burgess' gorgeous spittle are going to be disappointed, I'm afraid. We have locked him in a cupboard and aren't going to send him. Jon Brookes has done his shoulder in, needs surgery, and can't drum right now.

"Quite avant-garde"

Our buttocks tighten whenever we hear the word "supergroup" being muttered, even when it's one featuring Tim Burgess, Jamie HinceReynolds and Carl Barat.

It's going to happen, though, Tim has said so:

"The idea is to actually record something proper over the summer when we get a chance.

"Myself, Carl and Jamie from Klaxons actually went out for a bit of a band meeting and I think that we are all free in August - but I've just heard the news yesterday that Carl got quite sick so hopefully he'll be recovered by then."

As a general rule of thumb, however gorgeous the resulting band might look in the video, any band meeting which starts with members trying to synchronise diaries so they might turn up in the same place at the same time is a sign that the results of their labours might not be so much fun for the audience as for the artists.

"I just want it to be very serious you know, which would kinda be conflicting in the way that people have seen us in the past, but I think it might be quite avant-garde to be honest."

... so maybe not being fun won't be a problem?

Let's hope that it's not so avant-garde that they don't make a strongly homoerotic video.

The band is currently labouring under the name The Chavs, which you really hope they have another think over.

Doherty should never have used the pick-up window

Tim Burgess has worked out where it all went wrong for Pete Doherty - not ordering in:

“What I used to feel about people like that is that they shouldn’t go out and get hammered, that they’d be better off doing it all at home,” Burgess said.

“Why doesn’t he go for home delivery? Pete’s a fucking rock star. GET IT DELIVERED! We always did.”

Also, at the moment, if your crack pipe is delivered less than piping hot, you get it for free.

Burgess suggests that drugs might have also blunted Doherty's talent:

“But his songwriting has rapidly gone downhill, that’s the most worrying thing," he added.

“So much great music has been created on drugs. In Pete’s case, maybe heroin and crack is not such a productive combination.”

Although, to be honest, what really seems to have done for Doherty's talent was quitting Carl, not hitting crack.

Burgess revealed that The Charalatans were doing crack during the making of Up To Our Hips.



On drugs, eh? You'd never have guessed.

Charlatans: Free at last

If Thor felt annoyed when his thunder was stolen, you can imagine how The Charlatans must have felt when their announcement of 'free album' was eclipsed by Radiohead's 'pay what you feel' plan.

But while In Rainbows has been and gone, and come out in a conventional form, the world has still been waiting for the Charlatans' You Cross My Path. Until now - XFM are hosting the free download of the whole thing; you can also pick and choose individual tracks (on a try-before-you-don't-buy basis, we suppose) including A Day For Letting Go and Missing Beats (of A Generation).

Let's just hope nobody like, ooh, Trent Reznor launches any high-profile free album round about now, eh?