Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

What would you be doing if the band had still gotten nowhere by this stage?

I just wanna sing for the rest of my life, so I'd still be playing in the pubs, places round where I live, y'know. We've been doing this for 5, almost 6 years, and you don't do it to get the approval of others. You do it because you love it. Getting the approval of others means you've got an easier life style and less financial pressures -- less worries about getting money to pay for your fix of music. You expect success, though. You must have faith in what you're doing. It's like the crock at the end of the rainbow, but the biggest buzz is, like, simply singing and playing and listening to stuff you enjoy y'know. And that won't change. I sing all the time, you can't shut me up!

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Catatonia - Lost Cat video
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Catatonia - The Mother of Misogyny.
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Catatonia - Bleed (Live)
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Cerys Matthews was the lead singer of Catatonia, a Welsh band who became famous in Britain and Wales in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the increased fame brought pressure on Ms. Matthews and the relationship between the band deteriorated. In 2001 it seemed that though there was tension, they may have put their troubles behind them.


'I'll end up a spinster, like my role model Anne Widdecombe'

It was June 1999 when it became clear that all was not well with Cerys Matthews. The Welsh singer and the other four members of her band, Britpop darlings Catatonia, were in Australia and New Zealand on tour. Q magazine flew a journalist out to write a cover feature on the band, expecting tales of joyous hi-jinks and alcoholic excess that the gregarious, party-loving Matthews invariably generated. But in Melbourne, things were very different.

The dismayed writer found Catatonia, in his own words, "in the worst state I'd ever seen a band". After months on the road, they were exhausted, homesick and factionalised. The band were scarcely talking to each other. Relations between Matthews and her former boyfriend, songwriter and guitarist Mark Roberts, were particularly bad. She appeared to be coping by taking every breakfast with a side-order of alcohol. When the magazine ran the ensuing gobsmacked feature, the cover line ran "Cerys: I'm in a bad way".

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In fact, the opposite was true. Matthews set about salvaging her career and her mental state by throwing herself wholeheartedly back into her first love - making music. "I was determined, making this album, to be sure that I could agree with every word I sang and was comfortable with every sentiment and every note," she reflects now, eyes gleaming. "I knew it had to be exciting and poignant and heartfelt. I decided to rekindle my love affair, my first love affair, with music, because I was sick to death with fame and attention and what it all means."MORE

But it didn't last. The band broke up and she decided to go solo. A great deal of her stuff on youtube is her singing trad. Welsh songs, which are pretty beautiful in their own right. But since we are focusing on her rockier stuff:

Cerys Matthews - Chardonnay (Live)
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My favourite song of hers so far is this one:

Cerys Matthews - Into The Blue
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Apparently she has recorded albums in Welsh, and made history as the first person to record an album in Welsh and English simultaneously: Don’t Look Down/Paid Edrych i Lawr.

Cerys Matthews - Trwy'r Drych
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Albums: Albums
Cockahoop (UK #30, 5 weeks on Chart) (Blanco y Negro - 2003)
Never Said Goodbye (Rough Trade - 2006)
Awyren = Aeroplane (mini-album) (My Kung Fu 030 - 2007)
Don't Look Down/Paid Edrych i Lawr (Rainbow City Recordings - 2009)
"Tir" (Rainbow City Recordings - 2010)
"Explorer" (Rainbow City Recordings - 2011)

Here's a single from Explorer:

Cerys Matthews - Sweet Magnolia

What's On Wales: Cerys Matthews Interview

....Matthews’ latest album, Explorer, is her fourth solo effort and the follow-up to the bilingual double-album Don’t Look Down/Paid Edrych i Lawr.

“The album is about endlessly exploring music and how songs have the ability to travel,” says Matthews. It’s clear she’s also taken influence from her own radio show on 6music, delving into her vast record collection with songs influenced by a wide range of worldly sounds and her own trips on the road.
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Matthews has been collecting music, in some form, since the age of seven. “I could read music very early on and used to visit the local library searching for sheet music, especially a lot of Welsh language music,” she says. A huge record collection was garnered soon after, but what was her first purchase? “I don’t know,” she says, “Probably something really dodgy like Video Killed The Radio Star by Buggles.”

The first song Matthews learnt on guitar was The Animals’ classic House of the Rising Sun (“It has that really simple four-chord structure”) and she will be on lead guitar duties with her band on her forthcoming Over Land and Sea tour in the UK. With so many global sounds filling Explorer, surely Matthews will need more than just her guitar? “I’ll be taking a whole host of different instruments on the tour with me,” she confirms. “One of my favourites is an Oud – it’s similar to a lute but much smaller and with fewer frets. It’s steeped in a fascinating history.”MORE

Wikipedia, Website, Twitter

Dhoom Machaao Dhoom was a Hindi programme which used to air on Disney Channel India. It premiered on January 8, 2007, with a one-hour special introductory episode, which had songs by the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs winner, Sanchita Bhattacharya. She performed the song Aisa jadoo in the same episode. The story deals with Priyanka Sethi and the Pink Band, a band which she formed with her friends. The show used to air from Monday to Thursday at 9.30 p.m.(IST). As of April 2008, it has been replaced by another Hindi show called Sanya. Sanya was stopped due to poor ratings and was replaced by Kaarthika.^{[citation needed]}MORE

Mother's Finest is a funk rock band founded in Atlanta, Georgia by Joyce Kennedy and Glenn Murdock in the early 1970s. The group charted with the singles "Fire" (#93 Pop Singles), "Baby Love" (#79 Black Singles, #58 Pop Singles), "Don't Wanna Come Back" (#54 Black Singles), "Love Changes" (#26 Black Singles), and "Piece Of The Rock" in the mid to late 1970s.
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A super-cool act formed in Atlanta in the seventies, Mother's Finest made history as the first multicultural heavy metal band. But more specifically, Mother's Finest is considered the preeminent funk rock group, thanks in part to the woman who as co-lead vocalist sounded like quite the holy roller: Joyce "Baby Jean" Kennedy.

Lifting the spirits of funk rock fans to near-religious heights, Joyce Kennedy would part her lips at a microphone and something like a lightning bolt of soul struck a chord with all who heard her.

"Baby Jean" was born in a tiny Delta town called Anguilla, Mississippi, and was raised in Chicago. Which is where she met the man who would become her husband and co-lead vocalist, Glenn Murdock. Together, Joyce and Glenn embodied the next generation of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, but with a decidedly, hardcore rock 'n roll spirit. Joyce surely delivered the spine-tingling vocals for which Tina was known. But something of Joyce's voice also possessed the honey-drenched warmth of Gladys Knight, too.

Too out-of-the-box for black radio, too black for rock radio, Mother's Finest found -- and absolutely still has -- a loyal, cultish following.
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Las Kellies started in 2005 when three girls met at a gig in Buenos Aires, decided to have a band together and borrowed their friend's amps and instruments. Their third album, Kellies - released by Fire Records and mixed by Dennis Bovell (see The Slits, Madness, Fela Kuti), sees Las Kellies mixing catchy garage sounds with dub and post-punk that has earned 8/10 in NME and 4/5 in BUZZ.

Singing in Spanish, English, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Catalan and French, Las Kellies spent several years ensuring their prominence on the Argentinian music scene. With their first record, Shaking Dog! (2007), they created an irresistible blend of raw, spicy rock that owes as much to old rock and roll as it does the Raincoats, which turned out to be a veritable birthday party of a record.

In 2009 their second independent record, Kalimera, was released. That same year Las Kellies took the new, tighter songs on their first international tour, Rocking the Old World, unleashing their infectious energy onto Europe with their garage rhythms, teasing impertinence and all-out fun live shows that incorporate the dress sense of Devo and the bounciness of ESG.

Las Kellies are: Ceci Kelly, guitar and vocals; Betty Kelly, bass and vocals; Sil Kelly, drums and vocals.

Interview with the band Kellies from Buenos Aires on occasion of their concert at the ladiyfest Berlin.