On This Day 25/06/1991 The Almighty

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On this day, 25 June 1991, Scottish hard rock band The Almighty played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on their Little Lost Somewhere ‘91 tour.

Formed in Glasgow in 1988 the band were signed by Polydor in March 1989 and recorded their first album, Blood, Fire & Love which was released in October to generally positive reviews.

The band were also signed to a long-term songwriting agreement to Chrysalis Music, having been scouted by Dave Massey. In the same year they were voted in third place on the Kerrang! readers poll for Best New Act.

Recording of the Almighty's second studio album, Soul Destruction, began in December 1990 with Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor as producer. The album was released in March 1991 along with the lead single "Free'n'Easy". In February and March the band toured the UK supporting Motörhead and Megadeth.

In June 1991 they embarked on a headline UK tour. The concert at the Town and Country club in London was filmed and released later that year on VHS as Soul Destruction – Live. Later in the year they supported Alice Cooper on a European tour.

Tour Setlist

Intro

Destroyed

Full Force Lovin' Machine

Love Religion

What More Do You Want

Loaded

Praying to the Red Light

Power

Little Lost Sometimes

Bandaged Knees

Sin Against the Light

Devil's Toy

Crucify

Free 'n' Easy

Lay Down the Law

Wild & Wonderful

Encore:

Hell to Pay

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

(Bachman–Turner Overdrive cover)

Encore 2:

You’ve Gone Wild

Bodies

(Sex Pistols cover)

On This Day 25/05/1999 Muse

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On this day, 25 May 1999, rock band Muse played Cardiff’s Coal Exchange as support to Welsh band Feeder.

Formed in 1994, theband consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums, percussion).

After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media.

The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of the radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the magazine NME.

Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-president of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin.

During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries.

John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown.

Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of seven consecutive UK number-one albums.

On This Day 21/05/1995 Kirsty MacColl

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Singer songwriter Kirsty MacColl at Cardiff St David’s Hall on 21 May 1995. Photograph: Rob Watkins

On this day, 21 May 1995, singer and songwriter Kirsty MacColl played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall.

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The daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl. She recorded several pop hits in the 1980s and 1990s, including "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis" and cover versions of Billy Bragg's "A New England" and the Kinks' "Days".

Her first single, "They Don't Know", had chart success a few years later when covered by Tracey Ullman. MacColl also sang on a number of recordings produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite, most notably "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues. Her death in 2000 led to the "Justice for Kirsty" campaign.

In 1995, she released two new singles on Virgin, "Caroline" and a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (a duet with Evan Dando), together with the "best of" compilation Galore.

Galore became MacColl's only album to reach the top 10 in the UK Albums Chart, but neither of the new singles, nor a re-released "Days", made the Top 40. MacColl did not record again for several years; her frustration with the music business was exacerbated by a lengthy case of writer's block. MacColl herself admitted that she was ready to give up her music career and become an English teacher in South America.

On This Day 14/05/1998 Arab Strap

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On this day, 14 May 1998, Scottish indie rock band Arab Strap played Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach. The band had just released their second studio album Philophobia which peaked at #37 in the UK album charts. NME named Philophobia the 17th best album of 1998. In 2012, Fact placed the album at number 91 on its "100 Best Albums of the 1990s" list.

Vocalist and drummer Aidan Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton grew up in Falkirk, Scotland, and bonded over their mutual love for Drag City recording artists such as Will Oldham (who at the time recorded under the name Palace Brothers) and Smog. They began collaborating in 1995, and their debut album, The Week Never Starts Round Here, was released the following year. At this point Gary Miller and David Gow joined the band and became the rhythm section, creating a more dynamic live experience when the band started touring.

Over the course of their ten-year existence, Arab Strap worked with numerous musicians, including Jenny Reeve and Stacey Sievewright, as well as Adele Bethel, who went on to form Sons and Daughters. Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian featured on the album Philophobia, but the Belle & Sebastian album/song "The Boy with the Arab Strap" would later create something of a feud between Moffat and Murdoch.

Arab Strap's marked characteristics include sordid, personal, yet honest, lyrics – described by the NME as "fly on the duvet vignettes". Like fellow Scottish band The Proclaimers, their lyrics are sung in their native Scots tongue. At first essentially an electro-acoustic band with a brooding, spare sound, later albums and gigs saw them develop a fuller sound that drew deeply on both indie and dance music.

On This Day 02/05/1992 Everly Brothers

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On this day, 02/05/1992, legendary singing duo the Everly Brothers played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall.

They began writing and recording their own music in 1956, and their first hit song came in 1957, with "Bye Bye Love", written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The song hit No. 1 in the spring of 1957, and additional hits would follow through 1958, many of them written by the Bryants, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems".

In 1960, they signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", written by the brothers themselves, which was their biggest selling single. The brothers enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1961, and their output dropped off, though additional hit singles continued through 1962, with "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be)" being their last top-10 hit.

The group was highly influential on the music of the generation that followed it. Many of the top acts of the 1960s were heavily influenced by the close-harmony singing and acoustic guitar playing of the Everly Brothers, including the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel.

In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked the Everly Brothers No. 1 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 1986, and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Don was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2019, earning the organization's first Iconic Riff Award for his distinctive rhythm guitar intro to the Everlys' massive 1957 hit "Wake Up Little Susie".

Review - South Wales Echo - Dan O’Neill

On This Day 29/04/1997 Billy Bragg

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On this day, 29 April 1997, singer, songwriter, musician, author and political activist Billy Bragg played Cardiff University.

His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His activism is centred on social change and left-wing political causes.

Bragg released the album William Bloke in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom.") After the ambitious instrumentation of Don't Try This at Home, it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").

Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album Mermaid Avenue in 1998,[33] and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000. The first album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, Mermaid Avenue Vol III, and The Complete Sessions followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial.

A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.

Setlist

She's Got a New Spell

The World Turned Upside Down

(Leon Rosselson cover)

Goalhanger

The Man in the Iron Mask

To Have and to Have Not

Levi Stubbs' Tears

Accident Waiting to Happen

The Boy Done Good

Greetings to the New Brunette

The Saturday Boy

Brickbat

Upfield

Sexuality

Between the Wars

Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

There Is Power in a Union

A New England

(Father's version)

On This Day 26/04/1994 Tori Amos

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On this day, 26 April 1994, American singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on her Under The Pink tour.

She had recently released her second studio album Under The Pink with the album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart on the back of the hit single "Cornflake Girl", and peaked at number 12 in the US.

The singer-songwriter continued to offer piano-driven rock songs dealing with religion, gender, and sexuality. In addition to featuring more cryptic lyrics and experimental song structures, Amos invited in reggae influences on the single "Cornflake Girl", prepared piano on "Bells for Her" by John Philip Shenale, and Debussy-inspired piano lines on "Yes, Anastasia".

Amos performed the Under the Pink tour from February through November 1994, encompassing many of the same stops as on her previous world tour. A limited edition release of the album commemorating the Australian tour included a second disc entitled More Pink, a collection of rare B-sides like "Little Drummer Boy" and a cover version of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You", was issued in November 1994. During this period, she also contributed the song "Butterfly" to the soundtrack for the 1994 movie Higher Learning, as well as a cover of the R.E.M. song "Losing My Religion".

The original track listing included the B-side "Honey", which was left off the album at the last minute. Amos has since voiced great regret for this:

"There were certain songs that were supposed to be on the record that got kicked off. 'Honey' was supposed to be on the record and, in retrospect, I wish it had been. I kicked it off for 'The Wrong Band'. Under the Pink wept when 'Honey' wasn't on, and she still is angry with me about it."

The album was recorded in Taos, New Mexico in a hacienda. The album artwork features several Native American and New Mexican references in the photography. The album is also notable as the last Amos album to feature the production of Eric Rosse as they split that year.

Setlist

Precious Things
Pretty Good Year
Crucify
Leather
Icicle
God
Silent All These Years
The Waitress
Happy Phantom
Bells for Her
Me and a Gun
Baker Baker

Encore 1:
Cornflake Girl
A Case of You

Encore 2:
Past the Mission
Smells Like Teen Spirit

Encore 3:
Mother

On This Day 05/04/1997 Bryan Adams

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On this day, 5 April 1997, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams played the Cardiff International Arena on his 18 Till I Die tour.

Orn November 5, 1959, the Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and photographer his estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him on the list of best-selling music artists.

Adams was the most played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s and has had 25 top-15 singles in Canada and a dozen or more in the US, UK, and Australia.

In June 1996, the album 18 til I Die was released. It contained the songs: "The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You" (number 1 in Canada), "Let's Make a Night to Remember" (number 1 in Canada), ] "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" (number 1 in Canada), and "Star", which is included in the soundtrack of the film Jack.

The album reached number 22 on the UK charts while also reaching number two in Australia and number four in Canada. The album was less successful in the US only reaching number 31 on the Billboard 200, but was certified platinum in the United States by the RIAA. 18 til I Die was certified three times platinum in Canada and Australia and two times platinum in the UK.

In November 1996, "I Finally Found Someone" was released, which was recorded by Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand as part of the soundtrack of Streisand's self-directed film The Mirror Has Two Faces. The song was nominated for an Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. It peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In November 1997, Adams penned new lyrics to the Jean-Jacques Goldman song "Puisque tu pars" also written that month, remade as Let's Talk About Love recorded by Celine Dion.