Up to his knees in mud, Peter Moore discovers that The Duke Spirit are still playing rock music the way that it is supposed to be played

There is little better to raise the pulse than a big, thick guitar riff. Now, I am thinking of the kind of thing that used to exist before Thatcherism, when shaggy haired men in skinny denims and unbuttoned shirts used to dispatch a flurry of notes that would cause the fillings to shake in your teeth and your eyes to water as if you were at a funeral.

Apart from a handful of notable Americans, the majority of today’s musicians seem to have forgotten the importance of such a musical device. We get pastiches of pop and this, and rock and that – dance and rave mix with disco and rap and whilst the gloomy indie drudge is incessant, the riff seems to have become somewhat maligned.

This is why, stood knee deep in a field of mud about three weeks ago, I was glad to discover The Duke Spirit. Clad in miserable tight leather jackets, the engine room of the band was equipped with two guitars, a bass and a drummer, the kind of thing of which a traditionalist like Noel Gallagher would utterly approve. In front of this was Leila Moss, a hopelessly attractive blond parody of what Baby Spice might have looked like if she’d been raised in the north of England, inhabiting a role at the front of a rock and roll band that was always going to draw glib comparisons with Nico.

Still, as the rain held off, The Duke Spirit proved to be about the best thing I saw during the weekend’s music. Moss, with her ballerina’s gestures and cheerful conversation, whipped a half drunken crowd into action and behind her the band chopped away at their instruments like woodcutters in the forest – finding just enough groove, just enough edge and throwing in a few damnably good riffs.

So, thanks to The Duke Spirit for rekindling my hope for the British rock bands, the majority of which seem to have got lost recently on the musical highway, caught in odd musical alleyways that distract them from the essential characteristics of a good rock song.

Tags: BBC, Digital TV, Music by Peter Moore
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Another north eastern gem

Elbow are yet another glittering band to emerge from the north east of England, and last night, in a career that has more resembled a marathon than a sprint, they scooped one of the biggest prizes in the British music industry: the Mercury Music Prize.

Congratulations to Elbow, you can find out much more about their music by clicking here. In the meantime, here is one of the songs taken from their award winning album, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid.’

Tags: Digital TV, Music by Peter Moore
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Having survived the rain, the wind and the mud, Peter Moore muses as to why British people are drawn to muddy music festivals

Like it or not, us Brits just have to put up with the fact that we are no longer one of the global big boys. In the event of Russia or China sending up a few scuds, or the Indians taking a fancy to skittling us with some carpet bombs, the best we can hope for is hiding behind the skirts of the Americans.

These days we gather our self respect from rather different quarters. Because whilst the mines of Wales have been trumped by Middle Eastern oil, English factories have been squashed by the Chinese and Scottish shipyards have fallen empty with the emergence of Eastern European ports, there are few countries in this galaxy or any other that can keep pace with the British music scene.

I’ve just returned to my clean, cheerfully furnished office from the deepest throes of the English countryside, where all weekend the mud sat around my ankles, the wind ripped through my ears and the rain collided viciously against my face. That is to say, that I have just returned to London after a music festival.

What is it, you might ask, that compels otherwise sane individuals to such levels of insanity as a stint at a festival with 30,000 others dangerously close to the beginning of autumn. Some tents flooded, others collapsed, a number of people were hospitalised with hypothermia, mobile telephones faltered by the thousand, and those who forgot their Wellington boots have now got trench foot.

Indeed, by the time I left our ramshackle campsite yesterday it resembled a cross between an African refugee camp and the Third Battle of Ypres. I half expected to see Field Marshall Haig on the way out asking me ‘how it went.’

The reason we Brits put ourselves through such horrid conditions is quite simple: we love our music and we are passionate about it. Over the past half century we have given the world a million bands from the Shadows to the Klaxons and for all their cultural superiority the Yanks have never come up with a band that is half as good as The Beatles.

Indeed, the British musical legacy only begins with our bands. Just think of the dance music, the funk and the punk, there are singer songwriters by the bucket load, we’ve more indie bands than we have NHS doctors and the urban music scene has gone off in an atomic mushroom.

All of these wonderful things have sprouted, quite literally, from the minds of those that are willing to spend a weekend of their lives getting drenched in a field. If you think of it, music festivals combine many of the things that us Brits hold dear: our unpredictable weather, vast quantities of drink, silly dancing and music that is fit to rock the world.

Tags: Digital TV, Music by Peter Moore
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The seven essential ingredients

As musical styles fuse and merge and hybrid genres emerge, it can become ever more difficult to draw out the common elements of a perfect song. But, like brewing the perfect pint, manufacturing an irresistible sports car or brewing the perfect pot of tea, writing a flawless rock song requires the presence of a number of essential ingredients. If I am going to be precise, then you require the presence of seven vital components.

Firstly and indisputably, you need to have at least one electric guitar, one electric bass guitar, a set of drums and a vocalist. You can argue at length on the specific equipment required (Gibson vs. Fender guitars, Marshall amps?), but it is clear that you will at least need to be plugged in to a power source, the sound has to be amplified and the vocalist needs to be behind a microphone. Some left-field thinking would suggest that keyboards are also an essential element, I’d disagree. Although the keyboard can augment the sound and add to the melody, it is hardly ‘essential’ and is better considered as ‘optional.’ A little like adding sugar to tea perhaps.

Secondly you need a riff. If this appears as technical jargon to some, then it is better explained as a repetitive sequence of single notes played on a guitar (and/or the bass). Just think of Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin, Day Tripper by The Beatles or Walk this Way by Aerosmith. The wandering bass riff from the White Stripes Seven Nation Army is one that has become popular in the last few years and has been oddly adopted by Italian football fans, another is the echoing sea-saw riff featured at the start of The Raconteur’s Level.

Thirdly is the need for a big chorus, a towering crescendo to follow the whimsical verses. Perhaps you could nominate Meatloaf’s Like a Bat Out of Hell as an example of an imperious chorus, or Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. Oddly, here the meaning of the lyrics takes second place in importance to the general sound and impact. Some of the biggest choruses in history have been filled with trite lyrics (think of Coldplay’s Speed of Sound), but work due to power of their delivery. If you get the chorus wrong though, the whole song may as well be assigned to the rubbish heap.

Fourthly, a good simple melody is essential for the chorus and verses, usually alternating between the two. This is usually when the hidden success of a song lies. If you have a gift for brain-sapping melodies like Kurt Cobain or John Lennon, then the rest usually falls neatly into place. Just watch a copy of Klaxons Golden Skans if you are looking for an example of an irresistible melody.

Fifthly is a guitar solo. This can come in various guises, from the Slash-from-Guns-and-Roses approach which sees a flurry of pentatonic notes, to something more minimal as found with John Frusciante’s efforts on The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Give it Away which is little more than a fuzzy collection of single notes. This is the part of the song where the musicians and their music are at their narcissistic best, throwing their heads, bodies and instruments around in defiance of Isaac Newton.

Sixthly is the mastery of the loud/quiet aesthetic: a quiet musing verse is followed by a ravenous grandmother-gobbling chorus full of fizz and fuzz. Nirvana were the band that brought this technique into prominence during the early 1990s with their song Smells Like Teen Spirit, and it has been repeated to rippling success by bands ever since. Just think of The Raconteurs and Steady as She Goes or Blur’s Song 2. Of course Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and company managed without it in the sixties and seventies, but in the early twenty first century, it has become an fundamental part of the mix.

Finally, dream up some repetitive lyrics. This is rock music: it is supposed to be brash, bold and capable of bashing you on the head with a bottle of lager, it is not whimsical or musing. That is much better left to the Elliott Smith’s, Bob Dylan’s and Nick Drake’s of our times. The listener needs something that is going to grab them by the earlobes and drag them over to the speaker. It doesn’t matter if the lyrics are as emotionally deep as a puddle, or if they go ‘WooHoo’ (ask Blur), the most important thing is that they bore their way into the skull and stay there for good.

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Digital television offers an array of music channels, including additional coverage from festivals across the UK, extended BBC sessions and a host of different genres. Find out more about digital television and the realities of the digital switchover today.

Tags: Digital TV, Music by Peter Moore
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