LILYPAD GETS AN AUDIOLIFE

The nice folks at Audiolife have an artist-friendly, widget-based webstore that seems perfect for our needs. If you'd like to see a specific custom collection, please drop us a note. We are able to deliver on-demand CD orders in full color. Visit our widget at Lilypad's store.

Cath has the honor of contributing an essay to ‘Juvenes’ (To Hell with Publishing), Kevin Cummins’ long awaited book of photographs from his Joy Division archive.

The collection is presented by To Hell With Publishing and designed by FUEL and comes as a limited edition. Within you will find many previously unseen pictures of the band between 1977 and 1980, the year of   Ian Curtis' death.

Expanding on the visual narrative are specially commissioned essays from Curtis' daughter Natalie, and from Ian Rankin, David Peace, Nick Lezard, Alan Hempsall, Pat Nevin, Matthew Higgs and Cath Carroll.

Date of Publication: 1st November 2007. To Hell With Publishing can be contacted at info@tohellwithpublishing.com. Kevin, one of the UK’s premier photographers of rock and popular culture wrote a very illuminating piece for The Guardian. It followed the passing of Factory's Tony Wilson and focused on the release of Joy Division bio film Control. Here's the link.

 

IN MEMORIAM

 

RICH CARROLL

We are deeply saddened by the death of Richard "Butch" Carroll who was injured Sunday night, February 22, 2009 after losing control of his motorcycle only to die the next day (Mon 23Feb) in hospital. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Cathy Beaudoin, Butch's partner in life and business for 23 years. An unfathomable loss.

Those that attended our 2001 SXSW performance were treated to an outstanding rhythm section with Butch on bass and Dan Massey on drums. Dan introduced me to Butch in the mid-70s at a jam at his parent's house. They'd played together since kids in drum corps.

Collectively, we had over twenty five years of friendship invested for that St. Patty's Day gig. Probably as close to a family outing as gigs get. A friend helping a friend, who's helping a friend help his friend (and wife). The best way I can describe The Cath Carroll Band SXSW Edition.

So each St. Pat's, please join us in remembering Rich Carroll, our friend, bassist and musical brethren, forever dubbed simply Butch. A tip of the glass to a true renaissance man. RIP  -KK

 

TONY WILSON

Anthony H.

To Tony with love.

Your spirit will shine on like it always has done. Thank you for bringing the world to us and giving it away, for your vision and audaciousness, for ignoring the advice of your accountant, for never a dull moment, for the sublime and the ridiculous and for having the grace to be human in public.

With love and gratitude to his family for sharing him with us. -Cath

JOHN PEEL

OUR UNCLE IN THE ETHER 1939-2004 BY CATH CARROLL

This sweetly grouchy music obsessive helped raise me- and thousands like me- and as often happens, it’s not something you realize until that someone or something is gone. You’re left trying to identify a feeling of loss more visceral than you had expected.

Many have suggested the death of  John Peel is like losing a member of the family- but it’s really not the same, is it? So is it like losing a friend? No, different yet. Is it sentiment for the fading symbols of our youth, like seeing the last Routemaster bus lurch into the sunset? No, there’s nothing symbolic about it. I think it is more like losing a part of the self, so deeply had Peel’s presence been woven into our lives.

Over the years, so many of us felt, or imagined ourselves to be both outcasts and prisoners of middle suburbia, screaming inside, tormented by unremarkable comforts and modest routine, Marks & Spencers cakes on Sunday and well-heated single-decker local buses. He befriended us in our isolation, a guiding, avuncular voice during our most desperate years. Often, he changed the course of our lives and our loves, how we saw the world, how we saw ourselves. We found out, through him, that there were millions like us. John Peel was our community, our common language and reference point, a great teacher. He presumed we were all discerning, all equal, and “your Uncle John”, as he mockingly referred to himself, treated us with a gruff and unquestionably genuine affection. We loved him back.

We loved him for the little things too, that gloriously exasperated way he’d put emphasis on random spoken words, his passion for the peculiar, the obstreperous and sometimes even the downright lovely. However, he was not always a tolerant man, as some of the daytime Radio One DJs of Aulde would attest. What’s more, you wouldn’t expect him to have had time for death. Can’t you hear him? “I received a demo from DEATH this morning, and apparently I’m supposed to give it a LISTEN although really, there are more PRESSING things to attend to, like this little gem from PASTRY FATE, formerly the Uxbridge ALL Stars- and you were wondering what happened to them, yeeees, you were, weren’t you, mmmn?”

I left the UK a few days before the end of the Eighties. Whenever I visited home, there was never a question that he would be anywhere but THERE, muttering away. Now, amidst this feeling of loss is an irrational feeling of surprise. It never occurred to me that he might leave. How could that be? Peelie was always about being mortal and fallible. As long as I can remember, he was a self-proclaimed old man (although when he was mocking his aged condition, back in the late Seventies, he was younger than I am now. Hmph.). However, he existed for us in a disembodied state, a voice in our heads, so it seems cruel and unusual that he would be made incorporeal twice over.

Lord love him, Half Man Half Guru that he was. How he would cringe at being thus anointed. But he was our guide, he would encourage us without letting us get too full of ourselves. If you must know, John Peel was the key to the ruination of my academic life. If he alone didn’t inspire me to head out, degreeless, into what an interfering bank manager, unctuously scandalized, referred to as “ a world of crooks, lowlives, charlatans and queers,” ***  he had certainly whispered in the ear of the one who went with me.

Now, there are times when I kick myself for turning my back on a completely FREE further education, but all I have to do is remember the first night we all heard Feargal Sharkey’s desperate vibrato calling out across the darkened Irish Sea, or remember the sound of Steel Pulse at a Rock Against Racism concert in a Moss Side park, or hear the voice of Mark E Smith carping through his 2,467th Peel session…then, yes, then I remember exactly how I felt , and why. And I know for sure where I would have gone, had he not been there. I can trace a direct line from John Peel to so many people I hold dear, to many inglorious mistakes, to many moments of joy ( hearing him introduce, then play, your own record- could there be anything more complete, sisters and brothers?). To having the wit and courage to step outside of the box. Now, there were times when I might have stepped back in it again, but the box would never be the same. Eventually, the box ceased to be. Thank you John Peel, and Godspeed to you. Ah, Fellow Listeners, weren’t we always One.

*** He meant the music business. Boy, was THAT a letdown!

 

Mark Whitby, DJ for the John Peel-inspired radio streamer - Dandelion Radio, included four Lilypad exclusive Miaow tracks. All restored from original cassettes, Inglorious Miltons, Viva Che, Angel Spit and Marry Me Dusty are streaming from Mark's Nov 09 and Jan 10 shows.

The Priceless Innuendo demo restoration is nearing completion after a long refinishing nears its final leg. Then what? Glad you asked! The Priceless Restorations collection will be available for free download and streaming via our website all of February '10.

If you need your analogue-hiss and warbly-transport fix, this may be of interest to you? And if you are a Miaow fan, this is the Factory album that never-was collected from demos intended for a proper studio session.

Brilliant stuff - sounding really great. Will feature all three tracks in my November Dandelion Radio show. Good luck with the rest of the restoration project - a timeless band. -Mark Whitby (via email)

In tribute to Tony Wilson, Communications: A Factory Box Set will be a 10,000 pressed, limited-edition release, spanning the entire Factory history.

Song selection by Jon Savage.

Includes liner notes written by Paul Morley and art by Peter Saville.

And the Cath Carroll connection? Disc 3 includes Miaow's, When It All Comes Down. Disc 4 contains the Martin Phillips' 1991 remix of Moves Like You, featured in the Factory video directed by the Douglas Brothers, conveniently located below for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks to James Nice at LTM for the heads up and all the work coordinating things for us, too.

 

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