Not enough people know Anni Rossi, the singer/ songwriter/ violonist. She plays with her instrument like you’d play the guitar, indeed, she isn’t scared to strum the string, making it a perfect tool for RNR.

Meet with Anni

a place (I won’t name for some personal reason) in Williamsburg

On Friday night, following an evening of drinking cheap beer with colleagues, I joined my new roommate, Andy, a New-Yorker and member of an anarchist organization called The Base. I knew that he knew the place where I needed to be. It was his friend’s birthday, and their musician friends were playing for her. Those kinds of friends are very precious, between tours, they will certainly animate your greatest parties.

That said, the gigs were very pleasant. First line, a guitarist and a drummer nostalgic of Kurt , second, a band from the past future, I mean like the people during the eighties pretending to be from the future. ( I’m not sure if you know what I mean, I’m stoned.) Anyway, those guys freaked me out, they were really good, but I just couldn’t take it, it took me back to … a night in Budapest, it was November, We were waiting for the bus in Nyugati station, I was wearing somebody else’s hat and he loved it… I was mentally preparing for the long tricky way back home (since I live in the extremities of Bushwick, just on the border with Bedstuy…) when I heard the name of Anni Rossi, which surprised me for the reason I mentioned before. So I asked around: what about Annie? She’s here? Really??? Where? (Turned out she was there all the time.) Is she going to perform? She’s great, isn’t she? I was, let’s say, suddenly a little overwhelmed and turned straight back to shake her hand: Are you Anni Rossi? Yes, and what’s your name? Line. Line who? Line ** ******. Curious and nice, she seemed unfamiliar with this kind of devotion, yes because I confessed my passion for one of her song, it was playing in my headphones in Thailand, Scotland, and on various trips here and there.

I asked her insistingly to play it, she said she’d try as she didn’t bring her violon (maybe she was upset with it), that night she preferred an electric banjo, accompaigned by the classic bass and drum combo. The concert was like a Rob, Ryan and Anni family reunion. Her belly button proudly displayed, she performed with a nonchalant attitude and voice like a cool Cold War Kid. Sipping her whiskey in between songs, she took it slow, inspiring air, expiring it, creating beautifully contained bluesy waves.

And finally the way back home wasn’t that bad at all, walking with magical bubbles in my head. Anni Rossi is just Loveli, check it out!

*

Bushwick

is located in the center of Brooklyn, where I live. It is full of brownish little 2 storey houses with flat rooftops and old factories transformed into lofts. It wasn’t such a nice neighbourhood (criiiiime) a couple of years ago, but as the rental price is cheaper than in other shiny and trendy places such as Williamsburg (headquarter of the hipster community), a lot of young and poor artists/ professionals like me are living in there. In my street seems to live many repented, retired gangsters, so it’s kind of quiet, apart from loud conversations and tooting at 2 am.

The mentioned neighbouring Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant) is the land of heavyweight rappers and boxers. For example Mike Tyson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but the chess world champion, Bobby Fischer also lived here.

Aretha Franklin in Punk, Sometimes with Nick Cave

Shilpa Ray is an Indian American singer-songwriter. She got Indian classical music education, and learnt to play harmonium and piano. In her childhood it had been forbidden her to listen to pop music. Her first pop experience was Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. Then she has taken to music of Velvet Underground, Cramps, Stooges and Joy Division. After her bands „Beat The Devil” and „Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers” were split, she toured with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as a backup singer and supporting act. Then she recorded a version of Pirate Jenny featuring Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for compilation album „Son of Rogue Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.” (It was co-produced by Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes’ bandmate in the band „P”, Johnny Depp.) Her latest EP It’s All Self Fellatio was released by Nick Cave’s own label in 2013.

Shilpa Ray in Palisades, Brooklyn

It’s back home that Shilpa Ray closed her 6 weeks US tour. And the gig was as stunning as the character herself. She plays harmonium (a kind of beautiful piano/accordeon instrument) that fits perfectly with her style. Wavy hair and open mouth, her cat voice hiss and miaows through the sound system sitting in front of me and I let my body speak with the alive machine.

Shilpa, I’d like to say that you’re a sort of hero. You possessed your public by spreading your healthy, angry, frustrated feeling of shame. Your natural talent is an inspiration to all the unloved ones. So what else do we need? You transform your own emotions into a real touchable and touching music. The tribality of it all, sustained by heavy beats proves that you can deal with being rough and powerful. The female fans say it surely, you inspire and transpire feminity.

John, the professional pedal steel guitar/keyboard player melts with her. He says, when playing he tries to inverse the melody making his music complementary to other’s, and that’s the magic trick of being a professional artist. This 6 weeks tour has been tough for the band, but finishing it at home just makes it seem all so smooth. Indeed, John lost himself on stage and that’s how he knows it’s been a good night!

Oooo crap, Shilpa has to fly away and there are so many things I will never know about the artist, though, after having heard what I heard I ‘ll always remember her melodic inside.

People! Do yourself a pleasurable favor and listen to It’s all self fellatio, you’ll see, it’s all so goooood.

Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

Line is our brand new fellow in the RNR666 team.

She is from France, but will move to New York soon,
and will do big bites to the Big Apple of course.
Her first article was sent from Santiago de Compostela. Enjoy

from the cases of the annoying little girl

with the shortest interview of the history of humanity

The good wind brought me here in Santiago de Compostela on the 24th of July, the night before the Galician National day (even the Spanish king is present!). This region is the north-western corner of Spain, and it is certainly full of independentists, people strongly attached to their identity and language, how nice!

Cause even though we are in Spain, Galicia is not as warm as you could imagine, and that’s fine enough, I love a little breeze in summer nights. So here I am, after having been offered some fruity white wine and illicit substance, fireworks worthy of a war bombing, and MUSICA. Woooow a big stage and I can hear…wait a minute… that’s…ROCK’N’ROLL. Oooo yeaaah. I can see from far away a tiny woman, ginger short hair, blackly dressed like a proper rocker, perfectly screaming with her hoarse voice, what a talent! She is surrounded by 3 nice stylish men, guitar, bass, percussion, and she rules them the way it should be done.

I get to the first row (thanks to my many years of sneaking experience), and she’s not that small anymore, rather impressive with her strong tattooed arms, and it has its effect, girls are going craAazyyy around here. This is not any woman we can tell. I can’t understand all the words expelled through her mouth but my friend Xemma from AGAL (Associaçom Galega da Língua, id est Association for Galician Language) tells me that she’s a feminist slash, activist slash, independentist, and it shows, ooo… interesting. After playing pop rock’n’roll, she sings a lullaby that everybody in the public knows by heart, this is a SHOW. And among that, other little popular tricks, she adapts some traditional song in Galician version, e.g. Guantanamera. But the best part was about to come… BLUES!  Aaaa blues, how I love women’s blues and she definitely has the guts (and the sunglasses) for it! Power and Perfection are the two P’s coming to my mind while dancing as if I was on stage myself (by the way, my neck still hurts from all the headbanging).

Tovább / Read more »