Jeeni Blog

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Victorious Festival - Colour of the Jungle

/ By Freya Devlin
Victorious Festival - Colour of the Jungle

Colour of the Jungle are a five-piece rock band, performing at this years Victorious Festival. The bands captivating songwriting and energy has resonated with audiences from Munich to the South coast of England. The group of five friends jammed for fun before moving to the studio, where they soon discovered their true potential and recorded their debut EP The Jungle Book. Their catchy-but-emotional, approachable-yet-raw sound is built upon sexy bass-driven rhythms and edgy instrumentation. Creating music that sticks in the head and the heart.

Following the release of their debut EP The Jungle Book, Colour of the Jungle dropped ‘Steel Tray’. A summer anthem that captures the complex bass lines of John Harris, confident drum beats of Dan Fiford, rhythmic riff and leads of Joe Costello and Brendan McVeagh, and intriguing lyrics of Jack Evans. Inspired by iconic rock and roll greats such as Kings of Leon, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Growlers, Colour of the Jungle are sculpting their own identity of modern garage rock.

To date Colour of the Jungle have played many festivals. Including Victorious, Wickham, Street Party and Hayling Island Kite Festival. Along with playing many events and venues from their hometown Portsmouth, all around Hampshire, right through to London and also venturing out to Munich… you could say there are truly creating a stir in the jungle. The Pompey band continue to make a name for themselves, gaining an impressive reputation with their live shows. Winning “Best Local Band’ in the 2021 Southsea Folk Awards.

Colour of the Jungle at Victorious Festival 2021

Victorious Festival is the UK’s biggest metropolitan festival and returns to Southsea Seafront this this August Bank holiday weekend (27th-29th August). With an excellent line-up including Madness, The Streets, Royal Blood and many more. COTJ will perform a set including music from their new EP ‘Monkey Mind’ on the Seaside Stage at Victorious Festival. Nick Courtney, will present the Seaside Stage, showcasing the best up and coming talent from Portsmouth and surrounding areas. See cruise liners soar past while watching the next big thing.

Catch Colour of the Jungle on the Seaside Stage on Saturday 28th August 2021 at the Victorious Festival, Portsmouth.

Or check out Colour of the Jungle’s showcase here: Colour of the Jungle | Showcase | JEENI

#independent #victorious #festival #portsmouth #jeeni #colourofthejungle #showcase

01
Jul

Zeeteah Massiah - ‘Bad Guy’ Single Review

Zeeteah’s newest release is a genius reggae reimagining of Billie Eilish’s breakthrough hit, ‘Bad Guy’.  Jeeni ambassador and long-term supporter, Zeeteah Massiah has now provided Jeeni with 21 individual pieces of her unique brand of jazz and reggae, all of which are available at her showcase. Her husband, Paul Caplin acts as both songwriter and producer for Zeeteah and the two of them have released two albums together, ‘Juice’ and ‘Maybe Tomorrow’.   A certain level of musical depth and understanding is needed to undergo a stylistic transformation of an existing song. To some, it’s merely a process of downgrading the intensity and presence of the piece to a slow, acoustic setting. However, in a lot of these cases, the essence and arrangement of the pieces are largely unchanged. On the other end of that spectrum of effort and passion, you’ll find artists like Zeeteah Massiah who listened to the ‘Old Town Road’ dethroner and heard a hidden stylistic potential held in Billie’s hit that she knew would effortlessly make sense to any listener.  Zeeteah set out to not just echo Billie’s Grammy-winning hit in a slightly different accent, but instead, wanted to transpose it into a completely different musical language. The result is a rejuvenated and refreshing take on ‘Bad Guy’ that has a vivid coat of Caribbean-styled paint applied to just about every element of the source material. Where the original was dark, somber yet playful, Zeeteah’s keeps just the playfulness for her rendition. The slow, creeping tempo compliments the lyrics and performance from Zeeteah in a way that could make you think that this might actually be the original. This almost sinister embrace of the villainous title is enhanced by the harmony that dips in and out of jazzy minor chords that keep the listener in a subtle state of unsettlement, and curiosity.   As is to be expected from Zeeteah and her artistic proclivities, bright and colourful instrumentation commands the tone of this arrangement. Being the first component heard; a classic reggae drum roll makes the genre-shift immediately apparent. This Caribbean staple is then joined by its good friends; short offbeat guitar stabs and deep, bouncy basslines. In this introduction, we also hear a brilliant alteration from Billie and Finneas’ original arrangement. The quirky, recognisable synth melody heard after Billie’s isolated ‘Duh!’ is instead taken up by a muted trumpet, heard before the vocals even enter. This is a clever embrace of the fact that Zeeteah’s choice of cover is of course a colossal hit, so there’s no sense in shying away from its most recognisable moments. That melody is also expanded on later for a phenomenal trumpet solo towards the end of the cover that acts as a sort of replacement for the sudden shift in pace, heard at the end of the original.  Considered a part of Billie Eilish’s brand as both a performer and a person, her vocals are often intentionally sleepy and low-energy, something that Zeeteah decided not to adopt for her interpretation. The vocal performance here is mischievous and rebellious to the core as opposed to Billie’s more disinterested and indifferent approach. Zeeteah also uses next to no effects on her voice compared to the first version, which is just as well because it would be a shame to distract from the raw talent and personality held in Zeeteah’s performance on ‘Bad Guy’.  This task of reinventing one of the biggest hits from the last 10 years was a tall order, however, unsurprisingly, Zeeteah Massiah’s ‘Bad Guy’ is nothing but a triumph. 

19
May

Five Great Songs About Real Places, by Wendy King

  A songwriter finds many things to write about; emotions, events, people, and even places. Some of the finest songs of all time have been written with somewhere in mind, a place that touches the soul of the person with the pen.Mull of Kintyre, written by former Beatle Paul McCartney, is an example of this. It’s written about a part of Scotland the singer had a home and is a reference to feeling at home when he’s there. West Coast punk band Rancid, perhaps at the other end of the songwriting scale, had a song called Olympia WA on their album and Out Come The Wolves, written as much about New York as the Washington state capital.Those songs might not immediately trip off the tongue, but they are strong efforts in terms of writing about places. It isn’t always cities either – Gainsville resident Bacon James recently won a songwriting competition for a song about the Santa Fe river, called Lost and Found (At the Santa Fe). It drew emotions he experienced from the river with an actual place, in much the same way as McCartney did, and as many others have done about different places. Often, it isn't the place that is the full subject of the song, but how that place made the writer feel.This is a theme you’ll see running through some of the entries in our round-up of five great songs about places. Christie Road – Green Day (click to play) Green Day might be a global phenomenon now, a rock band that sells out arenas, but in 1994, pre-Dookie, they were just three angry, disaffected kids looking for an outlet. Back then, Bille-Jo Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt used to hang out at a place called Christie Road, doing what a band named after marijuana would be expected to do. Christie Road is an ode to their wasted days, their safe place before stardom came calling. Ewan MacColl - Dirty Old Town (click to play) The first song on our list made famous by another artist is Dirty Old Town by Ewan MacColl. It’s written about Salford in England, an industrial town that was once in the shadow of towers belching out smoke thanks to its place on the Manchester Ship Canal. MacColl wrote about his life there and finding love and an oasis of tranquillity, amongst the smoke and dirt. The song was later recorded by The Pogues, to critical acclaim. The White Stripes - Hotel Yorba (click to play) When you think of songs about Detroit and locations in Motor City, you most likely think of Kid Rock or Eminem, but the duo The White Stripes produced an iconic two-minute ode to a hotel along the I-75, the Hotel Yorba. It is now subsidized housing, but Jack wrote the song after hearing, incorrectly, that the Beatles once stayed there. Whilst there’s not a lot of emotion behind the location, it is a demonstration that a song doesn’t have to be written about a famous place at all. Billy Edd Wheeler - Jackson (click to play) Johnny Cash was a great storyteller, and whilst one of his most famous songs is a story about a place, he didn’t write it. Jackson, possibly written about Jackson, Tennessee, was actually penned by Billy Edd Wheeler and performed by the Kingston Trio. Cash made it his own, singing as a duo with June Carter. Jackson serves as a place of sin and iniquity, offering the married protagonist respite from what feels like a loveless marriage, the exact opposite of Johnny’s lifelong union with June. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama (click to play) We’ve mentioned Kid Rock already in this article, and he’s going to get a mention again, but not for songwriting. He helped catapult Sweet Home Alabama, a rock classic, back up the charts in 2007 when he dropped All Summer Long, his tribute to growing up in Michigan, that borrowed the Lynyrd Skynyrd song’s structure. As for the original, it is rather more controversial than even the infamous Robert James Ritchie – it’s written as a retort to Neil Young’s anti-slavery song, Alabama, and seeks to defend the state’s people from being tarnished by the darkness of its history. Now that is a little more contentious than signing about a hotel! Have you written a great song about a place that's significant to you? Then upload it on Jeeni for everyone to enjoy. Who knows, you might just have a solid-gold hit on your hands! Several of Jeeni's most popular artists have done exactly that, including the award-winning Richard Murray. (click to play) This item was written by Wendy King for jeeni.com  

23
Jun

The Majestic at The Queens Hotel Southsea

COMPETITION TIME WIN FREE ACCESS FOR A GROUP OF 6  The Queens Hotel Southsea Sunday 13th June 2021. The Majestic is a Roots Rock Reggae band hailing from London. Taking some of the liveliest parts of reggae, from an eclectic set of influences, and with a diversity of origin comes an infectious blend of British and Jamaican music. Formed in the early 1980s by band leader Baba Ras, with its initial success leading to a tour supporting Misty in Roots, and culminating in the Stonehenge Festival of ‘83 alongside Hawkwind. The band then went on hiatus until 2011, when they returned to the UK scene for a second time, racking up an impressive three hundred-plus shows in their first three years. Bit by bit, a gradual change in line up culminated in the six-piece performing today. With a traditional riddim section mixed with rocky guitar leads and saxophone hooks, the Majestic promise a wild spectacle. Whilst a regular at Boomtown and Falmouth Reggae Festival, the band are a familiar face on the wider UK festival circuit, and is intimate with venues such as Brixton’s Hootananny, Brixton Jamm and The Fox And Firkin, frequently playing reggae hotbeds in London and beyond. Currently, the final touches on the band’s second album, Roots and Reality, are being made, being released for summer 2020. The Majestic can now usually be found touring the length and breadth of the UK and further, sharing its own diverse brand of reggae and bringing party vibes everywhere they go. Love, peace and a message of compassion and unity is what The Majestic spread! Uniting their fellow humans through music is an absolute must! Additionally, The Majestic will be performing at the Summer Garden Party hosted at The Queens Hotel Southsea along with Emiliyah and the MightyZ Allstars, Sunday 13th June 2021. How to win: All you have to do is like and share this blog post and we will enter you into the draw to be announced Saturday Night 12 June 2021 at 8pm.  Full Details of event can be found at: https://book.events/queensgardenparty/2021-06-13/30015 #funky #upbeat #uplifting #themajestic #blogs #reggaemusic #band #livemusic #jamacianmusic #guitar #saxophone