Late to the discussion but, I'm learning Welsh. Like Datblygu, SFA, John ac Alun, Bryn Fon, Brigyn, etc. My kids tell me I'm listening to Indie - sounds more like rock / folk rock to me (depends on the group - J&A can sound very country, look up Hei, Anita.)
rock music or the lack of it in welsh music
Right, Dave!
Shannon, I only just now saw this thread, and wanted to reply. As for Welsh rock bands, there are The Manic Street Preachers, and Stereophonics, to name just a couple. There are more
how many speak welsh here?
Exactly.
u like levon helms from the band? im confusedhe sings in welsh?
Diolch for the heads up Maeyc....Bookmarked it....listening now
Yes they are pretty good. There seems to be a bubble of good Welsh (from Wales rather than in Welsh) music appearing at the moment, two faves of mine are Klaus Kinski from the north who put on quite a show, and Bomb the Sun from the south who sound right in your face and rock excellently.There are plenty more and I recommend the Adam Walton show on BBC radio Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/adamwalton/ This is how I keep abreast of things.
This is an old discussion but... here is my favorite current Welsh Rock band. WE//ARE//ANIMAL are from North Wales and just released a new smash up single yesterday on iTunes. Here is the link for a crazy psychadelic video the lads had put together for the song. If you like the song please head over to iTunes to get it for yourself. Keep Welsh Rock bands alive.Here also is the link to iTunes. http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/we-are-animal/id352513203 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJa-j6W1bjo
HiMusic sceen in Wales is on the up with many top venues in Cardiff and Newport , and with bands like Moterhead and The Damned and The Beatles once played Abergavenny friend of mine seen them there , good concert , despite John Lennon having a punch up with man in crowd .Have a great day all.Stu.
Can't beat the Stereophonics for a true sound of Wales 
Thanks for the update Gareth. You're up early over there.
The link's broken for your Lisa Gwilym's link as I tried it, so thought I'd bring an update back with me hope it's of same linkage you had. Lisa Gwilym's programme link
I may not have grasped the tilt of this discussion but I'll stick my tuppenyworth in anyway.The Welsh language is a bit of a millstone for the Welsh musician - I am born and bred here but I don't speak the language. I feel that the minority of Welsh speakers, at least here in the north, have some sort of superiority (inferiority ) complex and regard non Welsh speakers (native or not ) as somehow beneath them. The fact that they have appropriated a specifically English speaking musical form i.e. rock and roll and shoehorned their very un-R&R language into it seems bypassed their irony chip.I draw attention to the undeliably great Datblygu, who were the first Welsh group that made me prick up my ears and listen because they appeared to me to be attempting a genuine contemporary Welsh musical outlook. I still have very little idea of what they were singing about but it doesn't really matter. Something about the vocal delivery transcends language and I can "understand" where they are coming from. I remember John Peel being quite taken with them and they made several sessions for his radio programme. Datblygu's take was similar to the Krautrock groups of the '70's who wanted to take the radical essence of American rock and make it their own, which they did.The problem with "Welsh music" as I see it is that the language takes precedence over the music. If they sing the phone book in Welsh then that is better than, say, John Cale. The Welsh music scene is a cultural cul-de-sac with very few exceptions. This is not for want of people trying but coming up against the ultra conservative establishment does little other than put genuine avant travellers off to seek richer pastures in the English speaking world.That is why a lot of Welsh stop singing in Welsh.
Well, I kind of agree with you there but it's not all as hopeless as you fear. The best place to start looking is www.ankstmusik.com . Here you will find the cream of contemporary Welsh rock with attitude rather than simply all the notes in the right place and no spark.
your remark reminds me of the greatful dead live in europe 72 album cover
helloim behind in reading al thisi thought levon or was it manuel killed himself??
great thats why i moved here , going to see a bar room band is like buying a neil young album theres always somthing good
here in new orleans where the bars dont close gigs start late , a three night stand by the meters , at the house of blues doesnt start in the smaller down the parrish bar till 2am , by that time , theres plenty of people who have finished their regular gigs will be able to come and jam , a must see gig for the home town boys ,
i get levon ,s newsletter once a month you can buy tickets to his midnight ramble at his studio , roots rock rule boyo 
dave
dave
Levon Helm is the only man in my life, and what a book "Wheels on Fire" yes please, cos one can't beat a drum, if you get my drift. If you don't, tuff.....
another rockpile concert on wolfgangs vaualt
Love the list of English language Welsh bands from Christopher, and some great recommendations in this discussion.I was back in Wales on a road-trip last month and was lucky enough to catch a new Welsh rock band at Clwb Ifor Bach. Thought I'd share my thoughts on a couple of bands that I absolutely loved...The live music scene seems to start pretty early in Cardiff. I knew that the first of three bands on at Clwb Ifor Bach hit the stage at 8.15pm, but it was the other two bands I wanted to check out, so I had to arrive by 9.15pm for the second set of the evening. The venue is legendary in Wales and frequently breaks new Welsh talent. As I arrived, Warnings were taking to the stage. They're from Cardiff, and drew a packed crowd of local supporters. I guess their music is comparable to Stone Roses and an early Pearl Jam sound, with atmospheric songs and rousing choruses. I particularly liked When The Sun Goes Down and Second Light - - check out their music online: https://www.cinchsolution.com/what-happened-to-ilike/ . I loved their sound and think theyre likely to become very popular very quickly; hopefully well see them in American soon! The crowd actually thinned out a little as headliners The Gubbins came on. They hail from Aberdare, so another great new Welsh band to look out for. I thought they were pretty good too but, for me, Warnings were the highlight and seem to have amazing potential.
i know of no welsh rock bandshave you done a google search?
If there is we'll sign them up for the Left Coast Eisteddfod immediately......lol
maybe there a kiss cover band that does the songs in welsh?
free concert if you go to wolfgangs vault.com theres a great 1990 concert of dave edmunds all star rock and roll review , a free streaming concert with all the usual offenders and guests
while i was writing this i was listening to the outakes from the bands rock of ages , stop the presses , epipthany, andy fairweather low on vocals edmmans and gee on guitars "batman" on bass , rockin louie on drums
you should try to be more consice in your replys , it leaves so much to conjection ,
try the pine leaf boys , this years attempt to crack the charts with a "cajun" band
okay i,ll buy into that , that being said why aint isn,t there a welsh chieftains now theres a celt band that can cross over at will by sheer musicianship , take modern artists and make them do right , never mind about getting mick jagger to do a great long black vail , but to stand up to the stones on a jam and have fun and no use it as a out take
Errr- I'm wrong, you're right. I had meant only Big Leaves not being mentioned; I must have been scanning the left list and not seen your parenthetical inclusion. A rare admission of fault on my part I assure you! In recompense, one addition for each facet of your musical triad:Singing in Welsh (at least at their start, a common tendency of many bands on Ankst?): Ectogram. In English: Young Marble Giants. Musician: a dodgy one, but while he grew up in Tamworth, Staffs., Julian Cope was born in Deri, Mid-Glamorgan.
Gentlemen, I refer to Cajuns Denbo: http://www.cajunsdenbo.co.uk/CDband.shtml
Dave Martin, I know what you mean, even sober as I am (now!). What Sarah Hill in her "Blerwytirhwng" book struggles with and to me does not articulate fully is how you take reggae, post-punk, folk rock, or psychedelia and infuse them with an undeniably Welsh essence . That exists (I'd suggest tentatively as an outsider looking in hearing the music but without intimate connection with Cymru I confess-- that's why I am here to listen and learn) in snatches here and there when I hear in what's sung in Cymraeg a whiff of a deeper link to the land and mythos and hiraeth . But, I too am trapped as a faraway fan, like those art schoolers who founded folk rock bands in Britain in the later 60s; I am trying to romanticize gwerin from my urban perch.Ireland has, if I may compare, a solid trad scene, of course, but they have failed to produce any musicians able to jump from the trad to the pop or rock while sticking to a Celtic language. I have a new wave record in Irish that's dreck. I think it was the only one of its genre ever made.Horslips in the 70s went back and forth between electric folk, trad, and hard-rock but they emulated in the end the slick West Coast El Lay studio sound and their success foundered as they tried to match Jethro Tull's arena anthems. Liam Maonla on "Rian" (Hothouse Flowers), Iarla Lonaird (on Peter Gabriel's label, tellingly), and Peadar Riada on his two records in the mid-90s to my limited knowledge came closest to integrating a complex world-music inspired approach into their trad, blended with an indie-label rockish eclecticism. This seemed the most promising direction, but this also can dissolve seductively into meaningful moans above mushy synths and flutes stacked atop didgeridoos and tribal drums. (See: Peter Gabriel.)Sorry to sound like the wannabee rock critic, but I concur with Dave's complaint here: there's a persistent difficulty in locating a tangible substance in music from Wales as truly different. You can't stick lyrics in another language atop the same old pop or folk or rock groove from Anglo-American conventions, and claim some triumph for Celtic reclamation of culture. This remains the problem with asserting there's some essential (that adjective again) difference in Welsh-language music that follows London or LA-based trends. Not sure if this will ever happen for anybody in the Celtic lands making music in the wake of the domination of the international pop conglomerate that shapes and segregates and reproduces our market-tested tunes.Yet, one last comment. Hill notes how long the Welsh-pop evolution took; there was not a professional rock-pop band able to survive on their music alone until well into the 70s, and as long for a full LP! The whole pop music scene took much longer to evolve in Wales, whether folk and pop in the 60s, rock in the 70s, or punk and reggae in the 80s. The organic sound of The Band that Dave admires itself took patience, years of roadhouse gigs, and smart guys' exposure to lots of earlier, diverse, obscure music before it melded at Big Pink. So, perhaps the blend we're denying may take longer still to percolate into a "truly" Welsh medium of expression?
second wind (three beers) cor my spelling and and lack of command of our speach is bad , but before any bodys said it no the MAN band was not great , their two hour sets were a real bummer, they were not the welsh quicksilver messenger service , maybe the disservice , they were boring beyond boring , if you wore a greatcoat and took mandies they made sense , maybe and thats a strech, the high point of their career was to get the san fransico artist rick griffin to do them a album cover , another quote was budgie was a inspiration to metalica that says nothing , no even more than nothing , in fact i knew mewtalica wete stoopid but never knew they were that stoopid9 money talks )
having reread the other answers and taking del shannons remarks and realy reading fionnchu,s remarks i put forward this proposition there aint no welsh rock never was, never will be , if rock is taken as a art form , third and fourth generations are just that ,mimics , its the same as dixie land jass ( correct spelling for here orleans ) rock filterd through the air waves via the us armed services network , the super furry maniacs never went the other way , they aint the true stuff so they will never filter through the airwaves across the world because they dont have nothing to say thats new , its the same old stuff sorry fans , as pete townsend said rock does not stand up to examanation , its here now and gone a hour later , now should a BAND come along and capture the welshness of the valleys that has now long passed, its only doing what the band done for americana in the 60,s and 70,s its second hand stuff , so its not a art form its done before , is welsh rock and roll was a still born child before it was born , so what really is welsh music? choir boyo, male voice the sound of the lads coming out of the mines , oops thats gone , is the welsh male voice choir lost like the blues , yup welsh music, real music of the people not the new welshness from the west wales or the cripples of mid and north wales , is a lost art form a bunch of middle class art students singing lame songs is not a art form
you left out the late great mickey gee he passed last week , a guest on many albums and often found sitting in with many bands around the cardiff pubs
dont take my word find a copy of the basement tapes , at the time eric clapton was trying to join the band , so what is no better than ok ? great songwriters in their own right , brilliant musicians , oh they dont speak or sing in welsh?
what?you like levon helm? i suppose the band were ok
Blerwytirhwng: The Place of Welsh Pop Music by Sarah Hill & my musings/review(s)..This is a pricy academic study by a scholar at Cardiff U (I think she may even be American-born from Oakland and a learner of Welsh!), Sarah Hill. Rather theoretical in parts, but informative. Only trouble: little insight into how this music sounds: is it merely British/American Anglo-sounds with Welsh lyrics, or is there an inherent difference? That relates to the comments below about Christian rock vs. "regular" rock, by the way-- are you changing the essence or only the surface if you sing in Cymraeg?Hill also includes the (I wonder if apocryphal as I am no Zep expert) tale of how supposedly two members of the band were approached. They were hanging out admiringly if on the fringes at a Welsh-language music festival and asked if they'd want to jam. No one recognized them.You can always get "Blerwytirhwng" as I did from interlibrary loan. There's only two votes on my review from last year of her book; the negative one may be from her (I often suspect this as a prolific reviewer of rather esoteric works on Amazon!) as I "only" gave it four/five stars. Worth a look by anyone seriously interested in the genre; listening to GZM & Euros Childs & Big Leaves (not on the discussion so far) & SFA-- not to mention the "Welsh Rare Beat" Sain compilations co-coordinated by Gruff Rhys-- got me interested in finding out much more about Wales & Cymraeg.By the way, as a learner of Irish over the long years, it's intriguing why Gaeilge lacks rockers compared to English-language Irish bands. The whole scene in Welsh in Wales has no real parallel among the Gaeilgeori across the sea. This presence in Welsh of a vibrant cultural and musical and linguistic counterpart and contrast with Irish led me lately to find and join Americymru! Maybe one day I can pick out more than a few geriadau from the exchange between CMD & AL in Welsh below.I also posted the past couple of years on Amazon and my blog at various reviews (find under keywords like "Welsh rock music"), for instance, of the WRB comps and just the other day my review of Euros Childs' newest, "Cheer Gone." I tracked this down on import as I wanted it despite a depleted budget. A bit too Americana, as it's recorded barebones in Nashville, but there's some strong songs. Reminiscent of an acoustic Lambchop with a better singer? I like Childs best when as on "Bore Da" he sings in Cymraeg, however. While his music's certainly less lysergic and more stripped down than it used to be, I find his voice alluring. A skilled interpreter in both languages, deserving much more attention. I miss GZM and wish they'd issued the expanded CDs of their first three CDs; rumor from my friends in England has it these were never put out by Castle Communications as planned. Any info on this GZM mystery much welcomed. Hwyl pob ichi... Blerwytirhwng: The Place of Welsh Pop Music by Sarah Hill: My revie... [it's also up at their British site].
Thanks for the list Chris. Personally I like most of them. I guess the pages Dave is referring to are here:- http://americymru.ning.com/group/welshmusic and here:- http://americymru.ning.com/forum/topics/top-ten-welsh-albums-of-2008
i went through the music page on this venerable site what a load of c.... , just because you can sing in welsh does not give you the right to crowed the airwaves with half assed dreck check out levon helms dirt farmer about dirt famers / coal miners in west virginia
updated by @dave-martin: 12/13/15 02:40:43PM
updated by @dave-martin: 12/13/15 02:40:43PM
