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Post by busyboy on Apr 4, 2007 12:58:07 GMT -5
04/14/2007
BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 3,831 99,577
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roentgenizdat
3x Platinum Member
Joined: October 2006
Posts: 3,503
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Post by roentgenizdat on Apr 5, 2007 5:37:07 GMT -5
04/14: 180 --- BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 3,831 4,513 99,577
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roentgenizdat
3x Platinum Member
Joined: October 2006
Posts: 3,503
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Post by roentgenizdat on Apr 11, 2007 12:30:00 GMT -5
Portrait of the artist: Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc PartyWhat got you started?Dog Man Star by Suede - the first record I fell in love with. It made me aware of the power of music. What was your big breakthrough?Being featured in the penultimate issue of The Face magazine in late 2003. The buzz had started to appear around us, but that really galvanised it. Who or what have you sacrificed for your art?Relationships with my family, friends and loved ones have suffered, but that's what telephones are for. Is your work fashionable?It's subject to people having fleeting opinions about it, but it's not all bad, because for that one moment you can be immensely important to someone. Some bands can transcend that, which is the ideal - you want to make music that matters to people. Does an artist need to suffer to create?That is something that has been misunderstood in recent times, and has led to really cliched behaviour. Someone like Pete Doherty - his drug-taking and refusal to adhere to a traditional lifestyle - makes people think that his art is somehow more relevant because he's a fuck-up. It's easier to be a misfit or a dropout than it is to be a genius and actually create something. If someone heard one of your songs in 1,000 years' time, what would it tell them about the year 2007?The overriding emotion and theme of our new record points to a very detached, impersonal way of living. There is a certain soullessness about it that was intentional. I hope that idea of the crushing routines of life in the 21st century would be conveyed to people in 1,000 years. Vinyl or MP3?MP3. A lot of my purist friends will probably be hanging their heads in shame, but in my lifestyle, the portability of an MP3 is far more helpful. Is the internet a good thing for art?It's a tool. It's not detrimental. It expands possibilities and the category of art, and makes it harder to rely on trusted notions of what is good or bad art. What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?Ravel's Bolero. What's your favourite film?The Sound of Music. I have a strong connection to it because I've seen it so many times. Who would you most like to work with and why?The producer Timbaland. I've loved everything he has put out for the last 10 years. Production-wise, everything else leaves me cold. What advice would you give a young musician just starting out?If you really want it, you'll devote all your time to making something that sounds like no one else on the planet. Too many people in bands sound like every other band around. In shortBorn: Liverpool, 1981 Lives: Bethnal Green, London Career: Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, was nominated for the Mercury prize in 2005. The new single, I Still Remember - taken from their second album, A Weekend in the City - was released yesterday. High point: "Touring Australia in 2005. The realisation dawned that on the other side of the world, people were moved by the music we were making, and that was a fantastic feeling." Low point: "The travelling."
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roentgenizdat
3x Platinum Member
Joined: October 2006
Posts: 3,503
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Post by roentgenizdat on Apr 12, 2007 15:10:29 GMT -5
04/21: BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 3,278 3,831 102,855
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oscillations.
Diamond Member
Opinion = Fact
I was faced with a choice at a difficult age.
Joined: February 2005
Posts: 10,130
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Post by oscillations. on Apr 15, 2007 15:32:28 GMT -5
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Post by joker on Apr 18, 2007 13:59:16 GMT -5
Haha, I like it!
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Post by joker on Apr 18, 2007 15:00:09 GMT -5
BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 2447 105302
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Post by joker on Apr 23, 2007 14:16:13 GMT -5
Bloc Party in biggest-ever UK showsBloc Party have announced their biggest UK shows to date hot on the heels of selling 10,000 tickets for their New York show in a day. The three arena shows will begin at Glasgow SECC on December 12 and will be the band’s only UK headline dates this year. The news follows the success of A Weekend In The City in the US album charts, where it debuted at number 12. The LP re-entered the UK Top 20 today in its eleventh week on the album charts. The dates are as follows: December 12 Glasgow SECC (£18.50) 13 Manchester G-Mex (£18.50) 14 London Alexandra Palace (£20.00) Tickets go on general sale Friday April 27 at 9:30am, alternatively you can join the band’s official fan club to get first dibs on a date with Kele and co, with tickets on sale Thursday April 26 from 9.30am.
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Post by joker on May 1, 2007 15:01:34 GMT -5
Bloc Party to DJ at Ibiza nightThe Rakes and Embrace hit the decks too 30.Apr.07 2:05pm Bloc Party are set to be one of the DJ's at the Judgement Sundays residency which takes place at the Eden club in San Antonio, Ibiza. Frontman Kele Okereke will make an appearance in the Back Room on July 22. The night, which is organised by Judge Jules, will run from June 10 until September 16. The main rooms will see DJ sets from Judge Jules, Lisa Lashes and Eddie Halliwell. Also hitting the decks in the Back Room will be The Rakes, Embrace, The Futureheads and Shitdisco. The dates are: Embrace (July 8) Bloc Party (July 22) Shitdisco (August 5) Futureheads (19) The Rakes (September 2) Shitdisco (16)
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Post by joker on May 1, 2007 15:02:50 GMT -5
05/05 Album Sales:
BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 2,051 107,353
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Post by joker on May 1, 2007 15:03:21 GMT -5
105 99 BLOC PARTY The Prayer 2006 Vice/Atlantic 61 51 10 0.290
Well, it's a start.
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Post by joker on May 16, 2007 18:07:02 GMT -5
Bloc Party To Appear In Computer Game (Smash It)French mobile megabrand Gameloft have introduced a touch of the Party to their forthcoming title Smash It. Gameloft – who are renowned for creating interesting games and high quality adaptations of console/ handheld titles – are set to hire Bloc Party to provide the soundtrack. Smash It will feature guitar based anthems from the Kele Okereke, Russell Lissack, Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong, which include Banquet from their first official studio album, Silent Alarm. Smash It is a puzzle-based game and when you pull off combos you get a blast of some music. However this is not the first time for such a big tune to make it onto a computer game, as fans will know Banquet featured on the FIFA 06, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Burnout Revenge game soundtracks. Sorry to those who arrived at this story to read their favourite band were NOT virtually appearing in the game. We’ll speak to the guys and see if we can get them to work with Rockstar Games to appear in Grand Theft Auto IX or something.
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Post by joker on May 21, 2007 13:03:18 GMT -5
Bloc Party line up new singleThere's a bumper pack of B-sides too1 hour ago Bloc Party will release a new single this summer. 'Hunting For Witches' will be the third track lifted from second album 'A Weekend In The City', and is out on July 9. Physical formats of the single will come backed with brand new tracks 'Rhododendrons', 'Secrets' and 'Cavaliers and Roundheads', along with a live version of the single recorded at Bristol Academy earlier this year. Additionally, a download package will feature exclusive mixes from Fury666, Crystal Castles and Dave Pianka. The band have also announced a second date at London's Alexandra Palace on their December tour, meaning the dates now look like this: Glasgow SECC (December 12) Manchester Central (13) London Alexandra Palace (14, 15)
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Post by joker on May 31, 2007 12:50:12 GMT -5
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Post by joker on Jun 1, 2007 13:13:55 GMT -5
Bloc Party: It's Time To Get SeriousBy Richard Harrington Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 1, 2007; Page WE08In the 2005 song "Positive Tension," Bloc Party promised "something glorious is about to happen, a reckoning." And it did. The Essex-born, now London-based quartet's critically acclaimed debut, "Silent Alarm," went platinum and won NME's "album of the year" honors, and the band toured the world with a propulsive, post-punk amalgam of dance rock and art rock that drew on such home-brewed influences as the Cure, Gang of Four and Joy Division as well as such American acts as the Pixies, Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins. Along with Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and the Futureheads, Bloc Party helped revitalize the British guitar rock movement. Emerging bands love manifestoes, and the one on Bloc Party's Web site initially described the group as "an autonomous unit of un-extraordinary kids reared on pop culture between the years of 1976 and the present day." Now "the present day" is two years further along, and Bloc Party's second album, "A Weekend in the City," seems to be more about glorious things that didn't happen, promises not kept and dreams deferred. In "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," the album's opening track, singer-guitarist Kele Okereke mournfully confesses that "I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity / I am trying to be heroic as all around me history sinks." Okereke, who writes all of Bloc Party's lyrics and melodies, adds, "So I enjoy and I devour flesh and wine and luxury / But in my heart I am lukewarm / Nothing ever really touches me." The song then spins into a taut catalogue of hedonistic behavior before Okereke says, "East London is a vampire, it sucks the joy right out of me." "Hunting for Witches" addresses terrorism-fueled paranoia and the British tabloid media's post-911 Islam-phobia, while "Uniform" examines cookie-cutter youth culture. The bitter "Where Is Home?" looks at racism from a personal perspective -- Okereke's Nigerian parents immigrated to England before he was born in Liverpool 25 years ago (his father is a molecular biologist, his mother a midwife) -- and makes no attempt to disguise his second-generation protagonist's frustration ("In every headline, we are reminded that this is not home for us") and rage ("I want to stamp on the face of every young policeman / To break the fingers of every old judge"). Party music this is not. Even the sound has evolved, thanks to producer-remixer Garret "Jacknife" Lee, who has worked with U2, Snow Patrol, Kasabian and Bjork. There's less of the jittery, fidgety funk built on staccato guitars and disco drum beats and more synths, strings and processed sounds. Like the band's mood, the album's textures are darker. Calling from Lausanne, Switzerland, during the band's 13-country European tour, Okereke says, "As a band, we became confident about what it is we wanted to say, and that will only come after you've made your first record." Some critics have suggested that the new album's weightier tone is about the band's difficulties after "something glorious" happened to them after making "Silent Alarm." "To be honest, we were always skeptical about the nature of success or certainly how it's presented in the U.K.," Okereke says lightly. "You grow up to be skeptical of people that are famous or successful -- you can almost feel the shame of that sort of thing. It wasn't like we'd suddenly become jaded at the end of 2005. I think we were already very cynical about what was happening before it happened, but you want to cling to some sort of artistic integrity. That's how we got through it, really. I don't think this second record's a more somber affair because we've become jaded by our success. It's a more somber affair because of the issues we're talking about on the record." "Silent Alarm" had its serious moments -- "Helicopter" and "Pioneers" critique the Iraq war; "Price of Gas," its political roots and environmental consequences. There were plentiful dark lyrics set to uplifting melodies and, Okereke says, "a real unclear, unfocused energy or tension -- that's what the first record was supposed to be about. I thought, lyrically, I couldn't really rely on that again, and I wanted [the new album] to feel like a document of where my head was at now." As for the new album's dramatically different sound, Okereke says he could live happily without ever hearing another reference to " 'spiky guitars' or 'angular punk funk.' Musically, there were so many guitar bands coming out in the U.K. that were doing a similar thing to what we were doing, I felt really dislocated with that whole punk-funk thing. That was the last thing we wanted to do with this record. We don't want to just be rehashing ourselves." Ourselves would be Okereke and lead guitarist Russell Lissack (they've known each other since school days a decade ago), drummer Matt Tong and bassist Gordon Moakes. Forming in 2002 and taking the Bloc Party name a year later, they made an indie single, "She's Hearing Voices," that they thrust into the hands of Radio One DJ Steve Lamacq at a Franz Ferdinand/Domino Records party. Lamacq played it and had the band record a live session for his show. "Silent Alarm," which mixed earnest ballads, dance tracks and a handful of political commentaries, arrived a year later. According to Okereke, the sound and subjects of "Silent Alarm" were inspired by the time he and his bandmates were at university by day and hanging out in dance clubs by night. After two years touring behind "Silent Alarm," that world seemed to have changed dramatically, as would the band's sound. "A Weekend in the City" is a bleak portrait of modern life in post-millennial, post-Middle East-crisis England "because that's what I was observing in all my friends who were at home working or at university and now going into their career," Okereke says. "There was a real malaise everywhere," he continues. "And every book that I was reading or every film that I saw that resonated with me, they all seemed to have this existential angst, and that really fed into what I wanted the record to be about: people in very mundane, ordinary situations but with this real level of alienation and dislocation underneath the surface, because that's literally all I was seeing when I was going back home to see my friends and my loved ones. All the optimism that we had at university about how we were going to make a difference had completely evaporated, and now there was just a real sense of disillusion." At one point, the new album was titled "Post War Britain." Elsewhere, Okereke addresses the empty escapism of drugs and alcohol. Describing false drug-fueled confidence in the anxious "On," Okereke sings, "You make my tongue loose / I am hopeful and stutter-free" (in conversation, he speaks slowly and softly with an occasional stutter) but insists any temporary high is followed by "a flatness bleaker than the one it replaced." Prescription drugs are addressed as well, with much the same consequence. In the majestically melancholy suicide meditation "SRXT" -- for Seroxat, a British version of the anti-depressant Paxil -- Okereke sings: "If u want to know what makes me sad / Well it's hope, the endurance of faith / A battle that lasts a lifetime / A fight that never ends." But it's not all gloom. Toward the album's end, there's a lovely trio of love songs, starting with a yearning "Kreuzberg," set against the divides of the Berlin Wall and the one between intimacy and casual sex. The majestic "I Still Remember" looks at the thin line between friendship and romance, while "Sunday" insists on the possibility of "a private kind of happiness." And on "Waiting for the 7:18," Okereke evokes the kind of anxious insecurity he found coming home last year, singing, "If I could do it again, I'd make more mistakes / Not be so scared of falling." "Bear in mind the album isn't at all autobiographical," Okereke says. "There are parts of it that are, but very few. In that song I was really trying to conjure an image of this kind of midlife crisis, the late-30-year-old who had all these expectations in his youth and has come to realize that same old drudgery and routine is now what it's like -- it's about somebody coming to terms with the deadening nature of who he is and wishing they'd been more adventurous." Like leaving college for the uncertainties of music? What career path had Okereke been on before he decided to be "more adventurous"? "I was doing English literature at university," he replies. "Not as a career but because I had to get out of my parents' house. I don't know what I would have done, I really don't. The prospect of working in an office in that environment still fills me with complete dread, really. That why I knew I had to make this work."
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Post by joker on Jun 1, 2007 13:14:39 GMT -5
Bloc Party: It's Time To Get SeriousBy Richard Harrington Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 1, 2007; Page WE08In the 2005 song "Positive Tension," Bloc Party promised "something glorious is about to happen, a reckoning." And it did. The Essex-born, now London-based quartet's critically acclaimed debut, "Silent Alarm," went platinum and won NME's "album of the year" honors, and the band toured the world with a propulsive, post-punk amalgam of dance rock and art rock that drew on such home-brewed influences as the Cure, Gang of Four and Joy Division as well as such American acts as the Pixies, Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins. Along with Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and the Futureheads, Bloc Party helped revitalize the British guitar rock movement. Emerging bands love manifestoes, and the one on Bloc Party's Web site initially described the group as "an autonomous unit of un-extraordinary kids reared on pop culture between the years of 1976 and the present day." Now "the present day" is two years further along, and Bloc Party's second album, "A Weekend in the City," seems to be more about glorious things that didn't happen, promises not kept and dreams deferred. In "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," the album's opening track, singer-guitarist Kele Okereke mournfully confesses that "I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity / I am trying to be heroic as all around me history sinks." Okereke, who writes all of Bloc Party's lyrics and melodies, adds, "So I enjoy and I devour flesh and wine and luxury / But in my heart I am lukewarm / Nothing ever really touches me." The song then spins into a taut catalogue of hedonistic behavior before Okereke says, "East London is a vampire, it sucks the joy right out of me." "Hunting for Witches" addresses terrorism-fueled paranoia and the British tabloid media's post-911 Islam-phobia, while "Uniform" examines cookie-cutter youth culture. The bitter "Where Is Home?" looks at racism from a personal perspective -- Okereke's Nigerian parents immigrated to England before he was born in Liverpool 25 years ago (his father is a molecular biologist, his mother a midwife) -- and makes no attempt to disguise his second-generation protagonist's frustration ("In every headline, we are reminded that this is not home for us") and rage ("I want to stamp on the face of every young policeman / To break the fingers of every old judge"). Party music this is not. Even the sound has evolved, thanks to producer-remixer Garret "Jacknife" Lee, who has worked with U2, Snow Patrol, Kasabian and Bjork. There's less of the jittery, fidgety funk built on staccato guitars and disco drum beats and more synths, strings and processed sounds. Like the band's mood, the album's textures are darker. Calling from Lausanne, Switzerland, during the band's 13-country European tour, Okereke says, "As a band, we became confident about what it is we wanted to say, and that will only come after you've made your first record." Some critics have suggested that the new album's weightier tone is about the band's difficulties after "something glorious" happened to them after making "Silent Alarm." "To be honest, we were always skeptical about the nature of success or certainly how it's presented in the U.K.," Okereke says lightly. "You grow up to be skeptical of people that are famous or successful -- you can almost feel the shame of that sort of thing. It wasn't like we'd suddenly become jaded at the end of 2005. I think we were already very cynical about what was happening before it happened, but you want to cling to some sort of artistic integrity. That's how we got through it, really. I don't think this second record's a more somber affair because we've become jaded by our success. It's a more somber affair because of the issues we're talking about on the record." "Silent Alarm" had its serious moments -- "Helicopter" and "Pioneers" critique the Iraq war; "Price of Gas," its political roots and environmental consequences. There were plentiful dark lyrics set to uplifting melodies and, Okereke says, "a real unclear, unfocused energy or tension -- that's what the first record was supposed to be about. I thought, lyrically, I couldn't really rely on that again, and I wanted [the new album] to feel like a document of where my head was at now." As for the new album's dramatically different sound, Okereke says he could live happily without ever hearing another reference to " 'spiky guitars' or 'angular punk funk.' Musically, there were so many guitar bands coming out in the U.K. that were doing a similar thing to what we were doing, I felt really dislocated with that whole punk-funk thing. That was the last thing we wanted to do with this record. We don't want to just be rehashing ourselves." Ourselves would be Okereke and lead guitarist Russell Lissack (they've known each other since school days a decade ago), drummer Matt Tong and bassist Gordon Moakes. Forming in 2002 and taking the Bloc Party name a year later, they made an indie single, "She's Hearing Voices," that they thrust into the hands of Radio One DJ Steve Lamacq at a Franz Ferdinand/Domino Records party. Lamacq played it and had the band record a live session for his show. "Silent Alarm," which mixed earnest ballads, dance tracks and a handful of political commentaries, arrived a year later. According to Okereke, the sound and subjects of "Silent Alarm" were inspired by the time he and his bandmates were at university by day and hanging out in dance clubs by night. After two years touring behind "Silent Alarm," that world seemed to have changed dramatically, as would the band's sound. "A Weekend in the City" is a bleak portrait of modern life in post-millennial, post-Middle East-crisis England "because that's what I was observing in all my friends who were at home working or at university and now going into their career," Okereke says. "There was a real malaise everywhere," he continues. "And every book that I was reading or every film that I saw that resonated with me, they all seemed to have this existential angst, and that really fed into what I wanted the record to be about: people in very mundane, ordinary situations but with this real level of alienation and dislocation underneath the surface, because that's literally all I was seeing when I was going back home to see my friends and my loved ones. All the optimism that we had at university about how we were going to make a difference had completely evaporated, and now there was just a real sense of disillusion." At one point, the new album was titled "Post War Britain." Elsewhere, Okereke addresses the empty escapism of drugs and alcohol. Describing false drug-fueled confidence in the anxious "On," Okereke sings, "You make my tongue loose / I am hopeful and stutter-free" (in conversation, he speaks slowly and softly with an occasional stutter) but insists any temporary high is followed by "a flatness bleaker than the one it replaced." Prescription drugs are addressed as well, with much the same consequence. In the majestically melancholy suicide meditation "SRXT" -- for Seroxat, a British version of the anti-depressant Paxil -- Okereke sings: "If u want to know what makes me sad / Well it's hope, the endurance of faith / A battle that lasts a lifetime / A fight that never ends." But it's not all gloom. Toward the album's end, there's a lovely trio of love songs, starting with a yearning "Kreuzberg," set against the divides of the Berlin Wall and the one between intimacy and casual sex. The majestic "I Still Remember" looks at the thin line between friendship and romance, while "Sunday" insists on the possibility of "a private kind of happiness." And on "Waiting for the 7:18," Okereke evokes the kind of anxious insecurity he found coming home last year, singing, "If I could do it again, I'd make more mistakes / Not be so scared of falling." "Bear in mind the album isn't at all autobiographical," Okereke says. "There are parts of it that are, but very few. In that song I was really trying to conjure an image of this kind of midlife crisis, the late-30-year-old who had all these expectations in his youth and has come to realize that same old drudgery and routine is now what it's like -- it's about somebody coming to terms with the deadening nature of who he is and wishing they'd been more adventurous." Like leaving college for the uncertainties of music? What career path had Okereke been on before he decided to be "more adventurous"? "I was doing English literature at university," he replies. "Not as a career but because I had to get out of my parents' house. I don't know what I would have done, I really don't. The prospect of working in an office in that environment still fills me with complete dread, really. That why I knew I had to make this work."
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Post by joker on Jun 1, 2007 15:42:01 GMT -5
REGULAR BLOKESGreat Britain's Bloc Party strikes a chord in the StatesBy: Ed Condran 06/1/07Success has yet to spoil Bloc Party leader Kele Okereke. While on tour, the affable Okereke still handles his own gear at the airport. Just prior to performing at the music confab South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in March, Okereke and his bandmates — guitarist Russell Lissak, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong — were plucking their baggage from the carousel, just like everyone else. "We're not rock stars," Okereke said. "I don't feel like a rock star." The British rock band is on a tour that stops Thursday at The Stone Pony. While Bloc Party already has been lionized in the United Kingdom, the band is emerging in the United States courtesy of "A Weekend in the City," which is the follow-up to its 2005 debut, "Silent Alarm." The new tracks aren't as immediate as the tunes from the group's first disc, but Okereke reveals much more the second time around. "I was hiding behind a cloak with the first album," he said. "After touring (behind "Silent Alarm') I realized that there is nothing worse than a recording artist who is just being abstract and not really saying anything. If you're saying something, you should be understood by everyone." Okereke, who sings about racism and the religious right throughout much of "A Weekend in the City," was born in England to Nigerian immigrants and raised in a strict Roman Catholic home. "I went to church until I left home (at 20)," he said. "My mother always let God take care of things. I think that in life you need to take on things." Okereke wears his heart on his sleeve as he sings about love and disconnection. Perhaps that's why Bloc Party has become successful stateside. "It's hard to say why we do well here," Okereke said. "I think part of it is that people don't see us as an English band like they see Oasis as an English band. We don't have the arrogance that a lot of English bands have. We're still regular people. That hasn't changed. Maybe that's appealing here."
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