Welcome to the latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s occasional radio show, which normally has a global music focus. This week’s guest for the entire two hours is the musical cult hero and all-round good bloke Lu Edmonds.
Lu has an unusual background, being brought up in Moscow and Caracas, and speaks Spanish and Russian. If you want someone with a widescreen take on pop and punk and post-punk music in the last 40 plus years, Lu is uniquely placed. He joined punk pioneers The Damned for the their second album. He’s currently a vocalist, saz and cümbüş player in the Mekons and the lead guitarist for Public Image Limited, where he has been John Lydon’s right hand man for 30 or so years.
Lu has also been been in pioneering globally influenced bands like 3 Mustaphas 3, not to mention Les Triaboliques with fellow picker Justin Adams, and music guru Ben Mandleson. He worked with the Tuvan band Yat Kha. In 2019, Edmonds and Mark Roberts, as Blabbermouth, released the album Hörspiel ("hörspiel" being German for "radio drama" or "audio play”), and he plays tracks from the excellent new one called Edge of Reason which features poet Murray Lachlan Young. He also tells tales of working with the brilliant, tragic Kirsty MacColl. Due to an amusing misunderstanding of the start time with the engineer in the studio, Lu actually starts the show on his own and Culshaw only joins him after 10 minutes or so. But chaos and general subversiveness have been Lu’s watchword since he became a figure of renown many moons ago. Among his aliases are: Lu Cipher, Luanora Carrington, Mr Knee, Organic Lu-cose, and Tak Lu Makan.
TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW CLICK ON THIS LINK https://www.mixcloud.com/MusicBoxRadioUK/the-arts-desk-with-lu-edmonds-wednesday-21st-september-2022/
