Articles by Allan Jones - Uncut.co.uk

Win Exclusive Craig Finn vinyl, plus Fleet Foxes

You may have seen in the current Uncut that The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn will shortly be releasing his first solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes, recorded in Austin, Texas, with Spoon producer Mike McCarthy and a band including White Denim drummer Josh Block.

Bob Dylan Sings For Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese was a special guest last night at the Critics' Choice Awards in Hollywood last night, where he picked up the Best Documentary Feature prize for his George Harrison documentary, Living In The Material World and was further honoured with the Critics' Choice Music And Film Award.

Simone Felice's Solo Debut

We’re still just about at that time of the year when there’s ample of it left to look forward to what’s coming up in the rest of it. Everybody’s at it, of course, it’s one of the things we do annually around now.

Bob Dylan, London Hammersmith Odeon, Saturday November 19 2011

I’m not sure what happens on Saturday towards the end of the first night of Bob Dylan’s three shows at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Suddenly, though, he’s blazing through one of the songs he traditionally reserves for encores, “All Along The Watchtower”, with no break between it and the roaring version of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” that normally you’d have expected to be the show’s climax, the band then taking a well-deserved bow and a quick break before coming back for one, two or three more songs, further lapping up of the crowd’s applause prior to a final wave goodnight, perhaps even a nod from Bob in the general direction of a crowd he otherwise doesn’t go too far out of his way to acknowledge.

Club Uncut @ The Great Escape: Alela Diane/ The Secret Sisters/ Olof Arnalds/ Jo Bartlett, Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, May 14 2011

Club Uncut’s final night in Brighton can’t quite match the high of Josh T. Pearson’s performance on Friday, but a strong, diverse bill of female talent doesn’t disappoint.

Club Uncut @ The Great Escape: Villagers/ Josh T. Pearson/ Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou/ Dean McPhee, Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, May 13 2011

“I’m tired,” Josh T. Pearson says. “It’s been a long life. I don’t even know what day of the week it is...” Someone in the crowd tells him the day and the date. “Friday the 13th?” he wryly muses, as if his life has been full of nothing but such days of potential reckoning in the ten long years since his band Lift To Experience released their fearsome album, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, and soon after blew apart. That record imagined humanity making its last stand in Texas during the apocalypse. Pearson’s eventual follow-up Last Of The Country Gentlemen considers a recent relationship in similar terms. There’s the rare sense tonight of every bitter, funny, helpless word mattering, because they’re being pulled up from a harrowing place and being relived on stage.

Bruce Springsteen - London BFI Southbank, October 29, 2010

Sitting on stage at London’s BFI Southbank, Bruce Springsteen is reflecting on events 33 years ago, when he and the E Street Band entered New York’s Record Plant studios to record the Darkness On The Edge Of Town album.

Simone Felice, St Pancras Old Church, London, September 2 2010

What is it about Simone Felice and hushed and sacred places that make your voice drop to a whisper as soon as you walk into them?

Bob Dylan: The Hop Farm Festival, July 3 2010

This sounds familiar. It’s a blast of Aaron Copeland’s “Hoedown”, a loud orchestral stirring the faithful many here tonight recognise immediately as the taped introduction to his shows he’s been using now for at least the last 10 years that still never fails to thrill and make you also laugh out loud. The voice of his long-time tour manager, Al Santos, follows, mock-serious.