Big trouble house

Half a century of Southern rock made by ramblin’ men

Simon takes us through his career, from Simon And Garfunkel and Graceland to todayon…

One of the highlights of Dave Alvin’s last solo album, 2011’s Eleven Eleven, was a track called “What’s Up With Your Brother?”, a droll blues about Dave’s famously fractious relationship with his brother, Phil, that ended hilariously with them having the kind of argument that put paid to The Blasters, the band they were in together before fraternal tensions drove them into a ditch. They split in 1985, after just five albums. While Dave became dedicated to life as a hard travelling road dog, Phil completed a master’s degree in mathematics and artificial intelligence.

I had the good fortune to interview Jim Jarmusch recently for our An Audience With… feature. As you’d imagine, it was interesting, wide-ranging chat, and inevitably not everything we talked about made it into the magazine. There’s a couple of things in particular that seemed pretty interesting – not least the ‘full’ answer he gave to a question regarding the current status of The Sons Of Lee Marvin, a shadowy cabal whose members – allegedly – include Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Iggy Pop.

Brooklyn quintet's sad and uplifting sixth...

Black Crowe's head music dives deep into the past...

Alex Chilton’s wild, idiosyncratic life after Big Star is examined in the new issue of Uncut (Take 180, May 2012), out now. But what happened before the demise of Chilton’s greatest group? They should have been rock superstars, but Rob Jovanovic explains how drugs, in-fighting and personal tragedy meant Big Star had to settle for being the biggest cult band of all time (from Uncut's Take 94, March 2005). ________________________________

His entire output, plus bountiful extras, all in – what else? – a beautiful, blood-red velvet box...

OK, so the damage limitation process is well under way. I’ve just received this email: “The Weinstein Co. today announced that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s highly anticipated Grindhouse double bill will be released as two separate movies in the UK. Tarantino’s Death Proof will be released via Momentum Pictures/Dimension Films on September 21 with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror released at a later date to be confirmed shortly.”

From the Uncut archive: a meeting with the outsider folk legend deep in the Oregon wilderness