Roots

Shirley Collins, Richard Thompson and a previously unreleased Anne Briggs recording!

The British reggae group who battled injustice and inequality in the mid-70s and beyond

With help from T Bone Burnett, Robert Redford, Willie Nelson and many more

Against a backdrop of Cold War politics, rock and roll riots and a newly assertive generation of working-class youth, the songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg charts the history, impact and legacy of skiffle - Britain’s first indigenous pop movement. Roots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth – a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it. It’s a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffeebar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s. Emerging from Soho jazz clubs in the early ’50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who grew up during the dreary years of post-war rationing. These were Britain’s first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of ‘Rock Island Line’ and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. Like the punk rock scene that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed was the ability to play three chords on a cheap guitar and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section. This is the story of how the first generation of British teenagers changed our pop music from being jazz-based to guitar-led.

EC’s metatextual affair with the jazz y neo-hip-hoppers...

Elvis Costello and the Roots have released a new lyric video for "Walk Us Uptown," the first single from their forthcoming album, Wise Up Ghost. Wise Up Ghost, which will be released on September 16 on Blue Note Records, will be Costello's first since 2010's National Ransom. Speaking to Rolling Stone about the album in June, Costello said, "We had no deadline, no labels involved. We were just doing it on our own."

Elvis Costello is to release a new album in September. The album, a collaboration with The Roots, will be called Wise Up Ghost and will be released on September 16 on Blue Note Records. We first reported on the album back in February, as a possible Record Store Day release.

Been a while since we had some Boredoms activity to write about here – since, perhaps, “Super Roots 9”, their live recording plus choir, came out on Thrill Jockey.

Muddy Waters, Bukka White and Howlin' Wolf on new DVD

By some immeasurably strong act of will, I’ve refrained from banging on about the Boredoms round these parts for the best part of three months – ever since, in fact, they played the best show I saw in 2007.