Features

Boxing Day, 1967, and The Beatles’ new film, something called Magical Mystery Tour, is about to be shown for the first time, broadcast by the BBC, fans looking forward to what surely will be a highlight of the Christmas television schedules, a welcome respite to those of a certain age from the usual seasonal fare of old movies and light entertainment, all that stuff that they usually show to keep the old folks happy over the holidays.

I interviewed James Murphy in late 2006, for a preview piece about The Sound Of Silver, the second album by his band, LCD Soundsystem.

It’s a pretty auspicious day, according to my Twitter feed. No, it’s not just that Neil Young has joined Twitter – 21,300 followers and rising.

This week I seem to have read more people expending energy on how much they despise Mumford & Sons rather than focusing on music they actually like.

Emmett Kelly has been making records as The Cairo Gang for a good few years now but, if he’s known at all, chances are it’s for his unusually enduring role in Will Oldham’s band: the amazing Royal Stable site suggests he’s been in on most Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy projects since 2006.

Here’s Jimmy Page, reminiscing about Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion show at the 02. “We wanted to go out there, stand up and be counted,” he said at a press conference held earlier today in London. “To show people who maybe didn’t know Led Zeppelin but had heard a lot about us why we were what we were. And not only that, we had had a really good time that night. We made a lot of people very happy.”

The new Uncut, as discussed, is in the shops today with The Byrds on the cover, and a free CD of tracks inspired by that band. Woods are included on the comp, and their latest, “Bend Beyond”, is a record I’ve played a lot these past couple of months, but somehow neglected to write much about.

Lots of links to follow from this week’s playlist, although one should be treated with fairly obvious caution. Not many survivors from previous charts, either; seems we’ve hit a decent new wave here.

Given that my last three blogs have been on Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, I guess something resembling my tenuous underground credibility might be a bit compromised this week. A good time, then, to flag up some terrific music I’ve been enjoying these past few days that doesn’t have quite the same profile as Dylan et al.

Calexico’s new album, Algiers, is reviewed in the current issue of Uncut (October 2012, Take 185) – so we thought we’d take a trip back to April 2003 (Take 71), when Uncut’s John Mulvey flew out to Tucson, Arizona to discover more about the duo’s redrawing of the alt.country map. __________________________