Features

The first thing I heard this morning when I got into the office was the news that Lux Interior of The Cramps had died. As a tip of the hat in fond farewell, here's another entry from my regular Stop Me. . . column, from 1980, when The Cramps supported The Police on the Italian leg of their first world tour.

The fourth full transcript from Uncut's cover feature

The other day, it occurred to me that, after nearly two years of doing Wild Mercury Sound, I should put together some kind of list of other blogs I like. To that end, it’d be great if you could post your recommendations at the bottom of today’s playlist; that’d be really helpful (plug your own if you like, too).

Sorry for the spoiler in the title, but Yo La Tengo’s temporary reinvention as a bunch of garage rockers from New London, Connecticut is pretty easy to unpick. The press release suggests that the fragrantly-named “Fuckbook” is the Condo Fucks’ sixth album (the previous five all appear to have been given Matador catalogue numbers).

Something of an adventure getting into work today, and I appear to be alone at Uncut for the moment. Helping me on the yomp through the snow, however, were a couple of quietly magical records on Time-Lag that I’ve got hold of recently.

I’ve just finished a longish review of this new Bill Callahan album, “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle”, for the next issue of Uncut, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much here; save some adjectives, maybe, for the magazine. It is, though, one of the best records Callahan has made in what’s now a reasonably long, generally underestimated career.

This morning's sad news of John Martyn's death reminded me of a particularly colourful encounter I had with him, back in what they call the day, which I wrote about in my regular Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before column in Uncut in July 2004 and re-print below. Adios, John.

1948 - 2009

Reeling slightly from the bad news about John Martyn, here are the records played in the Uncut office over the last couple of days. Mildly weird mix this week: the glut of Smog is due to me trying to review the new Bill Callahan album, which I'll try and blog about in the next few days.

With the sad news of the guitarist's passing, here we publish his last Q&A originally printed last October