Within seven minutes of BBC1 picking up live coverage, Chris Rock gets in the first "C’mon motherfuckers". This shortly after David Gray and Damien Rice have murdered "Que Sera Sera", Snow Patrol have yelled, "Looking forward to Spinal Tap? We are!" and Geri Halliwell has walked onstage to say, "Isn‘t it great my band are back together?" While the eight concerts around the world constitute an immense, well-intended event, the Wembley show is a thoroughly surreal mish-mash of deafening hard rock, weightless aerobic pop and celebs spouting platitudes.
To be honest, the success of Rilo Kiley has been pretty bewildering to me up 'til now. Much as I liked Jenny Lewis' country solo album, "Rabbit Fur Coat", I never grasped the appeal of her band. For all her likeable LA snarkiness, their music always sounded like a grey jangle; as if the American mainstream had embraced, what, The Sundays maybe, as the future of music. Quite strange, but in quite a dull way.
Reeling somewhat from the news that Bob Dylan has permitted Mark Ronson to remix "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", it occurs to me that there's not much time to file a blog today. Here, instead, is what we've played today in the Uncut office -
A morning for gentle music, this, after last night's Uncut birthday party where The Hold Steady played in our striking rooftop canteen. They were great, as you might imagine, barrelling through 30 minutes of songs (a fraught, euphoric "Stuck Between Stations" was my highlight) with all the gusto that, apparently, sent Glastonbury mad.
One of the first festivals I covered not long after joining Melody Maker in 1974 was in Buxton, a bleak outpost on the Yorkshire Moors, headlined by Rod Stewart and The Faces, as they were increasingly billed after the departure of Ronnie Lane and not long before Rod himself legged it to LA and a subsequent solo career of great success if variable artistic merit.
I’ve mentioned here previously the time in 1979 I went to see Lou Reed at what was then still known as the Hammersmith Odeon when he reacted testily to requests from the crowd to play their favourite numbers by announcing that he would under no circumstances be playing anything else that night apart from his new album, The Bells, so there would, he repeated emphatically, no “Heroin”, “Sweet Jane”, “Walk On The Wild Side” or any of the other numbers so many people had obviously come to hear him perform.
A lot of slightly anxious looking at the weather forecast this morning. It's Uncut's tenth birthday party this evening, and The Hold Steady are meant to be playing on the roof of our building.
Unlike some music journalists, I'm not hugely sentimental about where I come from. I've worked with people who've been pathologically loyal to the music that comes out of their hometowns, in a way which seemed to contradict their actual taste. Of course, the fact that the musical riches of North Nottinghamshire are pretty skimpy might have something to do with it.
OK, I know this looks a bit pathetic, but Michael and Allan are off today and I've been too busy to put together a proper blog. So instead, here are the records that we've played in the Uncut office today: -
