Features

It’s Record Store Day on Saturday; a kind of weird, but necessary I guess, annual event that’s become a critical point in release schedules. I’ve been going through the lists of releases at recordstoreday.com and thought it might be worth picking out a few things that are worth looking out for. Increasingly, a fair amount of the day’s business is built on canny catalogue management aimed at collectors (especially vinyl fetishists), and there are a bunch of things here that fall roughly into that sector:

Strange juxtapositions and all that, but please have a listen to the Date Palms track and, in the unlikely event you haven’t been near the internet for the past few days, the Daft Punk clip. Nile Rodgers’ expression is a thing of joy, among other things.

For the next issue of Uncut, I've reviewed Season 1 of Veep. In case you're not familiar with the show, it's basically Armando Iannucci's attempt to relocate The Thick Of It to the White House.

From Uncut, March 2009. 'Thirty years on from the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's reign of terror, Uncut revisits a tempestuous and invigorating period in British pop history. PAUL WELLER, THE SPECIALS, THE BEAT, UB40, SOUL II SOUL and THE FARM recall a time when mass unemployment energised a whole generation to learn one chord, learn another, form a band - and then make an insurrectionist statement on Cheggers Plays Pop...'

Iggy & The Stooges’ new album, Ready To Die, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2013, and out now. In this archive feature from Uncut’s Take 146 issue (July 2006), Iggy talks us through the highlights of his 40-year career – including skiing trips with David Bowie and a cameo from Princess Margaret… Interview: Jaan Uhelszki ____________________

A momentous week, one way or another, though I can’t help wishing the resonant and thought-through fury of “Tramp The Dirt Down” was heading into the Top Ten instead of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”.

John Dwyer has the sort of discography so deep and complicated that one suspects even he must have trouble keeping up with himself. As a consequence, it might be a mistake to try and divine paths and trends in career which his encompassed Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospitals, Zeigenbock Kopf and Sword + Sandals (according to Wikipedia, anyway, if I can emphasise my spotty knowledge any more) as well as Thee Oh Sees.

“To make true political music,” the great American critic Greil Marcus wrote nearly 25 years ago, “you have to say what decent people don’t want to hear; that’s something that people fit for satellite benefit concerts will never understand, and that Elvis Costello understood before anyone heard his name.”

Hopefully, you'll have seen the new edition of Uncut by now. Among many, many good things in this month's issue, there's Nick Hasted's interview with Ginger Baker.

Graham Nash discusses the unique exhibition of his photography in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2013, and out now – in this archive feature from Uncut’s April 2009 issue (Take 143), the silver-throated former Holly tackles some prickly subjects – dissing Dylan, breaking up with Joni and playing peacekeeper in CSNY… Interview: John Lewis ______________________