Features

There’s a story about Brendan Gleeson meeting unsuccessfully with a Hollywood agent to discuss furthering his acting career overseas. This was in the mid-Nineties, and until then Gleeson had largely worked in television, mostly in his native Ireland, with only a handful of minor film roles to his credit. Admittedly, Gleeson had come late to acting: he’d been a secondary school teacher in Dublin before taking up acting full time in 1991 and was now in his early forties.

It’s recently been announced that a rare live recording of Syd Barrett guesting on guitar with The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band in Cambridge in July 1972 is to be released – so now seems like a perfect time to revisit the extensive tribute we published in Uncut just after Barrett’s death in July 2006 (Take 112, September 2006). As well as a fantastic piece written by David Cavanagh, we hear from Syd’s friends, collaborators and admirers, including David Bowie, David Gilmour, Mick Rock, Peter Jenner, Damon Albarn, Julian Cope and Kevin Ayers. Shine on…

“I want to be mothered,” Mark Kozelek sang in 1993 on “Mother”, one of the more startling tracks on the second Red House Painters album. “I want you to give attention to my belly button/Mother, I want to have bobby pins stuck in my ears.”

Anyone who’s read any of Robert Gordon’s previous books, like Can’t Be Satisfied, for instance, his great biography of Muddy Waters, will no doubt be looking forward to Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion, Gordon’s history of the legendary Memphis label, which is published this month by Bloomsbury.

A week of revelations here, I suppose, since a bunch of albums that I’ve had to strategically redact from recent lists, until they’re formally announced, can now be identified and previewed. Please note, then, the appearance of new albums by Damon Albarn, Elbow and Real Estate among the 20-odd things below. The Real Estate is especially fantastic – more like Felt and The Feelies than ever, maybe – and I’ll try and write something more extensive about it in the next week or so.

I interviewed T Bone Burnett as part of a piece on Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen Brothers film, which ran in the issue of Uncut on sale in December. What was originally meant to be a brisk 10 minute chat about working with the Coens and the film's soundtrack evolved into a much longer conversation, the bulk of which, inevitably, I couldn't work into the feature. So I thought I'd post it here for anyone interested in reading T Bone's thoughts on the evolution of folk music, the music he was listening to when he was growing up, and of course his experiences working with the Coens. Other topics under discussion included the American Civil War, George Clooney and Bob Dylan...

The Led Zeppelin legend has just returned with a new group, Minibus Pimps, in collaboration with Deathprod, aka Norwegian Helge Sten. Here, from Uncut’s April 2010 issue (Take 155), is a look back at the bassist and multi-instrumentalist’s other jobs… Fans and famous admirers ask Jones about his favourite instruments, bluegrass, working with REM, the Butthole Surfers and Josh Homme, and being “a bloody good choirmaster”. Interview: John Lewis ___________________

Quickly today, as there’s an issue to be flung together, but a plug in passing for our latest Ultimate Music Guide, on sale today and dedicated to Lou Reed. More on that later.

Sometimes, with Bill Callahan, the focus on his records is so unwaveringly on his lyrics, it is tempting to treat them as recited poetry rather than actual music. On an old Smog record like “The Doctor Came At Dawn”, say, the music seems barely there; just a little shading to point up the melodic undertow of a baritone that often wanders closer to speech than song.