Reviews

Imagine you're combing the racks of your favourite cool record store, one of those sub-High Fidelity dives with a coupla snooty geeks behind the counter and some Sun Ra covers on the wall. You're flipping through the '80s Hardcore section, looking for an ancient Millions Of Dead Cops LP, swimming in Raymond Pettibon graphics, when all of a sudden... What's this? The Finger's We Are Fuck You/Punk's Dead Let's Fuck? Who? What? Musta come from some boondock town in one of the "vowel states"—Ohio or Iowa.

Classy reissues from '70s songsmith

Exceptional lost album echoing bittersweet mid-period Beach Boys

Three vignettes from the Miller dynasty's diamond

Screened on TV last Christmas, this celebrity fundraiser for the Peter Cook Foundation features a host of comedians including Michael Palin, Rik Mayall, Angus Deayton and Dom Joly (reprising the one-legged Tarzan sketch) and, unfortunately, Josie Lawrence and Griff Rhys-Jones. A fitfully amusing parade of the old and new, worth purchasing if only for the excellent, pithily epigrammatic Jimmy Carr.

Two strands of British comedy collide with utterly predictable results (all together now: "Oooh, Matron!") as the usual crew is augmented by the sublime Frankie Howerd and a positively quirky supporting cast (Anita Harris, Peter Jones, Julian Orchard). Post-irony, I think we should admit the Carry Ons are dreadful, but Sid James' laugh remains an imported national treasure.

Heavy metal pioneers certainly, but as this appealing history shows, Deep Purple also had the knack of turning a great riff into a decent pop song. There's a dated feel to the lengthy interviews with the likes of Jon Lord, Ian Paice and Ritchie Blackmore, all conducted in the early '90s. But as all but two of the live performances in the archival footage come from 1968-74, it hardly matters.

Arizonan soundtrackers make ill-advised foray into space rock

Louisiana-based blues revivalist

Darkly uplifting second album from Scottish pop visionary