Black country, new road

The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features David Bowie peering from the cover in his guise as sleazy space-star Ziggy Stardust. To celebrate this look at Bowie’s greatest creation 40 years on, here’s a fantastic piece from Uncut’s 18th issue, in November 1998, in which Chris Roberts looks back at the glammed-up, transgressive superstars who changed his adolescent world.

A few weeks shy of a year ago, I was at the 12 Bar Club in London’s Denmark Street, the Tin Pan Alley of pop legend, to see a young Los Angeles-based band called Dawes. They’d been brought to my attention by an Uncut reader, who couldn’t recommend them highly enough. As an example of what they did in his opinion better than anyone he’d recently heard, he sent me a track called “When My Time Comes”, a rousing country rock thing that I hadn’t been able to stop playing.

The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features a fascinating look at the history of Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio, which brought the world Howlin’ Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and others. Elvis Presley was one future star who cut his debut recordings at the Memphis studio – and in this archive piece from the fourth ever issue of Uncut (September 1997), comedian Frank Skinner talks about the King’s early years and the huge impact the Sun recordings had on him.

The grunge-blues giant returns, now digging deeper grooves and - shock! - nu disco...

Collection of covers of Bob songs; some good, some not so good.

It didn’t require a telescope to spot Craig Finn’s first solo record glinting on the horizon. The most recent Hold Steady album, last year’s Heaven Is Whenever, hinted at creative restlessness within the ranks. The band carved out a little more space and Finn scaled down his narratives to something less obviously cinematic, yet it seemed clear there was ample room for further exploration.

Bleak, doubtful and largely self-penned. Back to the music that made her...

Out, hippies, out! Four CD set captures the righteous, blues-rocking anger of Warwickshire’s counterculture warriors...

The first eight albums, in one channel and one box. You know the songs, of course. But hear him in mono and hear him anew...

Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks. Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.