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David Bowie reveals latest picture discs…

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David Bowie has announced the latest in the run of 40th anniversary 7″ picture discs. "Space Oddity" and "Golden Years" will be released on October 2 and November 13, respectively. They wil be joined by an orange vinyl 7" of "Amsterdam" and a limited edition blue vinyl release of Man Of Words/Ma...

David Bowie has announced the latest in the run of 40th anniversary 7″ picture discs.

Space Oddity” and “Golden Years” will be released on October 2 and November 13, respectively.

They wil be joined by an orange vinyl 7″ of “Amsterdam” and a limited edition blue vinyl release of Man Of Words/Man Of Music, the US version of Bowie’s 1969 album David Bowie aka Space Oddity.

The “Amsterdam” 7″ and Man Of Words/Man Of Music album coincide with the opening of David Bowie Is… at the Groninger Museum, Groningen in The Netherlands and are exclusive to the exhibition.

SPACE ODDITY 7″ PICTURE DISC FOR THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF DAVID’S FIRST EVER #1 SINGLE IN THE UK
A-Side
Space Oddity (UK single edit)
(David Bowie)
Produced by Gus Dudgeon and arranged by David Bowie and Paul Buckmaster

AA-Side
Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud (single B-side with spoken introduction)
(David Bowie)
Produced by Gus Dudgeon and arranged by David Bowie and Paul Buckmaster

A Side image from the David Bowie Archive
AA Side photo by Vernon Dewhurst

GOLDEN YEARS 40th ANNIVERSARY 7″ PICTURE DISC
A-Side
Golden Years (Single Version)
(David Bowie)
Produced by David Bowie & Harry Maslin

AA-Side
Station To Station (Single Edit)
(David Bowie)
Produced by David Bowie & Harry Maslin

Both the A & AA side features photos by Steve Schapiro, the AA side is a previously unseen shot

AMSTERDAM 7″ ORANGE VINYL EXCLUSIVE TO THE NETHERLANDS ‘DAVID BOWIE IS’ EXHIBITION
A-Side (45 r.p.m.)
Amsterdam
(Jacques Brel/English lyrics: Mort Shuman)
Produced by Ken Scott & David Bowie

B-Side (33 1/3 r.p.m.)
My Death (Live)
(Jacques Brel/Eric Blau/Mort Shuman)
Recorded live at Carnegie Hall 28th September, 1972

Front cover photo is a previously unseen shot by Brian Ward
Reverse cover photo is a live shot from Carnegie Hall, 28th September, 1972 by David Gahr

Meanwhile, Bowie releases the first in a series of box sets spanning his career on September 25.

David Bowie Five Years 1969 – 1973 features all of the material officially released by Bowie during the early stage of his career.

It will be available across a number of formats: as a 12 CD box set, a 13 album vinyl set pressed on audiophile 180g vinyl and digital download.

Exclusive to the box sets will be Re:Call 1 a new 2-disc compilation of non-album singles, single versions & b-sides. It features a previously unreleased single edit of “All The Madmen“. Also included is the original version of “Holy Holy“, which was only ever released on the original 1971 Mercury single and hasn’t been available since.

Also exclusive to all versions of Five Years 1969 – 1973 will be a 2003 stereo remix of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by the album’s original co-producer Ken Scott, previously only available on DVD with the LP/DVD format of the 40th anniversary edition of the album.

The box set’s accompanying book, 128 pages in the CD box and 84 in the vinyl set, will feature rarely seen photos as well as technical notes about each album from producers Tony Visconti and Ken Scott, an original press review for each album and a short foreword by Ray Davies.

Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to David Bowie in UK shops now and also available to buy at our online store

Click here to learn more about Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to David Bowie

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

A quick round-up of new releases…

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I haven't done this for a while, so I thought it might be a good idea this week to round up a few recent releases I've been enjoying, kicking off with the terrific eleventh album from Eleventh Dream Day. For over three decades now, Eleventh Dream Day have been quietly reconfiguring rock classicism;...

I haven’t done this for a while, so I thought it might be a good idea this week to round up a few recent releases I’ve been enjoying, kicking off with the terrific eleventh album from Eleventh Dream Day.

For over three decades now, Eleventh Dream Day have been quietly reconfiguring rock classicism; a Chicago analogue to Yo La Tengo, perhaps, with Rick Rizzo a guitar virtuoso in the wild but discreet mould of Ira Kaplan. An enduring tenacity runs through “Works For Tomorrow”, one of the best and feistiest entries in their catalogue, ranking alongside Beet (1990, and I think maybe the second album I ever reviewed for NME) and Eighth (1997). Rizzo’s soloing is less Neil-inspired than usual, and his partnership with new recruit James Elkington (last seen in Jeff Tweedy and Steve Gunn’s bands, on Richard Thompson’s recent “Electric”, and a star of the next Uncut CD thanks to a version of “Reel Around The Fountain” with Nathan Salsburg) results in some Television-esque twin-guitar chuggers like “Go Tell It”. Kudos, too, for an inspired cover of Judy Henske & Jerry Yester’s “Snowblind”, in which drummer Janet Beveridge Bean unexpectedly reveals her inner Grace Slick.

For those long-term Mark Kozelek fans perturbed by either the abrasive textures of Universal Themes or his misogynist rants, Chris Connolly’s second solo LP, “Alameda”, may act as, to some degree, a soothing balm. Connolly is a regular Kozelek collaborator, and mainstay of Desert Shore. His solo work, though, mostly centres around piano reveries that bracket him alongside post-classical tyros like Nils Frahm. Connolly can handle the romantic flurries, with “Fantasy” a strong stab at updating Ravel. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he has a looser, more playful side close, on the likes of “Blue Waltz”, to jazzier explorers like George Winston. The self-explanatory “Electro” suggests Connolly could productively pursue an alternative career as a quaintly baroque Harold Faltermeyer.

Emmett Kelly’s career has been a predominantly stealthy one, mostly as guitar-playing foil and songwriting accomplice of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. These past few years, however, Kelly’s own Cairo Gang project has blossomed, with the rich jangles of this fifth album, “Goes Missing”, a notable career high. The Byrds are a constant touchstone, so much so that “Be What You Are” and “Ice Fishing” briefly threaten to become, respectively, “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Eight Miles High”. Beyond the Rickenbackers, “Goes Missing” also encompasses moptop abandon and a faintly Syd-like whimsy, marking out Kelly as an imaginative retro-pop craftsman to stand comparison with his labelmate, Tim Presley of White Fence.

Given the boom in experimental nature writing over the past decade, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to anticipate a corroborative response from music-makers. Laura Cannell is a case in point: a violin and recorder player based in the East Anglian hinterlands, whose music evokes the landscape and elements without much recourse to traditional folk tropes. If anything, the sawing drones she favours on “Beneath Swooping Talons” are closer in spirit to John Cale or Tony Conrad, albeit touched with a certain early-music austerity, while her woodwind extemporisations have an almost jazz-like flightiness, at once uncanny and serene. One to file alongside another leftfield gem reissued this year, “Music For Church Cleaners” by the organist, Áine O’Dwyer.

https://soundcloud.com/frontandfollow/cathedral-of-the-marshes

Soon after the Dirty Projectors’ breakout album, “Bitte Orca”, bassist and vocalist Angel Deradoorian seemed to be disentangling herself from David Longstreth’s knotty strategems. She released a spooked EP, “Mind Raft”, in 2009, and seemed destined for an illustrious solo career. It’s taken six years, though, for her debut album to materialise, after a stint in Avey Tare’s band and guest slots with The Roots, Flying Lotus and, bizarrely, Brandon Flowers. There’s a sense that the psychedelic electronica of “The Expanding Flower Planet” has been superseded by the work of Julia Holter and Grimes, among others. Nevertheless, the ornate multi-tracked chorales retain a heady intensity – not least on “Violet Minded”, strong kin to the Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is The Move”.

Finally, “Second Thoughts” by Arthur’s Landing. The niche industry that has grown around Arthur Russell’s music may have finite potential, as the trove of unreleased material nears exhaustion. This collateral project, however, helps fill the gap: a bunch of his associates from the downtown NY scene, reworking his old music. Illustrious players like Peter Zummo, Peter Gordon and the immense bassist, Ernie Brooks, prove adept at recapturing both Russell’s weightless art-disco (“Planted A Thought”, “Change My Life”) and his even more ethereal singer-songwriter side (“Lost In Thought”, “It’s A Boy”). Steven Hall, meanwhile (a former boyfriend of Allen Ginsberg), is a suitably limpid vocal sub for Russell. A second CD, of empathetic remixes, rounds out this respectful, groovy tribute to an enduring musical innovator.

https://soundcloud.com/arthurs-landing/arthurs-landing-lost-in-thought-bob-blank-mix

Neil Young announces new tour dates

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Neil Young has announced a fresh batch of dates for his Rebel Content tour. Young and Promise Of The Real appeared to have finished their Rebel Content tour on July 24, 2015 at the Wayhome Festival in Ontario. Writing in his end of tour report on Facebook, Young enthused, “I loved rocking with P...

Neil Young has announced a fresh batch of dates for his Rebel Content tour.

Young and Promise Of The Real appeared to have finished their Rebel Content tour on July 24, 2015 at the Wayhome Festival in Ontario.

Writing in his end of tour report on Facebook, Young enthused, “I loved rocking with Promise of the Real I love this band Lets keep it going…”

Although both Young and Promise Of The Real were due to perform again at this year’s 30th anniversary Farm Aid event on September 19, they have now announced a second leg to the tour, beginning on October 1 at the Adam Center/University of Missoula, Montana.

They will play 11 new dates, finishing on October 17 at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, California.

The full set of tour dates are:

October 01 – Adam Center/U of Missoula – Missoula, Montana
October 02 – Arena Spokane – Spokane, Washington
October 04 – Wa Mu Theatre – Seattle, Washington
October 05 – Queen Elizabeth Theatre – Vancouver, British Columbia [solo acoustic show]
October 07 – Chiles Center – Portland, Oregon
October 08 – Matthew Knight Arena – Eugene, Oregon
October 10 – Santa Barbara Bowl – Santa Barbara, California
October 11 – Cosmopolitan – Las Vegas, Nevada
October 13 – RIMAC Arena – San Diego, California
October 14 – The Forum – Los Angeles, California
October 17 – Greek Theater – Berkeley, California

During the Rebel Content tour, Young aired a number of deep cuts and rarities from his back catalogue.

They performed Zuma’s “Lookin’ For A Love” at his July 19, 2015 show at Champlain Valley Exposition, Essex Junction, Vermont.

The last time Young played the song was with Crazy Horse (going under the name The Echos) on April 13, 1996 at Old Princeton Landing, Princeton-By-The-Sea, California. Before that, Young hadn’t played the song live since a September 21, 1985 show at Reunion Arena, Dallas, Texas with The International Harvesters.

Young and the band also played a version of the standard “Moonlight In Vermont”. One the artists who have previously covered the song is Willie Nelson, whose sons Lukas and Micah are in Promise Of The Real.

He played “Hippie Dream” for the first time in 18 years during July 11, 2015 show at Pinnacle Bank Arena, Lincoln, Nebraska.

“Hippie Dream” appeared on Young’s 1986 album, Landing On Water. Young last played it on August 24, 1997 at the Coral Sky Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach, Florida.

During his 29 song set, Young also played “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” for the first time since 2008, “Words” and “Out On The Weekend” for the first time since 2009.

On the opening night of the tour – on July 5, 2015 at Marcus Amphitheatre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – he played “Don’t Be Denied” for the first time in 12 years, Greendale’s “Double E” for the first time in 10 years and performed Ragged Glory track, “White Line”, live for only the sixth time.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The Dead Weather announce tracklisting for new album, Dodge & Burn

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The Dead Weather have confirmed the tracklisting for their forthcoming album, Dodge & Burn. The album will be released in September 2015 on Third Man Records. It will feature eight new songs alongside four previously released tracks that have been remixed and remastered for this album. "Open ...

The Dead Weather have confirmed the tracklisting for their forthcoming album, Dodge & Burn.

The album will be released in September 2015 on Third Man Records.

It will feature eight new songs alongside four previously released tracks that have been remixed and remastered for this album.

Open Up (That’s Enough)“, Rough Detective”, “Buzzkill(er)” and “It’s Just Too Bad” were previously available as subscription-only 7″s.

A new single, “I Feel Love (Every Million Miles),” is streaming now exclusively on Tidal. The Dead Weather has also premiered the video. You can watch an excerpt below:

The tracklisting for The Dead Weather’s Dodge & Burn is:

I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)
Buzzkill(er)
Let Me Through
Three Dollar Hat
Lose The Right
Rough Detective
Open Up
Be Still
Mile Markers
Cop and Go
Too Bad
Impossible Winner

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The smells of Bill Murray revealed…

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There is a website called Bill Murray Stories, where members of the general public are invited to submit photographs and anecdotes of themselves featuring Bill Murray. Each one details unusual and random encounters with Murray at baseball games, on the golf course, or the Duty Free at JFK airport. ...

There is a website called Bill Murray Stories, where members of the general public are invited to submit photographs and anecdotes of themselves featuring Bill Murray. Each one details unusual and random encounters with Murray at baseball games, on the golf course, or the Duty Free at JFK airport.

The stories carry headlines like, ‘Autograph At My Wedding’, ‘One Unbelievable Elevator Ride, Part 2’ and ‘Bill Murray Ate Church’s Chicken At My Choir Rehearsal’. They’d make a good regular slot on This American Life, perhaps. They are all warmly told, not in the least bit stalkery, and reveal Murray to be the charming, quirky guy you’d always hope he’d be.

The site is one aspect of what you could perhaps losely describe as an unnoficial and good-natured industry that has sprung up around Murray. You can buy a Bill Murray colouring book or a paper doll tribute or a number of different designs for tote bags.

You suspect that Murray himself would find all this rather good fun. After all, Murray genuinely appears to enjoy interacting with his fans: performing karaoke with strangers, crashing stag dos or bartending at South By South West. Accordingly, you’d hope that a man with this kind of sensibility would take such affectionate homages – t-shirts, mugs and leggings – in good spirits.

Stop offs for karaoke sessions aside, it’s been a busy time Murray recently. Last week, it was announced that Murray would be returning to Ghostbusters franchise, while over the weekend Disney rolled out footage of Murray as Baloo the Bear singing “Bare Necessities” in their remake of The Jungle Book.

This week, meanwhile, Murray is the subject of two new books. The first, The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray, takes a more time-honoured approach to the actor’s career, promising to chronicle “every single Murray performance in loving detail, relating all the milestones, yarns, and controversy in the life of this beloved but enigmatic performer.”

The second, however, is a little less conventional. Cook Your Own Food is a scratch and sniff book, based around scenes from Murray’s most celebrated films – Lost In Translation, The Life Aquatic, Caddyshack, Groundhog Day and so on.

According to the publisher’s website, “Feel closer to the greatest man alive! Delve into his scenes, drink with him, laugh with him and smell as he smells.

“We’ve brought together some amazing artists to re-interpret some classic Bill Murray films. Focusing on his culinary habits.

“Scratch the smelly pads at the top right and enter the world of Bill Murray”.

You can buy it online by clicking here.

You might be tempted to buy a copy, and then – who knows? – read it in a Wes Anderson-themed bar for full effect.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Tame Impala – Currents

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“Everything flows and nothing stays.” So said Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who might’ve found a good place for his most famous maxim in song had there been any shoegazer bands in 500 BC. In any case, the notion is a discomfiting, possibly even scary one, for anyone who may struggle to handl...

“Everything flows and nothing stays.” So said Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who might’ve found a good place for his most famous maxim in song had there been any shoegazer bands in 500 BC. In any case, the notion is a discomfiting, possibly even scary one, for anyone who may struggle to handle all this flux.

That attitude may have been closer to what Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker was feeling when he wrote “Apocalypse Dreams” on 2012’s Lonerism, a work whose prevailing state of blissed-out exuberance often belied the anxieties simmering underneath. “Everything is changing and there’s nothing I can do,” he sang, sounding rather less accepting of the situation than Heraclitus did. “My world is turning pages while I’m just sitting here.”

Tame Impala have hardly been what anyone would consider a stationary object, but nevertheless, their rate of change is rather more dramatic on Currents. Parker returns to themes of personal transformation here again and again – indeed, they’re plain as day in the lyrics and even the titles of songs like “The Moment”, “Reality In Motion” and “New Person, Same Old Mistakes”. As Parker sings in “Yes, I’m Changing” – his already breathy falsetto sounding even dreamier than before – “Yes, I’m changing, yes, I’m gone/Yes, I’m older, yes, I’m moving on/And if you don’t think it’s a crime, you can come along with me.”

Though the song is directed at a lover who may soon be left behind, the last phrase in the chorus suggests that the 29-year-old Australian understands the challenge that Currents poses to some fans. It’s the third and by far the gentlest album that Parker has made under the moniker of Tame Impala, a one-man recording project that has done double duty as a five-man, globe-conquering, synapse-scrambling psychedelic-rock juggernaut over the last five years.

Anyone who has experienced this burlier incarnation of the group – captured in full flight on 2014’s Live Versions – may be especially startled by the music they find here. The celestial sound of layers upon layers of vintage synths has largely replaced Parker’s displays of six-string wizardry and chunky riffage on 2010’s Innerspeaker and its acclaimed follow-up. The previously aggressive swirls and surges have abated, with Parker now filling the space with hazy, Gallic grooves that bear a distinct air of Air.

And whereas the woolliest moments of Innerspeaker and Lonerism conjured a fantasy of what The Beatles may have sounded like if they ever shared a bill with Pink Floyd at the UFO Club, Currents dives deeper into later, less hip reference points, like the more limpid balladry of 10cc and Supertramp, the latter of which Parker has repeatedly cited as one of his very favourite bands.

Close students of Parker’s art may have anticipated this radical shift given the orientation of other recordings, however, like the mix of ‘60s yé-yé, jangly psych and dance-pop he developed with former girlfriend Melody Prochet for her band Melody’s Echo Chamber, or his playful and soulful contributions to Mark Ronson’s Uptown Special. (Parker devotees may also be less worried that the travelling incarnation of Tame Impala has undergone a similarly dramatic overhaul – beefier live renditions of recent songs suggest they fit very well into the existing repertoire.)

What Currents most strongly shares with its two predecessors is Parker’s ability to pursue a wide variety of musical tangents without losing the through-line. That exploratory bent comes most prominently to the fore in “Let It Happen”. Unfolding over the course of almost eight minutes, Currents’ opening track marries a woozy slice of sun-dazed pop to a robotic dance groove that ought to be derailed by the unexpected sound akin to a CD skipping halfway through. Instead, it culminates in some heretofore never-attempted hybrid of Air’s “Sexy Girl”, Daft Punk’s “Da Funk” and Steve Stevens’ riff on Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana”. Somehow it all still sounds like Tame Impala. That’s largely because of Parker’s flair for melody and his multi-tracked and eminently unruffled vocal style, which is likely to draw fewer comparisons to John Lennon’s thanks to the significant change in musical context.

One of several songs to surface in the months before Currents’ release, “Eventually” has a similarly unlikely yet exquisitely integrated combination of elements, its sense of blissed-out drift being accentuated rather than disrupted by the rhythmic swagger or the squiggly, pitch-bent note used as a final flourish. “The Moment”, “Yes, I’m Changing” and “The Less I Know The Better” see Parker continue his efforts to create music that matches the most sumptuous pleasures that could be found on an AM radio dial circa 1975, albeit with the occasional day-glo smear or other rude sonic intrusion that the likes of Seals and Croft would’ve never allowed to muck up such pristine surfaces.

Parker throws several more curveballs on “Past Life”, Currents’ oddest track yet the one that may best demonstrate its synthesis of the airily delicate and the gloriously askew. As a narrator with an electronically distorted voice relates the tale of an ordinary day that takes a turn toward the uncanny due to an encounter with “a lover in a past life”, Parker ladles a loping groove with effects until it threatens to collapse under the weight. Yet this suitably daft cousin to Daft Punk’s “Giorgio By Moroder” (or possibly The Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds”) still has room for another gorgeous vocal refrain by Parker.

Currents’ first single as well as Tame Impala’s first stab at a boudoir-ready slow jam, “Cause I’m A Man” demonstrates the buttery goodness that Parker achieves by embracing the softest qualities of his voice and his wider musical sensibility. Evoking the minimalist soul-pop of Shuggie Otis’ “Aht Uh Mi Head”, Parker offers a not-terribly-adequate apology on behalf of his often lunk-headed gender. “Cause I’m a man, woman/Don’t always think before I do,” he croons before lamenting “it’s the only answer I’ve got for you.” Though he also confesses that “my weakness is the source of all my pride”, the sly attitude demonstrated here is a needed counterbalance to lyrics elsewhere on the album that have the faint ring of a new-age guide to self-actualisation.

Love Paranoia” also offers an unexpected degree of bite, the song’s 10cc-calibre prettiness being undercut by Parker’s description of the anxieties released alongside the ecstasies of a romantic fling. “If only I could read your mind, I’d be fine,” he notes before conceding how all the emotional turbulence brings out “the worst in me”. More familiar hang-ups return in “New Person, Same Old Mistakes”, though the narrator here works harder to fight off the voices of negativity that swell up from deeper in the mix.

As he is in so many other moments here, Parker is too keen to revel in the freedoms he’s created to ever let himself feel defeated. Currents may be equally exhilarating to any listener willing to adjust to Tame Impala’s new paradigm, which – what with new paradigms being as ephemeral as everything else in this life – you may be wise to savour here in the present.

From the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Michael Stipe lists his 10 favourite books

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Michael Stipe has compiled a list of his 10 favourite books. Stipe selected his list as part of One Grand, a new bookshop installation devised by magazine editor Aaron Hicklin for which he asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. Actress T...

Michael Stipe has compiled a list of his 10 favourite books.

Stipe selected his list as part of One Grand, a new bookshop installation devised by magazine editor Aaron Hicklin for which he asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island.

Actress Tilda Swinton and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney have already contributed lists.

Stipe’s top 10:

Complete Works by Arthur Rimbaud
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney
Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Four Plays by Aristophanes translated by William Arrowsmith
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
Just Kids by Patti Smith

About Smith’s book, Stipe said, “Because I’m reading it as I write this, and it’s amazing.”

Smith has been in the news recently, as he memoir Just Kids is to be turned into a TV mini series for Showtime.

Smith will adapt her memoir with John Logan, who is showrunner on the cable network’s series, Penny Dreadful.

Aa yet, there have been no casting announcements made as to who will play Smith in the series.

The announcement was made by Sowtime president David Nevins during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour.

The Hollywood Reporter quotes Nevins as saying, “Just Kids is one of my favorite memoirs of all time.

“Not only is it a fascinating portrait of artists coming of age, but it’s also an inspiring story of friendship, love and endurance. I’m so thrilled that Patti Smith will bring her unique voice to writing the scripts along with the gifted John Logan, who has been doing such a phenomenal job with Penny Dreadful for us.”

In a statement, Patti Smith said, “A limited series on Showtime will allow us to explore the characters more deeply, enabling us to develop stories beyond the book and allow a measure of unorthodox presentation.

“The medium of a television limited series offers narrative freedom and a chance to expand upon the themes of the book.”

Meanwhile, Smith’s new memoir, M Train, is due to be released on October 6.

On October 27, HarperCollins will also release an updated, expanded edition of 1998’s Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, featuring thirty-five new songs, new artwork, as well as an introduction from Smith herself.

Smith returns to the UK to play two shows at London’s Roundhouse on October 30 and 31. The shows are part of her tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Horses album.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Jonny Greenwood reveals his current favourite album, book and podcast

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Johnny Greenwood has been lifting the lid on his current cultural highlights. In an interview with The Guardian, Greenwood has selected his favourite current listening, reading and viewing favourites - which include Sun Ra, Evelyn Waugh and Clive James. Picking his current favourite album, Greenwo...

Johnny Greenwood has been lifting the lid on his current cultural highlights.

In an interview with The Guardian, Greenwood has selected his favourite current listening, reading and viewing favourites – which include Sun Ra, Evelyn Waugh and Clive James.

Picking his current favourite album, Greenwood opted for Sun Ra And His Arkestra‘s In The Orbit Of Ra, describing the posthumous jazz compilation LP as “sound[ing] like music from the future”.

In terms of books, the guitarist opted for Clive James‘ Poetry Notebook 2006-2014 collection. “I owe so much to Clive James,” Greenwood says. “He’s led me to most of my favourite writers and poets – and frankly, he’s given me the further education I missed when I dropped out [of university] at 19.”

Greenwood also revealed that he listens to Richard Herring‘s Leicester Square theatre podcasts, Evelyn Waugh‘s The Sword Of Honour audiobooks, plays the The Talos Principle video game and watches movies via the Mubi app (“Netflix drives me crazy – so much choice, but you struggle to find anything worth watching,” Greenwood laments).

Here’s Greenwood’s picks:

Album: Sun Ra And His Arkestra – ‘In The Orbit Of Ra’
Book: Clive James – ‘Poetry Notebook 2006-2014’
Podcast: Richard Herring’s ‘Leicester Square Theatre Podcast’
Audiobook: Evelyn Waugh’s ‘The Sword Of Honour’ series, read by Robert Powell
Video game: ‘The Talos Principle’
App: Mubi

Greenwood will perform his score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood with the London Contemporary Orchestra as part of David Byrne’s Meltdown at the Southbank Centre on 19 August.

Meanwhile, Greenwood recently gave an update on the current Radiohead activity in a recent interview with Dutch music website 3voor12, Greenwood confirmed that the band are working in the studio “in periods” and that restarting the process “took a lot of time.”

Consequence Of Sound report that the interview has since been translated by the Radiohead community on Reddit.

“We didn’t do anything together for too long, so restarting took a lot of time,” Greenwood said. “We’re working in periods now. This afternoon, Thom and I will work on a song we started yesterday, see what it will lead to.”

He went on to reveal that the band were re-visiting a 1996 track, “Lift“.

“What people don’t know is that there’s a very old song on each album, like ‘Nude’ on In Rainbows. We never found the right arrangement for that, until then. ‘Lift’ is just like that. When the idea is right, it stays right. It doesn’t really matter in which form.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Bob Johnston, Dylan and Cash producer, dies aged 83

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Bob Johnston - who produced albums for Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash - has died aged 83. According to a report in The Tennessean, he died on Friday, August 21. Johnston was born on May 14, 1932 in Hillsboro, Texas. After trying his hand at songwriting - including composing numbers for E...

Bob Johnston – who produced albums for Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash – has died aged 83.

According to a report in The Tennessean, he died on Friday, August 21.

Johnston was born on May 14, 1932 in Hillsboro, Texas. After trying his hand at songwriting – including composing numbers for Elvis Presley movies – he took a job at Columbia Records in New York.

One of his first production credits was Patti Page’s “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte,” which became a Top 10 hit in 1964.

He began working with Dylan in 1965, on Highway 61 Revisited.

Speaking to Uncut’s February 2014 issue [Take 202] Johnson recalled, “When I first went in there for Highway 61. I found a piece of paper on the floor. I said to Dylan, ‘What’s this?’ and he said. ‘It’s something Al Kooper wrote down, it’s overdubs.’ I said, ‘If you keep doing that there won’t be anything left.’ ‘I’m gonna cut live. If we have to overdub, we’ll overdub. But not because Al Kooper wants 14 chances to be a little better.’”

Writing about Johnston in Chronicles Volume 1, Dylan said, “You could see it in his face and he shared that fire, that spirit. Columbia’s leading folk and country producer, he was born one hundred years too late. He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat, and riding with his sword held high.”

The following year, the pair worked together again on Blonde On Blonde.

They collaborated again on four more albums – 1967’s John Wesley Harding, 1969’s Nashville Skyline, 1970’s Self Portrait and New Morning.

During this period, Johnston also worked with Johnny Cash, producing both of his live prison albums – 1968’s At Folsom Prison and 1969’s At San Quentin.

Among his other production credits during this period were Simon & Garfunkel‘s 1966’s album Sounds Of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, produced Leonard Cohen‘s Songs From A Room (1969) and 1971’s Songs Of Love And Hate.

He also produced The Byrds‘ Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (1969) and Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Race (1973).

Although Johnston’s work was principally with American musicians, he did accept an unusual commission to record in England in 1972.

“Guy stood on the front steps of my house in Nashville on a Sunday night,” he told Uncut. “Tells me he’s got a group in England who he wants me to record. He says to me, ‘I have a castle in Crowborough. If you record the group, and get them to 99 on the charts, you can come and live in the castle for a month’…

“I said, ‘Can I really? What will you give me if I get them a number one?’ He said, ‘You can stay there a year.’ So I went over to England and recorded Lindisfarne for Fog On The Tyne…”

He continued working through the Eighties and 1990s, during which time he produced albums for Willie Nelson and Carl Perkins.

In an email sent to Uncut by Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black, who also published an online biography of the producer, Johnson had been in a memory facility in Nashville and in hospice for much of the past week before being confined to a bed.

“For several days before, singing, swaying and waving around his hands, telling stories out loud, entertaining and consuming all those that saw and heard him. Once he was confined to bed and connected to machines, hospice only gave him a few days to live.

“He was on morphine to help any pain he was experiencing. Bob’s wife told me he pass[ed] away peacefully. The grand master waved his magical wand for the last time, then disappeared off into the night.”

You can read Uncut’s archival interview with Bob Johnston by clicking here

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Bob Johnston: “Don’t ever quit – don’t stop playing! If you do, don’t come back!”

By way of tribute to Bob Johnston, whose death was confirmed over the weekend, we thought we’d post John Robinson’s substantial interview from Uncut issue 202. Here, the producer looks back on his groundbreaking work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen among others... ---------- Such ...

By way of tribute to Bob Johnston, whose death was confirmed over the weekend, we thought we’d post John Robinson’s substantial interview from Uncut issue 202. Here, the producer looks back on his groundbreaking work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen among others…

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Such is his irrepressible nature, Bob Johnston can’t stop himself from sharing a good story – even when he’s declining an interview and is on the point of putting the phone down. You’re calling from England? He knows about England.

“Guy stood on the front steps of my house in Nashville on a Sunday night,” he says. “Tells me he’s got a group in England who he wants me to record. He says to me, ‘I have a castle in Crowborough. If you record the group, and get them to 99 on the charts, you can come and live in the castle for a month’…

“I said, ‘Can I really? What will you give me if I get them a number one?’ He said, ‘You can stay there a year.’ So I went over to England and recorded Lindisfarne for Fog On The Tyne…”

He pauses, recalling his meeting with Charisma records boss Tony Stratton-Smith and this commission as a freelance producer. This was 1970 – after Johnston had spent several years recording artists like Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Johnny Cash. For all his time spent as head of Columbia in Nashville, and all these successes, you can tell the 81-year old Texan still enjoys the punchline of the tale.

“They went to number one,” he says triumphantly. “And I moved into the castle.”

But he’s not interested in talking right now. He’s got a book coming out, and doesn’t want “too many versions of himself” out there at the same time. That, however, seems impossible. A man of warm regards and bitter enmities; who has rubbed shoulders with the greats while never hoping for their glory; a man, what’s more, whose fantastically tall stories all turn out to be true, there is, quite simply, only one Bob Johnston.

Charlie McCoy, the multi-instrumentalist who played on every Bob Dylan album from 1965 to 1970, recalls his first recording with Dylan as an apparently completely accidental event. When McCoy was in New York for a visit, his Nashville pal Bob Johnston arranged for him to go and see a Broadway show. Johnston suggested he drop by the Columbia studios on 51st Street to pick up the tickets.

“He introduced me to Dylan,” recalls Charlie today, “and he said to me, ‘I’m getting ready to record a song, why don’t you pick up that other guitar and play?’ We had time for one take, one playback and then the bass player left for another session. And that was ‘Desolation Row’.”

Bob Johnston has historically explained his role as a producer in terms of staying out of the way of the artist and what they have to communicate. Certainly, he has no respect for those who leech off or otherwise obstruct talent. That might be a business executive. Equally, it might be a lesser artist. In New York, Bob recorded Simon and Garfunkel.

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“Don’t kid yourself,” he says. “It was Paul Simon. I wanted Simon to do the harmony too – I think that would have been better than Artie. But they had been at high school together and that’s how they did it. Artie never did like me very much.”

The UK’s five smallest record shops revealed…

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The five smallest record shops in the UK have been revealed. The Vinyl Factory report that the Entertainment Retailers Association have surveyed 220 record shops in search of the country's smallest. 5. Earworm Records 1 Powells Yard, Goodramgate, York, YO1 7LS 196 square foot 4. People Records 14...

The five smallest record shops in the UK have been revealed.

The Vinyl Factory report that the Entertainment Retailers Association have surveyed 220 record shops in search of the country’s smallest.

5. Earworm Records
1 Powells Yard, Goodramgate, York, YO1 7LS
196 square foot

4. People Records
14 Chapel Street, Guildford, GU1 3UL
165 square foot

3. The Record Shop
7 Shurdington Rd, Cheltenham, GL53 0JB
100 square foot

2. Marrs Plectrum
387 Fulbridge Rd, Peterborough PE4 6SF
79 square foot

1. VOD Music
28 New Street, Mold, Flintshire, CH7 1NZ
67 square foot

In related vinyl news, earlier this year the first vinyl record shop opened in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar.

Dund Gol Records opened in the Children’s Book Palace of Mongolia in March, 2015.

One of the world’s most isolated record shops, Dund Gol Records is the brainchild of B. Batbold. It has a stock of over 1,000 vinyl records from Batbold’s own collection.

In an interview with The UB Post, Batbold said, “Western artists are releasing vinyl records instead of CDs. I don’t want to keep all my vinyl records. I want to spread vinyl records to people who collect vinyl records. That’s why I opened the store.”

In other vinyl firsts, the world’s biggest record collection is to be turned into a vinyl library.

Brazilian collector Zero Freitas has amassed over 5 million records, which he employs a team of college interns to catalogue.

Speaking to the BBC, Freitas – who owns a private bus line in the São Paulo suburbs – outlines his plans to create a searchable collection for public use.

“We hope people will be able to select records through our collection and listen to the music,” says Freitas. “The relationship people have with certain songs is subjective and personal. I want to share this with people and make it possible for them to recall their memories.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: “It’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship”

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When CSNY returned to action in 2006, they found themselves fighting another unjust American war, this time in Iraq rather than Vietnam. But had they finally made peace with each other? Messrs Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young talk to Uncut about the egomania, debauchery and bush babies that ran riot i...

When CSNY returned to action in 2006, they found themselves fighting another unjust American war, this time in Iraq rather than Vietnam. But had they finally made peace with each other? Messrs Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young talk to Uncut about the egomania, debauchery and bush babies that ran riot in their past, and discovers whether playing Neil’s “boring-assed fucking protest music” has, finally, made them a truly harmonious quartet… Originally from Uncut’s July 2008 issue (Take 134). Words: Alastair McKay

___________________

“It’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship…”

Let’s say it’s April, 2006, by which time Neil Young’s simmering anger at America’s invasion of Iraq and the slaughter going on there during the subsequent occupation comes to what  you might call boiling point. In nine frantic days, he writes, records and releases Living With War, an album of coruscating fury at the Bush administration, its demented War On Terror and the havoc it’s wreaking in the Middle East that provokes an unprecedented right-wing backlash, Neil demonised by conservative ultras and the hawkish pro-Bush media. Undaunted by the fierce criticism of the record, he now thinks about taking it on the road.

Living With War had been recorded in a day, with Neil joined only by drummer Chad Cromwell and bassist Rick Rosas, plus occasional interventions from Tommy Brea’s forlorn trumpet. The songs were rough and raw, and fuelled by rage, though some of the harder edges were softened by the addition of a hastily convened 100-voice choir.

This was not a record made with a career plan in mind. It was Young working at the far edges of instinct, and with a sense of urgency he has rarely shown since the Kent State massacre of 1970 – when the National Guard shot dead four students protesting against Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia – prompted him to write “Ohio”. And, just as that record was issued immediately, so Living With War was rush-released within weeks of its recording. It was a brazen, brilliant move – reconnecting Young with his roots as a folk singer, and shattering the sense of a career drifting into the twilight.

The songs on Living With War had no room at all for subtlety. They were all about making a point and moving on. They were, in essence, punk, which makes it even more surprising that Young now decides to take the songs on the road with his former CSNY band mates, with whom he has had such a fractious history. The garage rock of his more primal backing band, Crazy Horse, would have been perhaps a more obvious fit. But then being obvious isn’t part of who Neil Young is.

There is also something pragmatically calculating about Young’s alliance with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the dates that follow in the summer of 2006. He knows more people will come to see CSNY than they would to see him solo, such is the affection – much tested, but to many still undiminished – of a band who, before they were driven apart by conflicting egos, drugs and an apparent inability to occupy the same space without soon being at each others’ throats, had assumed, with 1970’s multi-million selling Déjà Vu, the status of “the American Beatles”.

Young’s bold-faced strategy is evident when you watch CSNY: Déjà Vu – his new documentary film about what became the Freedom Of Speech tour – when it becomes clear Young made a deliberate choice to hijack a schedule that had already been booked, and then dictate his terms.

“I called them up,” Young tells Uncut, “and said, ‘Listen, I made this record, you should listen to it, as this is what I want to do. I want to do all the songs on the record in the show. I don’t want to focus on anything else and I don’t want you to focus on anything else.’”

There would be room for nostalgia in the set, but only if the songs supported the mission: saving whales, for example, was off the agenda.

“We’re going to do a tour that’s focused on this type of music and this subject,” Young insisted. “We don’t want to take away from the intensity by diverting ourselves into little side trips.”

Young’s demands were precise. Nothing was to distract from the message. There was to be no loose talk, no rambling introductions to the songs, no glib statements about politics, no taunting of the president. There was to be no repeat, essentially, of the Monterey Pop festival in 1967, where David Crosby decided to use the platform to share his sincere belief that President Kennedy had been killed by more than one gunman.

In most previous incarnations in their troubled history, such discipline would have been unthinkable. But how easily were David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills, none of them known for easily toeing anyone’s line, persuaded to buckle to Neil’s will?

“From when Neil first called and said, ‘Come over, I’ve got some music for you to listen to,’ from that moment, we knew that we wanted to support him,” Graham Nash tells Uncut. “We knew that we wanted to sing those songs. We knew the importance of the direction of the tour and we went right along with it. We completely agreed with what Neil was trying to do.”

Destroyer’s Dan Bejar: “David Bowie’s ‘Where Are We Now?’ is a major inspiration”

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Destroyer's Dan Bejar, speaking in the current Uncut, reveals how David Bowie's comback inspired his own forthcoming album. The band's tenth record Poison Season, out on August 28, is their follow-up to 2011's acclaimed Kaputt. Explaining the impact of Bowie's January 2013 single, Bejar says: "[Cl...

Destroyer‘s Dan Bejar, speaking in the current Uncut, reveals how David Bowie‘s comback inspired his own forthcoming album.

The band’s tenth record Poison Season, out on August 28, is their follow-up to 2011’s acclaimed Kaputt.

Explaining the impact of Bowie’s January 2013 single, Bejar says: “[Classic rock] has always been Destroyer’s comfort zone. That is the music that got me out of the basement, and into trying to sing in a rock’n’roll band, in 1997.

“For some reason I recently started to revisit those early-’70s records that were so pivotal to me in the late ’90s, mostly sparked by the song ‘Where Are We Now’ by David Bowie. It made me think about him for the first time in a long time, and sonically it is definitely a major inspiration for Poison Season.”

The current Uncut, featuring David Gilmour on the cover, is out now.

Photo: Fabiola Carranza

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Watch Thom Yorke play three new songs in Japan

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Thom Yorke debuted three new songs at a gig in Japan last night. The singer was joined by Nigel Godrich at Zepp Namba Osaka in Tokyo for the show which featured material from his recent album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, 2013 LP Amok and his debut The Eraser. Yorke also debuted three new songs – "Im...

Thom Yorke debuted three new songs at a gig in Japan last night.

The singer was joined by Nigel Godrich at Zepp Namba Osaka in Tokyo for the show which featured material from his recent album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, 2013 LP Amok and his debut The Eraser.

Yorke also debuted three new songs – “Impossible Knots“, “Not The News” and “Traffic“, which you can watch below.

The gig was only his second show after his recent performance at the Latitude Festival.

Thom Yorke played:

‘The Clock’
‘Brain In A Bottle’
‘Impossible Knots’
‘Black Swan’
‘Guess Again!’
‘Amok’
‘Not The News’
‘Truth Ray’
‘Traffic’
‘Twist’
‘Pink Section’
‘Nose Grows Some’
‘Cymbal Rush’
‘Default’

Yorke recently revealed that he will compose new music for an upcoming for a new production of Harold Pinter‘s play Old Times in New York.

The play will star Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelly Reilly and be directed by Douglas Hodge. It will run at American Airlines Theatre from October 6 through to November 29, presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

“It’s been a pleasure working with Doug on my first stage production,” Yorke said of his involvement. “I’ve enjoyed exploring through music the script’s themes of love and memory as well as Pinter’s rhythms, twists and turns.”

Director Hodge added: “The music Thom has written for Old Times gives an immediacy and a ‘now?ness’ to the show.”

“The play itself is about memory and love – Thom’s music works backwards and forwards and plays with time and repetition in the same way Pinter does.”

“In true Thom Yorke style, the music is epic, heartbreaking, irresistible and complex. I’m hopeful this collaboration will result in a new kind of theatre-goer coming to our show.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Read Tom Waits new poem to Keith Richards

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Tom Waits has written a new poem, "A Likely Story", about his friend Keith Richards. The poem appears in a forthcoming Rolling Stone tribute, Keith Richards: The Ultimate Guide to His Music & Legend. You can read the poem below. Waits and Richards have worked together several times over the y...

Tom Waits has written a new poem, “A Likely Story“, about his friend Keith Richards.

The poem appears in a forthcoming Rolling Stone tribute, Keith Richards: The Ultimate Guide to His Music & Legend.

You can read the poem below.

Waits and Richards have worked together several times over the years, firstly on Waits’ Rain Dogs album in 1985, then 1992’s Bone Machine and most recently Bad As Me in 2011.

In May 2013, Waits joined the Rolling Stones on stage to perform a version of “Little Red Rooster”. Click here to watch some footage.

Richards will release a new solo album, Crosseyed Heart, on September 18; it is his first release under his own name since 1992’s Main Offender.

You can read our preview of Crosseyed Heart by clicking here.

1035x2217-keithrichards-poem-waits

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Pete Townshend co-writes tribute to Ronnie Lane

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Pete Townshend has co-written a song about Ronnie Lane with Lane's wife, Kate. The song, "Chameleon", features on the new album by Des Horsfall's Kuschty Rye. You can hear it below. Townshend plays guitar and sings on the song, and composed the music; Kate Lane composed the lyrics for her husband....

Pete Townshend has co-written a song about Ronnie Lane with Lane’s wife, Kate.

The song, “Chameleon“, features on the new album by Des Horsfall’s Kuschty Rye. You can hear it below.

Townshend plays guitar and sings on the song, and composed the music; Kate Lane composed the lyrics for her husband.

“Chameleon” appears on The Bastard’s Tin, which is the second of a proposed trilogy of Kuschty Rye albums, names after Ronnie Lane’s 1979 song.

The project is dedicated to Lane and Slim Chance, the band Lane formed after leaving the Faces in 1973.

Townshend and Horsfall are accompanied on the song by Slim Chance’s Steve Simpson and Charlie Hart.

“Chameleon” is described as a “devotional love letter” from Kate Lane to her husband. It was written following their separation, after he was diagnosed with the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

You can find more information on the Kuschty Rye project by clicking here.

Meanwhile, Uncut are currently hosting a series of online exclusives taken from the forthcoming Faces box set, You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything.

The box set is released by Rhino on August 28 and contains newly remastered versions of all four of the band’s studio albums, plus a bonus disc of rarities.

You can click here to listen to our first exclusive: “Flying (Take 3)”, which is one of the unreleased bonus tracks from The First Step.

The surviving members of the Faces – Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Kenney Jones – are to reunite to play a show for Prostate Cancer UK.

They will perform at Rock ‘n’ Horsepower at Hurtwood Park Polo Club in Ewhurst, Surrey on Saturday, September 5, 2015.

In other news, a new Small Faces box set will include rarities, outtakes and alternative versions.

The Decca Years is released on October 9, 2015.

The 5-CD box set compiles everything that the Small Faces recorded for Decca during their 18-month record deal with the label, along with the last remaining recording sessions that the group made for the BBC during the same period.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The 27th Uncut Playlist Of 2015

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Not to be too bushy-tailed about being back in the office, but a nice thing about returning after a fortnight away has been the pile of new music awaiting me. Below, I've shared as much of the good stuff as I can, but please make a special effort to check out Israel Nash, whose second album is an ab...

Not to be too bushy-tailed about being back in the office, but a nice thing about returning after a fortnight away has been the pile of new music awaiting me. Below, I’ve shared as much of the good stuff as I can, but please make a special effort to check out Israel Nash, whose second album is an absolute killer if you appreciate a) CSNY’s live takes of “Down By The River”; b) My Morning Jacket up to “It Still Moves”; c) “No Other; d) Jonathan Wilson solo albums. Post very much in character here, I guess.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

1 Olga Bell – Incitation (One Little Indian)

2 Israel Nash – Israel Nash’s Silver Season (Loose/Thirty Tigers)

3 Gagakirise And EYE – Gagakiriseye (Thrill Jockey)

4 The Dead Weather – Dodge And Burn (Third Man)

5 Sk Kakraba – Songs Of Paapieye (Awesome Tapes From Africa)

6 Doug Hream Blunt – My Name Is (Luaka Bop)

7 Method Man – The Meth Lab (Tommy Boy)

8 Joanna Newsom – Sapokanikan (Drag City)

9 Simon Kirby/Tommy Perman/Rob St John – Concrete Antenna (www.concreteantenna.org)

10 Simon Scott – Insomni (Ash International)

11 King Midas Sound/Fennesz – Editions 1 (Ninja Tune)

12 Michael Chapman – Fish (Tompkins Square)

13 The City – Now That Everything’s Been Said (Light In The Attic)

14 El Vy – Return To The Moon (4AD)

15 John Grant – Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (Bella Union)

16 Robert Forster – Songs To Play (Tapete)

17 Dave Heumann – Here In The Deep (Thrill Jockey)

18 Scott Tuma – Hard Again (Scissor Tail)

19 Scott Tuma – The River 1 2 3 4 (Scissor Tail)

20 Larry Gus – I Need New Eyes (DFA)

21 Julia Holter – Have You in My Wilderness (Domino)

22 Duane Pitre – Bayou Electric (Important)

23 Ava Cherry – How Loneliness Goes (iTunes)

24 Christina Vantzou – No 3 (Kranky)

25 The Chills – Silver Bullets (Fire)

26 Los Lobos – Gates Of Gold (429)

27 Ballaké Sissoko & Vincent Segal – Musique De Nuit (No Format)

28 Israel Nash Gripka – Israel Nash’s Rain Plains (Loose)

29 Dave Rawlings Machine – Nashville Obsolete (Acony)

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free

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2013’s Southeastern, was, give or take the odd playful moment, a gripping description of the self-dug pit from which its composer had recently hauled himself. Now sober, married and grateful, Jason Isbell was reporting where he’d been, and what he’d seen. Its connection was instant and unspari...

2013’s Southeastern, was, give or take the odd playful moment, a gripping description of the self-dug pit from which its composer had recently hauled himself. Now sober, married and grateful, Jason Isbell was reporting where he’d been, and what he’d seen. Its connection was instant and unsparing, and it was always going to be a tough act to follow. Sensibly, Isbell hasn’t.

Though Southeastern was a redemption song, it also emitted an undertone of anxiety, the sound of someone waking somewhere unfamiliar and unexpectedly comfortable, wondering if they’re really supposed to be here. Something More Than Free finds Isbell sounding surer of himself, as a songwriter and a man. There’s a confidence about his character sketches, leavened with wise humility: any of this cast of anxious itinerants could have been him, had his luck run a little lousier, his talent not been quite so irrepressible.

That said, it picks up, kind of, where Southeastern left off. That album closed with “Relatively Easy”, a thanks for the small mercies of a happy home and enjoyable work: more than many ever get. Something More Than Free opens with the gospel-laced “If It Takes A Lifetime”, narrated by someone putting a spring in his daily trudge by reminding himself that you can spend a long time looking for what was right here all along (“I thought that I was running to/But I was running from”). Not for the last time on the album, there’s something of the terse Springstonian sermon about it (“A man is a product of/All the people that he ever loved”).

On the basis that Isbell seems unlikely to bristle at Springsteen comparisons, Something More Than Free has something of Nebraska and something of The Rising about it – the terse, elegant poetry of the former, the deadpan rock’n’roll ecstasies of the latter, and sometimes, as on “Twenty-Four Frames” and “Palmetto Rose”, both. But it says much that all of the album leaves one grasping for measures against other inhabitants of the pantheon – the tightly wrought, Paul Simon-ish detail of the sparse “Flagship”, in which the occupants of some fleapit hotel are drawn as lessons in life and how not to live it, or the unfettered Neil Young-esque guitar solo that illuminates the gently epic “Children Of Children”.

Like the aforementioned greats, whose ranks Isbell sounds more and more poised to join, he understands the value of his own story, his own lexicon. Though familiarity with his previous works is not a prerequisite, those who have been listening will wonder whether the lovelorn drifter crooning “The Life You Chose” into an empty glass is the same guy who sang “Alabama Pines”, on 2011’s Here We Rest. Those whose association with Isbell’s works reaches back to first contributions to Drive-By Truckers will hear something of sublime father-to-son ballad “Outfit” in the title track, also a caution against resignation to destiny.

Though Isbell’s principal interests are failure and regret – rightly so; they’re much more interesting than triumph and hubris – he filters both through a humour as warm as it is bitter. So “How To Forget”, a return to a favourite theme of settling accounts with the past, is a mid-tempo country shuffle told as an unexpected meeting with an over-exuberant ex (“She won’t stop telling stories, and most of them are true/She knew me back before I fell for you”). Closing track “To A Band That I Loved” – a stately, gorgeous Americana ballad drawn from the same vein as Dawes’ recent “All Your Favourite Bands” – is a heartfelt attempt to make up some of the credit that the titular group were refused by an indifferent world.

Isbell’s studio discography already now comprises five albums – eight, if his stint in DBTs is included. Still in his mid-thirties, he has the kind of voice – in both singing and writing – that only seems likely to improve with age. It’s already a significant canon. Little seems beyond him.

Q&A
JASON ISBELL
Are you surprised by how such an obviously personal catharsis like Southeastern resonated with people? How do you feel about that album now?

I wouldn’t say I’m surprised, but I’m certainly grateful. I’ve always had faith in the power of an honest story well told. Honestly, there aren’t too many different stories to tell, so if you pick the right details, songs can be broad in scope and purpose without being vague. People latch on to that.

There’s an echo of “Outfit” in the title track – the line about loading boxes for someone else evoked the bucket of wealthy man’s paint. To what extent are your songs about ordinary hardship a gesture of thanks that you escaped that kind of work?
Both those songs were inspired by conversations with my father. He’s worked very hard his whole life, as did his father and mother. I work very hard myself, but there are obvious rewards to what I’m doing. Dad’s only reward is a family that’s well taken care of, and that seems to be enough for him. Those stories are the ones that interest me the most: work as service, as a labour of love in the truest sense.

The characters in the songs generally seem kind of lonely and adrift (“Flagship”, “Speed Trap Town”, “Hudson Commodore”) – do you see yourself in them?
I’m not lonely in any permanent sense, but I still feel like a person on the fringes of society in a lot of ways. I love traveling, I crave it sometimes, but I’m not delusional enough to believe it’s a natural and healthy way to live. It’s possible for me to inhabit these characters because I have a good memory of the times when I was adrift, and I still feel like a bit of a castaway.

Is “Children Of Children” in any respect about your own parents? And/or is it in some respect a preparation for fatherhood?
It is about my parents, and my wife’s parents. Both sets were very young when we were born. The time my mother spent raising me likely cost her a lot of opportunities, and even though she’d never be resentful of that and it’s obviously not my fault, I’ve benefited from it, so I’ve felt guilty about it. I think my wife Amanda has at times felt that way about her mother. The song is my way of looking those things in the eye and dealing with them.
INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Track premiere! Hear an unreleased version of the Faces’ classic,”Flying”

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On August 28, the Faces release You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (1970 - 1975) - a new box set containing newly remastered versions of all four of the band's studio albums, plus a bonus disc of rarities. To coincide with this momentous Faces news, we’re delighted to be able to share exclus...

On August 28, the Faces release You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (1970 – 1975) – a new box set containing newly remastered versions of all four of the band’s studio albums, plus a bonus disc of rarities.

To coincide with this momentous Faces news, we’re delighted to be able to share exclusively a track from these sets – “Flying (Take 3)”, which is one of the unreleased bonus tracks from The First Step.

We’ll share two more exclusive tracks from the Faces box set over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, this track is only available to UK viewers.

You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (1970 – 1975) will be available through Rhino on CD and digitally and as a limited edition vinyl.

You can pre-order the CD set by clicking here. And you can pre-order the vinyl set by clicking here.

Scroll down for the full tracklisting.

Meanwhile, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Kenney Jones are to reunite The Faces to play a show for Prostate Cancer UK.

They will perform at Rock ‘n’ Horsepower at Hurtwood Park Polo Club in Ewhurst, Surrey on Saturday, September 5, 2015.

“This year is the 40th anniversary since The Faces parted ways so it’s about time we got together for a jam,” said Stewart. “Being in The Faces back in the day was a whirlwind of madness but my God, it was beyond brilliant. We are pleased to be able to support Prostate Cancer UK.”

Faces_LP_Box

The track listing for You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (1970 – 1975) is:

THE FIRST STEP
1. “Wicked Messenger”
2. “Devotion”
3. “Shake, Shudder, Shiver”
4. “Stone”
5. “Around The Plynth”
6. “Flying”
7. “Pineapple And The Monkey”
8. “Nobody Knows”
9. “Looking Out The Window”
10. “Three Button Hand Me Down”
11. “Behind The Sun” (Outtake) *
12. “Mona – The Blues” (Outtake) *
13. “Shake, Shudder, Shiver” (BBC Session) *
14. “Flying” (Take 3) *
15. “Nobody Knows” (Take 2) *

LONG PLAYER
1. “Bad ‘n’ Ruin”
2. “Tell Everyone”
3. “Sweet Lady Mary”
4. “Richmond”
5. “Maybe I’m Amazed”
6. “Had Me A Real Good Time”
7. “On The Beach”
8. “I Feel So Good”
9. “Jerusalem”
10. “Whole Lotta Woman” (Outtake) *
11. “Tell Everyone” (Take 1) *
12. “Sham-Mozzal” (Instrumental – Outtake) *
13. “Too Much Woman” (Live) *
14. “Love In Vain” (Live) *

A NOD IS AS GOOD AS A WINK…TO A BLIND HORSE
1. “Miss Judy’s Farm”
2. “You’re So Rude”
3. “Love Lives Here”
4. “Last Orders Please”
5. “Stay With Me”
6. “Debris”
7. “Memphis”
8. “Too Bad”
9. “That’s All You Need”
10. “Miss Judy’s Farm” (BBC Session) *
11. “Stay With Me” (BBC Session) *

OOH LA LA
1. “Silicone Grown”
2. “Cindy Incidentally”
3. “Flags And Banners”
4. “My Fault”
5. “Borstal Boys”
6. “Fly In The Ointment”
7. “If I’m On The Late Side”
8. “Glad And Sorry”
9. “Just Another Honky”
10. “Ooh La La”
11. “Cindy Incidentally” (BBC Session) *
12. “Borstal Boys” (Rehearsal) *
13. “Silicone Grown” (Rehearsal) *
14. “Glad And Sorry” (Rehearsal) *
15. “Jealous Guy” (Live) *

* previously unreleased

BONUS LP
1. “Pool Hall Richard”
2. “I Wish It Would Rain” (With A Trumpet)
3. “Rear Wheel Skid”
4. “Maybe I’m Amazed”
5. “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off”
6. “You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Ironing Board, Or Any Other Domestic Short Comings)” (UK Single Version)
7. “As Long As You Tell Him”
8. “Skewiff (Mend The Fuse)”
9. “Dishevelment Blues”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Kurt Cobain, Montage Of Heck soundtrack given November release date

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The soundtrack for recent Kurt Cobain film, Montage Of Heck, has been given a release date. The yet-untitled LP will feature unheard music by Cobain. As AwardsLine reports, it will be released the same say as the DVD, coming on November 6. According to Billboard, director Brett Morgen sifted thro...

The soundtrack for recent Kurt Cobain film, Montage Of Heck, has been given a release date.

The yet-untitled LP will feature unheard music by Cobain.

As AwardsLine reports, it will be released the same say as the DVD, coming on November 6.

According to Billboard, director Brett Morgen sifted through the extensive Cobain archives for home recordings and rare tracks.

The release will include recordings featured in the film, and it has been reported that other unheard material will also be included. Morgen describes the music featured as ranging “from thrash to ragtime and everything in between”. It will also include “a sketch comedy routine”.

Commenting on the soundtrack as a whole, Morgen said: “You really get a sense of how happy he was simply by creating himself. His lyrics are really playful, and, at times, you can feel his smile and warmth coming through.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the September 2015 issue of Uncut is on sale in the UK on Tuesday, July 28 – featuring David Gilmour, a free Grateful Dead CD, Bob Dylan and the Newport Folk Festival, AC/DC, Killing Joke, the Isley Brothers, Julien Temple, Ryley Walker and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.