The Sex Pistols are to feature on a new range of credit cards launching by Virgin Money.
The bank, founded in 1995 by Richard Branson, will issue three cards with Sex Pistols branding on them: two featuring the artwork for the band’s 1977 album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, w...
The Sex Pistols are to feature on a new range of credit cards launching by Virgin Money.
The bank, founded in 1995 by Richard Branson, will issue three cards with Sex Pistols branding on them: two featuring the artwork for the band’s 1977 album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, with a third single utilises imagery from the single, “Anarchy In The UK“.
In a statement, Virgin Money said it was “time for consumers to put a little bit of rebellion in their pocket”. Michele Greene, the bank’s director of cards, said: “In launching these cards, we wanted to celebrate Virgin’s heritage and difference. The Sex Pistols challenged convention and the established ways of thinking – just as we are doing today in our quest to shake up UK banking.”
“Even after nearly 40 years, the Sex Pistols’ power to provoke is undimmed,” said Richard Branson.
The End Of The Road festival have announced details of their Comedy and Literature line-up for this year's event.
Among the artists performing, there will be a special celebration of the life of Nick Drake. Drake's sister Gabrielle and Cally Collomon will discuss their recent book, Remembered For A...
The End Of The Road festival have announced details of their Comedy and Literature line-up for this year’s event.
Among the artists performing, there will be a special celebration of the life of Nick Drake. Drake’s sister Gabrielle and Cally Collomon will discuss their recent book, Remembered For A While, perhaps joined by special guests.
Meanwhile, Phill Jupitus, Robin Ince, Andy Zaltzman and Sara Pascoe are among the comedians performing at End Of The Road.
Uncut contributor Mick Houghton will discuss his recently published Sandy Denny biography, while other authors appearing on the bill include Richard King (How Soon Is Now?, Original Rockers), Zoe Howe (The Jesus And Mary Chain) and Rob Chapman (Syd Barrett).
They join Sufjan Stevens, The War On Drugs, Tame Impala, My Morning Jacket, Mark Lanegan Band and Saint Etienne at this year’s festival, which takes place between September 4 – 6 at Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset.
Uncut will be hosting a stage at this year’s festival; check back here for updates.
You can buy final tier tickets for End Of The Road at £195 by clicking here.
Comedy
Phill Jupitus
Andy Zaltzman
Robin Ince
Sara Pascoe
Felicity Ward
Max & Ivan
The Beau Zeaux
Sameena Zehra
Deborah Frances White
Voices In Your Head
Damian Clark
Steve Hall
Jim Smallman
Rachel Parris
Sarah Bennetto
Storytellers’ Club
Literature
Nick Drake: A Celebration with Gabrielle Drake & Cally Callomon
Richard King
Mick Houghton
Zoë Howe
Rob Chapman
Adharanand Finn
Claire Fuller
Susanna Hislop
Katharine Hibbert
Thom Yorke has announced details of a live show.
He will play Tokyo's Summersonic Festival on August 15, 2015.
The news was confirmed on Twitter by Nigel Godrich.
https://twitter.com/nigelgod/status/606834799936946177
https://twitter.com/nigelgod/status/606835502646497281
https://twitter.com/ni...
Thom Yorke has announced details of a live show.
He will play Tokyo’s Summersonic Festival on August 15, 2015.
The news was confirmed on Twitter by Nigel Godrich.
“I’m sorry that I’m wearing dark glasses,” explains Patti Smith, as the final notes of “Free Money” fade out. “I’m not trying to be cool. It’s just the sun. The sun is not yellow… it’s chicken!” It is shortly after 7pm and Patti Smith and her band are in the middle of playing...
“I’m sorry that I’m wearing dark glasses,” explains Patti Smith, as the final notes of “Free Money” fade out. “I’m not trying to be cool. It’s just the sun. The sun is not yellow… it’s chicken!” It is shortly after 7pm and Patti Smith and her band are in the middle of playing their Horses album in full. Even at this relatuvely late hour, the thermometer is nudging 70 degrees and the sky is a perfect blue. But admittedly, a sun-lit park in East London seems an incongruous setting for Horses. After all, the album is explicitly a New York record, written in the Chelsea Hotel and Smith’s own MacDougal Street apartment then finessed at several of the city’s storied venues, from St Mark’s Church to CBGBs. Yet here we find Smith and her band celebrating the 40th anniversary of their debut album with a tour of the European festival circuit.
The question of how to present this characteristically New York album in the outdoor spaces of Europe – and in sequence – seem not to have overly concerned Smith and her co-conspirators much. By coincidence, two nights before this London show, there’s an Old Grey Whistle Test compilation on television that includes footage of Smith and her band performing “Horses” from May, 1976. The odd grey hair aside, it’s revealing to see how little they’ve changed: Lenny Kaye, Smith’s long-serving guitarist, still favours a white shirt and black waistcoat outfit while Smith’s sunglasses appear to be an ever-present accessory (although these days, she admits, they’re fitted with prescription lenses). But critically the spirited, wide-ranging qualities of the material – not to mention its pathos and wit – are reassuringly as strong as ever, even in this setting. After opening with a rousing version of “Gloria” and the languid skank of “Redondo Beach”, “Birdland” suggests a more challenging proposition for a potentially restless festival crowd. A nine-minute excursion into incantatory poetry over improvised noise, it is closer to performance art than rock gig; but commendably, the audience are fully engaged. Even the occasionally lengthy gaps between songs – when Smith sips from a mug of tea or talks briefly to a member of the road – are met with tolerance rather than impatience. Smith herself is unfailingly polite. After “Free Money”, she helpfully explains that they’re reached the end of Side 1; later, after she botches the introduction to “Break it Up”, claiming “I never do anything perfect. I only fuck up perfect”, she is cheered enthusiastically.
The second side of Horses is dominated by the “Land…” sequence, which provides the transformative highlight of tonight’s set. The heavy lifting falls initially to Smith’s band: especially, Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty – the two veterans of the Horses album sessions – who are there to interpret the song’s complex, rhythmic intensity. Smith’s delivery, meanwhile, alternates between witchy invocations and the fire and brimstone shrieks of a tent revival preacher. The Horses set concludes with “Elegie” – “Written 40 years ago when I was toddler”: her tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Many more friends, she says, have died since and she encourages the audience to shout the names of lost loved ones while the song plays – she names Joe Strummer, Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone and Sid Vicious, her brother Todd Pollard Smith, husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, band mate Richard Sohl, Lou Reed and John Nash.
Such a gesture – warm, inclusive – highlights the hippie mother aspect of Smith’s personality, as does her request that the audience sing “Happy birthday” to bassist Tony Shanahan. But there are serious moments, too. After dedicating “Dancing Barefoot” to Polly Harvey and a rousing “Because The Night”, she reaches a peak with “People Have The Power”, exclaiming: “We are free people and we want the world and we want it now!” Finally, Smith and her band leave the stage after an explosive version of “My Generation”: Kaye’s guitar lines spitting and arcing into the darkening evening sky.
SETLIST 1 Gloria 2 Redondo Beach 3 Birdland 4 Free Money 5 Kimberly 6 Break It Up 7 Land: Horses / Land Of A Thousand Dances / La Mer(de) / Gloria 8 Elegie 9 Dancing Barefoot 10 Pumping (My Heart) 11 Because The Night 12 People Have The Power 13 My Generation
The Stones’ debut album on their own label didn’t just become their first to top both the British and American charts. Sticky Fingers symbolised the new, brashly decadent culture into which rock was moving as the ’70s dawned. Its Anglo-American musical heritage was spiced with hi...
The Stones’ debut album on their own label didn’t just become their first to top both the British and American charts. Sticky Fingers symbolised the new, brashly decadent culture into which rock was moving as the ’70s dawned. Its Anglo-American musical heritage was spiced with hints of hard drugs and demi-monde celebrity – afforded by an Andy Warhol-designed cover featuring a bulging male crotch begging to be unzipped.
This reissue of Sticky Fingers features the 2009 remastered album alongside an additional disc of five alternate takes and five live cuts from the Roundhouse in 1971. On the deluxe edition, a third disc adds the Leeds date from the 1971 tour – widely bootlegged as Get Your Leeds Lungs Out! – in its entirety.
The live material, performed before the new album was released, displays a band emboldened by the input of new guitarist Mick Taylor, on a set leaning heavily on Let It Bleed. With Nicky Hopkins prominent on piano, the Roundhouse “Live With Me” is looser and raunchier than the album version, and Taylor contributes neat, wheedling solos to “Stray Cat Blues” and “Love In Vain”, while the Leeds take of the latter is just superb, conveying true blues pain. Versions of “Midnight Rambler” from both venues shift confidently through gears, swinging like mad as they stretch out to between 11 and 13 minutes.
But it’s Sticky Fingers itself that still impresses most, the power of its blend of grit and sophistication undiminished nearly half a century on, in a beguiling union of country and city, the raw and the cooked. Keith Richards’ opening “Brown Sugar” riff heralds the quintessential Stones loose/tight groove, and Mick Jagger’s vocal seethes with lascivious menace. The alternate version, meanwhile, shows a song still en route to perfection, with slide guitar diminishing the chunky impact of the intro, and Bobby Keys’ sax solo truncated to accommodate a guitar break – apparently from Eric Clapton. And there’s as yet no closing “Yeah!/Yeah!/Yeah!/Wooo!” chant, the final additional hook that brings the song home.
Like “Brown Sugar”, “Wild Horses” was one of the tracks recorded at Muscle Shoals, bringing the Stones’ bluesy mettle to the West Coast country-rock style. It’s one of Jagger’s best vocal performances, the aching vulnerability of his delivery set off beautifully by the tragic warmth of the chorus harmonies, paralleling the way the delicate lead guitar dances through the plangent acoustic strumming. On the outtake, there’s no lead guitar, but some nice acoustic harmonic picking set against 12-string. It’s the first of what Jagger acknowledges is a large complement of slower material that includes “I Got The Blues”, a brooding country-soul number in Otis Redding style; the country-blues staple “You Gotta Move”. The eerie “Sister Morphine”, dates from the Let It Bleed sessions, with Ry Cooder’s haunting slide guitar casting shivers through the song, backed up by Jack Nitzsche’s extraordinary, atmospheric piano. It’s almost a travesty, albeit a relief, when it’s followed by the corny country parody of “Dead Flowers”, where the drug theme is more ironically weighted via a reference to being “in my basement room with a needle and a spoon”. The outtake version is, if anything, even more excessively cartoonish, Jagger hamming it up terribly with an uptight cowboy drawl. Ironically, it’s since become one of the album’s most covered songs, not least by mainstream country artists with, one hopes, a sense of humour.
Despite the overall downtempo character, Sticky Fingers doesn’t seem an underpowered album thanks to the potency of the rockier tracks. “Bitch” has a great rolling power, with the riff’s funked-up Chuck Berry groove punched home by louche horns. Keith Richards peels off one of his best lead lines, and Charlie Watts adds a masterstroke with his tom-tom flourish as Jagger delivers the line “my heart is beating louder than a big bass drum”. The alternate version is more than two minutes longer than the album cut, but save for a few lewd sax honks, remains substantially the same. Elsewhere, the languid grace of the opening riff to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is so engagingly funky that you don’t really notice how the tempo drops for the Santana-style jazz-rock breakdown section underpinned by the keyboard dream-team of Nicky Hopkins’ piano and Billy Preston’s organ. The alternate version is half as long as the one on the album, with no breakdown. Instead, there’s a counterpoint guitar line by Taylor which doesn’t really work, followed by a better one from Richards.
Finally, “Moonlight Mile” is as natural an album-closer as “A Day In The Life”, with Jagger’s hoarse falsetto on the chilly verses giving way to warmer choruses, underscored by Paul Buckmaster’s strings, and Taylor’s delicately threaded lead line. Hugely atmospheric, with the final chords bestowing an epiphanic grace upon its homesick loneliness, it’s a captivating conclusion to one of the most satisfying album sequences in rock history.
Led Zeppelin have shared a previously unreleased track, "Sugar Mama".
The track is taken from the band's forthcoming deluxe reissue of Coda.
You can hear the song over at The Guardian.
"Sugar Mama" was first recorded in 1968 at London's Olympic Studios.
Led Zeppelin will release a remastered edi...
Led Zeppelin have shared a previously unreleased track, “Sugar Mama“.
The track is taken from the band’s forthcoming deluxe reissue of Coda.
As with the band’s previous reissues – the first three albums and Physical Graffiti – each comes with a companion disc of previously unreleased music related to the original release selected and compiled by Jimmy Page.
The Replacements have reportedly played their last gig together according to Paul Westerberg.
Westerberg announced from the stage at Primavera Porto on Friday, June 5 that it was be their final show together, reports The Guardian. He also noted that the rest of the band - who reformed in 2013 - had...
The Replacements have reportedly played their last gig together according to Paul Westerberg.
Westerberg announced from the stage at Primavera Porto on Friday, June 5 that it was be their final show together, reports The Guardian. He also noted that the rest of the band – who reformed in 2013 – had stayed at their hotel rather than soundchecking, calling them “lazy bastards to the end”.
According to a story on Billboard, the the band will also not be playing make-up dates for canceled shows in Pittsburgh (May 5) and Columbus, Ohio (May 6).
Considering the band’s future in an interview with Uncut earlier this year, Westerberg said, “There’s a 50/50 chance that we might not ever play another note, or it might last another 5 years. As of today, I don’t even know who’s in the band! My bet is that we’ll finish this year out with the same four as last year, hopefully no one will die, and we’ll reassess. If it continues to be fun, we’ll play. If it’s not fun, we can at least get it up for the show. It’s what I wanna do for now, anyway.”
Motörhead have announced details of their new album, Bad Magic.
The album is due for release on August 28, 2015 through UDR Music/Motörhead Records.
Bad Magic is the band's 22nd studio album, recorded with producer Cameron Webb.
The albums contains a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For T...
Motörhead have announced details of their new album, Bad Magic.
The album is due for release on August 28, 2015 through UDR Music/Motörhead Records.
Bad Magic is the band’s 22nd studio album, recorded with producer Cameron Webb.
The albums contains a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” while Queen’s Brian May guests on “The Devil”.
The band will also undertake a North American tour with Anthrax beginning in August, which ends with the Motörboat cruise between Sept 28 – Oct 2 from Miami, Florida to Nassau.
Motörhead will then embark on a 40th Anniversary European Winter Tour, which starts on November 15, 2015 at Le Zenith in Paris, ending on December 6 at the Hartwell Arena in Helsinki, Finland.
Bad Magic tracklisting: Victory Or Die Thunder & Lightning Fire Storm Hotel Shoot Out All Of Your Lights The Devil Electricity Evil Eye Teach Them How To Bleed Till The End Tell Me Who To Kill Choking On Your Screams When The Sky Comes Looking For You Sympathy For The Devil
Thirty years ago, The Jesus And Mary Chain were smashing up paint factories on acid and plotting their career in an East Kilbride bedroom. Soon, there would be riotous gigs, startling records, leather trousers, animosities and a musical revolution born out of white noise. Now, as they recreate the m...
Thirty years ago, The Jesus And Mary Chain were smashing up paint factories on acid and plotting their career in an East Kilbride bedroom. Soon, there would be riotous gigs, startling records, leather trousers, animosities and a musical revolution born out of white noise. Now, as they recreate the maelstrom of Psychocandy onstage, William and Jim Reid look back… “We don’t punch each other in the face anymore. But it’s pretty intense.” Story: Tom Pinnock. Originally published in Uncut’s December 2014 issue (Take 211).
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Reflecting on the remarkable 30-year career of The Jesus And Mary Chain, William Reid seems as surprised as anyone that they’ve made it this far. “Growing up, music was a different universe,” admits the guitarist and songwriter. “It felt like being a musician would be like winning the lottery 100 times in a row. Then straight from the go, we had people despise us and love us.”
This month, William and his younger brother Jim celebrate the 30th anniversary of their ’85 debut LP with a UK tour. “It is strange to be playing Psychocandy again,” William admits. “But hopefully we can do it justice. I want to make records and show people we’re not a ‘heritage act’. What a fucking horrible term!” But critically, the prospect of the warring Reid brothers still being around to honour the Psychocandy anniversary is something few would have bet on back in the ’80s. In those days, William, his younger brother Jim, bassist Douglas Hart and drummer Bobby Gillespie were laughed at by their label, dismissed as “just noise” by their critics and almost killed by their own fans. Even more surprising than their survival, perhaps, is the fact they are planning to record new music as soon as they can. “I want to make an album this year,” confirms William with some intent. “Or two. We’re trying to get our shit together and hopefully it’ll happen.”
Despite reforming for live shows in 2007, the Mary Chain – with Jim and William now joined by Phil King on guitar, Mark Crozer on bass and Brian Young on drums – haven’t released a new album since 1998’s Munki. But both brothers admit that each have a number of songs stockpiled, with the only obstacle agreeing where and how to record them.
“It’s difficult,” explains Jim Reid. “William lives in LA, I live in southwest England. But we’re getting on about as well as we can. You put the two of us together for any length of time, there’ll be some sparks. It’s the way it’ll always be, I guess. But we’ve learnt to back off when the right time to back off is.”
First off, a quick update on the unsavoury Mark Kozelek business that I wrote about here on Tuesday. In case you haven't seen this on The Guardian site, Laura Snapes has written about her interview with Kozelek, and about her response to the subsequent abuse: I can't recommend enough that you should...
In the interim, a bunch of interesting new records turned up in the Uncut office – notably the one by The Cairo Gang – and the embargos were lifted on a few more that we’ve had to keep quiet about these past few weeks: Beirut, a great Eleventh Dream Day comeback and, perhaps most remarkably and unexpectedly, the return of Flying Saucer Attack…
Tom Petty has released a track, “Somewhere Under Heaven”.
Written by Petty and Mike Campbell the track was recorded in 1992, but forgotten in Petty’s archives until this year.
It will appear on Petty’s forthcoming album Wildflowers – All The Rest, which consists of material written and r...
Tom Petty has released a track, “Somewhere Under Heaven”.
Written by Petty and Mike Campbell the track was recorded in 1992, but forgotten in Petty’s archives until this year.
It will appear on Petty’s forthcoming album Wildflowers – All The Rest, which consists of material written and recorded by Petty between 1992 and 1994.
This will complete the original Wildflowers album, which was initially intended to be a double CD by Petty and producer Rick Rubin.
“This is not just some schlocky way to sell the old album,” Petty told Uncut last year. “There’s a whole other album on there and it’s good. We were really on our game then. When I hear it back, I’m like, ‘Wow, we didn’t put that out?! Boy, that’s bold!'”
“Somewhere Under Heaven” is now available to stream and purchase digitally.
It appears during the closing credits of the Entourage film, which is released on June 3.
Meanwhile, Petty is also due to record a new album with his old band, Mudcrutch. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Heartbreakers/Mudcrutch guitarist Mike Campbell confirmed the band will reconvene this August to begin work on a new album. “Tom wants to make another one. It probably won’t take very long. It’s a labor of love, really.”
Mudcrutch also feature rhythm guitarist Tom Leadon, drummer Randall Marsh and Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench.
In March this year, The Flaming Lips were among the bands performing at a tribute to Brian Wilson held in Los Angeles.
The cover of The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" that The Flaming Lips performed at the event now appears in the first instalment of a two-part internet documentary produced by Flood...
In March this year, The Flaming Lips were among the bands performing at a tribute to Brian Wilson held in Los Angeles.
The cover of The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” that The Flaming Lips performed at the event now appears in the first instalment of a two-part internet documentary produced by Flood Magazine. Scroll down to watch.
Part one of Brian Fest: A Night to Celebrate The Life And Music Of Brian Wilson features interviews with Al Jardine, Blondie Chaplin, Heart’s Ann Wilson and Wilson Phillips.
A judge ruling in a copyright dispute regarding lyrics by The Fall has admitted that Mark E Smith's vocal style makes it "hard to hear the words".
Smith's publisher Minder Music Ltd, former bandmate Julia Adamson and producer Steven Sharples were contesting ownership of the band's 1999 track "Tou...
A judge ruling in a copyright dispute regarding lyrics by The Fall has admitted that Mark E Smith‘s vocal style makes it “hard to hear the words”.
Smith’s publisher Minder Music Ltd, former bandmate Julia Adamson and producer Steven Sharples were contesting ownership of the band’s 1999 track “Touch Sensitive“.
The singer and Adamson said it was a development of an earlier song of the same name, which they co-wrote and performed on the John Peel Show in 1998.
The Guardian reports that Sharples said the album version was a rewrite and that he, as a co-writer of both new lyrics and music, was entitled to a one-third share of the royalties.
In her ruling and after listening to three versions of the song – the radio version, a live performance and the album recording – judge Amanda Michaels said: “Mr Smith delivers the lyrics in a manner which at some points makes it hard to hear the words.”
Michaels also deemed that the transcripts of the lyrics that Sharples provided were inaccurate. “I accept the contention that the line is not ‘And a Star Wars police vehicle Paul’s off’, but… the more comprehensible ‘And a Star Wars police vehicle pulls up’,” she added.
The judge eventually ruled that Sharples’ claim to have contributed to the writing of the lyrics was “not reliable” but that string passages in the track from Sharples were a “small but significant contribution” to its authorship. Adamson ruled that the royalties will be split three ways between Sharples, Adamson and Minder Music.
The Jesus And Mary Chain have announced details of a live album.
Live At Barrowlands will be released on Demon on July 31, 2015.
The album was recorded at the Glasgow venue on November 21, 2014: the first date in a short UK tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Psychocand...
The Jesus And Mary Chain have announced details of a live album.
Live At Barrowlands will be released on Demon on July 31, 2015.
The album was recorded at the Glasgow venue on November 21, 2014: the first date in a short UK tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Psychocandy.
The album will be released as a deluxe 10″, LP and CD package. A CD-only release is planned for later in the year.
The deluxe package will feature the full concert, a 40 page hardback book, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and more.
The adage which holds that you get your whole life to make your debut album, and barely a year or two to furnish your second, seems truer than usual in this case. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell had been friends and collaborators for nearly 40 years, going back to Harris’s 1974 solo debut, Piece...
The adage which holds that you get your whole life to make your debut album, and barely a year or two to furnish your second, seems truer than usual in this case. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell had been friends and collaborators for nearly 40 years, going back to Harris’s 1974 solo debut, Pieces Of The Sky, before finally releasing their first proper album together in 2013. It was the highest imaginable praise of Old Yellow Moon that it ranked high among the best things either of them had ever put their names to, an album that managed to be both careworn and rumbustious, not so much a rage against any dying of the light as a genial agreement to make the most of what was left.
Old Yellow Moon was also helped by the fact that it genuinely sounded – and by all accounts was – something the pair had decided to do for fun, with no particular expectations for it. They rifled through Crowell’s formidable back catalogue for songs, and included other favourites by Roger Miller, Hank DeVito, Patti Scialfa, Allen Reynolds, Maraca Berg and Kris Kristofferson. It gave every impression of being the kitchen table singalong the project had apparently started life as. On The Traveling Kind, the pair have decided to take matters a little more seriously, co-writing six new songs for the project; the rest of the tracklisting is made up by Crowell, Crowell in cahoots with other collaborators, and a couple of covers. It is, unfortunately, only a partial success.
It starts promisingly. The title track, written by Harris and Crowell with Wandering Sons frontman Cory Chisel, is an amiable front-porch strum which leads the album as an obvious continuation of the theme established on Old Yellow Moon, a reflective assessment of the road thus far travelled (“We don’t all die young to save our spark/From the ravages of time,” and so forth). The best of the rest of The Traveling Kind is that which most closely adheres to this template: the lovely parting lovers’ duet “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try” (another Chisel co-write); Crowell’s 70s-vintage “No Memories Hanging Around” (originally recorded by his ex-wife Rosanne Cash and Bobby Bare); the Crowell/Mary Karr drunkard’s waltz “Just Pleasing You” (previously recorded by Vince Gill.)
Elsewhere, sadly, The Traveling Kind is rather a plod. The pair attempt environmental consciousness-raising on “The Weight Of The World”, but succeed only in burdening this slight jazzy truffle with a weight of apocalyptic portent it cannot support. Of the two covers, Amy Allison’s “Her Hair Was Red” is pleasant, but Lucinda Williams’ “I Just Wanted To See You So Bad”, written as a playful entreaty, swings here for the mournful devotion of, say, Roy Orbison’s reading of “I Drove All Night”, but only manages bombast and bluster. And there are two co-writes with Will Jennings, who has – in fairness – helped compose many fine songs, but has also been partially responsible for Eric Clapton’s “Tears In Heaven”, Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes’ “Up Where We Belong” and Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. The accordion-laced Franco-country closer, “La Danse De La Joie”, is harmless enough, but Jennings’ influence is regrettably discernible on the dreadful “Higher Mountains”, a vapidly yearning potboiler which will in due course doubtless end up soundtracking the closing credits of some enragingly uplifting triumph-against-the-odds movie.
Nevertheless, there is enough that is good to prompt hope that Harris and Crowell produce at least a third album together. By far the best cut is one they wrote together, “If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now”. It’s an estimable contribution to the canon of bickering country duets, full of well-crafted zingers – and, crucially, the track on “The Traveling Kind” on which it sounds the least like they’re making much effort.
Q&A
EMMYLOU HARRIS
Was it always the intention before Old Yellow Moon that there would be at least another album by the pair of you?
I don’t think we thought that far ahead. We were just so happy to be actually doing the record we had said we would do for almost 40 years.
How different was the process of writing songs for The Traveling Kind from choosing songs for Old Yellow Moon?
Writing songs for me is a lot harder than choosing or finding songs, but enjoyable.
Why the decision to bring other writers in on some tracks – were there specific things you were looking for from the likes of Cory Chisel and Will Jennings?
Rodney and I have both written with Will before and we were excited to see him and work with him again. Rodney introduced me to Cory. He is a big fan of Cory’s singing and writing, so it was an experiment that worked out really well.
How big a pool of covers were the Lucinda Williams and Amy Allison tracks chosen from – and why did they make the cut?
Their tracks were considered for the first record very strongly but we just never got around to cutting them but we still love these songs so we revisited them for this record.
INTERVIEW BY ANDREW MUELLER
Led Zeppelin are to release a final batch of remasters on July 31, 2015.
The band’s final 3 albums - Presence, In Through The Out Door and Coda - have been remastered by Jimmy Page and each comes with a companion disc of previously unreleased music related to the original release selected and com...
Led Zeppelin are to release a final batch of remasters on July 31, 2015.
The band’s final 3 albums – Presence, In Through The Out Door and Coda – have been remastered by Jimmy Page and each comes with a companion disc of previously unreleased music related to the original release selected and compiled by Page.
Presence has “Reference Mixes” of the album tracks, plus one unreleased song (“Pod”).
In Through The Out Door has “Rough Mixes” of the album tracks.
Coda has two unreleased songs (“St. Tristan’s Sword” and “Sugar Mama”), plus two very rare recordings from Page and Robert Plant’s trip to Bombay in 1972, an alternate version of “When The Levee Breaks” (“If It Keeps On Raining”) and alternate takes of “The Wanton Song” and another alternate version of “In The Light”.
Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda will each be available July 31 from Atlantic/Swan Song in the following formats:
Single CD – Remastered original album. Presence and Coda will be packaged in a gatefold card wallet. All CD and LP versions of In Through The Out Door will be wrapped in a brown paper page replicating its initial release.
Deluxe Edition (2CD and 3CD) – Remastered album, plus a second disc of unreleased companion audio. Coda will feature two companion audio discs.
Single LP – Remastered album on 180-gram vinyl, packaged in a sleeve that replicates the LP’s first pressing in exacting detail. All vinyl versions of In Through The Out Door will also include the water-sensitive insert that replicates the inner sleeve from the album’s initial release.
Deluxe Edition Vinyl – Remastered album and unreleased companion audio on 180-gram vinyl. Coda will feature two companion LPs.
Digital Download – Remastered album and companion audio will both be available.
Super Deluxe Boxed Set – This collection includes:
Remastered album on CD in vinyl replica sleeve.
Companion audio on CD in card wallet.
Remastered album on 180-gram vinyl in a sleeve replicating first pressing.
Companion audio on 180-gram vinyl.
High-def audio download card of all content at 96kHz/24 bit.
Hard bound, 72+ page book filled with rare and previously unseen photos and memorabilia.
High quality print of the original album cover, the first 30,000 of which will be individually numbered.
The full releases are:
Presence
Track Listing
1. “Achilles Last Stand”
2. “For Your Life”
3. “Royal Orleans”
4. “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
5. “Candy Store Rock”
6. “Hots On For Nowhere”
7. “Tea For One”
Companion Audio
1. “Two Ones Are Won” (Achilles Last Stand – Reference Mix)
2. “For Your Life” (Reference Mix)
3. “10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod)” (Reference Mix)
4. “Royal Orleans” (Reference Mix)
5. “Hots On For Nowhere” (Reference Mix)
In Through The Out Door
Track Listing
1. “In The Evening”
2. “South Bound Saurez”
3. “Fool In The Rain”
4. “Hot Dog”
5. “Carouselambra”
6. “All My Love”
7. “I’m Gonna Crawl”
Companion Audio
1. “In The Evening” (Rough Mix)
2. “Southbound Piano” (South Bound Saurez – Rough Mix)
3. “Fool In The Rain” (Rough Mix)
4. “Hot Dog” (Rough Mix)
5. “The Epic” (Carouselambra – Rough Mix)
6. “The Hook” (All My Love – Rough Mix)
7. “Blot” (I’m Gonna Crawl – Rough Mix)
For an artist whose talents were in constant demand, Amy Winehouse meant different things to many people around her. To one, she was “the truest jazz singer I have ever heard”; another saw her as “an old soul in a young body”, while a third describes her as “a humble person caught up in a ...
For an artist whose talents were in constant demand, Amy Winehouse meant different things to many people around her. To one, she was “the truest jazz singer I have ever heard”; another saw her as “an old soul in a young body”, while a third describes her as “a humble person caught up in a bad situation”. These various perspectives are all broadly accurate; but if there is one lesson we can take away from Asif Kapadia’s documentary it is that if Amy Winehouse chose her female friends well, the same is not necessarily true of the men in her life. Watching Kapadia’s film – from her childhood in Southgate, north London through her remarkable success up to her death in 2011 aged 27 – it is possible to see how badly she was let down by the male figures closest to her: an absentee father, an exploitative husband, a manager who appears out of his depth. “You like a powerful man,” observes an ex-boyfriend: it transpires that the exact opposite would be more appropriate.
Assembled from home video and mobile phone footage, as well as contemporaneous interviews, Amy opens in 1988 in Southgate, in suburban north London. A 14th birthday party is in progress, which catches Winehouse mucking around with her friends, Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert. To illustrate Winehouse’s remarkable gifts, she delivers a breathy version of “Happy Birthday”. Ashby and Gilbert – along with her first manager, Nick Shymansky – are essentially the heart of Kapadia’s film. It is they who care the most, want only to help, when around Winehouse swarm a growing number of people who have their own strategies. The early footage of Winehouse, Shymansky and her guitarist Ian Barter as they play pool or smoke weed in the downtime between touring engagements is among the warmest in the film. Her performances during this period are far more expressive and wide-ranging than her later material.
As the film progresses, we learn how her father, Mitch Winehouse, began an affair when his daughter was 18 months old. “She got over it pretty quick,” he says; an early indication that he is not the most intuitive witness. By the time she reaches her teens, she is on anti-depressants. Regrettably, Winehouse is serially drawn to men of a similar disposition to Mitch: chief among them, Blake Fielder-Civil. While Kapadia is keen not to point any fingers, neither father nor ex-husband emerge well from this film. It is her father who later advises her not to attend a drying-out facility and who then arrives during what is ostensibly a fragile period of recovery for the singer on St Lucia with a full documentary crew in tow. If one is looking for a moment that best sums up Fielder-Civil’s part in Winehouse’s story, it may well be the scene filmed in a bar on their wedding day, where he asks the camera, “Who’s paying for this? I’m broke. Amy? Get us a bottle of Dom Perignon.” Fresh from their honeymoon, he introduces his new bride to heroin and crack cocaine. Her promoter-turned-manager, Raye Cosbert, meanwhile, seems to think nothing of sending her on a European tour days before she died.
Much as with Kapadia’s previous film, Senna – and also the recently released Kurt Cobain documentary – Amy relies on diligently researched archive footage. But it is the involvement of Ashby, Gilbert and Shymansky who are perhaps the film’s strongest asset: with no particular agenda, theirs feels the most unfiltered version of events. At one point, Ashby confesses that she stole Winehouse’s passport in order to prevent her from going on tour overseas: she was subsequently reprimanded for her troubles. Such revelations only further enhance the suspicion that the professionals who were responsible for Amy Winehouse’s well-being singularly failed in their endeavours. But that’s not to suggest Kapadia’s film presents Winehouse as a victim: she was far too complex and mercurial a personality for that.
Ennio Morricone has announced details of his 60 Years Of Music world tour to take place in early 2016.
The announcement follows a hugely successful European arena tour in April this year.
“Performing my work live in all these different cities for people of so many different ages and cultural bac...
Ennio Morricone has announced details of his 60 Years Of Music world tour to take place in early 2016.
The announcement follows a hugely successful European arena tour in April this year.
“Performing my work live in all these different cities for people of so many different ages and cultural backgrounds is an incredibly gratifying experience,” says Morricone. “Next year I will celebrate my professional career of 60 Years during which I composed over 600 works.
“Next year I will perform a whole new program with new highlights, which I am already working on. Of course there will always be the classic pieces from the great Sergio Leone westerns and The Mission. But overall the experience will be different this time. I plan to include a suite for example with pieces of music, which I composed for 7 different movies which all won Oscars!”
Morricone will play:
January 15, 2016: O2 Arena, Prague
January 17, 2016: Papp Laszlo Arena, Budapest
January 19, 2016: Slovnaft Arena, Bratislava
February 14, 2016: 3Arena, Dublin
February 16, 2016: The O2 Arena, London
February 18, 2016: Lanxess Arena, Cologne
February 20, 2016: Sportpaleis, Antwerp
February 21, 2016: Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam
The Grateful Dead have announced details of an 80-disc live collection, 30 Trips Around The Sun.
The set, which contains over 73 hours of music, will be released on September 18.
A numbered, limited edition CD box set of 6,500 copies will also includes a gold-colored 7-inch vinyl single. The A-si...
The Grateful Dead have announced details of an 80-disc live collection, 30 Trips Around The Sun.
The set, which contains over 73 hours of music, will be released on September 18.
A numbered, limited edition CD box set of 6,500 copies will also includes a gold-colored 7-inch vinyl single. The A-side is “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” from the band’s earliest recording session in 1965 with the B-side of the last song the band ever performed together live, “Box Of Rain” recorded during their final encore at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995.
The first four shows included in 30 Trips… have been announced and include a 1967 show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and a 1987 show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The remaining shows will be revealed in the coming weeks on dead.net. All 30 of the unreleased shows in the set will not be made available for individual purchase on CD at any time in the future.
30 Trips Around The Sun also comes on a USB drive, which includes all of the music from the collection in both FLAC (96/24) and MP3 formats and is an individually numbered limited edition of 1,000 copies.
The band will also release a four-CD version of the collection on September 18, called 30 Trips Around The Sun: The Definitive Live Story 1965-1995. This set includes 30 unreleased performances – one from each concert in the boxed set.
The tracklisting for 30 Trips Around The Sun: The Definitive Live Story 1965-1995 is:
Disc One “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” – 1965 “Cream Puff War” – 1966 “Viola Lee Blues” – 1967 “Dark Star” – 1968 “Doin’ That Rag” – 1969 “Dancing In The Street” – 1970 “The Rub” – 1971 “Tomorrow Is Forever” – 1972 “Here Comes Sunshine” – 1973
The three studio albums recorded by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore under their aliases Derek and Clive are to be reissued on CD by Universal Music Catalogue.
Titled A Right Pair Of C****: The Complete F****** Derek & Clive, the 5-CD set will be released on July 31.
The set contains Derek and Cliv...
The three studio albums recorded by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore under their aliases Derek and Clive are to be reissued on CD by Universal Music Catalogue.
Titled A Right Pair Of C****: The Complete F****** Derek & Clive, the 5-CD set will be released on July 31.
The set contains Derek and Clive: (Live) (1976), Derek and Clive – Come Again (1977), and Derek and Clive – Ad Nauseam (1978) as well as Rude & Rare The Best of Derek and Clive (2011).
