With a new album Django And Jimmie on sale June 2, Merle Haggard is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular An Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary outlaw?
To what does he attribute his long friendship with Willie Nelson?
...
With a new album Django And Jimmie on sale June 2, Merle Haggard is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular An Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary outlaw?
To what does he attribute his long friendship with Willie Nelson?
Does he have a favourite cover version of one of his songs?
What advice would he give to a young musician who’s just be starting out?
Send up your questions by noon, Friday, May 15 to uncutaudiencewith@timeinc.com.
The best questions, and Merle’s answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine.
Please include your name and location with your question.
Early 1973. The Melody Maker's Michael Watts is on a plane from Durango to Mexico City, with at least some of the cast and crew of Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. Across the aisle from Watts is the amiable and forthcoming star of the movie, Kris Kristofferson, generous enough to be sharing his bott...
Early 1973. The Melody Maker’s Michael Watts is on a plane from Durango to Mexico City, with at least some of the cast and crew of Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. Across the aisle from Watts is the amiable and forthcoming star of the movie, Kris Kristofferson, generous enough to be sharing his bottle of Jameson’s with the writer.
Just behind Kristofferson, with a straw hat pulled right down over his face, sits another member of the cast; one who shares a trailer with Kristofferson on set, but can let days go by without even speaking to his supposed friend. A newcomer to acting, whose pathological guardedness leads the film’s publicist to describe him to Watts as, “just rude”. A man renamed, for the purposes of Sam Peckinpah’s movie, as Alias.
“This guy can do anything,” says Kristofferson, marvelling. “In the script he has to throw a knife. It’s real difficult. After 10 minutes or so he could do it perfect. He does things you never thought was in him. He can play Spanish-style, bossa nova, flamenco…one night he was playing flamenco and his old lady, Sara, had never known him do it at all before.â€
Watts, possibly emboldened by the liquor, confides in Kristofferson that he is scared to speak to this glowering enigma. “Shit, man,†Kristofferson roars. “You’re scared. I’m scared, and I’m making a picture with him!â€
Fear. Mystery. Confusion. Awe. The magnetic strangeness of Bob Dylan has now dominated our world for over half a century, casting a long shadow over most everyone who has followed in his wake. The prospect of compiling an Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to the great man was itself rather daunting, which may explain why it’s taken us so long to put together this very special issue (It’s in UK shops on Thursday, but you can order a Dylan Ultimate Music Guide from our online store right now).
Anyhow, we pursue rock’s most capricious and elusive genius through the back pages of NME and Melody Maker, revisiting precious time spent with Dylan over the years: from a relative innocent in a Mayfair hotel room, complaining about how, already, “people pick me apart”; to a verbose prophet of Armageddon revealing, with deadly intent, “Satan’s working everywhere!”
To complement these archive reports, we’ve also written in-depth new pieces on all 36 of Dylan’s storied albums, from 1962’s “Bob Dylan” to this year’s “Shadows In The Night”; 36 valiant, insightful attempts to unpick a lifetime of unparalleled creativity, in which the rich history, sounds and stories of America have been transformed, again and again, into something radical and new. In which Dylan has revolutionised our culture, several times, more or less single-handedly.
“‘Tombstone Blues’ proved Dylan had not exactly abandoned protest music, more broadened the scope of his protest to accurately reflect the disconcerting hyper-reality of modern western culture,” writes Andy Gill, in his exemplary essay on “Highway 61 Revisited”. “It was a transformation which would change the way that both artists and audiences alike regarded their relationship with the world. No mean feat for rock’n’roll.”
A living refutation of the “stupid drummer†joke, Dave Grohl has moved from the back of the stage with Nirvana to the front of his own band, the insistent, enormously successful Foo Fighters. For the band’s most recent album, Sonic Highways Grohl moved somewhere less prominent again: behind th...
A living refutation of the “stupid drummer†joke, Dave Grohl has moved from the back of the stage with Nirvana to the front of his own band, the insistent, enormously successful Foo Fighters. For the band’s most recent album, Sonic Highways Grohl moved somewhere less prominent again: behind the camera, becoming the producer/director/narrator of this ‘making of’ documentary with a difference.
Sonic Highways follows the Foo Fighters as they record tracks for their upcoming album in eight different American cities of musical note. Hang on, though. With quality research, first-hand knowledge gathered while schlepping around the country on tour, and an ear for both a scene and a good story, this becomes both a personal geography and an extremely engaging history lesson.
A case in point would be Chicago. It’s the home to Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio, which serves as a gateway into Albini’s enthusiasms, morality and history – not least with Nirvana. As you will already know, the city was also the laboratory of the electric blues, and duly Grohl (a scrupulous off-camera interviewer) gets brilliant, brilliant stuff from Buddy Guy, who tells an anecdote about Muddy Waters that will leave you beaming helplessly. The long-haired contextual authority is played by Rolling Stone’s David Fricke, while celeb pals provide additional colour.
Studios are more interesting than you’d think, it turns out. In New York, Fricke recalls walking past Electric Lady, the bespoke facility of Jimi Hendrix, complete with – as Gene Simmons explains – underground river. Jimmy Iovine, the face of the modern record business, recalls being the second engineer on Record Plant recordings, and how he came to be called “Jimmy Shoesâ€. Bowie is present anecdotally, via James Murphy.
Steve Rosenthal runs New York’s Magic Shop, a sonically-perfect cupboard in Hell’s Kitchen, which has hosted recordings by Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Ramones and other local acts. When the boyband wave broke in ’98, the studio, with its Neve console, didn’t try to compete, but went deeper into what it loved – launching a sound restoration business which has since performed Lazarine work on historic recordings by the likes of Woody Guthrie. Might Nora Guthrie on hand to speak movingly on this topic, by any chance? Oh, of course, there she is.
There are, in among these joys, it must be added, the sequences during which Foo Fighters go through the process of recording their new compositions, and then play them in a full-tilt Reading Festival manner rather at odds with the sensitive work that we’ve been watching. Nor can Grohl can’t quite subdue his urge to clown cleverly in situations that excite him. In such moments he seems a little too pleased with himself, but then if you were him, watching this, you’d have every reason.
EXTRAS: extended interviews with Barack Obama, Dan Auerbach, Chuck D, Billy Gibbons, Gibby Haynes, Joan Jett, Ian Mackaye, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood and Joe Walsh.
Mackenzie Scott’s 2012 debut, the self-titled Torres, was one of those records that impressed, despite it being clear that what laid within may not quite be the finished product. It was recorded in five days while Scott was a 22-year-old student, in a Tennessee studio owned by Tony Joe White – a...
Mackenzie Scott’s 2012 debut, the self-titled Torres, was one of those records that impressed, despite it being clear that what laid within may not quite be the finished product. It was recorded in five days while Scott was a 22-year-old student, in a Tennessee studio owned by Tony Joe White – a veteran Louisiana musician who last year jammed with Foo Fighters on Letterman, but may be best remembered for writing Tina Turner’s “Steamy Windowsâ€. Torres had the feel of a record made quickly and on the cheap, all emotional purge, bare electric guitar and raw emotion. The final track, “Waterfallâ€, found her contemplating a suicide plunge. “The rocks beneath they bare their teeth/They all conspire to set me free…†Morbid, perhaps; but what was interesting is that it felt more like a beginning than an ending.
Torres’ second album follows a process of maturing and uprooting. There was graduation from university, in English and songwriting; tours with Sharon Van Etten and Strands Of Oak; then a move from Nashville to Brooklyn. But Sprinter was made even further from home. Specifically, Bridport, Dorset, where she holed up in the studio of Rob Ellis, producer and sometime drummer for PJ Harvey. Sprinter also features bass from original PJ Harvey bassist Ian Olliver – which constitutes his and Ellis’ first studio work together since 1992’s Dry – not to mention guitar and synth from Portishead’s Adrian Utley, in whose Bristol studio the record was completed. If Torres felt naked and pared back, this record is ambitious and multi-faceted, sometimes a thing of quiet, folksy restraint, but as likely to dive into a watery sonic netherworld, or strap on some grungy dynamics to get its kicks.
Not to dwell on PJ Harvey, but Sprinter shares some things with the oeuvre of Polly Jean. At first glance, it has the ring of a raw confessional, but on closer inspection, is plainly the result of some fastidious authorship, crammed with vivid vignettes surely rooted in life experience, but ringing like the best fiction. Standout is “New Skinâ€, a ragged, theatric guitar lament that vacillates between exhaustion, guilt and steely resolve, and rallies with a repeated entreaty: “But if you’ve never known the darkness/Then you’re the one who fears the most.†Too many good lines here, though, from the bleary-eyed southern states hedonism of “Cowboy Guilt†(“You had us in stitches/With your George W impressions/You sang of reparations/With the Native Americansâ€) to “Ferris Wheelâ€, in which a wallow in unrequited affection becomes a lonely visit to the fairground: “My friends just laugh and roll their eyes/When I tell them I don’t mind the way it feels/To ride an empty Ferris wheel.â€
The weight of a religious upbringing hangs heavy, leaving a sense of issues unresolved. On “The Harshest Light†she quotes the Yahweh of the Old Testament, while the title track contemplates a pastor who preaches to his students of Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector redeemed by Jesus; but the man of God receives no such redemption, sent down “for pornographyâ€. Such tantalising narrative glimpses nudge up against blasts of raw feeling. “Strange Hellos†is an explosive Nirvana lope that shoves its chorus in your face like a scarred wrist: “I was all for being real/But if I don’t believe then no-one will…†“Son You Are No Islandâ€, meanwhile, channels romantic revenge into audacious sonics. To a creeped-out drone, Scott multitracks her voice into eerie chorus, and at the denouement – “Son, you’re not a man yet/You fucked with a woman who would know†– the voices suddenly scatter, like a flock of admonishing harpies.
An album that frequently feels to be about growing pains, Sprinter may, like its predecessor, not quite be Mackenzie Scott’s defining moment. All the same, it shows enough promise that we should take that as a profound positive. Like Torres, it ends on a note of watery despair, albeit one so beautifully rendered it feels almost triumphant. Across its eight minutes, “The Exchange†contemplates the uncomfortable feeling of watching our heroes age, why lost souls choose the touring life, her mother’s adoption, and a family tree severed at the bough. “I pray to Jesus Christ/Incessantly/I shine my shoes for the/Fat Lady†she sings, and at the end she’s imagining herself underwater, calling out to her parents, sinking deeper and deeper into the murk. A certain morbidity may become a hallmark of Torres’ writing; but then, it’s in the darkness that she finds herself.
Q&A
Torres
You lived in Nashville, which is commonly thought of as a big music city – but recently moved to New York. Why the change of scene?
I love Nashville, and it is a big music city. It just isn’t a big city. At least, it isn’t the big city. I’ve wanted to live in New York City since I was 14 years old. It was always my plan to move here once I’d earned my degree in Tennessee.
Many of your songs have an almost fictive but there’s a strong sense of autobiography that runs through Sprinter, too.
I’m dependent on my life experience. It provides a foundation for the writing. If I didn’t have experience to speak of then I wouldn’t be a credible source. I try to try out different interpretive lenses in viewing my experiences, though, because otherwise I think the writing would get stale. I really love this Sylvia Plath quote from an interview she did with Peter Orr in 1962: “I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences […] with an informed and an intelligent mind.â€
Dorset is a long way from home. Why did you decide to come to the UK to record Sprinter? Was it recommended to you, or was it an idea you’d always had in your head?
Rob Ellis lives in Bridport. We’ve known each other for a couple of years and I was willing to do almost anything to work with him on this record. So I traveled to him!
There seems to be more emphasis on musical atmosphere-building than on your debut – and of course you have figures like Adrian Utley, Robert Ellis and Ian Olliver on board. How did you envisage it sounding? Did you succeed?
I got exactly what I wanted out of those handsome Brits! Seriously. I kept telling Rob (when we were talking pre-production) that I wanted the record to have a distinct (albeit nebulous when I tried to articulate my vision to him) atmosphere, and he kept assuring me that the friends he’d asked to play on the record were right for the job. All of the musicians who played on the record took direction really well; I actually had chills listening to Olly and Adrian play their bass and guitar parts, respectively. Also, Rob’s drum work is phenomenal. He’s one of those rare drummers that you just watch and become mesmerized. He uses his entire body when he plays.
INTERVIEW: LOUIS PATTISON
Sharon Van Etten has released a new track, "Just Like Blood".
The song is taken from her forthcoming EP, I Don't Want To Let You Down, which is released in early June through Jagjaguwar.
The EP is Van Etten's first new music since her third album Are We There was released in May, 2014.
https://so...
Sharon Van Etten has released a new track, “Just Like Blood”.
The song is taken from her forthcoming EP, I Don’t Want To Let You Down, which is released in early June through Jagjaguwar.
The EP is Van Etten’s first new music since her third album Are We There was released in May, 2014.
The question of how a fêted film director follows up his most successful project is not necessarily an easy one to answer.
Hosting a transatlantic cruise dedicated to your films is one option, of course. Or perhaps, in order to take a break entirely from the rigours of film, it is important to fin...
The question of how a fêted film director follows up his most successful project is not necessarily an easy one to answer.
Hosting a transatlantic cruise dedicated to your films is one option, of course. Or perhaps, in order to take a break entirely from the rigours of film, it is important to find a fresh outlet for your creative processes.
If, for instance, you are Wes Anderson, then, you might choose to accept a commission to design a Wes Anderson-themed bar. In Milan. Where there is also the opportunity to throw in a few additional details, like a pinball machine based around Life Aquatic… With Steve Zissou.
This, anyway, is Bar Luce; which Wired reports is due to open on May 9 for Fondazione Prada, the fashion house’s art complex with whom Anderson has previously collaborated on his 2013 short film, Castello Cavalcanti.
The bar reportedly draws from influences including Italian neorealist cinema, while its retro-aesthetic features arched ceilings and green formica furniture.
“I think it would be an even better place to write a movie,†Anderson says. “I tried to make it a bar I would want to spend my own non-fictional afternoons in.â€
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' latest film soundtrack is currently streaming on Youtube.
Their score for Loin Des Hommes is the duo's latest soundtrack collaboration, which previously included The Proposition (2005), The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (200...
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis‘ latest film soundtrack is currently streaming on Youtube.
Their score for Loin Des Hommes is the duo’s latest soundtrack collaboration, which previously included The Proposition (2005), The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012).
A compilation of their previous soundtrack work, White Lunar, was released in 2009.
Uncut presents 100 startling bursts of glory that revealed rock’s major players and revolutionised the world of music… Originally published in Uncut's August 2006 issue (Take 111).
_______________
Presley’s first record back in March 1956 and the recent debut of the Arctic Monkeys, the faste...
1 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
Released just prior to Sgt Pepper, The Velvet Underground & Nico was the narcotic, leather-coated flipside to the Summer Of Love. Overseen by Andy Warhol and produced by Tom Wilson (Bringing It All Back Home, Freak Out!) it captured a rock’n’roll demi-monde of white noise and buzzing drone. With Lou Reed’s Bowery-bum poetry, John Cale’s avant-expressionism and the ice-maiden vocals of Nico, these poisonous tales of drug abuse (“Heroinâ€; “I’m Waiting For The Manâ€) and S&M sex (“Venus In Fursâ€) were as dark as ’60s rock got. All but ignored at the time – Rolling Stone didn’t even bother with a review – its No 171 placing on the Billboard chart belied its subsequent influence. As Brian Eno once remarked, those who did hear it immediately formed a band.
Best track: “Heroinâ€
Ex-Velvets sonic provocateur John Cale talks exclusively about the making of the greatest debut album of all time…
SIDE 1 TRACK 1 “Sunday Morningâ€
We did this at Mayfair Sound Studios in NYC, November 1966. It was the last recording for the album. The place had a beautiful wooden floor that was all ripped up and there were holes everywhere – you had to step around to set up; a real fucking hassle. We decided it needed a celeste and it was a pretty song, so it became our second single; one of the only things MGM could relate to. The song captures a mood and a specific event. Lou and I had been up all night on crank, as usual, so we decided to visit one of his old Syracuse college pals. Unfortunately, this guy’s upper-middle-class wife didn’t appreciate visits from old college pals high on amphetamines, at 3am, who wanted to play music. He had a guitar which Lou picked up and the evening inspired him to write the song.
SIDE 1 TRACK 2 “I’m Waiting For The Manâ€
One of our drone songs. We used a drone style on “Venus In Furs†and “All Tomorrow’s Partiesâ€. I liked it because it was rock’n’roll. I hammered the piano, smacking it with fists, and there was no back-beat for Maureen’s drums. It’s very British-sounding, mid- ’60s pop like The Honeycombs’ “Have I The Right?â€. Lou came up with the riff and his solos were crazy. Sterling used to do the solos live. His method was to play like unwinding a ball of string, where you end up in the right place. I dunno how they got the vocal, because we recorded everything on four-track. They must have left one track open for the voice. It was all about mixing then; there weren’t any overdubs. The song’s about a trip up to Harlem, a conversational piece based on real experience. There was a lot of that stuff around: Dave Van Ronk, Arlo Guthrie… talking street poetry. It captures Lou’s voice perfectly and it’s got a body, which Tom Wilson achieved when we re-recorded it at TTG [aka Sunset-Highland Studios in Hollywood].
SIDE 1 TRACK 3 “Femme Fataleâ€
This and “I’ll Be Your Mirror†were written for Nico at Andy Warhol’s suggestion when love affairs between Lou, Nico and I were in the air. Lou liked it when Andy gave him some words and said to go away and write a song around them. It could have been about Edie Sedgwick, but it was about all the starlets. There were a lot of screen tests going on at the Factory. The girls were all mad and strung out on drugs; beautiful and wasted. He was making Chelsea Girls when we rehearsed and that was harrowing. You’d see the girls disintegrating and sliding down walls with tears in their eyes. Nobody normal would go near the Factory. It was a protective environment for kooks – quite dangerous for your sanity. Andy wasn’t like that. He was a professional and a manipulator. He never pressed a button; he didn’t ‘do’ anything. He had his eye on the ball. Anyway, Chelsea Girls informed this song and it reminds me of an interview Andy did for PBS where he was at his most mischievous, and he says, “Ohhh, I really love New York. I think it should be carpeted.†Lou wanted to keep it pure. He was right. I wanted to push the envelope and fuck the songs up. That’s why we split. He wanted me to be a sideman in my own fucking group.
SIDE 1 TRACK 4 “Venus In Fursâ€
One of our oldest songs. Lou brought this and “Waiting For The Man†into Pickwick when he was a jobbing songwriter. It was a poetry song, which he used to play on acoustic guitar. I couldn’t concentrate when it was a folk number because it felt like Joan Baez to me. Anyway, he kept on shoving the lyrics in my face – “read the fucking lyrics!†– so I did. The first time we played it at our Ludlow Street apartment in fall ’65, we just locked ourselves in and did the damn thing as a 15-minute jam. Again, we re-did this in Hollywood and the more I talk about that, the more I realise we really didn’t do anything great in New York. I don’t think this has been said before. The Velvets recorded their debut in LA? We really may have done.
SIDE 1 TRACK 5 “Run Run Runâ€
A great stage song because it was so uptempo. You felt as if you were on the New York streets living the song out; like all of ’em, I guess, which was Lou’s genius. It had that chukka-chukka bluesy groove, and I’d keep the riff going and Lou would solo above it. It was weird stuff. I loved Champion Jack Dupree, but Lou knew a helluva lot more blues than I did. “Run…†was a song that worked live. We knew everything couldn’t be a “Black Angel’s Death Song†or a “Heroinâ€, which were designed to let off steam. This was less claustrophobic, a moment of release.
SIDE 1 TRACK 6 “All Tomorrow’s Partiesâ€
This wasn’t originally written for Nico at all. We did a 20-minute version of it in Ludlow Street in ’65 and then we recorded it at Scepter, and probably TTG, with Nico’s vocal double-tracked. The single version [the first Velvets single was released to NYC radio stations before the album’s release] is slightly different. Nico sang very well on most of it, although a lot of it was out of tune. The song was about a girl called Darryl, a beautiful petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her. Me and Lou were both trying to win her affections. We both had our day in the sun. We were at Darryl’s apartment one day and she had this boyfriend who was a Polish hitter, a construction guy who, if you gave him 200 bucks, he’d beat the shit out of someone for you. So we’re over there and Darryl’s asleep and she’s got this baby-sitter called Pepe hanging around and the Polish guy turns up and I’m playing a recorder. He says to me, “If you don’t stop, I’ll shove it down your fucking throat.†Lou was beside himself with fear. I carried on playing and the Pole goes, “OK, tough guy, come outside and I’ll show you how to fight.†He taught me a few moves, some boxing feints. Lou said as were leaving, “Are you fucking nuts? That guy was gonna kill us both.â€
SIDE 2 TRACK 1 “Heroinâ€
The desire for something you can’t describe… This is about a guy who is jumping towards God or the perfection of Jesus. There’s a ferocious desire within the song to solve a problem. He doesn’t have much left apart from a desire to score; spiritually he’s bereft, but he thinks if he can get his fix, life will become better. I don’t know if it’s about a specific person, more likely an amalgamation, but it’s a beautiful portrayal of someone at their wits’ end. It’s the first song where we decided a drone would work. The song was pretty much the same in ’65; Lou just changed the key when I played the viola because that’s the dominant instrument – the landscape. Everything was downtuned and distorted with the Velvets in those days. We used cheapish guitars. Lou had the Gretsch Country Gentleman; I used a classical viola with mandolin and guitar strings that were eaten into with clips and pick-ups – really scarred, but it got better as time went on.
SIDE 2 TRACK 2 “There She Goes Againâ€
This was about the people living on 54th Street. The riff is a soul thing, Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike†with a nod to The Impressions. That was the easiest song of all, which came from Lou’s days writing pop at Pickwick – write in a style. Any song that came down the pipe was a jewel for us. I dunno who the song was about; any number of derelict girls we knew down on the Lower East Side, probably. She would have been a bad girl. There were a lot of them; some of ’em were in the band for a few minutes. Electra, for example. We had an Afghanistan instrument called a sarinda that she played on “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams†[a contemporary Velvets song]. After we’d rehearsed we noticed her knuckles were bleeding. She was smacking the damn thing so hard because she enjoyed the pain. Later Lou introduced Maureen as drummer and I thought, “Oh no, not another of these mad women.†But she was very sweet.
SIDE 2 TRACK 3 “I’ll Be Your Mirrorâ€
This was Nico’s favourite. It’s a song of infinite desire, strangely tender for us. This may have been one of Andy’s 14-word suggestions for a song but Lou accomplished it with great economy. Nico used to sing it in her big Germanic Marlene Dietrich way or, if we were lucky, with this kind of controlled passion. It’s a very beautiful song, a great interlude for a live show, but we sometimes opened with it as it set the tone between the thoughtful and the thoughtless, which is what you want in rock’n’roll. Our problem with Nico was this: what did she do when she’d finished? She couldn’t just stand there, but she didn’t like being side-stage, either. I suppose that was one of those insoluble problems that made the Velvets different.
SIDE 2 TRACK 4 “Black Angel’s Death Songâ€
Lou had this lying around from his Syracuse days; it was something his teacher suggested he write as a poem – free expression. It was almost like prose and we didn’t think we could pull it off. But those were the days when, if someone said it can’t be done, you did it anyway. When we mixed it in Hollywood we wanted to use maracas instead of that hissing I do, but it didn’t come off right. Sterling refused to play the bass. He resented playing bass on “Venus In Fursâ€. We played Tom Wilson this and “Heroin†screaming fucking loud with feedback; broke the speakers, all that shit. And Tom goes, “Yeah, hey, you’re, er, creating something exceptionally good there.â€
SIDE 2 TRACK 5 “European Sonâ€
This was inspired by Lou’s teacher, Delmore Schwartz. It was a total improv with my bass part that we fixed up when we went to LA. It had the longer song format, which radio wasn’t cut out for, and it was a big rave noise, fantastic for ending a show with. For the LP, we dragged a chair across a floor over some aluminium studio plates. We didn’t know what we were doing but it sounded funny. It sounded like a plate glass window being smashed. We wanted to break the rules, so we broke every fucking rule we could.
Over nearly twenty years of existence on the fringes of Americana, Calexico have not paid for guitar-shaped swimming pools for their constituent members. But they have become one of those bands that elicit especial admiration from other artists: odd, wayward, sui generis. Edge Of The Sun, Calexicoâ€...
Over nearly twenty years of existence on the fringes of Americana, Calexico have not paid for guitar-shaped swimming pools for their constituent members. But they have become one of those bands that elicit especial admiration from other artists: odd, wayward, sui generis. Edge Of The Sun, Calexico’s ninth album, is where Calexico call in those chits, enlisting a formidable supporting cast of admiring collaborators, including – but not limited to – Carla Morrison, Greg Leisz and Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam.
At no point, however, does Edge Of The Sun feel, as such enterprises can, like an exercise in mutual ego-stroking, or an ill-disciplined rave-up. Every guest appreciates that Calexico’s sound is sufficiently expansive to permit kindred souls all the space they might need. So “Edge Of The Sun†accommodates Band Of Horses’ Ben Bridwell on the breezy, Jayhawksish opening track “Falling From The Sky†as generously as it does Greek traditionalists Takim on the sephulcral “World Undoneâ€, or Neko Case on the brooding anti-pop of “Tapping On The Lineâ€, redolent of one of the better album tracks from R.E.M.’s wilderness years.
And the guest cast do not occlude what remains a recognisable strain of Calexico’s Ameri-Mexicana. The south-of-the-border component is arguable even more prominent than usual: some of “Edge Of The Sun†was written in the Mexico City neighbourhood for which the instrumental interlude “Coyoacan†is named. “Cumbia de Dondeâ€, graced by call-and-response backing vocals from Spanish singer Amparo Sanchez, is a sweet, trumpet-drenched shuffle. “Miles From The Sea†and “Beneath The City Of Dreamsâ€, both featuring Guatemalen singer Gaby Moreno, also echo Calexico’s ongoing journey along the United States’ southern frontier (John Convertino, indeed, has recently relocated to El Paso.)
It ends with “Follow The Riverâ€, an almost incongruously straightforward ballad, which channels the autumnal melancholy of Crowded House to the extent that Joey Burns ends up sounding something like Neil Finn (DeVotchKa’s Nick Urata provides backing vocals). It’s an elegant close to a(nother) illustration of the breadth and generosity of this remarkable group’s vision.
At first glance, it’s hard to work out quite what Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp had in common. One, the Oxford-educated son of an esteemed classical composer; the other the son of a tugboat captain from London’s East End. As one bemused interviewee reasons in Lambert & Stamp, “If you’d mad...
At first glance, it’s hard to work out quite what Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp had in common. One, the Oxford-educated son of an esteemed classical composer; the other the son of a tugboat captain from London’s East End. As one bemused interviewee reasons in Lambert & Stamp, “If you’d made this up as a sitcom idea… it wouldn’t work. It’s too far fetched.â€
But Lambert and Stamp’s interests converged in film: they met in the early Sixties while both employed at Shepperton studios as assistant directors and both harboured dreams of directing. Their entry point, they reasoned, would be to document the emerging London music scene by following an upcoming band: The High Numbers. What they lacked in experience and knowledge of rock’n’roll, they compensated for in what Stamp calls ideas-driven “balls in the air†tactics. Pete Townshend, meanwhile, recalls the sharpness of Lambert’s thinking: “‘We need to have an address in Eton Place, because then we won’t ever have to pay our bills’.â€
Lambert died in 1981 and appears here in archive footage; Stamp, meanwhile, was filmed at length before his death in 2012 by director James D Cooper. Stamp is terrific value, his thoughts windmilling at a ferocious rate. For once even Townshend is relegated to supporting player; though of course, he still finds time to lecture Roger Daltrey on a particular aspect of their band’s history. Other interviews with Terence Stamp, Heather Daltrey, Richard Barnes add shading to this intimate portrait of the unlikely partnership behind one of rock’s greatest bands.
The final sequences, of Stamp visiting Lambert’s grave and reunited on screen with his former charges for a black tie award’s ceremony in America, are especially touching. “There are a lot of things we could have done and should have done and didn’t do,†reflects Stamp finally. “But we did enough.â€
The first clip has been released from the forthcoming Amy Winehouse documentary.
Amy, which opens in UK cinemas on July 3, has been directed by Senna filmmaker, Asif Kapadia.
It will contain extensive unseen archive footage alongside previously unheard tracks.
Amy had been produced by James...
The first clip has been released from the forthcoming Amy Winehouse documentary.
Amy, which opens in UK cinemas on July 3, has been directed by Senna filmmaker, Asif Kapadia.
It will contain extensive unseen archive footage alongside previously unheard tracks.
Amy had been produced by James Gay-Rees (Senna, Exit Through The Gift Shop) and will be released in the UK by Altitude Film Distribution.
My Morning Jacket’s Jim James answers your questions in the new issue of Uncut, dated June 2015 and out now.
As well as discussing snorkeling with the Grateful Dead and performing with Bob Dylan, the singer, guitarist and songwriter tackles the subject of touring and the damage it’s caused him....
My Morning Jacket’s Jim James answers your questions in the new issue of Uncut, dated June 2015 and out now.
As well as discussing snorkeling with the Grateful Dead and performing with Bob Dylan, the singer, guitarist and songwriter tackles the subject of touring and the damage it’s caused him.
“The physical beating your body takes when you’re on tour can be pretty extreme,†James says. “That, and isolation from people at home that you love. But we’re lucky we all get along really well and we’re super supportive, and the show itself is super fun.
“But the brutality of that constant travel, it’s really wrecked my health in a lot of ways. There’s some injury I’ve sustained from every portion of touring!â€
My Morning Jacket’s seventh album The Waterfall has just been released.
Eric Clapton continues his 70th birthday celebrations this year with a seven-night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall.
The shows follow two sell-out concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden, for which Clapton drew on all aspects of his incredible history from his time in Cream to the prese...
Eric Clapton continues his 70th birthday celebrations this year with a seven-night residency at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
The shows follow two sell-out concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden, for which Clapton drew on all aspects of his incredible history from his time in Cream to the present day.
Clapton’s Albert Hall shows run from May 14 to 23 and coincide with the release of a new compilation, Forever Man which is in shops on May 11.
Forever Man is available on 2CD, 3CD and vinyl and spans three decades of Clapton’s Reprise Records years; it features classic studio tracks and a blues-themed disc. Forever Man can be pre-ordered by clicking here.
We have ONE pair of tickets to give away for Clapton’s Royal Albert Hall show on Thursday, May 21, as well as two copies of the 3CD set of Forever Man as runners up prizes.
To be in with a chance of winning, just tell us the correct answer to this question:
What is the opening track on Clapton’s debut solo album, Eric Clapton?
Send your entries to UncutComp@timeinc.com by noon, Monday, May 18, 2015. Please include your full name, address and a contact telephone number.
A winner will be chosen by the Uncut team from the correct entries. The editor’s decision is final.
In this month's Uncut, I reviewed the gorgeous new album by The Weather Station. I also conducted an email Q&A with Tamara Lindeman, who basically is The Weather Station. Her answers turned out to be as thoughtful and precise as her lyrics, and I'm happy to run the complete conversation here…
...
In this month’s Uncut, I reviewed the gorgeous new album by The Weather Station. I also conducted an email Q&A with Tamara Lindeman, who basically is The Weather Station. Her answers turned out to be as thoughtful and precise as her lyrics, and I’m happy to run the complete conversation here…
Can you tell us a bit about The Weather Station story so far? I guess, for a lot of Uncut readers, this will be the first time they’ve come across you.
Sure. I started recording music when I was 19. It was a sort of obsession – I wanted to make music – heavy things were happening that I wanted to express somehow. My roommate at the time was a rapper, and she lent me software she used to make beats – I rented an interface and mic and started recording my voice, household sounds, banjo (which I was learning at the time) and a bit of guitar (which I tuned like a banjo). I didn’t really know how to play or write songs – I’d always sang and played piano, but I didn’t know musicians or people to play with – but I cut and pasted my way into making music. I put my recordings up on the web rather anonymously under the name ‘The Weather Station’.
Over time, I learned my instruments and formed a band, and joined other bands as well. Over the course of four years I turned some of the recordings into a full length record – The Line – which I released in 2009.
In 2010, I met Daniel Romano, who encouraged me to drop the atmospheric backdrop and just focus on the song – he was the first person who told me that my songwriting was good – good enough to stand on its own. We made All Of It Was Mine together. From that point on I have put the focus on lyrics, and essentially been a solo singer songwriter – just I came to it backwards, I guess.
How did you end up recording the album in a 19th Century French mansion?
I was on tour singing backups with a band called Bahamas – led by my friend Afie Jurvanen. He had to record a song for a film soundtrack and booked time at La Frette Studio, in France, where we were on tour at the time. I came along to sing. The owner loved what we were doing, and invited us to come back in February, when the studio was often empty. I thought Afie would want the time, but he suggested we make a record for me.
La Frette is an interesting place – it really is a mansion – with a walled garden and big iron gates – a beautiful, majestic place. The owner, Olivier, bought it in the late 80’s, along with an unbelievable collection of analogue gear that studios were trying to get rid of at the time. The place – the gear – it was acquired when it was considered worthless – now it’s all priceless.
Being able to be there didn’t really seem like real life, just this wonderful gift that I could hardly believe was mine.
Do you think being an actor makes you more or less confessional in your musical work?
Hmm. More so, I suppose? If it has influenced at all. I mean, I so rarely do it – I don’t think being an actor has anything to do with me, let alone my music. It’s a job that rewards obedience – you’re paid to disappear into someone else’s vision, to say other people’s lines – if you’re good – you disappear completely.
But maybe it has influenced on some level, my interest in being scrupulously truthful.  Because of my experiences in the film industry I guess I have very little interest in performance or artifice – I’m not interested in fantasy or wish fulfillment based storytelling. I love artists who do that, but I don’t want to myself. And maybe that is a reaction, a bit, to working as an actor – it makes me want to never act. I wanted to make music in some ways because it allowed me to be fully present in a way that’s difficult even in life, let alone in the film industry. It was the place I went to be honest.
Do you feel the Joni Mitchell comparisons (I am guilty of these myself) are just? I do worry a little that it is in part predicated on frozen lakes and road trips…
Ha! I do actually. It bothers me when every single female musician is compared to her – especially when the comparison is not apt – but in this case I think it’s pretty reasonable, and of course, I’m quite flattered.
I actually didn’t listen to Joni Mitchell for most of my life – in part because every time I sang somebody told me I reminded them of her. And the first few times I listened, I actually disliked her. But over the last couple years I’ve taken the time to dig deep and I’m glad I did. Now I’m a blushing fan just like everybody else. Court And Spark!
Anyhow, are these road trips real? And if so, can you tell us a little more about them?
Of course! “Way It Is Way It Could Be” is framed by a tour I did of Atlantic Canada in January – driving through Quebec towards New Brunswick along the south shore of the St Lawrence – where it looks like an ocean – in -40 weather. “Floodplain” is framed by the same tour route only in spring flood season – there are some epic rivers in New Brunswick, and they all flooded at the same time, that year. The city in “Loyalty” is Indianapolis, a place I’d never been to or even thought of till I pulled up there on tour – the strangeness of that city – the skyscrapers, the monuments, the emptiness of the streets, crept into the song I was writing at the time and became a metaphor. “Personal Eclipse” pulls on my experience of driving to and from California when I turned 20. I did that drive a couple times actually. But of course, the drive is just a canvas to talk about other things…
Are you shy in real life – and if so, in what way? In “Shy Women”, you seem to be talking about the weight of knowledge, and a certain discretion, rather than anything resembling timidity?
Interesting – shy really isn’t the right word in some ways, though I chose it.
I’ve been shy for most of my life, but it never really was timidity – I was reticent to speak because I actually had so much to say. I think that’s generally true for most ‘shy’ people. I’m less shy now, generally, though I’m constantly surprised by how deep some things are ingrained – that thing of not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to take up any space in a room, finding it difficult to express an opinion unless I am absolutely certain it is the right one. Saying things on the internet is still difficult.
In the song it is of course heavier and different than shyness – but in that way the flippancy of the word makes it more poignant. Â ‘Shyness’ is in many ways about smoothing social interactions, putting people at ease, which is kind of what women are conditioned to do too – but it’s also something that can cover up and perpetuate some very heavy and unjust things.
Discretion, actually, seems a guiding principle for the whole album. Do you generally prefer music that tends towards subtlety and understatement? Can you maybe give a few examples?
Totally. Totally. Bill Callahan is someone I always come back to. But really, I’m surrounded in by songwriters who are also very understated, the songwriters in my community –  Ryan Driver, Steven Lambke, Michael Feuerstack, Sandro Perri…
To me though, it’s less about understatement and more about just reflecting reality – the way I experience things.  Pop music is often based on these declarative statements – ‘I will always love you’ – and those songs are cathartic and helpful, I think. But in life, such moments of clarity are fleeting – it’s complexity that endures. I guess it’s natural to me to want to reflect that.
But it’s also about longevity. If I wrote big choruses, I don’t know that I could sing them every night, because they wouldn’t always be true. That’s why my big chorus in the love song is ‘I don’t expect your love to be like mine’, which is the same thing to me as ‘I will always love you’, but more exacting – more precise, I guess.
My first record was really heavy, and I can’t even sing those songs anymore – it would be impossible to sing them honestly at this point in my life. But All Of It Was Mine has held up for me – I can still find things in there to interact with, when I’m singing the songs every night.
I find it interesting that there have been a few great records lately by female musicians who do the same thing – Courtney Barnett for example, writes with a specificity that comes across as understatement but to me is actually just precision.
While Fairport Convention toiled, Fotheringay idled. While the band Sandy Denny left in the wake of 1969’s folk-rock landmark Liege And Lief gigged relentlessly, the group she put together with her boisterous Australian boyfriend Trevor Lucas swanned around in a vintage limousine. They retreated t...
While Fairport Convention toiled, Fotheringay idled. While the band Sandy Denny left in the wake of 1969’s folk-rock landmark Liege And Lief gigged relentlessly, the group she put together with her boisterous Australian boyfriend Trevor Lucas swanned around in a vintage limousine. They retreated to a Sussex farmhouse to ‘get it together’ but rehearsed only once and spent most of their time messing about and getting drunk. They spent stupid money on a gigantic PA system nicknamed ‘Stonehenge’ – and by all reports that didn’t work either.
Within a year, Denny, Lucas, his Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway, and co-conspirators Pat Donaldson and Jerry Donahue had frittered away a reported £30,000 advance and had only one half-cooked LP to show for it. “We’ve had a terrible deadline to meet,†Denny says with dog-ate-my-homework air introducing a BBC session on this surprisingly hefty document of Fotheringay’s brief career. “All that material we’ve been working on must go on the album ‘cause we don’t have anything else to put on it.â€
The cupboards have been stripped bare for this four disc boxed set – 3CDs of studio recordings, demos, radio sessions and a live set, plus a DVD featuring un-broadcast TV footage – which features some of the best work of Denny’s maddeningly unfulfilled career. Indeed, the rendition of the Napoleonic bloodbath ballad “Banks Of The Nileâ€, which closed their self-titled album, released in June 1970, might well eclipse more celebrated Fairport classics like “A Sailor’s Life“, “Percy’s Song“, “Farewell Farewell“ or “The Deserter“.
Cursed with a voice of supernatural power, Denny knew when she walked out on Fairport at their peak that she did not want to spend the rest of her career belting out souped-up traditional songs. Her mentor and producer Joe Boyd was equally sure Denny could do better than retreating into a band whose easygoing style – a little bit country and little bit rock’n’roll – harked back to the early Fairport. However, while Denny (as she appears on German TV show Beat Club), a glowering thundercloud in a kaftan hunched over her piano, sounds like a solo star in waiting, she certainly doesn’t look like one. Her eagerness to cede the spotlight to Lucas, meanwhile, suggests she didn’t feel like one either.
Denny’s voice hugs every alpha-male curve of Lucas’s on Fotheringay’s live and studio versions of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Way I Feelâ€, and by all accounts the monstrously insecure singer was utterly smitten with him. However, while Lucas’s spade-is-a-spade baritone has its charms – “Peace In The End†is cheery enough and Denny’s embellishments give his version of Bob Dylan’s “Too Much of Nothing†some heft – his contributions only paper over the cracks between the clutch of songs Denny brought to the new band. But when Denny was inspired, so were Fotheringay.
Fotheringay box set art
As with “The Banks Of The Nileâ€, the band provide a beautifully measured counterpoint on “Nothing More†– Denny’s attempt to reach out to her former bandmate Richard Thompson, quietly grief-stricken in the wake of the crash that killed his girlfriend Jeannie Franklin and Fairport drummer Martin Lamble. “My friend I know you’ve suffered, although you are still young,“ she sings. “Why was it you would not take help from anyone?â€
The gentle swells that Fotheringay build under “The Sea†show a sympathetic subtlety, as the former nurse depicts the apocalypse coming to her home city: “Sea flows under your doors in London town, and all your defences are all broken down.†A distaff relative to Nick Drake’s “One Of These Things Firstâ€, its meaning is – like many of Denny’s songs – smoothed away by wave upon wave of obfuscating rewrites.
Fotheringay are at their unobtrusive best again on the “The Pond And The Streamâ€, Denny somewhat unfairly calling herself out for being an uptight urbanite compared to free-range folkie Anne Briggs. “Annie wanders on the land, she loves the freedom of the air,†Denny sighs. “She finds a friend in every place she goes. There’s always a face she knows. I wish that I was there.â€
However, country living proved notably less inspiring when Fotheringay moved to Chaffinches Farm in Sussex, on a vague mission to log-cabin together their second LP. Fairport sparkled on their bucolic retreats – Liege And Lief came together at Farley Chamberlayne, near Winchester; Full House, their first post-Denny record, was born of communal living at the Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire. Fotheringay’s rural idyll, by contrast, largely involved playing cards and going swimming.
An exasperated Boyd downed tools after the band returned to the studio that December. Functioning prototypes of “Late November†and “John The Gun†– both of which would appear on her first solo album – capture Denny in “Battle O Evermore†Valkyrie voice,  but a surfeit of Lucas leads, and will-this-do covers of “Wild Mountain Thyme†and “Silver Threads And Golden Needles†showed exactly how little Fotheringay had done on their holidays. Boyd told Denny she was wasting her time. He had a point.
Fotheringay were dissolved, but Denny’s solo career proved no more fulfilling. 1971’s North Star Grassman And The Ravens has a sullen charm, but no amount of string sections could cover up a shortage of top-class material as Lucas looked to steer her toward mainstream diva-dom on her final three LPs, Sandy, Like An Old Fashioned Waltz and Rendezvous. Drunk, drugged and disappointed, Denny unraveled, and motherhood only accelerated her decline. She died from a brain haemorrhage, aged 31, in April 1978, days after Lucas had spirited their baby daughter Georgia away to Australia – an extreme intervention which may have staved off further tragedy. Lucas died of a heart attack, aged 45, in 1989.
In light of that unhappy ending, many pinpointed the Fotheringay-era as the period when the rot set in. What Nothing More suggests, though, is that 1970 might have been Denny’s best year as a writer. The easy atmosphere and the security of having Lucas close by may not have eased her anxiety – Boyd wrote that Renee Zellweger’s Bridget Jones was an accidentally perfect Denny – but it gave her the space to create some startling songs. What came after seemed too much like hard work.
Q&A
Gerry Conway, drums Can you remember how Fotheringay first came about?
It was beginning to be the end of Eclection; we’d had several line-up changes and Trevor and I weren’t happy with the way it was going. Then there was a conversation one day in the kitchen of Sandy and Trevor’s flat in Chipstead Street in which the plan to form another band was hatched – the three of us were in it together. We just had to look for a bass player and a guitar player.
Was it Sandy’s band, Trevor’s band or everyone’s?Â
Sandy really wanted to have a vehicle for her own songs, so we did more or less concentrate on her material along with some traditional stuff and contributions from Trevor. Nobody cracked the whip. It was a friendly band.  No one had any ambition of storming the charts are getting rich. Money didn’t come into it – there wasn’t any.
What was the dynamic between Trevor and Sandy?Â
I think they were just in love, and from love comes great things – but we were all mates together. Trevor was very much a party type person. There wasn’t going to be anything deep and meaningful going on – it was all going to be fun and we all got swept along on that sort of vibe.
They have been characterised as the Sid and Nancy of folk rock; was theirs a noticeably volatile relationship?Â
It did eventually become that way. Sandy did have quite a temper, bless her, so they would quarrel, but that never really included us – we just accepted that Sandy was that way. I remember backstage at a gig, Sandy was unhappy about something and I could hear her going on behind me, then suddenly she grabbed the bench I was sitting on, not spotting me, and threw it across the room with me on it. It was more funny than anything else.
Banks of the Nile is one of the performances of Sandy’s career: can you remember much about recording it?Â
I remember it like yesterday. We did a few takes of it and we weren’t happy, so we did what most people did in those days: stopped the session and went to the pub. And when we were a bit more refreshed we decided to come back and just jam it. It’s something that we just did blind. Did we realise it was a special moment? No. We were never happy. It always could have been better.
Is it true that Fotheringay had a Bentley?Â
What we had was a couple of very dodgy Austin Princesses, which we didn’t own. Our friend Jock had a car business and occasionally he would take us to gigs in one of his Austin Princesses, so we were arriving in style but usually breaking down halfway home. The nearest Fotheringay came to a Bentley was when Jock asked me to take one to Chipstead Street for Roy Harper to pick up – I had it for about an hour.
Is the talk about ‘Stonehenge’ – Fotheringay’s massive PA system – overstated?Â
It was true and it was silent. It was Trevor’s brainchild – he went to WEM, who were making PAs, and laid out a plan to build a big system. Sure enough, they built it and it was enormous. The only problem was that when set it up, you could put your head in it and you still wouldn’t hear anything. It was a bit of a white elephant.
Fotheringay’s country retreat to Chaffinches Farm seemed to involve more swimming than songwriting. True?Â
That’s fairly accurate. We did do one rehearsal, but the rest of the time Pat Donaldson and I were gardening. Then our roadie at the time – his brother had a motorbike shop – got a couple of BSAs for us and we had time trials up the side of the house or would ride them over the sand dunes in East Wittering. I’m not sure what we were preparing to do – we were just there.
Sandy split Fotheringay go solo. Can you remember how that came about?Â
Sandy came in in floods of tears to say that she had been persuaded to do the solo career and had to leave the band. After that we had a short meeting with the rest of us to decide whether we were going to carry on and get somebody else, but without Sandy it wasn’t a goer. The band only really survived for a year. This is a four disc set – I am amazed that there is that much material available.
Joe Boyd seems to have been fairly dismissive of Fotheringay.Â
He wanted either Fairport with Sandy or Sandy as a solo act, but what people failed to understand about Sandy was that her driving force in life was the sort of solidarity that came from being in a friendly band. She wanted to be successful – we all did – but I don’t think it was top of her list. First of all was that life should be nice, and that she should have nice people around her.
The Who have been officially announced as the final headliner for this year's Glastonbury festival.
Meanwhile, Paul Weller will play in the penultimate Sunday night slot on the Pyramid Stage.
The Who released a statement this morning [May 6, 2015] confirming reports that had appeared over the week...
The Who have been officially announced as the final headliner for this year’s Glastonbury festival.
Meanwhile, Paul Weller will play in the penultimate Sunday night slot on the Pyramid Stage.
The Who released a statement this morning [May 6, 2015] confirming reports that had appeared over the weekend [May 2, 2015] in a British tabloid that they were playing the festival.
Roger Daltrey said, “It’s great to be ending this part of a 50 year career at the most prestigious and respected music festival in the world. We’ll do our best to close this year’s event with a bang, unless of course the fireworks get get!”
The band will play their Hyde Park gig at the British Summer Time festival on Friday, May 26.
They will then close Glastonbury on Sunday, May 28. The band are currently scheduled to play a show in Paris that night, although the date will presumably be rescheduled.
The Who last played Glastonbury in 2007.
Other acts confirmed for this year’s Glastonbury festival include Patti Smith, Alabama Shakes, Mavis Staples, Suede and Motörhead will play, as well as Pharrell Williams, the Mothership Returns – which will feature George Clinton, Parliament, Funkadelic and the Family Stone – Father John Misty, Sharon Van Etten, Courtney Barnett, Flying Lotus, Spiritualized, Super Furry Animals, Ryan Adams and more.
The Grateful Dead's final Fare Thee Well show will be shown in UK cinemas this summer.
The band announced they are to reunite to celebrate their 50th anniversary with five gigs.
They will play Santa Clara, California on June 27 and 28 and Chicago’s Soldier Field on July 3, 4 and 5.
As pr...
The Grateful Dead‘s final Fare Thee Well show will be shown in UK cinemas this summer.
The band announced they are to reunite to celebrate their 50th anniversary with five gigs.
They will play Santa Clara, California on June 27 and 28 and Chicago’s Soldier Field on July 3, 4 and 5.
As previously reported, these shows will be available to watch in the States on pay-per-view and also via online streaming.
The band have now revealed plans to screen their farewell gig at 250 cinemas across the UK on July 6.
Although these are billed as Fare Thee Well shows, there are reports suggesting that members of the band are planning a full-scale tour with John Mayer to take place during the autumn.
Meanwhile, George R.R. Martin, the creator of Game Of Thrones, has revealed the Grateful Dead as an influence on the series.
Robert Plant has paid tribute to Ben E King, who died last week.
Plant said, "His was the voice of my 'coming of age'... dramatic... imploring... pained... spectacular... I learned his every nuance. I lived in grief and joy in his songs and, crazily much later in time we became friends, in our "'At...
Robert Plant has paid tribute to Ben E King, who died last week.
Plant said, “His was the voice of my ‘coming of age’… dramatic… imploring… pained… spectacular… I learned his every nuance. I lived in grief and joy in his songs and, crazily much later in time we became friends, in our “‘Atlantic’ connection… A wonderful, kind man. A huge influence, loved and respected by so many. My thoughts go out to Betty….”
King died aged 76 from natural causes on April 30, 2015. He is survived by his wife, songwriter Betty Nelson, who he married in 1964.
Both King and Plant were signed to Atlantic Records. In 1984, Plant covered “Young Boy Blues” for his The Honeydrippers project, which had originally appeared on the B side of King’s 1961 single, “Here Comes The Night”.
There was something of a social media meltdown on the Uncut Facebook page at the back end of last week, after Michael posted this news story on www.www.uncut.co.uk. It reported one of those surveys guaranteed to rile people - specifically, in this case, people over the age of 33 who still engage wit...
There was something of a social media meltdown on the Uncut Facebook page at the back end of last week, after Michael posted this news story on www.www.uncut.co.uk. It reported one of those surveys guaranteed to rile people – specifically, in this case, people over the age of 33 who still engage with new music. Rarely, in fact, has there ever been a bigger provocation to Uncut’s indignant hardcore, than being told, “For the average listener, by their mid-30s, their tastes have matured, and they are who they’re going to be… Listeners are returning to the music that was popular when they were coming of age – but which has since phased out of popularity.â€
Of the several hundred responses from our readers, many limited themselves to an economical “bullshit”, or similar. Others, though, articulated their exasperation with being so reductively categorised. “I’m 55 and I still check out and buy new music,” wrote Mark Anthony Wyatt. “My musician son tips me off on new bands/artistes he thinks I will like, and I do the same for him, but it’s almost never chart/day time radio playlist stuff. These old farts who say ‘It’s not like it was in my day’….. open your ears!” Meanwhile Peter Geise, 65, pointed out, “I like all kinds of different music from ’30s jazz and blues to modern types. My latest purchases are Real Estate, Caribou and The War On Drugs.”
It all corroborated a fundamental suspicion we have about Uncut readers; that while many still treasure the music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles, the founding fathers and mothers, the gilded ’60s generation, they’re also hyper-attuned to new music. For the past few years, experts have told us that online music stores and streaming sites have collapsed the boundaries between notionally old and new music, but Uncut readers have mostly grasped this for decades. Music is a continuum, and good things keep turning up, if you have the appetite to keep looking.
For example: if you’ve enjoyed Goat these past few years, Chile’s Föllakzoid provide a similar kind of ritual psych with what seems, at least, to be an extra frisson of authenticity – the dank, post-rockish grooves are allegedly influenced by the ancient Armonic ceremonial rhythms of the Andes. It’s a usefully pungent backstory that enlivens “III”, a decent collection of head-nodders, occasionally prodded out of the dirge zone, as on “Electric”, towards a kind of grim, guitar-heavy techno. Useful assistance, too, from the German electronic maverick Atom TM, who adds astral texture and historical resonance to the jams with the aid of one of Kraftwerk’s old Korg synths.
In other psych news, connoisseurs of gloopy, lo-fi latterday jams have long gravitated to Philadelphia, thanks to the city harbouring bands like Bardo Pond, Birds Of Maya and Spacin’. Aye Aye are what passes for a supergroup in those parts, featuring the Gibbons brothers from Bardo Pond, current Purling Hiss drummer Ben Leapheart, and local scene mascot Harmonica Dan Balcer. Sludge blues are approximately their forte on their self-titled debut, with the self-explanatory likes of “Sleep Day” moving at the dirge pace of much Gibbons-related material. Balce’s forlorn harmonica leads, however, provide a relative sense of definition to these six instrumentals, executed as they are with a Cro-Magnon “grace” that makes Crazy Horse sound like sprightly technocrats.
Or how about Goran Kajfes’ Subtropic Arkestra, and their “The Reason Why Vol 2”? On 2013’s “The Reason Why Vol 1”, trumpeter Kajfes and his group applied rumbustious jazz-rock treatments to tunes by Tame Impala, Soft Machine and Cluster, revealing themselves as a prejudice-smashing big band akin to fellow Scandinavians Jaga Jazzist. This time, the songbook’s a little more obtuse, with vibrant attacks on Milton Nascimento (Brazil), Francis Bebey (Cameroon) and a clutch of old Turkish psych jams; Mahzar Ve Fuat’s “Adimiz Miskindir Bizim”, fuzztoned organ to the fore, is especially rewarding. Kajfes’ arrangements are consistently punchy and accessible. Nevertheless, a lyrical take on Grizzly Bear’s “Yet Again” is a neat point of entry for anyone daunted by the exotic range. Jose Gonzales guests, inconspicuously.
One of the stranger cultural by-products of the 2012 London Olympics was a starring role, in the opening ceremony, for the music of power-electronics duo Fuck Buttons, and the spin-off project of Benjamin John Power, Blanck Mass. An unlikely gig for supposed noise artists, it would seem, though in truth much of Power’s 2011 solo debut, “Blanck Mass”, felt purpose-built for stadiums: grandiose, martial techno, sometimes worryingly macho in its triumphalism. After such success, Power might plausibly have retreated into noise, and on “Dumb Flesh”, “Detritus” is, initially, cacophonous enough for Whitehouse. But generally, “Dumb Flesh” is more gleaming and monolithic than ever, with “Cruel Sport” an epic highlight. A full-time career soundtracking military pageants still beckons.
The music of Cecile “Colleen” Schott (French, but now based in San Sebastian) emerged in the early ’00s, through a series of albums so ineffably delicate that the most representative one (2006’s “Colleen Et Les Boîtes À Musique”) was constructed almost entirely using music boxes. Much of that atmosphere remains on her new one, “Captain Of None”, thanks to whispered vocals and a focus on the courtly pluck of a viola da gamba. “Salina Stars”, however, adds a melodica and some heavier dub frequencies into the mix, while the surprisingly urgent “This Hammer Breaks” layers vocal and percussive loops in such a way that suggests Colleen’s nearest contemporaries may now be Juana Molina and even Julia Holter.
John Dwyer has been at it so long now, maybe he stretches the definition of new music a way too far. Nevertheless, since he moved from San Francisco to LA, the wonderful Thee Oh Sees have become a more streamlined garage-rock vehicle, albeit one that retains the speed of a dragster and the heft of a juggernaut. “Mutilator Defeated At Last” is very much in the vein of 2013’s career-topping “Floating Coffin”: throbbing hypnorock predominates, sometimes – as in “Lupine Ossuary” – slashed apart by some notably wild guitar solos. The variety of last year’s “Drop” has been mostly sacrificed to bug-eyed momentum, while the backing vocals and keys of old are used sparingly. “Sticky Hulks” is an enterprising digression, being an organ etude that conjures up the tantalising notion of a dronerock Procol Harum.
Finally, there’s the odd artist who can bridge the divide in some unexpected way between a vintage generation and a new one. Todd Rundgren’s dilettantism and short-attention span have made for many frustrating records over the years. On “Runddans”, though, he’s forced to play an uncharacteristically long game by collaborating with the Norwegian prog-disco maestro Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Emil Nikolaisen, from shoegazers Serena-Maneesh. “Runddans” is 39 minutes of continuous music, most closely related to the percolating grooves of Lindstrøm’s 2008 magnum opus, “Where You Go I Go Too”. Rundgren drops in and out of this spacious environment, working and reworking saturated melodic themes, finessing wordless, Beach Boy harmonies. “I have waited for this moment for what seems like nine lifetimes,” he sings, ecstatically; one suspects relieved Rundgren fans who’ve endured myriad sketchy experiments may feel likewise.
