At the end of last year, I came across a story in the Los Angeles Times, which reported that the apartment occupied by Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman's great 1973 film The Long Goodbye was available for rent. One bedroom, one bathroom, private parking, hardwood floors and a terrace...
At the end of last year, I came across a story in the Los Angeles Times, which reported that the apartment occupied by Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman‘s great 1973 film The Long Goodbye was available for rent. One bedroom, one bathroom, private parking, hardwood floors and a terrace, with access via a private elevator, it was on the market for around £1,790 a month.
“At the end of a cul de sac near the Hollywood Bowl, park your car in a garage carved into the hill,” wrote the original advertisment for the apartment on Craigslist. “Walk through a gated tunnel to a private elevator where you’ll be taken up 6 stories through the hill to the top of a Tuscan tower. Nestled in a quiet walk street enclave high above the bustle of Hollywood Blvd.”
Long Goodbye poster
The Long Goodbye is probably my favourite Altman film; a smart update of Chandler’s novel reworking through the prism of the Seventies. And, of course, Gould was on excellent form as Marlowe’s sardonic private investigator, Philip Marlowe.
Of course, The Long Goodbye was given a boost recently when it was cited as an influence on Paul Thomas Anderson‘s film, Inherent Vice. This goodwill directed towards Altman and his films continues in Ron Mann’s affectionate new documentary about the filmmaker.
Remarkably, for a filmmaker whose preferred style of movie making was loose and digressive, Mann’s tribute to Altman is a remarkably straightforward bit of business. That’s not to demerit the film unduly, but the narrative moves in workmanlike fashion when it should ideally amble along, occasionally pausing to truffle out some interesting minor detail. Certainly, Ron Mann’s film is at its best when exploring Altman’s nascent career: his time as an airman during the last war and his apprenticeship in network television.
An early supporter was Alfred Hitchcock, who invited him to direct episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents… during the 1950s. His formative attempts at moviemaking were compromised: for instance, he was fired from Countdown, about a space mission to the moon, before it was even finished. Admittedly, much of Altman’s initial forays into filmmaking are less well-told than, say, the stories of M*A*S*H or Nashville.
It would be nice to dig a little deeper, too, into Brewster McCloud, California Split and 3 Woman. Along the way, Mann assembles an impressive list of former collaborators to offer confirmation to Altman’s skills – James Caan, Julianne Moore and Bruce Willis among them. But their testimonies are warm rather than necessarily illuminating. At its most infuriating, Mann’s film is crushingly literal: “Bob loved to throw a party,” his widow Kathryn Reed Altman tells us in voiceover. – cut to an early, unreleased Altman short called… The Party.
If nothing else, Mann’s film might at least inspire you to revisit some of Altman’s best, from his Seventies’ heyday.
Mick Jagger has revealed that the Rolling Stones are considering playing their Sticky Fingers album in its entirety on their coming North American tour.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Jagger confirmed that the band are discussing the possibility: "We're floating the idea of playing the whole album," he...
Mick Jagger has revealed that the Rolling Stones are considering playing their Sticky Fingers album in its entirety on their coming North American tour.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Jagger confirmed that the band are discussing the possibility: “We’re floating the idea of playing the whole album,” he admitted. “At the very least, we’ll play the songs we don’t normally play.”
The Stones’ North American tour begins on May 24, the day before a deluxe reissue of Sticky Fingers is released.
Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers deluxe edition
Rolling Stone point of that a number of the album’s tracks – “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” “Bitch” and “Dead Flowers” – are already key parts of the Stones’ live set.
“It’s a really great album,” Jagger explained. “But it has a lot of slow songs. Normally in a show we’d just do one or two ballads. Sticky Fingers has about five slow songs. I’m just worried that it might be problematic in stadiums. Maybe we’d play it and everyone would say, ‘Great,’ but maybe they’ll get restless and start going to get drinks.”
Tour rehearsals begin in a few weeks and the group will use that time to figure out the feasibility of playing the album in its entirety. “I’m sure we’ll have a go at it,” Jagger says. “We play a lot of the tunes and know them pretty well. I think we’ve played them all at least once. It’s not like trying to do Their Satanic Majesties Request.”
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono had paid tribute to Cynthia Lennon, who died yesterday [April 1, 2015] aged 75.
Writing on his website, McCartney said, "The news of Cynthia’s passing is very sad. She was a lovely lady who I’ve known since our early days together in Liverpool. She was a...
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono had paid tribute to Cynthia Lennon, who died yesterday [April 1, 2015] aged 75.
Writing on his website, McCartney said, “The news of Cynthia’s passing is very sad. She was a lovely lady who I’ve known since our early days together in Liverpool. She was a good mother to Julian and will be missed by us all, but I will always have great memories of our times together.”
Starr, meanwhile, posted his condolences on Twitter, sending “peace and love” to her surviving son, Julian Lennon.
Peace and love to Julian Lennon God bless Cynthia love Ringo and Barbaraxx
Yoko Ono, who married John Lennon in 1969, also sent “love and support” to her step-son, posting a photograph of herself with her own son, Sean, alongside Cynthia and Julian Lennon.
Writing on ImaginePeace.com, Ono also said, “I’m very saddened by Cynthia’s death. She was a great person and a wonderful mother to Julian. She had such a strong zest for life and I felt proud how we two women stood firm in the Beatles family. Please join me in sending love and support to Julian at this very sad time.”
The news of Cynthia Lennon’s death was announced yesterday by her son, Julian.
A statement posted on his website said, “Cynthia Lennon passed away today at her home in Mallorca, Spain following a short but brave battle with cancer.
“Her son Julian Lennon was at her bedside throughout. The family are thankful for your prayers.
“Please respect their privacy at this difficult time.”
May Pang and broadcaster Bob Harris have also paid tribute.
Cynthia Lennon has died aged 75.
In a statement posted on Julian Lennon's website said, "Cynthia Lennon passed away today at her home in Mallorca, Spain following a short but brave battle with cancer.
"Her son Julian Lennon was at her bedside throughout. The family are thankful for your prayers.
...
Cynthia Lennon has died aged 75.
In a statement posted on Julian Lennon’s website said, “Cynthia Lennon passed away today at her home in Mallorca, Spain following a short but brave battle with cancer.
“Her son Julian Lennon was at her bedside throughout. The family are thankful for your prayers.
“Please respect their privacy at this difficult time.”
The prospect of a new solo album by Mark Knopfler is one of nature’s less effective ways of setting the pulse racing. Knopfler is to hype what rain is to fire. Operating a full octave below ‘low-key’, by now the primary ingredients of his music – rootsy work-outs, bluesy growlers, wry shuffl...
The prospect of a new solo album by Mark Knopfler is one of nature’s less effective ways of setting the pulse racing. Knopfler is to hype what rain is to fire. Operating a full octave below ‘low-key’, by now the primary ingredients of his music – rootsy work-outs, bluesy growlers, wry shuffles, country and Celtic touches – are reassuringly fixed.
There are, however, gradations to his doggedly unflashy craft. The 2012 double album, Privateering, was a genial 20-track sprawl through Knopfler’s arsenal, running wide rather than terribly deep, leaning heavily on sturdy blues. Tracker, while never deviating far from established expectations, possesses a different quality. An album threaded with themes of transience and ruminations on time and memory, it’s richly melodic, lyrically involving, and boasts an unhurried elegance and quiet intensity which elevates it to the ranks of Knopfler’s most affecting work.
Befitting an album by a well-read member of rock’s awkward squad, two of Tracker’s highlights are character studies of literary outsiders. On “Basil”, which begins in a haze of mandolins before proceeding towards a stately “Brothers In Arms” ache, Knopfler summons up the ghost of North-east modernist poet Basil Bunting, best known for his 1965 epic Briggflatts, whom he encountered while working as copy boy at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. The distance between the pair – one, a cocky teen with the world at his feet; the other, a disillusioned poet with compromised ambitions – is laid out with sharp-eyed empathy, Knopfler peppering his recollections with details of “five cigarettes and two silver half-crowns”, and the unforgettable triumph of “kissing a Gateshead girl”.
“Beryl” is a more muscular pen portrait, revisiting another cornerstone of Knopfler’s legacy. Having stolen the intro – three raps on the hi-hat and a single snare shot – from “Sultans Of Swing”, it duly pilfers that song’s key, tempo and stripped down, bar-band boogie as well. It’s a fitting setting for a bristling homage to the late Liverpool writer Beryl Bainbridge, awarded a posthumous honour by the Booker Prize committee but unfairly overlooked while alive, according to Knopfler, who chides: “It’s too late, ya dabblers, it’s all too late”.
If a chippy class warrior still resides within this 65-year-old multi-millionaire, so does an unabashed music fan. The easy, undemanding groove of “Broken Bones” nods heavenwards to JJ Cale, an enduring influence who died in 2013. More significantly, perhaps, much of Tracker was written during a period of sustained touring with Bob Dylan. Though their association dates back to 1979, Knopfler’s radar remains alert for incoming traffic. “Lights Of Taormina”, a charmingly weathered reflection from the Sicilian town, sounds like a campfire version of “Just Like Tom Thumb Blues”. “River Towns”, meanwhile, has the steady roll of latter-day Dylan, and a protagonist “looking in the mirror at the face that I deserve” to boot. They’re two of several excellent, emotive songs written from the perspective of rootless men. The elliptical “Silver Eagle” frames a moment of transient tenderness recalled from a bus rolling through America; “Mighty Man” honours the itinerant escapades of a scarred Irish navvy, aptly framed by a reinterpretation of the traditional standard “She Moved Through The Fair”; “Wherever I Go”, a graceful country ballad sung with Rth Muoody from The Wailin’ Jennys, finds two souls crossing paths briefly on the road, their emotional bond undiluted by physical distance.
It’s serious stuff, but beautifully realised. There’s room for some nifty musical footwork on the wryly nostalgic “Laughs And Jokes And Drinks And Smokes”, which sounds like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” uprooted to some ’baccy-stained folk club. The incongruous “Skydiver”, meanwhile, is a reminder that Knopfler knows his pop coordinates. A Ray Davies-esque study of a carefree gambler, its nifty descending chord sequences are lit up by cascading harmonies.
It adds up to a little more than just another solid Mark Knopfler offering. His eighth solo album will no doubt satisfy dedicated fans, but for those lulled into inattentiveness somewhere along the way, Tracker also makes an excellent case for re-engagement.
Q&A MARK KNOPFLER There seems to be a real unity of themes on this record.
It has to do with time and memory, that’s a big part of it. As you get older you view time differently, it becomes more of a reverse telescope. I also end up here and there with Northern themes. They’re part of my background and they do inform the songs.
What prompted you to write about Beryl Bainbridge and Basil Bunting?
I’d be standing right behind Basil as a copy boy, and it was clear that he didn’t want to be there. He was writing Briggflatts then, which is a meditation on time and abandoned love. I was 15, and at that age the world is a rosy promise, whereas I think he was seeing it from the other side. The road ahead was shorter than the one he left behind. Beryl also had to do with time, because back then there was an Oxbridge prejudice. She was self-deprecating, a working class Liverpool girl who never went to university. Maybe she realised how mighty she was, but she didn’t want to make a thing about it.
How was touring with Dylan?
It definitely helped me produce a couple of songs: “Lights of Taormina” and “Silver Eagle”, I wouldn’t have written that otherwise. I was back touring on buses again and I started writing about from that perspective.
INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON
Joni Mitchell has been hospitalized.
According to a report on Rolling Stone, the emergency services were called to Mitchell's Los Angeles home yesterday [March 31, 2015] to assist an unconscious female.
Since then, a statement published on her website has said, "She regained consciousness on the a...
Joni Mitchell has been hospitalized.
According to a report on Rolling Stone, the emergency services were called to Mitchell’s Los Angeles home yesterday [March 31, 2015] to assist an unconscious female.
Since then, a statement published on her website has said, “She regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to an L.A. area hospital.”
The latest report, carried on Mitchell’s official Twitter feed, has confirmed that she is in intensive care in hospital but “is awake and in good spirits”.
Joni is currently in intensive care in an LA area hospital but is awake and in good spirits. More updates to come as we hear them.
The Rolling Stones have announced details of Sticky Fingers deluxe reissues featuring extensive rare bonus material.
The set will be released across multiple formats on May 25, 2015 by Universal Music.
The release follows the highly successful Deluxe reissue programmes for Exile On Main Street in ...
The Rolling Stones have announced details of Sticky Fingers deluxe reissues featuring extensive rare bonus material.
The set will be released across multiple formats on May 25, 2015 by Universal Music.
The release follows the highly successful Deluxe reissue programmes for Exile On Main Street in 2010 and Some Girls in 2011.
Among the formats, the album will be available in Deluxe and Super Deluxe formats. These include an alternative version of “Brown Sugar” featuring Eric Clapton; unreleased versions of “Bitch”, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “Dead Flowers”, an acoustic take on “Wild Horses” and five tracks recorded live at the Roundhouse in 1971 including “Honky Tonk Women” and “Midnight Rambler”.
The Super Deluxe edition will also include Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out!, the 13-track audio recording of the Stones’ gig from March 1971.
Both the Deluxe edition and the Super Deluxe editions are available to pre-order on iTunes. Pre-orders will receive an instant download of a previously unreleased, acoustic version of “Wild Horses“.
Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers sleeve
Sticky Fingers will be released on:
Original CD
Remastered album with 12 page booklet.
Original LP
Remastered album on black heavyweight vinyl plus 12×12 insert.
Deluxe 2CD
Remastered album plus bonus CD featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances with 24 page booklet.
Deluxe Edition Boxset
Remastered album, bonus CD featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances plus DVD with 2 tracks from Live At The Marquee.
All housed in a presentation box with 72 page hardback picture book and 4 postcard set.
Super Deluxe Edition Boxset
Remastered album and bonus CD featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances.
Plus Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out CD, a DVD featuring 2 tracks from Live At The Marquee and 7” vinyl with “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”.
All housed in a presentation box with a 120 page hardback book complete with real zip.
Plus print, poster, 4 postcard set and mini replica of band cut out.
Deluxe Double LP Set
Remastered album and bonus tracks featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances on two black heavyweight vinyls.
Remastered album and bonus tracks featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances on two black heavyweight vinyls.
Housed in an outer wallet with Spanish cover.
Standard Download
Remastered album.
Download
Remastered album plus bonus tracks featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances.
Super Deluxe Download
Remastered album, bonus tracks featuring previously unreleased alternate takes and live performances, plus Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out live tracks.
Meanwhile, the Stones have also announced a North American stadium tour this summer. The 15-city Zip Code tour begins on May 24 at San Diego’s Petco Park and ends on July 15 at Quebec’s Le Festival D’Été de Québec.
Tickets for the American shows go on sale April 13, while the Quebec date goes on sale April 11.
The Rolling Stones will play:
May 24: Petco Park, San Diego May 30: Ohio Stadium, Columbus, Ohio June 3: TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minnesota June 6: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas June 9: Bobby Dodd Stadium, Atlanta, Georgia June 12: Citrus Bowl Stadium, Orlando, Florida June 17: LP Field, Nashville, Tennessee June 20: Heinz Field, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania June 23: Marcus Amphitheatre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 27: Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri July 1: Carter-Finley Stadium, Raleigh, North Carolina July 4: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, Indiana July 8: Comerica Park, Detroit, Michigan July 11: Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo, New York July 15: Le Festival d’ete de Quebec, Quebec City
Wilco have cancelled a forthcoming show in Indiana in protest over the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The Act has already attracted widespread controversy across America for allowing business owners to discriminate against gay and lesbian patrons on religious grounds.
Variety reports t...
Wilco have cancelled a forthcoming show in Indiana in protest over the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The Act has already attracted widespread controversy across America for allowing business owners to discriminate against gay and lesbian patrons on religious grounds.
Variety reports that Wilco broke the news on their Twitter feed on March 30, 2015, with the band claiming the Act “feels like thinly disguised legal discrimination”.
We're canceling our 5/7 show in Indianapolis. “Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act” feels like thinly disguised legal discrimination.
When we think of music about London, it's often easy to fall back on certain archetypes: the jaded, the satirical, the post-modern music hall character sketches; the occasional snatches of melancholy located in the midst of a crowd; the long, clever shadows cast by Ray Davies and Damon Albarn, to na...
When we think of music about London, it’s often easy to fall back on certain archetypes: the jaded, the satirical, the post-modern music hall character sketches; the occasional snatches of melancholy located in the midst of a crowd; the long, clever shadows cast by Ray Davies and Damon Albarn, to name but two. When artists try and make music about London, it often seems as if they can’t help but try and articulate the urban extreme, all chaos and scale.
But London, of course, contains multitudes, and not all of it fits into such predictable categories. For a long time, I lived close to the banks of the River Lea in South Tottenham, and spent a lot of my spare time walking and cycling around the towpaths and marshes: an unusual, mostly-neglected artery that stretched from the Thames at Limehouse, through the fringes of Docklands, by the Olympic Park and the football pitches of Hackney Marshes, out past the filter beds and reservoirs and into Essex – to Cheshunt, Waltham Abbey, Broxbourne and beyond.
It’s this landscape which is described with great skill on a new album by the imaginative Lancastrian artist Rob St John. “Surface Tension” documents the course of the River Lea, and makes aesthetic and cultural capital out of both its context – decaying, gentrified, sometimes surprisingly bucolic – and its toxicity. The 31-minute piece begins with birdsong, lapping water and gentle chamber piano, but gradually takes in boats, locks, dogs, footballers and the conceptual use of the profoundly polluted Lea water.
According to St John’s notes, his field recording adventures extended to using “binaural microphones, underwater hydrophones and contact mics.” He also constructed tape loops of these recordings, soaked them in tubs of the vile river water for a month, then replayed them as they fell apart, creating an effect similar to that inadvertently engineered by William Basinki on his “Disintegration Loops”.
St John’s work is clearly political, in the way his process makes explicit the filth that has been routinely dumped into the Lea for generations (it seems salient to add here a link to the excellent Love the Lea campaign) He even took pollution readings made by Thames 21 and created “seven sonifications, each of which are odd, fizzing and twinkling reshapings of a piano line, ‘played’ (in a way) by the river” (I am quoting this because, to be honest, I don’t understand what he’s done well enough to put it into my own words).
Over 31 minutes, though, St John’s music is as interesting as the process which underpins it. It ebbs through passages of chamber piano and cello (reminiscent of post-classical ensemble, Rachel’s), analog kosmische and, at 18 minutes, eerily euphoric, Boards Of Canada-style techno – a reminder of how I used to stumble into the last rites of outdoor raves near Coppermill Fields after breakfast on Sunday mornings. It might not be quite as innovative as the manipulated field recordings – there’s a fair bit of the “Small Children In The Background” trick beloved of sundry post-rockers as well as BOC – but it does have a prettiness which potently transcends as well as complements the damaged river narrative. The music comes with a 48-page book of St John’s photographs, but they’re not integral to the enjoyment of the project (in fact, I haven’t actually seen them myself).
Essentially, the sound of “Surface Tensions” captures how the River Lea and its valley is a beautiful and at times tranquil place, where most days you can spot cormorants, as well as herons. A lot of art about the Lea is predicated on its otherness, and these past few years especially it’s been a magnet for aspriring psychogeographers drawn to what they would doubtless call its liminal qualities, its role as an interzone between city and nature, between old and new. There’s a lot of wishful thinking about the uncanny fixed onto it, too: those interested might enjoy the quasi-occult fictions in Gareth E Rees’ “Marshland: Dreams and Nightmares On The Edge Of London” more than I did (though I did once find a clean fox skull behind the ice rink, just after a fox had entered a house and attacked a child near Victoria Park).
“Surface Tensions”, though, can be enjoyed as a pastorale, as a celebration of an unlikely rural space, with its sombre cellos and piano lines. Much literature of the Lea Valley posits it as a hinterland, as an anomaly, but “Surface Tension” also soundtracks a plausible escape route. Every morning and evening now, I cross Walthamstow Marshes by train, and I miss being near the Lea more than anything else about living in London.
But I also realise, among much other more mundane and less poetic business, that the need for such an escape route was a critical reason why I actually left the capital. If the thing you like most about London is a place that reminds you of the countryside, maybe, in my case at least, it makes sense to get a little closer to the real thing.
Bob Dylan has personally approved the release of the MusiCares Person of the Year concert from February, 2015.
According to a report on Billboard, Dylan has signed off the DVD release of the concert, which featured Bruce Springsteen, Jack White and Neil Young among the line-up.
Billboard points ou...
Bob Dylan has personally approved the release of the MusiCares Person of the Year concert from February, 2015.
According to a report on Billboard, Dylan has signed off the DVD release of the concert, which featured Bruce Springsteen, Jack White and Neil Young among the line-up.
Billboard points out it is unclear whether the 35 minute speech Dylan delivered at the event will also be included in the DVD package.
As yet, no release date has been confirmed for the DVD release.
Previous recipients of the MusiCares Person of the Year include Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney and Neil Young.
A 1969 soundtrack by Serge Gainsbourg, presumed lost for 45 years, has been found in a suitcase.
Fact reports that the score for Les Chemins de Katmandou, by Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier, was discovered up in an old suitcase by the daughter of Vannier’s former copyist.
The tapes have since...
A 1969 soundtrack by Serge Gainsbourg, presumed lost for 45 years, has been found in a suitcase.
Fact reports that the score for Les Chemins de Katmandou, by Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier, was discovered up in an old suitcase by the daughter of Vannier’s former copyist.
The tapes have since been remastered and portions of the score will feature in the forthcoming expanded release of Le Cinema De Serge Gainsbourg, a five-CD box set due on April 20.
The box set spans 1959 to 1990, and will be released by EmArcy/Mercury/Universal France.
Les Chemins de Katmandou – titled The Pleasure Pit in the UK – was directed by André Cayatte and co-starred Gainsbourg along with his partner, Jane Birkin.
If you think Dylan going electric or the punk revolution caused a stir in the music press, you should have been around when John Coltrane brought his quintet to the UK to start a 27-city European tour in November 1961. Bob Dawbarn, the Melody Maker’s representative, returned from the opening show ...
If you think Dylan going electric or the punk revolution caused a stir in the music press, you should have been around when John Coltrane brought his quintet to the UK to start a 27-city European tour in November 1961. Bob Dawbarn, the Melody Maker’s representative, returned from the opening show at the Gaumont State in Kilburn, North London, with a piece that ran under a headline screaming: “WHATHAPPENED?”
Dawbarn was a knowledgable fan of modern jazz — including the music of Dizzy Gillespie, whose band topped the bill that night — but Coltrane’s new sounds had him “baffled, bothered and bewildered”, reflecting the opinion of a large chunk of the audience uneady for the changes jazz was starting to undergo.
Part of the problem was that Coltrane’s UK album release schedule lagged far behind the US. The fans who knew him from his work with Miles Davis and his own earlier records as a leader were expecting a tenor saxophonist who expanded the rulebook but did not rip it to shreds. They had not heard his latest Atlantic album, My Favourite Things, containing a version of the title song in which he used the major-to-minor shifts of Richard Rodgers’ harmless little melody (from The Sound Of Music) as the vehicle not only for his discovery of the soprano saxophone but for his assault on jazz’s established limits of harmony and timescale.
No fewer than six extended versions of the song are included in So Many Things: The European Tour 1961, a set of four CDs on the Acrobat label compiled from two shows each in Paris and Stockholm and one apiece in Copenhagen and Helsinki. The sound quality varies from patchy to excellent but the flame of discovery burns throughout, nowhere more thrillingly than on the second Paris version of “My Favourite Things”, where Coltrane attacks his long solo from a variety of different angles, with increasingly jaw-dropping results.
Other highlights include a gorgeous version of “Naima” featuring the bass clarinet of Eric Dolphy, who is also heard to advantage on alto saxophone and flute. McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Workman (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) show themselves completely attuned to the rapidly evolving needs of a leader whowould die in 1967 without having visited the UK again. This diligently compiled set is as close as we’ll get to a souvenir of his profound effect on European listeners.
James Taylor has revealed details of his new album, Before The World.
Rolling Stone reports the album will be released on June 16.
It is Taylor's first studio album of original material since 2002's, October Road.
His most recent album, 2008's Covers, featured songs by artists including Leonard C...
James Taylor has revealed details of his new album, Before The World.
Rolling Stone reports the album will be released on June 16.
It is Taylor’s first studio album of original material since 2002’s, October Road.
His most recent album, 2008’s Covers, featured songs by artists including Leonard Cohen, Lieber and Stoller, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Buddy Holly.
“I got out of the habit of writing songs for about 10 years,” explains Taylor.
The album features regular musicians Steve Gadd on drums and Jimmy Johnson on bass, while songs include “Angels Of Fenway”, “Watchin’ Over Me” and “Stretch Of The Highway”.
“I have no idea what releasing an album even means anymore,” he says. “Friends of mine say, ‘James, you have to adjust your expectations. People don’t buy these things.’ Not to be presumptuous, but Vincent Van Gogh sold just two paintings while he was alive. If that’s what your medium is, you simply must do it.”
A Kickstarter campaign launched on Saturday, March 28, 2015 to raise funds for Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook.
The scrapbook documents the making of Tom Waits For No One, a 1979 a rotoscoped short film starring Waits singing "The One That Got Away".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
A Kickstarter campaign launched on Saturday, March 28, 2015 to raise funds for Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook.
The scrapbook documents the making of Tom Waits For No One, a 1979 a rotoscoped short film starring Waits singing “The One That Got Away”.
The 160 page hardback book will contain animation cells, rotoscope drawings, character studies and backgrounds.
Writing on the Kickstarter page, the film’s director John Lamb says, “At the video shoot. Tom drove up in his ’66 Blue Valentine T-bird and stepped out wearing a pork pie Stetson, an old wrinkled suit and carrying a bag, asking where the dressing rooms were. We’re thinking ‘Whew, he’s going to change that suit!’ Then he came out of the dressing room with the same hat and a different old wrinkled suit.
Tom Waits For No One
“For the shoot, we utilized 5 video cameras, 2 high, 2 low and 1 handheld. We did 6 takes with 2 separate dancers. We edited down 13 hours of video into to a 5 1/2 minute film, which was then traced frame by frame and turned into ‘Tom Waits For No One’.”
In September, 2014 Uncut first reported on the Kickstarter campaign to restore the Tom Waits For No One film.
It says records in the intro line, and that's pretty misleading most weeks. But it's especially with this list, since a bunch of the best stuff I've heard in the past few days has arrived in different digital ways: a live session from Steve Gunn and his band at folkadelphia.com; a Soundcloud comp of...
It says records in the intro line, and that’s pretty misleading most weeks. But it’s especially with this list, since a bunch of the best stuff I’ve heard in the past few days has arrived in different digital ways: a live session from Steve Gunn and his band at folkadelphia.com; a Soundcloud comp of beautiful Bitchin Bajas live jams, quaintly organised into a “Side A” and a “Side B”; a preliminary clip from the next Omar Souleyman album, produced here by Mideselektor; and maybe best of all, the quiet arrival of Heron Oblivion, a raging new psych band featuring Ethan and Noel from Comets On Fire, and fronted by the great Meg Baird (it’s kind of next level Espers, if that makes sense to some of you?).
Quick reminder, anyhow, that our new issue of Uncut is out and about now: Van Morrison, Replacements, Ride, Blur, Alabama Shakes, Motorhead, Xylouris White, Cannibal Ox, Adam Curtis and plenty more. Enjoy responsibly etc…
We’ve not reached the full-on Tupac/ Johnny Cash situation yet, perhaps, but a thriving mini-industry has sprung up in Joe Strummer heritage documentaries: Dick Rude’s snappy Mescaleros tour film, Let’s Rock Again (2004); Julien Temple’s possibly definitive profile The Future Is Unwritten (2...
We’ve not reached the full-on Tupac/ Johnny Cash situation yet, perhaps, but a thriving mini-industry has sprung up in Joe Strummer heritage documentaries: Dick Rude’s snappy Mescaleros tour film, Let’s Rock Again (2004); Julien Temple’s possibly definitive profile The Future Is Unwritten (2007); and now Nick Hall’s sweet, low-budget documentary, itself an inadvertent semi-sequel to Danny Garcia’s enlightening Clash Mark II doc, The Rise And Fall Of The Clash (2012).
Hall’s film zooms in on the end of the Clash II chapter to focus on a brief, lesser-known moment in Strummer’s story: when, in 1985, with that rebooted version of the group collapsing, the singer left the UK. As Clash II members Nick Sheppard and Pete Howard reflect, the sudden disappearance was a virtual repeat of the headline-making vanishing act Strummer had performed back in 1982, when he “went missing” on the eve of the Combat Rock tour – with one crucial difference. This time when he disappeared, no one cared enough to notice.
Sporting a bruised ego and the beginnings of a beard, Strummer went to ground in Spain – a country for which he’d felt a deep, obsessive romantic attachment even before he got around to expressing it in songs like “Spanish Bombs” – to lick his wounds and try to work out the way ahead.
The title of Hall’s film refers to the car Strummer bought while he stayed there, a boxy boat that became a legend among slack-jawed local punks as he cruised it around the streets and bars of Granada, “a miraculous apparition.” Strummer lost the car when he eventually returned to the UK and his then-partner Gaby Holford, just in time for the birth of their first daughter, Lola: he parked it somewhere, and forgot where.
Hall mounts a little attempt to find that long-lost Dodge again as a slightly gimmicky framing device. But the real worth of his documentary lies in the memories, diaries and fading photographs of the members of Radio Futura and 091, Spanish bands Strummer befriended during his sojourn, and, in the latter case, tried to produce an LP for, with disastrous results.
Strummer had many adventures, and made a lot of good, forgotten music between the end of The Clash and his critical rebirth with The Mescaleros. It’s easy to imagine more such films appearing: surely, the tale of his reconciliation with Mick Jones and the creation of BAD’s No 10 Upping Street album deserves the documentary treatment next? But future historians should bear in mind the words of Gaby, who has the best line in the film: “What do they call it: ‘The Wilderness Years’? That was our *life*!”
Portishead’s Geoff Barrow [left, in photograph] discusses his upcoming soundtrack and the current state of the band’s next album in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2015 and out now.
Barrow has recently teamed up with composer Ben Salisbury to create the soundtrack to Alex Garland’s direct...
Portishead’s Geoff Barrow [left, in photograph] discusses his upcoming soundtrack and the current state of the band’s next album in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2015 and out now.
Barrow has recently teamed up with composer Ben Salisbury to create the soundtrack to Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina, and reckons that soundtracks are more vital right now than traditional groups.
“Not being funny, but soundtracks are more interesting than bands now,” says Barrow. “The people buying soundtracks are the same people that would buy a Godspeed record, a Boards Of Canada record.”
Barrow also shed light on the progress of Portishead’s next album, admitting that the band were “nowhere near” finishing the record, but that his other projects healthily feed into the band’s way of working.
“With Portishead, I’m massively over-analytical – it’s like being stuck in glue,” admits Barrow. “But then you go work on something else and think, this could be a good way of writing a Portishead record.”
“Ask me anything you want…” In this feature from Uncut’s February 2014 issue (Take 201), David Crosby discusses the shooting skills of Crosby, Stills And Nash, why Joni Mitchell is better than Bob Dylan, and the dangers of being a “wake-and-bake”… Interview: Andy Gill
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The last time I met you, it was election season, and you were very bullish about John Kerry’s prospects. You were walking around with a T-shirt reading, “Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot”.
That’s a very fair assessment! That man was an imbecile! Posing in a flight-suit saying, “Mission accomplished”! He didn’t have a clue! He did us a lot of harm. If that sonofabitch Clinton had just been able to keep his flies closed… I liked Clinton a lot, he was a Rhodes Scholar, very bright…
…and he played an instrument, too.
Yes. Not well, but the feeling was there. And America was in the black. Since then, we’ve been borrowing from the Chinese – now there’s a really smart idea! Nice people to owe money to – not! You know what’s gonna happen? We’re gonna have an economic collapse, and default on China. And then the fur will fly. But they can’t nuke us, ’cos those subs are still down there, underneath the ice-caps, and if you nuke us, a week later they’ll surface, and turn your country to glass.
Are you still against gun control?
It all depends on where you come from, and how you got to guns. I was raised on a farm – we grew avocados and lemons and stuff – and in that milieu, when you got to be about 12, 13, you got a .22 rifle. And I got pretty good with it – I could take a lemon off a tree, y’know? I was taught how to shoot properly and safely, and it was all part of American life, a normal thing. Then guns became gang-bangers with 9mm with 50-shot clips and they’re spraying them around, braaaapp!, and guns got a bad rep. But all three of us [CSN] shoot, and we haven’t started a war all week!
Is the 1974 live album finally going to appear?
Oh yeah! It’s coming out, and I can tell you some good news: we have video! We have some amazing footage. And Neil finally approved it! We showed him two songs where he was so spectacularly good – “Pushed It Over The End” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” – he couldn’t deny it. We were, at that time, one of the best bands in the world.
Thanks to distinctive harmonies and hip characters, in the mid-’60s, The Byrds became known as the “American Beatles”, and as the most gregarious band member, Crosby quickly became close friends with his English counterparts.
“I watched them make Sgt Pepper,” he recalls. “I went to Abbey Road nearly every night. It was an astounding experience. I came in one night –blitzed, I admit – they were behaving very strangely, and they sat me down on a stool, in front of speakers the size of coffins in the middle of this huge room, then they go up to the control room and leave me all alone, and play ‘A Day In The Life’!
“They said I was the first person to hear it. It got to that piano chord at the end, and my brains ran out into a puddle on the floor, I just couldn’t believe it. Because you can’t do that, you can’t be in the middle of this beautiful song and then just stop and go, ‘Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head’ – McCartney, he’s so fucking good! I got to the end of that, and there was not much left of me!”
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If I Could Only Remember My Name
Almost as soon as they had formed, the individual members of CSN were already busily beavering away on solo projects. This, Crosby confirms, was planned. Stills, possibly piqued to action by the prolific solo start made by his old Buffalo Springfield jousting partner Neil Young, was the first of the trio to release a solo album, in late 1970; but Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name followed just a few months later, a blissful, ethereal work featuring multi-layered vocal experiments. It remains a distinctive, sui generis album over four decades later, beloved in the most unexpected quarters – in 2010, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano pronounced it second (after Revolver) on a list of apparently papally approved favourites.
If I Could Only… was recorded at Wally Heider’s Studio in San Francisco, where Crosby had relocated to renew old friendships with such as Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner and Quicksilver’s David Freiberg. They both appeared on the album alongside Nash, Young, Mitchell and a Who’s Who of Bay Area musicians from the Airplane, the Dead and Santana. In particular, Crosby became fast friends with Jerry Garcia, the pair devising a casual performing band called either Jerry & The Jerks, or David & The Dorks, “depending on who got to the mic first”. Garcia proved a supportive figure to Crosby, when his girlfriend Christine Hinton was killed in a car crash. “A wonderful guy, one of the best,” says Croz. “When I was making my solo record, I was in terrible shape, because my girlfriend had just died. I didn’t know what to do, I had no way to deal with it, so I hid in the studio – it was the only place I felt comfortable. Jerry came by every night. Every night he’d show, and we’d tap away. I had a double handful of songs, and they were good. I was doing things nobody had heard before, like ‘Tamalpais High’ and ‘Song With No Words’, using your voice like a horn stack. They were loving that we’d do shit nobody else had done.
“God, I miss Jerry. I wrote a poem about him the other night. I always thought that if we had to have someone speak for musicians, I’d have had Jerry. ’Cos he’d have come at it differently.”
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A BYRDS REUNION? “Not a chance!” says Crosby…
With 2014 marking the 50th Anniversary of the formation of The Byrds, hopes are high among fans for another Byrds reunion. The first reunion of the original lineup occurred in 1973, producing the lacklustre Byrds, whose bland tone Roger McGuinn blamed partly on the strength of Crosby’s pot: “Half a joint, you couldn’t do anything,” he claimed. Subsequently, late-’80s shows as The Byrds by Gene Clark and Michael Clarke prompted a legal challenge from McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman, who responded with reunion concerts of their own. This time, though, there is unlikely to be any fresh alliance of the remaining members. “Not a chance,” says Crosby. “I’ve asked Roger over and over. I’ve told him, ‘Roger, you don’t have to like me, just let me fly wing-man – you lead, I’ll follow, I just wanna make that music.’ He called me and said, ‘I hear you’re still telling people I hate you.’ I said, ‘Well, not exactly, though I’m probably not your favourite person…’ He said, ‘That’s not it. I don’t dislike you at all; I just love what I’m doing. I’m a folkie, I’ve played folk more times than rock, and I don’t want to be in a rock’n’roll band, I’d sooner join the army’! “That one got me! It’s a shame, as Chris and I would love to do it. You can lead a horse to water…”
Tributes have been paid to John Renbourn, whose death was announced yesterday [March 26, 2015].
Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol told Uncut, "Another light has gone out. John made a uniquely important contribution to guitar music and I first became aware of his playing when I picked up the guitar ...
Tributes have been paid to John Renbourn, whose death was announced yesterday [March 26, 2015].
Fairport Convention‘s Simon Nicol told Uncut, “Another light has gone out. John made a uniquely important contribution to guitar music and I first became aware of his playing when I picked up the guitar in my early teens. John influenced more people than he ever knew and he knew a lot of people. He was much-loved and will be much-missed.”
Meanwhile, online David Crosby hailed him as “a great musician”.
Other friends and fans including Gordon Giltrap, Riley Walker, Cerys Matthews, Andy Votel and Lauren Laverne also offered their condolences.
I'm still numb from the news that my old friend John Renbourn has passed away.
The news of Renbourn’s death was made public by Glasgow venue, The Ferry, where Renbourn, 70, had beem scheduled to play on Wednesday, March 25 as part of a UK tour with fellow musician, Wizz Jones.
Writing on their Facebook page, The Ferry said, “RIP John Renbourn. As his chosen Glasgow venue in recent years we are sad to announce the passing of our friend John Renbourn. All at The Ferry missed you last night, John!”
Speaking to Uncut, a member of staff at The Ferry confirmed Renbourn had failed to turn up for the March 25 show. “He didn’t show. nobody knew where he was. Wizz Jones was in the dark about what had happened. He did the show on his own. We tried to contact him. Wizz Jones called his agent [manager] this morning. He didn’t know what was happening so he called the police local to where he lived [Hawick, Scotland]. They went round to his house and found that he had died.”
Renbourn’s manager Dave Smith, who worked with him for 25 years, confirmed the news of his client’s passing to Uncut. It is believed the guitarist died from natural causes.
Pentangle
Renbourn enjoyed a wide-ranging career, as a solo artist, as a collaborator and also as a member of Pentangle.
Born in Marylebone in 1944, he became involved with the London folk scene in the early 1960s, where he met Bert Jansch. The two men recorded Bert And John in 1966.
Renbourn became a founding member of Pentangle the following year, along with Jansch, Danny Thompson, Jacqui McShee and Terry Cox.
The band’s first American tour included performances at the Newport Folk Festival and Fillmore West with the Grateful Dead.
This line-up of Pentangle stayed together until 1973, recording five albums: 1968’s The Pentangle and Sweet Child, 1969’s Basket Of Light, 1970’s Cruel Sister and 1971’s Reflection.
Renbourn also worked as a solo artist in tandem with his commitments in Pentangle.
He released his first, self-titled album in 1965.
During the 1980s, he received Grammy nominations for 1981’s Live In America with the John Renbourn Group, and Wheel Of Fortune, his 1983 collaboration with the Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson.
His last studio album was 2011’s Palermo Snow.
Renbourn also released books and video lessons for aspiring guitarists, beginning with Guitar Pieces in 1972, and ran a series of guitar workshops. This year’s workshop was due to take place in Spain during September.
What to expect from a Van Morrison concert, then? Morrison, of course, has a reputation as an unpredictable live performer. Anecdotal evidence gathered from around the Uncut office suggests he is just as capable of transcendent moments of sublime mystery as he is of turning in perfunctory, no frills...
What to expect from a Van Morrison concert, then? Morrison, of course, has a reputation as an unpredictable live performer. Anecdotal evidence gathered from around the Uncut office suggests he is just as capable of transcendent moments of sublime mystery as he is of turning in perfunctory, no frills sets. Will he favour the roaming spirit of his peerless Seventies albums, or the blues and R&B numbers from his youth that have become increasingly foregrounded in his live sets? Tonight, there are two additional elements that might inform the tone of tonight’s show. First, this is part of this year’s run of Teenage Cancer Trust shows; a cause that obliges the artist to ensure they’re at their best. Secondly, this show convenient falls close to the release date of his new album, Duets: Reworking The Catalogue, and there is in all likelihood an imperative to support that.
As it transpires, all these things become to some degree relevant. Critically, we get an avuncular Morrison. He is hardly an unstoppable raconteur – he says very little, in fact – but his demeanour suggests he is at the very least enjoying himself. Sauntering on stage a few minutes after his band have started playing the light, jazzy grooves of “Celtic Swing”, he joins in with an expansive saxophone solo. His five piece backing band are dressed soberly in blacks and greys; Morrison himself wears a black suit, hat and sunglasses. I’m reminded to some extent of Dylan’s current touring band: another group of well-drilled musicians who are sensitive and discretely responsive to both the material and the demands of a notoriously capricious frontman. Under Morrison’s current musical director Paul Moran, they hold the line admirably. Admittedly, it’s not that difficult in the early part of the show. No sooner have the band warmed up, than Morrison introduces his new album to the audience and brings on the first of tonight’s duet partners, Clare Teal, for “Carrying A Torch” and “The Way Young Lovers Do”. The vibes are a little Pizza Express Jazz Club; fortunately, Morrison moves on to a persuasive version of “Baby Please Don’t Go” before he is joined by Teenage Cancer Trust founder Roger Daltrey for “Talk Is Cheap”, which never quite lifts off. Perhaps they’re under-rehearsed, but instead of the fiery R&B thrill they’re presumably aiming for, the song feels sluggish where it should swing.
Personally, I find this section of the show a little difficult to get my head round. As he brings out PJ Proby for three songs, including one of Proby’s own and a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me”, it begins to feel suspiciously like two old mates have a laugh. Morrison dwells too long here and what could passably be considered a generous act of sharing the stage with a favourite contemporary begins to feel like an indulgence. Things pick up, though, when Georgie Fame sits in for a handful of songs. This seems to change the shape of the music; the songs become looser, jazzier, fuller. The night’s brief collaboration with Fame culminates in a warm, gently swaying version of “Centrepiece”, which seems to segue into Dylan’s “Corrina Corrina”, lubricated by Morrison’s extraordinary baritone and Fame’s evocative Hammond playing. Fame is followed by Mick Hucknall, who gives a pleasingly restrained and sympathetic reading of “Streets Of Arklow”.
By this point, it’s increasingly hard to guess where Morrison is going with his set. Is this a promo job for the Duets album, an opportunity to dust down some old R&B and soul covers or a leisurely trip through his capacious back catalogue? Or is it all three? And if so, is the balance of material right? But then he pulls out a final clutch of songs that showcase not only his most famous work but also mark a foray into the wild beauty of those Celtic landscapes. “Moondance” appears as its lightest and most delicate, lifted by some nimble sax work from Morrison. “Magic Time” continues to illustrate Morrison at his freewheeling best before we get a galloping “Brown Eyed Girl”. For a finale, he plays magical, meandering versions of “Into The Mystic” and “In The Garden”, rich in wonderment, that transport and elevate.
It’s arguable to a point that Morrison is at a place now where he is entitled to play what he wants, when he wants. Indeed, some might find the digressions into old soul and R&B pleasing in their own right. But there’s enough in Morrison’s own formidable back catalogue that he doesn’t need to dwell too long in other people’s music. We are here for the mystic; and when it finally arrives, it is a most astonishing thing.
