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The Rolling Stones announce European festival dates

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The Rolling Stones announce European festival dates
The Rolling Stones have confirmed they will be playing European tour dates this summer. Last week, Uncut reported that the band were planning a run of European dates. Now, the band have announced they will play the Pinkpop Festival on Holland on Saturday 7 June and the TW Classic Festival in Belgi...

The Rolling Stones have confirmed they will be playing European tour dates this summer.

Last week, Uncut reported that the band were planning a run of European dates.

Now, the band have announced they will play the Pinkpop Festival on Holland on Saturday 7 June and the TW Classic Festival in Belgium on Saturday 28 June as part of their 14 On Fire tour.

The Rolling Stones will be playing more major shows in Europe in May and June, and these will be announced over the next two weeks.

Mick Jagger commented: “I love festivals in the summertime and can’t wait for the tour to get to Europe.”

Keith Richards added: “Let’s keep this show on the road …the band are in top form so I’m really looking forward to getting back to Europe.”

The Tenth Uncut Playlist Of 2014

John Mulvey
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The Tenth Uncut Playlist Of 2014

I’ve alluded a few times in recent weeks to the excellence of the forthcoming “Spiderland” boxset, and especially to the Lance Bangs documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which it contains. “Breadcrumb Trail” tells the odd, low-key, long-obfuscated tale of Slint, revealing much without entirely dismantling the band’s mystique, and focusing on the band’s drummer Britt Walford. Walford, it transpires, was the band’s key creative force and fount of perversity – there are vague discourses on “anal breathing” tapes and a cataclysmic stretch of house-sitting for Steve Albini, among other deviations, often elucidated by Walford’s amazingly staunch parents. What has happened to Walford in the 20-odd years since Slint disbanded, though, remains tantalisingly oblique. There was a stint in The Breeders (pseudonyms included “Mike Hunt”), and intermittent Slint reunions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVdU_bLD2-M ) Bafflingly, his own new music seemed to dry up: there is talk in “Breadcrumb Trail” about a bakery job making “erotic cakes”. That’s changed this month with the arrival of “This World”, the first album by a band called Watter that features Zak Riles from Grails, Tyler Trotter and, on drums, the enigmatic Walford (Two more Louisville players, Rachel Grimes from Rachel’s and Todd Cook from The For Carnation, figure, too). First thing you might notice from the “Rustic Fog” track below is that Walford’s dealing in uncharacteristically conventional time signatures. The whole album, in fact, has a sort of solidity and grandeur that’s quite different in mood to Slint, even if it deals to some degree in a sound that we’ve been calling post-rock for the past two decades. If anything, though, Watter remind me of a step onwards and backwards from latterday Earth, towards the sort of blasted desert soundtracks of the Savage Republic/Scenic continuum that eventually fed into Godspeed You Black Emperor (mixed with a little Kosmische synth atmospherics, too). Worth a listen, anyhow – as is plenty more here. Maybe try Dylan Shearer, who’s backed by bits of Comets On Fire and Thee Oh Sees, but spends most of his debut album fastidiously recreating the sound of early Robert Wyatt solo albums? Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air (CBS) 2 Watter – This World (Temporary Residence) 3 Grace Jones – Nightclubbing: Deluxe Edition (Island) 4 Fennesz – Bécs (Editions Mego) 5 Sam Doores + Riley Downing & The Tumbleweeds - Holy Cross Blues (Coin) 6 Kenny Graham – The Small World Of Sammy Lee (Trunk) 7 Dylan Shearer – Meadow Mines (Fort Polio) (Castleface/Empty Cellar) 8 Archie Bronson Outfit – Wild Crush (Domino) 9 Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires - Dereconstructed (Sub Pop) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YucWOXSCa4U ) 10 Terry Bickers & Pete Fij – Broken Heart Surgery (?) 11 Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté - Toumani & Sidiki (World Circuit) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCEeaERMfNo 12 Jack Ruby – Hit And Run (Saint Cecilia Knows) 13 Woo – When The Past Arrives (Drag City) 14 The Grateful Dead – One From The Vault (Light In The Attic) 15 Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade) 16 Hiss Golden Messenger - March 2, 2014, Mercury Lounge, New York (NYC Taper)

I’ve alluded a few times in recent weeks to the excellence of the forthcoming “Spiderland” boxset, and especially to the Lance Bangs documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which it contains. “Breadcrumb Trail” tells the odd, low-key, long-obfuscated tale of Slint, revealing much without entirely dismantling the band’s mystique, and focusing on the band’s drummer Britt Walford.

Walford, it transpires, was the band’s key creative force and fount of perversity – there are vague discourses on “anal breathing” tapes and a cataclysmic stretch of house-sitting for Steve Albini, among other deviations, often elucidated by Walford’s amazingly staunch parents. What has happened to Walford in the 20-odd years since Slint disbanded, though, remains tantalisingly oblique. There was a stint in The Breeders (pseudonyms included “Mike Hunt”), and intermittent Slint reunions.

)

Bafflingly, his own new music seemed to dry up: there is talk in “Breadcrumb Trail” about a bakery job making “erotic cakes”. That’s changed this month with the arrival of “This World”, the first album by a band called Watter that features Zak Riles from Grails, Tyler Trotter and, on drums, the enigmatic Walford (Two more Louisville players, Rachel Grimes from Rachel’s and Todd Cook from The For Carnation, figure, too).

First thing you might notice from the “Rustic Fog” track below is that Walford’s dealing in uncharacteristically conventional time signatures. The whole album, in fact, has a sort of solidity and grandeur that’s quite different in mood to Slint, even if it deals to some degree in a sound that we’ve been calling post-rock for the past two decades. If anything, though, Watter remind me of a step onwards and backwards from latterday Earth, towards the sort of blasted desert soundtracks of the Savage Republic/Scenic continuum that eventually fed into Godspeed You Black Emperor (mixed with a little Kosmische synth atmospherics, too).

Worth a listen, anyhow – as is plenty more here. Maybe try Dylan Shearer, who’s backed by bits of Comets On Fire and Thee Oh Sees, but spends most of his debut album fastidiously recreating the sound of early Robert Wyatt solo albums?

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

1 Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air (CBS)

2 Watter – This World (Temporary Residence)

3 Grace Jones – Nightclubbing: Deluxe Edition (Island)

4 Fennesz – Bécs (Editions Mego)

5 Sam Doores + Riley Downing & The Tumbleweeds – Holy Cross Blues (Coin)

6 Kenny Graham – The Small World Of Sammy Lee (Trunk)

7 Dylan Shearer – Meadow Mines (Fort Polio) (Castleface/Empty Cellar)

8 Archie Bronson Outfit – Wild Crush (Domino)

9 Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires – Dereconstructed (Sub Pop)

)

10 Terry Bickers & Pete Fij – Broken Heart Surgery (?)

11 Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté – Toumani & Sidiki (World Circuit)

12 Jack Ruby – Hit And Run (Saint Cecilia Knows)

13 Woo – When The Past Arrives (Drag City)

14 The Grateful Dead – One From The Vault (Light In The Attic)

15 Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade)

16 Hiss Golden Messenger – March 2, 2014, Mercury Lounge, New York (NYC Taper)

Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance – Ooh La La: An Island Harvest

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Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance – Ooh La La: An Island Harvest

Double-disc retrospective from the king of rustic rock... When Ronnie Lane left The Faces in 1973 he had grown tired of the rock lifestyle and of being around “the names that, when dropped, attract a crowd,” as he put it so beautifully on “Little Piece Of Nothing”. Even the name he gave his hastily assembled new band was a sly – and, as it transpired, accurate – comment on their commercial potential. Still only 27 but already deep in the transition from ace face to gypsy king, Lane sealed the deal by settling into Fishpool farm, up in the Shropshire hills near the Welsh border. From his new base, surrounded by animals and rolling countryside, he set about fashioning a rustic-rock idyll in which the music he made reflected the landscape and his new way of life. “Country Boy”, one of 37 album tracks, singles, outtakes, alternate versions and live cuts compiled for this two-disc retrospective, is almost a manifesto, Lane finding “silver in the stars and gold in the morning sun”. Elsewhere there are songs about blacksmiths, poachers, Indian summers and harvest time. To bring nature’s bounty to life, the shifting groups of musicians he assembled hit upon a fertile blend of rock and roll, country, folk, music hall, roadhouse blues, hot jazz, Cajun and early American roots music. Covers here include “Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Fats Domino’s “Blue Monday” and the Isaac Family’s bluegrass gospel obscurity “Bottle Of Brandy”. But as well as honouring a past that stretched back much further than “Heartbreak Hotel” or the first Beatles LP, this music contains pre-echoes of future records by Paul Weller, The Waterboys, Nick Lowe, Van Morrisson and countless others. The disarmingly beautiful instrumental “Harvest Home” would sound completely at ease on any recent release by contemporary folk trio Lau. These tracks hum to the sound of accordions, fiddles, mandolins, saloon bar piano, acoustic guitars, squawking geese and chirruping birds, but as fiddler Charlie Hart points out, “it’s not all polite.” You can well imagine The Faces tearing through “Steppin’ and Reelin’”; “One For The Road” is a rowdy closing time sing-song and “Ain’t No Lady” indulges Lane’s bawdy side, while the raw “Back Street Boy” is rude Southern funk with a Romany heart. Whether stately or rambunctious, Slim Chance made good time music with bags of soul. Imagine Chas & Dave meeting Meher Baba. The darkly beautiful “Burnin’ Summer” may have a powerful seam of pastoral spirituality running through it, but Lane still prefaces an unbridled first tilt at Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” with the elbows-out cockney joshing of the young Steptoe. Emerging from the shadow of Rod Stewart, his characterful voice blossomed, settling into a hybrid of Dylan’s clean Nashville Skyline-era croon and George Harrison’s ragged soulfulness. As wonderful as much of this richly diverse music is, Ooh La La: An Island Harvest is not an entirely satisfactory overview of Lane’s first few post-Faces years. As the title implies, it focuses on his two Island albums, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance (1974) and One For The Road (1976). The complete omission of tracks from the first Slim Chance album Anymore For Anymore, released in 1974 on GM Records and therefore presumably sidelined for contractual reasons, is regrettable, ensuring meagre pickings from the band’s first act. All that’s on offer is a (beautiful) alternate version of “The Poacher”, as well as live renditions of debut single “How Come” and Anymore For Anymore’s “Tell Everyone”, the latter pair part of an eight-song BBC In Concert set from April 1974, when Slim Chance, in its initial incarnation, featured Scottish folk duo Gallagher & Lyle. The live tracks also provide a connective thread back to Lane’s work with The Faces, with outings for “Last Orders”, “Debris”, “Flags And Banners” and “Ooh La La”. The latter song crops up again in a previously unreleased version which brings a vibrant Dixieland verve to one of Lane’s greatest compositions, though admittedly at the expense of some of the original’s poignancy. Wonderful songs all, of course, but their presence, alongside the jumbled chronology and omissions elsewhere, lend a slightly incoherent, rag-bag feel to an otherwise very welcome salute to an undervalued songbook. A decent crop, but not quite the full golden harvest. Graeme Thomson Q&A SLIM CHANCE’S CHARLIE HART What are your memories of life at Fishpool? It’s the most fabulous, out-of-the-way part of the world. We’d stay up all night, watch the light coming up in the valley, then I’d go out and sow barley with Ronnie and we’d come home and record “Harvest Home”. The music is really rooted to the place, the lifestyle, the characters. It was idyllic. When he moved back to London in the early 80s he’d say to me, ‘God, that was a magical time.’ The blend of music is remarkable. He was bringing in music hall, Cajun, early jazz, Leadbelly, East End songs, and somehow it all came together in unified form. He has been influential. In the mid-70s rock and roll was getting over-ripe, and in a way Ronnie was reacting against that in a similar way to punk. Ronnie did not like pretence, that’s for sure. Did he talk much about The Faces? He wanted to start afresh, but he’d talk about it. He liked Mac, who remained a very good pal, and there was a bit of ranting about Rod Stewart! He didn’t let go of everything. He wanted to retain the entertainment factor of The Faces, he wanted to look good on stage, and he was still up for rocking out. Was he deliberately turning away from the mainstream? He had done it all, so in a certain sense he was content to do whatever he wanted artistically. But he was also trying to broaden rock and roll, and to do that you have to remain reasonably commercial. We did OK, but we weren’t successful enough to keep the band together. That was a source of deep regret to him. He was trying to do two things and couldn’t quite manage it. INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON

Double-disc retrospective from the king of rustic rock…

When Ronnie Lane left The Faces in 1973 he had grown tired of the rock lifestyle and of being around “the names that, when dropped, attract a crowd,” as he put it so beautifully on “Little Piece Of Nothing”. Even the name he gave his hastily assembled new band was a sly – and, as it transpired, accurate – comment on their commercial potential.

Still only 27 but already deep in the transition from ace face to gypsy king, Lane sealed the deal by settling into Fishpool farm, up in the Shropshire hills near the Welsh border. From his new base, surrounded by animals and rolling countryside, he set about fashioning a rustic-rock idyll in which the music he made reflected the landscape and his new way of life. “Country Boy”, one of 37 album tracks, singles, outtakes, alternate versions and live cuts compiled for this two-disc retrospective, is almost a manifesto, Lane finding “silver in the stars and gold in the morning sun”. Elsewhere there are songs about blacksmiths, poachers, Indian summers and harvest time.

To bring nature’s bounty to life, the shifting groups of musicians he assembled hit upon a fertile blend of rock and roll, country, folk, music hall, roadhouse blues, hot jazz, Cajun and early American roots music. Covers here include “Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Fats Domino’s “Blue Monday” and the Isaac Family’s bluegrass gospel obscurity “Bottle Of Brandy”. But as well as honouring a past that stretched back much further than “Heartbreak Hotel” or the first Beatles LP, this music contains pre-echoes of future records by Paul Weller, The Waterboys, Nick Lowe, Van Morrisson and countless others. The disarmingly beautiful instrumental “Harvest Home” would sound completely at ease on any recent release by contemporary folk trio Lau.

These tracks hum to the sound of accordions, fiddles, mandolins, saloon bar piano, acoustic guitars, squawking geese and chirruping birds, but as fiddler Charlie Hart points out, “it’s not all polite.” You can well imagine The Faces tearing through “Steppin’ and Reelin’”; “One For The Road” is a rowdy closing time sing-song and “Ain’t No Lady” indulges Lane’s bawdy side, while the raw “Back Street Boy” is rude Southern funk with a Romany heart.

Whether stately or rambunctious, Slim Chance made good time music with bags of soul. Imagine Chas & Dave meeting Meher Baba. The darkly beautiful “Burnin’ Summer” may have a powerful seam of pastoral spirituality running through it, but Lane still prefaces an unbridled first tilt at Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” with the elbows-out cockney joshing of the young Steptoe. Emerging from the shadow of Rod Stewart, his characterful voice blossomed, settling into a hybrid of Dylan’s clean Nashville Skyline-era croon and George Harrison’s ragged soulfulness.

As wonderful as much of this richly diverse music is, Ooh La La: An Island Harvest is not an entirely satisfactory overview of Lane’s first few post-Faces years. As the title implies, it focuses on his two Island albums, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance (1974) and One For The Road (1976). The complete omission of tracks from the first Slim Chance album Anymore For Anymore, released in 1974 on GM Records and therefore presumably sidelined for contractual reasons, is regrettable, ensuring meagre pickings from the band’s first act. All that’s on offer is a (beautiful) alternate version of “The Poacher”, as well as live renditions of debut single “How Come” and Anymore For Anymore’s “Tell Everyone”, the latter pair part of an eight-song BBC In Concert set from April 1974, when Slim Chance, in its initial incarnation, featured Scottish folk duo Gallagher & Lyle.

The live tracks also provide a connective thread back to Lane’s work with The Faces, with outings for “Last Orders”, “Debris”, “Flags And Banners” and “Ooh La La”. The latter song crops up again in a previously unreleased version which brings a vibrant Dixieland verve to one of Lane’s greatest compositions, though admittedly at the expense of some of the original’s poignancy.

Wonderful songs all, of course, but their presence, alongside the jumbled chronology and omissions elsewhere, lend a slightly incoherent, rag-bag feel to an otherwise very welcome salute to an undervalued songbook. A decent crop, but not quite the full golden harvest.

Graeme Thomson

Q&A

SLIM CHANCE’S CHARLIE HART

What are your memories of life at Fishpool?

It’s the most fabulous, out-of-the-way part of the world. We’d stay up all night, watch the light coming up in the valley, then I’d go out and sow barley with Ronnie and we’d come home and record “Harvest Home”. The music is really rooted to the place, the lifestyle, the characters. It was idyllic. When he moved back to London in the early 80s he’d say to me, ‘God, that was a magical time.’

The blend of music is remarkable.

He was bringing in music hall, Cajun, early jazz, Leadbelly, East End songs, and somehow it all came together in unified form. He has been influential. In the mid-70s rock and roll was getting over-ripe, and in a way Ronnie was reacting against that in a similar way to punk. Ronnie did not like pretence, that’s for sure.

Did he talk much about The Faces?

He wanted to start afresh, but he’d talk about it. He liked Mac, who remained a very good pal, and there was a bit of ranting about Rod Stewart! He didn’t let go of everything. He wanted to retain the entertainment factor of The Faces, he wanted to look good on stage, and he was still up for rocking out.

Was he deliberately turning away from the mainstream?

He had done it all, so in a certain sense he was content to do whatever he wanted artistically. But he was also trying to broaden rock and roll, and to do that you have to remain reasonably commercial. We did OK, but we weren’t successful enough to keep the band together. That was a source of deep regret to him. He was trying to do two things and couldn’t quite manage it.

INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON

Keith Richards to release children’s book in September

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Keith Richards to release children’s book in September
Keith Richards will release a children's with his daughter, Theodora, later this year. The guitarist will release Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar on September 9 after signing a deal with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Richards' artist daughter Theordora has illus...

Keith Richards will release a children’s with his daughter, Theodora, later this year.

The guitarist will release Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar on September 9 after signing a deal with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Richards’ artist daughter Theordora has illustrated the picture book, which was co-written with Barnaby Harris and Bill Shapiro.

Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar is inspired by Richards’ grandfather, Theodore Augustus Dupree (known as Gus), who was in a jazz big band and provided inspiration for Theodora Richards’ name. Richards first wrote about his grandfather in his best-selling autobiography Life.

Speaking about the book, Richards’ said in a statement: “The bond, the special bond, between kids and grandparents is unique and should be treasured. This is a story of one of those magical moments. May I be as great a grandfather as Gus was to me.”

Richards became grandfather to a baby boy after his daughter Angela Richards gave birth to Otto Reed earlier this year (February 6).

Neil Young recruits Bruce Springsteen, David Crosby, Jack White to help him launch Pono

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Neil Young recruits Bruce Springsteen, David Crosby, Jack White to help him launch Pono
Neil Young launched his high quality digital Pono music player and service yesterday (March 11) at SXSW in Austin, Texas, saying of the player "once you hear this, you can't go back." Young spoke at the Austin Convention Centre and announced his plans for Pono, which yesterday also launched its Kic...

Neil Young launched his high quality digital Pono music player and service yesterday (March 11) at SXSW in Austin, Texas, saying of the player “once you hear this, you can’t go back.”

Young spoke at the Austin Convention Centre and announced his plans for Pono, which yesterday also launched its Kickstarter campaign. At the end of the event, Young revealed that the campaign had already raised over half its target funds of $800,000 in just four hours, “which is pretty cool” he commented. He also explained that ‘Pono’ is the Hawaiian word for ‘righteousness’.

Pono will consist of a digital music service (PonoMusic) and 128GB portable device (PonoPlayer) capable of storing 1-2,000 high resolution songs. The PonoPlayer is described in a press release as a “purpose-built, portable, high-resolution digital-music player designed and engineered in a “no-compromise” fashion to allow consumers to experience studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible, bringing the true emotion and detail of the music, the way the artist recorded it, to life.”

Speaking without notes and pacing back and forth on the large stage, Young explained his reasons for launching Pono, which has been two and half years in the making, and he also explained that he had support from all the major record labels, commenting: “They’re all with us, all the record companies”.

Criticising the rise of MP3 quality sound and explaining that was the reason behind making his own player, Young said: “I’m a fan of listening loud – I love to listen loud… I like to take whatever it is to the limit.” He stated that this was not possible with MP3 and said the music industry also began to slump after its introduction. “Everything started to die – it was because of the MP3 and the cheapening of the quality to where it was practically unrecognisable,” he commented, lamenting albums which were perceived to have been made with ‘filler’ tracks. “The album had no value – only the individual tracks had value,” he stated.

He added: “As a guy who’d been making records for many years at that point, I was pissed off – I love every note, on every song, on every record…. They weren’t just filler.” He then said that the sound of MP3 was ‘shit’: “We were selling shit, but people were still buying it because they like music [but] they were buying Xeroxes of the Mona Lisa.”

Young went on to explain that music adapted to the constraints of MP3. “Instead of being soulful – which it still is – music adapted, it became beat heavy, it became smart, it became tricky. But for me, it was like ‘woah, I don’t want to do that!’… I started thinking it might be a good idea to do something about it”.

He then showed a short film, which saw a host of music world stars commenting on Pono, after listening to the player, including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Mumford and Sons, Dave Grohl, Elvis Costello, Mike D of the Beastie Boys and Jack White. Click above to watch the video. “This gives it to you as good as you can get it,” says Tom Petty, whilst Springsteen comments that it has “a closeness and intimacy that digital recordings can lose very quickly.” Elton John says: “I haven’t heard a sound like that since vinyl”.

“Pono plays back whatever the artist decided to do,” added Young. “My body is getting washed, I’m getting hit with something great. It’s not ice cubes, it’s water – I’m listening. I’m feeling.” Pono’s CEO John Hamm also spoke during the session and talked about the triangular shape of the Pono device. “The electronics that fit inside wouldn’t fit in a flat package,” he explained. “It’s a small piece of audio gear, not a mobile device.”

Waging Heavy Peace, released in 2012, Young explained how Pono will help to “save the sound of music”. Young claims in the book that he had emailed Steve Jobs about Pono before his death: “I have consistently reached out to try to assist Apple with true audio quality, and I have even shared my high-resolution masters with them,” he wrote, before stating that his service will “force iTunes to be better and to improve quality at a faster pace”.

Introducing… Oasis: the Ultimate Music Guide

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Introducing… Oasis: the Ultimate Music Guide

“There wasn’t a lot of pre-production for What’s The Story. . .If we were at home, the postman would drop off an envelope and in it would be a cassette saying ‘Noel demos’. You’d get a phone call: ‘There’s the next album. Learn it. See you in a week.’ That’s the way Noel worked. Everyone would figure out the chords – there was no point asking him, he didn’t know the name of the fucking things. ‘It’s one of them where your finger’s up there. . .’” This is Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, looking back at the somewhat haphazard way one of the biggest-selling UK albums of all time came together in his introduction to the latest instalment in our series of Ultimate Music Guides, this one dedicated to Oasis, who in their illustrious pomp swept all before them before the always-simmering tensions between permanently squabbling siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher, for many years an entertaining if occasionally wearying distraction, came to a brutal climax in August 2009 at the Rock et Seine festival in Paris. A backstage argument between the two ended with Noel walking out on the band that for just over a decade has held such omnipotent sway over British rock. Two hours later, he released a statement announcing “with some sadness and great relief. . . .I quit Oasis tonight”. Noel went off and formed The High Flying Birds. Liam and what was left of the final Oasis line-up became Beady Eye, with a promise from Liam that they would be “bigger than Oasis”, which is not something they have yet become, despite Liam’s initial post-split bravado. Anyway, 20 years on from the release of Definitely, Maybe, our Ultimate Music Guide, as ever, brings together a collection of predictably colourful and eventful interviews from the archives of Melody Maker, NME and Uncut , a fantastic trawl that’s supplemented by new, in-depth reviews of every Oasis album and the albums that have followed by High Flying Birds and Beady Eye, plus a full Oasis singles discography, including rarities and most valuable collectables. Oasis: the Ultimate Music Guide is on sale from Thursday, March 13 and will also available to order online at www.uncut.co.uk/store or download digitally at www.uncut.co.uk/digital-edition. To get you in the mood here’s a clip of Oasis making their TV debut on The Word from 1994. Have a good week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_lzy_kMF1c

“There wasn’t a lot of pre-production for What’s The Story. . .If we were at home, the postman would drop off an envelope and in it would be a cassette saying ‘Noel demos’. You’d get a phone call: ‘There’s the next album. Learn it. See you in a week.’ That’s the way Noel worked. Everyone would figure out the chords – there was no point asking him, he didn’t know the name of the fucking things. ‘It’s one of them where your finger’s up there. . .’”

This is Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, looking back at the somewhat haphazard way one of the biggest-selling UK albums of all time came together in his introduction to the latest instalment in our series of Ultimate Music Guides, this one dedicated to Oasis, who in their illustrious pomp swept all before them before the always-simmering tensions between permanently squabbling siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher, for many years an entertaining if occasionally wearying distraction, came to a brutal climax in August 2009 at the Rock et Seine festival in Paris.

A backstage argument between the two ended with Noel walking out on the band that for just over a decade has held such omnipotent sway over British rock. Two hours later, he released a statement announcing “with some sadness and great relief. . . .I quit Oasis tonight”. Noel went off and formed The High Flying Birds. Liam and what was left of the final Oasis line-up became Beady Eye, with a promise from Liam that they would be “bigger than Oasis”, which is not something they have yet become, despite Liam’s initial post-split bravado.

Anyway, 20 years on from the release of Definitely, Maybe, our Ultimate Music Guide, as ever, brings together a collection of predictably colourful and eventful interviews from the archives of Melody Maker, NME and Uncut , a fantastic trawl that’s supplemented by new, in-depth reviews of every Oasis album and the albums that have followed by High Flying Birds and Beady Eye, plus a full Oasis singles discography, including rarities and most valuable collectables.

Oasis: the Ultimate Music Guide is on sale from Thursday, March 13 and will also available to order online at www.uncut.co.uk/store or download digitally at www.uncut.co.uk/digital-edition.

To get you in the mood here’s a clip of Oasis making their TV debut on The Word from 1994.

Have a good week.

U2 deny pushing next album back to 2015

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U2 deny pushing next album back to 2015

A spokesperson for U2 has denied that the band have pushed back the release date of their 13th studio album to 2015. Investigations by Billboard last week suggested that the band had pushed the album back to next year. It reported that the band had booked further studio time with producers Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder, who would join the project's main producer Danger Mouse. It also suggested that U2 had cancelled a tour due to take place in summer 2014. Speaking to The Guardian, a spokesperson for the band flatly the claims, saying: "U2's album is planned for this year (2014), is still on track and touring plans haven’t been confirmed yet." Following recent appearances at the Golden Globes and the release of new tracks "Ordinary Love" and "Invisible", which was downloaded for free three million times, speculation had mounted that the band were gearing up to release their next album this year. Following Billboard's investigation last week, an Interscope representative said the album cannot be considered delayed as a release date was never announced.

A spokesperson for U2 has denied that the band have pushed back the release date of their 13th studio album to 2015.

Investigations by Billboard last week suggested that the band had pushed the album back to next year. It reported that the band had booked further studio time with producers Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder, who would join the project’s main producer Danger Mouse. It also suggested that U2 had cancelled a tour due to take place in summer 2014.

Speaking to The Guardian, a spokesperson for the band flatly the claims, saying: “U2’s album is planned for this year (2014), is still on track and touring plans haven’t been confirmed yet.”

Following recent appearances at the Golden Globes and the release of new tracks “Ordinary Love” and “Invisible”, which was downloaded for free three million times, speculation had mounted that the band were gearing up to release their next album this year. Following Billboard’s investigation last week, an Interscope representative said the album cannot be considered delayed as a release date was never announced.

The Stooges recording new album without Iggy Pop

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The Stooges recording new album without Iggy Pop
The Stooges are recording an album of material without Iggy Pop. The line-up of James Williamson, Mike Watt, Steve Mackay and Toby Dammit are working on an album, Re-Licked, with a series of guest vocalists including Mark Lanegan and Jello Biafra. Re-Licked consists of previously unreleased songs ...

The Stooges are recording an album of material without Iggy Pop.

The line-up of James Williamson, Mike Watt, Steve Mackay and Toby Dammit are working on an album, Re-Licked, with a series of guest vocalists including Mark Lanegan and Jello Biafra.

Re-Licked consists of previously unreleased songs written around the time of the Iggy And The Stooges’ 1973 album Raw Power. Pop announced last September that he wouldn’t be working with The Stooges in 2014, but Williamson told Rolling Stone: “Iggy gave me his blessing and wished me success with the album. But it’s a hard pill to swallow when someone is doing all your songs with your band and you’re not on it.”

Pop said in a statement: “I don’t have a problem with anything. This statement about ‘hard pill’ sounds kind of passive aggressive to me…T hese guys are my friends and we’ve all worked together many years. They’re working musicians and they need to play.” Pop’s spokesman additionally claimed the singer wasn’t given the chance to appear on Re-Licked and only learned of the album in December 2013 when a record label rejected the chance to release it.

Since reforming in 2003, the band have released two albums: The Weirdness in 2007 and Ready To Die in 2013.

Neil Young confirms more solo shows

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Neil Young confirms more solo shows
Neil Young has confirmed a pair of solo shows. Young, who is due to play four solo shows in Los Angeles, has now announced two shows in Dallas, Texas at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center on April 17 and 18. Tickets for the two-night run will go on sale March 14 and are available here. Meanwh...

Neil Young has confirmed a pair of solo shows.

Young, who is due to play four solo shows in Los Angeles, has now announced two shows in Dallas, Texas at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center on April 17 and 18.

Tickets for the two-night run will go on sale March 14 and are available here.

Meanwhile, to enter our competition to win a pair of tickets to see Neil Young & Crazy Horse at London’s Hyde Park, click here.

Roddy Frame announces details of new album Seven Dials + previews track

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Roddy Frame announces details of new album Seven Dials + previews track
Roddy Frame has announced details of new album, Seven Dials. Seven Dials will be released on AED on Monday May 5h 2014. It's Frame's first since Western Skies in 2006, was recorded at West Heath Studios in London and co-produced with Seb Lewsley. The track listing for Seven Dials is as follows: ...

Roddy Frame has announced details of new album, Seven Dials.

Seven Dials will be released on AED on Monday May 5h 2014.

It’s Frame’s first since Western Skies in 2006, was recorded at West Heath Studios in London and co-produced with Seb Lewsley.

The track listing for Seven Dials is as follows:

White Pony

Postcard

Into The Sun

Rear View Mirror

In Orbit

Forty Days Of Rain

English Garden

On The Waves

The Other Side

From A Train

Meanwhile, Frame is previewing “Forty Days Of Rain“, which you can hear below.

Benmont Tench – You Should Be So Lucky

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Benmont Tench – You Should Be So Lucky

The Heartbreakers keys man debuts - with a little help from his friends... As a member of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers and a busy A-list session player, Benmont Tench is a master of the art of getting the job done without drawing undue attention to himself. This quintessential sideman is also an eminent presence in the LA musical community, egolessly blending in with his fellow players, who revere the 60-year-old veteran for being both a musicians’ musician and a disarmingly laidback dude. Long one of producer Rick Rubin’s guns for hire, he always shows up when a friend like Ryan Adams or Ringo Starr calls. Both are on Tench’s first solo album, part of a veritable supersession that also includes locally bred guitarist Blake Mills, expat drummer Jeremy Stacey, bassist Don Was, multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns, singer/guitarists Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Petty himself. Ethan’s dad, legendary producer Glyn Johns, first broached the subject of Tench making a solo album 20 years ago, and took his chair behind the console when Benmont finally decided to go for it. Computers were absent from the control room. With its organic arrangements, live-off-the-floor performances and painterly detail, You Should Be So Lucky is very much an old-school Glyn Johns production, cut in the same room and featuring several of the same players who appeared on Adams’ similarly timeless 2012 LP Ashes & Fire. There’s nothing flashy about this record; it’s totally in character for the resolutely understated Tench. It opens subtly with the melancholy ballad “Today I Took Your Picture Down”, which recalls Warren Zevon at his most stoic. “On this track you can hear the players really listening”, Tench notes in his track-by-track breakdown, but he could just as accurately be referring to the album as a whole, which is about simpatico players locking in with the material and each other. Tench sings his lyrics much as he plays, with restraint, feel and unforced emotion, not letting himself get in the way of the song yet still fully inhabiting its nuances. The title of “Veronica Said” signals Tench’s debt to Lou Reed (another singer who made the most of a limited voice). The sublime “Why Don’t You Quit Leaving Me Alone” (recorded by Rosanne Cash for 1987’s King’s Record Shop) wouldn’t be out of place out of place on a Randy Newman album; the tender love song “Hannah” inspires Tench’s most heartfelt vocal, its melody pushing his voice to the top of his narrow range, with poignant results; and “Blonde Girl, Blue Dress” knowingly captures the emotional state of the other guy, the one who doesn’t get the girl – presumably a common occurrence with sidekicks and sidemen alike. Bob Dylan, who’s done more with less than any singer, is Tench’s primary touchstone, and he honours the bard on the album’s two non-originals, a luminous take on Dylan’s rendition of the folk standard “Corrina, Corrina” and a rollicking barrelhouse cover of Tempest’s “Duquesne Whistle”. You can also pick up his influence in the torrid title track, which comes across with the hellbent ferocity of Highway 61 Revisited, as Tench unleashes his inner Al Kooper and Adams, playing rhythm guitar as if his life depended on it, practically tears the strings off his acoustic. “Ecor Rouge”, one of two instrumentals, is a watercolour landscape, while the other, “Wobbles”, swings New Orleans style, propelled by the dual drumming of Stacey and Ethan Johns. As different as they are, both capture lightning in a bottle, and hearing them, it’s easy to see why Was, after playing on the record, was inspired to release it on the iconic label Blue Note, which he now heads. Much like the classic Blue Note albums of the last century, You Should Be So Lucky is tailor-made for connoisseurs of musicianship at its headiest and most tasteful – the kind of record you’re proud to own, matching the pride of all those who participated in its creation. Bud Scoppa Q&A You’re known around LA for your willingness to play with anybody. I hope I use a little bit of taste when I go out [laughs]. “He’s no pushover, but he can be had.” But the Heartbreakers have a lot of downtime, and I love to play. If you play with other people, you’re gonna learn something. You blend everybody’s dialects and you find a common language. This record strikes me as an extension of that impulse. Everybody on this record is a good friend of mine. I’ve played with these folks in my house; we cook some food and talk, break out some instruments and play. So making the record felt like my house. That’s exactly what I wanted and what Glyn wanted. Hell, we just wanted to have some fun and do something good. But if I hadn’t been surrounded by friends, it would’ve been too intimidating and overwhelming. You made the record in 10 days, soup to nuts. That’s impressive. That’s the amount of time that we could have all of the musicians, Glyn and Sunset Sound. But I like limitations. Limitations make you work in a different way, and you get a different result. INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA

The Heartbreakers keys man debuts – with a little help from his friends…

As a member of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers and a busy A-list session player, Benmont Tench is a master of the art of getting the job done without drawing undue attention to himself. This quintessential sideman is also an eminent presence in the LA musical community, egolessly blending in with his fellow players, who revere the 60-year-old veteran for being both a musicians’ musician and a disarmingly laidback dude.

Long one of producer Rick Rubin’s guns for hire, he always shows up when a friend like Ryan Adams or Ringo Starr calls. Both are on Tench’s first solo album, part of a veritable supersession that also includes locally bred guitarist Blake Mills, expat drummer Jeremy Stacey, bassist Don Was, multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns, singer/guitarists Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Petty himself. Ethan’s dad, legendary producer Glyn Johns, first broached the subject of Tench making a solo album 20 years ago, and took his chair behind the console when Benmont finally decided to go for it.

Computers were absent from the control room. With its organic arrangements, live-off-the-floor performances and painterly detail, You Should Be So Lucky is very much an old-school Glyn Johns production, cut in the same room and featuring several of the same players who appeared on Adams’ similarly timeless 2012 LP Ashes & Fire. There’s nothing flashy about this record; it’s totally in character for the resolutely understated Tench. It opens subtly with the melancholy ballad “Today I Took Your Picture Down”, which recalls Warren Zevon at his most stoic. “On this track you can hear the players really listening”, Tench notes in his track-by-track breakdown, but he could just as accurately be referring to the album as a whole, which is about simpatico players locking in with the material and each other.

Tench sings his lyrics much as he plays, with restraint, feel and unforced emotion, not letting himself get in the way of the song yet still fully inhabiting its nuances. The title of “Veronica Said” signals Tench’s debt to Lou Reed (another singer who made the most of a limited voice). The sublime “Why Don’t You Quit Leaving Me Alone” (recorded by Rosanne Cash for 1987’s King’s Record Shop) wouldn’t be out of place out of place on a Randy Newman album; the tender love song “Hannah” inspires Tench’s most heartfelt vocal, its melody pushing his voice to the top of his narrow range, with poignant results; and “Blonde Girl, Blue Dress” knowingly captures the emotional state of the other guy, the one who doesn’t get the girl – presumably a common occurrence with sidekicks and sidemen alike.

Bob Dylan, who’s done more with less than any singer, is Tench’s primary touchstone, and he honours the bard on the album’s two non-originals, a luminous take on Dylan’s rendition of the folk standard “Corrina, Corrina” and a rollicking barrelhouse cover of Tempest’s “Duquesne Whistle”. You can also pick up his influence in the torrid title track, which comes across with the hellbent ferocity of Highway 61 Revisited, as Tench unleashes his inner Al Kooper and Adams, playing rhythm guitar as if his life depended on it, practically tears the strings off his acoustic.

“Ecor Rouge”, one of two instrumentals, is a watercolour landscape, while the other, “Wobbles”, swings New Orleans style, propelled by the dual drumming of Stacey and Ethan Johns. As different as they are, both capture lightning in a bottle, and hearing them, it’s easy to see why Was, after playing on the record, was inspired to release it on the iconic label Blue Note, which he now heads. Much like the classic Blue Note albums of the last century, You Should Be So Lucky is tailor-made for connoisseurs of musicianship at its headiest and most tasteful – the kind of record you’re proud to own, matching the pride of all those who participated in its creation.

Bud Scoppa

Q&A

You’re known around LA for your willingness to play with anybody.

I hope I use a little bit of taste when I go out [laughs]. “He’s no pushover, but he can be had.” But the Heartbreakers have a lot of downtime, and I love to play. If you play with other people, you’re gonna learn something. You blend everybody’s dialects and you find a common language.

This record strikes me as an extension of that impulse.

Everybody on this record is a good friend of mine. I’ve played with these folks in my house; we cook some food and talk, break out some instruments and play. So making the record felt like my house. That’s exactly what I wanted and what Glyn wanted. Hell, we just wanted to have some fun and do something good. But if I hadn’t been surrounded by friends, it would’ve been too intimidating and overwhelming.

You made the record in 10 days, soup to nuts. That’s impressive.

That’s the amount of time that we could have all of the musicians, Glyn and Sunset Sound. But I like limitations. Limitations make you work in a different way, and you get a different result.

INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA

Neil Young to sell PonoPlayer music device through Kickstarter

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Neil Young to sell PonoPlayer music device through Kickstarter
Neil Young will debut his new digital audio format Pono at South By Southwest tomorrow [March 11]. Details of the service have now appeared online. A number of news sources - including The Guardian - report that Young will launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for his new PonoPlayer device on ...

Neil Young will debut his new digital audio format Pono at South By Southwest tomorrow [March 11]. Details of the service have now appeared online.

A number of news sources – including The Guardian – report that Young will launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for his new PonoPlayer device on 15 March, with early buyers getting a discount on its planned $399 price.

The device will be supported by an online music downloads store called PonoMusic, which will sell files at a higher resolution than rivals like Apple’s iTunes.

Here’s the Pono press release in full:

March 10, 2014 – (Burbank, CA.) – PonoMusic is a revolutionary movement conceived and founded by Neil Young. Our mission is to bring the highest-quality digital music to discerning, passionate consumers, who wish to experience music the way the artists intended, with the emotion, detail, and power intact. “It’s about the music, real music. We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that. We couldn’t be more excited about bringing PonoMusic to the market,” said Neil Young, founder and chairman of PonoMusic.

PonoMusic encompasses both an online music store (PonoMusic.com) and a playback device (The PonoPlayer). The PonoPlayer is a digital-music experience unlike any other, offering the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels, curated and archived for discriminating PonoMusic customers. The Pono desktop media management application allows customers to download, manage and sync their music to their PonoPlayer and other high- resolution digital music devices.

“Our goal was to offer the highest quality digital music available from all the major labels with the world’s greatest sounding, user-friendly portable music player. We’ve achieved our goal and we are excited to launch our Kickstarter campaign next week to invite music lovers everywhere to join the PonoMusic community and reserve a PonoPlayer for their own enjoyment,” said John Hamm, CEO of PonoMusic.

The PonoPlayer is a purpose-built, portable, high-resolution digital-music player designed and engineered in a “no-compromise” fashion to allow consumers to experience studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible, bringing the true emotion and detail of the music, the way the artist recorded it, to life. It also features a convenient, easy-to-use LCD touch screen interface that is totally intuitive. The audio technology in the PonoPlayer was developed in conjunction with the engineering team at Ayre, in Boulder Colorado, a leader in world class audio technology.

PonoMusic and Ayre have collaborated their ideas to achieve their goal — to make the power and majesty of music available to everybody. “We are absolutely thrilled to be a part of this project. We will always be grateful to Neil Young for changing the landscape of recorded music,” said Charlie Hansen, CEO of Ayre Acoustics.

The PonoPlayer has 128GB of memory and can store 1000 to 2000 high-resolution digital-music albums. Memory cards can be used to store and play different playlists and additional collections of music. The PonoPlayer will be sold at PonoMusic.com for $399 MSRP and is available for pre-order at a discount on Kickstarter.com as of March 15th. PonoMusic recommended earbud and headphone products will also be available for purchase on PonoMusic.com.

David Bowie announces Record Store Day releases

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David Bowie announces Record Store Day releases
David Bowie will release two limited edition picture discs on Record Store Day next month. The annual celebration of music shops will take place on April 19 and Bowie has outlined plans to release a 7" picture disc of "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" in the UK, while North American fans will be able to purc...

David Bowie will release two limited edition picture discs on Record Store Day next month.

The annual celebration of music shops will take place on April 19 and Bowie has outlined plans to release a 7″ picture disc of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” in the UK, while North American fans will be able to purchase the single “1984” on 7″ picture disc.

First released as a single in 1974, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2014 with the new release set to come backed with “Farewell Speech” recorded at the final Ziggy Stardust concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973.

The track listing for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” 40th Anniversary 7″ Picture Disc is:

A-Side “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”

AA-Side “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide inc Farewell Speech” (Live Ziggy Stardust The Motion Picture version)

Catalogue No DBROCK40

The track listing for “1984” 40th Anniversary 7″ Picture Disc is:

A-Side “1984”

AA-Side “1984 (Live On The Dick Cavett Show)”

Catalogue No DB401984

These are the latest in the run of Bowie’s 40th anniversary 7″ picture discs, following on from “Starman”, “John I’m Only Dancing”, “The Jean Genie”, “Drive In Saturday”, “Live On Mars”, “Sorrow” and “Rebel Rebel”.

Meanwhile, in this month’s issue of Uncut we celebrate the 40th anniversary of David Bowie’s album Diamond Dogs. You can find details about it here.

Watch trailer for HBO’s Bruce Springsteen documentary

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Watch trailer for HBO’s Bruce Springsteen documentary

The first trailer for HBO's forthcoming Bruce Springsteen documentary has been revealed. Scroll down to watch it. Titled High Hopes, the film follows Springsteen as he works on his latest album of the same name. High Hopes, the album, was released in January 2014 and the trailer shows Springsteen and the E Street Band as they recruit Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello and begin work on the record. Speaking about his songwriting process in the preview clip, Springsteen says: "I find I'm trying to resolve something internally. That's really the thrust. It's where all the fuel for what you're going to do is." High Hopes will air on HBO on April 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UDzIfrmK98

The first trailer for HBO’s forthcoming Bruce Springsteen documentary has been revealed. Scroll down to watch it.

Titled High Hopes, the film follows Springsteen as he works on his latest album of the same name. High Hopes, the album, was released in January 2014 and the trailer shows Springsteen and the E Street Band as they recruit Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello and begin work on the record.

Speaking about his songwriting process in the preview clip, Springsteen says: “I find I’m trying to resolve something internally. That’s really the thrust. It’s where all the fuel for what you’re going to do is.”

High Hopes will air on HBO on April 4.

Morrissey announces title and release date for new studio album

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Morrissey announces title and release date for new studio album
Morrissey has announced details of his new studio album. A post on the quasi-official fansite, True To You, reveals the album will be called World Peace Is None of Your Business. The post continues by saying that a release date has been provisionally set for late June/early July worldwide by Harve...

Morrissey has announced details of his new studio album.

A post on the quasi-official fansite, True To You, reveals the album will be called World Peace Is None of Your Business.

The post continues by saying that a release date has been provisionally set for late June/early July worldwide by Harvest Records thru Capitol. Morrissey is said to be “beyond ecstatic” with the album, all 12 tracks of which were produced by Joe Chiccarelli in France.

At the end of last year, Morrissey’s guitarist Jesse Tobias here told Uncut that the singer had two albums worth of songs ready to record.

Morrissey’s last studio album was Years Of Refusal in 2009.

Win tickets to see Neil Young & Crazy Horse at Hyde Park

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Win tickets to see Neil Young & Crazy Horse at Hyde Park
Neil Young And Crazy Horse will headline this year's Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time event at London's Hyde Park on Saturday July 12. They'll be joined by special guests The National, Phosphorescent, Caitlin Rose and Ethan Johns. We're delighted to be able to offer a pair of tickets to th...

Neil Young And Crazy Horse will headline this year’s Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time event at London’s Hyde Park on Saturday July 12.

They’ll be joined by special guests The National, Phosphorescent, Caitlin Rose and Ethan Johns.

We’re delighted to be able to offer a pair of tickets to the event.

To enter, just tell us:

Which long out-of-print live Neil Young album is due to be reissued on Record Store Day this year?

Send your entries to uncutcomp@ipcmedia.com. Please include your full name, address and a daytime phone number. The competition closes at noon GMT on Friday, March 14, 2014. The editor’s decision is final.

Neil Young: The Ultimate Music Guide is available to buy online here.

A digital edition is also available to download on digital newsstands including Apple, Zinio and Google Play. To download your copy, click here and select the appropriate newsstand.

Other instalments in The Ultimate Music Guide series are also available online at www.uncut.co.uk/store.

For more information about Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time click here.

Dave Van Ronk – Down In Washington Square: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

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Dave Van Ronk – Down In Washington Square: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

The real Llewyn Davis? The Mayor of MacDougal Street's first career-spanning collection... One irony (among many) of Dave Van Ronk is that, for a lifetime of inspiration, on multiple generations — from Bob Dylan’s earliest days to the latest Coen Brothers film — the man himself generally despised what passed for folk music. His true roots lay in pre-swing jazz and Dixieland, jug band music and hardcore country/blues — cf. Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt. For another, he staunchly avoided specific social commentary, even as that was in vogue; protest songs were strictly nonstarters. Possessed of a gruff exterior and nary an ounce of pop sense, his recording career only occasionally matched his legend. Still, his astonishing finger-pick guitar style and encyclopedic knowledge of the tributaries of American music, his generous spirit and his larger-than-life presence, mark him as a pivotal figure. This set, collecting some 54 tracks, most from his 1957-61 prime, well captures Van Ronk’s penchant for bringing a proper apocalyptic fervor to wide swaths of material, from scarifying blues to sea shanties, balladic obscurities to standards-to-be. He was most effective on myriad down-and-dirty blues, like Arthur Crudup’s “Mean Old Frisco”, given a driven, psychotic vocal amid lacerating guitar runs. An early studio recording of Bessie Smith’s harrowing “Backwater Blues” is just as spooky, but nuanced by comparison — elegantly syncopated guitar, ever-present gut-check vocal. Several unreleased live 1961 recordings are both electrifying and apocryphal: “Had More Money”, a burning, churning riff on Robert Johnson’s “Possession On Judgment Day” finds him in his growling, interpretive prime, inhabiting a steely, twitchy, unsettled intensity. “House of the Rising Sun,” presented in the splendid arrangement Dylan heard and swiped for his first album, descends — within Van Ronk’s choppy, spooked vocals—like a never-ending bad dream. Down In Washington Square, adding 16 unreleased cuts even while it summarily ignores some 20 years of Van Ronk history (1963-1982), brims with revelation. Luke Torn

The real Llewyn Davis? The Mayor of MacDougal Street’s first career-spanning collection…

One irony (among many) of Dave Van Ronk is that, for a lifetime of inspiration, on multiple generations — from Bob Dylan’s earliest days to the latest Coen Brothers film — the man himself generally despised what passed for folk music. His true roots lay in pre-swing jazz and Dixieland, jug band music and hardcore country/blues — cf. Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt. For another, he staunchly avoided specific social commentary, even as that was in vogue; protest songs were strictly nonstarters.

Possessed of a gruff exterior and nary an ounce of pop sense, his recording career only occasionally matched his legend. Still, his astonishing finger-pick guitar style and encyclopedic knowledge of the tributaries of American music, his generous spirit and his larger-than-life presence, mark him as a pivotal figure.

This set, collecting some 54 tracks, most from his 1957-61 prime, well captures Van Ronk’s penchant for bringing a proper apocalyptic fervor to wide swaths of material, from scarifying blues to sea shanties, balladic obscurities to standards-to-be. He was most effective on myriad down-and-dirty blues, like Arthur Crudup’s “Mean Old Frisco”, given a driven, psychotic vocal amid lacerating guitar runs. An early studio recording of Bessie Smith’s harrowing “Backwater Blues” is just as spooky, but nuanced by comparison — elegantly syncopated guitar, ever-present gut-check vocal.

Several unreleased live 1961 recordings are both electrifying and apocryphal: “Had More Money”, a burning, churning riff on Robert Johnson’s “Possession On Judgment Day” finds him in his growling, interpretive prime, inhabiting a steely, twitchy, unsettled intensity. “House of the Rising Sun,” presented in the splendid arrangement Dylan heard and swiped for his first album, descends — within Van Ronk’s choppy, spooked vocals—like a never-ending bad dream. Down In Washington Square, adding 16 unreleased cuts even while it summarily ignores some 20 years of Van Ronk history (1963-1982), brims with revelation.

Luke Torn

Greg Dulli: “No doubt about it, having sex with a stripper under the stage during an Aerosmith set is the most rock thing I’ve done…”

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Greg Dulli: “No doubt about it, having sex with a stripper under the stage during an Aerosmith set is the most rock thing I’ve done…”

Greg Dulli discusses the return of The Afghan Whigs in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2014 and out now. As well shedding light on the band’s new album, Do To The Beast, the singer, guitarist and songwriter invites Uncut into his home and talks about the ghosts he suspects may be haunting his lounge, and reveals his most rock’n’roll moment – having sex with a stripper under a stage while Aerosmith performed above them. “Yeah, no doubt about it, that’s the most rock thing I’ve done,” laughs Dulli. “There’s nothing you can do about ghosts,” he states elsewhere in the piece. “There are things we’re never gonna know.” The Afghan Whigs’ Do To The Beast is released on April 14. The new issue of Uncut is out now. Photo: Danny Clinch

Greg Dulli discusses the return of The Afghan Whigs in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2014 and out now.

As well shedding light on the band’s new album, Do To The Beast, the singer, guitarist and songwriter invites Uncut into his home and talks about the ghosts he suspects may be haunting his lounge, and reveals his most rock’n’roll moment – having sex with a stripper under a stage while Aerosmith performed above them.

“Yeah, no doubt about it, that’s the most rock thing I’ve done,” laughs Dulli.

“There’s nothing you can do about ghosts,” he states elsewhere in the piece. “There are things we’re never gonna know.”

The Afghan Whigs’ Do To The Beast is released on April 14.

The new issue of Uncut is out now.

Photo: Danny Clinch

Elbow – Album By Album

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Elbow – Album By Album
The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Elbow’s sixth album, is out on Monday (March 10) – in this archive piece from Uncut’s August 2011 issue (Take 171), Guy Garvey, Mark Potter and Craig Potter stroll through two decades’ worth of musical memories. “We’ve never had the word ‘can’t...

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Elbow’s sixth album, is out on Monday (March 10) – in this archive piece from Uncut’s August 2011 issue (Take 171), Guy Garvey, Mark Potter and Craig Potter stroll through two decades’ worth of musical memories. “We’ve never had the word ‘can’t’ bandied around the room,” says Garvey. “It’s like a red rag to a bull.” Interview: Graeme Thomson

___________________

ELBOW

The Newborn EP (Ugly Man, 2000)

Having been dropped by Island Records without even releasing an album, Elbow sign to local indie label Ugly Man. The proggy title track on their second EP proves a watershed.

Mark Potter: Getting our Island deal was an amazing moment for us, and to have it pulled away at the last minute literally put us on our arses. Pete Jobson from I Am Kloot was with us when we found out we’d been dropped and he said, “I know a guy who would love to put your music out.” That was Ugly Man. So right away it was, “We don’t need this deal, we can do this on our own.” There’s a real defiance on that EP.

Craig Potter: “Newborn” was very much a breakthrough song. We’d been picking through these early Genesis albums and one song, “Entangled”, jumped out. The way that song developed and took its time was a big inspiration on “Newborn”. We had the front half of the song and in the studio we started experimenting and it just grew and grew. We knew we had something special when we finished it.

Guy Garvey: We’d never written anything that ambitious before, although I’m very proud of all the songs we chose for the EP. “Kisses” is a crazy piece of work based on a field recording that I made on a bus, and “None One” was the first bitter heartbreak lyric I’d ever put together. First of many!

ELBOW

The Any Day Now EP (Ugly Man, 2001)

The influences on the third EP range from Bowie to Funkadelic, but the Elbow sound is beginning to emerge. It’s later reissued by V2 in truncated form.

Mark Potter: At the time we weren’t sure exactly what we wanted to be. We were still developing as musicians and working out how we wanted to come across. We learned to play together by playing funk music, Sly Stone and stuff like that, and there was still a bit of that in “Any Day Now”. I’m actually thinking of getting my wah-wah pedal back out on the next album!

Craig Potter: We were determined these songs were going to see the light of day, but it was all done on the fly, really. Getting favours pulled in from friends who had little studios just to get these recordings done.

Garvey: We wrote “Any Day Now” close to the time we wrote “Newborn”. They’re very different songs, and yet it all seemed to happen in this single month. The root sensibilities of what we’re trying to do haven’t changed. The buzz when all five of us are feeling the same thing was there then and it’s still the same. It’s really lovely and not lost on any of us. We’re different people now but I think we’re still doing what we set out to do on these EPs. Even the sleeve of “Any Day Now” is very us.

ELBOW

Asleep In The Back (V2, 2001)

Having already recorded their debut album once for Island with Steve Osborne, after signing to V2 they have another go. It’s nominated for the Mercury prize and a Brit, while the title track goes Top 20.

Mark Potter: I have a copy of the original version and it’s quite different sounding. The first time around it was a bit overwhelming to have people criticising your music and picking apart the arrangements. Second time it felt better. Ben [Hillier] was one of the team. Very much, “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.”

Garvey: It was a case of, “Fuck it, we can do what we want”, whereas the first time it was a case of, “This has got to be perfect”. Lots of fun and experimentation. At the end of “Bitten By The Tailfly” I’m chanting “Portillo is a fascist bully-boy”. If you know it’s there, you can hear it! There’s also the sound of me hitting myself on the head with a crate. In my mind it sounded like a Wagnerian timpani, but that’s three bottles of red wine for you.

Craig Potter: It doesn’t sound like a debut to me. It sounds like a bold, confident album, maybe because we’d been through the shit beforehand.

Mark Potter: It got some acclaim and we felt like we were on our away, but had it had the success of The Seldom Seem Kid, I’m not sure

we were quite ready for it then.

ELBOW

Cast Of Thousands (V2, 2003)

Recording in Liverpool, the band suffer a severe case of Second Album Syndrome, though in “Grace Under Pressure” – “We still believe in love so fuck you” – they mint their first anthem.

Garvey: There’s a book to be written about this record. Every single one of us was going through something fucking weird. We were buzzing because everything had gone so well, so we arrogantly strode into the studio with half an album’s worth of material thinking, ‘Ah, it’ll be all right.’ It dried up pretty quickly.

Mark Potter: Ben Hillier sat us down and said, “Sorry lads, I’ll give you a month to go away and write some songs and we’ll go at it again.” I know Guy got quite ill from worrying about it.

Craig Potter: There was a lot of pressure on everyone, especially Guy. At the end it was like, “This can’t happen again.”

Garvey: They were probably the bitterest rows we’ve ever had. They were mostly about music, but they couldn’t help get personal at times. It was awful. At the same time I became much more interested in lyrics. The build-up to the Iraq War was going on and all I could see were bare-faced liars. I wanted something that spoke positively but had a bit of an edge to it, and when I went on at Glastonbury to sing “Grace Under Pressure” those words came all at once: “We still believe in love so fuck you”. If I’d thought about them more they might have been a little better…

ELBOW

Leaders Of The Free World (V2, 2005)

Fuelled by “the odd beer and other things” at Blueprint in Salford, the band self-produce an album packed with dynamic songwriting.

Mark Potter: It was the first time Craig took the reins production-wise. We found this amazing space, a big old textile mill in Salford. [Art group] the Soup Collective came in and put cameras all over, there were animators in one corner, painters in another, it was a really buzzing environment. We’d often work until 5am, helped by the odd beer and other things that go on at that time of night. It was amazingly creative.

Garvey: Leaders… was made while the studio was being made. We had to stop recording so often because of the sound of manual labour – we ended up using it on “Picky Bugger”: the loops are all hammers, whistles and bells. It was great initially but there was a certain air of trepidation because we’d decided to make it ourselves. “Forget Myself” was running to 128 tracks of audio when we mixed. And with the Soup Collective’s involvement, overall it was an ambitious project. We were there day and night. I was drinking a load of red wine, really knocking it back, and there was a heartbreak for me in the middle of it, which informed the lyrics. It all poured out. The result is something that’s light years ahead of Cast Of Thousands.

ELBOW

The Seldom Seem Kid (Fiction, 2008)

A slow-burning sensation created in the shadow of further industry upheaval and the death, aged 39, of local musician and close friend Bryan Glancy. They win the 2008 Mercury prize; “One Day Like This” becomes a summer anthem, and boom – Elbow hit the big time.

Mark Potter: Leaders… came out and even Elbow fans didn’t know about it, which was really saddening for us. V2 were happy for us to be an underdog indie band, but we always had ambition. Halfway through the Leaders… campaign we said to our manager, “Look, we’re going to down tools, see if you can get some interest.” Fiction expressed interest straight away but negotiations were complicated, so we decided to get back in the studio and work on the next record while all this industry stuff was being sorted out. In the end it took two years.

Garvey: We had enough money in the coffers to last pretty much exactly the amount of time it took to make the album. Bankruptcy was on the horizon. It could have very well spelled the end of the band, but we never talked about that. I encountered a different sense of responsibility about my songwriting on that record than I’d ever had before. Once we’d made the decision to dedicate it to Bryan, it was a whole different ball game. The front end of “Friend Of Ours” was written about a week after he died, and it’s really angry. I sang it only once because I told the band I was never going to sing those words again, and then I didn’t look at it again for 12 months. All the end stuff on that song, about how he’s remembered and how much we love him, was one of the last things we did for the album.

Craig Potter: As far as we were concerned, the record was finished, but [Elbow A&R man] Jim Chancellor came in and said, “I think you’ve got another song in you.” “One Day Like This” started with me and Guy sat around the piano. We wanted to write a song that sounded like a classic, starting off with the simplest of chords and the melody following the vocal line. Then we sat down as the five of us and finished it as a song. We were under a lot of pressure on that album but I don’t think the pressure comes across in the music. Somehow we managed to keep a positive slant on the whole thing.

Garvey: It’s something we’re immensely proud of. We had such fun doing it, despite everything going on. Some of that first album feeling is there again: “Fuck ’em, let’s do what we want.”

ELBOW

The Seldom Seen Kid Live At Abbey Road (Fiction, 2009)

Elbow perform their breakthrough album live at Abbey Road backed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. Broadcast on the BBC to one million interactive viewers – later released on album and DVD.

Mark Potter: I’d never seen the band so nervous in my life. Absolute fear! We turned up at Abbey Road with all these “real” musicians and had one day’s rehearsal with them. We only got one shot. We hadn’t heard the arrangements so we didn’t know what it was going to sound like at all. We started playing “Grounds For Divorce” and when the orchestra struck up behind us it was shivers-down-your-spine. Unbelievable. When the concert was over I sat under a table for 10 minutes just to recover. Guy came to see me and said, “S’alright Potts, we’ve pulled it off.” It’s perhaps the highlight of everything we’ve ever done, I’m so proud of it.

Garvey: Like riding a unicycle on a tightrope. The most difficult thing was calming myself down between songs so my voice didn’t quiver. On top of the awards and the Glastonbury performance, that single event doubled our audience. It allowed people of all ages to realise they were as welcome at our concerts as kids.

I AM KLOOT

Sky At Night (Shepherd Moon/EMI, 2010)

The two Manc bands were old friends. A decade after Garvey produced Kloot’s debut, he and Craig are invited to oversee John Bramwell’s most sublime set of songs.

Garvey: Kloot have always been our contemporaries and good friends. It was bad timing, actually, because we were supposed to be finishing up Build A Rocket Boys, but Johnny’s songs were too good for us not to get involved. They wanted this late night record, and there were some astonishing moments. “I Still Do” is just gorgeous. That’s Johnny on a plate: chilling and incredibly beautiful.

Craig Potter: We wanted to do everything we could because here’s a brilliant songwriter who should be appreciated a lot more. I think there was a worry we were going to turn them into something they’re not – and we did, in a way. We spent time on arrangements and subtleties, but it was the same way we always work. You need to support a song and do whatever it demands.

Garvey: We knew our names being attached to the record would help, but it wasn’t favours for a mate. We were honoured to be asked. I hope people are going back through Kloot’s back catalogue because John is a classic songwriter.

ELBOW

Build A Rocket Boys! (Fiction, 2011)

The task of following a massively successful record is gracefully negotiated. This spacious yet intimate album is again recorded at Blueprint, though its character is shaped during a week spent together on Mull.

Craig Potter: “Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl” cropped up while we were on Mull and thematically something clicked for Guy. At the same time the rest of us embraced the idea of doing stuff with more space.

Garvey: I was very conscious that most of what I’d had in the way of new experiences were life-affirming, but anyone who writes an album about just those kinds of feelings is a twat. So what to do? I realised I had all this drama in my past, so that was a starting point. I’m talking about things that affect people our age: new insecurities, new things to feel guilty about.

Mark Potter: There’s a feeling that this album rounds things off and now we have even more room to go somewhere else, although I’m not sure we know yet where that is.

Garvey: This isn’t really a proper job, but it’s something we’ve worked at out whole lives and we want it to keep moving. It feels like we’re just at the start. Isn’t that ridiculous after 20 years!

Watch Julian Casablancas preview new solo album

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Watch Julian Casablancas preview new solo album
Julian Casablancas has given a sneak preview of his new solo album. Click below to watch now. The two-minute clip is credited to Julian Casablancas + The Voidz and shows footage of The Strokes' frontman recording in the studio, with various snippets of new songs audible throughout. There is no fur...

Julian Casablancas has given a sneak preview of his new solo album. Click below to watch now.

The two-minute clip is credited to Julian Casablancas + The Voidz and shows footage of The Strokes‘ frontman recording in the studio, with various snippets of new songs audible throughout. There is no further information regarding an album title or release date included with the video, but vsitors to Casablancas’ website can sign up to pre-order the album now.

The Strokes will make their live return at the Governors’ Ball in New York this June. The three-day event will take place on Randall’s Island between June 6 and 8. OutKast have been announced as the headliner alongside Jack White and Vampire Weekend. As well as performing with The Strokes, Julian Casablancas will also perform as a solo artist at the event.

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