Ecstatic vision

Alex Chilton’s wild, idiosyncratic life after Big Star is examined in the new issue of Uncut (Take 180, May 2012), out now. But what happened before the demise of Chilton’s greatest group? They should have been rock superstars, but Rob Jovanovic explains how drugs, in-fighting and personal tragedy meant Big Star had to settle for being the biggest cult band of all time (from Uncut's Take 94, March 2005). ________________________________

The more-than-extensive ‘Immersion’ edition of Pink Floyd’s opus The Wall (the box includes a scarf and marbles!) is reviewed in our latest issue, out now – so we thought we’d revisit John Lewis’ excellent feature from June 2011 (Take 169). As the extravaganza arrives in Europe, Uncut meets the obsessive fans, stoners, bloggers and military advisors who’ll follow Waters and his lavish production to the ends of the globe…

The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features David Bowie peering from the cover in his guise as sleazy space-star Ziggy Stardust. To celebrate this look at Bowie’s greatest creation 40 years on, here’s a fantastic piece from Uncut’s 18th issue, in November 1998, in which Chris Roberts looks back at the glammed-up, transgressive superstars who changed his adolescent world.

The Brooklynites set sail for the big time with their fifth LP...

With blogging, of course, you publish and be damned, then, once damned, you publish again. So it is with the Top 75 I unleashed on an unsuspecting world on Tuesday, only to soon realise that it was, basically, a bit of a cock-up.

According to Daniel Rossen, sat onstage in front of a notably packed Club Uncut, this is only the second ever ‘proper’ gig by Department Of Eagles. The first, it transpires, saw the band expanded to a five-piece, augmented by a couple of the Dirty Projectors and another of Rossen’s bandmates in Grizzly Bear.

A news story in my inbox the other day reminded me that I still hadn’t blogged on the El Guincho record, the one I’ve been alluding to on playlist blogs for a while now. I say “a while”, though in truth I was heinously late hitching up to this particular bandwagon, since most go-getting bloggers were onto “Alegranza” sometime last year, when it was first released in Spain.

Just before I get down to the business of this week’s office playlist, can I draw your attention to this news story over at NME? I’m aware that, since the story is ostensibly about Babyshambles, there’s a fair few of you who won’t have bothered following this one, but bear with me; the potential repercussions might be pretty alarming.

Elliptical, euphoric and "staggeringly good" says Allan Jones, plus a Q&A with Craig Finn