Subscribe
Home Blog Page 78

Bill Pitman, Wrecking Crew guitarist, has died aged 102

Michael Bonner
-
0
Bill Pitman, Wrecking Crew guitarist, has died aged 102
Guitarist Bill Pitman, a veteran of The Wrecking Crew, has died at the age of 102. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut As reported by The New York Times, Pitman died on Thursday August 11 at his home in La Quinta, California. No cause of death has been revea...

Guitarist Bill Pitman, a veteran of The Wrecking Crew, has died at the age of 102.

As reported by The New York Times, Pitman died on Thursday August 11 at his home in La Quinta, California. No cause of death has been revealed, however Pitman reportedly spent the last month of his life recovering from an accident that left him with a fractured spine.

Born on February 12, 1920, Pitman was raised in a musical household, as his father worked as a staff bassist for programming at NBC. His journey with music began at age five and through high school, making regular treks from New Jersey to Manhattan as an admirer of the local jazz scene. He began playing in jazz clubs around LA in 1951 (at age 31) and his career catapulted after scoring a regular gig in Peggy Lee‘s backing band.

He went on to perform regularly for The Rusty Draper Show, a radio gig that he stuck with for three years before being poached for session work by artists like Al Hendrickson, Howard Roberts, Buddy Rich and Red Callender. His introduction to rock’n’roll came via Phil Spector, who, after a chance meeting with Pitman, recruited him into his cohort of big-name session players.

Though unnamed at the time, this collective – which featured a fluctuating roster of members all based in LA – went on to be dubbed by member Hal Blaine as The Wrecking Crew. Their first hit was The Teddy Bears 1958 single “To Know Him Is To Love Him”, which led to Pitman being invited to all of Spector’s future recording sessions.

As a member of The Wrecking Crew, Pitman performed on albums by the likes of The Byrds, Nancy Sinatra, James Brown, The Monkees and many others.

Some of his most revered contributions include work on The Beach Boys‘ “Good Vibrations“, Dylan‘s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, The Ronettes‘ “Be My Baby“, Sinatra‘s “Strangers In The Night” and Barbra Streisand‘s “The Way We Were“.

Pitman’s most recognisable work is said to be the acoustic guitar playing on Pet Sounds’ opening track, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice“. With his fellow Californians, Pitman also performed on ‘The Beach Boys Today!’ and ‘Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)’, both released in 1965.

Elsewhere, Pitman worked on a litany of film and TV soundtracks. His earliest contribution to cinema can be heard in Elvis Presley‘s 1961 film Blue Hawaii, while later accomplishments include scores for M*A*S*H (1970), Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), Dirty Dancing (1987) and Goodfellas (1990).

The Wrecking Crew’s success was celebrated in the 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew!, directed by Denny Tedesco, son of fellow Wrecking Crew guitarist Tommy Tedesco.

On the official Facebook page for the film, Tedsco shared a tribute to Pitman. “He was my dad’s friend who played guitar and golf with him,” he wrote. “It wasn’t until I got older did I understand the impact that he made. Bill could be heard from ‘Mr. Tamborine Man’ to ‘Good Vibrations’… He was an amazing man.”

The tribute was shared alongside a five-minute interview with Pitman that featured in The Wrecking Crew!, filmed when he was 82 years old – watch it below:

Passing of Legendary Wrecking Crew member, Bill Pitman

We've lost another friend of ours last night. Bill Pitman has passed away. He was 102. Born on February 12, 1920Growing up, as a little kid, I always knew who Bill Pitman was. He was my dad's friend who played guitar and golf with him. It wasn't until I got older did I understand the impact that he made. Bill could be heard from Mr. Tamborine Man to Good Vibrations. Hundreds and hundreds of Film and television. He became the first call with the Danelectro guitar for many years. The interview I did with Bill for the WC Movie, he was 82 years young. He was an amazing man. Best to his wife Jan and his children. Jr. Salt, we will miss you. Say hello to Sr.

Posted by The Wrecking Crew on Friday, August 12, 2022

Pitman is survived by his wife Jan and their children.

Additional reporting by Ellie Robinson.

Sandy Denny’s four solo albums to be reissued

Michael Bonner
-
0
Sandy Denny’s four solo albums to be reissued
Sandy Denny's four solo albums are to be reissued by Proper Records in collaboration with UMC, on 180gm vinyl. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Originally released by Proper between 1971 and 1977, The North Star Grass Man And The Ravens, Sandy, Like An Ol...

Sandy Denny‘s four solo albums are to be reissued by Proper Records in collaboration with UMC, on 180gm vinyl.

Originally released by Proper between 1971 and 1977, The North Star Grass Man And The Ravens, Sandy, Like An Old-Fashioned Waltz and Rendezvous map our Denny’s musical journey after Fairport Convention and Fotheringay.

The reissue campaign will begin with The North Star Grass Man And The Ravens and Sandy on September 23 with Like An Old-Fashioned Waltz and Rendezvous following on November 11.

As if you needed it, here’s the tracklisting for each of these four much-loved albums.

THE NORTH STAR GRASSMAN AND THE RAVENS
Side One
Late November
Blackwaterside
The Sea Captain
Down In The Flood
John The Gun

Side Two
Next Time Around
The Optimist
Let’s Jump The Broomstick
Wretched Wilbur
The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
Crazy Lady Blue

SANDY
Side One
It’ll Take A Long Time
Sweet Rosemary
For Nobody To Hear
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood

Side Two
Listen, Listen
The Lady
Bushes And Briars
It Suits Me Well
The Music Weaver

LIKE AN OLD FASHIONED WALTZ
Side One
Solo
Like an Old Fashioned Waltz
Whispering Grass
Friends
Carnival

Side Two
Dark The Night
At The End of the Day
Until The Real Thing Comes Along
No End

RENDEZVOUS
Side One
I Wish I Was a Fool for You (For Shame of Doing Wrong)
Gold Dust
Candle in the Wind
Take Me Away
One Way Donkey Ride

Side Two
I’m a Dreamer
All Our Days
Silver Threads and Golden Needles
No More Sad Refrains

Julia Jacklin: “I was trying to mix Celine Dion with Throbbing Gristle”

Tom Pinnock
-
0
Julia Jacklin: “I was trying to mix Celine Dion with Throbbing Gristle”
Having flirted with acting, Julia Jacklin eventually found herself in Montreal, speed-writing a follow-up to the acclaimed Crushing on a Roland keyboard in view of Leonard Cohen’s house. In the latest issue of Uncut magazine - in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online...

Having flirted with acting, Julia Jacklin eventually found herself in Montreal, speed-writing a follow-up to the acclaimed Crushing on a Roland keyboard in view of Leonard Cohen’s house. In the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store – Tom Pinnock hears how she came up with a modern classic by crossing Celine Dion with Goblin. “I was trying to keep the beauty,” Jacklin says, “but make sure it was never getting too pretty.”

Every Thursday night, in a brightly lit suburban strip mall above a dental surgery, Julia Jacklin searched for new horizons. She’d already tried tap-dancing and screenwriting classes in her adopted city of Melbourne; now she was enrolled on an acting course. “It was hilariously bad,” she laughs, “just excruciating. It was this very bizarre group of people shoved together in this small room for three hours each week. I was going through a bit of a crisis during the pandemic. I guess, like a lot of musicians, I was trying to extend my artistic repertoire.”

In part, Jacklin’s new pursuits were an attempt to decompress after the pressures of making and touring her second album, 2019’s Crushing. A powerful, wry examination of relationships and sexual dynamics, delivered via the Australian’s truly classic, burnt-honey voice, it established her as an artist to be taken seriously – except, that is, when Jacklin herself is joking around. A lockdown mercifully put an end to that acting course after six weeks, but it was enough to make her reset her goals completely towards music. “Yeah, I think I’ve got to stay in my lane.”

Fittingly, new album Pre Pleasure might just be her best yet: across 10 tracks, it pairs the tortured and imagistic lyrics of Crushing with more accessible and bolder musical textures, at times lushly orchestral or crisply fuzzy, at others intimately stripped down. “I was trying to keep the beauty and the joy and the easy listening side of Robyn, Luther Vandross and Celine Dion,” she explains of her unusual influences, “but make sure it was never getting too pretty. And that’s where, like, Throbbing Gristle and Goblin came in…”

Uncut first catches up with Jacklin via videocall while she’s on a short trip to Tasmania. She’s come away for a few days on her own, hoping to work on some new songs. As seems to be the way with her mercurial muse, however, little actual writing has occurred. “What have I been doing? I don’t know! Not much, honestly. Walking. I’ve been buying books that I probably won’t read for a while. I’m in a real memoir phase at the moment, so I bought David Sedaris’ new one, and Alice Walker’s journals. I’m enjoying reading other people’s thoughts at the moment.”

“The most obvious thing about Julia’s music is just how personal her lyrics are,” explains Marcus Paquin, who co-produced Pre Pleasure with Jacklin in Montreal. “She speaks of her own journey through self-discovery and feelings of inadequacy – and she’s able to express those ideas poetically.”

“She has such a cinematic vision,” adds Fran Keaney of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, fellow Melbourne residents and occasional collaborators. “It’s such neat storytelling – her songs are almost like Raymond Carver short stories.”

PICK UP THE NEW UNCUT FOR THE FULL STORY

The Foundations – Am I Groovin’ You – The Pye Anthology

Terry Staunton
-
0
The Foundations – Am I Groovin’ You – The Pye Anthology
One of the earliest, most noteworthy chart battles in the UK was fought between Bayswater-based The Foundations and their north London contemporaries The Equals, with both bands striving to be the first mixed-ethnicity outfit to make it to number one. The former’s debut release, “Baby, Now That ...

One of the earliest, most noteworthy chart battles in the UK was fought between Bayswater-based The Foundations and their north London contemporaries The Equals, with both bands striving to be the first mixed-ethnicity outfit to make it to number one. The former’s debut release, “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You”, triumphed when it reached the top spot in November 1967, eight months before their rivals’ “Baby, Come Back” followed suit.

The victors had been honing their craft in clubs and dancehalls for two years as The Ramongs and The Ramong Sound. A change of name brought success, but the template remained the same: upbeat soul with singalong, pop-minded aspirations, yet infused with the edgier, grittier elements of Booker T & The MG’s or the house band at Motown’s Hitsville power base.

While The Foundations only troubled the Top 20 on four occasions, the commercial bounciness of their chart-topper, plus “Back On My Feet Again”, “Build Me Up Buttercup” – more of which later – and “In The Bad, Bad Old Days” only tells part of the story outlined on this 3CD anthology. They’re particularly in their element on the frenzied “Jerkin’ The Dog” (previously a minor US hit for R&B showman The Mighty Hannibal), and the mod strut of “Mr Personality Man”. For the fullest, most vivid portrait of the band in their pomp, the inclusion on this set’s third disc of the ’68 live album Rocking The Foundations is hard to beat. From the Hammond-led funk of the Freddie Scott song that gives this compilation its title, to the horn-blasting howl of Edwin Starr’s “Stop Her On Sight”, it’s a masterclass in how to confidently throw soul-infused shapes across a dance floor.

All was not well in the ranks, however. Shortly before the album’s release, singer Clem Curtis announced he was quitting to try his luck as a solo artist in the US (where he was briefly mentored by Sammy Davis Jr, and played a Las Vegas residency opening for the Righteous Brothers). Diplomatically, he hung around to help run auditions for his replacement, the gig ultimately going to Colin Young. The new boy’s arrival saw the release of the group’s second-biggest hit; like its predecessors, “Build Me Up Buttercup” came from the pen of their longtime producer Tony Macaulay (writing in tandem with Manfred Mann’s own new singer, Mike D’Abo), its structure intentionally aping material Holland-Dozier-Holland were fashioning for The Four Tops – a ploy rewarded by a spell at No 1 in the American trade magazine Cash Box chart.

But the relationship with Macaulay was becoming increasingly strained, largely because of his reluctance to allow the group to contribute self-penned material. The recording of 1969’s Digging The Foundations displeased some members, unhappy with having to play, especially, a version of “Let The Heartaches Begin”, the Macaulay ballad that had been a UK No. 1 for Long John Baldry two years earlier (knocking “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” off the top spot, in fact) and the producer’s lightweight “That Same Old Feeling”, which would later see chart action when covered by Pickettywitch.

To be fair, The Foundations’ overhaul of the Baldry track has a lot going for it; a quickening of tempo gives the song the air of an early Drifters hit with a smidgen of The Isley Brothers on the side, while the same album’s “Take Away The Emptiness” possesses the finger-clicking fizz of Chairmen Of The Board at their best. Ties with Macaulay were severed the following year (he would go on to write million-sellers for David Soul), and although singles like “Take A Girl Like You”, the theme song to the Hayley Mills movie of the same name, adhered closely to the Macaulay formula, the hits days were over.

The band finally got their wish when the Young-penned “I’m Gonna Be A Rich Man” was chosen as the A-side for what would turn out to be their last single, but while its bluesy psychedelia was representative of the harder direction they wanted to pursue, fans were in no hurry to go with them.

Curtis returned to the UK in the late ’70s to front a new band bearing The Foundations name, resulting in a legal wrangle with a similar ad hoc lineup put together by Young (compilers of this set include recordings by both). Young later toured in another permutation of the group with original guitarist Alan Warner (who still shepherds a lineup today), following renewed interest when “Build Me Up Buttercup” featured prominently in the 1999 comedy There’s Something About Mary. Yet their influence goes further than just their own trailblazing hits: their hybrid of white pop and black soul was a torch carried forward into the ’70s and ’80s by the likes of Hot Chocolate and The Beat, while Lynval Golding of The Specials has cited seeing The Foundations on the Midlands club circuit in the ’60s as a seismic inspiration.

Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes

Louis Pattison
-
0
Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes
There have been times when it feels like everywhere you look, you see the hand of Danger Mouse. Over the last decade or so of work, the New York-born producer Brian Burton has accrued a list of credits that read like a who’s who of modern music. Adele, Gorillaz, U2, Beck, The Black Keys, Norah Jon...

There have been times when it feels like everywhere you look, you see the hand of Danger Mouse. Over the last decade or so of work, the New York-born producer Brian Burton has accrued a list of credits that read like a who’s who of modern music. Adele, Gorillaz, U2, Beck, The Black Keys, Norah Jones – and that’s before you get to his artistic collaborations, with Cee-Lo Green in Gnarls Barkley, The Shins’ James Mercer in Broken Bells, and Karen O for 2019’s Lux Prima.

As impressive a CV as this is, it’s sometimes given the impression that Burton has been keen to leave his past behind him. He began his career as a hip-hop producer, recording the seminal 2003 LP Ghetto Pop Life with the Brooklyn MC Jemini before breaking into the public consciousness with 2004’s The Grey Album, a visionary – and very much unsanctioned – mash-up of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ self-titled “White Album”. Since The Grey Album, Burton has occasionally returned to rap (in particular, see Danger Doom, his collaboration with the late masked rapper MF DOOM). But by and large, it appears he’s nudged his career on a different track, honing his skills as a musical auteur and leaving the beats and rhymes behind.

Cheat Codes marks Danger Mouse’s return to rap, and does so with panache. This collaboration with Tariq Trotter – aka Black Thought of The Roots – is the result of an artistic collaboration that’s been teased as far back as 2006. And on Burton’s part, you sense a degree of wish fulfilment. He describes Trotter as his favourite rapper, and you can hear it; these warm, vintage-tinged tracks feel elegantly crafted, shaped to the contours of Trotter’s voice.

The formula is deceptively simple. There are 12 tracks here, most built around an extended sample pulled from the depths of Danger Mouse’s deep cuts section. The cinematic slide of “Saltwater” is spun together from “L’Amico Suicida” by the ’70s operatic Italian prog group Biglietto Per L’Inferno, while “Identical Deaths” shakes a shimmering segment from “Future Recollections”, a track by the obscure UK psych group Raw Material.

But Burton isn’t one of those samplers who seems overly concerned with covering his tracks. One of his tricks is to retain a fragment of the song’s original vocal, letting it slide into focus behind the MC at an opportune moment. See “Sometimes”, which takes a snatch of Gwen McCrae’s “Love Without Sex” and slows the vocal into an androgynous cry of despair.

Cheat Codes feels like a platform for Trotter’s skills, Burton lining up the beats and letting his hero spit unimpeded. There’s no surrounding concept, no skits or extraneous scene-setting. Tracks like “No Gold Teeth” and “Close To Famous” showcase his mix of lyrical ingenuity and pugilistic one-upmanship without distraction. You get the sense they could have made Cheat Codes in a state of hermetic seclusion, just the pair of them vibing off one another. Instead, it features a diverse, if carefully selected parade of guests. Michael Kiwanuka delivers a breathy hook over the atmospheric boom-bap of “Aquamarine”. “Because” features verses from Joey Bada$$, Russ, and Danger Mouse’s vocal protegee Dylan Cartlidge. And there’s an unfeasibly stacked lineup on the claustrophobic “Strangers”, Black Thought budging up to accommodate both A$AP Rocky and Run The Jewels.

For many, though, the key verse will be the late MF DOOM’s cameo on “Belize”. Burton says he recorded the vocal after the recording of Danger Doom’s 2005 album The Mouse And The Mask but hadn’t yet found a place for it. Deployed expertly here, it captures what DOOM did best – a blend of gymnastic wordplay, cartoonish imagery and playful assonance that takes a few listens to fully unpack. Fans have been clamouring for a follow-up to The Mouse And The Mask for years. It looks likelier than ever that record will never come. But Cheat Codes finds Danger Mouse rolling with a new lyrical foil and this one feels like it could run and run.

Send us your questions for Robyn Hitchcock

Tom Pinnock
-
0
Send us your questions for Robyn Hitchcock
How often does he really dream of trains? Why was Balloon Man filled with houmous? And how does one know if they have fegmania? That's right, groovers, Uncut's next Audience With... star is the utterly unique Robyn Hitchcock, back soon with his first new album in five years, Shufflemania. The rec...

How often does he really dream of trains? Why was Balloon Man filled with houmous? And how does one know if they have fegmania? That’s right, groovers, Uncut‘s next Audience With… star is the utterly unique Robyn Hitchcock, back soon with his first new album in five years, Shufflemania.

The record, out October 21 on Tiny Ghost Records – you can preorder it here – features a host of guests, from Johnny Marr to Sean Ono Lennon – so why not ask him about his many musical connections? Of course, also to be untangled are his obsessions with death, fish, Syd Barrett and Bryan Ferry, what it’s like being an Englishman in Nashville, the strange days of The Soft Boys and much more…

Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by August 21, and Robyn will answer the best ones in the next issue of Uncut.

Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Leonard Cohen

John Robinson
-
0
Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Leonard Cohen
BUY THE LEONARD COHEN ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE “It’s just the way it is” It’s been a while now, but mention of 2016 can still prompt an involuntary shudder in music fans. The passing of so many legendary artists and top-class musicians in that year didn’t only prompt sadness and ret...

BUY THE LEONARD COHEN ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

“It’s just the way it is”

It’s been a while now, but mention of 2016 can still prompt an involuntary shudder in music fans. The passing of so many legendary artists and top-class musicians in that year didn’t only prompt sadness and retrospective admiration; on isolated occasions it also led to talk of achieving a kind of perfection.

For some artists, their death came to seem like their latest meticulously planned creative step. David Bowie’s Blackstar album, for example, was released on his 69th birthday – just two days before he died on January 10. The passing later in the year of Leonard Cohen (at 82, though his gravitas made him seem far older) might well be thought of as confronting a finality for which his whole life had been a preparation.

Cohen began life as a poet and novelist, pragmatically became a musician, and – as Richard Williams points out in his review of the posthumous 2019 album Thanks For The Dance, in which Cohen’s final song sketches are spoken softly over a newly tracked backing – ultimately returned to poetry. You might choose to see that as completion of a perfect circle.

As you’ll read in this Deluxe, 148-page Ultimate Music Guide, what occurred between those points was often turbulent, but Cohen seemed to take it all in his stride. His private life is sometimes portrayed as an eventful itinerary of romances, but was founded on longstanding complex relationships and deep self-questioning, which all found a place in his songs.

Nor were things uneventful professionally. Cohen’s recording life often seemed a battle: a historic conflict between artistic achievement and commercial expectations. One of the features we have added to this new edition is Stephen Troussé’s forensic investigation of Leonard’s tumultuous early 1970s, when he thought he was all washed up – and leading a band, not uncoincidentally, called the Army.

How all this manifested itself in the work, from the self-lacerating Songs Of Love And Hate to the deranged Phil Spector collaboration Death Of A Ladies’ Man you can read about in greater depth in the reviews collected here. What emerges in the longer feature articles, meanwhile, is a picture of a person who made not much attempt to conceal what he was going through (“Make this your last interview,” he says to Roy Hollingworth in 1973, “and let’s quit together”). There were trials, but there were also lessons, however bitter they may have been.

For his fans, Leonard Cohen is a poet, a songwriter, a tunesmith (Bob Dylan particularly praised his melodies). Those who worked closely with him seem more impressed by an artist at the peak of his powers, but who achieved a rare equanimity. Hattie Webb, one of his backing singers, recalled how he behaved during a worrying mid-air incident during Leonard’s 2008 tour.

“All the people around me were very frightened,” she recalled. “I was gripping hold of my drink and seeing my life flashing before my eyes, and I looked over at Leonard. He was completely and utterly calm, and said: ‘Don’t worry, darling, nothing can happen to you – it’s just the way it is.’ That’s what we take from Leonard. He worries about the small things and deals with those. And with the big things, he lets nature take its course.”

Enjoy the magazine.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

Leonard Cohen – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

Uncut
-
0
Leonard Cohen – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide
Hallelujah! On the launch of a new documentary film and greatest hits collection, we celebrate the life and career of Leonard Cohen. From his bohemian 1960s all the way to his triumphant return to performance in the 2000s, he’s your man. “Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely ...

Hallelujah! On the launch of a new documentary film and greatest hits collection, we celebrate the life and career of Leonard Cohen. From his bohemian 1960s all the way to his triumphant return to performance in the 2000s, he’s your man. “Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in…”

Buy a copy here!

Blondie: “It was always kind of an experiment…”

Peter Watts
-
0
Blondie: “It was always kind of an experiment…”
A new boxset shines fresh light on BLONDIE’s remarkable journey from downtown scenesters to uptown habitués. In the latest issue of Uncut magazine - in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store - Peter Watts explores the roads not travelled during their formative ...

A new boxset shines fresh light on BLONDIE’s remarkable journey from downtown scenesters to uptown habitués. In the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store – Peter Watts explores the roads not travelled during their formative years in the company of DEBBIE HARRY, CHRIS STEIN and CLEM BURKE. “It was always kind of an experiment…”

When Chris Stein moved out of Manhattan around 20 years ago, he took several boxes of Blondie ephemera with him and stored them in his garage. These included a backstage mirror from Hammersmith Odeon that was hauled back to America like Viking plunder, as well as approximately 100 water-damaged reels of unreleased music, acetates, vinyl and home-recorded cassettes. Some came from the very start of the band’s career in 1974, when Stein and Debbie Harry lived together in a succession of crummy New York apartments. Others were experimental remixes, created in 1982 as the band fell apart. In between were the origins of most of Blondie’s biggest hits.

Did Harry have any idea of what her bandmate was sitting on? “I know he is a very good collector and he always kept very interesting things,” she says. “It’s been a while since we lived together, but I knew that anything he recorded at home or in his own studio would be there. There’s all the stuff we recorded together, home demos. Chris had his own label, Animal, so it’s all that stuff too.”

“All that stuff” has been reclaimed from Stein’s garage, restored, transferred and listened to anew for the Blondie boxset Against The Odds: 1974–1982. This is the first time Stein, Harry and drummer Clem Burke have authorised such a deep dive through Blondie’s archives. As well as the six original studio albums, there are four albums of rare material including 36 previously unreleased tracks. Collectively this represents a chance to take a proper overview of Blondie’s career as well as a glimpse some of the roads not taken – weird experiments with sequencer and drum machine, a discarded album with Giorgio Moroder, unexpected covers and song ideas that never left Stein and Harry’s home.

“My garage had become a repository for all the Blondie stuff that was floating about,” says Stein. “We wanted to put some of this stuff out in the world. There’s a lot of interest in the process of how this stuff got made. People like to hear demos. They are the beginning of the creative journey – they show that initial idea before we get to the reality of the finished thing. I didn’t see The Beatles thing [Get Back], but everybody was very enthusiastic about it, watching them just fuck about in the studio for hours on end. People told me that was the charm of the thing, seeing it normalised. This set is another version of that.”

PICK UP THE NEW UNCUT FOR THE FULL STORY

Lamont Dozier dies aged 81

Michael Bonner
-
0
Lamont Dozier dies aged 81
Lamont Dozier has died, aged 81. ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The news was broken by his son, Lamont Dozier Jr, via his Instagram account, reports The Guardian. https://www.instagram.com/p/ChBtNoBusKb/?hl=en Dozier, of course, was one thirds of the pee...

Lamont Dozier has died, aged 81.

The news was broken by his son, Lamont Dozier Jr, via his Instagram account, reports The Guardian.

Dozier, of course, was one thirds of the peerless Motown song-writing partnership Holland-Dozier-Holland, who wrote hits for the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Isley Brothers, among others. Their songbook includes “Baby Love”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, “Where Did Our Love Go” and “Nowhere To Run”.

No cause of death has been announced.

Tom Waits shares unreleased live recordings

Michael Bonner
-
0
Tom Waits shares unreleased live recordings
Leading up to the release of 20th anniversary editions of Alice and Blood Money, Tom Waits is putting out previously unreleased live versions of songs from the records. ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut You can hear "All the World is Green" from Blood Money - rec...

Leading up to the release of 20th anniversary editions of Alice and Blood Money, Tom Waits is putting out previously unreleased live versions of songs from the records.

You can hear “All the World is Green” from Blood Money – recorded in Milan in 2008 as part of Waits’ Glitter & Doom Tour…

… while “Fish and Bird” from Alice – recorded in London in 2004.

Alice and Blood Money were originally released on the same day – May 7, 2002. Both albums came about as a consequence of Waits and co-writer Kathleen Brennan’s recent collaborations with playwright Robert Wilson. The music on Alice featured in Wilson’s avant-garde opera, while Blood Money served as the basis of Wilson’s adaptation of Georg Buchner’s play Woyzeck.

Yo La Tengo on “Sugarcube” and working with Bob Odenkirk: “He’s a genius”

Tom Pinnock
-
0
Yo La Tengo on “Sugarcube” and working with Bob Odenkirk: “He’s a genius”
Originally published in Uncut's July 2022 issue “I think it was shown on MTV once, maybe twice,” says bassist James McNew, remembering “Sugarcube”’s video. “As far as I know, that's it. That's all.” In the 25 years since, however, the promo has racked up millions of views on YouT...

Originally published in Uncut’s July 2022 issue

“I think it was shown on MTV once, maybe twice,” says bassist James McNew, remembering “Sugarcube”’s video. “As far as I know, that’s it. That’s all.”

In the 25 years since, however, the promo has racked up millions of views on YouTube, no doubt helped by the presence of its stars David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, the latter now better known as lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He has, it turns out, been a Yo La Tengo fan since the early ’90s.

“We were all fans of Bob’s from The Larry Sanders Show,” explains Ira Kaplan. “Then Georgia and I were on vacation out in LA and we saw that Bob was doing stand-up at a bookstore, so we went out to see the show. Afterwards he was just browsing the record section, and it was kind of out-of-character for us to do this, but we introduced ourselves. It turned out he knew our band.”

There’s more to “Sugarcube” than its video, of course. Since the mid-’80s, the Hoboken-based group had been charting a unique path, mastering the acoustic hush of 1990’s Fakebook as adeptly as they did the brutal fuzz workouts of ’92’s May I Sing With Me. On their eclectic eighth album, 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One – now celebrating its 25th anniversary with a digital and vinyl reissue – they perfected this sonic tightrope walk. “Sugarcube”, a highlight of its 16 tracks, is a propulsive, droning delight, Hubley’s drumming and McNew’s unusual organ bass driving Kaplan’s freeform guitar wrangling and their surprisingly gentle harmonies.

“It feels really natural to play “Sugarcube” or to play [quiet instrumental] “Green Arrow”,” says McNew. “Loud music is us and quiet music is us, atmospheric music is us and straight-ahead music is us. We were more comfortable with that idea than other people were, it seems.”

Recording took place in Nashville’s House Of David, a studio converted for Elvis Presley, with the sessions – somewhat typically for Yo La Tengo – efficient and exploratory at the same time. “We’d recorded before at Alex The Great in Nashville,” recalls Hubley, “which is a much more bohemian studio, with a lot of character. But House Of David was on a real street, with a lot of music industry stuff on that road, you know, publishing companies and other recording studios.”

“There were these big magnolia trees in the front yard,” says producer Roger Moutenot, summing up their quest for experimental spontaneity. “One time we went out there and the crickets were just crazy, so I ran in, set up two microphones on the front porch, and we recorded these crickets for “Green Arrow”. At one moment, this one cricket just stepped forward and almost took a solo. We were all just cracking up! It was beautiful. But that was the fun thing about Yo La Tengo – there was nothing too off-the-wall, no boundaries. This was a very free and expressive record to make.”

GEORGIA HUBLEY (drums, vocals): I remember we were pretty excited about the things we were coming up with for I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. We had a pretty crappy rehearsal room in Hoboken, but it was great, we were able to have all our stuff set up, and we’d just keep trying different things.

IRA KAPLAN (guitar, vocals): When we got to the point where we didn’t have to do anything else but be a band, it was great because we could practise during the day. When we had night-time practices, it would be kind of cacophonous with other bands playing simultaneously. But by the time of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, we were able to work pretty much every weekday afternoon.

JAMES McNEW (organ, percussion): The space has since been demolished and turned into luxury condominiums, as has most of Hoboken, actually. But yeah, we would just play with no real destination in mind, and come up with jams and ideas that were fun to play and that seemed interesting.

KAPLAN: Our rehearsal room was located next door to a woodworking place, and one day as we were walking to practice we saw Teller from Penn & Teller on the street. It turned out they were having some stuff fabricated for them at the shop. At some point we came out of rehearsal and Teller was there, and then we saw blood flying out of his hand. Apparently he was testing some blood-spurting device.

HUBLEY: “Autumn Sweater”, for instance, was started on guitar, and then it just moved over to organ, but that was pretty indicative of a lot of the writing. “Sugarcube” doesn’t have bass guitar, it’s just James playing bass on our Acetone, our beloved, trashy Italian organ, which is very bassy-sounding.

McNEW: I don’t even know where we got the Acetone. It was just in our practice space. We noticed that no-one was ever using it – there was dust on it. So we decided to pay some attention to it, and it turned out to be so great that we would all take turns playing it on different songs. I liked the idea of organ acting as bass – you know, it had a lot of good precedents in Suicide or Snapper, things like that. It was a sound that I really like.

KAPLAN: Electr-O-Pura had been the first record that we’d made exclusively with Roger. We went to Nashville to make that.

ROGER MOUTENOT (producer): We made a deal where they’d come down here to record, and then I would go up to New York to mix. That was the arrangement.

KAPLAN: Going back to Nashville for I Can Hear The Heart…, I think we all felt pretty comfortable, and excited about the songs we had. There were definitely songs where we really didn’t know how they went, we were kind of allowing the process of recording to give us the chance to finish and change songs as freely as we wanted.

MOUTENOT: House Of David was a weird choice for a studio, but I had worked there, and I really, really liked the console. So I thought, ‘Oh, this will be good for this project.’ It had this unique vibe: Elvis was going to work there, and they built this whole entranceway off the garage, so he wouldn’t have to walk outside the building. There was actually a trapdoor that went into the garage, and that was for Elvis.

HUBLEY: I keep trying to visualise the place – I can see the room where we set up, and then there was a little downstairs area where we had a TV and we would watch reruns or whatever, when there was nothing for us to do, if they were working on machines that needed to be repaired or anything like that.

McNEW: They had cable TV, which was a great novelty back then. It was a nice place, a terrific [live] room, and the control room was really nice to use.

MOUTENOT: Most tracks were recorded live, as live as we could get. Sometimes we did vocals too, but I think for “Sugarcube” we just cut the basic tracks. For the most part, the Yo La Tengo stuff I worked on was always live to start with, just to get that band thing. There were a couple of songs on I Can Hear The Heart… that were built up, though, like “Moby Octopad”, which started with drums and then bass, and things like Ira’s piano were overdubbed later.

KAPLAN: I remember us coming up with the little ending for “Sugarcube”. It’s ancient times, so it was recorded on tape, and when you finished you’d rewind the tape machine. If you didn’t turn down the faders you’d hear the sound of the tape going backwards, played really fast. It sounded great, so we recorded that and stuck it on the end.

HUBLEY: The intro with the drum fill, I really cannot remember how that came about: it has to be some sort of weird accident that we decided to keep. I wish I remembered, because it’s so weird and random. I do remember thinking, ‘That’s terrible sounding’ but everybody else was like, “No, that’s great!” It kind of works.

MOUTENOT: That was a special fill! It may have been that Georgia did the fill and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so great, let’s use that take.” But you know, I did cut between some takes once in a while – I did a bit of editing on that record as it was recorded on tape. I can’t say, but it might have been that.

McNEW: I remember Roger deciding that he needed to do some cutting on tape, and it was as though he was about to defuse a bomb. He ordered everyone out of the control room, so it was just him and whoever the assistant from the studio was. He told us all to just go get lunch, just get out of there while he did this extremely life-or-death manoeuvre on the tape. It was a mystery to me! I just knew that he was doing something very important, and I wanted to give him his space. Though I think that drum fill was actually a part of the arrangement. I don’t recall how it began, where it originated from, but I think it was always part of the beginning of the song, strangely enough.

MOUTENOT: That’s what I love about this particular record, I Can Hear The Heart…, it’s up, it’s down, it’s rocking, it’s soft, it’s got a lot of different textures and feelings. Like, “Damage” is one of my favourites, it just puts me in a dream world every time. When you make a record that way, when you open the can of worms like that and say ‘anything goes’, you could go down the rabbit hole and really get screwed up. But for some reason, with these guys, it all worked because we always would go somewhere but pull it back in to be what the band wanted. It was super fun.

KAPLAN: Apart from being in it, we had very little to do with the video after coming up with the concept – the plot of doing this lousy video and irritating the record company, and then them sending us to rock school; and then we do the exact same video as rock school graduates, the same as they one they hated, but this time they love it. That was what we presented to our pal Phil Morrison, who had directed the “Tom Courtenay” video and a couple of others that we did. Then Phil took that concept and him and his writing partner Joe Ventura came up with the script for the video.

HUBLEY: We knew the storyline, such as it was, but a lot of it’s improvised – certainly, Bob and David do a lot of improvising. We flew out to California just to do the video. I think it was maybe a two-day shoot in a variety of locations, but mostly at a high school or college in Santa Monica. It was shot at a weekend in the summer, so it was fairly empty and easy to film there.

McNEW: It just seemed like a weird dream that it was actually happening – it still seems like a weird dream that it did happen. I mean, I remember just how deeply committed to the idea Bob and David were. They really delivered and gave so much more than you would ever even have possibly imagined that they would give to such a such a ridiculous idea. That’s just kind of inspiring, and it shows how gifted both of those guys are.

KAPLAN: It was really fun. I wish the shoot had been longer. The only part I remember being gruelling at all was filming the scene where we’re getting yelled at by John Ennis, with Bob and David playing the record company flunkies. We were filming in an actual office, and because there was dialogue there was no way you could have AC on. Maybe because it was the weekend the air conditioning was off anyway? But it was really hot in there. That is the closest I can come to a complaint, because it was hilarious. All these takes kept being ruined, because either John was laughing or we were laughing.

McNEW: Keeping a straight face was a pretty sizable challenge. That scene in the boardroom where John Ennis is screaming at us, it was impossible to try to act our way through that. It’s very strange and amazing to see Bob [so famous] now, on television, in theatres. Of course, I’m not surprised, because I felt that he should have been there all along. I think that he’s a genius, as is David. But it is strange when universes collide all of a sudden. I know that I have esoteric tastes, and when they cross over into the mainstream, it’s surreal to think that, ‘Oh, everybody likes Bob. That’s great. That’s fantastic.’

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is being reissued both digitally (out now) and on coloured vinyl (out now in the US & Canada, and August 12 elsewhere) for its 25th anniversary, via Matador

__________________

FACTFILE

Written by: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew
Personnel: Ira Kaplan (guitar, vocals), Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals), James McNew (organ, percussion)
Produced by: Roger Moutenot
Recorded at: House Of David, Nashville, TN
Released: April 22, 1997 [album], August 4, 1997 [single]
Chart peak: UK -; US –

__________________

TIMELINE

February 28, 1992
Yo La Tengo release May I Sing With Me, their fifth album but first with bassist James McNew

May 2, 1995
Electr-O-Pura marks the band’s first time recording in Nashville entirely with producer Roger Moutenot

April 22, 1997
I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is released – though it has stiff competition, it remains perhaps Yo La Tengo’s finest LP

August 4, 1997
“Sugarcube” is released as a single, backed on 7” by B-side “Busy With My Thoughts”, and on CD by “The Summer” and a 14-minute take on Eddie Cantor’s Looney Toons theme, “Merrily We Roll Along”

Crazy Horse on Neil Young’s Toast

Michael Bonner
-
0
Crazy Horse on Neil Young’s Toast
It's been another momentous year for Neil fans. Just as we'd settled down to enjoy the rowdy delights of Barn, the Official Bootleg Series truffled out new perspectives on his storied '70/'71 and the Eldorado reissue brought back into focus Young's creative rehabilitation at the end of the '80s. ...

It’s been another momentous year for Neil fans. Just as we’d settled down to enjoy the rowdy delights of Barn, the Official Bootleg Series truffled out new perspectives on his storied ’70/’71 and the Eldorado reissue brought back into focus Young’s creative rehabilitation at the end of the ’80s.

This week, Young releases Noise & Flowers – a live album taken from his 2019 European tour with Promise Of The Real. Young started the tour a few weeks after the death of his long-serving manager, Elliot Roberts, which freights this album with a certain rugged pathos. There’s amazing version of “On The Beach”, too. But, for me at least, the biggest Neil release so far this year has been Toast – the mythical ‘lost’ album recorded in 2000 at the end of a scorching run of records with Crazy Horse. You can read my full review of Toast here – but I thought now the issue is off-sale it wouldn’t hurt to run the Q&As with Frank “Poncho” Sampedro and Billy Talbot that accompanied my review. It’s worth reading to the end, as Billy gives some tidbits on the upcoming Horse album and likelihood of a new Horse tour.

Anyway, in case you’ve somehow missed out on this so far, here’s the splendidly ragged “Standing in the Light of Love” to get you in the zone…

Here’s Poncho first, with Billy to follow further down.

UNCUT: What took you to San Francisco in the first place?
Frank “Poncho” Sampedro: It was logistics. Neil and Pegi had taken a penthouse apartment in downtown San Francisco, as their daughter Amber was going to high school there. It was more sensible than travelling in from where they lived out in the woods [at Broken Arrow Ranch], so Amber could be around her friends.

What was Toast like?
There were derelict buildings and squatters. I remember there was a doughnut shop on the corner and that was it. In the studio, we found a backdoor we could open, so we’d go out the back to smoke a cigarette and watch the rats run around. I mean, they were huge. There’s no place to even get dinner, so we would order out and one of the roadies would go pick up all the food. But at Toast, they didn’t have enough forks for everybody. You would think someone might go out and buy a couple of forks. Anyway, they never did.

What kind of place was Neil in at the time?
He never said a word about his relationship with Pegi. All Neil did was sit on the floor in the middle of the studio with a couple of yellow pads and some pencils and pens around them. While he was writing, the rest of us was supposed to just be cool and not bother him. Before that, Neil would always call and just overwhelm us with anywhere from 10 to 20 new songs. He’d start playing them all on their own, so we’d have a game of catch up. But that’s the way it was. It was fun. But at Toast, I can’t even tell you how many weeks – months – we stayed there.

… and then you went to South America.
We were on fire, man! The people loved us. Playing to 200,000 people in Rio de Janeiro was insane. When we started “Like A Hurricane”, the crowd sang the melody back to us, like a soccer chant. The more intense the solo got, the louder they got. I looked over at Neil, he had his head thrown back with his eyes closed, wailing away on his guitar. It was such a high magical moment, man. Wow. We came back to Toast with this new energy. We were all into Latin. Every song, we tried to turn it into Latin. But it quickly got back into the same thing, then it just ended.

Then what happened?
Neil called me, like, two weeks later, He said, “Hey, I want to redo some of the songs. Got a couple other ones. I’m gonna get together with Booker T. I think you and I, we should go for a new studio. That’d be good.” So I flew out to this new studio up north over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a 2,000 per cent turnaround from Toast. The next day, Booker and Duck [Dunn] showed up. We hit it off right away and we started recording. It was all good. Duck would sit in a chair to play bass, then all of a sudden he’d stand up – and whenever he did that, we knew that was the take. But that’s what made the difference – Neil had the songs this time.

What do you think about Toast now?
I’m amazed at this record. I can’t believe some of the stuff we played. It seems so natural when you listen it. We played all genres and we touched on a lot of different aspects of who the Horse could have been or could be. Neil’s lyrics are really touching. The way he used his vocals were so creative, It’s just unbelievably beautiful. Really.

What do you think of the versions of “Quit”, “How Ya Doin’?” and “Boom Boom Boom”?
They hit me emotionally. When I heard “Boom Boom Boom” and “How Ya Doin’?”, I cried. It was so sad, and so good at the same time. “Boom Boom Boom” is equal to “Down By The River”, it takes you to so many different places. Tommy Brae’s trumpet solo makes you cry. Pegi and Astrid’s vocals are so eerie. The chorus – “Ain’t no way I’m gonna let the good times go” – it sounds like Neil is trying to end the song, then he’ll play a little more and sing that chorus again. It’s so bluesy. But we never stopped. Then we broke into our old selves and started getting crazy and psychedelic at the end. Wow! What a ride. “How Ya Doin’?” is so eerie. I put that right up there with “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”. When Neil sings, “Let’s say I got a habit”, that goes right through you – but it’s about all those things, all the crazy insanity that get into in our lives, from drugs to drinking to love and all the things that hook us. How do we control them? We don’t, we have no control over those things.

Aside from the seven songs on Toast, did you record anything else while you were in San Francisco?
We recorded “Two Old Friends” [later re-recorded for Are You Passionate?] I remember I played it while everybody was taking a break. I was sitting in this little acoustic guitar booth that they built for me and I played the whole song. I just practising. The song was going through the speakers into the studio. When I came out, Neil looked at me and said, “Wow, that’s beautiful.” But we didn’t get it there, for some reason.

It’s strange, though, that after all that Neil writes about Toast: “Crazy Horse shows a depth never seen or heard before. This is a pinnacle. Where they let me go, where they took me, was unbelievable.”
But he wasn’t saying it to us! But I guess he was having a hard time expressing himself. That’s like the best compliment we could ever get. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Way Down In The Rust Bucket blew my mind – but that was material we did well, already. We played it all really good that night live. So that was cool. But this is totally unique for Crazy Horse, it has so many different layers. It’s part of jazz, part of blues and it’s just spooky as hell. It’s going to surprise a lot of people, I think.

And now for Billy Talbot…

UNCUT: When did you hear Toast was finally coming out?
Billy Talbot: About a year ago. That’s when Neil listened to it and, as far as I know, the reason it’s coming out is because he really thinks it’s great. He was a little surprised by it, but probably secretly really knew [how great it was].

And what do you think about it?
I think that it’s kind of understandable it was never released; it might have been misunderstood. It has a certain loneliness to it. It’s kind of spooky. It has a vibe to it, a heavy vibe to it. It speaks of something that happened back in that time in a beautiful, beautiful way. I think Neil really rocked with the Horse.

What are your memories of the studio?
I liked it there. As I remember, the room was big enough. The control room was nice. There had good speakers in there, I guess. I don’t know how we came upon that place. But it was good. It was a good place to record. I remember being able to slip out the back door and go and listen to something in the car, or slip out the back door, a bunch of us and walk to someplace that we eat at or get in a car and drive a few blocks away to someplace and eat something and then come back and do some more music.

What do you remember about the sessions?
It went down easily and slowly. The air was pretty clean, as far as all of it was concerned. We were into the moment really nicely,. It went on after this in another form, I understand. Another record came out. When we were there doing this, it was a beautifully creative, peaceful time.

You went on tour to South America halfway through the sessions…
That was great. Yeah. We went and played, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, in Brazil for one thing. We have some video of that. We were playing great. The Toast recordings don’t reflect that. They’re great in a whole other way. We might even have done a Toast song, “Goin’ Home”, there in Brazil. That show was pretty good. But Toast recordings were a whole ’nother feeling.

What do you mean by that?
There are some songs that don’t sound like Crazy Horse particularly. I’m really partial to “Boom Boom Boom”. “Quit” has a good beginning, the way it glides in. All the songs are unusual. There’s another flavour to them that it’s hard to describe.

Neil said, “Crazy Horse shows a depth never seen or heard before. This is a pinnacle. Where they let me go, where they took me, was unbelievable.”
It’s another dimension. It was really different, the way that other things have been really different and this isn’t the same as those other things. This is another different. I like it because of that. I can understand how it just sat there, in time. Now it’s coming to light. For some reason, it makes sense to me.

Can you explain how?
No! I don’t even want to think about it! Sometimes, some things are not meant to be thought about. They’re meant to just be absorbed. Toast comes from the past. I’m just trying to come to terms with it, then maybe I’ll think about it, or there’ll be some things to think about. The words in the songs – that’s always interesting with Neil.

Tell me a bit about what Neil was like during this session.
He’s always a bit secretive. He doesn’t just run at the mouth. But he’s a nice guy and he likes having fun, enjoying life. At the same time, he was the creator of this music, along with the Horse in a way. But he wrote these various pieces, that we got into, in the way that they are. We got into it that way. And anyway, it’s good to hear.

How do you think Toast fits in with that run of ‘90s Horse albums – Ragged Glory, Sleeps With Angels and Broken Arrow?
I’m just grateful, to be able to go through those years all these years, and still be able to do something – like Colorado and Barn. I liked those records a lot. Through the years we’ve been recorded, and that’s really something to have in your life, to look back on, to see yourself in those times and these times, because we’re always different. We’re people, growing; or maybe not growing but you think you are. In any case, as the years go by, you get to see yourself through these different times with music. And that’s a good thing, for sure.

The Horse have just finished recording with Rick Rubin…
Yeah, we did. We had a lot of fun.

Any plans to tour? It’ll be difficult with Nils off playing with Springsteen next year.
Yeah, he’s going to be occupied. Maybe he’ll slip over and play with us once in a while. We don’t do a lot of stuff. We need everybody to miss us. So when they see us, they’ll just love us. If you miss somebody enough, it’s good to see them.

Is it all the same Horse – from Danny up through Poncho to Nils?
From my perspective, it is. Ralph and I and Neil are always in it. Therefore with Danny or with Poncho or with Nils, all of this is just part of it.  That’s what Crazy Horse is. All of this and all of that. Nils likes to think of himself as being part of Crazy Horse all along, as he was with us years ago. Neil is an incredible songwriter. People are still interested in what he does and consequently, what we do. And we realise that, but we still play together and we still do this and it still happens because we don’t think too much about all of that stuff.

Then you get people like me ringing you up and asking you to explain it…
It’s OK. I understand that. But we’re just really moving along on this planet, trying to get through another day.

John Cale returns with new single, “Night Crawling”

Michael Bonner
-
0
John Cale returns with new single, “Night Crawling”
John Cale has released a new single, "Night Crawling". ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The song is his first new music since 2020's single, “Lazy Day”, and his collaboration with Kelly Lee Owens on “Corner Of My Sky”. Evoking the spirit of mid-'70s N...

John Cale has released a new single, “Night Crawling“.

The song is his first new music since 2020’s single, “Lazy Day”, and his collaboration with Kelly Lee Owens on “Corner Of My Sky”.

Evoking the spirit of mid-’70s New York, the song recalling times when Cale and David Bowie would traverse the city at night.

You can watch the video for “Night Crawling” below:

Says Cale, “There was this period around mid-late 70s when David and I would run into each other in NY. There was plenty of talk about getting some work done but of course we’d end up running the streets, sometimes until we couldn’t keep a thought in our heads, let alone actually get a song together! One night we managed to meet up for a benefit concert where I taught him a viola part so we could perform together. When I wrote ‘Night Crawling,’ it was a reflective moment of particular times. That kind of NYC that held art in its grip, strong enough to keep it safe and dangerous enough to keep it interesting. I always figured we’d have another go at the two of us recording together, this time without the interference of being perpetually off our heads! The thing about creating music is the ability to divine a thought or feeling even when reality says it’s a logical impossibility.”

Meanwhile, Cale tours the UK in October/November. You can see him at:

Sun 23rd Oct – The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
Mon 24th Oct – Barbican, York
Fri 28th Oct – Llais Festival, Cardiff *
Mon 31st Oct – Playhouse Whitley Bay, Whitley Bay
Thu 3rd Nov – Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham
Mon 7th Nov – De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
Wed 9th Nov – The London Palladium, London
Thun 10th Nov – Cambridge Corn Exchange, Cambridge
Fri 11th Nov – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

* = John Cale + special guests, 80th Birthday Celebration

The Comet Is Coming unveil their new album Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

Michael Bonner
-
0
The Comet Is Coming unveil their new album Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam
The Comet Is Coming have announced details of their new album, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam. ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Due for release on September 23 via Impulse! Records, the fourth studio album from Shabaka Hutchings and his bandmates Dan Leavers (...

The Comet Is Coming have announced details of their new album, Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam.

Due for release on September 23 via Impulse! Records, the fourth studio album from Shabaka Hutchings and his bandmates Dan Leavers (Danalogue) and Max Hallett (Betamax) was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio.

The band have shared a first single, “Code“:

Meanwhile, the full tracklisting for Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam is:

Code
Technicolour
Lucid Dreamer
Tokyo Nights
Pyramids
Frequency of Feeling Expansion
Angel of Darkness
Aftermath
Atomic Wave Dance
The Hammer
Mystik

Judith Durham, former Seekers lead singer, dies aged 79

Ellie Robinson
-
0
Judith Durham, former Seekers lead singer, dies aged 79
Judith Durham, the former lead singer of The Seekers, has died aged 79. ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Her death was confirmed by The Seekers on Saturday (August 6), with the band writing in a statement that Durham passed after a short stay in the Alfred Hospi...

Judith Durham, the former lead singer of The Seekers, has died aged 79.

Her death was confirmed by The Seekers on Saturday (August 6), with the band writing in a statement that Durham passed after a short stay in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria – a short ways out from her hometown of Essendon. She was admitted into palliative care a day prior, and died as a result of complications from her lengthly struggle with a chronic lung disease.

In a personal statement shared on behalf of her band (which also included guitarists Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley), bassist Athol Guy said: “Our lives are changed forever losing our treasured lifelong friend and shining star. Her struggle was intense and heroic – never complaining of her destiny and fully accepting its conclusion. Her magnificent musical legacy Keith, Bruce and I are so blessed to share.”

Sharing the sentiment was Durham’s sister, Beverley Sheehan, who added: “Judith’s joy for life, her constant optimism, creativity and generosity of spirit were always an inspiration to me.”

It is with overwhelming sadness that Musicoast Pty. Ltd. and Universal Music Australia announces the death of…

Posted by The Seekers on Saturday, August 6, 2022

Durham’s family have asked for privacy in the wake of her passing. Over the weekend, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews announced that – with the blessing of her family – Durham would be honoured at a state funeral. In doing so, he described her as “a true icon of Australian music”, and asserted that “her memory will not only live on in her numerous hit songs, but in the hearts of generations of Victorians and Australians”.

Born in 1943, Durham formed The Seekers with Guy, Potger and Woodley in 1962. They released their first album, Introducing The Seekers, a year later. The band released a total of 13 albums – the most recent being 2019’s Back To Our Roots. Durham didn’t sing on any of the four albums released between 1975 and 1989, as she embarked a solo career in 1968. She also wasn’t involved in the band’s first two comebacks.

As a solo artist, Durham released 11 studio albums, bookending her catalogue with the Christmas-themed albums For Christmas With Love (1968) and It’s Christmas Time (2013). She also released five live albums, five compilations and one EP as a solo artist, as well as seven live albums, 36 compilations and six TV specials with The Seekers.

The Seekers enjoyed a litany of monumental accolades. In 1967, they were named joint Australians Of The Year. They were inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in 1995, and the same year, Durham was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM). 19 years later (in 2014), each member of the band was individually honoured as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).

Among the many notable figures to share condolences for Durham’s passing was Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who wrote in a statement: “A national treasure and an Australian icon, Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists. Her kindness will be missed by many, the anthems she gave to our nation will never be forgotten.”

Cosey Fanni Tutti: “Whatever was thrown at me, it never destroyed me inside”

Laura Barton
-
0
Cosey Fanni Tutti: “Whatever was thrown at me, it never destroyed me inside”
COSEY FANNI TUTTI’s defiantly subversive and progressive work – as a member of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and beyond – has always been fired by a boundless curiosity. But with a new memoir and album imminent, has the one-time “wrecker of civilisation” finally mellowed? “Whatev...

COSEY FANNI TUTTI’s defiantly subversive and progressive work – as a member of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and beyond – has always been fired by a boundless curiosity. But with a new memoir and album imminent, has the one-time “wrecker of civilisation” finally mellowed? “Whatever was thrown at me, it never destroyed me inside,” she tells Laura Barton in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store.

Enjoy this excerpt from Laura’s feature…

Across the fields around King’s Lynn, the wheat grows high and green, and the houses thin out and out until they become little more than occasional farms and small parishes, quiet beneath the Norfolk sky. For more than 30 years, Cosey Fanni Tutti and her partner, Chris Carter, have lived out here, in a village where few are interested in the comings and goings of two avant-garde musicians.

This midweek morning, Tutti sits at her kitchen table, dark-ringed eyes beneath a heavy, dark fringe. The scene is a strange combination of domesticity and defiance: the fitted kitchen, the well-kept garden; behind her on the counter, a row of plastic cereal containers. But next door lies the couple’s home studio, a framed fan-painting of the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats hangs on a wall, and opposite the refrigerator, a glass cabinet displays some of the accumulated paraphernalia of a life spent in sonic and artistic experimentation.

Tutti is 70 now, with a career that has so far encompassed co-founding the music and performance art collective COUM Transmissions in 1969 and industrial music originators Throbbing Gristle in 1975. Later came Chris & Cosey – a duo with Carter – and Carter Tutti Void, the couple’s collaboration with Factory Floor’s Nik Void. There has also been extensive solo work, including her acclaimed 2019 album TUTTI, a memoir called Art Sex Music, her extraordinary soundtrack to Caroline Catz’s documentary film Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And Legendary Tapes, and a new book, Re-Sisters: The Lives And Recordings Of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe And Cosey Fanni Tutti.

Across five decades her work has been subversive and progressive, it has crossed boundaries and melded disciplines, but above all it has been fired by a boundless curiosity – to explore sound as a means of pleasure and pain, to challenge societal norms and conservative thinking, a desire to understand and to question and connect.

In person Tutti is at first a watchful presence, but the reserve softens, and an animation for her subject rises. Her conversation ranges widely, as if constantly seeking connections, so that five minutes in her company might draw together tuning forks, the black, blue and gold Mandarin wallpaper of her teenage bedroom, and the wonder of first seeing Derbyshire’s science exercise books from her school days: “Pages and pages of writing and drawing on wave theory and the shape of the mouth and how it can affect the acoustics,” she says, lit up. “I was just astounded. I thought, ‘Wow, this isn’t about music. No, no. This is sound. That’s the big difference.’”

PICK UP THE NEW UNCUT FOR THE FULL STORY

Earl’s Closet – The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath, 1970-1980

Peter Watts
-
0
Earl’s Closet – The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath, 1970-1980
Earl McGrath sounds like a character from a Paul Thomas Anderson film. A socialite and bon vivant, he was born into poverty in Wisconsin before leaving a troubled home at 14 to join the merchant navy. Having broadened his geographical horizons, he started on his cultural ones, meeting WH Auden, Henr...

Earl McGrath sounds like a character from a Paul Thomas Anderson film. A socialite and bon vivant, he was born into poverty in Wisconsin before leaving a troubled home at 14 to join the merchant navy. Having broadened his geographical horizons, he started on his cultural ones, meeting WH Auden, Henry Miller and Leonard Bernstein before organising a music festival in Italy in 1959 featuring Cecil Taylor and Jack Kerouac. While there, he met and married an Italian countess, moving effortlessly into high society. An art collector and cultural dabbler, he worked in Hollywood – he bought pot from Harrison Ford and claimed to have conceived Midnight Cowboy, The Monkees and Saturday Night Live – before enabling a crucial meeting between Ahmet Ertegun and The Rolling Stones.

In return, Ertegun helped McGrath form Clean Records with Robert Stigwood. When that failed, he became president of Rolling Stone Records. When McGrath died in 2016, writer Joe Hogan discovered a cupboard in his apartment filled with 200 demos and masters that McGrath had accumulated over the decades. Twenty-two tracks feature on Earl’s Closet, including previously unheard recordings by Hall & Oates, Terry Allen and David Johansen plus a host of unknowns or also-rans. The sounds are eclectic, but the vibe is distinct: Earl’s Closet is a tour through ’70s LA, all chest hair, musk and laidback slinky grooves.

Fortunately, the music lives up the promise of the great back story. Most of these recordings were rejected, but there’s nothing objectively bad – even David Johansen’s post-Dolls throwaway “Funky But Chic” has a certain charm. The two Hall & Oates numbers are superb, and several others could have been hits, such as Michael McCarty’s ballad “Christopher”, the beautiful Bee Gee harmonies of Shadow’s “I See My Days Go By” or Norma Jean Bell’s ultra-funky “Just Look…”. A handful did become hits, albeit with other artists, such as “Two More Bottles Of Wine”, an original by Delbert McClinton (as Delbert & Glen) that Emmylou Harris took into the charts in 1978. The two Terry Allen numbers are highlights but pick of the lot is “Tension”, a wired Jim Carroll outtake later dressed up in synth and released as “Voices” in 1985.

McGrath’s closet also contained reels of music by The Rolling Stones, Pete Tosh, Eric Clapton and John Phillips, but the artists on Earl’s Closet are, for the most part, the ones who never quite made it. Several burned out on drugs, such as Detroit rocker Johnny Angel, while others had fascinating careers on the sidelines, such as Norma Jean Bell. Folk-rockers Country are an interesting case study; one member got hooked, the other became a hit songwriter for Olivia Newton-John. Then there are the complete unknowns, such as the mysterious Jabor, who dropped a groovy slice of late ’70s MOR on “Sail Away” and disappeared forever. Or at least, until they were found in Earl’s closet and given a second chance to fly.

Amanda Shires – Take It Like A Man

Lisa-Marie Ferla
-
0
Amanda Shires – Take It Like A Man
To really know somebody is to know all the little ways to hurt them. It’s fitting, then, that the most devastating moments on Take It Like A Man are rarely the most dramatic. “You can say it’s all my fault, we just couldn’t get along”, she sings on the quietly dignified “Fault Lines”. ...

To really know somebody is to know all the little ways to hurt them. It’s fitting, then, that the most devastating moments on Take It Like A Man are rarely the most dramatic. “You can say it’s all my fault, we just couldn’t get along”, she sings on the quietly dignified “Fault Lines”. “Just so you know, I’ll say ‘I don’t know’/But no-one’s gonna be asking me”.

Like a lot of people – like a lot of wives and mothers – Shires experienced something of a compression of identity during the pandemic, locked down at home near Nashville with her husband, the musician Jason Isbell, and their daughter. A touring musician since joining the Texas Playboys on fiddle at the age of 15, Shires had a considerable body of work to her name before meeting Isbell, whose career-defining albums Southeastern and Something More Than Free charted their courtship and the role Shires played in helping him get sober. As Isbell’s star climbed, the love story captured in his songs charmed fans beyond Shires’ own work: on her solo material; with John Prine and in Isbell’s backing band The 400 Unit; and recruiting Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris to join her in country supergroup The Highwomen.

Lockdown and the deaths of Shires’ friends and collaborators Prine and Justin Townes Earle put that work on pause, as well as exacerbating tensions in the public-facing fairytale. With two working musicians in the house, Shires found her own creativity stifled. Disillusioned with music after several poor studio experiences, she was convinced she would never record again – until an approach from musician-producer Lawrence Rothman changed her mind.

Take It Like A Man – Shires’ second full-length collaboration with Rothman following last year’s For Christmas – is a bold re-statement of artistic identity. An unsparing document of a very real marriage, it ruthlessly captures the everyday resentments and recriminations, and, ultimately, the love that gets one through those moments. It is, in a sense, Shires’ Lemonade, with Isbell’s guitar work on some of the album’s rawest tracks paralleling Jay-Z’s contributions to wife Beyoncé’s opus.

“Fault Lines”, the piano-and-string-led elegy at the album’s mid-point, is the rawest of those, a portrait of a relationship stretched to breaking point. “Time was all I’d want”, intones Shires over Peter Levin’s gloomy piano, “you can keep the car and the house”. The first song to emerge from Shires’ early correspondence with Rothman and the first to be recorded, it was cut and re-cut from the final tracklisting, its unflinching lyrics – including a reference to the “flagship” character of her husband’s song of the same name – begging to be unravelled. Ultimately it was Isbell who persuaded Shires not to leave it out.

It’s an exquisite move, as it allows the album to ebb and flow from rebirth to redemption through resentment, reconciliation and romance. Opener “Hawk For The Dove” is immediately immersive, its booming bass drum, electric guitar squall and frantic second-half fiddle a counterpoint to the coyness in Shires’ vocals. “You can call me serious trouble, just admit I’m what you want”, she purrs, as Highwomen protégée Brittney Spencer echoes the mischievous refrain.

“Empty Cups”, written solely by Shires, is a lyrical masterwork of tiny resentments: a door slammed so hard that spoons rattle, a hand on a cheek, a “makeup rainbow” of a tear-streaked face. Stately organ and backing vocals from Maren Morris, whose voice could wring tears from a stone at the best of times, complete a picture of looming heartbreak, while “Don’t Be Alarmed”, which features co-writing credits for Isbell, Rustin Kelly and Liz Rose, attempts to paper over the cracks.

A trio of songs on the back half of the album offer solace. “Here He Comes” is a bouncy romp with a horn section as irresistible as the “slight lean and overconfident creep” of its subject matter. “Bad Behavior” tracks a tentative courtship and an underlying wildness, emphasised by glistening keyboards, while “Stupid Love” is a sunny Southern love song complete with a four-part horn section.

While, as in life, no happy endings are assured – see swooping Natalie Hemby co-write “Everything Has Its Time”, with its gentle message of “nothing lasts forever” – the overall journey here is one of self-discovery and self-reliance. Even the title of the album turns out to be a message to that effect, with Shires, as the title track closes, drawing out that final line: no need to “take it like a man” when you can “take it like Amanda”.

Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus: Super Deluxe Edition

Jon Dale
-
0
Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus: Super Deluxe Edition
Ask anyone who was a fan of Little Feat during their initial run – a decade-long stretch from 1969 to ’79 where vocalist and guitarist Lowell George, and keyboard player Bill Payne, steered a leaky ship through toil and trouble – and they’ll tell you Little Feat’s music truly came alive on...

Ask anyone who was a fan of Little Feat during their initial run – a decade-long stretch from 1969 to ’79 where vocalist and guitarist Lowell George, and keyboard player Bill Payne, steered a leaky ship through toil and trouble – and they’ll tell you Little Feat’s music truly came alive onstage. Much like peers the Grateful Dead, the Feat needed the unpredictable conduction of energy between band and audience, plus the heat-of-the-moment, now-or-never fury of live performance, to take flight. It’s no surprise, then, that Waiting For Columbus is one of Little Feat’s most enduring albums, often included in lists of the greatest live albums of all time; it’s also wild to consider how the sextet pulled things together against the odds, and almost in spite of themselves.

They’d already been through a hell of a lot. Little Feat formed in ’69, when George left Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, taking bass player Roy Estrada with him, and connected with Payne (whose pre-history included appearing on an obscure garage rock stomper, Something Wild’s “Trippin’ Out”), and drummer Richie Hayward, who’d previously worked with George in The Factory. They recorded two albums (1971’s Little Feat and the following year’s Sailin’ Shoes) as a quartet before the band temporarily split, with Estrada leaving for Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Reforming soon after, George and Payne replaced Estrada with guitarist Paul Barrère, bass player Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton. The “classic lineup” of Little Feat was thus in place, recording a string of albums across the ’70s, though they always seemed to be in some state of complication or confusion; during a temporary split across ’73 and ’74, for example, members of the group would end up playing with the Doobie Brothers, Robert Palmer and Ike Turner.

The road to Waiting For Columbus seemed particularly rocky, though. There were shifts in the intra-band dynamic; George wanted Payne and Barrère to contribute more, but still needed to maintain his position of dominance in the group. Little Feat’s music, which had, for several years, felt genre-agnostic, moving from blues to country to funk to R&B, seemed to be bending towards a more fluid, improvisatory jazz-rock sensibility, which George found a little alienating. His songwriting contributions decreased and others stepped up to the plate, such that by 1977’s Time Loves A Hero, George’s songs felt almost like an afterthought – he simply wasn’t coming up with enough material. And while Little Feat were having limited success – Top 40 albums, a good concert draw – they couldn’t quite push through to the next level, something that dogged the group through the entirety of their existence.

Band politics and cultural relevance aside, if Waiting For Columbus proves anything, it’s the elasticity and playfulness with which Little Feat approached their material, with a fearlessness that seemed, somehow, to shoehorn – and not uncomfortably – the freedoms of jazz and improvisation into the elemental structures of the song. They do this in two ways – in live performance, you can hear them knocking songs into new shapes, improvising passages that lock together effortlessly, taking songs and re-wiring them entirely. The New Orleans funk that became so central to their music is in full display on songs like “Mercenary Territory”; “Dixie Chicken” is stretched out like so much taffy, woven into a beautifully limber groove; Mick Taylor’s guest appearance on “A Apolitical Blues” is instructive both of how malleable a player Taylor was, and how accommodating Little Feat were as a group. But the album itself is also a Frankenstein, pieced together post-production from various shows, with some guitars and bass re-recorded, and most of George’s vocal performances redone.

Thus, there’s real value in the three full live shows that make up the rest of this super deluxe edition. From the evidence here, they lifted some stellar performances from the Washington show for the album. It’s a bit of a shame to not hear other nights from all three cities represented here, though some are buried, no doubt, for good reason – one night from London would come to be known as “Black Wednesday”, performed, as it was, under a cloud of all-night partying, acrimony and internecine fighting. The August 2, 1977 London show here is a gem, though, the group fully in control, riding the music to peaks of ferocity, but still maintaining a core playfulness. The addition of the Tower Of Power horns gives the songs real heft, and the version of “Mercenary Territory” here is one of their very best. The Washington performance makes up a good portion of the original Waiting For Columbus, but it’s great finally to hear the set in full, as by that point, the Feat were a tightly drilled machine.

The revelation of this deluxe edition, though, is the Manchester City Hall set from July 29, 1977. None of the Manchester recordings have been previously released, which, on the evidence, seems a real missed opportunity. The group hadn’t yet been joined by the Tower Of Power brass section – that would come later, in London – so the Manchester set gives a great chance to hear the Feat in six-piece formation. There’s an electricity pulsing between the members of the group, with potent performances of “Fat Man In The Bathtub”, “Rock & Roll Doctor”, and “Oh Atlanta”, though the set really gets expansive with a 10-minute “Dixie Chicken”, where the group prove their improvisational cojones – there’s both sensitivity and fierce conviction in the way they interact here, and an elasticity that can only really come with years of shared illumination.

If the truth be known, each set has its moments of longueurs; while Little Feat were “on” more often than not, they sometimes were given to the overly prolix, and the jazz-rock “Day At The Dog Races” dragged at times – stretching out to 10 minutes and beyond, its vamp on a repetitive riff could meander, though there are some particularly beautiful moments on the Manchester rendition, when things simmer down a little, and Payne lets out little susurrating sighs of liquid keys over a subdued percussive palette. It’s moments like these that suggest there was more to the Feat’s dalliance in such music than George clocked at the time – allegedly, when he heard the tapes of the studio version, from Time Loves A Hero, George snapped, “What is this? Fuckin’ Weather Report?”

George would often leave the stage while the rest of the group performed “Day At The Dog Races”, a visible marker both of the complex and multiple musical threads being followed by the various group members, and the simmering volatility of the relationships at the heart of Little Feat. But for all this strangeness and unpredictability, listening back to Waiting For Columbus – both in its originally released form, and with the appended live sets in this deluxe collection – reinforces the staying power of the music here, an ideal combination of elevated songwriting, musical voraciousness, and the rare alchemy of a group, on stage, in full possession and understanding of their abilities, playing with nuance and sensuousness. That they’d continue to do so, even after the death of their erstwhile leader, Lowell George, in June 1979, is testament to the lasting power of the music here and its ongoing resonance. Few played it so well, with such generosity of spirit and fluidity of groove, before or since.

1...777879...1,272Page 78 of 1,272

SHOP UNCUT