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The 49th Uncut Playlist Of 2008

John Mulvey
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Before we get to the records, a quick reminder that December’s Club Uncut is here already, with Department Of Eagles, Hush Arbors and Mr David Viner comprising what looks like one of our best bills of the year at the Borderline tonight. I imagine I’ll file some kind of report tomorrow morning – see you there, if you were lucky enough to snag tickets. Another plug, too, for a rather under-publicised show on Thursday that I’m pretty psyched about: possibly the London debut of Endless Boogie at the Old Blue Last. Again, I’ll try and post a review before the end of the week. In the meantime, these are the last 17 records we played round these parts. Death, Mountains and the Six Organs comp are probably this week’s big new hits, while that Alela Diane album grows on me, surprisingly, with every play. Not feeling the Kanye, though. . . 1 Kanye West – 808s And Heartbreak (Roc-A-Fella) 2 Six Organs Of Admittance – RTZ (Drag City) 3 Beirut - "March Of The Zapotec/Realpeople: Holland" 4 Death - . . . For The Whole World To See (Drag City) 5 Mountains – Choral (Thrill Jockey) 6 Women – Women (Jagjaguwar) 7 Flamin’ Groovies – This Band Is Red Hot 1969-1979 (Raven) 8 The Thing – Now And Forever (Smalltown Superjazz) 9 Kendra Smith – The Guild Of Temporal Adventurers (Fiasco) 10 Opal – Happy Nightmare Baby (SST) 11 Mike Heron – Smiling Men With Bad Reputations (Elektra) 12 Various Artists – J&S: Harlem Soul (Kent) 13 Department Of Eagles – In Ear Park (4AD) 14 Alela Diane – To Be Still (Names) 15 Banjo Or Freakout – Mr No/Someone Great (No Pain In Pop) 16 Tim Hardin – 1 (Water) 17 Staff Benda Bilili – Très Très Fort (Crammed Discs)

Before we get to the records, a quick reminder that December’s Club Uncut is here already, with Department Of Eagles, Hush Arbors and Mr David Viner comprising what looks like one of our best bills of the year at the Borderline tonight.

Continue

J TILLMAN – VACILANDO TERRITORY BLUES

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J TILLMAN – VACILANDO TERRITORY BLUES

Some might be surprised to learn that Tillman—who joined Seattle sensations Fleet Foxes as drummer last spring, along the way enhancing the group's spine-tingling harmonies—is now five albums into a solo career stretching back to 2004. In a strange inversion of pop's customary bent for instantly generated mass culture, Tillman's output has, for the most part, inhabited a secret universe. Pressed on tiny labels in minuscule numbers—100 here, 150 there—and passed around like the holy grail among the knowing few, those discs nonetheless form a body of work heralding the arrival of a major songwriter. Carving out a darkly brooding persona with roots in Neil Young's early '70s output, Richard Buckner's elliptical Americana, Nick Drake balladry, and assorted, harder-to-pinpoint gospel, country, blues, and folk idioms, Tillman’s two most recent solo long-players—Cancer and Delirium (2007) and Minor Works (2006)—are packed with memorable songs. Often built upon the simplest, ingratiating musical maneuvers--like the little stair-step acoustic guitar on Minor Works' "Crooked Roof"--Tillman's songs rarely hew to the literal, instead deftly navigating allegory and alienation, the occasional revelation stacked against heaps of melancholy. On Vacilando (so named from the Spanish term, indicating a wanderer for whom the experience of travel is more important than the reaching of a destination), though, he strips away his tendency for over-production, resulting in a more focused, refined approach. Tillman's cavernous vocal range, all texture and nuance, is front and center; meanwhile, a wise-beyond-his-years lyrical depth that, one fathoms, springs from (or, more accurately, is a reaction to) his restrictive religious upbringing, results in pithy imagery, i.e., "Suffering doesn't know God's name (from "New Imperial Grand Blues") or, from the album's opening salvo, "All that you see, you have dominion/All you don't know, you are forbidden." An existentialist’s song cycle, Vacilando's grim, lonely songs reinforce each other with an impeccable internal logic, fashioning its own little world-weary universe, wherein less is more, simple guitar strums signal seismic shifts in mood, shadows bump into one another. Like Neil Young’s On the Beach or Jason Molina’s Songs:Ohia incarnation, it’s best heard late at night, alone, lights down low, one last bottle of wine in the wings. From its atmospheric, old-world opening, "All You See," chorale vocals over a barely audible guitar, the album initiates a haunting sweep. The baseline is austere: minimalist arrangements hinging on acoustic guitar, occasional keyboard flourishes, Tillman's sad, aching voice, the occasional wordless vocal passage. Elaboration is present when needed, like the forlorn banjo on "Barter Blues" or rolling drums on "Laborless Land," which has the timeless feel of an American Civil War ballad. It's the new High Lonesome. Tillman cradles the hushed aphorisms of "Firstborn" like a week-old baby. "Vessels," built around a deceptive guitar riff, features Tillman's most tender vocal turn, even as the apocalypse looms; brittle piano fills lend a slightly sardonic touch to the pitying “James Blues” a pre-WW2-style parlor blues. Penultimate track "Above All Men" represents an apotheosis of sorts, putting aside personal turmoil long enough to recognize simple blessings. The record's insistently bleak tone threatens to tilt into claustrophobia at times, but Tillman winningly subverts expectations. The striking full-band cut, “Steel on Steel,” with delicious French horn/pedal steel interplay and Fleet Fox Casey Wescott on keyboards, melds agonizing romantic heartbreak to an epiphany on life's ephemeral nature. It's a leftfield instant pop classic, Tillman winding his silkiest vocal around the song's glistening melody. "New Imperial Grand Blues," in contrast, is a pulsating rocker, a jarring peek into the Crazy Horse side of Tillman's brain. It’s a bone-rattling blues called “Master’s House”, however, that best embodies Tillman’s talent: “How easily the heart of man is tamed” he surmises, over the music, his quivering, floating tenor gaining a steady, stoic determination. It’s an explosive assessment, with implications reverberating into personal, spiritual, even geopolitical realms. Tillman’s own spirit, meanwhile, you suspect will be tough to quell. LUKE TORN Q&A: Josh Tillman Uncut: What's the key to getting such a rich, intimate, late-night sound in the studio? Josh Tillman: Providing obstructions is important. Parameters are more and more counterintuitive in the studio, but they're key as far as making something that sounds like a person in a room making music. Recording late at night helps, too. Uncut: "Steel on Steel" is just gorgeous, but a little atypical for you. JT: I started VTB being pretty drastically indifferent to the idea of it needing to sound like anything in particular. I hadn't ever recorded a song with other people that had been deliberately arranged and rehearsed outside the recording environment. I wanted some songs with a band that sounded like music instead of [just] tracks. Uncut: What are a couple of your favorite late-night, lights-down-low records? JT: Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator), Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Master and Everyone, Talk Talk, Sprit Of Eden, Low, Trust, Neil Young, Tonight's The Night LUKE TORN

Some might be surprised to learn that Tillman—who joined Seattle sensations Fleet Foxes as drummer last spring, along the way enhancing the group’s spine-tingling harmonies—is now five albums into a solo career stretching back to 2004.

In a strange inversion of pop’s customary bent for instantly generated mass culture, Tillman’s output has, for the most part, inhabited a secret universe. Pressed on tiny labels in minuscule numbers—100 here, 150 there—and passed around like the holy grail among the knowing few, those discs nonetheless form a body of work heralding the arrival of a major songwriter.

Carving out a darkly brooding persona with roots in Neil Young’s early ’70s output, Richard Buckner’s elliptical Americana, Nick Drake balladry, and assorted, harder-to-pinpoint gospel, country, blues, and folk idioms, Tillman’s two most recent solo long-players—Cancer and Delirium (2007) and Minor Works (2006)—are packed with memorable songs. Often built upon the simplest, ingratiating musical maneuvers–like the little stair-step acoustic guitar on Minor Works’ “Crooked Roof”–Tillman’s songs rarely hew to the literal, instead deftly navigating allegory and alienation, the occasional revelation stacked against heaps of melancholy.

On Vacilando (so named from the Spanish term, indicating a wanderer for whom the experience of travel is more important than the reaching of a destination), though, he strips away his tendency for over-production, resulting in a more focused, refined approach. Tillman’s cavernous vocal range, all texture and nuance, is front and center; meanwhile, a wise-beyond-his-years lyrical depth that, one fathoms, springs from (or, more accurately, is a reaction to) his restrictive religious upbringing, results in pithy imagery, i.e., “Suffering doesn’t know God’s name (from “New Imperial Grand Blues”) or, from the album’s opening salvo, “All that you see, you have dominion/All you don’t know, you are forbidden.”

An existentialist’s song cycle, Vacilando’s grim, lonely songs reinforce each other with an impeccable internal logic, fashioning its own little world-weary universe, wherein less is more, simple guitar strums signal seismic shifts in mood, shadows bump into one another. Like Neil Young’s On the Beach or Jason Molina’s Songs:Ohia incarnation, it’s best heard late at night, alone, lights down low, one last bottle of wine in the wings.

From its atmospheric, old-world opening, “All You See,” chorale vocals over a barely audible guitar, the album initiates a haunting sweep. The baseline is austere: minimalist arrangements hinging on acoustic guitar, occasional keyboard flourishes, Tillman’s sad, aching voice, the occasional wordless vocal passage. Elaboration is present when needed, like the forlorn banjo on “Barter Blues” or rolling drums on “Laborless Land,” which has the timeless feel of an American Civil War ballad. It’s the new High Lonesome.

Tillman cradles the hushed aphorisms of “Firstborn” like a week-old baby. “Vessels,” built around a deceptive guitar riff, features Tillman’s most tender vocal turn, even as the apocalypse looms; brittle piano fills lend a slightly sardonic touch to the pitying “James Blues” a pre-WW2-style parlor blues. Penultimate track “Above All Men” represents an apotheosis of sorts, putting aside personal turmoil long enough to recognize simple blessings.

The record’s insistently bleak tone threatens to tilt into claustrophobia at times, but Tillman winningly subverts expectations. The striking full-band cut, “Steel on Steel,” with delicious French horn/pedal steel interplay and Fleet Fox Casey Wescott on keyboards, melds agonizing romantic heartbreak to an epiphany on life’s ephemeral nature. It’s a leftfield instant pop classic, Tillman winding his silkiest vocal around the song’s glistening melody. “New Imperial Grand Blues,” in contrast, is a pulsating rocker, a jarring peek into the Crazy Horse side of Tillman’s brain.

It’s a bone-rattling blues called “Master’s House”, however, that best embodies Tillman’s talent: “How easily the heart of man is tamed” he surmises, over the music, his quivering, floating tenor gaining a steady, stoic determination. It’s an explosive assessment, with implications reverberating into personal, spiritual, even geopolitical realms. Tillman’s own spirit, meanwhile, you suspect will be tough to quell.

LUKE TORN

Q&A: Josh Tillman

Uncut: What’s the key to getting such a rich, intimate, late-night sound in the studio?

Josh Tillman: Providing obstructions is important. Parameters are more and more counterintuitive in the studio, but they’re key as far as making something that sounds like a person in a room making music. Recording late at night helps, too.

Uncut: “Steel on Steel” is just gorgeous, but a little atypical for you.

JT: I started VTB being pretty drastically indifferent to the idea of it needing to sound like anything in particular. I hadn’t ever recorded a song with other people that had been deliberately arranged and rehearsed outside the recording environment. I wanted some songs with a band that sounded like music instead of [just] tracks.

Uncut: What are a couple of your favorite late-night, lights-down-low records?

JT: Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator), Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Master and Everyone, Talk Talk, Sprit Of Eden, Low, Trust, Neil Young, Tonight’s The Night

LUKE TORN

THE KINKS – PICTURE BOOK

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THE KINKS – PICTURE BOOK

In 1994, I interviewed Ray Davies. He turned up at Wandsworth Park in a Nissan Micra, smoking a cigar. Then he flitted from bench to bench, talking about the tragicomic tale of The Kinks, his brother Dave (they communicated by fax, unable to meet without conflict), and a career spent writing “songs for waitresses and divorced people”. Davies didn’t seem offended that I asked no questions about The Kinks after 1977. His own autobiography, X-Ray, stopped even earlier, in 1975. Because it has more expansive parameters, few will sit blissfully through the entire contents of Picture Book, a 6-CD box set of 137 Kinks tracks spanning the years 1963–1994. Over those three decades, the brothers from Muswell Hill (and original bandmates Pete Quaife and Mick Avory) turned beat-pop on its head, introduced soap opera and vaudeville into rock’n’roll, and played out their last 15 years as arena-rockers in America. (Although, as I write, rumours are circulating that they have re-formed.) They were launched to 1964 audiences in fruity foxhunters’ garb, a fatuous idea then and now, but their impact on British music (from The Who to The Jam to Blur) would be anything but ephemeral. Many heavy metal musicians, furthermore, credit Dave Davies as the guitarist who pioneered their genre (“You Really Got Me”, “All Day And All Of The Night”), while The Kinks remain one of three bands – the others being The Who and The Pretty Things – who are synonymous with rock opera (Arthur, Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire). And that’s before they even reached 1970. The first disc (1963–66) of Picture Book traces the growth of an energetic Merseybeat-style foursome through their famed sequence of abrasive early hits (and a proposed-but-cancelled 45, “Don’t Ever Let Me Go”), to the first evidence that the 21-year-old Ray Davies is developing a more introspective side to his lyrics and music. “See My Friend”, melancholic and strange, is a clear turning-point for him, while another haunting 1965 number, “There Is A New World Opening For Me”, one of several demoes in this box, spookily anticipates the style (and sound) of Leonard Cohen. The Kinks didn’t soften overnight, as raunchy workouts like “Milk Cow Blues” and “Sittin’ On My Sofa” demonstrate, but they were getting there. Discs two (1966–68) and three (1968–71) will be the ones that captivate and vindicate most Kinks fans, even if they never (itals)quite(itals) corroborate the increasingly popular viewpoint that The Kinks were better than The Beatles. Both discs feature a mix of classic hits (“Waterloo Sunset”, “Days”, “Victoria”, “Lola”), lesser-known singles (“Mr Pleasant”, “God’s Children”), radio sessions, album tracks and unreleased songs (many of high quality) which would later be collected on The Great Lost Kinks Album (1973). The only blemishes are an awful, lo-fi, alternate version of “Dead End Street”, instead of the proper one, and no sign of either “Lazy Old Sun” or “Wonderboy”. Otherwise: magnificent. By taking an unfashionable route through the late ’60s (no psychedelia or Eastern mysticism; no screaming Anastasia or crossfire hurricanes), The Kinks risked alienation and loss of commercial ground, but ensured they’d be reappraised in future years as intrepid go-it-alone types, full of idiomatic priorities and Ealing spirit, happy to plonk down roots and observe unspoken traditions (“Autumn Almanac”), or create a poignant dialogue between the classes (“Two Sisters”, “Shangri-La”). The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which didn’t chart in 1968, celebrated childhood as a quintessence and England as a museum of glittering trophies, with a gusto that now seems radical, not parochial. And if nostalgia-plus-patriotism doesn’t seem a difficult balance for Ray Davies to get right, remember what happened when John Major tried it 15 years later. Warm beer? Long shadows on cricket grounds? Perhaps he should have slipped in a line about phenomenal cats. The Englishness of The Kinks was taken to almost self-negating extremes; it was as if Davies felt he needed to write songs about one mundane daily routine after another (brewing a pot of tea; smoking a fag) in order to make sense of the national psyche. Things got hopelessly out of hand on the sprawling Preservation in 1973–4, a satire/rock opera/music-hall folly that coincided with a serious depression (and suicide attempt) in Davies’s personal life. Luckily, The Kinks were going through a purple patch as musicians: their laidback, louche, country-rock grooving on the Muswell Hillbillies LP (1971) entirely suited the look-to-America horizons of Davies’s lyrics, and drummer Mick Avory’s lazy triplet entrance on “Here Come The People In Grey” is a model of just-so impudence. For all that, however, disc four (1971–77) of Picture Book betrays a shrewd compiler’s hand. Some albums that it visits were flimsy vehicles for high-falutin concepts, with clumsy storyboarding that suggested Davies’s powers were on the wane, but you might not guess it from these 19 selections, a few of which (“Celluloid Heroes”, “[A] Face In The Crowd”, “Sitting In My Hotel”) are pinnacles of his sad-smiling, ballad-writing art. Unfortunately, sitting in hotels, and life on the American freeway, were to make a bland FM travesty of this once delightfully eccentric group. Despite surviving the punk era, and winning a new Stateside fanbase with charm-free stodge-rock like Low Budget, it was, by any standards, a lamentable decline. The vast majority of disc five (1977–81) is like an endless flight on an alcohol-free aeroplane with a small child kicking the back of your seat. Disc six (1983–94) is a marginal improvement, once Ray stops writing in horrible clichés and Dave starts playing like Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, but it’s telling that the standout song of these 17 – “Living On A Thin Line”, from 1984’s Word Of Mouth – is a D. Davies composition. Picture Book, in the end, is simply too honest for its own good. “Look how splendid we were!” it boasts, “and see how turgid we became.” Thank heavens it’s sequenced in chronological order. DAVID CAVANAGH

In 1994, I interviewed Ray Davies. He turned up at Wandsworth Park in a Nissan Micra, smoking a cigar. Then he flitted from bench to bench, talking about the tragicomic tale of The Kinks, his brother Dave (they communicated by fax, unable to meet without conflict), and a career spent writing “songs for waitresses and divorced people”. Davies didn’t seem offended that I asked no questions about The Kinks after 1977. His own autobiography, X-Ray, stopped even earlier, in 1975.

Because it has more expansive parameters, few will sit blissfully through the entire contents of Picture Book, a 6-CD box set of 137 Kinks tracks spanning the years 1963–1994. Over those three decades, the brothers from Muswell Hill (and original bandmates Pete Quaife and Mick Avory) turned beat-pop on its head, introduced soap opera and vaudeville into rock’n’roll, and played out their last 15 years as arena-rockers in America. (Although, as I write, rumours are circulating that they have re-formed.)

They were launched to 1964 audiences in fruity foxhunters’ garb, a fatuous idea then and now, but their impact on British music (from The Who to The Jam to Blur) would be anything but ephemeral. Many heavy metal musicians, furthermore, credit Dave Davies as the guitarist who pioneered their genre (“You Really Got Me”, “All Day And All Of The Night”), while The Kinks remain one of three bands – the others being The Who and The Pretty Things – who are synonymous with rock opera (Arthur, Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire). And that’s before they even reached 1970.

The first disc (1963–66) of Picture Book traces the growth of an energetic Merseybeat-style foursome through their famed sequence of abrasive early hits (and a proposed-but-cancelled 45, “Don’t Ever Let Me Go”), to the first evidence that the 21-year-old Ray Davies is developing a more introspective side to his lyrics and music. “See My Friend”, melancholic and strange, is a clear turning-point for him, while another haunting 1965 number, “There Is A New World Opening For Me”, one of several demoes in this box, spookily anticipates the style (and sound) of Leonard Cohen. The Kinks didn’t soften overnight, as raunchy workouts like “Milk Cow Blues” and “Sittin’ On My Sofa” demonstrate, but they were getting there.

Discs two (1966–68) and three (1968–71) will be the ones that captivate and vindicate most Kinks fans, even if they never (itals)quite(itals) corroborate the increasingly popular viewpoint that The Kinks were better than The Beatles. Both discs feature a mix of classic hits (“Waterloo Sunset”, “Days”, “Victoria”, “Lola”), lesser-known singles (“Mr Pleasant”, “God’s Children”), radio sessions, album tracks and unreleased songs (many of high quality) which would later be collected on The Great Lost Kinks Album (1973). The only blemishes are an awful, lo-fi, alternate version of “Dead End Street”, instead of the proper one, and no sign of either “Lazy Old Sun” or “Wonderboy”. Otherwise: magnificent.

By taking an unfashionable route through the late ’60s (no psychedelia or Eastern mysticism; no screaming Anastasia or crossfire hurricanes), The Kinks risked alienation and loss of commercial ground, but ensured they’d be reappraised in future years as intrepid go-it-alone types, full of idiomatic priorities and Ealing spirit, happy to plonk down roots and observe unspoken traditions (“Autumn Almanac”), or create a poignant dialogue between the classes (“Two Sisters”, “Shangri-La”). The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which didn’t chart in 1968, celebrated childhood as a quintessence and England as a museum of glittering trophies, with a gusto that now seems radical, not parochial. And if nostalgia-plus-patriotism doesn’t seem a difficult balance for Ray Davies to get right, remember what happened when John Major tried it 15 years later. Warm beer? Long shadows on cricket grounds? Perhaps he should have slipped in a line about phenomenal cats.

The Englishness of The Kinks was taken to almost self-negating extremes; it was as if Davies felt he needed to write songs about one mundane daily routine after another (brewing a pot of tea; smoking a fag) in order to make sense of the national psyche. Things got hopelessly out of hand on the sprawling Preservation in 1973–4, a satire/rock opera/music-hall folly that coincided with a serious depression (and suicide attempt) in Davies’s personal life. Luckily, The Kinks were going through a purple patch as musicians: their laidback, louche, country-rock grooving on the Muswell Hillbillies LP (1971) entirely suited the look-to-America horizons of Davies’s lyrics, and drummer Mick Avory’s lazy triplet entrance on “Here Come The People In Grey” is a model of just-so impudence.

For all that, however, disc four (1971–77) of Picture Book betrays a shrewd compiler’s hand. Some albums that it visits were flimsy vehicles for high-falutin concepts, with clumsy storyboarding that suggested Davies’s powers were on the wane, but you might not guess it from these 19 selections, a few of which (“Celluloid Heroes”, “[A] Face In The Crowd”, “Sitting In My Hotel”) are pinnacles of his sad-smiling, ballad-writing art.

Unfortunately, sitting in hotels, and life on the American freeway, were to make a bland FM travesty of this once delightfully eccentric group. Despite surviving the punk era, and winning a new Stateside fanbase with charm-free stodge-rock like Low Budget, it was, by any standards, a lamentable decline. The vast majority of disc five (1977–81) is like an endless flight on an alcohol-free aeroplane with a small child kicking the back of your seat. Disc six (1983–94) is a marginal improvement, once Ray stops writing in horrible clichés and Dave starts playing like Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, but it’s telling that the standout song of these 17 – “Living On A Thin Line”, from 1984’s Word Of Mouth – is a D. Davies composition.

Picture Book, in the end, is simply too honest for its own good. “Look how splendid we were!” it boasts, “and see how turgid we became.” Thank heavens it’s sequenced in chronological order.

DAVID CAVANAGH

Neil Young Archives Details Revealed!

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Neil Young Archives Details Revealed!

New details on Neil Young's expansive The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972 box set, due for release early in 2009, have been revealed. According to a newly-released trailer, the box set, on 10-disc DVD or Blu-Ray, will contain 128 audio tracks, including 43 unreleased and 13 of these never heard before. The set, which comes with a 236-page hardback book, will also feature access to thousands of images and hours of video. One of the videos included is Journey Through The Past, Young's 1974 film never before released on DVD, which includes footage of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash And Young. An audio track of 'Aurora' by Young's high school band The Squires is also included. The previously-released Archives albums, Live At The Fillmore East and Live At Massey Hall 1971, will also be included in the box set, although it is currently believed that the newly-released Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 will not. Hand-written lyrics, letters, newspaper cuttings and memorabilia will also be available in the Archives, along with a detailed interactive timeline. For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk. Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

New details on Neil Young‘s expansive The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972 box set, due for release early in 2009, have been revealed.

According to a newly-released trailer, the box set, on 10-disc DVD or Blu-Ray, will contain 128 audio tracks, including 43 unreleased and 13 of these never heard before.

The set, which comes with a 236-page hardback book, will also feature access to thousands of images and hours of video.

One of the videos included is Journey Through The Past, Young‘s 1974 film never before released on DVD, which includes footage of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash And Young.

An audio track of ‘Aurora’ by Young‘s high school band The Squires is also included.

The previously-released Archives albums, Live At The Fillmore East and Live At Massey Hall 1971, will also be included in the box set, although it is currently believed that the newly-released Sugar Mountain – Live At Canterbury House 1968 will not.

Hand-written lyrics, letters, newspaper cuttings and memorabilia will also be available in the Archives, along with a detailed interactive timeline.

For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

Strokes Side Project Little Joy Plot UK Tour

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Strokes Side Project Little Joy Plot UK Tour
Little Joy, the new band put together by The Strokes' drummer Fab Moretti, have announced a handful of UK dates for the start of 2009. The group, also featuring Rodrigo Amarante and Binki Shapiro, will play six dates in England and Scotland in January next year. Little Joy's self-titled album, pro...

Little Joy, the new band put together by The Strokes‘ drummer Fab Moretti, have announced a handful of UK dates for the start of 2009.

The group, also featuring Rodrigo Amarante and Binki Shapiro, will play six dates in England and Scotland in January next year.

Little Joy‘s self-titled album, produced by Devendra Banhart collaborator Noah Georgeson, was released last month.

The band play:

Brighton Audio (January 15)

Sheffield Leadmill (16)

Glasgow Stereo (17)

Leeds Cockpit (19)

Manchester Academy 3 (20)

London Dingwalls (21)

For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

The Pretenders Announce First US Tour Since 2003

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The Pretenders Announce First US Tour Since 2003
The Pretenders have announced a massive US tour, their first since 2003. The group will kick off the tour in Albany, New York, on January 29 2009, touring until March 1 in Reno. The Pretenders released their ninth album "Break Up The Concrete" earlier this year. The band play: Albany, NY Palace ...

The Pretenders have announced a massive US tour, their first since 2003.

The group will kick off the tour in Albany, New York, on January 29 2009, touring until March 1 in Reno.

The Pretenders released their ninth album “Break Up The Concrete” earlier this year.

The band play:

Albany, NY Palace Theatre (January 29)

New York, NY Roseland Ballroom (30)

Atlantic City, NJ Borgata-Music Box (31)

Washington, DC 9:30 Club (February 2)

Boston, MA Orpheum Theatre (4)

Jim Thorpe, PA Penn’s Peak (5)

Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory (6)

Ledyard, CT Fox Theatre (7)

Ann Arbor, MI Michigan Theater (9)

Cleveland, OH House Of Blues (10)

Indianapolis, IN Murat Theatre (11)

Cincinnati, OH Taft Theatre (13)

Akron, OH Akron Civic Ctr Theatre (14)

Chicago, IL Riviera Theater (15)

Milwaukee, WI Northern Lights Theatre (17, 18)

Minneapolis, MN First Avenue (20)

Kansas City, MO Ameristar Casino (21)

Tulsa, OK Brady Theater (22)

Denver, CO Paramount Theatre (24)

Aspen, CO Belly Up Aspen (25)

Dallas, TX House Of Blues (27)

Houston, TX House Of Blues (28)

Austin, TX Stubbs (March 1)

Phoenix, AZ The Dodge Theater (4)

San Diego, CA House Of Blues (5)

Pala, CA Pala Casino-Cabaret Room (6)

Las Vegas, NV House Of Blues (7)

Anaheim, CA Grove (8)

Los Angeles, CA Wiltern (1)

San Francisco, CA Fillmore (13)

Reno, NV Silver Legacy Casino (14)

For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

Ask Graham Nash!

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Ask Graham Nash!
Graham Nash is taking part in UNCUT's monthly An Audience With... feature very soon and we're after your questions to put to him. So, is there anything you've ever wanted to ask Nash? About his memories of Manchester? Hanging in Laurel Canyon with Crosby and co? Or what it’s like being part of th...

Graham Nash is taking part in UNCUT‘s monthly An Audience With… feature very soon and we’re after your questions to put to him.

So, is there anything you’ve ever wanted to ask Nash? About his memories of Manchester? Hanging in Laurel Canyon with Crosby and co? Or what it’s like being part of the biggest supergroup in the world – CSNY?

Send your questions to: uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com by Monday, December 8.

Include your name and location. The best questions (and Nash‘s answers) will appear in a future edition of UNCUT magazine.

NEIL YOUNG – SUGAR MOUNTAIN: LIVE AT CANTERBURY HOUSE 1968

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NEIL YOUNG – SUGAR MOUNTAIN: LIVE AT CANTERBURY HOUSE 1968

On May 5, 1968, in Long Beach, California, Neil Young played his final show with Buffalo Springfield, a band he’d already left and re-joined at least twice. “I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do next,” he told me in 1989. This seemed unlikely. For someone with only a vague notion of what he was going to do, he moved decisively, quickly hiring Elliot Roberts as his manager. Roberts - on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in the American music business - had worked briefly with the Springfield earlier in their last disputatious year together, before being sacked by Neil for playing golf when he should have been attending to the group’s multiple whims. Roberts now signed his new client to Reprise, where apart from a short and unhappy liaison with Geffen Records, Young would remain for the rest of his career. That summer, Neil started work on his first solo album. The next step was to get Young in front of an audience, to test their reactions. In November, with the release of his debut solo album, Neil Young, now looming, two shows were booked, at Canterbury House, part of the University Of Michigan. The gigs were recorded on two-track tape, and exactly 40 years later finally see the light of the proverbial day as Sugar Mountain. I think if I’d been there on either night, my first reaction would have been something akin to shock. From what I knew of him at the time, Young was by reputation surly and remote, inclined towards fractious discord. In pictures, he had a tendency to look sullen, a moody loner. What a flattening surprise, then, to hear him here sounding so, well, goofy, I suppose you’d say. Ten of the 23 tracks listed on Sugar Mountain are spoken word introductions, rambling asides, random observations, often hilarious anecdotes delivered in a youthfully high-pitched voice that he at one point makes fun of himself. This awe-shucks folksiness is thoroughly disarming, as no doubt intended. Down the years, Young’s played this part to serial perfection – the straw-chewing backwoods philosopher, the bucolic savant, plain-speaking, daffy but wise, Jimmy Stewart on his way to Washington as Mr Deeds. “I never plan anything,” he says at one point, sounding baffled by his present circumstance in front all these people, some of them calling out for Buffalo Springfield songs he thought no one had even heard. But how true, you wonder, is this? Among the Buffalo Springfield songs for which he was perhaps best known were elaborate patchworks like 'Mr Soul', 'Expecting To Fly' and 'Broken Arrow' (all featured here). These were post-Pepper sonic collages, painstakingly assembled during long hours of over-dubbing in the studio, which was also how much of Neil Young had been produced, a process that had left him by his own admission disenchanted. For these Canterbury Hall shows, though, there clearly would be no attempt to replicate the unreleased album’s dense arrangements, orchestral flourishes and gospel backing vocals. This is just Neil, his voice and guitar and 13 songs, six from his Buffalo Springfield days, four from the forthcoming album, the unrecorded 'Sugar Mountain', an exquisite version of 'Birds', a song that would appear on After The Goldrush, and a brief snippet of Winterlude that barely merits a track listing of its own. In virtually every instance, these solo versions are preferable to the originals, performed with a singular confidence that suggests he may already have realised how dated when it came out aspects of Neil Young would sound, the stereo panning and overlaying of studio effects giving it an ornate fussiness that sat uneasily in the mutating musical climate of the late 60s. What’s striking here is how cleverly Young by now had grasped the fundamental changes in American music essayed already by Dylan and The Band on John Wesley Harding and Music From Big Pink. The summer of 1968 had seen the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. A season of riot had left cities on fire across the republic and Nixon was in the White House. Dark times were getting darker. It was as if the only legitimate response to more complicated times was a new kind of simplicity. And so the precocious psychedelic technician of those Springfield epics is calculatedly recast as a soulful solo voyager whose songs spoke without undue adornment of shared apprehensions, collective uncertainties. On songs like 'Sugar Mountain', 'If I Could Have Her Tonight' and 'I've Been Waiting For You', his vulnerability is something tangible and universal. On a quartet of great Springfield songs included here – 'Out Of My Mind', 'Mr Soul', 'Expecting To Fly', 'Broken Arrow' – he expresses among other things an uneasy discomfort with fame and its hollow trappings that places him on the side of the people he’s playing to, an unchallenged alliance. These songs and similarly intimate others like them were unquestionably personal. Young brilliantly, however, was able to make the ‘you’ of the songs not only the individual they initially were addressed to, but also the people who would shortly be buying his albums in their thousands and then millions. The ‘you’ in this instance being the plurality of his audience, spoken to as if in private conversation, with whom he shared mutual intimacies, feelings about love and loss in which his fans would increasingly hear aspects of themselves and what they were going through. One of the pivotal songs here, I think, is the surreal 'Last Trip To Tulsa', which as the closing track of Neil Young would be regarded by some as an aberration, too heavily indebted to Dylan, its solo acoustic setting at odds with the rest of the album. Now, of course, its impressionistic narrative – nightmarish, absurd, paranoid, awash with grim portent - can be heard as the precursor to masterpieces to come, like 'Ambulance Blues' or 'Thrasher' and even 'Ordinary People', that similarly took the pulse of the nation and its people. Sugar Mountain is a fascinating snapshot of Neil Young at a transitory moment in his long career, for which it also provides an indelible template. This is in many ways how he would sound for the next 40 years. At least, that is, when he wasn’t raging noisily with Crazy Horse, taking various detours into unadulterated country, winsome folk, synthesiser-pop, stylised rockabilly, big band R&B, grunge, electronic experimentalism, otherwise undermining convenient expectation or elsewhere meandering down the musical avenues that have at various times left fans baffled and at least one record company exasperated enough to want to sue him for not sounding enough like himself, when in fact for all this time he has sounded like no one at all but himself. ALLAN JONES

On May 5, 1968, in Long Beach, California, Neil Young played his final show with Buffalo Springfield, a band he’d already left and re-joined at least twice. “I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do next,” he told me in 1989. This seemed unlikely. For someone with only a vague notion of what he was going to do, he moved decisively, quickly hiring Elliot Roberts as his manager. Roberts – on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in the American music business – had worked briefly with the Springfield earlier in their last disputatious year together, before being sacked by Neil for playing golf when he should have been attending to the group’s multiple whims. Roberts now signed his new client to Reprise, where apart from a short and unhappy liaison with Geffen Records, Young would remain for the rest of his career. That summer, Neil started work on his first solo album.

The next step was to get Young in front of an audience, to test their reactions. In November, with the release of his debut solo album, Neil Young, now looming, two shows were booked, at Canterbury House, part of the University Of Michigan. The gigs were recorded on two-track tape, and exactly 40 years later finally see the light of the proverbial day as Sugar Mountain.

I think if I’d been there on either night, my first reaction would have been something akin to shock. From what I knew of him at the time, Young was by reputation surly and remote, inclined towards fractious discord. In pictures, he had a tendency to look sullen, a moody loner. What a flattening surprise, then, to hear him here sounding so, well, goofy, I suppose you’d say. Ten of the 23 tracks listed on Sugar Mountain are spoken word introductions, rambling asides, random observations, often hilarious anecdotes delivered in a youthfully high-pitched voice that he at one point makes fun of himself.

This awe-shucks folksiness is thoroughly disarming, as no doubt intended. Down the years, Young’s played this part to serial perfection – the straw-chewing backwoods philosopher, the bucolic savant, plain-speaking, daffy but wise, Jimmy Stewart on his way to Washington as Mr Deeds. “I never plan anything,” he says at one point, sounding baffled by his present circumstance in front all these people, some of them calling out for Buffalo Springfield songs he thought no one had even heard. But how true, you wonder, is this?

Among the Buffalo Springfield songs for which he was perhaps best known were elaborate patchworks like ‘Mr Soul’, ‘Expecting To Fly’ and ‘Broken Arrow’ (all featured here). These were post-Pepper sonic collages, painstakingly assembled during long hours of over-dubbing in the studio, which was also how much of Neil Young had been produced, a process that had left him by his own admission disenchanted. For these Canterbury Hall shows, though, there clearly would be no attempt to replicate the unreleased album’s dense arrangements, orchestral flourishes and gospel backing vocals.

This is just Neil, his voice and guitar and 13 songs, six from his Buffalo Springfield days, four from the forthcoming album, the unrecorded ‘Sugar Mountain’, an exquisite version of ‘Birds’, a song that would appear on After The Goldrush, and a brief snippet of Winterlude that barely merits a track listing of its own. In virtually every instance, these solo versions are preferable to the originals, performed with a singular confidence that suggests he may already have realised how dated when it came out aspects of Neil Young would sound, the stereo panning and overlaying of studio effects giving it an ornate fussiness that sat uneasily in the mutating musical climate of the late 60s.

What’s striking here is how cleverly Young by now had grasped the fundamental changes in American music essayed already by Dylan and The Band on John Wesley Harding and Music From Big Pink. The summer of 1968 had seen the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. A season of riot had left cities on fire across the republic and Nixon was in the White House. Dark times were getting darker. It was as if the only legitimate response to more complicated times was a new kind of simplicity. And so the precocious psychedelic technician of those Springfield epics is calculatedly recast as a soulful solo voyager whose songs spoke without undue adornment of shared apprehensions, collective uncertainties.

On songs like ‘Sugar Mountain’, ‘If I Could Have Her Tonight’ and ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’, his vulnerability is something tangible and universal. On a quartet of great Springfield songs included here – ‘Out Of My Mind’, ‘Mr Soul’, ‘Expecting To Fly’, ‘Broken Arrow’ – he expresses among other things an uneasy discomfort with fame and its hollow trappings that places him on the side of the people he’s playing to, an unchallenged alliance.

These songs and similarly intimate others like them were unquestionably personal. Young brilliantly, however, was able to make the ‘you’ of the songs not only the individual they initially were addressed to, but also the people who would shortly be buying his albums in their thousands and then millions. The ‘you’ in this instance being the plurality of his audience, spoken to as if in private conversation, with whom he shared mutual intimacies, feelings about love and loss in which his fans would increasingly hear aspects of themselves and what they were going through.

One of the pivotal songs here, I think, is the surreal ‘Last Trip To Tulsa’, which as the closing track of Neil Young would be regarded by some as an aberration, too heavily indebted to Dylan, its solo acoustic setting at odds with the rest of the album. Now, of course, its impressionistic narrative – nightmarish, absurd, paranoid, awash with grim portent – can be heard as the precursor to masterpieces to come, like ‘Ambulance Blues’ or ‘Thrasher’ and even ‘Ordinary People’, that similarly took the pulse of the nation and its people.

Sugar Mountain is a fascinating snapshot of Neil Young at a transitory moment in his long career, for which it also provides an indelible template. This is in many ways how he would sound for the next 40 years. At least, that is, when he wasn’t raging noisily with Crazy Horse, taking various detours into unadulterated country, winsome folk, synthesiser-pop, stylised rockabilly, big band R&B, grunge, electronic experimentalism, otherwise undermining convenient expectation or elsewhere meandering down the musical avenues that have at various times left fans baffled and at least one record company exasperated enough to want to sue him for not sounding enough like himself, when in fact for all this time he has sounded like no one at all but himself.

ALLAN JONES

THE REAL JIMMY PAGE – PART 2

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THE REAL JIMMY PAGE – PART 2

In the January issue of UNCUT, we celebrated the career of rock's greatest and most mysterious guitar hero through the first hand accounts of the people who know him best. Here at Uncut.co.uk, we'll be posting the full and unedited transcripts from those interviews, including words from Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Roy Harper, Steve Albini and more. Today… DONOVAN Page and John Paul Jones featured on many early recordings by the Zelig-like Scottish singer-songwriter, forming Zeppelin during sessions for 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'… UNCUT: When did you first become aware of Jimmy Page? DONOVAN: There was Big Jim and Little Jim - Big Jim Sullivan and little Jim Page. Big Jim was the no. 1 session guitarist at that time, the master of the riff, and I think he might have taken little Jim under his wing - maybe got him jobs. Maybe they'd say, “This is a job for Big Jim,” and he wouldn’t have time, he’d say, “Give it to little Jim.” It was a time when there were less producers, less session guys, and they were all pretty much jazz. I’m not sure if Jimmy was asked for specially. I didn't know him socially, because in those days sessions were three songs, three hours. He was long-legged, not-so-long-haired then, dark clothes, bohemian but quiet. Who would've thought this guy would become a giant - the great treasure of the Pagan Celtic Rock of Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. What can you tell us about the 1968 sessions for 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'? Many people have said over the years how important that session of John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and me - and maybe Bonham, who said he was there - doing 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' was. I was developing a story-telling thing, and I wanted power-chords, because I'd obviously heard Dave Davies and Hendrix, and knew Pete Townshend. Originally I wanted to give 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' to Hendrix, but he couldn't come in. So Mickie Most suggested Jimmy. [Musical director] John Cameron told him, “All you’ve got to do is listen to Donovan’s guitar. Although it’s acoustic, the way he’s hitting it is the way the power-chords would go.” Rather than plug in, I was hitting driving chords on the acoustic in such a way that they buzz. So I guess Page listened. Jimmy added power and pagan rock. To this day, everyone wants that sound. And John Paul Jones arranged it, he gave the shapes to those sounds. And of course we really should have stopped the guitar solo, because I had another verse to sing that George Harrison had given me. But when we heard this thing that Page was doing coming out, we just said, “Keep playing…” That might have been the first power-chord solo. Mickie Most's office in Oxford Street had an adjoining door to Peter Grant’s. Maybe the band heard how 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' went…and why are we doing sessions when we can do this? And they became the greatest Pagan British Rock Band. What about later? Did you stay in touch? I got to know Jimmy a little bit later [in the early 1980s], when he lived near Windsor, in the house he bought, twice, from Michael Caine. He was mourning, because Bonham had died. I said, “Is that it?” He said, “That’s it. No more Zep.” He took me down to a cottage. He said, “This is the Guitar Cottage. These are my guitars.” And they were all in little cases, maybe 300. I said, “Can I open one?’ He said, “Yeah.” I said, “It’s in tune, Jimmy!” He said, “They’re all in tune…” It was Spinal Tap. It felt like he wasn’t going to lift those guitars again? Jimmy was quieter than I remembered him. His interest in esoterica was interesting. He was a collector of rare Aleister Crowley books, and people spoke of it as black magic. But the performance with stringed instruments comes with a tradition of philosophy and literature, and I considered him very well-read, Jimmy, and one of the three great gunslingers of our generation on the guitar, with Beck and Clapton. What distinguished him was invention; the folk style, arpeggio; and, not so much jazz, that was more Beck. But the Celtic rock, which was not like Clapton or Beck. NICK HASTED Picture: Redferns.

In the January issue of UNCUT, we celebrated the career of rock’s greatest and most mysterious guitar hero through the first hand accounts of the people who know him best.

Here at Uncut.co.uk, we’ll be posting the full and unedited transcripts from those interviews, including words from Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Roy Harper, Steve Albini and more.

Today… DONOVAN

Page and John Paul Jones featured on many early recordings by the Zelig-like Scottish singer-songwriter, forming Zeppelin during sessions for ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’…

UNCUT: When did you first become aware of Jimmy Page?

DONOVAN: There was Big Jim and Little Jim – Big Jim Sullivan and little Jim Page. Big Jim was the no. 1 session guitarist at that time, the master of the riff, and I think he might have taken little Jim under his wing – maybe got him jobs. Maybe they’d say, “This is a job for Big Jim,” and he wouldn’t have time, he’d say, “Give it to little Jim.” It was a time when there were less producers, less session guys, and they were all pretty much jazz. I’m not sure if Jimmy was asked for specially. I didn’t know him socially, because in those days sessions were three songs, three hours. He was long-legged, not-so-long-haired then, dark clothes, bohemian but quiet. Who would’ve thought this guy would become a giant – the great treasure of the Pagan Celtic Rock of Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

What can you tell us about the 1968 sessions for ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’?

Many people have said over the years how important that session of John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and me – and maybe Bonham, who said he was there – doing ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ was. I was developing a story-telling thing, and I wanted power-chords, because I’d obviously heard Dave Davies and Hendrix, and knew Pete Townshend. Originally I wanted to give ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ to Hendrix, but he couldn’t come in. So Mickie Most suggested Jimmy. [Musical director] John Cameron told him, “All you’ve got to do is listen to Donovan’s guitar. Although it’s acoustic, the way he’s hitting it is the way the power-chords would go.” Rather than plug in, I was hitting driving chords on the acoustic in such a way that they buzz. So I guess Page listened. Jimmy added power and pagan rock. To this day, everyone wants that sound. And John Paul Jones arranged it, he gave the shapes to those sounds. And of course we really should have stopped the guitar solo, because I had another verse to sing that George Harrison had given me. But when we heard this thing that Page was doing coming out, we just said, “Keep playing…” That might have been the first power-chord solo. Mickie Most‘s office in Oxford Street had an adjoining door to Peter Grant’s. Maybe the band heard how ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ went…and why are we doing sessions when we can do this? And they became the greatest Pagan British Rock Band.

What about later? Did you stay in touch?

I got to know Jimmy a little bit later [in the early 1980s], when he lived near Windsor, in the house he bought, twice, from Michael Caine. He was mourning, because Bonham had died. I said, “Is that it?” He said, “That’s it. No more Zep.” He took me down to a cottage. He said, “This is the Guitar Cottage. These are my guitars.” And they were all in little cases, maybe 300. I said, “Can I open one?’ He said, “Yeah.” I said, “It’s in tune, Jimmy!” He said, “They’re all in tune…” It was Spinal Tap.

It felt like he wasn’t going to lift those guitars again?

Jimmy was quieter than I remembered him. His interest in esoterica was interesting. He was a collector of rare Aleister Crowley books, and people spoke of it as black magic. But the performance with stringed instruments comes with a tradition of philosophy and literature, and I considered him very well-read, Jimmy, and one of the three great gunslingers of our generation on the guitar, with Beck and Clapton. What distinguished him was invention; the folk style, arpeggio; and, not so much jazz, that was more Beck. But the Celtic rock, which was not like Clapton or Beck.

NICK HASTED

Picture: Redferns.

Foals Added To The Breeders’ ATP Festival Line-Up

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Foals Added To The Breeders’ ATP Festival Line-Up
Foals have been added to the line-up of May's All Tomorrow's Parties festival curated by The Breeders. The Oxford five-piece have been added alongside Zach Hill and The Soft Pack. They join a host of bands set to perform at Minehead's Butlins Holiday Park in Somerset over the weekend of May 15-17 ...

Foals have been added to the line-up of May’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by The Breeders.

The Oxford five-piece have been added alongside Zach Hill and The Soft Pack.

They join a host of bands set to perform at Minehead‘s Butlins Holiday Park in Somerset over the weekend of May 15-17 2009.

The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Bon Iver, Deerhunter and Gang Of Four are all set to play at the event.

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Folk Hero Odetta Critically Ill In Hospital

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Folk Hero Odetta Critically Ill In Hospital
Odetta, the folk singer who influenced Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, is in a critical condition in hospital after suffering - then recovering from - kidney failure. The 77-year-old, who Dylan mentions throughout the early part of his "Chronicles" book, is currently in New York's Lenox Hill Hospital. Ho...

Odetta, the folk singer who influenced Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, is in a critical condition in hospital after suffering – then recovering from – kidney failure.

The 77-year-old, who Dylan mentions throughout the early part of his “Chronicles” book, is currently in New York‘s Lenox Hill Hospital.

However, she hopes to be well enough to perform, as scheduled, at President-elect Barack Obama‘s inauguration in January 2009.

According to The Guardian, her manager, Doug Yeager, wrote to fans: “She has a big poster of Barack Obama taped on the wall across from her bed. Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama‘s inauguration and I believe that is the reason she is still alive.”

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Picture: PA Photos.

Billy Bragg Announces Welsh Tour To Remember Miners’ Strike

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Billy Bragg Announces Welsh Tour To Remember Miners’ Strike
Billy Bragg has announced a solo tour of Welsh venues next summer to remember the miners' strike of 1984 and 1985. The singer-songwriter will play nine dates in June 2009, kicking off with a special show at Blaenafon Workmen's Hall where he'll perform and discuss the strike and its impact on him. ...

Billy Bragg has announced a solo tour of Welsh venues next summer to remember the miners’ strike of 1984 and 1985.

The singer-songwriter will play nine dates in June 2009, kicking off with a special show at Blaenafon Workmen’s Hall where he’ll perform and discuss the strike and its impact on him.

Tickets for the gigs are on sale now.

Billy Bragg plays:

Blaenafon Workmen’s Hall (June 5)

Porthcawl Grand Pavillion (6)

Cardigan Theatr Mwldan (7)

Pontardawe Arts Centre (9)

Brecon Theatr Brycheiniog (10)

Caernarfon Galeri (11)

Wrexham William Aston Hall (12)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre (14)

Blackwood Miners Institute (15)

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Phil Manzanera To Play Solo Shows At Ronnie Scott’s

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Phil Manzanera To Play Solo Shows At Ronnie Scott’s
Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera has announced a three-night stint at London's legendary Ronnie Scott's. Manzanera will perform at the jazz club with his new backing band The Firebird V11 from February 9-11 2009. His group features This Heat's Charles Hayward on drums, Yaron Stavi on bass and p...

Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera has announced a three-night stint at London‘s legendary Ronnie Scott’s.

Manzanera will perform at the jazz club with his new backing band The Firebird V11 from February 9-11 2009.

His group features This Heat‘s Charles Hayward on drums, Yaron Stavi on bass and pianist Leszek Mozdzer – the four-piece released an album, Firebird V11, last month.

In a statement, Manzanera said: “The last time I was at Ronnie Scott’s was to see the great Charlie Mingus, I was accompanied by Robert Wyatt, and the performance left a lasting impression on me.

“I’m delighted to be returning, some 40 years later, to play on that hallowed stage and with such a great band of musicians.”

Tickets for the shows are available from the Ronnie Scott’s website or by calling the box office on 020 7439 0747.

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The Specials Announce UK 2009 Tour!

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The Specials Announce UK 2009 Tour!
The Specials' original line-up are reforming for a UK tour next year. The legendary Coventry group will play eight dates around England and Scotland, beginning in Newcastle on April 22. Formed in 1977, the band released two albums, "The Specials" and "More Specials", before splitting in 1981. The...

The Specials‘ original line-up are reforming for a UK tour next year.

The legendary Coventry group will play eight dates around England and Scotland, beginning in Newcastle on April 22.

Formed in 1977, the band released two albums, “The Specials” and “More Specials”, before splitting in 1981.

The reunited band will play:

Newcastle Academy (April 22)

Sheffield Academy (23)

Birmingham Academy (25, 26)

Glasgow Academy (28)

Manchester Apollo (May 3)

London Brixton Academy (6, 7)

Tickets for the gigs go on sale on December 11.

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Beirut: “March Of The Zapotec/Realpeople: Holland”

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A few weeks ago, I found myself guesting on a music show on Al-Jazeera, talking about, of all things, Calexico. The idea of musical fusion was very prominent in the programme, and the band’s German members talked about the affinities between German oompah and Mexican forms like Mariachi; heightend, if I remember rightly, by German brewmasters relocating to America. This story came back to me as I was listening to the new Beirut album the other day. For half of its duration, Zach Condon is augmented by a 19-piece funeral band (I know someone who sounded informed pooh-poohed this concept when I mentioned it last week, but who am I to doubt the sanctity of the press release?) from Teotitlan del Valle, apparently “a tiny weaver village” in Oaxaca. The music of this group, The Jimenez Band, actually seems closer to oompah than mariachi, with an endearingly drunken galumph to it. But what’s most striking is how Condon seems to be chasing this sound around the world, finding woozy, brassy parallels between French boulevard sways (that he exploited so brilliantly on “The Flying Club Cup”) and, especially, the Balkan brass of "Gulag Orkestar". So “March Of The Zapotec” begins with a brief Mexican parade, “El Zocalo”, before lumbering gracefully into “La Llorona”, an exceptional Condon song heavy on the tuba. As with the previous Beirut records, there’s a hugely self-conscious air to the project, but the idiosyncratic songwriting and the way it meshes with the local sonic environment always, against the odds, works beguilingly. Then, just when you think you’ve nailed Condon as an indie/oompah aesthete, however, he pulls something of a fast one. “March Of The Zapotec” isn’t so much an album so much as two EPs grafted together. And so once the six tracks of “March Of The Zapotec” itself are over, Condon moves on to “Realpeople: Holland”. Realpeople, it transpires, is the artist name he dallied with prior to Beirut (when he was about 14, presumably), and is very hard to confuse with those Oasis-affiliated cloggers The Real People, if I can gratuitously remind you of that horror for a moment. In fact, these five songs are ostensibly synthpop trinkets recorded in Condon’s bedroom, which compound the similarities – often obscured by the oompah, of course – between his voice and melodic style and those of Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields. “My Night With A Prostitute From Marseilles” is very much in this vein – though, as the title suggests, the actual song could have been written during the “Flying Club Cup” sessions. The closing “No Dice”, however, is straightforwardly bouncy instrumental electropop, not entirely appealing. In the interim, you can hear Condon struggling, entertainingly, to maintain the purity of his concept. The stand-out “Venice” might start like an old Warp “Artificial Intelligence” track from the mid-‘90s, burbling and nebulously nostalgic. But soon enough, a bunch of horns ebb in, and the song drifts into more familiar terrain; terrain compounded by the martial pitter pat and accordion of “The Concubine”. Even in his bedroom, working in miniature, it seems Condon can’t stop himself from swaggering.

A few weeks ago, I found myself guesting on a music show on Al-Jazeera, talking about, of all things, Calexico. The idea of musical fusion was very prominent in the programme, and the band’s German members talked about the affinities between German oompah and Mexican forms like Mariachi; heightend, if I remember rightly, by German brewmasters relocating to America.

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New Glastonbury Film To Premiere This Week

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New Glastonbury Film To Premiere This Week
Glastonbury's Left Field is set to be immortalised in a new film, set to premiere this Thursday (December 4). "Glastonbury Left Field 2008 - The Movie", which will be previewed at the Bread And Roses in south London, focuses on the biggest covered stage of the Somerset festival. Artists featuring ...

Glastonbury‘s Left Field is set to be immortalised in a new film, set to premiere this Thursday (December 4).

“Glastonbury Left Field 2008 – The Movie”, which will be previewed at the Bread And Roses in south London, focuses on the biggest covered stage of the Somerset festival.

Artists featuring in the film include British Sea Power, Billy Bragg, Alabama 3, The Beat, Dirty Pretty Things and Reverend And The Makers.

The stage is supported by a range of trade unions and organisations, including Unison.

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Raconteurs Release Bluegrass Version Of ‘Old Enough’ Today

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Raconteurs Release Bluegrass Version Of ‘Old Enough’ Today
The Raconteurs have released a new bluegrass version of "Old Enough" as a download today (December 2). Jack White and Brendan Benson's supergroup teamed up with country stars Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe to re-record the song, originally featured on the band's "Consolers Of The Lonely" album. "O...

The Raconteurs have released a new bluegrass version of “Old Enough” as a download today (December 2).

Jack White and Brendan Benson‘s supergroup teamed up with country stars Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe to re-record the song, originally featured on the band’s “Consolers Of The Lonely” album.

“Old Enough” is available to download from Amazon‘s US site now, and will head to other download sites next week.

The legendary Skaggs is a 13-time Grammy Award-winning mandolinist and multi-instrumentalist, while Monroe is a 22-year-old Nashville singer and songwriter.

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Bruce Springsteen Releases New Song On Amazon And MySpace

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Bruce Springsteen Releases New Song On Amazon And MySpace
Bruce Springsteen is releasing a song from his new album "Working On A Dream" online on Amazon and MySpace for a week from today (December 1). "My Lucky Day"'s video will also be streamed on the sites, along with two minutes of behind-the-scenes footage of Springsteen and the E Street Band. "Worki...

Bruce Springsteen is releasing a song from his new album “Working On A Dream” online on Amazon and MySpace for a week from today (December 1).

“My Lucky Day”‘s video will also be streamed on the sites, along with two minutes of behind-the-scenes footage of Springsteen and the E Street Band.

“Working On A Dream” is set for release on January 27 2009.

The track can be downloaded from Amazon and MySpace Music.

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Michael Eavis Reveals His Favourite Song Of All Time

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Michael Eavis Reveals His Favourite Song Of All Time
Michael Eavis has revealed that his favourite song of all time is Elvis Presley's "How Great Thou Art". Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the Glastonbury organiser explained that Presley's 1967 recording of the hymn would be the one song he'd take with him to a desert island. The son...

Michael Eavis has revealed that his favourite song of all time is Elvis Presley‘s “How Great Thou Art”.

Appearing on BBC Radio 4‘s Desert Island Discs, the Glastonbury organiser explained that Presley‘s 1967 recording of the hymn would be the one song he’d take with him to a desert island.

The song was the title track of the singer’s second gospel album.

Eavis also picked Bob Dylan‘s “I Threw It All Away”, The Smiths‘ “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”, T-Rex‘s “Children Of The Revolution” and The Grateful Dead‘s “Uncle John’s Band”.

The farmer also elected to take Peter Ackroyd‘s biography of William Blake and a harmonica with him to a desert island.

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The Police, Queen, Morricone Honoured At Grammy Hall Of Fame

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The Police, Queen, Morricone Honoured At Grammy Hall Of Fame

Music by The Police, Queen and Ennio Morricone has been entered into the Grammy Hall Of Fame. The Police's classic 1983 album "Synchronicity", Queen's 1977 single "We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You" and Morricone's soundtrack to 1966's "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" are all new entries into the Grammy Museum. Stevie Wonder's "For Once In My Life" will also join the collection, which now stands at 826 recordings. The new LA Live centre will host the Grammy Museum, which will feature an exhibition on the history of the inductees. For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk. Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

Music by The Police, Queen and Ennio Morricone has been entered into the Grammy Hall Of Fame.

The Police‘s classic 1983 album “Synchronicity”, Queen‘s 1977 single “We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You” and Morricone‘s soundtrack to 1966’s “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly” are all new entries into the Grammy Museum.

Stevie Wonder‘s “For Once In My Life” will also join the collection, which now stands at 826 recordings.

The new LA Live centre will host the Grammy Museum, which will feature an exhibition on the history of the inductees.

For more music news, head to Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut is the perfect Christmas treat. Subscribe and save up to 38%.

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