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James Yorkston: “When The Haar Rolls In”. Plus other stuff.

John Mulvey
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Just playing the new Love As Laughter album, as recommended by one of you on the albums of the year thus far thread, when Sam Jayne serendipitously sings, “Listen to the radio play ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’.” Serendipitous because I’ve just posted John Robinson’s excellent review of Neil You...

Just playing the new Love As Laughter album, as recommended by one of you on the albums of the year thus far thread, when Sam Jayne serendipitously sings, “Listen to the radio play ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’.” Serendipitous because I’ve just posted John Robinson’s excellent review of Neil Young’s Hop Farm jam yesterday over at the Live blog.

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Mad Men

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Mad Men

Few, if any, TV programmes have worked so meticulously to conjure such a precise intersection of content and form. Mad Men, set in a fictional NYC ad agency at the dawn of the ’60s, looks uncannily like an animation of a magazine advertising spread of the period: every outfit sharp, every hair slicked, every grin radiantly insincere, every human interaction a masque ball of ulterior motives conducted through a swirling silver mist of cigarette smoke. Created by Matthew Weiner, who worked as a writer and producer on later series of The Sopranos, Mad Men is clearly intended to fulfil the modern definition of quality drama. Like The Sopranos, The West Wing or The Wire, Mad Men is made on the assumption that it’s as likely to be watched in splurges on DVD as it is in weekly instalments on TV (in the UK, the BBC seemed to acknowledge as much by interring the series on BBC4 late on Sunday nights). As such, Mad Men represents part of an interesting cultural reversal – just as music, especially among younger consumers, is becoming unmoored from its collectible artefact, the album, so the previously transient, disposable medium of TV is being made more and more in the hope or expectation that people will want to own it. The question, then, is whether Mad Men warrants this sort of devotion. It seems, on the strength of its first season, unfortunately unlikely. Though Mad Men looks fabulous – in a laudable act of period verisimilitude, it’s shot on film – and though the writing, plotting, acting and characterisation are taut, there is an abysmal emptiness at the soul of the series. That’s due principally to the fact that the characters are corrupt, neurotic, self-absorbed, vicious and venal to an extent that makes it desperately difficult to care what happens to them. This does, of course, beg the obvious retort that Mad Men is set in an ad agency, after all, but it doesn’t encourage the passing viewer to invest 13 episodes’ worth of time in it. Which is frustrating, as there’s a great idea struggling beneath the viscous gloss on the surface. Mad Men is a rare reflection of the under-examined America that the ’60s counterculture revolted against, and which was never entirely vanquished: conservative, sexist, racist, boorish, smug, materialist, complacent (the sub-plot of the Sterling Cooper agency working on Richard Nixon’s doomed 1960 presidential run is a beautifully waspish touch). Central figure Donald Draper (Jon Hamm) – the Madison Avenue superstar whose implacable coolness conceals a secret life of infidelities and falsehoods – is one of the most unpleasant creatures ever floated as an anti-hero, rendered relatively bearable only by the utter ghastliness of his colleagues, especially predatory lech Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and unctuous would-be usurper Pete Campbell (an excellent, infuriating Vincent Kartheiser). Even the put-upon female characters fail to elicit sympathy, inhabiting perhaps too comfortably their largely decorative roles in the office. Intentionally or not, what Mad Men most often ends up provoking, as this snakepit of charmless, grasping, unhappy schemers festers and bickers, is idle reflection on which of today’s workaday mores and practices will be regarded as shockingly backward 40 years hence. An ad agency is an apposite setting for an exploration of the distance and the difference between appearance and reality. But, as is often the case with advertising itself, the disconnect between the two can leave the consumer feeling somewhat depressed and aggrieved. Mad Men has been applauded far and wide as a genuinely great TV show, but it’s difficult not to suspect that this is largely for no better reason than that it looks so much like a genuinely great TV show. But with a formidable rank of skeletons still closeted, pending emergence during the second season, due for broadcast later in 2008, this unremittingly bleak, weirdly seductive tragedy has time yet to prove itself. EXTRAS: Commentaries, featurettes. ANDREW MUELLER

Few, if any, TV programmes have worked so meticulously to conjure such a precise intersection of content and form. Mad Men, set in a fictional NYC ad agency at the dawn of the ’60s, looks uncannily like an animation of a magazine advertising spread of the period: every outfit sharp, every hair slicked, every grin radiantly insincere, every human interaction a masque ball of ulterior motives conducted through a swirling silver mist of cigarette smoke.

Created by Matthew Weiner, who worked as a writer and producer on later series of The Sopranos, Mad Men is clearly intended to fulfil the modern definition of quality drama. Like The Sopranos, The West Wing or The Wire, Mad Men is made on the assumption that it’s as likely to be watched in splurges on DVD as it is in weekly instalments on TV (in the UK, the BBC seemed to acknowledge as much by interring the series on BBC4 late on Sunday nights).

As such, Mad Men represents part of an interesting cultural reversal – just as music, especially among younger consumers, is becoming unmoored from its collectible artefact, the album, so the previously transient, disposable medium of TV is being made more and more in the hope or expectation that people will want to own it.

The question, then, is whether Mad Men warrants this sort of devotion. It seems, on the strength of its first season, unfortunately unlikely. Though Mad Men looks fabulous – in a laudable act of period verisimilitude, it’s shot on film – and though the writing, plotting, acting and characterisation are taut, there is an abysmal emptiness at the soul of the series.

That’s due principally to the fact that the characters are corrupt, neurotic, self-absorbed, vicious and venal to an extent that makes it desperately difficult to care what happens to them. This does, of course, beg the obvious retort that Mad Men is set in an ad agency, after all, but it doesn’t encourage the passing viewer to invest 13 episodes’ worth of time in it.

Which is frustrating, as there’s a great idea struggling beneath the viscous gloss on the surface. Mad Men is a rare reflection of the under-examined America that the ’60s counterculture revolted against, and which was never entirely vanquished: conservative, sexist, racist, boorish, smug, materialist, complacent (the sub-plot of the Sterling Cooper agency working on Richard Nixon’s doomed 1960 presidential run is a beautifully waspish touch).

Central figure Donald Draper (Jon Hamm) – the Madison Avenue superstar whose implacable coolness conceals a secret life of infidelities and falsehoods – is one of the most unpleasant creatures ever floated as an anti-hero, rendered relatively bearable only by the utter ghastliness of his colleagues, especially predatory lech Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and unctuous would-be usurper Pete Campbell (an excellent, infuriating Vincent Kartheiser). Even the put-upon female characters fail to elicit sympathy, inhabiting perhaps too comfortably their largely decorative roles in the office.

Intentionally or not, what Mad Men most often ends up provoking, as this snakepit of charmless, grasping, unhappy schemers festers and bickers, is idle reflection on which of today’s workaday mores and practices will be regarded as shockingly backward 40 years hence.

An ad agency is an apposite setting for an exploration of the distance and the difference between appearance and reality. But, as is often the case with advertising itself, the disconnect between the two can leave the consumer feeling somewhat depressed and aggrieved. Mad Men has been applauded far and wide as a genuinely great TV show, but it’s difficult not to suspect that this is largely for no better reason than that it looks so much like a genuinely great TV show. But with a formidable rank of skeletons still closeted, pending emergence during the second season, due for broadcast later in 2008, this unremittingly bleak, weirdly seductive tragedy has time yet to prove itself.

EXTRAS: Commentaries, featurettes.

ANDREW MUELLER

The Sex Pistols:There’ll Always Be An England

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The Sex Pistols:There’ll Always Be An England

Between November 1975 and January 1978, the Sex Pistols played approximately 130 gigs. Judging by the number of dewy-eyed forty- and fiftysomethings who claim to have witnessed them, each one must have taken place at a packed Wembley Stadium, instead of in front of half a dozen people on the London pub-rock toilet circuit. It’s this ongoing desire to say that you’ve seen the Pistols that accounts for their ability to sell out five nights at the Brixton Academy in November 2007, as documented on this DVD. Of course, this isn’t the first time the Pistols have reformed. Eleven years ago, you could have seen them playing at Finsbury Park in front of 30,000 anarcho-crusties and neo-Nazi Oi! scum who, like Japanese soldiers stranded on remote Pacific islands decades after VJ Day, refused to believe that the punk wars had ended. What’s refreshing about the Brixton residency is the change in atmosphere. No longer even pretending to be seditious, the Sex Pistols are now part of the social glue holding together our fragile notion of Englishness. As they march out onto the stage to the accompaniment of Vera Lynn’s “There’ll Always Be An England”, Union Jack knotted hankies and unapologetic beer bellies ahoy, it’s as gleefully patriotic as The Last Night Of The Proms, or an England football international. “Like you, we had a manager called McLaren,” announces Lydon. “He was also a cunt.” Julien Temple’s film details this good-natured idiocy wonderfully, spending as much screen time documenting the audience as the sub-heavy-metal histrionics of the band. Where Scorsese’s audience in Shine A Light seemed to be a specially invited crowd of glamorous young models, here Temple’s wandering cameras capture the sheer diversity of Pistols fans today – balding fortysomethings, curious wentysomethings, baffled teens, Japanese tourists, besuited accountants and ageing crusties. And the band finally seem comfortable with their archetypes – Lydon the pantomime dame, Paul Cook the Dickensian chimney sweep, Steve Jones the unpleasantly priapic career criminal and Glen Matlock the floppy-fringed art-school dropout. These indentities becomes clearer in the bonus DVD, a film called The Knowledge, where Cook, Jones and Matlock take us on a nostalgic tour around the west London of their childhood, revisiting old Pistols haunts like WWI veterans at Paschendale. Meanwhile Lydon narrates a lengthy bus journey across London, wistfully reporting how his beloved “shithole” has been gentrified, moaning about spectacular modern architecture like City Hall, the London Eye, the Gherkin and the Emirates Stadium (“I kind of agree with Prince Charles on this”). Intercut with some impressive (and often hilarious) vintage footage, you can see it as the third and final –and most good-natured – part of Temple’s trilogy of Sex Pistols films. EXTRAS: The Knowledge, an 80-minute film of the Pistols’ guide to London, also directed by Temple. JOHN LEWIS

Between November 1975 and January 1978, the Sex Pistols played approximately 130 gigs. Judging by the number of dewy-eyed forty- and fiftysomethings who claim to have witnessed them, each one must have taken place at a packed Wembley Stadium, instead of in front of half a dozen people on the London pub-rock toilet circuit. It’s this ongoing desire to say that you’ve seen the Pistols that accounts for their ability to sell out five nights at the Brixton Academy in November 2007, as documented on this DVD.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the Pistols have reformed. Eleven years ago, you could have seen them playing at Finsbury Park in front of 30,000 anarcho-crusties and neo-Nazi Oi! scum who, like Japanese soldiers stranded on remote Pacific islands decades after VJ Day, refused to believe that the punk wars had ended.

What’s refreshing about the Brixton residency is the change in atmosphere. No longer even pretending to be seditious, the Sex Pistols are now part of the social glue holding together our fragile notion of Englishness. As they march out onto the stage to the accompaniment of Vera Lynn’s “There’ll Always Be An England”, Union Jack knotted hankies and unapologetic beer bellies ahoy, it’s as gleefully patriotic as The Last Night Of The Proms, or an England football international. “Like you, we had a manager called McLaren,” announces Lydon. “He was also a cunt.”

Julien Temple’s film details this good-natured idiocy wonderfully, spending as much screen time documenting the audience as the sub-heavy-metal histrionics of the band. Where Scorsese’s audience in Shine A Light seemed to be a specially invited crowd of glamorous young models, here Temple’s wandering cameras capture the sheer diversity of Pistols fans today – balding fortysomethings, curious wentysomethings, baffled teens, Japanese tourists, besuited accountants and ageing crusties.

And the band finally seem comfortable with their archetypes – Lydon the pantomime dame, Paul Cook the Dickensian chimney sweep, Steve Jones the unpleasantly priapic career criminal and Glen Matlock the floppy-fringed art-school dropout.

These indentities becomes clearer in the bonus DVD, a film called The Knowledge, where Cook, Jones and Matlock take us on a nostalgic tour around the west London of their childhood, revisiting old Pistols haunts like WWI veterans at Paschendale. Meanwhile Lydon narrates a lengthy bus journey across London, wistfully reporting how his beloved “shithole” has been gentrified, moaning about spectacular modern architecture like City Hall, the London Eye, the Gherkin and the Emirates Stadium (“I kind of agree with Prince Charles on this”).

Intercut with some impressive (and often hilarious) vintage footage, you can see it as the third and final –and most good-natured – part of Temple’s trilogy of Sex Pistols films.

EXTRAS: The Knowledge, an 80-minute film

of the Pistols’ guide to London, also directed by Temple.

JOHN LEWIS

The Visitor

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The Visitor

DIR: THOMAS McCARTHY ST: RICHARD JENKINS, HAAZ SLEIMAN, HIAM ABBASS You might not know the name, but, unless you’ve avoided American movies and TV for the past 25 years, you will almost certainly recognise Richard Jenkins, a character actor par excellence who’s supplied uptight lawmen, crumbling husbands, distracted doctors and distant fathers in everything from There’s Something About Mary to Six Feet Under. The first great joy of Thomas McCarthy’s movie is that, after a career spent providing pitch-perfect support, it finally gives Jenkins, at 61, the lead, and he responds in a manner beyond most of the stars he has helped prop up. He plays Walter Vale, a lonely economics professor at a leafy Connecticut college. A widower, he has retreated from life, erecting the excuse of his work as a wall between himself and the world; but when work forces him back to New York City and the empty apartment he and his wife used to share, the world presents a surprise: a young couple living in his home, immigrants – Tarek (Sleiman), from Syria, and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab – conned into renting the place. Walter’s wife was a pianist, and love of music remains his one tenuous lifeline. As it happens, Tarek is a musician, too, a drummer, and the two gradually hit it off, forming an odd couple as the fascinated Walter takes lessons from the younger man. Just as their friendship is cemented, however, disaster: Tarek, an illegal, is arrested and faced with deportation. A familiar actor himself, it’s perhaps no surprise that McCarthy elicits uniformly exquisite performances, but he’s emerging as a writer-director of singular vision. As with his previous film, The Station Agent, here is a quiet comedy about healing, but the stakes have been upped. Set against post-9/11 Manhattan, it casts Jenkins as a man learning to loosen up and open up in a world intent on shutting itself off and shutting itself down. McCarthy is hardly subtle: his plot is basically “white American sees black Muslims are people, too”, yet he handles a strident subject in a gentle way. This is a modest miracle of a movie – and, in Jenkins, you won’t see a more perfectly modulated performance this year. DAMIEN LOVE

DIR: THOMAS McCARTHY

ST: RICHARD JENKINS, HAAZ SLEIMAN, HIAM ABBASS

You might not know the name, but, unless you’ve avoided American movies and TV for the past 25 years, you will almost certainly recognise Richard Jenkins, a character actor par excellence who’s supplied uptight lawmen, crumbling husbands, distracted doctors and distant fathers in everything from There’s Something About Mary to Six Feet Under.

The first great joy of Thomas McCarthy’s movie is that, after a career spent providing pitch-perfect support, it finally gives Jenkins, at 61, the lead, and he responds in a manner beyond most of the stars he has helped prop up.

He plays Walter Vale, a lonely economics professor at a leafy Connecticut college. A widower, he has retreated from life, erecting the excuse of his work as a wall between himself and the world; but when work forces him back to New York City and the empty apartment he and his wife used to share, the world presents a surprise: a young couple living in his home, immigrants – Tarek (Sleiman), from Syria, and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab – conned into renting the place.

Walter’s wife was a pianist, and love of music remains his one tenuous lifeline. As it happens, Tarek is a musician, too, a drummer, and the two gradually hit it off, forming an odd couple as the fascinated Walter takes lessons from the younger man. Just as their friendship is cemented, however, disaster: Tarek, an illegal, is arrested and faced with deportation.

A familiar actor himself, it’s perhaps no surprise that McCarthy elicits uniformly exquisite performances, but he’s emerging as a writer-director of singular vision. As with his previous film, The Station Agent, here is a quiet comedy about healing, but the stakes have been upped.

Set against post-9/11 Manhattan, it casts Jenkins as a man learning to loosen up and open up in a world intent on shutting itself off and shutting itself down. McCarthy is hardly subtle: his plot is basically “white American sees black Muslims are people, too”, yet he handles a strident subject in a gentle way. This is a modest miracle of a movie – and, in Jenkins, you won’t see a more perfectly modulated performance this year.

DAMIEN LOVE

Tom Waits Touts Tickets For Charity

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Tom Waits Touts Tickets For Charity
Toms Waits is raising money for charity by putting front-row tickets for his live shows up for auction, including dates in Dublin and Edinburgh. Five pairs of tickets are available for one date in each city on his Glitter & Doom tour. Tickets for all 15 concerts went on sale last month, with t...

Toms Waits is raising money for charity by putting front-row tickets for his live shows up for auction, including dates in Dublin and Edinburgh.

Five pairs of tickets are available for one date in each city on his Glitter & Doom tour.

Tickets for all 15 concerts went on sale last month, with the best seats in each house held back for series of online auctions.

“Some folks prefer to pay more. You get a great seat, and a good feeling for helping some needy folks,” says Waits. “It’s scalping for charity.”

Access to the auction is through www.ticketmaster.ie/tomwaits, which lists all the sales and when they close. The last auction finishes on July 25.

Tickets will be auctioned for the following concerts:

San Sebastian, Spain Auditorio Kursaal (July 12)

Barcelona Auditorium Forum (14, 15)

Milan Teatro Degli Arcimboldi (17,18,19)

Prague KCP (21, 22)

Paris Grand Rex Theatre (24,25)

Edinburgh Playhouse(27, 28)

Dublin Ratcellar Marquee in Phoenix Park (30, August 1)

Neil Young – The Hop Farm, July 6, 2008

John Mulvey
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His grey hair blows wildly in the breeze. His dishevelled clothing suggests an eccentric who’s been around a very long time. There’s a determined expression on his face which suggests he may be old, but he’s not going anywhere soon… But enough about the average Hop Farm punter – this, after all, is a day dominated by Neil Young. A new one day event, Hop Farm is geared towards the greyer pound, and is filled today with some quality traditional rock – there are fine sets from My Morning Jacket and Supergrass – but this is an event whose clientele have only one act in mind. Neil, here playing to those, so it seems from a brief straw poll, who were unable to make it to his recent UK shows, does not disappoint. Using a similar stage set to his indoor gigs – the massive klieg lights, a cigar store Indian, an enigmatic illuminated code of letters and numbers arrayed on the backdrop behind him – this is a show of very different character. Neil himself is wearing the now familiar paint-spattered Jackson Pollock suit, but the bemused eccentric tinkering with props that characterised those gigs is substituted for an unequivocal directness of approach. “Love And Only Love” opens a show which uses Neil’s heaviest guitar strafing to sandwich a set of softer, acoustic-based favourites. Early surprises include a terrific outing for first album classic “I’ve Been Waiting For You” (“I don’t play this very often. I…don’t know why…”), a comparatively terse “Spirit Road” (“A new song, but it sounds just like the last one”), and a fiery “Fuckin’Up”. Effectively, this clears the stage for the quieter section of the show. It’s here – with “Oh Lonesome Me”, a trip to the pipe organ for “Mother Earth”, then “Needle And The Damage Done”, “Heart Of Gold” and “Old Man”– that you’re reminded that alongside the occasionally Dylanesque performer who can throw bizarre setlist curveballs, there still exists the Neil Young who’s a master of judging the mood. This selection of evergreen (i)Harvest(i)-based material also showcases the schizophrenic nature of Young’s band. Twenty minutes later they will be embarking on more scarifying noise adventure; right now they are simply perfectly harmonious. If it’s a show that makes a huge success of this kind of juxtaposition, making it seem like the most natural thing in the world, the closing portion is interesting, if ever so slightly mystifying. After an epic voyage with “No Hidden Path”, a brief hiatus is followed by Neil’s take on The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. Undoubtedly, it’s a kind of headline-grabbing statement – apparently on occasion Neil would play the song through the PA before he came onstage in the USA in the 1970s – but to carp in a minor way, the turn-on-a-sixpence nature of the song seems ill-suited to Neil’s behemoth sound. Still, as a way of underlining a job well done, it’s about perfect. He’d love to turn you on. And, of course, he did. JOHN ROBINSON SETLIST Love And Only Love Hey Hey, My My Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere I've Been Waiting For You Spirit Road Fuckin' Up Oh, Lonesome Me Mother Earth The Needle And The Damage Done Unknown Legend Heart Of Gold Old Man Get Back To The Country Words No Hidden Path A Day In The Life

His grey hair blows wildly in the breeze. His dishevelled clothing suggests an eccentric who’s been around a very long time. There’s a determined expression on his face which suggests he may be old, but he’s not going anywhere soon…

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Cornbury Festival – July 5 & 6, 2008

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PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage. Blimey, it’s David Cameron. But hey, that’s the sort of festival Cornbury is. Last year Kate Moss was knocking around, the year before that Prince Harry, and only 10 minutes ago we were supping shoulder to shoulder with Jeremy Clarkson in the Pimms and Champers VIP bar. Billed - somewhat ironically as it turned out – as “The Complete Summer Weekend”, the Cornbury Festival takes place on the beautiful country estate of Lord and Lady Rotherwick near Charlbury in Oxfordshire; the sort of place where fallow deer graze peacefully under ancient giant oaks. Past line-ups have seen Amy Winnehouse, Blondie, David Gray, The Waterboys, Proclaimers and Joe Cocker perform and here’s how this year’s most family fun you can have in the Cotswolds shook down. BEST BITS: 1. Toots & The Maytals doing ‘Monkey Man’ as the sun did battle with the blackening sky and, sadly, lost. 2. The Bangles – that’s the Petersen sisters plus Susanna Hoffs – playing a perky ‘Going Down To Liverpool’ and ‘Eternal Flame’ – the latter a real lighters aloft moment. 3. Carbon/Silicon on the Second Stage, Mick Jones toothily grinning in the face of the driving rain as Tony James and co delivered a dapper ‘Why Do Men Fight’. 4. Paul Simon. Just Paul Simon. It was weird he was here, especially as Hugh Phillimore, the guys who runs the show, had originally tried to book ZZ Top! Anyway, the titchy half of the most successful duo of the 60s saw us all home in good humour on Saturday with a set smattered with solo hits like ‘Me & Julio’ and ‘Slip-Slidin’ Away’ plus S&G greats like ‘Mrs Robinson’. 5. 10cc. There’s only Graham Gouldman left from the original line-up but the set is still a jukebox of hits – ‘I’m Not In Love’, ‘Rubber Bullets’ and the exquisite ‘I’m Mandy, Fly Me’ – all immaculately played. 6. KT Tunstall – braved the elements which had, by Sunday evening, assumed the characteristics of Noah’s mythic flood, to put on a plucky and ecstatically received show. BUMMERS SO now we know where all the traditional Glastonbury weather went. STEVE SUTHERLAND

PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage.

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CORNBURY FESTIVAL

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PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage. Blimey, it’s David Cameron. But hey, that’s the sort of festival Cornbury is. Last year Kate Moss was knocking around, the year before that Prince Harry, and only 10 minutes ago we were supping shoulder to shoulder with Jeremy Clarkson in the Pimms and Champers VIP bar. Billed - somewhat ironically as it turned out – as “The Complete Summer Weekend”, the Cornbury Festival takes place on the beautiful country estate of Lord and Lady Rotherwick near Charlbury in Oxfordshire; the sort of place where fallow deer graze peacefully under ancient giant oaks. Past line-ups have seen Amy Winnehouse, Blondie, David Gray, The Waterboys, Proclaimers and Joe Cocker perform and here’s how this year’s most family fun you can have in the Cotswolds shook down. BEST BITS: 1. Toots & The Maytals doing ‘Monkey Man’ as the sun did battle with the blackening sky and, sadly, lost. 2. The Bangles – that’s the Petersen sisters plus Susanna Hoffs – playing a perky ‘Going Down To Liverpool’ and ‘Eternal Flame’ – the latter a real lighters aloft moment. 3. Carbon/Silicon on the Second Stage, Mick Jones toothily grinning in the face of the driving rain as Tony James and co delivered a dapper ‘Why Do Men Fight’. 4. Paul Simon. Just Paul Simon. It was weird he was here, especially as Hugh Phillimore, the guys who runs the show, had originally tried to book ZZ Top! Anyway, the titchy half of the most successful duo of the 60s saw us all home in good humour on Saturday with a set smattered with solo hits like ‘Me & Julio’ and ‘Slip-Slidin’ Away’ plus S&G greats like ‘Mrs Robinson’. 5. 10cc. There’s only Graham Gouldman left from the original line-up but the set is still a jukebox of hits – ‘I’m Not In Love’, ‘Rubber Bullets’ and the exquisite ‘I’m Mandy, Fly Me’ – all immaculately played. 6. KT Tunstall – braved the elements which had, by Sunday evening, assumed the characteristics of Noah’s mythic flood, to put on a plucky and ecstatically received show. BUMMERS SO now we know where all the traditional Glastonbury weather went. STEVE SUTHERLAND

PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage.

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Countdown to Latitude: Franz Ferdinand

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Franz Ferdinand, Glasgow’s most eminent art-college band turned international rock stars, close the main stage on the first night of Latitude. According to frontman Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand set out to prove that art-rock could involve "really, really catchy tunes that girls can dance to". ...

Franz Ferdinand, Glasgow’s most eminent art-college band turned international rock stars, close the main stage on the first night of Latitude. According to frontman Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand set out to prove that art-rock could involve “really, really catchy tunes that girls can dance to”.

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Countdown to Latitude: Just A Minute

Michael Bonner
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Previously, Radio 4 has hosted its arts magazine show, Loose Ends, from Latitude. Loose Ends returns this year, to the Radio 4 stage, along with satirical comedy The Now Show, Roger McGough's Poetry Please and current affairs programme, Broadcasting House. But surely the most impressive presence on the Radio 4 bill is the legendary panel game, Just A Minute. Now in its 41st year, the show – where contestants have to talk for a full minute without repetition, deviation or hesitation – will include Phill Jupitus and Ross Noble among the panelists, while the redoubtable Nicholas Parsons will, as ever, be in the chair. Who knows – maybe we’ll also see Parsons out and about at the festival, listening to the beatific harp noodlings of Joanna Newsom, enraptured by the sweaty punk blues of Grinderman or Julian Cope’s psychrock assault..? If you’ll indulge us, we’d even like to see Cope or Nick Cave on the Just A Minute panel. We can but dream…

Previously, Radio 4 has hosted its arts magazine show, Loose Ends, from Latitude. Loose Ends returns this year, to the Radio 4 stage, along with satirical comedy The Now Show, Roger McGough’s Poetry Please and current affairs programme, Broadcasting House. But surely the most impressive presence on the Radio 4 bill is the legendary panel game, Just A Minute.

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Black Mountain and Notwist Join Sub Pop Singles Club

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Black Mountain and Notwist Join Sub Pop Singles Club
Sub Pop, the Seattle label which signed Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney in the early ‘90s, have announced the re-launch of their singles club. Limited edition singles by Om, Notwist and Black Mountain will be released every month on special 7" vinyl. Black Lips, Unnatural Helpers, Tyvek, Arthu...

Sub Pop, the Seattle label which signed Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney in the early ‘90s, have announced the re-launch of their singles club.

Limited edition singles by Om, Notwist and Black Mountain will be released every month on special 7″ vinyl.

Black Lips, Unnatural Helpers, Tyvek, Arthur & Yu, Mika Miko and Blues Control have also been confirmed as fiuture releases.

Subscriptions are restricted to the first 1500 people who sign up and costs $75 within North America and $90 for international members.

See the Sub Pop website for more details

Fans Inspire The New Hold Steady Album

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Fans Inspire The New Hold Steady Album
The Hold Steady have revealed that their older fans were the inspiration behind their new album, Stay Positive. “In talking to them, we have found that no matter their ages, they are so much like us as people, that they seem at times an extension of the music,” said frontman Craig Finn. “A g...

The Hold Steady have revealed that their older fans were the inspiration behind their new album, Stay Positive.

“In talking to them, we have found that no matter their ages, they are so much like us as people, that they seem at times an extension of the music,” said frontman Craig Finn.

“A great American philosopher named D. Boon once said ‘Our band could be your life.’ I think that is true. But ‘Your Life could be Our Band’ is also a true statement.”

Stay Positive gets its UK release on July 14 and the band have a number of headline festival appearances this month.

The live dates are:

London O2 Wireless Festival July 6

Liverpool Summer Pops Festival (8)

Leeds The Irish Centre (10)

Newcastle Carling Academy 2 (11)

Scotland T In The Park Festival (12)

Countdown To Latitude: Simon Armitage

Michael Bonner
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If there’s anyone appearing on the Latitude bill this year who might legitimately be able to claim that poetry is the new rock’n’roll, then step forward Huddersfield’s finest, Simon Armitage. Anyone who’s read his brilliant memoir, Gig, will remember his often hilarious observations on life as a card-carrying Eighties’ indie fan, from The Wedding Present to The Smiths and beyond. His own, intermittent attempts to kick-start a music career resulted, finally, in launching his teenage fantasy band, The Scaremongers. Hopefully, during his performance in the Literary Arena, Armitage will regale us with some of his shrewd, witty observations on Dylan, Morrissey and – ahem – David Gedge, as well as some of his magnificent poetry. His recently published, earthy translation of Sir Gawain & The Green Knight is recommended, as is his own wry, amiable observational poetry, located somewhere between Morrissey and Alan Bennett.

If there’s anyone appearing on the Latitude bill this year who might legitimately be able to claim that poetry is the new rock’n’roll, then step forward Huddersfield’s finest, Simon Armitage.

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Madness Announce One Off Show

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Madness Announce One Off Show
Madness have announced an extra show in Manchester on December 18. The band plan to replicate their recent performances at London's Hackney Empire, where they played their new album 'The Liberty OF Norton Folgate' in its entirety, follwed by a set of their greatest hits. The Hackney shows feature...

Madness have announced an extra show in Manchester on December 18.

The band plan to replicate their recent performances at London’s Hackney Empire, where they played their new album ‘The Liberty OF Norton Folgate’ in its entirety, follwed by a set of their greatest hits.

The Hackney shows featured jugglers, ukelele playing chimney sweeps, pearly Kings and Queens, and had a full orchestra.

Split into 3 acts, Madness performed the major part of forthcoming album ‘The Liberty Of Norton Folgate’, topped off with a 40 minute classic singles set including ‘Baggy Trousers’, ‘Embarrassment’, ‘My Girl’ and ‘House Of Fun’.

The band performed new tracks ‘Bingo’, recent single ‘NW5’ and ‘Sugar and Spice’ during the second part of the show.

Suggs described his duet on ‘Out On The Town’ with guest vocalist Rhoda Dakar of Bodysnatchers, Special AKA, as “A dysfunctional Sonny and Cher.”

Lastly Madness played the 10 minute title track, ‘The Liberty Of Norton Folgate’ a stunning opus, classic Rise And Fall era Madness.

Madness played:

Overture

We Are London

Idiot Child

Bingo

NW5

On The Town

Overture II

MKII

Sugar And Spice

Dust Devil

Clerkenwell Polka

Forever Young

————

The Liberty OF Norton Folgate

————

One Step Beyond

Embarrassment

The Prince

House Of Fun

Baggy Trousers

Madness

Our House

It Must Be Love

My Girl

Night Boat To Cairo

For tickets see www.gigsandtours.com

CSNY Legend Adds Extra Tour Date

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CSNY Legend Adds Extra Tour Date
Stephen Stills has announced he will play an extra London date at Shepherds Bush Empire on October 20. Tickets for the additional gig will go onsale July 5. He will now play a total of eight dates, kicking off in Brighton on October 10. Last year Stills released a collection of demo versions from...

Stephen Stills has announced he will play an extra London date at Shepherds Bush Empire on October 20.

Tickets for the additional gig will go onsale July 5.

He will now play a total of eight dates, kicking off in Brighton on October 10.

Last year Stills released a collection of demo versions from a lost tape of a recording he made in 1968 called “Just Roll Tape” and embarked on an extensive US tour.

On his last tour Stills performed songs from throughout his four-decade career, including material from his most recent solo album, 2006’s “Man Alive!” and classics from his time with Crosby, Stills & Nash, CSN&Y, The Buffalo Springfield and Manassas.

The tour dates are:

Brighton Centre (October 10)

London Shepherds Bush Empire (11)

Manchester Apollo (13)

Birmingham Symphony Hall (15)

Newcastle City Hall (16)

Sheffield City Hall (18)

Glasgow Clyde Auditorium (19)

London Bush Empire (20)

Tickets are available from www.bookingsdirect.com or by calling 0870 735 5000.

The 26th Uncut Playlist Of 2008

John Mulvey
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Thanks for all your half-year Top Tens; some interesting choices there, as well as The Charlatans. Keep them coming, and I’ll do some kind of dark mathematics and rustle up a collective Wild Mercury Sound chart next week. In the meantime, here’s this week’s office playlist. Can I just draw your attention to the Suarasama album, “Fajar Di Atas Awan”, which is quite the best thing I’ve heard this week? It’s a reissue, on Drag City, of a Sumatran record from 1998. I’ll write about it more soon, but maybe a few of you will be tantalised by the references used by the label: “Sandy Bull, John Fahey, the Radha Krsna Temple, the collaborations of Ravi Shankar and Andre Previn, even our own Ghost and Six Organs Of Admittance.” Amazingly beautiful record. And some of these other ones are pretty good, too. . . 1 Homegas – Homegas (Takoma) 2 Plush – Take A Chance (Candlewick Lake) 3 Telepathe – Devil’s Trident (Merok) 4 Derek & The Dominos – Tell The Truth (Polydor) 5 Status Quo – Dog Of Two Head (Pye) 6 Josephine Foster – This Coming Gladness (Bo’Weavil) 7 The Waterboys – Room To Roam (Collector’s Edition) (EMI) 8 Giant Sand _ proVisions (Yep Roc) 9 Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh - Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh (Drag City) 10 Suarasama – Fajar Di Atas Awan (Drag City) 11 Various Artists – Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul & Calypso Crossover 1969-1979 (Strut) 12 Sic Alps – US Ez (Siltbreeze) 13 James Yorkston – When The Haar Rolls In (Domino) 14 Jim O’Rourke – Tamper (Drag City) 15 David Werner – Whizz Kid (RCA) 16 Ponytail – Ice Cream Spiritual (We Are Free) 17 Eat Skull – Sick To Death (Siltbreeze) 18 Mystery Record Borrowed From NME 19 David Vandervelde – Waiting For The Sunrise (Secretly Canadian) 20 Calexico – Carried To Dust (City Slang)

Thanks for all your half-year Top Tens; some interesting choices there, as well as The Charlatans. Keep them coming, and I’ll do some kind of dark mathematics and rustle up a collective Wild Mercury Sound chart next week.

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More Additions to Latitude: Micah P Hinson

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More Additions to Latitude: Micah P Hinson
Latitude Festival have announced yet more additions to the amazing lineup, starting with Texan singer-songwriter Micah P. Hinson! These New Puritans and Team Waterpolo will play the main Obelisk stage and Malcom Middleton and The Shortwave Set have been added to the Sunrise Arena. This will be one...

Latitude Festival have announced yet more additions to the amazing lineup, starting with Texan singer-songwriter Micah P. Hinson!

These New Puritans and Team Waterpolo will play the main Obelisk stage and Malcom Middleton and The Shortwave Set have been added to the Sunrise Arena.

This will be one of the first chances to see Hinson premiere songs from his new album The Red Empire Orchestra, the other being Club Uncut on July 14.

Other additions to the Uncut Arena include Beautiful South‘s Paul Heaton, Patrick Watson, Noah And The Whale, Captain and Those Dancing Days.

The announcement comes under two weeks before the festivities kick off at Henham Park, Suffolk on July 17.

Uncut are profiling our favourite artists appearing this year on the Latitude blog. Read our Countdown to Latitude!

For more information and the full lineup see the Latitude festival website.

Music Arena Additions:

Obelisk Arena

These New Puritans

Team Waterpolo

Uncut Arena

Micah P. Hinson

Patrick Watson

Captain

Paul Heaton

Noah And The Whale

Those Dancing Days

Sunrise Arena

Natty

Malcolm Middleton

Punch Brothers

The Shortwave Set

Gary Go

Soko

The Little Ones

Yacht

Countdown to Latitude: British Sea Power

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British Sea Power have a reputation as a band who like to punch above their weight: Rough Trade signed them on the strength of a single gig, their 2003 debut album, The Decline of British Sea Power, shifted 60,000 copies through word of mouth, and they once avoided interviews by issuing journalist...

nullBritish Sea Power have a reputation as a band who like to punch above their weight: Rough Trade signed them on the strength of a single gig, their 2003 debut album, The Decline of British Sea Power, shifted 60,000 copies through word of mouth, and they once avoided interviews by issuing journalists with grid references ‘directing’ them to where they should meet. There will undoubtedly be a contingent of their devoted fans, complete with a sea of waving leafy branches, when they play the main Obelisk stage on Friday at Latitude.

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Highway To Hell Tops Funeral Tunes Down Under

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Highway To Hell Tops Funeral Tunes Down Under
AC/DC's Highway to Hell is becoming one of the most requested funeral tunes in Australia, reports the Daily Telegraph. Leading the funeral chart is Frank Sinatra's classic, My Way followed by Louis Armstrong's version of Wonderful World. Highway to Hell, which includes the line: "Going down, part...

AC/DC‘s Highway to Hell is becoming one of the most requested funeral tunes in Australia, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Leading the funeral chart is Frank Sinatra‘s classic, My Way followed by Louis Armstrong‘s version of Wonderful World.

Highway to Hell, which includes the line: “Going down, party time; My friends are gonna be there too”, is just outside the top ten, with Led Zeppelin‘s Stairway to Heaven.

AC/DC confirmed they have finished recording a new album with producer Brendan O’Brien and audio engineer Mike Fraser are currently mixing it for a late 2008 release.

Jim O’Rourke: “Tamper” and “Mimidokodesuka”

John Mulvey
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As I mentioned the other day, there seems to be a covert return to the musical fray from Jim O’Rourke afoot. From being everywhere, not least in Sonic Youth, a few years ago, O’Rourke appeared to “retire” from music two or three years ago. Now, it transpires, the great man has been “wri...

As I mentioned the other day, there seems to be a covert return to the musical fray from Jim O’Rourke afoot. From being everywhere, not least in Sonic Youth, a few years ago, O’Rourke appeared to “retire” from music two or three years ago.

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