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Iron Man – Uncut’s First Review!

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Iron Man – Uncut’s First Review!

Directed by JON FAVREAU Starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR, GWYNETH PALTROW, JEFF BRIDGES, TERRENCE HOWARD A glance at those involved - that swinging actor-turned-director, a smart cast with a light, ironic touch - leads you to hope this adaptation of the travails of the Marvel super-hero might be a knowing and exciting addition to the blockbuster canon, like Christopher Nolan's reinvention of Batman. It nearly is. But not quite. Somewhere in its narrative arc (there's the sense a committee of re-writers has been involved) it loses sight of what it's trying to be. CGI crowd-pleaser or hip, winking, one-liner fest? Solid franchise opener or comedic one-off allowing Robert Downey Jr to shine? It's a bit of both and yet neither. A cracking first hour lapses into a noisy mish-mash of Transformers and RoboCop, and the generic finale doesn't even cut it in terms of pure, budget-burning spectacle. That said, there are many splendid moments. Iron Man's genesis is compelling. Billionaire arms magnate Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is a shallow, womanising, wisecracking, egotist. Naturally, Downey front-loads him with charm and wit. Kidnapped by terrorists in the Middle East, told to build them a WMD, he escapes by inventing a bulletproof suit. Which flies. Back in the USA he renounces warfare and becomes a maverick force for good. This displeases business partner Stane (Bridges, unrecognisable with bald pate and evil Lex Luthor cackle) and wins the admiration of his Girl Friday, "Pepper" Potts (Paltrow, bafflingly electing to play Lois Lane in the manner of Nicola from Girls Aloud). The sky-borne duels of the deafening climax rather undermine the shrewd, often very funny set-up and the initially deft characterisation. There's enough here, though, to suggest that now the obligatory rockets have been sent up, a sequel might focus on Iron Man's brain, not bulk. CHRIS ROBERTS

Directed by JON FAVREAU

Starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR, GWYNETH PALTROW, JEFF BRIDGES, TERRENCE HOWARD

A glance at those involved – that swinging actor-turned-director, a smart cast with a light, ironic touch – leads you to hope this adaptation of the travails of the Marvel super-hero might be a knowing and exciting addition to the blockbuster canon, like Christopher Nolan‘s reinvention of Batman. It nearly is. But not quite. Somewhere in its narrative arc (there’s the sense a committee of re-writers has been involved) it loses sight of what it’s trying to be. CGI crowd-pleaser or hip, winking, one-liner fest? Solid franchise opener or comedic one-off allowing Robert Downey Jr to shine? It’s a bit of both and yet neither. A cracking first hour lapses into a noisy mish-mash of Transformers and RoboCop, and the generic finale doesn’t even cut it in terms of pure, budget-burning spectacle.

That said, there are many splendid moments. Iron Man‘s genesis is compelling. Billionaire arms magnate Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is a shallow, womanising, wisecracking, egotist. Naturally, Downey front-loads him with charm and wit. Kidnapped by terrorists in the Middle East, told to build them a WMD, he escapes by inventing a bulletproof suit. Which flies. Back in the USA he renounces warfare and becomes a maverick force for good. This displeases business partner Stane (Bridges, unrecognisable with bald pate and evil Lex Luthor cackle) and wins the admiration of his Girl Friday, “Pepper” Potts (Paltrow, bafflingly electing to play Lois Lane in the manner of Nicola from Girls Aloud).

The sky-borne duels of the deafening climax rather undermine the shrewd, often very funny set-up and the initially deft characterisation. There’s enough here, though, to suggest that now the obligatory rockets have been sent up, a sequel might focus on Iron Man’s brain, not bulk.

CHRIS ROBERTS

Roger Waters’ Inflatable Coachella Pig Is Recovered

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Roger Waters’ Inflatable Coachella Pig Is Recovered

Former Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, has been informed that the 'flying' inflatable pig, used at his show at Coachella music festival, but which floated away during Sunday's (April 27) gig, has been found, in pieces, on a California roadside today (April 30). Organisers of the Coachella music festival had offered a reward of $10,000 and lifetime passes to the annual music bash if anybody found the missing inflatable. The pig bore the image of a ticked ballot box for US presidential hopeful Barack Obama and the slogans "fear builds walls" and "don't be led to the slaughter" and was flown, tethered with ropes to the ground, during Waters' version of the Pink Floyd track "Pigs". Two families have found the tattered remains of the popped pig, according to BBC News, and have decided to split the reward money and four lifetime passes to the festival.

Former Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, has been informed that the ‘flying’ inflatable pig, used at his show at Coachella music festival, but which floated away during Sunday’s (April 27) gig, has been found, in pieces, on a California roadside today (April 30).

Organisers of the Coachella music festival had offered a reward of $10,000 and lifetime passes to the annual music bash if anybody found the missing inflatable.

The pig bore the image of a ticked ballot box for US presidential hopeful Barack Obama and the slogans “fear builds walls” and “don’t be led to the slaughter” and was flown, tethered with ropes to the ground, during Waters’ version of the Pink Floyd track “Pigs”.

Two families have found the tattered remains of the popped pig, according to BBC News, and have decided to split the reward money and four lifetime passes to the festival.

Kylie Announces Mammoth UK Tour

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Kylie Announces Mammoth UK Tour
Kylie Minogue has announced details of her new live tour, and has revealed that she plans to perform 20 arena dates in the UK alone. The KylieX2008 tour kicks of in Paris on May 6, the day after her new single "In My Arms" is released and is reportedly set to cost £10 million to stage. The press s...

Kylie Minogue has announced details of her new live tour, and has revealed that she plans to perform 20 arena dates in the UK alone.

The KylieX2008 tour kicks of in Paris on May 6, the day after her new single “In My Arms” is released and is reportedly set to cost £10 million to stage. The press statement claims it will be the pop princess’ “greatest tour ever”

The singer’s tour will visit several countries for the first time, including Greece, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Luxembourg, Russia, Latvia and Spain.

Minogue’s UK dates start at Glasgow SECC on July 5, followed with six nights at Manchester MEN, four nights at Newcastle Metro Radio Arena and seven nights at London’s O2 Arena, finishing up on August 4.

Kylie’s UK dates are as follows:

Glasgow SECC (July 5,8,9)

Manchester Evening News Arena (11,12,14,15,17,18)

Newcastle Metro Radio Arena (20,21,23,24)

London O2 Arena (26,27,29,30, August 1,2,4)

Conor Oberst To Join Mercury Rev and AMC At End Of The Road

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Conor Oberst To Join Mercury Rev and AMC At End Of The Road
Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst has today (April 30) been confirmed to play the End Of The Road festival, which takes place in Dorset this September. Other new additions to the line-up include Lambchop's Kurt Wagner performing solo, Baby Dee, Dead Meadow and Robyn Hitchcock who returns after playing with...

Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst has today (April 30) been confirmed to play the End Of The Road festival, which takes place in Dorset this September.

Other new additions to the line-up include Lambchop‘s Kurt Wagner performing solo, Baby Dee, Dead Meadow and Robyn Hitchcock who returns after playing with Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones at last year’s EOTR bash.

As previously announced, End Of The Road will see headline performances from American Music Club and a UK exclusive festival performance from Mercury Rev.

Other Uncut-friendly highlights include Calexico, Sun Kil Moon, Low and the Dirty Three.

The intimate award-winning festival (Best new festival in 2006, UK Festival Awards) has a maximum capacity of 5000 and takes place at Larmer Tree Gardens from September 12 – 14.

Tickets and more information is available from the EOTR festival website here:www.endoftheroadfestival.com

The line-up confirmed so far is:

Mercury Rev

American Music Clulb

Calexico

Two Gallants

Micah P Hinson

Mountain Goats

Sun Kil Moon / Mark Kozeles

Jeffrey Lewis

Jason Molina

A Hawk And A Hacksaw

Bob Log III

The Wave Pictures

Woodpigeon

Friska Viljor

Akron/Family

Kimya Dawson

Darren Hayman (Darren and Jack Play Hefner Songs)

FM Belfast

Laura Marling

Devon Sproule

Angelo Spencer

Kelley Stoltz

Low

Dirty Three

British Sea Power

Billy Childish

Absentee

Baby Dee

Bowerbirds

Clare and the Reasons

Dead Meadow

El Guincho

Kurt Wagner

Miracle Fortress

Pyramids

Robyn Hitchcock

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Sons of Noel and Adrian

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Americana Album of the Month – Review Here!

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Americana Album of the Month – Review Here!
Uncut.co.uk publishes a weekly selection of music reviews; including new, reissued and compilation albums. Find out about the best here, by clicking on the album titles below. All of our reviews feature a 'submit your own review' function - we would love to hear about what you've heard lately. The...

Uncut.co.uk publishes a weekly selection of music reviews; including new, reissued and compilation albums. Find out about the best here, by clicking on the album titles below.

All of our reviews feature a ‘submit your own review’ function – we would love to hear about what you’ve heard lately.

These albums are all set for release next week (May 5):

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Pilgrim’s Road – 4* Uncut’s Americana Album of the Month is the opulent seventh LP from Robert Fisher’s ever-evolving collective. Check out the Uncut review here.

Fisher is about to embark on the Pilgrim’s Orchestra tour in the UK, featuring Jackie Leven and Malcolm Lindsay – more details available by clicking here.

Otis Redding – Otis Blue (Collector’s Edition) – 5* Sixties Southern Soul brought to perfection, repackaged in multi-format glory.

T Bone Burnett – Tooth of Crime 3* Grammy-laden songwriter’s much-delayed theatrical soundtrack.

No Age – Nouns 4* – What happens when the punk rock of The Misfits and Black Flag meets the hissy lo-fi of Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted and the ecstatic throb of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything?

Plus here are some of UNCUT’s recommended new releases from the past few weeks – check out these albums if you haven’t already:

The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age of the Understatement – 4* It’s finally here – Arctic Monkeys and Rascals’ Miles Kane’s project is a lush affair. Check out Uncut’s review of the current UK album’s chart number one record here.

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Sunday At Devil Dirt – 4* The follow up to the pair’s debut collaboration Ballad of the Broken Seas, sees the moody return of the Sonny & Cher of grunge. Check out the Uncut review here.

Madonna – Hard Candy – 3* Back to bubblegum basics for the Material Girl – featuring Justin Timberlake, Timbaland and The Neptunes.

Portishead – Third 5* – Magnificent return and reinvention from the Bristol three + indepth Q&A with Geoff Barrow.

The Breeders – Mountain Battles 4* – The Breeders return with only their fourth album in 18 years but Kim and Kelley Deal remain defiantly nonchalant – check out our review here, includes a Q&A with Kim Deal.

The Fall – Imperial Wax Solvent 4* – Mark E Smith returns triumphantly with another new line-up.

The Tindersticks – The Hungry Saw 3* – Resilient mope-rockers’ seventh album, after a five year absence sees Stuart Staples in a chirpier mood.

Robert Forster – The Evangelist 4*- Go-Between mourns his lost partner Grant McLennan + review includes an Uncut Q&A with Robert Forster.

For more reviews from the 3000+ UNCUT archive – check out: www.www.uncut.co.uk/music/reviews.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Pilgrim Road

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Pilgrim Road

Longtime Willard Grant fans may have found their last album, 2006’s Let It Roll, something of a shock. Out went much of the artful gothic-folk they’d been distilling since their early days in Boston in the mid-‘90s. In came loud guitars, feedback and nine-minute rock epics. In that context, Pilgrim Road sounds like the belated follow-up to 2003 masterpiece Regard The End, but with a renewed sense of adventure. Ornate and mournful, it feels too like the work of a classical ensemble. Certainly, with a 20-plus cast of musicians covering off everything from piano to singing saw and “Jerusalem church bells”, it’s an ambitious beast. And with leader Robert Fisher intoning biblically on death, salvation and the hereafter, its themes are similarly weighty. Produced and arranged by Fisher and Scottish composer Malcolm Lindsay, the mix of violin, cello, pump organ, horns and woody guitars is beautifully interwoven, creating a sombre, intense mood-piece with fleeting moments of uplift. Such a highlight is “The Great Deceiver”, a gospel duet with Fisher and Iona MacDonald pleading for God and saviour before the massed voices of a choir. Or “The Pugilist”, in which Fisher offers up a bleak sermon like a condemned man at a pulpit: “God and devil wrestle for our souls / I’m bowed out and broken / Shot full of holes”. There’s a lovely instant, around two minutes in, where his voice soars skyward as if making a final dash for freedom. It’s a testament to Fisher and Lindsay’s powers of assimilation that the two covers here – Lal Waterson’s “Phoebe” and American Music Club’s “Miracle On 8th Street” – fit into the chamber-folk whole like they were their very own. On the latter, particularly, Fisher has rarely sounded so tender, his baritone softened by the saddest of trumpets. Full of dark grandeur, Pilgrim Road is exceptional. ROB HUGHES

Longtime Willard Grant fans may have found their last album, 2006’s Let It Roll, something of a shock. Out went much of the artful gothic-folk they’d been distilling since their early days in Boston in the mid-‘90s. In came loud guitars, feedback and nine-minute rock epics.

In that context, Pilgrim Road sounds like the belated follow-up to 2003 masterpiece Regard The End, but with a renewed sense of adventure. Ornate and mournful, it feels too like the work of a classical ensemble. Certainly, with a 20-plus cast of musicians covering off everything from piano to singing saw and “Jerusalem church bells”, it’s an ambitious beast. And with leader Robert Fisher intoning biblically on death, salvation and the hereafter, its themes are similarly weighty.

Produced and arranged by Fisher and Scottish composer Malcolm Lindsay, the mix of violin, cello, pump organ, horns and woody guitars is beautifully interwoven, creating a sombre, intense mood-piece with fleeting moments of uplift. Such a highlight is “The Great Deceiver”, a gospel duet with Fisher and Iona MacDonald pleading for God and saviour before the massed voices of a choir. Or “The Pugilist”, in which Fisher offers up a bleak sermon like a condemned man at a pulpit: “God and devil wrestle for our souls / I’m bowed out and broken / Shot full of holes”. There’s a lovely instant, around two minutes in, where his voice soars skyward as if making a final dash for freedom.

It’s a testament to Fisher and Lindsay’s powers of assimilation that the two covers here – Lal Waterson’s “Phoebe” and American Music Club’s “Miracle On 8th Street” – fit into the chamber-folk whole like they were their very own. On the latter, particularly, Fisher has rarely sounded so tender, his baritone softened by the saddest of trumpets. Full of dark grandeur, Pilgrim Road is exceptional.

ROB HUGHES

T Bone Burnett – Tooth Of Crime

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T Bone Burnett – Tooth Of Crime

Now a lauded producer, Burnett conquered his disillusionment with the music business by collaborating on Sam Shepard’s 1996 reworking of his play Tooth of Crime. The play was characterised by the New York Times as “high noon at the O.K. Corral in a jukebox universe”, but while there is no doubting the power of Marc Ribot’s off-kilter twanging or the noirish density of the music, the songs don’t really work on their own. The exception is “Kill Zone”, which calls out for a vocal by its co-writer, Roy Orbison. ALASTAIR McKAY

Now a lauded producer, Burnett conquered his disillusionment with the music business by collaborating on Sam Shepard’s 1996 reworking of his play Tooth of Crime. The play was characterised by the New York Times as “high noon at the O.K. Corral in a jukebox universe”, but while there is no doubting the power of Marc Ribot’s off-kilter twanging or the noirish density of the music, the songs don’t really work on their own. The exception is “Kill Zone”, which calls out for a vocal by its co-writer, Roy Orbison.

ALASTAIR McKAY

Otis Redding – Otis Blue (Collector’s Edition)

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Otis Redding – Otis Blue (Collector’s Edition)

By the sweltering July of 1965, 23 year old Otis Redding’s career had just lifted off. A star turn on the ‘chitlin circuit’ with a string of minor hits, the Georgia singer just bust the mainstream charts with “I Been Loving You Too Long”, which he’d written with singer Jerry Butler. Still, when Otis pitched up to Stax’s Memphis studios to cut his third album he was struggling for material. Remarkably, over the next two days he and the Stax house band the MGs would record the greatest album of his career, arguably the definitive album of the soul era. Perhaps it’s no accident it’s essentially a covers album, with Otis laying his trademark huff’n’puff, grits’n’grunt vocals on material by Smokey Robinson (“My Girl”), B.B.King (“Rock Me Baby”), William Bell (“You Don’t Miss Your Water”) and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”, a number Otis had never heard before MGs’ guitarist Steve Cropper presented it to him in studio. Otis fluffed the lyrics but conquered the song, an inspired reversal of black America’s contribution to “the Brit invasion”. Then there was a trio of songs by Otis’ hero, Sam Cooke, just six months dead. “Wonderful World” and “Shake” are Staxed competently, but “A Change Is Gonna Come” is renewed into a definitive anthem of civil rights era hope. Otis often yelped and stammered through songs, but when it mattered, like here, he delivered beautifully grained, gospel-rich performances. To pound his talents into the mix, Otis delivered “Ole Man Trouble”, whose slow stoicism echoes Paul Robeson’s “Ole Man River”, and “Respect”, a number he said took “a day to write, 20 minutes to arrange, and one take to record.” Aretha would turn the song into a feminist anthem, but here it’s the rant of a wounded lover, with Otis pushed to his scatting limits by the driving Jackson/Dunne rhythm section. The band, Cropper’s stinging guitar and the atonal Memphis horns, are phenomenal throughout – this is almost as much their album as Redding’s. The ‘mono mix of stereo version’ extras here are so much padding, while the live performances (all previously released) affirm Otis Blue’s message of a tender, profound and sadly lost talent. NEIL SPENCER Pic credit: Rex Features

By the sweltering July of 1965, 23 year old Otis Redding’s career had just lifted off. A star turn on the ‘chitlin circuit’ with a string of minor hits, the Georgia singer just bust the mainstream charts with “I Been Loving You Too Long”, which he’d written with singer Jerry Butler.

Still, when Otis pitched up to Stax’s Memphis studios to cut his third album he was struggling for material. Remarkably, over the next two days he and the Stax house band the MGs would record the greatest album of his career, arguably the definitive album of the soul era.

Perhaps it’s no accident it’s essentially a covers album, with Otis laying his trademark huff’n’puff, grits’n’grunt vocals on material by Smokey Robinson (“My Girl”), B.B.King (“Rock Me Baby”), William Bell (“You Don’t Miss Your Water”) and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”, a number Otis had never heard before MGs’ guitarist Steve Cropper presented it to him in studio. Otis fluffed the lyrics but conquered the song, an inspired reversal of black America’s contribution to “the Brit invasion”.

Then there was a trio of songs by Otis’ hero, Sam Cooke, just six months dead. “Wonderful World” and “Shake” are Staxed competently, but “A Change Is Gonna Come” is renewed into a definitive anthem of civil rights era hope. Otis often yelped and stammered through songs, but when it mattered, like here, he delivered beautifully grained, gospel-rich performances.

To pound his talents into the mix, Otis delivered “Ole Man Trouble”, whose slow stoicism echoes Paul Robeson’s “Ole Man River”, and “Respect”, a number he said took “a day to write, 20 minutes to arrange, and one take to record.” Aretha would turn the song into a feminist anthem, but here it’s the rant of a wounded lover, with Otis pushed to his scatting limits by the driving Jackson/Dunne rhythm section. The band, Cropper’s stinging guitar and the atonal Memphis horns, are phenomenal throughout – this is almost as much their album as Redding’s.

The ‘mono mix of stereo version’ extras here are so much padding, while the live performances (all previously released) affirm Otis Blue’s message of a tender, profound and sadly lost talent.

NEIL SPENCER

Pic credit: Rex Features

No Age – Nouns

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No Age – Nouns

Los Angeles duo No Age surfaced last year with Weirdo Rippers, a compilation of early vinyl cuts that suggested a couple of wide-eyed punk kids dudes discovering the manifold delights of effects pedals for the very first time. A year later, and singer/guitarist Randy Randall and singer/drummer Dean Spunt are ensconced on Seattle’s Sub Pop, perfecting a debut album proper that promises much more. Nouns poses an hypothesis of sorts: what happens when the punk rock of The Misfits and Black Flag meets the hissy lo-fi of Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted and the ecstatic throb of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything? The answer is thirty minutes and twelve songs long, bashed out with Fonz-like cool, but captured with a fuzz-soaked, dreamy production that makes good use of the tools and methods of budget production: the smeared, neo-psychedelia of hissy four-tracks and cheap guitars played through cheap pedals, applied here not through necessity, but for sheer love of the sound. No Age are still punks at heart: the opening “Miner” busts out the traps at speed, but it’s blurred and chaotic, vocals subsumed in a mush of effects. Spunt and Randell make this sound their own, though: the joyful “Sleeper Hold” imagines surfboards waxed and skate ramps traversed through a humid haze, azure guitars crashing like waves, while at the other of the spectrum, “Impossible Bouquet” offers a drifting, ambient guitar interlude with more in common with Fennesz’s Endless Summer or The Durutti Column than any more familiarly punk touchstone. The gorgeous “Cappo”, meanwhile, echoes a much earlier generation of Californian songsmiths, voices multi-tracked in some surreal echo of Pet Sounds: “Don’t you wanna cry?/If I were you, I’d cry/Force it out…” In an age where every rock riff must be compressed for maximum punch, No Age’s quixotic recording techniques might leave them feeling slight. Taken on its own terms, though, Nouns is a righteous success: delightfully dazed, good-times punk rock for a new generation of Californian dreamers. LOUIS PATTISON

Los Angeles duo No Age surfaced last year with Weirdo Rippers, a compilation of early vinyl cuts that suggested a couple of wide-eyed punk kids dudes discovering the manifold delights of effects pedals for the very first time. A year later, and singer/guitarist Randy Randall and singer/drummer Dean Spunt are ensconced on Seattle’s Sub Pop, perfecting a debut album proper that promises much more.

Nouns poses an hypothesis of sorts: what happens when the punk rock of The Misfits and Black Flag meets the hissy lo-fi of Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted and the ecstatic throb of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything? The answer is thirty minutes and twelve songs long, bashed out with Fonz-like cool, but captured with a fuzz-soaked, dreamy production that makes good use of the tools and methods of budget production: the smeared, neo-psychedelia of hissy four-tracks and cheap guitars played through cheap pedals, applied here not through necessity, but for sheer love of the sound.

No Age are still punks at heart: the opening “Miner” busts out the traps at speed, but it’s blurred and chaotic, vocals subsumed in a mush of effects. Spunt and Randell make this sound their own, though: the joyful “Sleeper Hold” imagines surfboards waxed and skate ramps traversed through a humid haze, azure guitars crashing like waves, while at the other of the spectrum, “Impossible Bouquet” offers a drifting, ambient guitar interlude with more in common with Fennesz’s Endless Summer or The Durutti Column than any more familiarly punk touchstone.

The gorgeous “Cappo”, meanwhile, echoes a much earlier generation of Californian songsmiths, voices multi-tracked in some surreal echo of Pet Sounds: “Don’t you wanna cry?/If I were you, I’d cry/Force it out…” In an age where every rock riff must be compressed for maximum punch, No Age’s quixotic recording techniques might leave them feeling slight. Taken on its own terms, though, Nouns is a righteous success: delightfully dazed, good-times punk rock for a new generation of Californian dreamers.

LOUIS PATTISON

Beck Announces Wireless Warm Up Shows

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Beck Announces Wireless Warm Up Shows
Beck has announced that he is to play two UK headline live shows, in the run up to his performance at this year's Wireless Festival in London's Hyde Park. The singer, whose classic Odelay album has just been expanded and reissued is set to play two wram-up shows, the first at Southampton's Guildha...

Beck has announced that he is to play two UK headline live shows, in the run up to his performance at this year’s Wireless Festival in London’s Hyde Park.

The singer, whose classic Odelay album has just been expanded and reissued is set to play two wram-up shows, the first at Southampton’s Guildhall on July 1 and the second at Manchester Apollo on July 2.

Beck, who has recently recorded a brand new studio album with producer Danger Mouse is to play at Wireless Festival on July 4, the same day that former Smiths’ frontman Morrissey headlines.

John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance Lyrics To Be Sold

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John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance Lyrics To Be Sold

Late Beatle John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" hadwritten lyrics are to be sold at Christies pop memorabilia auction this July. The London auction house says that the lyrics, along with never-seen-before photos were given to 16-year old writer Gail Renard in 1969, when Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their Montreal 'bed-in.' According to BBC News, John Lennon gave Renard a few mementos of the week she spent with them, including the famous song lyrics, telling her "one day they will be worth something". The collection is estimated to go for around £300,000 at the rock and pop auction on July 10.

Late Beatle John Lennon‘s “Give Peace a Chance” hadwritten lyrics are to be sold at Christies pop memorabilia auction this July.

The London auction house says that the lyrics, along with never-seen-before photos were given to 16-year old writer Gail Renard in 1969, when Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their Montreal ‘bed-in.’

According to BBC News, John Lennon gave Renard a few mementos of the week she spent with them, including the famous song lyrics, telling her “one day they will be worth something”.

The collection is estimated to go for around £300,000 at the rock and pop

auction on July 10.

Radiohead Pay Tribute To Jazz Legend Lyttelton

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Radiohead Pay Tribute To Jazz Legend Lyttelton
Radiohead have paid tribute to Humphrey Littleton, the jazz musician and radio broadcaster who died last week aged 86. The band previously recorded with Lyttelton on the Amnesiac album track "Life In a Glasshouse" and commended him for his inspiration. The band said in a statement today "We were a...

Radiohead have paid tribute to Humphrey Littleton, the jazz musician and radio broadcaster who died last week aged 86.

The band previously recorded with Lyttelton on the Amnesiac album track “Life In a Glasshouse” and commended him for his inspiration.

The band said in a statement today “We were all sorry to hear of Humphrey Lyttleton’s death – he was an inspiring person to record with, and without his direction, we’d never have recorded/released ‘Life In A Glasshouse’. So go and find ‘Bad Penny Blues’, and celebrate his life with some hot jazz…”.

To read Uncut’s obituary for Humphrey Lyttelton,

click here.

Pic credit: PA Photos

Shakin’ Stevens And Gilbert O’Sullivan For Glastonbury!

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Shakin’ Stevens And Gilbert O’Sullivan For Glastonbury!
Shakin' Stevens and Gilbert O'Sullivan are amongst the artists revealed to be playing this year's Glastonbury Festival, after the full main stage line-up for the June event has leaked online. Welsh rock 'n' roller Shakin' Stevens has been confirmed as a surprising opening act on the main Pyramid S...

Shakin’ Stevens and Gilbert O’Sullivan are amongst the artists revealed to be playing this year’s Glastonbury Festival, after the full main stage line-up for the June event has leaked online.

Welsh rock ‘n’ roller Shakin’ Stevens has been confirmed as a surprising opening act on the main Pyramid Stage on the festival’s second day (June 28). Stevens’ career has spanned four decades and was the UK’s top selling male artist of the 80s, and recently released a new album Now Listen.

Another surprise addition to Glastonbury’s bill is Irish crooner Gilbert O’Sullivan who is most famous for his two early ’70s chart toppers “Clair” and “Get Down”.

The Pyramid Stage this year will also see bands such as The Raconteurs, Editors, Goldfrapp and The Hold Steady join headliners previously announced Kings of Leon, Jay-Z and The Verve.

This year’s Glastonbury Festival takes place from June 27 – 29, at Worthy Farm, Somerset.

The full Glastonbury main stages line-up is:

June 27:

Pyramid Stage

Kings Of Leon

The Fratellis

Editors

The Gossip

The Feeling

KT Tunstall

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly

The Subways

Kate Nash

Other Stage

Panic At The Disco

The Enemy

We Are Scientists

Foals

The Hoosiers

Ben Folds

Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong

Vampire Weekend

Hilltop Hoods

John Peel Stage

Jamie T

The Cribs

Reverend And The Makers

MGMT

The Ting Tings

Young Knives

LIghtspeed Champion

Glasvegas

June 28:

Pyramid Stage

Jay-Z

Very Special Guest TBC

Manu Chao

The Raconteurs

James Blunt

Crowded House

Seasick Steve

The Hold Steady

Shakin’ Stevens

Other Stage

Massive Attack

Hot Chip

Elbow

Duffy

The Wombats

Neon Neon

Black Kids

The Golden Silvers

The Travelling Band

John Peel Stage

Biffy Clyro

The Futureheads

Band Of Horses

The Courteneers/The Black Keys

Vampire Weekend

The Teenagers

June 29:

The Verve

Leonard Cohen

Goldfrapp

Very Special Guest TBC

John Mayer

Gilbert O’ Sullivan

TBC

Other Stage

Groove Armada

The Zutons

The Pigeon Detectives

Mark Ronson

Scouting For Girls

Jack Penate

Newton Faulkner

Black Mountain

Hoodoo Gurus

John Peel Stage

The National

Spiritualized

Crystal Castles

Brian Jonestown Massacre

The Stars

The Courteneers/The Black Keys

Rocket Summer

COACHELLA FESTIVAL DAY 3 – Roger Waters and Spiritualized!

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OK, so now it’s 103 degrees so you’ll forgive me if I stay under canvas in VIP and neck a cool beer instead of hauling myself the quarter mile across this parched site to see Duffy. Today’s not the celebfest it has been and there are way fewer people here than Saturday. That said, here are the highlights: LOOK TO THE SKIES! It’s a flying pig! Like Glastonbury, Coachella isn’t one of those festivals organised by a faceless committee; it’s the personal baby of a guy called Paul Tollett who once told us that one of his dream headliners would be Pink Floyd. You can see his point. There can hardly be anywhere on earth more fitting to witness the Floyd in full majestic flow than out here under the freakily expansive desert skies. Unfortunately, the Floyd aren’t a functioning unit so we get the closest option which is ROGER WATERS who, of course, used to be in Floyd. Unfortunately old Rog is a bit of a bore and his three hour festival closing set on the Main Stage – complete with intermission – is a bit of an endurance test, truth be told. In the first half he plods through some pompous solo stuff that no-one knows, his massive band jazz-soloing like billy-o, plus he pads out some classics like ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’ and ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’. Then he almost wins us back by releasing this giant inflatable pig which has scrawled on it images of Uncle Sam wielding bloody meat cleavers, the words “Don’t be led to slaughter” and “Obama” next to a ticked ballot box. Subtle eh? Set two is a stodgy run through of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ topped off with the wearisome ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’… which we aren’t actually. We’re shattered. This is not what either Syd died for. SUNDAY BEST SPIRITUALIZED There aren’t that many of us in the sticky Mojave Tent but those of us who are get taken to church. This is just about the last of Jason Pierce’s Acoustic Mainline performances and we’re damn glad we caught it because stripped down like this – just Jason on acoustic plus a keyboard player, a three-piece choir and a string quartet - these songs bleed. The whole thing is entrancing but if we have to pick out the best, the teary-eyed moments are the old space companion ‘I Think I’m In Love’, the fragile cover of Daniel Johnson’s ‘Soul On Fire’ and the set-closer, a rousing Velvet Underground take on the Edwin Hawkins Singers 60s gospel classic ‘Oh Happy Day’. SUNDAY SNATCHES… GOGOL BORDELLO whipping up a gypsy dust storm on the Main Stage, PERRY FARRELL, fresh from the reuniting Jane’s Addiction for last week’s NME Awards, does ‘Stop’ and ‘Jane Says’ electronically with a backing tape at lunchtime in the Sahara dance tent – go figger! MY MORNING JACKET play the slot before Roger Waters on the Main Stage and are funkier than expected while SEAN PENN, who was whizzing around in a golf cart yesterday, speechifies from the Main Stage, encouraging us to join something called the Dirty Hands Caravan which is a bunch of biodiesel-fuelled buses which will leave from the site tomorrow and snake across country towards New Orleans cleaning up parks, protesting the war and generally making the world a better place to live in while Ben Harper serenades us around the evening campfire. Only in America, dudes, only in America… STEVE SUTHERLAND

OK, so now it’s 103 degrees so you’ll forgive me if I stay under canvas in VIP and neck a cool beer instead of hauling myself the quarter mile across this parched site to see Duffy.

Continue

Bonnie Prince Billy Announces New Album Is Ready

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Bonnie Prince Billy Announces New Album Is Ready
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy has announced that he is to release a brand new studio album Lie Down In The Light on May 19. This is Will Oldham's first full studio album since 2006's Letting Go. The prolific Americana songwriter has since released Ask Forgiveness, a covers album last year, which included o...

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy has announced that he is to release a brand new studio album Lie Down In The Light on May 19.

This is Will Oldham‘s first full studio album since 2006’s Letting Go. The prolific Americana songwriter has since released Ask Forgiveness, a covers album last year, which included one original track “I’m Loving The Street” and a live album “Wilding In The West” earlier this year.

Lie Down In The Dark features twelve tracks and the album features duets with Ashley Webber as well as regular musicians Paul Oldham and Emmett Kelly.

Oldham has enlisted the help of Lambchop engineer Mark Nevers to mix the new album.

Lie Down In The Dark’s full track listing is as follows:

‘Easy Does It’

‘You Remind Me Of’

‘Something (The Glory Goes)’

‘So Everyone’

‘For Every Field There’s A Mole’

‘(Keep Eye On) Other’s Gain’

‘You Want That Picture’

‘Missing One’

‘What’s Missing Is’

‘Where Is The Puzzle?’

‘Lie Down In The Light’

‘Willow Trees Bend’

‘I’ll Be Glad’

Joy Division

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Joy Division

DIR: GRANT GEE ST: BERNARD SUMNER, PETER HOOK, STEPHEN MORRIS, TONY WILSON Click here for an exclusive Uncut interview with Joy Division co-founder Peter Hook. Four decades after Ian Curtis found his way out, after all the compilations and remasterings, the biographies and histories, the videos, documentaries and features films, what can there possibly be left to say about Joy Division? Within its own lifetime the Factory story turned from tragedy to farce; now the relentless stream of modern media reminscence seems determined to run it through every other conceivable genre. Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People imagined Factory as some absurd Northern soap. Anton Corbijn’s Control presented the Ian Curtis story as the tragedy of a man who couldn’t work out whether he was in a ’60s kitchen sink drama or some existential ’80s Wim Wenders romance. More insidious is the modern desire to turn the troubled, conflicted, unsettled, convulsive art of the past into frozen “Icons”, tame commodities – as on last year’s BBC4 Factory documentary, which smoothed everything to psycho-sociological cliché, and seemed happy to present Joy Division as the ur-Indie Band, a kind of prototype Editors. “There’s just the two albums,” designer Peter Saville notes towards the end of this latest jerky version of the dream. “All the rest is the merchandising of memory...” What’s missing from the playful fictions and damned facts, is precisely the art of Joy Division – the band’s power, and the mystery of how it arrived from such unlikely sources – and its this that Jon Savage and Grant Gee’s Joy Division addresses. From the start, it’s clear this isn’t any straightforward, plausibly causal slice of northern life. The film begins with a Marshall Berman epigram on the vertigo of modernity and Gee’s direction is always toying with continuity – messing with the flow of film the way producer Martin Hannett did with the band’s sound. Time speeds up and slows down; the TV career of Tony Wilson or the road tales of Hooky’n’Barney are cut-up into bad-dream blasts. Corbijn’s stately video for “Atmosphere” is run at double-speed, so it resembles avant-garde Benny Hill, in honour of John Peel. The film focuses on absences: a series of “Things That Aren’t There” – from the Russell Club to the Haçienda – and the ghosts of the story: most notably Rob Gretton, who’s previously come across as hooligan stooge, but who’s densely plotted notebooks reveal rare focus and determination. And Martin Hannett, who as Paul Morley notes, managed to make Manchester sound “cosmic”. Beyond Morley, the film draws on a more obscurely enlightening crew of talking heads, from Savage’s own circles on the arty fringes of the Factory floor: City Fun editor Liz Naylor, designer and theorist Jon Wozencroft, and best of all Genesis P-Orridge, who has now successfully willed himself into the middle-aged lovechild of Brian Jones and Marianne Faithfull. All emphasise the dark art at the heart of the band, the way that their records drew on, transformed and acted as enchanted wardrobe-portals into the worlds of Burroughs and Ballard. Savage’s assiduous historical scholarship has brought some fantastic old footage to light: the first Sex Pistols show in Manchester, early rehearsals, late gigs and even the uncanny audiotape of Ian’s hypnotic regression to a past life that sounds eerily like a Kafka fable. The biggest coup, however, is the presence of Annik Honoré, Curtis’ Belgian lover, talking for the first time on film, still visibly shaken by his suicide, still profoundly moved by the music. But if the story has a flaw, it’s that it is too much in love with the European arthouse possibilities she seemed to offer Ian: you feel the film would have very much liked him to have moved to Holland, as was once broached, to open an arty book shop, hanging out with Belgian metal-bashers and Burroughs groupies... The film also buys in a little too much to the Wilsonian myth of the civic revival of Manchester being inspired by Joy Division – an idea that looks increasingly flimsy as those loft-style city centre apartments are repossessed and the credit goes bad. But these are quibbles. For the most part, Joy Division is a resounding, absorbing success. “I saw Joy Division as part of the resistance” says filmmaker Malcom Whitehead at one point, suggesting that their art and music was engaged in a kind of psychic struggle with the likes of Manchester God Cop James Anderton for the soul of the city. Savage and Gee’s film reminds us how urgent, alive and abrasive that music remains, the vital alternatives it still offers. STEPHEN TROUSSE

DIR: GRANT GEE

ST: BERNARD SUMNER, PETER HOOK, STEPHEN MORRIS, TONY WILSON

Click here for an exclusive Uncut interview with Joy Division co-founder Peter Hook.

Four decades after Ian Curtis found his way out, after all the compilations and remasterings, the biographies and histories, the videos, documentaries and features films, what can there possibly be left to say about Joy Division? Within its own lifetime the Factory story turned from tragedy to farce; now the relentless stream of modern media reminscence seems determined to run it through every other conceivable genre. Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People imagined Factory as some absurd Northern soap. Anton Corbijn’s Control presented the Ian Curtis story as the tragedy of a man who couldn’t work out whether he was in a ’60s kitchen sink drama or some existential ’80s Wim Wenders romance.

More insidious is the modern desire to turn the troubled, conflicted, unsettled, convulsive art of the past into frozen “Icons”, tame commodities – as on last year’s BBC4 Factory documentary, which smoothed everything to psycho-sociological cliché, and seemed happy to present Joy Division as the ur-Indie Band, a kind of prototype Editors.

“There’s just the two albums,” designer Peter Saville notes towards the end of this latest jerky version of the dream. “All the rest is the merchandising of memory…” What’s missing from the playful fictions and damned facts, is precisely the art of Joy Division – the band’s power, and the mystery of how it arrived from such unlikely sources – and its this that Jon Savage and Grant Gee’s Joy Division addresses.

From the start, it’s clear this isn’t any straightforward, plausibly causal slice of northern life. The film begins with a Marshall Berman epigram on the vertigo of modernity and Gee’s direction is always toying with continuity – messing with the flow of film the way producer Martin Hannett did with the band’s sound. Time speeds up and slows down; the TV career of Tony Wilson or the road tales of Hooky’n’Barney are cut-up into bad-dream blasts.

Corbijn’s stately video for “Atmosphere” is run at double-speed, so it resembles avant-garde Benny Hill, in honour of John Peel.

The film focuses on absences: a series of “Things That Aren’t There” – from the Russell Club to the Haçienda – and the ghosts of the story: most notably Rob Gretton, who’s previously come across as hooligan stooge, but who’s densely plotted notebooks reveal rare focus and determination. And Martin Hannett, who as Paul Morley notes, managed to make Manchester sound “cosmic”.

Beyond Morley, the film draws on a more obscurely enlightening crew of talking heads, from Savage’s own circles on the arty fringes of the Factory floor: City Fun editor Liz Naylor, designer and theorist Jon Wozencroft, and best of all Genesis P-Orridge, who has now successfully willed himself into the middle-aged lovechild of Brian Jones and Marianne Faithfull. All emphasise the dark art at the heart of the band, the way that their records drew on, transformed and acted as enchanted wardrobe-portals into the worlds of Burroughs and Ballard.

Savage’s assiduous historical scholarship has brought some fantastic old footage to light: the first Sex Pistols show in Manchester, early rehearsals, late gigs and even the uncanny audiotape of Ian’s hypnotic regression to a past life that sounds eerily like a Kafka fable. The biggest coup, however, is the presence of Annik Honoré, Curtis’ Belgian lover, talking for the first time on film, still visibly shaken by his suicide, still profoundly moved by the music. But if the story has a flaw, it’s that it is too much in love with the European arthouse possibilities she seemed to offer Ian: you feel the film would have very much liked him to have moved to Holland, as was once broached, to open an arty book shop, hanging out with Belgian metal-bashers and Burroughs groupies…

The film also buys in a little too much to the Wilsonian myth of the civic revival of Manchester being inspired by Joy Division – an idea that looks increasingly flimsy as those loft-style city centre apartments are repossessed and the credit goes bad.

But these are quibbles. For the most part, Joy Division is a resounding, absorbing success. “I saw Joy Division as part of the resistance” says filmmaker Malcom Whitehead at one point, suggesting that their art and music was engaged in a kind of psychic struggle with the likes of Manchester God Cop James Anderton for the soul of the city. Savage and Gee’s film reminds us how urgent, alive and abrasive that music remains, the vital alternatives it still offers.

STEPHEN TROUSSE

South Park: The Complete Sixth Season

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South Park: The Complete Sixth Season

Animated comedy – or “cartoons” as the ancients called it – changed forever in the 1990s. Under the twin assault of The Simpsons (wit and cynicism disguised as family television) and Beavis And Butthead (stupidity and rudeness disguised as, er, stupidity and rudeness) animated comedy stopped being the retarded cousin of proper comedy and suddenly became a sweary drunk playground for the imagination. Taboos were eroding, bad language and sex was the ordure of the day and suddenly smart, funny people were making cartoons instead of writing for Letterman. And then came South Park. Barriers weren’t so much knocked down as kicked in the knackers, mugged and bum-harmed. South Park really did change the world, in that the world is now both funnier and a bit more evil. But even the bad kid has to get older, and it is to South Park’s credit that it got older, but didn’t grow up much. As The Simpsons turned into a sort of soft yellow hell and Beavis And Butthead started to look like a documentary about American teenagers, South Park just got on with it. So we come to the year 2002. At this stage in its run, South Park has come a long way since its early peak as a mid-’90s soft toy and wind-up figure world obsession, but has yet to reach the level of Scientology-baiting and later, deeper strangenesses. It has already made its movie, called Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a title which not only references cocks (didn’t see that one coming) but also rather begged the question – what do you do when you’ve been bigger, longer and uncut? So South Park was, pretty much, mid-career at this point, excellent going for a series that had started out as an animated Christmas card. Season Six is most notable among fans for one thing; the fact that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone got fed up with writing death scenes for Kenny and just got rid of him, replacing him with abused lad Butters (and later rejecting Butters, too, turning him into Professor Chaos, the somewhat lame super-villain.) Well, it’s notable for other things, too. The splendidly self-referential episode “The Simpsons Already Did It”, which is probably the nearest this series will ever get to doffing its cap, would be one. There’s the use of language; “bloody vaginal belch” is charmless, typical and something The Simpsons would never do. There’s new, or continuing, it’s hard to tell, childishness and misogyny. There’s deeper levels of nerdism, in both a Lord Of The Rings tribute and, um, every single line of dialogue and every cut-out image. There’s perverts, disfigurement, the decision that AIDS is now funny as 22.3 years have passed... there is, in short, everything that makes South Park either appalling or brilliant. It was a busy 2002. Of course, at this point, it didn’t matter how rude or nasty or naughty the show was; acceptability standards had changed, and South Park was no longer shocking, it was just itself. The only criterion – given that the show’s darkly political and personalised ethical streak was yet to emerge – for viewer interest was if the thing was funny. These days, the benchmark is no longer Homer Simpson saying “D’oh”, it’s not even Peter Griffin making AIDS gags in Family Guy. There are real controversies, and now you can say or do anything so long as it doesn’t offend a major corporation or take the piss out of a war, or mock a religion. Later, South Park would magnificently become the only great right-wing satire show ever made – and also make Tom Cruise cry like a baby. Meanwhile, despite the loss of Kenny, despite the relentless hammering of taste in the fat mouth, and even despite the fact that all the storylines had been done by The Simpsons, Season Six of South Park is, somehow, incredibly funny. DAVID QUANTICK

Animated comedy – or “cartoons” as the ancients called it – changed forever in the 1990s. Under the twin assault of The Simpsons (wit and cynicism disguised as family television) and Beavis And Butthead (stupidity and rudeness disguised as, er, stupidity and rudeness) animated comedy stopped being the retarded cousin of proper comedy and suddenly became a sweary drunk playground for the imagination. Taboos were eroding, bad language and sex was the ordure of the day and suddenly smart, funny people were making cartoons instead of writing for Letterman.

And then came South Park.

Barriers weren’t so much knocked down as kicked in the knackers, mugged and bum-harmed. South Park really did change the world, in that the world is now both funnier and a bit more evil. But even the bad kid has to get older, and it is to South Park’s credit that it got older, but didn’t grow up much. As The Simpsons turned into a sort of soft yellow hell and Beavis And Butthead started to look like a documentary about American teenagers, South Park just got on with it.

So we come to the year 2002.

At this stage in its run, South Park has come a long way since its early peak as a mid-’90s soft toy and wind-up figure world obsession, but has yet to reach the level of Scientology-baiting and later, deeper strangenesses. It has already made its movie, called Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a title which not only references cocks (didn’t see that one coming) but also rather begged the question – what do you do when you’ve been bigger, longer and uncut?

So South Park was, pretty much, mid-career at this point, excellent going for a series that had started out as an animated Christmas card. Season Six is most notable among fans for one thing; the fact that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone got fed up with writing death scenes for Kenny and just got rid of him, replacing him with abused lad Butters (and later rejecting Butters, too, turning him into Professor Chaos, the somewhat lame super-villain.)

Well, it’s notable for other things, too. The splendidly self-referential episode “The Simpsons Already Did It”, which is probably the nearest this series will ever get to doffing its cap, would be one. There’s the use of language; “bloody vaginal belch” is charmless, typical and something The Simpsons would never do. There’s new, or continuing, it’s hard to tell, childishness and misogyny. There’s deeper levels of nerdism, in both a Lord Of The Rings tribute and, um, every single line of dialogue and every cut-out image. There’s perverts, disfigurement, the decision that AIDS is now funny as 22.3 years have passed… there is, in short, everything that makes South Park either appalling or brilliant. It was a busy 2002.

Of course, at this point, it didn’t matter how rude or nasty or naughty the show was; acceptability standards had changed, and South Park was no longer shocking, it was just itself. The only criterion – given that the show’s darkly political and personalised ethical streak was yet to emerge – for viewer interest was if the thing was funny. These days, the benchmark is no longer Homer Simpson saying “D’oh”, it’s not even Peter Griffin making AIDS gags in Family Guy. There are real controversies, and now you can say or do anything so long as it doesn’t offend a major corporation or take the piss out of a war, or mock a religion. Later, South Park would magnificently become the only great right-wing satire show ever made – and also make Tom Cruise cry like a baby.

Meanwhile, despite the loss of Kenny, despite the relentless hammering of taste in the fat mouth, and even despite the fact that all the storylines had been done by The Simpsons, Season Six of South Park is, somehow, incredibly funny.

DAVID QUANTICK

Honeydripper

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Honeydripper

DIR: JOHN SAYLES | ST: DANNY GLOVER, LISA GAY HAMILTON, CHARLES S DUTTON The beginnings of rock’n’roll have been memorialised so often thatJohn Sayles is taking a risk by revisiting them, particularly as Craig Brewer travelled so recently along this track with Black Snake Moan. But Brewer’s film wasn’t a period piece, it just felt that way. Sayles sets the action in 1950, in Harmony, Alabama, and documents a particular moment in time – the Jim Crow laws are in place, the white sheriff is corrupt, the cotton is picked by hand, and a black stranger in town can still expect to find himself in jail, looking for a way out. The Honeydripper is a club run by Pine Top Purves (Danny Glover), an old-time musician who is struggling in the face of competition from the juke-joint across the yard. The sheriff (Stacy Keach) is after a cut of his business, and a meal or two cooked by Pine Top’s wife (Lisa Gay Hamilton), who is toying with religion as a way out. The debts are mounting, and the gold-toothed gangsters from out of town are circling, waiting for the Honeydripper to fold. So, in a last roll of the dice, Pine Top books Guitar Sam, an electric blues player (the character is based on New Orleans guitarist Guitar Slim). But Sam doesn’t show, and disaster looms. Then, into town comes Sonny (Gary Clark Jr), a kid with an electric guitar, and a head full of dreams. A railway porter mentions him to Harmony: “I’ve only been arrested once,” he says. “And the town was called Liberty.” You don’t have to be Dewey Phillips to predict what will happen when Sonny starts playing “Good Rockin’ Tonight”. Essentially, the tale is no more complicated than one of those rock’n’roll exploitation movies where – against the odds – the band turns up at the hop and saves the day. But, as always with Sayles, the good stuff is in the characterisations. Glover is a treat as Pine Top, and there’s a fine comic turn from Charles S Dutton as his long-suffering sidekick, Maceo. The allusions to the civil rights movement are understated, but they’re visible. And, hell, the kid can play that guitar. ALASTAIR McKAY

DIR: JOHN SAYLES | ST: DANNY GLOVER, LISA GAY HAMILTON, CHARLES S DUTTON

The beginnings of rock’n’roll have been memorialised so often thatJohn Sayles is taking a risk by revisiting them, particularly as Craig Brewer travelled so recently along this track with Black Snake Moan. But Brewer’s film wasn’t a period piece, it just felt that way.

Sayles sets the action in 1950, in Harmony, Alabama, and documents a particular moment in time – the Jim Crow laws are in place, the white sheriff is corrupt, the cotton is picked by hand, and a black stranger in town can still expect to find himself in jail, looking for a way out.

The Honeydripper is a club run by Pine Top Purves (Danny Glover), an old-time musician who is struggling in the face of competition from the juke-joint across the yard. The sheriff (Stacy Keach) is after a cut of his business, and a meal or two cooked by Pine Top’s wife (Lisa Gay Hamilton), who is toying with religion as a way out. The debts are mounting, and the gold-toothed gangsters from out of town are circling, waiting for the Honeydripper to fold.

So, in a last roll of the dice, Pine Top books Guitar Sam, an electric blues player (the character is based on New Orleans guitarist Guitar Slim). But Sam doesn’t show, and disaster looms. Then, into town comes Sonny (Gary Clark Jr), a kid with an electric guitar, and a head full of dreams. A railway porter mentions him to Harmony: “I’ve only been arrested once,” he says. “And the town was called Liberty.”

You don’t have to be Dewey Phillips to predict what will happen when Sonny starts playing “Good Rockin’ Tonight”. Essentially, the tale is no more complicated than one of those rock’n’roll exploitation movies where – against the odds – the band turns up at the hop and saves the day. But, as always with Sayles, the good stuff is in the characterisations. Glover is a treat as Pine Top, and there’s a fine comic turn from Charles S Dutton as his long-suffering sidekick, Maceo. The allusions to the civil rights movement are understated, but they’re visible. And, hell, the kid can play that guitar.

ALASTAIR McKAY

Peter Hook Talks To Uncut About New Joy Division Film

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Peter Hook Talks To Uncut About New Joy Division Film
Up Close And Personal: Peter Hook This is the third cinematic film about Joy Division and Factory… HOOK: I think the thing is that it’s an interesting story – I don’t think you can deny that. Compared to how safe and boring things are these days, I think it’s remarkable. Did this docume...

Up Close And Personal: Peter Hook

This is the third cinematic film about Joy Division and Factory…

HOOK: I think the thing is that it’s an interesting story – I don’t think you can deny that. Compared to how safe and boring things are these days, I think it’s remarkable.

Did this documentary tell you anything new? Were you surprised by any of it?

I suppose the interesting thing for me is that we’d never had a conversation like that – me, Bernard [Sumner] and Stephen [Morris]. I’ve talked about it to other people, but I’ve never talked about it to them. So it was quite a revelation for me, to hear their thoughts.

Whose idea was the film?

It was Tom Atencio’s idea, New Order’s US manager. He rightly rushed it through before Control – and I kept wondering why. But if we’d done it after Control, after all the publicity we did for the film, none of us would spoken the way we did…

You would have been burnt out by it?

Absolutely.

If 24 Hour Party People dealt with the comedy of Factory, and Control the tragedy, this feels like the first film to focus on the music…

That’s an interesting point, because it features mainly the people who made the music. [Director] Grant Gee and Tom unearthed a lot of footage of Manchester and I found that quite riveting! In a strange way I’ve been very lucky, because I’ve had the comedy and I’ve had the tragedy – now I get the truth. For me, I was able to watch Control and watch this documentary and think that this was the perfect answer.

They’ve dug up loads of great old footage of the band – was that new to you?

I hadn’t seen any of that footage before. The thing about Joy Division is from when we started it to when left it, our personal circumstances never changed. You were getting success, and playing bigger venues. But you weren’t getting any more money. So it came and went and left you more or less in exactly the same position.

You were a bit more famous though?

I don’t know. Once Ian died, none of that mattered. I remember going to tax my car in Stretford and listening to the chart rundown on the Monday and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” had gone it at 9, I think. And it didn’t matter. It was an odd feeling. The thing was that we all just switched to New Order. New Order was like throwing a drowning man a life belt.

Stephen says in the film that after Ian died your attitude was – “Well… see you on Monday then!” It was as if you really did work at a factory and just clocked on as though nothing had happened…

The thing is that any kind of grief or loss – and unfortunately the older you get, the more you have to deal with it – is dealt with by a certain numbness. But we were young enough almost to just get on with it. We could see a light! Ha ha ha! Suddenly we were in darkness when Ian died, and with New Order we saw a light again.

There’s a clip in the film of a radio interview with Ian, and it occurred to me that this is the first time I’d heard his speaking voice…

Yes. It’s quite odd. I’ve managed to track down one other radio interview of Ian talking that’s very clear. I’ve only ever heard three: one was really bad quality in a pub, there were two where you could actually hear him, which I only heard quite recently. So it is a revelation.

The film plays up the tension between his artiness and the band’s laddishness…

The four of us were lads. And when we made music it came from somewhere else. I think people are interested to hear, and it adds to the myth that Ian would have opened a bookshop in Holland – if he didn’t want to be a builder! “Fuck this bookshop, I’m going back to the building site to get fucked with my mates on whizz!” But Ian was very arty compared to Bernard and I. Steve was always weird as fuck.

It’s great to hear you talking about the band – you sound like a fan…

The thing about Joy Division and early New Order is that we just got on with it. Everybody had a pivotal role and you can hear that in Joy Division. It’s not about Ian’s vocal, it’s not about any one thing – it’s that combination of the whole lot. Early New Order, the New Order that I loved, was about a combination of everything. It changed when it became more vocal orientated. Which left me very disenchanted. Whenever you listen to any Joy Division tape, it always sounds powerful. One of the greatest and saddest things in my life is that I’ll never know what would have happened to Joy Division. And that really gets me down. Especially because I got so disenchanted with New Order towards the end. It’s always the one that got away. It’s one of the saddest things.

INTERVIEW:

STEPHEN TROUSSE

Roger McGuinn’s Private Byrds Archives To Be Released

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Roger McGuinn’s Private Byrds Archives To Be Released

Previously unreleased archive material from The Byrds is shortly to surface for the first time. A recording of the group’s 1971 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall – featuring a line up of Roger McGuinn, Clarence White, Skip Battin and Gene Parsons – is to be released in June by Sundazed. Founder member Roger McGuinn has told www.uncut.co.uk that the recording came from his private collection – and that more releases of a similar kind would probably follow it. “We’ve carried these tapes around for 30-something years,” he said. “We just never paid much attention to them. [Sundazed’s] Bob Irwin came down, and he’s a genius at discerning these things. He could look at a box, and go ‘Oh, this is that, and so-and-so was there, this is wonderful.’” Irwin has taken further tapes from McGuinn, with a view to further releases. “He’s gonna check them out,” said Roger. “There are tentative plans to put out good things we find, but I’m not sure what.” Though McGuinn’s archive has yielded some delights, Irwin’s investigations have provided one minor disappointment. Says McGuinn: “He thought he had the only existing recording of the Byrds doing “Milestones” because it said so on the tape box. But when he got it up to his studio and played it back, the track wasn’t there….”

Previously unreleased archive material from The Byrds is shortly to surface for the first time. A recording of the group’s 1971 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall – featuring a line up of Roger McGuinn, Clarence White, Skip Battin and Gene Parsons – is to be released in June by Sundazed.

Founder member Roger McGuinn has told www.uncut.co.uk that the recording came from his private collection – and that more releases of a similar kind would probably follow it.

“We’ve carried these tapes around for 30-something years,” he said. “We just never paid much attention to them. [Sundazed’s] Bob Irwin came down, and he’s a genius at discerning these things. He could look at a box, and go ‘Oh, this is that, and so-and-so was there, this is wonderful.’”

Irwin has taken further tapes from McGuinn, with a view to further releases. “He’s gonna check them out,” said Roger. “There are tentative plans to put out good things we find, but I’m not sure what.”

Though McGuinn’s archive has yielded some delights, Irwin’s investigations have provided one minor disappointment.

Says McGuinn: “He thought he had the only existing recording of the Byrds doing “Milestones” because it said so on the tape box. But when he got it up to his studio and played it back, the track wasn’t there….”

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