In the issue of Uncut dated December 2008 (Take 139), Kevin Ayers talked us through the making of some of his finest albums - including the Soft Machine’s debut, through his collaboration with Brian Eno, John Cale and Nico, his much-loved solo album Whatevershebringswesing, and more.
Interview: John Robinson__________________
You catch us on a pretty busy day, deadlines fast approaching for our last issue of 2012. That’s the one, of course, that traditionally carries our end-of-year lists of best albums, reissues, films, DVDs and books. This means we’ve all been recently asked to nominate our personal Top 20s, from which John has been compiling the definitive countdown, the full list to be published when he’s finished his painstaking calculations in the Uncut that comes out at the end of November.
Arctic Monkeys look set to chart in the Top 20 with their cover of The Beatles' "Come Together" this weekend.
The band performed the track at the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday (July 27) and are set to take the Number 19 spot in Sunday's (August 5) Official UK Singles Chart, according to the Official Charts Company.
Meanwhile, Florence And The Machine look set to lose the Number One spot to Wiley's "Heatwave".
The other only high new entry is set to come from Underworld's Olympics track 'Caliban's Dream', which is set to land at Number Seven.
Paul McCartney was reportedly paid only £1 for his performance at the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday [July 27].
According to Associated Press, McCartney, as well as fellow performers Mike Oldfield, Emeli Sandie and Dizzee Rascal, were paid nominal fees of £1 ($1.57) to make the Olympic contracts binding.
The ceremony was watched by an average of 42 million people worldwide. However, many music fans in America were left outraged after NBC's broadcast of the Opening Ceremony failed to include a number of key musical segments.
Arctic Monkeys' cover of The Beatles' 'Come Together' is racing up the singles chart.
The track – which featured as part of Danny Boyle's four-hour Olympic Opening Ceremony extravaganza on Friday – has climbed to Number 14 in the iTunes download chart.
"Caliban's Dream" – the Underworld-penned track sung by Two Door Cinema Club frontman Alex Trimble is currently at Number Five.
The more-than-extensive ‘Immersion’ edition of Pink Floyd’s opus The Wall (the box includes a scarf and marbles!) is reviewed in our latest issue, out now – so we thought we’d revisit John Lewis’ excellent feature from June 2011 (Take 169). As the extravaganza arrives in Europe, Uncut meets the obsessive fans, stoners, bloggers and military advisors who’ll follow Waters and his lavish production to the ends of the globe…
Far be it for me to hang around with the popular kids, but the internet seems full these past couple of days with opinion on Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, culminating in a sort of collective music journalist meltdown in the face of Pitchfork awarding the album a fabled 10.0 rating.
A fairly inhospitable place to be on a Sunday night: just on the edge of the City, near Old Street roundabout, in the cellar of what used to be an almost permanently empty Chinese restaurant. This is the venue for, I think, only the second London show by Emeralds, a night subtitled “A Brave New World In Sound”.
