Alia musica

As chosen by his Bad Seeds and Grinderman bandmates, famous fans and Cave himself…

Today (January 28, 2015), social media reliably informs me that Robert Wyatt is 70, which seems a reasonable justification for reposting this long and, I hope, interesting transcript of an interview I did with him at home in Louth back in 2007, a little before the marvellous “Comicopera” was released. It begins with Wyatt discussing, of all things, Big Brother...

March 2013, Richmond, Virginia. Matthew E White's Big Inner album has become a minor word-of-mouth sensation: a country-soul fantasia, saturated with lavish horn and string arrangements, mostly recorded in the attic of his Richmond house (You can read my 2013 interview with Matthew E White here).

Keith Richards also posts personal message of condolence...

Very taken with Africa Express' version of "In C", by Terry Riley, this week. I have a few takes on the piece (50 years old this month, incidentally), the latest being one by Portishead's Adrian Utley from a couple of years back, though I still probably default to what I think is the original recording from '68.

A bit frustrating this week, since I can't really talk about a couple of the most significant musical arrivals here, due to record label embargoes and so forth. Sorry, as ever, about the teasing: I'll reveal more as soon as I can.

As AC/DC announce Malcolm Young's retirement and the release of a new album, Rock Or Bust, we look back at the life of former frontman Bon Scott in a piece taken from Uncut's December 2013 issue (Take 199). A street poet who’d been inside for ‘carnal knowledge’? A teenybop idol and hippy seer? A tearaway who swam with jellyfish and rode motorbikes naked? “A fantastic guy, a real human, so different to what people thought…” Words: Peter Watts _________________________

As The Kinks prepare to release a deluxe edition of Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround Part One, packaged with soundtrack Percy, we take a trip back to Uncut’s November 2007 issue (Take 126), where Ray Davies talks Uncut through some of the best albums he’s made in his long career. “My songwriting has been my ally through life,” Davies muses, “because I ain’t got much else.” Words: Nick Hasted

With a new Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth, due to open in the UK next month, I thought it a good time to dust down a piece I wrote on Cave's film career for our 2013 Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to Cave.

When Mick Jagger recently appeared in a promotion sketch, dryly describing these Monty Python reunion shows as "a bunch of wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth", it demonstrated that the Pythons still have the rock star heft of their ‘70s pomp.