end of the road

I don’t have any more information on the new Bob Dylan album, Tempest, following last week’s newsletter and blog on Friday confirming the track listing, so apologies to all the readers who have written in, hungry for further details about the record. The absence of anything further I can tell you at the moment about Tempest gives me, however, the opportunity to briefly sing the praises of Lawless, the new movie from director John Hillcoat and Nick Cave, who’s written the screenplay, as he did for The Proposition, Hillcoat’s savage outback Western.

Singer Tony Martin has died at the age of 98. The legendary crooner, who was best known for his hit singles "I Get Ideas", "Begin The Beguine" and "There's No Tomorrow", passed away on Friday (July 27) from natural causes at his home in West Los Angeles, reports Reuters. Martin, who enjoyed the most successful periods of his career in the 1930s and 1950s, was a contemporary of the likes of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and sold over one million copies of his most successful single "To Each His Own".

Joe Strummer would have been 60 this month, but imagine him for a moment the way I remember him at 20.

Remastered, if not remade or remodelled: Roxy’s radical motherlode...

There’s a feature in the new issue of Uncut by Andy Gill on the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, where he gets to see a couple of extended shows in Cleveland, and I can’t recall the last time I felt so jealous of one of our writers.

Don’t spread it about, but, yes, I’ve heard the new Dylan album. And four or five tracks in, what I was thinking was: how much better is this thing going to get?

Blur will headline an intimate gig at The 100 Club next month as part of Converse's 'Represent' series of free shows. Damon Albarn and co have been confirmed as the headline act for the August 2 show, and will play last on a bill which includes a stellar supporting cast of The Bots, Savages and Swiss Lips. To get tickets, fans need to visit Converse.co.uk/blur from 9am on Wednesday August 1, with registration open until 6pm. Successful applicants will be notified by email and must confirm if they can attend by 12pm on August 2.

Roger Waters' The Wall tour has been named the highest grossing tour of the year so far by Boxscore/Billboard. The Pink Floyd man's global jaunt earned $131.4 million (£83.6 million) from November 1 last year to May 31 this year, selling 1.2 million tickets. The tour ends on July 21 in Quebec City, and will have made more than $350 million (£223 million) in total since it hit the road in 2010, and will have been seen by three million people.

Another issue in the bag, and these are the records that have got us through the last couple of days of production. Mostly very good, with a few probably glaring exceptions.

Last night [July 16], the BBC pulled a documentary about last summer’s riots just hours before transmission after a court ruling prevented it from being broadcast. It’s foolish, of course, to speculate who initiated proceedings and for what purpose - although at the risk of sounding paranoid, you suspect there’s plenty of people who’d rather not have such pesky reminders of the riots on our screens in the run up to the Olympics.