Features

Apologies that blogs were a bit thin on the ground last week: as I maybe mentioned, I got pretty caught up in collating your Great Lost Albums into a Top 50 to run in the issue out at the end of June. A surfeit of great stuff there, and I’ll post some of your suggestions that didn’t make the 50 here in a couple of weeks or so.

An email over the weekend from Mark Golley, who's gone over to the States to catch a few dates on the solo tour Neil Young's doing with Bert Jansch in support. It's really interesting stuff about Young's latest capricious and intriguing career swerve - "performance and spook in equal measure" - so I figured that, with Mark's permission, I'd reprint it here.

Only had half an ear on new records these past couple of days, since Mark and I have been sifting through your many, many nominations for Great Lost Albums, following our special the other month. Pretty amazing discoveries there, that are going to keep us busy for a while.

Last autumn, after I’d placed a Sun Araw track on an Uncut psych CD called "Seeing For Miles", I fell into an occasional email correspondence with Cameron Stallones, the LA musician who records under that name.

Cornershop finished Club Uncut’s final night in Brighton with a set of psychedelic mantras and gorgeous pop, topping the best bill so far.

The hiccup of The Slits’ no-show on day one of Club Uncut’s residency at Brighton’s Great Escape didn’t dampen spirits for last night’s more typically full-on and varied affair.

Searching the internet for setlists yesterday, I came across Pavement’s set from the Brixton Academy on November 20, 1999; the last time I saw them play live.

Club Uncut has decamped to the seaside for the duration of The Great Escape, the three-day festival in which mostly new bands fill Brighton’s plentiful pubs and clubs. Our weekend starts, though, with a disappointment, when The Slits are a late cancellation, leaving a contingent of Northern Irish girls I meet here specifically to see them in a mood of gloomy resentment.

The first thing Paul Major says when Endless Boogie shuffle onstage is, “This is the last song of the night.” Droll joke, it seems. But 35 minutes later, as the band come to a juddering halt and ponder whether to attempt an encore, it turns out to have been true. One song, infinite possibilities.

Roy Harper arrives on stage at the Festival Hall with a healthy selection of excuses. He hasn’t played in three years. He’s only had half a soundcheck. He met the soundman at four o’clock – no, at ten past five. The first song is brought to a temporary halt after about thirty seconds, due to his guitar sliding on the passport secreted in his trouser pocket.