Things aren’t due to kick off for a couple of hours at the Pavilion Theatre where throughout this year’s Great Escape Festival Uncut is hosting a splendid line-up. So early Thursday evening I’m at the Dome, where Australian psyche rockers POND are making enough noise to wake the long-time dead.
The Eagles have been awarded honorary doctorates of music by the Berklee School of Music.
The ceremony, held in Boston on Saturday May 12, also saw Alison Krauss and Ethiopian musician Malatu Astatke honoured.
Previously, Berklee, the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world, has awarded honorary doctorates of music to David Bowie, BB King, Aretha Franklin and Quincy Jones among other.
Keith Richards has confirmed that he won't be joining Mick Jagger, when the Stones' singer presents the May 19 season finale of American sketch show, Saturday Night Live.
There has been speculation that Jagger would invite his bandmate to participate in the show, but speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, Richards had confirmed he won't be involved.
"I spoke to Mick and he said it's something that he said yes to many months ago, so he's just doing it," Richards told the magazine. "He's on his own."
Ringo Starr has reportedly lost his collection of Beatles' photographs.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Starr - a keen photographer - admitted he had no idea where his own photographs taking during his years with The Beatles are.
"I don't know where they are," he told Rolling Stone. "I wish I did. There's been several moves and things happen."
Previously, Starr unearthed a batch of postcards he'd received from his former bandmates, which were published as Postcards From The Boys in 2004.
For the current issue of Uncut, I interviewed Damon Albarn as part of my piece on his “Dr Dee” project (you can read it here). There wasn’t room for all of his answers in the mag, but today’s announcement of extra Blur dates prompted me to post the whole thing here.
Mick Jagger is set to host US comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live on May 19, and reports are suggesting that he will perform alongside the evening's other musical guests, the Arcade Fire and Foo Fighters.
The Rolling Stones frontman has confirmed that he will perform on the show as well as host, but Rolling Stone magazine is stating that he might play with the programme's fellow musical performers.
Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner has admitted that he and drummer Matt Helders dressed up and pretended to be Oasis in their school assembly.
Speaking to Pitchfork, the frontman named Oasis' 1995 album (What's The Story) Morning Glory as one of the LPs which had had the most influence upon him as a teenager, and revealed that he had performed tracks from the record in front of his peers while brandishing a tennis racquet.
Radiohead's Thom Yorke has said he can see why the band's eighth album The King Of Limbs alienated people.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, the singer said of the album, which was released as a download with just a week's notice with no publicity by the band:
"It was amazing just to put the record out like that. But then it didn't feel like it really existed…But that was the consequence of what we chose to do. You can either get upset about it, or say, 'well, that's not good enough.'"
The Black Keys' forthcoming documentary will be a "buddy movie" rather than a conventional tour film.
Noah Abrams, the director behind the yet-untitled film, has said he had no plans to shoot a straight band documentary and revealed that the movie would be a "buddy movie with perhaps the greatest soundtrack of all time".
The film-maker told Spin: "A lot of music documentaries spend too much time trying to make people cool. I'm fortunate enough to know these guys pretty well and their relationship is pretty incredible and very funny."
