The Happy Mondays have announced their plans to reform with the band's original line-up, including backing vocalist and former X Factor finalist Rowetta.
The Manchester icons, fronted by Shaun Ryder, will be touring the UK this summer as well as playing festival shows. No dates have yet been announced but it is thought that an official statement will be released in the coming weeks.
US President Barack Obama is apparently seeking support from a host of music names for his re-election campaign, including Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and Jay-Z.
Paris, 1968. On the set of a nondescript film called Slogan, 22 year old English actress Jane Birkin finds herself playing the love interest of a washed-up advertising executive undergoing a midlife crisis. In real life, Birkin’s three year marriage to Bond-theme composer John Barry is falling apart. She embarks on an affair with her leading man, a French pop star called Serge Gainsbourg, ushering in a year he would later call “un année erotique”, during which the duo would record a hit single, “Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus”, banned by the BBC for its suggestive sexuality.
Just been opening this morning’s post, and there are at least a couple of new albums in there that I’ll be playing imminently, from Grimes and the Carolina Chocolate Drops (not two artists who are immediately obvious bedfellows, for sure).
This comes in a cute Dansette-style box stuffed with ten albums of antique Kinkorama and Meet the Kinks!, a fab 1960s style booklet with rare fab pix. For complete retro-authenticity, everything is in mono, this being how the original records were released back in those sacred days (so sacred that “Days” itself is now the theme tune for a car advert).