The last time I had occasion to write about my old friend BP Fallon in Uncut was in March, 2010, when he’d just released his debut single, produced by Jack White and released by Jack’s Third Man Records as the first in the label’s new Spoken Word-Instructional record Series. “Fame #9” was backed with “BP Fallon Interview By Jack White” and “I Believe In Elvis Presley”, on which White played some viperish slide guitar, with The Raconteurs’ Patrick Keeler on drums. There was also a video, featuring some of BP’s many friends, including Kevin Shields, Bobby Gillespie and Gemma Hayes.
Towards the end of the V&A’s terrific David Bowie Is… exhibition, tucked away on a wall next to the handwritten lyrics for “Heroes” and a postcard from Christopher Isherwood, are a set of door keys that have evidently seen better days.
It’s easy – and probably useful, sometimes – to lambast major labels for what looks from the outside like chronic short-termism. The climate is, understandably I guess, a neurotic one, and those days are long gone when labels would work long-term with a select group of trophy artists, whose usefulness to the company was more silvery and nebulous, more about cachet than quick profit.
It's the last day of summer, as Van Dyke Parks tells us, repeatedly. He's right, of course, but it's also true that there are still two days left of End Of The Road, pretty much the last festival of 2012.
Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, Alt-J and Patrick Watson are among the new additions to this summer's End Of The Road festival.
The festival, which will take place in Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire on August 31 – September 2, will be headlined by Grandaddy, Midlake and a co-headline effort from Grizzy Bear and Tindersticks.
Also newly confirmed for the festival are Savages, Creature With The Atom Brain, Gravenhurst, Abi Wade, Big Wave, Olympians, Horse Thief, Hurray For The Riff Raff, King Charles, The Step Kids, Woods, and Zachary Cale.
Independent record label Bella Union will celebrate their 15 birthday by hosting a day at this summer's End Of The Road festival.
The label has announced that they will be staging a takeover of the festival bill on Friday August 31, and bringing acts including Beach House, Dirty Three, Midlake and Veronica Falls to the site at Larmer Tree Gardens in North Dorset.
Five whole remastered discs and a mountain of trinkets. But is it worth a ton?JEEZ, THE SOUND quality is INCREDIBLE. It’s like David Gilmour is playing his acoustic guitar IN YOUR ROOM. You really can hear the strings BUZZ and hear his fingers SCRAPE on the fretboard. You can hear Nick Mason’s drum stool SQUEAK, hear Rick Wright’s Clavinet THROB, and you can actually hear Roger Waters having a BREAKDOWN about two minutes into “Welcome To The Machine”. Amazing.
