I don’t know if you saw it, but BBC2’s David Bowie documentary, Five Years, screened at the weekend, was very entertaining. A lot of the archive footage was familiar, but there were also some splendidly unexpected highlights, like a sequence of Bowie filmed at Andy Warhol’s Factory, which rather vividly suggested that Bowie’s talent for mime isn’t perhaps all it’s cracked up to be in which he pretended to unspool his own entrails and pluck out his heart, a performance that was doubtless accompanied by much sniggering from Andy's crowd.
Paul Weller teamed up with Irish newcomers The Strypes for a one-off performance at London's Rough Trade East last night (April 20th) as part of the shop's Record Store Day celebrations.
Headlining the shop's day of in-store gigs, which also saw performances from the likes of Frank Turner, King Midas Sound and a separate set from The Strypes themselves, Weller enlisted guitarist Josh McClorey and bass player Pete O'Hanlon as well as Miles Kane's drummer Jay Sharrock to join him for a thirty minute set.
Bauhaus' Peter Murphy was reportedly arrested on Saturday (March 16) on suspicion of causing injuries while driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and for hit-and-run offences.
In this archive feature from Uncut's May 2003 issue (Take 72), rock's greatest living soap opera tell the story of how they went to hell and back to bring the world some of the most popular, and most perfect, hard-centred easy listening music of all time. However, it nearly cost them their sanity. And their lives… Words: Nigel Williamson_________________
Kraftwerk fans have been left frustrated as massive demand for tickets to the group's forthcoming residency at London's Tate Modern crashed the website yesterday (December 12).
The director of a new film profiling Ginger Baker is interviewed in the new issue of Uncut (dated January 2013, and out now), explaining why the Cream drummer broke his nose during filming… As a companion piece, this week's archive feature finds Baker's former bandmate, Eric Clapton, providing a painfully frank account of his days in Cream – psychedelic drugs, 24-hour confrontations and their love of Pet Sounds included. From Uncut's May 2004 issue (Take 84). Interview: Nigel Williamson
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I’m off to see the second of the Stones’ 50th anniversary shows at the O2 on Thursday, and pretty excited about it. This morning, rummaging through some back issues of Uncut, I came across something I’d written about going to see them at Wembley Stadium in 1982, when they were touring in celebration of their 20th anniversary, amid much speculation that surely this would be their last go-around, retirement their next stop, which is very much what people have thought every time since then that they’ve toured. And yet here they are, 30 years further down the line, and no hint yet that we have seen the last of them.
Anyway, here’s the piece I came across earlier today. Have a good week.
Health and safety officials have said that concert promoter Live Nation was "disingenuous" for citing health and safety concerns for pulling the plug on Bruce Springsteen’s headline set at Hard Rock Calling on Saturday night (July 14).
I wrote a long review of the new Sun Kil Moon album, "Among The Leaves", in the latest edition of Uncut. This is the unedited version of the email interview I conducted with Mark Kozelek that runs alongside the piece. Pretty funny and revealing, I think, not unlike his new album.
