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The Beach Boys announce Feel Flows – The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971 box set

Michael Bonner
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The Beach Boys announce Feel Flows – The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971 box set

The Beach Boys have announced details of a new box set, covering the highly influential 1969 – 1971 period of the band’s career.

Feel Flows – The Sunflower and Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971 will be available from July 30 as a 5CD and digital box set.

The collection features newly remastered versions of Sunflower and Surf’s Up and boasts 135 tracks, including 108 previously unreleased tracks, live recordings, radio promos, alternate versions, alternate mixes, isolated backing tracks and a cappella versions, culled from the album sessions.

You can hear the unreleased track “Big Sur” below.

The box also comes with a 48-page book featuring unseen and rare photos, lyric sheets, tape box images, recording artifacts, new liner notes and new and archival interviews from Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Bruce Johnston, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love. Feel Flows will also be released in abbreviated versions including 4LP on both black vinyl and limited edition Translucent Blue and Translucent Gold color vinyl, 2LP black vinyl and 2CD editions.

Here’s a video of the unboxing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8g4xNNs7wE

Tracklisting for Feel Flows – The Sunflower and Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971 is:

DISC 1
SUNFLOWER – ORIGINAL ALBUM
1. Slip On Through (2019 master) (2:19)
2. This Whole World (2019 master) (1:58)
3. Add Some Music To Your Day (2019 master) (3:36)
4. Got To Know The Woman (2019 master) (2:43)
5. Deirdre (2019 master) (3:30)
6. It’s About Time (2019 master) (2:57)
7. Tears In The Morning (2019 master) (4:07)
8. All I Wanna Do (2019 master) (2:36)
9. Forever (2019 master) (2:42)
10. Our Sweet Love (2019 master) (2:41)
11. At My Window (2019 master) (2:32)
12. Cool, Cool Water (2019 master) (5:03)
13. Sunflower Promo 1 (previously unreleased) (0:59)

SUNFLOWER – LIVE
Previously Unreleased – Produced by The Beach Boys
14. This Whole World (Live 1988) (2:10)
15. Add Some Music To Your Day (Live 1993) (3:23)
16. Susie Cincinnati (Live 1976) (2:46)
17. Back Home (Live 1976) (3:15)
18. It’s About Time (Live 1971) (3:45)
19. Riot In Cell Block 9 (Live 1970) (3:34)

SUNFLOWER – BONUS TRACKS
20. Break Away (original 1969 single mix) (2:55)
21. Celebrate The News (previously unreleased 2020 mix) (2:37)
22. Loop De Loop (previously unreleased 1969 mix) (2:59)
23. San Miguel (previously unreleased 2020 mix) (2:33)
24. Susie Cincinnati (previously unreleased 2020 mix) (3:02)
25. Good Time (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:56)
26. Two Can Play (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:06)
27. Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song) (2021 stereo mix – previously unreleased) (3:21)

DISC TWO
SURF’S UP – ORIGINAL ALBUM
1. Don’t Go Near The Water (2019 master) (2:41)
2. Long Promised Road (2019 master) (3:32)
3. Take A Load Off Your Feet (2019 master) (2:32)
4. Disney Girls (1957) (2019 master) (4:08)
5. Student Demonstration Time (2019 master) (3:59)
6. Feel Flows (2019 master) (4:44)
7. Lookin’ At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (2019 master) (1:57)
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree (2019 master) (3:09)
9. Til I Die (2019 master) (2:32)
10. Surf’s Up (2019 master) (4:14)
11. Surf’s Up Promo (previously unreleased) (1:02)

SURF’S UP – LIVE
Previously Unreleased
12. Take A Load Off Your Feet (Live 1993) (2:35)
13. Long Promised Road (Live 1972) (4:14)
14. Disney Girls (Live 1982) (4:23)
15. Surf’s Up (Live 1973) (4:58)
16. Student Demonstration Time (Live 1971) (4:42)

SURF’S UP – BONUS TRACKS
Previously unreleased (unless otherwise noted)
17. Big Sur (previously unreleased) (2:35)
18. H.E.L.P. Is On The Way (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:31)
19. Sweet And Bitter (previously unreleased) (2:33)
20. My Solution (previously unreleased) (3:44)
21. 4th of July (2019 mix – previously unreleased) (3:11)
22. Sound of Free (1970 single mix, 2019 master) (2:22)
23. Lady (Fallin’ In Love) (1970 stereo mix – previously unreleased) (2:21)
24. Seasons In The Sun (previously unreleased) (3:27)

DISC THREE
SUNFLOWER SESSIONS
Previously unreleased
1. Sunflower Promo 2 (previously unreleased) (0:59)
2. Slip On Through (track and backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:47)
3. This Whole World (long version track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:10)
4. Add Some Music To Your Day (track and backing vocals – previously unreleased) (4:35)
5. Deirdre (track – previously unreleased) (3:34)
6. It’s About Time (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:53)
7. Tears In The Morning (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (4:08)
8. All I Wanna Do (session intro, track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:46)
9. Forever (session highlights – previously unreleased) (3:36)
10. Forever (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:01)
11. Our Sweet Love (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:39)
12. At My Window (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:50)
13. Cool Cool Water (alternate 2019 mix – previously unreleased) (6:24)
14. San Miguel (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:57)
15. Loop De Loop (track – previously unreleased) (2:49)
16. Good Time (session intro, track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (4:27)
17. When Girls Get Together (track – previously unreleased) (1:47)
18. Slip On Through (alternate 1969 mix with session intro – previously unreleased) (3:25)
19. Our Sweet Love (string section – previously unreleased) (1:00)

1969-1970 A CAPPELLA
Previously unreleased
20. San Miguel (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (1:00)
21. Break Away (Tag) (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:18)
22. Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song) (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (2:44)
23. Good Time (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:19)
24. This Whole World (backing vocals section – previously unreleased) (1:05)
25. Add Some Music To Your Day (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (3:30)
26. Got To Know The Woman (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (2:52)
27. It’s About Time (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:50)
28. All I Wanna Do (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (2:58)
29. Forever (previously unreleased 2019 a Cappella mix) (2:52)

DISC FOUR
SURF’S UP SESSIONS
Previously unreleased
1. Don’t Go Near The Water (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:45)
2. Long Promised Road (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:38)
3. Take A Load Off Your Feet (alternate vocal – previously unreleased) (2:28)
4. Disney Girls (1957) (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (4:17)
5. Student Demonstration Time (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:46)
6. Feel Flows (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (5:02)
7. Lookin’ At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (session intro and alternate mix – previously unreleased) (2:43)
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (2:55)
9. Til I Die (long version with alternate lyrics – previously unreleased) (4:47)
(Brian Wilson)
10. Surf’s Up (2019 mix – previously unreleased) (4:08)
(Brian Wilson-Van Dyke Parks)
11. (Wouldn’t It Be Nice To) Live Again (extended 2019 – previously unreleased) (6:50)
(Dennis Wilson-Stanley Shapiro)

SURF’S UP – A CAPPELLA
Previously unreleased
12. Don’t Go Near The Water (previously unreleased 2020 a Cappella mix) (2:36)
(Alan Jardine-Mike Love)
13. Long Promised Road (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (4:00)
14. Feel Flows (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:33)
15. Disney Girls (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:36)
16. A Day In The Life Of A Tree (backing vocals excerpt – previously unreleased) (0:32)
17. Til I Die (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (2:36)
18. Surf’s Up (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (4:04)

Bonus Tracks
Previously unreleased
19. I Just Got My Pay (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:43)
20. Walkin’ (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:44)
21. When Girls Get Together (previously unreleased 2020 mix) (3:45)
22. Baby Baby (previously unreleased) (3:13)
23. Awake (previously unreleased) (3:44)
24. It’s A New Day (previously unreleased) (2:20)

DISC FIVE
Bonus Disc
Previously unreleased
1. This Whole World (alternate ending – previously unreleased) (1:41)
2. Add Some Music To Your Day (previously unreleased alternate version) (3:27)
3. Don’t Go Near The Water (alternate version – previously unreleased) (2:42)
4. Surf’s Up Part 1 (1971 remake track with 1966 Brian vocal – previously unreleased) (1:41)
5. Soulful Old Man Sunshine (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (3:14)
(Brian Wilson-Rick Henn-Don Ralke)
6. I’m Goin’ Your Way (previously unreleased alternate mix) (2:24)
(Dennis Wilson)
7. Where Is She (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:22)
(Brian Wilson)
8. Carnival (Over The Waves/Sobra Las Olas) (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (1:34)
9. It’s Natural (previously unreleased) (2:35)
10. Medley: All Of My Love / Ecology (previously unreleased) (5:05)
11. Before (previously unreleased) (2:25)
12. Behold The Night (previously unreleased) (2:26)
13. Old Movie (Cuddle Up) (previously unreleased) (3:37)
14. Hawaiian Dream (previously unreleased) (4:33)
15. Settle Down / Sound Of Free (basic session outtake – previously unreleased) (2:17)
16. I’ve Got A Friend (previously unreleased) (2:26)
17. Til I Die (piano demo – previously unreleased) (1:55)
18. Back Home (previously unreleased demo) (2:20)
19. Back Home (alternate version – previously unreleased) (2:34)
20. Won’t You Tell Me (demo – previously unreleased) (2:01)
21. Won’t You Tell Me (previously unreleased 2019 mix) (2:54)
22. Barbara (previously unreleased 2020 mix) (2:59)
23. Slip On Through (early version track) (2:48)
24. Susie Cincinnati (basic session highlights – previously unreleased) (3:05)
25. My Solution (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:04)
26. You Never Give Me Your Money (previously unreleased) (0:40)
27. Medley: Happy Birthday, Brian / God Only Knows (previously unreleased) (2:47)
28. You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone (track & backing vocals – previously unreleased) (3:32)
29. Marcella (a Cappella – previously unreleased) (3:27)

Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil to present six genre-focused shows for BBC Radio Scotland

Charlotte Krol
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Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil to present six genre-focused shows for BBC Radio Scotland

Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil is set to host six specialist shows on BBC Radio Scotland, starting this month.

The Simon Neil Experience will hear Neil “explore his love of music and share tracks from artists that have inspired him as a musician and music fan”. Each show will focus on a particular genre including rock, pop, experimental, heartbreak, soundtracks, and metal.

The new six-part radio series, which will have special guests, kicks off next Wednesday (June 9) at 10pm BST and will broadcast at the same time weekly. Listeners will also be available to stream/download the show on BBC Sounds.

Neil said in a statement: “It’s a pleasure to be doing The Simon Neil Experience with BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Sounds and I’m proud to present six shows that each explore a different style of music that I love. Radio has been a big part of my life as a musician and music fan, and whilst we were not able to travel and share our music with the world, I wanted to share the songs, and artists, that have helped me through the last year, and more, alongside some very special guests that I am incredibly excited about.”

Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro performs live on stage during a one-off Q Awards show at The Roundhouse on October 15, 2019 in London, England. CREDIT: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

Gareth Hydes, who commissioned the series, said: “It’s fantastic to welcome Simon to Radio Scotland’s presenter stable with this new series. We are excited to be working with him and looking forward to hearing the music that has inspired him through the decades and the stories behind them. It promises to be a must-listen for all Biffy Clyro fans but also for anyone interested in getting more insight in to what influences the front man of one of Scotland’s most successful musical exports.”

IDLES to release documentary ‘Don’t Go Gentle’ in cinemas next month

Elizabeth Aubrey
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IDLES to release documentary ‘Don’t Go Gentle’ in cinemas next month

IDLES are set to release their documentary, Don’t Go Gentle, in cinemas next month.

The documentary film, directed by Mark Archer, will be available to view in cinemas from July 2 with fans able to buy tickets for the screenings here. The film will also have a few previews and Q&A sessions with filmmakers in selected cinemas from June 23-30.

The documentary will be available to stream via VOD from August 6 and can be pre-ordered here.

You can see the film’s trailer and preview dates below:

Initial Previews and Q&As

June 2021

23 – Watershed, Bristol
24 – Rio Cinema, London
24 – Abbeydale Cinema, Sheffield
25 – Duke of York, Brighton
26 – Picturehouse Arts, Cambridge
27 – Moth Club, London
27 – Curzon Soho, London
30 – Clapham Grand, London
30 – Showcase Cabot Circus, Bristol

July 2021

1 – Ritzy, London
1 – Phoenix, Exeter

A synopsis of the film reads: “Don’t Go Gentle captures the 10-year journey of IDLES’ struggle, grief and moving determination. Exploring their vulnerabilities through their experience, lyrics and sound, we learn the reasons why these five individuals have connected with legions of people across the world. We see just how that relationship unfolds in the most courageous and positive of human ways.

“In a time when the ground is shifting beneath our feet, where open communication and truthful reflection are more vital than ever, we journey with lead singer Joe Talbot and the band as they tear across stages, knocking down stereotypes, empowering fans to talk about mental health and the realities we may not feel comfortable to speak about.”

New Order and Pet Shop Boys move North American ‘Unity Tour’ to 2022

Charlotte Krol
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New Order and Pet Shop Boys move North American ‘Unity Tour’ to 2022

New Order and Pet Shop Boys have rescheduled their joint North American tour for the third time due to the coronavirus pandemic – this time with dates set for autumn 2022.

The revised tour dates now include guest DJ Paul Oakenfold and take in an additional date at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in New York. Head here for tickets.

New Order announced the change on Twitter: “Due to continuing uncertainty caused by the Covid pandemic, [Pet Shop Boys] and New Order unfortunately have to announce that their much-anticipated Unity Tour of North America will be moving to next year.”

See the rescheduled 2022 Unity Tour tour dates below:

September 2022

Saturday 17 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
Monday 19 — Boston, MA @ Leader Bank Pavilion
Wednesday 21 — Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
Friday 23 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
Sunday 25 — Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion at the Mann
Wednesday 28 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
Friday 30 — Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island

October 2022

Sunday 2 — Minneapolis, MN @ The Armory
Friday 7 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
Saturday 8 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
Wednesday 12 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
Friday 14 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
Sunday 16 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena

London record store De Underground awarded heritage plaque

Matthew Neale
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London record store De Underground awarded heritage plaque

London’s De Underground record store has received a blue heritage plaque for its contributions to several underground music scenes in the ’90s.

Owned by Mike De Underground, Cool Hand Flex, Uncle 22 and DJ Randall, the hugely influential store only ran for five years between 1991 and 1996, but has now been officially recognised by the London Borough of Newham Heritage Project as “instrumental in the development of UK hardcore, jungle and drum & bass music”.

As well as being a well-respected record store, De Underground also operated as a recording studio, responsible for a number of seminal releases including De Underground Crew’s “Melody Madness” and the heavily sampled “Six Million Ways To Die”.

Posting on Instagram alongside a picture of the plaque being presented, Rendezvous Records wrote: “Massive respect and thanks to all involved with De Underground, it’s been a privilege and delighted to see @newhamlondon and @newhamheritagemonth recognising your contribution to British culture, our lives are richer for it.”

Audio clips have also been installed around Sebert Road in London, playable via QR codes on placards attached to streetlights, with the intention of recognising and celebrating Black innovators in UK dance music history and culture.

A new hour-long podcast, titled Crate Digging: The Influence of De Underground Records, has also been produced by Rendezvous Records to celebrate Newham Heritage Month. The podcast features interviews with various key figures from the scene at the time – listen below.

Meanwhile, Record Store Day will have events taking place in both June and July in 2021.

It comes after the 2020 version of the annual celebration ended up being split across three events in August, September and October.

After announcing their initial date of June 12 for 2021’s RSD at the end of last year, an additional date of July 17 has since been added.

Liz Phair: “I’ve had to pick myself up from being dead many times”

Erin Osmon
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Liz Phair: “I’ve had to pick myself up from being dead many times”

Liz Phair has spent the pandemic at her home in Manhattan Beach – an upmarket seaside community in Southern California. “I don’t think I have self-care,” Phair reflects on this protracted period of isolation. “I have determination and grit!”

Speaking to Uncut for our July 2021 issue, from a lime-green room adorned with hot-pink curtains, pink artwork and pink balloons, Phair explains that she has spent lockdown in the company of her adult son, Nick – who has reactive airway disease – which means she has remained on a “very protective spectrum” compared with many people she knows.

“My friends have been gallivanting everywhere,” she explains with evident frustration. “I can’t even talk about it.” Most days, she explains, she and Nick have disinfected their groceries and refused to permit guests inside the house. “More than anything I have a sense of being really lucky to be able to stay home,” she says. “Self-care is like, ‘Wow, I can look out my window at the ocean.’ That makes me enormously more fortunate than a lot of people.”

Another unavoidable consequence of the pandemic is a delay in the release of Soberish – her seventh studio album and first since 2010. A typically candid collection of songs, the album continues the kinetic and playful ruminations on love, relationships, sex and womanhood Phair has been exploring since the start of her career. As a taster, in February she released Hey Lou – an imaginary dinner table conversation between Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson that brought into focus her gifts for wry, observational lyrics and hook-laden choruses. Soberish also reunites Phair with Brad Wood – the producer and engineer who helped transform Phair’s bedroom recordings into her 1993 debut Exile In Guyville.

“I came in with a mandate,” Phair explains. “I want to do something that’s evocative of our past, that uses some of the same sounds, but in an entirely new way.” It made sense, Phair continues, to return her roots with Wood – and not just for comfort’s sake. “I also wanted to reclaim our position as pioneers,” she says. “So I challenged us to make music that people might take a minute to adjust to.”

After …Guyville marked Phair as a feminist trailblazer – whose candid, profanity-strewn anthems helped normalise female sexuality, anger and longing in mainstream channels – she navigated the alt.rock explosion to become one of its most unique and potent voices. Yet, following a number of unexpected career twists in the years since, Phair paused her music career. She focused on life as a single mother and pivoted to sound design for television – work, she acknowledges, that helped inform the alternately intricate and airy quality of Soberish. “I knew after my television composition work that I was more interested in complexity, but I also wanted it to be evocative of Guyville, to have the air and spaces somehow,” she says.

In some respects, it seems natural that Phair should continue to refer to her debut album, nearly 30 years since its release. Guyville is a useful barometer against which Phair can continue to judge not just the continuing relevance of its torch-bearing provocations, but also how much she has developed as an artist. Soberish, for instance, features a song called Bad Kitty, which traces a complete circle from Guyville to the present day.

“I don’t live in a world that appreciates me”, she sings. “You could say that I’m ahead of my time”. “I’m grappling with being one of the fallen bodies on the road to progress,” Phair explains. “How many times I’ve had to pick myself up from being dead, like getting knocked down and then getting back up.”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN UNCUT JULY 2021

Queen’s Roger Taylor announces 2021 UK solo tour

Charlotte Krol
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Queen’s Roger Taylor announces 2021 UK solo tour

Roger Taylor has shared details of a UK tour this autumn – see dates below.

The Queen drummer is set to release his sixth solo album Outsider on October 1 and will play cuts from the new record alongside Queen classics on a 14-date tour.

The tour kicks off on October 2 at Newcastle’s O2 Academy before wrapping up at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 22.

Ticket pre-sale starts at 10am next Tuesday (June 8) – find out more here. Fans who pre-order the album via Taylor‘s official site before 4pm BST on Monday (June 7) will get advanced and early access to pre-sale tickets.

See the full tour dates here:

October 2021

Saturday 2 – NEWCASTLE, O2 Academy
Sunday 3 – MANCHESTER, Academy
Tuesday 5 – YORK, Barbican
Wednesday 6 – CARDIFF, St. David’s Hall
Friday 8 – LIVERPOOL, O2 Academy
Saturday 9 – NORWICH, University East Anglia (UEA)
Monday 11 – BATH, Forum
Tuesday 12 – BOURNEMOUTH, O2 Academy
Thursday 14 – PLYMOUTH, Pavilions
Friday 15 – NOTTINGHAM, Rock City
Sunday 17 – BEXHILL, De La Warr Pavilion
Tuesday 19 – GUILFORD, G Live
Wednesday 20 – COVENTRY, HMV Empire
Friday 22 – LONDON, O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Taylor‘s intimate upcoming tour marks his first live performances outside Queen in more than two decades.

The songwriter, who wrote many of Queen‘s hits including “A Kind of Magic” and “Radio Ga Ga“, said in a statement: “For some time now, we’ve all just been trying to get by. Now, it’s back to the basics, myself and some great musical pals getting back out there to play some rock. Obviously we’ll include some of the Queen classic catalogue, and some of my earlier solo work, but we’ll also be introducing them to some of the new stuff. So we hope folks are going to come on down.”

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA – FEBRUARY 13: Roger Taylor of Queen performs at Suncorp Stadium on February 13, 2020 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Marc Grimwade/WireImage)

The rocker will perform with a specially assembled band for the tour made up of Queen + Adam Lambert’s keyboardist Spike Edney and supporting drummer Tyler Warren, plus guitarist Jason Falloon and Goldfrapp live players keyboardist Angie Pollock and bassist Charlie Jones.

Outsider is Taylor’s first album of new material since 2013’s Fun On Earth. Much of it was recorded during lockdown and, as per press material, finds the multi-instrumentalist in a “reflective” mood. He dedicated it “to all the outsiders, those who feel left on the sidelines”.

Taylor added: “I’ve had a bit of a creative spurt and suddenly found myself with an album, which was lovely. It was a surprise! I just found myself in the studio and they came out one after the other. It was a pleasure really.”

Pete Doherty announces intimate Camden show at former Dingwalls venue

Patrick Clarke
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Pete Doherty announces intimate Camden show at former Dingwalls venue

Pete Doherty has announced an intimate headline show to take place in Camden, London next month.

The Libertines frontman will return to his old stomping ground for a show at Powerhaus, formerly Dingwalls, on July 3.

Tickets for the intimate, 500-capacity show go on sale today (June 2) at 10am. You can find them here.

It won’t be Doherty’s only intimate London performance of the year, with The Libertines set to perform four shows at Kentish Town’s O2 Forum, this December as part of their Winter Giddy Up A Ding-Dong tour.

A statement about these “up close and personal” shows, which were teased by the band earlier last week, added: “The Libertines are pleased as punch to announce a 15-date Christmas jaunt across the UK in November and December, including two shows at London’s O2 Forum, the scene of the bands legendary shows in December 2003.”

The Cure release acclaimed CURÆTION-25 show on streaming services for first time

Nick Reilly
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The Cure release acclaimed CURÆTION-25 show on streaming services for first time

The Cure have released their acclaimed CURÆTION-25 performance at London’s Meltdown Festival in 2018 on streaming services for the first time.

Previously released as a DVD, the ambitious performance saw The Cure playing songs from each of the band’s 13 studio albums in chronological order, spanning their catalogue from 1979 to 2018, and then in reverse order from 2018 to 1979, as part of two symmetrical sets.

The first set was called From There To Here and saw them play one song from each of their 13 studio albums in chronological order, before ending with the recent unreleased song “It Can Never Be the Same”.

They then returned to open with “Step Into the Light” before then playing a track from each album once more, but this time in reverse chronology and ending on “Boys Don’t Cry“.

Now, it’s been confirmed that the show will stream in the US on The Coda Collection, a subscription streaming offering featuring an exclusive, curated selection of iconic music documentaries, concert films, and episodic series via Amazon Prime Video Channels.

“This Meltdown performance is memorable for many reasons,” said The Cure’s Robert Smith.

“The format we chose gave the band a unique opportunity to illuminate and celebrate the kaleidoscopic musical trip we are all on, in a very special venue in a very special year.”

You can sign up for a free 7-day trial for The Coda Collection here. 

Patrick Sky, pioneering folk musician, dies aged 80

Debbie Carr
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Patrick Sky, pioneering folk musician, dies aged 80

Patrick Sky, known for being a pioneering member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the ’60s, has died aged 80.

The singer-songwriter passed away on May 27 in a hospice in Asheville, North Carolina. As Rolling Stone reports, his wife – fellow musician and novelist Cathy Larson Sky – confirmed Sky had succumbed to prostate and bone cancer. He had previously been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.

Patrick Sky was best known for his highly provocative satirical record “Songs That Made America Famous“, which was recorded in 1971 but wasn’t released until some years later, following difficulties trying to get a record label to sign off on the profanities.

Fellow musician and friend, Eric Andersen, paid tribute to Sky on Thursday (May 27) in a post praising his “brilliant mind and insightful soul”.

“Well, today’s a big, big sad day for me personally and for all of us songwriter music lovers. The dark? Well, he finally got there…” he wrote in a statement on Facebook.

“Patrick Sky the songwriter, singer, and Irish Uilleann bagpipe luthier has left this world into the light from a hospice in Ashville, North Carolina, but didn’t leave us for good. Songs are spirits and always remain behind.”

Andersen went on to acknowledge Sky‘s friendship with Buffy St. Marie and Peter LaFarge, founded on their shared experiences as Indigenous Native Americans, and confirming a long-held rumour: “Heard the rumor just confirmed by your son Liam. Joni Mitchell’s song “Last Time I Saw Richard” on her album Blue was of course about you.”

Born in Georgia, Sky grew up in Louisiana and served in the US military before becoming part of Florida’s burgeoning folk scene. It was there he met St. Marie and proceeded to move to New York, where he recorded her debut album.

Later in his career, Sky turned more towards traditional folk music, reflective of his Irish roots. In the ’70s, the part Creek Indian, part Irish singer-songwriter visited Ireland and set out to learn – and build – the Uilleann pipes. Sky went on to start the Celtic folk label Green Linnet, and serve as a Rhode Island state planner on Native American affairs.

Patrick Sky is survived by his wife Cathy Larson Sky and son Liam Sky.

Portishead and more celebrated in new virtual music tour of Bath and Bristol

Elizabeth Aubrey
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Portishead and more celebrated in new virtual music tour of Bath and Bristol

Portishead are one of a number of artists who are being commemorated in a new music project which celebrates Bath and Bristol.

The history of both Bath and Bristol’s music scene is being highlighted via the Everything is Music website, which went live last week (May 28).

The website features historical information on over 250 venues in the regions, alongside interviews with artists and producers. Users will also be able to access the information from a phone app in what developers are deeming “a location-based digital museum project taking you on a musical journey through Bristol and Bath”.

A description on the site’s Instagram page added: “From 28 May, discover personal stories and archive material from the people and places who form the musical fabric of these cities.”

Portishead feature in the app and can be heard sharing their memories of recording their first album Dummy in Bristol. Other artists who feature in the project include IDLES and Tears For Fears.

As reported on the BBC, the website has been created by Landmrk who have worked on the project with Crack magazine.

Ben Price told the BBC: “So many people have done amazing research into Bristol’s musical history but it is always something temporary in a museum or an exhibition, we wanted to make something more permanent.

“People can walk around the cities and unlock amazing stories, it takes the idea of a museum out of four walls.

“I’m most proud of the way we have democratised the technology, making it really useable and friendly.”

A post on Crack added that the interactive map on the site also features “an immersive audio walking tour from DJ Pinch guiding users through key points in the story of dubstep”.

It also includes: “A celebration of the women who have reshaped and defined the electronic music landscape of Bristol, a walkthrough the various iconic soundsystems of St. Pauls Carnival and a spoken word performance from Solomon O.B. who last year performed at the historic toppling of the Colston statue.”

Listen to Nick Cave’s new single “Letter To Cynthia” in full online

Will Richards
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Listen to Nick Cave’s new single “Letter To Cynthia” in full online

Nick Cave has shared his new single “Letter To Cynthia” in full online – listen to it below.

The track originally appears on Cave and Warren Ellis’ new seven-inch release titled Grief, based on a letter sent to Cave’s Red Hand Files website.

“Letter To Cynthia” appears alongside another song, “Song For Cynthia”, and both tracks were inspired by a question that a fan named Cynthia had sent to The Red Hand Files, a site where Cave responds to letters from his audience.

“I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams,” she wrote in October 2018. “They are helping me.”

Referring to the death of Cave’s teenage son in 2015, she continued: “Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?”

In a description under the new single, Cave wrote: “In Fall 2018 Cynthia sent this question to The Red Hand Files.

“My reply was the first time I was able to articulate my own contradictory feelings of grief. Letters like Cynthia’s have helped bring me and many others back to the world. I recorded ‘Letter To Cynthia’ and ‘Song For Cynthia’ with Warren in November 2020 at Soundtree Studios in London. They are beautiful pieces and I hope you like them.”

In other Nick Cave news, Cave and Ellis will head out on a European tour with The Bad Seeds across the summer of 2022 – new dates were announced last week.

Inside the vault: Prince’s legendary lost albums

Uncut
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Inside the vault: Prince’s legendary lost albums

To celebrate the imminent arrival of Welcome 2 America, the latest issue of Uncut takes a fascinating trip inside Prince‘s archives. Our mission? To piece together some of rock’n’roll’s most legendary lost albums.

From his earliest releases in the late 1970s until his untimely death in 2016, Prince was obsessed with recording. On tour he recorded every show; at home he was in Paisley Park Studio A as much as possible. He might be trying to assemble his next album or he might be taking notes, writing songs, goofing off, or practising his own purple brand of mad science. That work ethic means he left behind a legendarily massive vault crammed full of alternate takes, false starts, cul-de-sac jams and more than a few “lost” records.

Because he thought one and sometimes two albums ahead, he might abandon a project on a whim – no matter how far along he was in the process. His motives for scrapping an album were often never known or now forgotten, but in most cases Prince simply moved on to the next big idea. He created albums faster than he could release them. But those lost albums continue to provoke endless what-ifs and conjure countless alternate timelines. Here are some of his most notorious albums that never made it out of Paisley Park…

The Second Coming (1982)

Prince filmed every show on the Controversy tour in 1981 and 1982, usually on a fairly primitive VHS camera set up next to the soundboard. “We would watch the tape every night on the bus,” recalls keyboard player Matt Fink. “He would point out mistakes or things we did well. That’s how we learned and improved the shows.”

Their stop at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, stands out because, unexpectedly, there were real cameras there and a professional film crew to capture their performance. It transpires they were recording a live album and a concert film – ‘The Second Coming’, a remarkable, if lost, snapshot of a transitional period in Prince’s career.

At the time, Prince and his band were playing some of their best shows as they upgraded to bigger venues. “Even when we were playing in clubs, we played like it was a coliseum,” says Dez Dickerson, Prince’s touring guitarist. “So the span between Controversy and 1999 was an age unto itself. It wasn’t just two different planets, it was two different galaxies!”

A fully edited version of the concert film was created – but Prince scrapped it to focus on 1999 and another film project that became Purple Rain. “There was so much time and effort put into it,” says Dickerson. “It was a fully polished, meticulously thought-through live album and a well-executed film. Prince never wanted us to be frontman and sidemen. He wanted us to bea rock band. The album and the film really captured that.”

Prince
Image: Joe Stevens

The Flesh (1986)

Prince loved to jam with whoever was around and could keep up with him. “He’d jam in the studio and then jam some more at rehearsals,” recalls Susan Rogers, who worked as a studio engineer for Prince in the early to mid-1980s. “He spent hours playing these instrumental jams – and at some point he started labelling them ‘The Flesh’.”

Rogers believes the name may have come from his father. “I learned that when Prince was young – 13 or so – his father would get really angry at him for bringing girls over to the house. They’d be listening to records in his room and his father would come in and say, ‘How dare you bring the flesh into this house?’ Prince always had that religion/sex dichotomy.”

Eventually he handed some of these recordings over to Eric Leeds, his saxophone player, to see if there was enough material for an album. “A lot of those jams might have gone on for 15 or 20 minutes,” Leeds explains. “So he gave me an opportunity to mess around with them, maybe do some overdubs or some edits. There was one song called Junk Music that I cut down from maybe 40 or 45 minutes. I gave him something and he said, ‘Yeah, cool.’ That was pretty much the end of it. I was under no illusions that any of it would ever be released.” Says Rogers, “Prince had so much fun playing them that I think he wanted to release them, but he was astute enough to realise it was a half-baked idea.”

Dream Factory (1986)

Following the success of Purple Rain and the box office disappointment of his follow-up movie Under The Cherry Moon, Prince was trying to figure out what to do next. “He was experimenting with what his next vision would be,” says Susan Rogers. “This took a long time because he was in a period of flux. There were a lot of things changing. His engagement to Susannah Melvoin was breaking up, and he was about to turn 30.”

‘Dream Factory’ was one of several potential albums he was working on simultaneously, all of which eventually coalesced into 1987’s Sign O’ The Times. “Dream Factory was conceived of and put together earlier than the rest, back when The Revolution were still around,” says Rogers. Astonishingly, they were working on Dream Factory as early as 1982, when the band recorded a trio of songs that included an early version of I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man.

“There was a piece by Wendy Melvoin called Colors, as I recall,” continues Rogers. “There was a piece by Lisa Coleman called Visions. He got to the point where he was thinking about album art and Susannah drew something that looked a bit like her art for Around The World In A Day.”

Just as ‘The Second Coming’ was meant to showcase his former touring band, Dream Factory was intended to foreground The Revolution. But when The Revolution broke up, inevitably the album fell apart. Prince scrapped their recordings and redid most of the parts himself – although by that time he was no longer thinking of it as a standalone album…

Camille (1987)

Camille was one of Prince’s gutsiest endeavours, one compelling enough that it got a catalogue number from Warner Brothers and an initial vinyl pressing before it was yanked. The androgynous character was a studio creation, devised when Prince began using varispeed techniques to change the timbre of his voice.

“He was very comfortable with his falsetto,” says Susan Rogers. “But he wanted to sing whole songs as a character with a higher voice – not quite an octave higher, but still feminine.” Susannah Melvoin had made some drawings of stick figures with X’s for eyes – “creepy but cool”, according to Rogers – which further piqued Prince’s imagination. Inspired, he turned them into a single mysterious character, who first appeared in the song Shockadelica. “You were never sure if Camille was alive or dead – a ghost maybe, or a zombie character. Camille might have been male or female.”

Born in the studio, Camille struggled to find life on the stage. “Not only was he searching for what his next album would be, Prince was also thinking about his opening act,” says Rogers. “I don’t know how he thought he was going to pull off Camille live. He would have had to find somebody who was very androgynous and had a low voice for a woman but a high voice for a man. That may be the reason he shelved it.” Nevertheless, most of the songs on Camille – including Housequake and If I Was Your Girlfriend – ended up on Sign O’ The Times, complete with the androgynous vocals.

Prince in The Electric Ballroom

Crystal Ball (1987)

“I remember vividly us recording the song ‘Crystal Ball’ at his home studio in Chanhassen,” says Susan Rogers. “He was still living with Susannah. He’d given her this blank wall in his downstairs den. She was sketching a mural on the wall with fairies and nymphs – slender, lithe female nude bodies with wings. He wrote a line in the song that went, ‘While soldiers draw their swords of sorrow, my baby draws pictures of sex all over the walls in graphic detail!’ There was nothing graphic about this mural, but that was Prince.
He would take something like that and extend it to something a little more vivid.”

Drawing heavily from the Dream Factory and Camille projects – but adding a handful of new tracks – Crystal Ball was intended to be a triple album, but Warner Brothers demanded it be condensed into a more manageable form. It was trimmed to 15 tracks and retitled Sign O’ The Times, with the remaining tracks showing up on B-sides and subsequent albums. One purported highlight called In A Large Room With No Light was a holdover. “That was one of Wendy and Lisa’s songs,” recalls Eric Leeds. “I’m hard pressed to think of anything else in Prince’s catalogue that sounds like it. Sheila E plays her ass off on it. There’s an out vamp and she’s does these drum fills that are just terrific. I suspect Prince never did anything with it at that time because it was around the time when Wendy and Lisa left the band.”

READ THE FULL FEATURE IN UNCUT JULY 2021

New documentary, The Beatles And India, set for autumn release

Cillian Breathnach
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New documentary, The Beatles And India, set for autumn release

A new documentary detailing The Beatles’ time in India has been announced. Its release will come alongside a companion album that features notable Indian musicians interpreting Beatles tracks.

The Beatles And India features rare archival footage, recordings and photographs, eye-witness accounts and location shoots across India.

A statement about the film describes it as “the first serious exploration of how India shaped the development of the greatest ever rock band and their own pioneering role bridging two vastly different cultures”.

The film is directed by Ajoy Bose, who also wrote the book Across The Universe – The Beatles In India, with co-director Pete Crompton also serving as “cultural researcher”.

The documentary’s accompanying album, The Beatles And India: Songs Inspired By The Film, will feature interpretations, by contemporary Indian artists, of Beatles songs that they had been inspired to write from their time in India. The artists include Vishal Dadlani, Kissnuka, Benny Dayal, Dhruv Ghanekar, Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar, and Soulmate.

You can hear the lead single, a cover of “India, India“, below.

The documentary will premiere on June 6 at the BFI as part of the Tongues On Fire UK Asian Film Festival ahead of a full release in autumn.

See the full tracklist of the album below:

Tomorrow Never Knows – Kissnuka
Mother Nature’s Son – Karsh Kale / Benny Dayal
Gimme Some Truth – Soulmate
Across The Universe – Tejas / Maalavika Manoj
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except Me And My Monkey) – Rohan Rajadhyaksha
I Will – Shibani Dandekar
Julia – Dhruv Ghanekar
Child Of Nature – Anupam Roy
The Inner Light – Anoushka Shankar / Karsh Kale
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill – Raaga Trippin
Back In The USSR – Karsh Kale / Farhan Ahktar
I’m So Tired – Lisa Mishra
Sexy Sadie – Siddharth Basrur
Martha My Dear – Nikhil D’Souza
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) – Parekh & Singh
Revolution – Vishal Dadlani
Love You To – Dhruv Ghanekar
Dear Prudence – Karsh Kale / Monica Dogra
India, India – Nikhil D’Souza

Thurston Moore to headline London’s Grand Day Out 2021

Tom Skinner
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Thurston Moore to headline London’s Grand Day Out 2021

Thurston Moore has been announced as the headliner for Rockaway Beach’s Grand Day Out – see the full line-up below.

The event will take place at The Clapham Grand in London on August 29 ahead of the three-day Rockaway being held at Butlins in Bognor Regis in January 2022.

Grand Day Out, which is being put on in lieu of this year’s cancelled Rockaway, will also feature performances from The Orielles, I See Islands, Life, Sink Ya Teeth and Moderate Rebels.

“It’s our total pleasure to announce that Thurston Moore will be headlining this year’s Rockaway Beach’s Grand Day Out 2021,” organisers wrote on Twitter, hailing the musician as “arguably the most influential guitar player of the past 20 years”.

See the full lineup here:

Also on offer will be a late-night aftershow, a selection of street food, karaoke, vinyl and quizzes – tickets are available now from here.

The announcement comes after Thurston Moore released a surprise album of 10 abstract and ambient instrumental pieces, Screen Time, back in February. His latest studio album, By The Fire, came out last September and featured Moore’s former Sonic Youth bandmate Steve Shelley and My Bloody Valentine‘s Debbie Googe.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds add more dates to 2022 European tour

Will Richards
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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds add more dates to 2022 European tour

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have added more dates to their 2022 European tour – see the full schedule below.

The band announced the first round of dates for their upcoming tour earlier this month, after being forced to cancel a 2021 tour of Europe and the UK due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

After announcing initial dates in Greece, Germany, Sweden, Norway and more, the band have now announced further shows in Spain, Poland, France and beyond, including a headline slot at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival.

See the full list of dates below, with tickets on sale here. Details of more shows are promised soon.

June 2022

4 – Barcelona, Primavera Sound
6 – Lyon, Les Nuits de Fourviere
7 – Lyon, Les Nuits de Fourviere
15 – Athens, Release Athens Festival
21 – Zagreb, INmusic Festival
23 – Prague, Metronome Festival
27 – Cologne, Lanxess Arena
29 – Berlin, Waldbühne

July 2022

1 – Belfort, Les Eurockennes de Belfort
7 – Trencin, Pohoda Festival

August 2022

3 – Rastatt, Residenzschloss
5 – Klam, Castle Clam
7 – Gilwice, Arena Gilwice
8 – Gdansk, Ergo Arena
11 – Oslo, Øya Festival
12 – Gothenburg, Way Out West Festival

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ original 2021 European tour dates were set to be focused around the band’s 2019 album Ghosteen.

During the coronavirus pandemic, though, Cave and bandmate Warren Ellis teamed up to write and record the surprise album Carnage, which arrived in February.

Caravan unveil 37-disc box set, including hours of unreleased live material

Sam Richards
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Caravan unveil 37-disc box set, including hours of unreleased live material

Canterbury scene standard-bearers Caravan have announced a comprehensive 37-disc box set, containing all their studio and live albums on CD, plus 11 discs of previously unreleased live recordings.

Who Do You Think We Are? will be released by Madfish on August 20 in a limited edition of 2,500 copies worldwide.

The box also contains Steven Wilson’s 5.1 surround sound mix of In The Land Of Grey And Pink, a DVD of European TV performances from 1971–81, two books featuring rare Caravan photos and memorabilia, photos signed by the three surviving members of the original Caravan line-up – Pye Hastings, Richard Sinclair and David Sinclair – a Caravan-centric map of Canterbury, a Caravan family tree poster and two replica 1970s gig posters.

Watch a trailer for Who Do You Think We Are? below and pre-order here.

Listen to IDLES cover Gang of Four’s “Damaged Goods”

Alex Gallagher
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Listen to IDLES cover Gang of Four’s “Damaged Goods”

IDLES have given their spin on Gang of Four‘s “Damaged Goods” for an upcoming tribute album celebrating the post-punk legends and late guitarist Andy Gill.

The Bristol outfit’s version stays relatively faithful to the original – taken from Gang of Four‘s 1979 debut Entertainment! – with frontman Joe Talbot’s distinctive vocals lending some grit to their rendition.

“IDLES does not exist without Gang of Four,” the band commented in a statement. “‘Damaged Goods‘ still sounds new and exciting after the millionth listen. We jumped at the chance to just to play it, let alone record it. It was an honour, a joy and a privilege.”

Listen to IDLES‘ cover of “Damaged Goods” below:

The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four is set to arrive June 4, with a star-studded list of contributors. The compilation was announced earlier this year alongside a cover of “Natural’s Not in It” by Serj Tankian and Tom Morello.

Other artists confirmed to appear on the compilation include Gary Numan, La Roux and Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmates Flea and John Frusciante.

IDLES released their latest album, Ultra Mono, in September of last year.

John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band – Leftover Feelings

Rob Hughes
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John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band – Leftover Feelings

Remarkably, given their long shadows and proximity to one another around Nashville, good friends John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas had never recorded together until now. They chose to mark the occasion in style by commandeering RCA’s fabled Studio B – birthplace of the late-’50s Nashville Sound and once home to Elvis, Dolly, the Everlys, Roy Orbison and more.

The place is referenced, by way of Waylon Jennings, in the evocative The Music Is Hot, a love letter to the sounds of Hiatt’s formative years. But Leftover Feelings travels deeper and wider through his psyche, taking us through a whole spectrum of emotion. Douglas and his rootsy band prove ideal companions, seasoning these discerning songs with well-judged doses of violin, lap steel and, of course, Douglas’ trademark dobro. Hiatt and co are at their most playful on the spirited Keen Rambler and Long Black Electric Cadillac. The latter, an eco-charged upgrade on the models of rock’n’roll legend, is a countrybilly frolic with real zip. And the playful electric blues of Little Goodnight, first cut by Hiatt in the early ’90s, turns as choppy as its protagonists’ dizzying experience of parenthood.

At other times, Hiatt gets more directly personal. Mississippi Phone Booth alludes to the tipping point of his boozing and drugging days, stuck on the end of a line, looking for some kind of human contact. Similarly, the self-admonishing Buddy Boy – “You can’t drink yourself out of this one/You’re gonna need some help” – feels like a page ripped from a diary.

Most moving of all is Light Of The Burning Sun, which details the suicide of his older brother, aged just 21, and the trauma that subsequently tore Hiatt’s family apart. “Shook the life out of us all”, he sings, over gentle acoustic guitar and Christian Sedelmyer’s mournful violin. At 68, Hiatt is producing some of the best work of his career, mapping his inner life with an eloquence that most can only aspire to.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – The Ultimate Collection

Tom Pinnock
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John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – The Ultimate Collection

For John Lennon’s 30th birthday, Yoko Ono presented him with a sensory box. Fingers could be inserted into holes containing different materials: liquid, say, or a spike. It was a hit, though you’d be forgiven for thinking the birthday boy might’ve preferred something less surprising.

After all, it’d been a turbulent old year. The Beatles were over. Lennon and Ono had embarked on primal scream therapy, during which Lennon had examined his feelings of abandonment and his grief over his mother’s death. To top it all, he had been unexpectedly reunited with his estranged father Alfred; they celebrated his 30th at Tittenhurst Park, an event that ended with Lennon Jr threatening to kill Lennon Sr.

By that point he was halfway through the recording of his first solo album: a visceral monument to his pain, it marks the peak of the confessional songwriting style he’d dabbled with since 1964’s I’m A Loser, and which had now become his sole métier. At points it feels closer to modern art than music. That’s not just down to the presence of Yoko Ono on “wind”: this is a record you delve into occasionally, when you need to feel something. It wouldn’t be seen dead hanging around with McCartney.

Fifty-one years after its release, it’s now reincarnated as an eight-disc super deluxe boxset comprising 11 hours of material, all newly mixed and a huge tranche of it previously unreleased. The ultimate mix CD presents the original in all its tenebrous beauty, leavened at times by a soulful feel, like deconstructed gospel on God and Mother. Then there’s the following set of themed CDs, all with the standard album tracklisting plus previous singles Give Peace A Chance, Cold Turkey and Instant Karma!: outtakes, elements (new mixes highlighting a key part or two), demos, raw studio mixes and, finally, collages showing the evolution of the songs.

Fascinating changes can be charted: Hold On begins as just guitar and vocals, before Take 2 introduces a double-time beat from Ringo Starr and some nifty fills, and bass chords from Klaus Voormann. “OK, that’ll do,” says Lennon, “we don’t want to get… berserk.” Mother seems to have been the most difficult song to perfect – Take 61 features the familiar piano and wracked vocals, but by Take 91 Lennon is back strumming  guitar before eventually returning to piano. “It’s hard to believe [the lyrics] all the way through without being on junk,” laments Lennon to Starr after one aborted take.

From its acoustic-blues demo, more Southern porch than Tittenhurst terrace, “Well Well Well” is consistently thrilling – “Fucking hell!” says Lennon as the wild Take 4 dissolves into avant-garde racket, while the “elements” mix is as cacophonous and exciting as Revolution. Look At Me is also tried in a variety of ways, solo and strummed, as a full band version, and then finally in the familiar picked White Album style à la Julia.

Instant Karma! appears in a few iterations with its blanket of slapback echo absent; most enlightening is the rootsy, Stax-like studio demo with George Harrison on nimble lead guitar. The elements mix of Cold Turkey, meanwhile, foregrounds a stunning feedback drone throughout the taut funk. Such is the volume of material here, one can forgive the low points, such as the seven practically indistinguishable versions of My Mummy’s Dead.

Despite its dark subject matter, sessions seem to have been relaxed, with rapport beautifully portrayed in the evolution documentary mixes: “You’re talking to folk-blues from the north of Liverpool, you know,” Lennon jokes when he’s asked to count in a track, “you’re not talking to fackin’ Mantovani…” Later, to Phil Spector, “They’re all very slow, except for the fast ones”; and during work on “Isolation”, “We’ll go and hear what we’re doing shall we, gang, before we turn into Edmundo Ros and his jazz quartet.” Particularly touching is Lennon’s scream of “George!” when Harrison enters the studio on his birthday.

The rarest jewels, though, lie in the two outlying discs. The “jams” disc presents, in chronological order, between-take improvisations from Lennon, Starr and Voorman, from a hilarious parody of three Elvis Presley songs to snippets of Get Back and I’ve Got A Feeling.

Of course, Yoko Ono also made her own Plastic Ono Band record – Lennon told Rolling Stone it was “20 years ahead of its time”, but it’s even further out than that – and the final disc, a packed Blu-ray, presents the epic October 10 sessions in full. Eighteen minutes long, Why is electrifyingly modern, predicting Funkadelic and Neu!, while the 16-minute Touch Me and 21-minute Why Not find Lennon showing off what he called his “cinéma vérité” slide guitar style and Ono conjuring up the most otherworldly sounds to whip on Lennon, Starr and Voormann. Unreleased jams Life, Omae No Okaa Wa and the freeform I Lost Myself Somewhere In The Sky are also prescient, the former eerily Can-like in its cyclical beat, high bass guitar and echoed, abstract wails. Unlike Lennon’s anguished record, Ono’s work here is life-affirming, her pain reborn as transcendence.

Honesty would, for better or worse, remain Lennon’s policy for the rest of his career, but he would never make anything quite like John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. As much of a sensory box as a pop record, it remains as arresting and difficult as it was 51 years ago. And, as the man said, that’s reality.

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