The way Joanna Newsom tells it, Ryan Francesconi had a critical role to play in “Have One On Me”: not just as chief arranger and player of the Bulgarian tambura, kaval, mandolin, banjo, recorder and so on, but also (along with drummer Neal Morgan) in steering her towards making “Have One On Me” a triple CD set.
The Rolling Stones on our minds a lot this week, with the Keith Richards book finally out (please have a look at Allan’s immense review in the new Uncut), and a pile of page proofs from our forthcoming Rolling Stones Ultimate Music Guide for me to read.
How to find a way through the arcane catalogue of the Sun City Girls? Last time I tried to count, there seemed to be around 60-odd releases, mostly rare as hen’s teeth, compounding the mythology of the band as among the most challenging and elusive of the past 20 or 30 years. Now, some three years after the death of Charles Gocher, there’s one last unexpected SCG album, and with characteristically perverse logic, expert word is that it may be their most accessible.
Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks.
Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.
There’s something a little daunting about writing on the subject of the Black Twig Pickers: an awareness, I guess, that I’m dealing with a world of knowledge and experience that comically exceeds my own. There’s a quote on their website which reads innocuously enough: “Exciting old-time music at its finest.” But it comes from some evidently specialist publication called Bluegrass Unlimited: the Black Twigs might attract dabblers in old-time music, but they privilege, understandably, those who know what they’re talking about.
One of my favourite labels of 2010 thus far has been Three Lobed Recordings, thanks in no small part to the amazing “Honest Strings” comp, in honour of Jack Rose, and the Hans Chew set I’ve been raving about these past few weeks.
