Call me speculative, but I don’t think John will be writing about Nick Lowe’s new album, At My Age, on his Wild Mercury Sound blog. It doesn’t, for a start, resemble the battle for Stalingrad reaching a furious climax, like the more deafening parts of the latest Queens Of The Stone Age record he’s been frightening me out of my wits with over the last week or so. I think therefore I might be permitted a few passing words on a particularly fine album without trespassing on John’s turf.
I'm not sure we should be giving any more publicity to the bizarre media phenomenon that is Sharon Osbourne, but I couldn't resist starting today with this quote from her about Josh Homme. Homme, it seems, had the temerity to criticise Ozzfest. In response, Osbourne told Blender, "I hope he gets syphilis and dies. I hope his dick fuckin' falls off so his mother can eat it."
Bob Dylan finished his UK tour on Tuesday in Birmingham, which has prompted Uncut’s resident Bob statistician Nigel Williamson to pore over the set lists of the 16 shows played so far during the latest European leg of the Never Ending Tour.
It’s Sunday, and I’m at Wembley Arena to see Bob Dylan. Outside, the sun’s just starting to set on what without exaggeration you could call a glorious day. Inside, a packed an excited Arena, meanwhile, in stark and tumultuous contrast to the evening’s warm decline, storm clouds are gathering as Bob Dylan and his band roar towards the climax of tonight’s opening number, “Cat’s In The Well”, a turbulent gem from the much-derided Under The Red Sky.
Nine Inch Nails lynchpin Trent Reznor is an unlikely inclusion in Time magazine's annual list of the 25 most influential Americans. "Reznor's music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy," claims the accompanying article, "but to the depressed, his songs proffer pop's perpetual message of hope." Other entertainment figures in the list are producer Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds, X-Files creator Chris Carter, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actress and talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, and comic strip hero Dilbert.
I won’t be seeing Dylan on his UK tour until Sunday at Wembley Arena, so I asked Damien Love to be a guest blogger and review the show for us. Damien is a veteran Uncut contributor, the author of a great biography of Robert Mitchum and a longstanding Dylan fan.
Thanks for the enormous response that followed my last post, in which I mentioned the possibility of a new Dylan album, apparently called Blue Eyes In The Darkness and due before the end of the year.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
April 9 to 15, 1997
Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer, aged 49. Although a much-respected cult figure in her own right, a handful of Nyro's songs became million-sellers when recorded by others, including Barbra Streisand ("Stoney End"), The Fifth Dimension ("Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic") and Three Dog Night ("Eli's Comin'").
