Morrissey appeared on last night’s Later... With Jools Holland, performing new single "Spent The Day In Bed" from his upcoming album Low In High School.
The album is set for a November 17 release via new label BMG.
You can watch the clip below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eya0JhBP0ZI&featur...
Morrissey appeared on last night’s Later… With Jools Holland, performing new single “Spent The Day In Bed” from his upcoming album Low In High School.
The album is set for a November 17 release via new label BMG.
You can watch the clip below.
Earlier this week, Morrissey claimed that the Ukip leadership election was rigged to ensure an anti-Islam activist did not win.
The singer made the comments during a live appearance on BBC 6 Music.
Morrissey said: “I was very surprised the other day – it was very interesting to me – to see Anne Marie Waters become the head of Ukip. Oh no, sorry she didn’t – the voting was rigged. Sorry, I forgot.”
As Morrissey’s comments were met by silence from the audience, he added: “You didn’t get it, did you? You obviously don’t read the news.”
Sharon Van Etten is releasing a deluxe edition of her 2009 debut album, because i was in love.
Called (it was) because i was in love, Van Etten says, “It was an innocent and beautiful record, which some of my newer fans may not even know about. This seemed like the perfect time to remix and rema...
Sharon Van Etten is releasing a deluxe edition of her 2009 debut album, because i was in love.
Called (it was) because i was in love, Van Etten says, “It was an innocent and beautiful record, which some of my newer fans may not even know about. This seemed like the perfect time to remix and remaster it, and give it a new life.”
The album arrives as a Vinyl Me Please exclusive (pre-order available November 9) and via Van Etten’s online shop. It will be available digitally everywhere.
(it was) because i was in love tracklist:
I Wish I Knew
Consolation Prize
For You
I Fold
Have You Seen
Tornado
Much More Than That
Same Dream
Keep
It’s Not Like
Holding Out
I’m Giving Up On You *
You Didn’t Really Do That *
* bonus tracks
Bruce Springsteen has paid tribute to his "long lost brother" Tom Petty.
Petty died on Monday aged 66.
“Down here on E Street, we’re devastated and heartbroken over the death of Tom Petty. Our hearts go out to his family and bandmates,” Springsteen writes. “I’ve always felt a deep kinshi...
Bruce Springsteen has paid tribute to his “long lost brother” Tom Petty.
“Down here on E Street, we’re devastated and heartbroken over the death of Tom Petty. Our hearts go out to his family and bandmates,” Springsteen writes. “I’ve always felt a deep kinship with his music. A great songwriter and performer, whenever we saw each other it was like running into a long lost brother. Our world will be a sadder place without him.”
Down here on E Street, we’re devastated and heartbroken over the death of Tom Petty. Our hearts go out to his family and bandmates.
Springsteen’s tribute follows similar accolades from Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson.
Dylan said: “It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”
Sending love to Tom Petty and his family at this difficult time.
The Breeders have released a new song, "Wait In The Car".
Released on 4AD, the single is the first music to be released by the line-up behind the band’s album, Last Splash - Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson.
You can hear the song below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i7...
The Breeders have released a new song, “Wait In The Car“.
Released on 4AD, the single is the first music to be released by the line-up behind the band’s album, Last Splash – Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson.
You can hear the song below:
The single will also form part of a series of 7”s releases.
Single One will be available at the band’s upcoming tour dates, starting October 15 (pressed on orange vinyl, featuring a cover of Amon Düül II’s 1970 track “Archangel’s Thunderbird”, recorded with Steve Albini in Chicago).
Single Two will be available exclusively at select independent record stores from October 27 (pressed on red vinyl, featuring a cover of Mike Nesmith’s “Joanne”).
Details of Single Three (featuring a cover of Devo’s ‘Gates Of Steel’ and pressed on yellow vinyl) are to announced later in the year.
Each version is limited to 1,500 copies worldwide.
Last night, as a sad day was drawing to a close in the UK, the gloom was further compounded by reports of Tom Petty’s death. Soon, in what became a live indictment of social media-era news, it transpired that the obituaries were premature - if only by what turned out to be a few hours. Amidst the ...
Last night, as a sad day was drawing to a close in the UK, the gloom was further compounded by reports of Tom Petty’s death. Soon, in what became a live indictment of social media-era news, it transpired that the obituaries were premature – if only by what turned out to be a few hours. Amidst the chaos and memorials on Twitter, Neko Case nailed the moment poignantly: “I hope Tom Petty is not actually dead and makes a full recovery to see all the kind, sweet things you are are saying about him. What a life.”
I hope Tom Petty is not actually dead and makes a full recovery to see all the kind, sweet things you are are saying about him. What a life. ❤️
Bob Dylan, no less, was quick to articulate his condolences. “It’s shocking, crushing news,” he told Rolling Stone. “I thought the world of Tom. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.” Jack White’s Third Man Records, meanwhile, tried to make sense of how terrible events collided. “We’ve lost music lovers & music makers today,” they wrote. “We don’t know how to cope, so we continue to work, with broken hearts, in the name of music.”
We've lost music lovers & music makers today. We don’t know how to cope, so we continue to work, with broken hearts, in the name of music.
Clubbable, enduring, an absurdly talented everyman who seemed to bridge the gap between the multitudes of music lovers and the rock giants who became his peers; Tom Petty was the most relatable of legends. When he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in June 2016, his speech captured a certain unshowy devotion to his art, and a humble awareness that his collaborators should be respected as a critical part of the process. “Writing a song for a rock band – you’d better bring a really good song, because they don’t take it well if it’s not,” he said. “Many times I’ve gone back to the drawing board… If no one ever wrote another song, we’d be fine. There’s plenty of songs. But I still do it. I love it, it’s a gift. Everybody can do it, but everybody can’t do it good.”
After the ceremony, Roger McGuinn – a key Petty hero who had become his sponsor that evening – told Uncut’s Jaan Uhelszki, ““Tom goes out of his way to be a good friend. He tries to give you a shot in the arm, if you need it. Like what he’s doing with Mudcrutch [the formative, pre-Heartbreakers band that Petty had just reformed]. Tom Leadon is a guitar teacher and Tom has elevated him to be a rock star for a month or two. It’s a very sweet thing to do.”
The picture that emerges of Tom Petty from such testimonies is of a humane pragmatist who was averse to imposing any mystical airs on what he did for a living. “I’m not Mr Laidback,” he admitted to Uncut’s Jason Anderson in 2014, though his music often achieved an elevated balancing act between a theoretically mellow California jangle and something more wired and uptight; something which gave Petty unlikely traction in the UK as a New Wave avatar at the start of the Heartbreakers’ recording career.
Graft and ambition are not always the most poetic ways of describing a creative talent, but they capture a certain workingman’s spirit innate to Petty, his endeavours and presentation; a spirit that, again, endeared him to both his fans and his storied rock friends. In Jason’s piece, Petty sat at home in Malibu and talked candidly about how he managed his temper, and how his single-mindedness had propelled him through such a long and extraordinary career. “One advantage I had over a lot of my friends,” he recalled, “[was] by the time I was 15, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. A lot of them didn’t way into their 20s. But I knew right away what my calling was, there was no question about it. I had no choice – I was fortunate in that way.”
It was a theme Petty echoed when he talked to Jaan Uhelszki in 2016, a couple of days after the Hall Of Fame show, in the sort of words that seem especially poignant today “I’ve come to realise that I’m always pushing the rock up the hill,” he said. “Because we don’t take the easy way. But that’s who we are and that’s the way we do it and it’s always worked out fine. And I’m going to keep doing it.”
Morrissey has claimed that the Ukip leadership election was rigged to ensure an anti-Islam activist did not win.
The singer made the comments during a live appearance on BBC 6 Music.
Morrissey said: “I was very surprised the other day – it was very interesting to me – to see Anne Marie Water...
Morrissey has claimed that the Ukip leadership election was rigged to ensure an anti-Islam activist did not win.
The singer made the comments during a live appearance on BBC 6 Music.
Morrissey said: “I was very surprised the other day – it was very interesting to me – to see Anne Marie Waters become the head of Ukip. Oh no, sorry she didn’t – the voting was rigged. Sorry, I forgot.”
As Morrissey’s comments were met by silence from the audience, he added: “You didn’t get it, did you? You obviously don’t read the news.”
Anne-Marie Waters, who has previously described Islam as “evil”, came second to Henry Bolton on Friday as the party elected its fourth leader within the space of a year.
Waters received 2,755 votes to Bolton’s 3,874.
The 6 Music session comes as Morrissey prepares to unveil his latest album, Low In High School, which is set for release on November 17.
Thom Yorke has announced a pair of live performances in California.
He will be joined by longtime producer Nigel Godrich and audiovisual artist Tarik Barri for both shows, which take place on December 12 at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles and on December 14 at the Fox Theater in Oakland.
The two ...
Thom Yorke has announced a pair of live performances in California.
He will be joined by longtime producer Nigel Godrich and audiovisual artist Tarik Barri for both shows, which take place on December 12 at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles and on December 14 at the Fox Theater in Oakland.
The two dates are an addition to his previously announced appearance at Day for Night Festival in Houston, Texas on December 17.
Yorke has also announced his 2014 solo album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is being reissued via XL on December 8 on CD, vinyl and via streaming services.
Bob Dylan has led the tributes to Tom Petty, who had died aged 66.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Dylan said: “It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”
Petty was found unconscious after suff...
Bob Dylan has led the tributes to Tom Petty, who had died aged 66.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Dylan said: “It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”
Petty was found unconscious after suffering a cardiac arrest at his Malibu home on Sunday, where he was rushed to UCLA Medical Centre and placed on life support.
Petty’s death was subsequently confirmed by Petty’s long-term manager Tony Dimitriades: “He died peacefully at 20:40 Pacific time (03:40 GMT Tuesday) surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played a final show last Monday [September 25], performing the last of three sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl to conclude their 40th anniversary tour.
Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Carole King and more have also paid tribute to Petty on social media.
Sending love to Tom Petty and his family at this difficult time.
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains will extend opening hours as well as stay open for a period of 42 hours before it closes on October 15.
Today [October 2] a final 4,500 tickets will become available.
The Victoria & Albert Museum's most visited UK music exhibition, Their Mortal Remai...
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains will extend opening hours as well as stay open for a period of 42 hours before it closes on October 15.
Today [October 2] a final 4,500 tickets will become available.
The Victoria & Albert Museum‘s most visited UK music exhibition, Their Mortal Remains will open for the entire weekend of October 6 – October 8, welcoming visitors for 42 hours.
The Exhibition will also be opening its doors on selected days from 9:00am and will be open until 10:00pm where possible. Full available hours can be viewed by clicking here.
Two double albums of unreleased Tim Buckley recordings are set to be released next month.
Greetings From West Hollywood and Venice Mating Call collect live recordings from Buckley's 1969 shows at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. They will be released on October 13 on Edsel Records in the UK and Manif...
Two double albums of unreleased Tim Buckley recordings are set to be released next month.
Greetings From West Hollywood and Venice Mating Call collect live recordings from Buckley’s 1969 shows at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. They will be released on October 13 on Edsel Records in the UK and Manifesto in the US.
The records are the latest in a series of live albums released since Buckley’s death, including Live At The Folklore Center 1967 and Live At The Troubadour 1969.
You can hear “Buzzin’ Fly” below.
The tracklisting for Greetings From West Hollywood is: Disc One: Buzzin’ Fly
Strange Feelin’
Blue Melody
Chase The Blues Away
Venice Mating Call
Gypsy Woman
I Don’t Need It To Rain
Disc Two: Driftin’
(I Wanna) Testify
Anonymous Proposition
Lorca
I Had A Talk With My Woman
Nobody Walkin’
The tracklisting for Venice Mating Call is: Disc One: Buzzin’ Fly
Strange Feelin’
Blue Melody
Chase The Blues Away
Venice Mating Call
Gypsy Woman
I Don’t Need It To Rain
Disc Two: Driftin’
(I Wanna)Testify
Anonymous Proposition
Lorca
I Had A Talk With My Woman
Nobody Walkin’
Pearl Jam have released the documentary film Let’s Play Two and accompanying soundtrack album.
Directed by photographer Danny Clinch, the film documents the band’s performances at Wrigley Field on August 20 and 22, 2016 during the Chicago Cubs' World Series championship season.
Let’s Play Tw...
Pearl Jam have released the documentary film Let’s Play Two and accompanying soundtrack album.
Directed by photographer Danny Clinch, the film documents the band’s performances at Wrigley Field on August 20 and 22, 2016 during the Chicago Cubs’ World Series championship season.
Let’s Play Two screens in the UK on October 4. You can find all screening details by clicking here.
The soundtrack is released on CD and vinyl.
Tracklisting for the album is:
Low Light
Better Man
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
Last Exit
Lightning Bolt
Black Red Yellow
Black
Corduroy
Given To Fly
Jeremy
Inside Job
Go
Crazy Mary
Release
Alive
All The Way
I’ve Got A Feeling
Roger Waters will play this year's Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park.
He'll bring his Us + Them tour to London on Friday July 6, 2018.
You can watch a trailer for the show below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F-Kq01H1BE&feature=youtu.be
Ticket prices start at £65.00 for gene...
Roger Waters will play this year’s Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park.
He’ll bring his Us + Them tour to London on Friday July 6, 2018.
You can watch a trailer for the show below:
Ticket prices start at £65.00 for general admission, rising to £249.90. Barclaycard and fanclub presale begins today (Monday October 2) while tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday October 6.
Bidin’ My Time, Chris Hillman’s first solo album in more than a decade, opens with a familiar tune: a new version of “Bells of Rhymney”, adapted by Pete Seeger from lyrics by the Welsh poet Idris Davies. Hillman has been living with the song for most of his life, having first recorded it for...
Bidin’ My Time, Chris Hillman’s first solo album in more than a decade, opens with a familiar tune: a new version of “Bells of Rhymney”, adapted by Pete Seeger from lyrics by the Welsh poet Idris Davies. Hillman has been living with the song for most of his life, having first recorded it for The Byrds’ 1965 debut, Mr Tambourine Man, an album that melded folk songs with electric guitars and invented a new genre, simply called folk rock. Naturally, Hillmans’ voice has changed over the last half-century, taking on a slightly gruffer grain and adding a soft twang to his syllables, but the guitars still chime like church bells and he still harmonises sweetly with former bandmate David Crosby and long-time collaborator Herb Pederson.
In the context of this lovely late-career comeback, which was produced by Tom Petty and features several members of the Heartbreakers, “Bells Of Rhymney” draws a straight line from the 2010s to the equally turbulent 1960s, and the lyrics have little to do with mining disasters in South Wales and everything to do with ageing folk rockers poring over memories of past glories. It becomes a song about folk rock, a song about The Byrds, a song about a generation trying to hold on to its fading dreams and deepest wishes. That bittersweet nostalgia colours every track that follows, as Hillman engages closely with his own past: not just the music he made, but the music he loves. He covers the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back” with the faithfulness of a diehard fan and treats “When I Get A Little Money”, penned in 2016 by the Indiana singer-songwriter Nathan Barrow, like a lost classic.
While Hillman might have been overshadowed by his various bandmates living (Crosby, Stephen Stills) and dead (Gene Clark, Gram Parsons), he was an incredibly influential presence in the folk- and country-rock scenes of the 1960s. His background was bluegrass: he learned mandolin as a teenager and gigged around the Southern California circuit with the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers and the Golden State Boys (with future country star Vern Gosdin). Just when he was ready to give up music for an actual career, he was recruited to join The Byrds as a bass player, despite having never even touched the instrument. He remained with that group through massive hits and several lineup changes, finally jumping over to The Flying Burrito Brothers with Parsons. He played with Stills in Manassas in the 1970s, and in the ’80s enjoyed a series of country hits with Pederson and John Jorgenson in The Desert Rose Band. Since then he has toured as a solo artist and more recently as a duo with Pedersen. “I thought I really was done recording,” he says, “but along comes this record deal out of nowhere. Herb and Tom conjured up this idea to seduce me to do an album.”
The presence of Crosby and Roger McGuinn makes Bidin’ My Time as close to a Byrds reunion as we’re likely to get, and that alone makes the album compelling. Their voices still combine with a familiar magnetism, and Hillman manages to put fresh new twists on a few songs from their catalogue. “She Don’t Care About Time” was penned by Gene Clark for their other 1965 album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, but this new version sounds more like an afternoon’s reverie, as though Hillman was casually reminiscing about an old lover. And “New Old John Robertson” puts a fresh spin on a tune from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Hillman and McGuinn penned the song as a eulogy for an old man from Hillman’s hometown – who turned out to be a retired director of silent films, including 1920’s Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde. Hillman now brings a new perspective to the song, identifying more closely with the ageing artist even as he recasts the tale as a spry bluegrass number.
Bidin’ My Time draws from every corner of Hillman’s long career, mixing folk rock and country rock and bluegrass into an amiable sound, somehow both modest and ambitious. Except on the sentimental “Such Is the World That We Live In”, that nostalgia sounds inviting and well-earned. The clean, crisp production recalls Rick Rubin’s work on Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers, and Hillman underscores that connection by covering the title track to close the album on a ruminative note. “You belong among the wildflowers,” he sings fondly, and he could be speaking to some old lover, or perhaps to Old John Robertson, or even to any of the old friends who came around to sing along.
A few new tracks from previously teased albums surfaced this week, so please scroll down and check out further excellent music from Kamasi Washington, Courtney Barnett/Kurt Vile and, best of all I think, The Weather Station. Also we have strong new singles from Ty Segall and Aldous Harding, and some...
A few new tracks from previously teased albums surfaced this week, so please scroll down and check out further excellent music from Kamasi Washington, Courtney Barnett/Kurt Vile and, best of all I think, The Weather Station. Also we have strong new singles from Ty Segall and Aldous Harding, and something Satie-esque from Robert Haigh, who was my favourite junglist when he recorded as Omni Trio 20-odd years ago.
Plenty more here, of course. Further exposure to the Bitchin Bajas album makes me think it’s their masterpiece. Can’t wait to play you the Brigid Mae Power single (and also Beast, which is a new project by Koen Holtkamp from Mountains). RIP to Folke Rabe, master of drone. And don’t forget the Four Tet album drops tonight.
No idea now, two days on, why we played those Dexy’s singles, before you ask.
As Old Crow Medicine Show moved through the Noughties, they steadily outgrew their reliance on old-time American folk and blues, opting instead to create their own brand of raw-boned, high-energy string music. It was a transition that brought a fair amount of success during Nashville’s Americana b...
As Old Crow Medicine Show moved through the Noughties, they steadily outgrew their reliance on old-time American folk and blues, opting instead to create their own brand of raw-boned, high-energy string music. It was a transition that brought a fair amount of success during Nashville’s Americana boom, but founder member Willie Watson clearly had unfinished business. Since quitting the band in 2012, having played on six studio albums, the singer-guitarist has re-immersed himself in the trad canon.
2014’s fine solo debut, Folksinger Vol 1, offered variants on tunes by Lead Belly, Utah Phillips and others, alongside thoughtful arrangements of songs from the public domain. This follow-up pretty much follows the same formula, with Watson once again bringing in David Rawlings as producer (the pair first collaborated during Watson’s early OCMS days, since when he’s also been a member of David Rawlings Machine).
This time around, however, they’re joined from time to time by Nashville veterans The Fairfield Four, a woodwind ensemble, Punch Brothers bassist Paul Kowert, OCMS man Morgan Jahnig and, making a low-key appearance on drums, Rawlings’ partner Gillian Welch. Not that it feels remotely crowded. The guest contributions manage to be both telling and subdued, adding discreet shades of colour to Watson’s nimble picking style and the warm, conversational lilt of his voice.
His version of “Gallows Pole”, the centuries-old plea for deliverance once popularised by Led Zeppelin, is a thing of true beauty, Watson’s vocal ushered in on a lonely harmonica and carried aloft by oboe. Elsewhere, he uses Furry Lewis as a guide for the silvery “When My Baby Left Me”, his slide guitar punctuated by dry percussive tappings. Watson also proves himself a master of the nuances of banjo, be it grounding gospel spiritual “Dry Bones” in the earth or ensuring that “John Henry” shifts along as quickly as the fabled steel hammer. Watson is no rigid traditionalist, allowing these songs the fluidity that interpretation demands. Above all, the universal motifs of loss, redemption and freedom from bondage are brought home in moving, understated style.
Not content with the latest issue of Uncut (full details here) and our Ultimate Music Guide to Prince, we’re releasing another new magazine this Thursday. Bowie: A Life In Pictures is possibly our most opulent production yet, a treasure trove of authentically rare photographs in an ultra-collectab...
Not content with the latest issue of Uncut (full details here) and our Ultimate Music Guide to Prince, we’re releasing another new magazine this Thursday. Bowie: A Life In Pictures is possibly our most opulent production yet, a treasure trove of authentically rare photographs in an ultra-collectable, none-more-glam mirrored cover. If you can’t make it to a UK shop, it’s available from Uncut’s online shop.
Bowie: A Life In Pictures is a lavish tribute to pop’s greatest chameleon, the artist who understood that the image could be just as revolutionary as the music. John Robinson and a team of meticulous Bowie obsessives have channelled all their passion and expertise into this latest magazine from the Uncut stable, which uses classic and rare photographs to fully chronicle how Bowie’s taste for reinvention changed the way pop stars looked – on a yearly basis.
From salvaged shots of Bowie’s earliest and most fleetingly active R&B bands, to his years as a bohemian, his breakthrough as Ziggy Stardust and the superstardom beyond, David Bowie: A Life In Pictures plots a dramatic course through each chapter in the artist’s 50 year career.
Bowie’s career took unpredictable turns – into movie-making, away from the public eye and back into the mainstream – but Bowie: A Life In Pictures follows him closely. Whether in posed portraits, intimate candids or thrilling reportage, every step of Bowie’s career – even his decade of his retirement – is handsomely illustrated. Discerning collectors will even note the presence of the occasional previously unpublished image.
At 86 (87 on September 7), the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins is the elder statesman among the survivors from jazz’s heroic age. They’re even talking about renaming the Williamsburg Bridge after him, in recognition of a famous sabbatical from public performance in the 1950s during which h...
At 86 (87 on September 7), the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins is the elder statesman among the survivors from jazz’s heroic age. They’re even talking about renaming the Williamsburg Bridge after him, in recognition of a famous sabbatical from public performance in the 1950s during which he searched for new musical solutions while playing alone on the windswept walkway, high above the East River, of the structure connecting Lower Manhattan with the district of Brooklyn from which it takes its present name.
Rollins’ return to action in 1959, when he felt ready to meet the challenge posed by the emergence of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, is mentioned in Robert Mugge’s documentary, a time capsule dominated by two performances from 1986, the year in which the film was made. Mugge begins and ends with extracts from an open-air performance at a sort of jazz picnic in the Saugerties, in upstate New York. Fronting his regular band of the time, Rollins unfurls extended improvs that show him at his most compelling and his most troublesome: tired rhetorical motifs investigated to the point of exhaustion alternate with brief bursts of astonishing invention.
The musical core of the film, however, is the performance in a Tokyo hall of the specially commissioned Concerto For Tenor Saxophone And Orchestra, on which he collaborated with the Finnish jazz composer Heikki Sarmanto. Sonny with strings turns out to be unfailingly pleasant and sometimes a little more than that, provoking the featured soloist to passages of concentrated lyricism, but it failed to establish a significant place in his large body of work. There are a couple of interviews with Rollins, filmed in New York and Tokyo; at one point he says that he is “closer to my saxophone than to Lucille” – his wife, who is sitting next to him.
We also hear thoughtful assessments from the critics Ira Gitler, Gary Giddins and Francis Davis, who pinpoints a reason why Rollins, although an acknowledged master, has not commanded the same degree of devotion as Coltrane or Coleman: “He never formed a band in his own image… And in a way that almost enhances his appeal, that lack of context. Sonny Rollins is the single most excellent standard of jazz you can possibly imagine.” But to appreciate that standard to the full, you would need to go back to something like the 1957 Blue Note recordings from the Village Vanguard, which is to say before the emergence of rivals chipped away at the young giant’s seemingly ironclad self-confidence, undermining his sense of his own place in the modern world he’d helped create.
EXTRAS: 6/10. Updated commentary by director Robert Mugge.
Besides being one of the most joyful and powerful film profiles of a major musical artist ever made, Gospel According To Al Green adheres awfully well to Willie Mitchell’s description of a great song. Al Green’s closest collaborator during the first secular phase of his career, Mitchell explains...
Besides being one of the most joyful and powerful film profiles of a major musical artist ever made, Gospel According To Al Green adheres awfully well to Willie Mitchell’s description of a great song. Al Green’s closest collaborator during the first secular phase of his career, Mitchell explains that a song shouldn’t stay in one place. Instead, it should be like “climbing a mountain”. When you “don’t have any more elevation”, it’s time to fade it out or cut it off. The real magic, Mitchell implies, is figuring out how high you can climb.
Evidently, director Robert Mugge was listening carefully to Mitchell’s advice, judging by the film’s ecstatic finale – a glorious 30-minute sequence featuring Green in full flight, singing and preaching to his congregation. It is rich reward for Mugge’s persistence; the US director chased Green for 13 months for permission to interview and film him in action.
The documentary – newly restored for this DVD and Blu-ray edition – was Mugge’s second project for Channel 4 after Black Wax, his 1982 film on Gil Scott-Heron. Though he was initially asked to profile gospel star Andraé Crouch, Mugge believed Green made for a more compelling subject, the singer having turned away from soul in the late ’70s to help spread the gospel as the minister of his own Baptist church in Memphis. After getting Green’s approval, Mugge hastily arranged to shoot the church’s seventh-anniversary celebration in 1983 with three 16mm cameras and a 24-track recording truck. It was the first (and apparently still the only) service by Green to be extensively filmed.
A few months later, Mugge shot Green and his band performing at an American Air Force base in Washington, DC. As presented here in the original film’s 4K restoration, the results of both shoots are stunning. Indeed, it’s another testament to Mugge’s talent and fortitude that he’s able to keep a camera steady on his exuberant subject as he bounces on his heels before his lectern in his tan-coloured suit, or bounds through the DC crowd to shake hands and share love.
Despite his initial reticence, Green made for a remarkably warm and candid subject during the film’s central interview, shot during rehearsals for the service. Though Green’s more jubilant when reflecting on his hard-won breakthrough with “Tired Of Being Alone” and the “charge of electricity” that prompted his conversion in 1973, he’s still plenty forthcoming on the topic of “the incident”. That was the night in 1974 when then-girlfriend Mary Woodson scalded him with hot grits before fatally shooting herself in his home. Speaking about it publicly for the first time, he relates the sad and grisly details like a man who can scarcely believe the story himself. “Did that actually happen?” he wonders. “I’m asking you – I’m not playing it for the movie.” He’s similarly frank about the complications caused by his newfound faith as he wrestled with his decision to change course: “I mean, I got a million-dollar career going here and I’m telling people they got to talk to Jesus?”
Perhaps what’s most surprising about Mugge’s film is how much it complicates any presumptions about the lines Green drew between the secular and the spiritual when he cast his thoughts heavenward. For instance, he has no apparent misgivings about leading his musicians and singers through a rendition of “Let’s Stay Together” in the rehearsal studio. What’s more, he freely and enthusiastically admits to applying the lessons he learned as a soul performer to his role as a man of God. “I took what I learned from the rock’n’roll,” he says. “The ingenuity, the class, the charisma, the steps, the movement, the hesitation, the wait, the way to be curious. You take all of this that you learn in pop and rhythm-and-blues and you use it to your best advantage.”
The additional ingredient, of course, is the “spiritual fire”. That’s what we witness in Gospel According To Al Green’s sublime finale, along with the astonishing prowess of a rare performer who’s able to surrender to the moment yet remain utterly in command.
EXTRAS: 8/10. Along with overseeing the original film’s 4K remaster, Mugge also created a new seven-minute Making Of doc. The set includes the complete audio of the interview and the whole anniversary church service, an extended sequence for one song, and a phone message by Green for Mugge.
“We were the guys in high school that people used to beat up, and we couldn’t talk to the pretty girls,” Van Conner explains partway through the 1996 music documentary Hype!. “We’re nerds, goddammit!” He’s talking about his band Screaming Trees, but the bass player is also talking abou...
“We were the guys in high school that people used to beat up, and we couldn’t talk to the pretty girls,” Van Conner explains partway through the 1996 music documentary Hype!. “We’re nerds, goddammit!” He’s talking about his band Screaming Trees, but the bass player is also talking about nearly everybody in the Seattle music scene, none of whom resembles the traditional rock star. There’s a chuckle in Conner’s voice, but also pride: rather than the angst-ridden young men long identified with grunge, most local musicians were just regular people driven indoors by the constant rain and a fanatical love of rock music. They weren’t bred to be celebrities. They were rock geeks.
That discrepancy between how Seattle saw itself and how the rest of the world saw Seattle is the main theme of Hype!, directed by Doug Pray (Scratch, Surfwise) and now out in a 21st- anniversary Blu-ray edition. Anyone hoping for a nostalgic tour of the city will be sorely disappointed. Released in 1996 but filmed just as the aftershocks of grunge were dying down, the film is highly sceptical of the attention given to the local scene, and most of the talking heads refuse to surrender any further autonomy to major labels and magazine photo spreads.
Seattle had long sat in a remote corner of America, half-forgotten by the rest of the country and ignored by touring bands reluctant to trek so far out of their way. As the film explains, that isolation, coupled with the rainy climate, created a rabid music scene with a staunch DIY ethos and a surprisingly diverse range of sounds demonstrated here by kinetic live clips from the Monomen, Blood Circus, Dead Moon and, yes, Nirvana. The Posies and The Fastbacks couldn’t have been more different from Tad and Mudhoney, yet they all played the same clubs for the same fans and released records on the same small labels: Estrus, K, PopLlama, Sub Pop. In fact, one of the most entertaining passages in Hype! is a supercut of musicians listing short-lived, obscure but beloved local bands, some of which existed only for a handful of shows and a 7-inch, but not long enough to regret their choice of names: Bundle Of Hiss, Skin Yard, Cat Butt, Butt Sweat.
Just as that scene seemed to be waning, a second wave of bands sprang up in their wake, including a trio from nearby Aberdeen, Washington, whose drummer pounded hard, whose bass player thumped out melodic sludge, and whose singer had an esophagus lined with rusty barbed wire. They signed with a local label called Sub Pop for their first record, called Bleach, and graduated to a major label for their second record, Nevermind. When that album made them stars, every A&R guy and music journalist headed west to find more bands like Nirvana. When they didn’t find them, they essentially invented them.
At this point Hype! becomes something like a zombie film, with the last humans boarding themselves up in a farmhouse to battle the invading horde. In the rush to capitalise on the new youth culture that grunge represented, Seattle was exploited and then distorted, a vibrant scene pared down to a handful of flannel-clad bands writing introverted anthems about inner turmoil and emotional anguish. Almost everyone interviewed for the documentary expresses feelings of disenfranchisement and bitterness, as though their autonomy has been wrenched away from them. They brandish irony as a defence mechanism, whether it’s Sub Pop receptionist Megan Jasper trolling the New York Times with made-up slang (“Swingin’ on the flippity-flop”) or producer Jack Endino embracing the goofy job title “Godfather Of Grunge”.
These artists wielded irony as a weapon against pop-cultural gentrification, although it easily curdles into something equally destructive. Sub Pop founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman are portrayed as overly clever businessmen appropriating local DIY culture and marketing their label with LOSER T-shirts. All that distinguishes them from the invading forces is a smirk and a local zip code. As it explores this particular mindset, Hype! becomes more than just a documentary about a music scene. Especially viewed from the perspective of the late 2010s, the film is an artefact of a very different era and a very different attitude toward success. Pray might be criticised for not incorporating other viewpoints into his film, for not interviewing fashion designers, rock journalists and record execs to offset the suspicions of the locals. By excluding other points of view, however, he demonstrates how history might be written by the losers.
EXTRAS: 7/10. New audio commentary with Doug Pray, vintage interviews, live clips, outtakes, an animated short by Seattle cartoonist Peter Bagge.
The on-court Sturm und Drang of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe has already been the subject of one HBO documentary. Now, Danish director Janus Metz has assembled a staunch biopic about the two Wimbledon champions that owes a debt to Rush, a film that dramatised another real-life international sporting ...
The on-court Sturm und Drang of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe has already been the subject of one HBO documentary. Now, Danish director Janus Metz has assembled a staunch biopic about the two Wimbledon champions that owes a debt to Rush, a film that dramatised another real-life international sporting rivalry, between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. The focus is build up to the 1980 Wimbledon final – between “the baseline player and the net rusher” – when a television audience of 17.3 million viewers watched Borg chase his fifth straight title on Centre Court.
Newcomer Sverrir Gudnason plays the Swede as a stoic, dedicated athlete who is uncomfortable being recognised walking down the street. Shia LaBoeuf, meanwhile, is the temperamental McEnroe. The narrative leans heavily on their contrasting dispositions – scenes of McEnroe partying are cut against Borg in his hotel room, diligently measuring his pulse rate. The further McEnroe progresses through the tournament, the more enraged he becomes by the media focus on his behaviour, while Borg increasingly shuts himself down, wrestling to keep an unspoken anxiety in check. “Can’t you just talk about the tennis?” Says an exasperated MacEnroe; can’t Borg just talk at all?
Sports commentators act as a kind of Greek chorus, filling in exposition as required (“McEnroe is the bigger talent, but playing Borg is like being hit by a sledgehammer”), allowing Gudnason and LaBoeuf to get on with more actorly work. Gudnason is good as the enigmatic Bjorg, eventually making an introverted, enigmatic character likeable. LaBoeuf has been enjoyably unhinged in films lately – American Honey – and he chews his way greedily through McEnroe, savouring every unpredictable tic, cuss and hissy fit.
