Yoko Ono is set to direct and curate next year's Meltdown Festival at London's Southbank Centre.
The 2013 festival will take place from June 14-23. The music and arts event has previously been helmed by David Bowie, Patti Smith and Jarvis Cocker.
Of her involvement with Meltdown, musician and visual artist Ono has said: "I am deeply honoured to curate the world-famous Meltdown Festival. In doing so I am aware of the great tradition of experimentalism mixed with classicism that has made the festival such an enduring part of the British arts landscape."
As the first song of Jessica Pratt’s first album begins, you could be forgiven for believing it was a private press folk album from the early ‘70s. The work of a lost canyon comrade of Linda Perhacs, perhaps, or the implausibly lovely efforts of a “Blue” disciple from some one-horse town in the mid-west.
Paul McCartney has said Yoko Ono did not split up The Beatles.
The singer told David Frost, in a new interview to be aired next month, that Yoko Ono's relationship with John Lennon was not the main reason why the band split up, reports The Guardian.
The newspaper, which has seen extracts from Frost's exclusive interview, reports that McCartney admits he had found Yoko sitting in on The Beatles' recording sessions very difficult but did not blame her for the group's demise.
Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer and Nirvana are among the artists who're releasing exclusive limited editions on November 23 as part of Record Store Day's "Black Friday".
A full list of this year's release is available here.
Among the highlights are:
David Bowie - "The Jean Genie". 7" picture disc in advance of the 40th Anniversary reissue of Aladdin Sane. The b-side is "The Jean Genie (BBC Top of the Pops 1973)".
The banana’s back. Not before time. Late last year, Lou Reed’s reputation suffered a serious blow when his ill-fated collaboration with Metallica met with hostility not witnessed since Metal Machine Music. He even had death threats. This 45th anniversary edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico is a timely reminder (if one is needed) that Reed at his best had few peers and no equals, and that his writer’s eye – literate, probing, explicit – was unflinching right from the start. He was always hardcore.
Allan’s off today – something about a cat in the well, I think – so he’s asked me to write this week’s newsletter blog. It’s not an especially difficult task seeing as a new issue of Uncut goes on sale this week. You might have already caught some of our recent news stories on www.www.uncut.co.uk, in which case you’ll already know that our cover stars this month are the Rolling Stones.
Ahead of the release of his new album The Jazz Age - where he's reinterpreted his own solo hits as well as those by Roxy Music - Bryan Ferry is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask him?
Whatever happened to the planned Roxy Music album from a few years ago?
Who's his tailor?
As a big Dylan fan, which Dylan song would he like to give The Jazz Age treatment?
In 2009, Uncut spoke to The Wire’s creator David Simon, shortly before the broadcast of his follow-up series, Treme. The show was set during the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, a city that Simon felt had effectively been abandoned by the rest of America since the storm. “The only thing that brought this city back was the people who understand its unique culture and who participate in that culture refused to give that up,” he told us.
