I’ve mentioned here previously the time in 1979 I went to see Lou Reed at what was then still known as the Hammersmith Odeon when he reacted testily to requests from the crowd to play their favourite numbers by announcing that he would under no circumstances be playing anything else that night apart from his new album, The Bells, so there would, he repeated emphatically, no “Heroin”, “Sweet Jane”, “Walk On The Wild Side” or any of the other numbers so many people had obviously come to hear him perform.
The opening weekend takings in America for Tarantino's new film, Grindhouse, were, frankly, a disaster of Krakatoa-eque proportions. It only took a measly $11 million – less than half the sum forecast by the film’s studio, the Weinstein Company.
I worry, occasionally, that this blog has started to give the impression we spend our days at Uncut listening to nothing but serious, respectable artists with a good decade or two of critical acclaim under their belts. Of course, we do listen to Cave, and Bowie, and Neil Young, and Cat Power, and a hell of a lot of Grateful Dead at the moment. You might not believe this, but Allan even digs out a dusty Dylan CD from time to time.
There's a great, contentious review in the next issue of Uncut by Peter Shapiro. Addressing the expanded reissues of their first seven albums, Peter asserts, "Sly & the Family Stone were the quintessential artists of the 1960s - the only ones who actually put the rhetoric of ‘60s idealism into practice"
