First of all, heartfelt thanks for all your kind words about our Bowie memorial special issue. They were very much appreciated by all of us here at Uncut; I don’t recall a response quite like it during my time at the mag. If you haven’t been able to find a copy yet, there are plenty still availa...
First of all, heartfelt thanks for all your kind words about our Bowie memorial special issue. They were very much appreciated by all of us here at Uncut; I don’t recall a response quite like it during my time at the mag. If you haven’t been able to find a copy yet, there are plenty still available in the Uncut online store, along with copies of our Bowie Ultimate Music Guide, our new Byrds Ultimate Music Guide, sundry volumes of the History Of Rock, and God knows what else, to be honest.
Moving on, though, it occurred to me today that, for various strong reasons, I haven’t posted a playlist yet this year. To try and remedy that, here are a bunch of records I’ve been listening to this past month (There were a lot of Bowie records played as well, obviously, including “Blackstar” daily, but I’ve left those out).
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Harpers Bizarre – The Complete Singles Collection: 1965-1970 (Now Sounds)
Black Mountain – IV (Jagjaguwar)
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Pond Scum (Domino)
Kiran Leonard – Grapefruit (Moshi Moshi)
Various Artists – Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music (Numero Group)
Radiohead – Spectre (Soundcloud)
PJ Harvey – The Wheel (Island)
Christine & The Queens – Christine & The Queens (Because)
Fennesz – Mahler Remix (Touch)
This Heat – Health And Efficiency (Light In The Attic)
Yeasayer – Amen & Goodbye (Mute)
Woods – City Sun Eater In The River Of Light (Woodsist)
The Last Shadow Puppets have announced a small number of tour dates in support of their forthcoming second album, including four in the UK, in March and April.
Alex Turner and Miles Kane will play the first date ahead of the release of the album Everything You’ve Come To Expect in Edinburgh, on M...
The Last Shadow Puppets have announced a small number of tour dates in support of their forthcoming second album, including four in the UK, in March and April.
Alex Turner and Miles Kane will play the first date ahead of the release of the album Everything You’ve Come To Expect in Edinburgh, on March 26, and play London on the night of the album release. They’ll also be stopping in Liverpool and Sheffield.
Turner explained to our sister title, NME, the long wait between albums, saying that the band intended to release a trilogy and “wanted to write the second and third parts before we released the second”. Asked if fans would have to wait another eight years for the third installment, Turner added: “Well, I don’t know about that. There are lots of other things we have to factor in.”
Speaking about the new music, Turner said of what to expect: “I think the last record ended up being just one thing. We talked about Scott Walker a lot and our record became perceived as a homage to that sound. This one, in my head, doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve as much as the first one did. We were definitely listening to a bit of Isaac Hayes this time, but it was less of a big deal.”
Kane continued: “At that time [of the first album], all that stuff was new to us. We were discovering it for the first time. This time, it was just songs that we were buzzing off that we were inspired by.”
The full tour dates, including shows in American and elsewhere in Europe, are as follows:
Edinburgh, Usher Hall (March 26)
Paris, Olympia (March 29)
London, Hackney Empire (April 1)
Liverpool, Olympia (April 2)
Sheffield, City Hall (April 3)
Amsterdam, Paradiso (April 7)
New York, Webster Hall (April 11)
San Francisco, The Fillmore (April 17)
Los Angeles, The Theatre at Ace Hotel (April 20)
Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday, January 29, with early access tickets available by signing up to the band’s newsletter before 6pm on Wednesday, January 27.
LCD Soundsystem are to headline London festival, Lovebox.
The festival takes place in Victoria Park, east London with LCD Soundsystem set to headline the Saturday night (July 16) of the two-day event.
Major Lazer will headline the Friday night (July 15) with more names expected to be confirmed in ...
LCD Soundsystem are to headline London festival, Lovebox.
The festival takes place in Victoria Park, east London with LCD Soundsystem set to headline the Saturday night (July 16) of the two-day event.
Major Lazer will headline the Friday night (July 15) with more names expected to be confirmed in the coming months.
Lovebox represents LCD Soundsystem’s first UK date since announcing their reunion earlier this year. The New York band will also be appearing at Coachella in America and Spanish festival Primavera.
James Murphy issued a lengthy statement on January 5 explaining how the band came to reform:
“We’re not just playing Coachella. we’re playing all over. we’re not just having some reunion tour. we’re releasing a record (sometime this year—still working on it, actually), so this isn’t a victory lap or anything, which wouldn’t be of much interest to us).”
In 2002, the Boston Globe ran a story exposing the systemic cover up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Massachusetts. Tom McCarthy’s strong procedural drama follows the work done by the paper’s Spotlight team as they uncover evidence stretching back decades and involving not just high ranki...
In 2002, the Boston Globe ran a story exposing the systemic cover up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Massachusetts. Tom McCarthy’s strong procedural drama follows the work done by the paper’s Spotlight team as they uncover evidence stretching back decades and involving not just high ranking members of the clergy but public officials and city elders.
The work is carried out in a pleasingly old-school style. Clippings are sifted, libraries visited, archives searched, court records unearthed. In one sequence, our reporters are seen diligently combing line-by-line through Massachusetts Church directories with rulers and pencils. A film in which an ensemble cast of characters work to defeat a seemingly unstoppable enemy, Spotlight is a bit like an anti-superhero movie, where spreadsheets win the day instead of laser vision.
The obvious antecedent is All The President’s Men, but Spotlight is a dense and complex as an Aaron Sorkin screenplay. It involves a lot of people, talking in rooms. It also has the downbeat hue and measured pace of David Fincher’s Zodiac – another great procedural, although that team pursued a different kind of real-life bogeyman. (Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett star in another film about journalism; Truth, about a 2004 newsroom scandal).
The core of Spotlight is a series of unfussy performances from an on-point cast, led by Michael Keaton as the Spotlight head, Walter Robinson. His crew consists of Mike Rendez (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matty Carroll (Brian d’arcy James), who live in subterranean office space in the depths of the Globe offices. Their outsider status within the Globe is not played up; but it is a critical part of the story.
The Spotlight investigation is initiated by the Globe’s incoming editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) – an “unmarried man of the Jewish faith who hates baseball”, who isn’t deep inside Boston society. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” says lawyer Mitch Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), identifying the code of silence within the Catholic community that has effectively buried these incidents of abuse for years and allowed the Church to transfer paedophile priests to other parishes or retire them. Arguably, it takes an outsider like Baron to instigate the investigation.
Bruce Springsteen has released the E Street Band's January 19 show in Chicago as a free download.
The move came after Winter Storm Jonas forced the postponement of the band's Sunday night concert at New York's Madison Square Garden.
Springsteen broke the news on social media, announcing that the C...
Bruce Springsteen has released the E Street Band’s January 19 show in Chicago as a free download.
The move came after Winter Storm Jonas forced the postponement of the band’s Sunday night concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Springsteen broke the news on social media, announcing that the Chicago show, the previous date on the current River tour, would be made available as a free MP3 download.
The show is available for free until 8pm EST on Tuesday (January 26); after that, CDs and higher fidelity formats will be available to purchase.
In addition to the complete performance of their 1980 album The River, The Chicago gig also features Springsteen’s cover of the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” in memory of Glenn Frey.
David Bowie planned "a long list of unscheduled music releases" before he died, according to reports.
Newsweek claims that future releases have been divided into eras and will not necessarily be released in chronological order. It is not yet known whether they will contain previously unheard work. ...
David Bowie planned “a long list of unscheduled music releases” before he died, according to reports.
Newsweek claims that future releases have been divided into eras and will not necessarily be released in chronological order. It is not yet known whether they will contain previously unheard work. Newsweek report [via Pitckfork] that the first of these compilations will be on sale before the end of 2017.
The Guardian have also confirmed that the cast of Lazarus, Bowie’s off-Broadway musical, were scheduled to record the show’s soundtrack on that Monday of his death.
In related news, the Bowie At The Beeb collection is to be released as a four-disc vinyl box set. It was previously released on CD in 2000.
Arthur Lee was a famously mercurial bandleader. He turned down the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the Ed Sullivan Show, believing his music should have top billing or none at all. His hardline go-it-alone policy ensured Love’s cult status for all time. But he was as chaotic as he was dogmati...
Arthur Lee was a famously mercurial bandleader. He turned down the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the Ed Sullivan Show, believing his music should have top billing or none at all. His hardline go-it-alone policy ensured Love’s cult status for all time. But he was as chaotic as he was dogmatic: he once sacked a Love guitarist (Jay Donnellan) for suggesting the band should aim to arrive at gigs more promptly – or at least on the day they were scheduled to take place – and those kind of old habits die hard. At London’s Highbury Garage in 1994, Lee went AWOL minutes before he was due onstage. A search party found him playing pool in a pub on the Holloway Road, oblivious to the panic he was causing.
A life lived by its own rules can be a frustrating one to compile for posterity. No live recordings circulate of Love from the ’60s – their heyday of Da Capo and Forever Changes – because Lee wouldn’t permit concerts to be taped. Coming Through To You, a 4CD boxset that attempts to document the best of what’s out there, has no choice but to begin in 1970, when the classic Love lineup had disintegrated and a new Love was exploring a heavier direction. That February, Lee allowed them to share a Fillmore East bill with the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers; the next stop was England, where fans expecting the beatific splendour of Forever Changes had to adjust to a long-haired Love more reminiscent of Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic”.
Eight of the 14 songs on the first disc have been released before – either on Studio/Live (1982) or The Blue Thumb Recordings (2007) – but six from Copenhagen and the Fillmore West, while known to bootleggers, are previously unissued. None would score high on subtlety. Sensitive listeners may quail at a turbo-charged “Bummer In The Summer” (at Waltham Forest Technical College), but that’s got to be better, surely, than Lee’s off-key caterwauling on “Good Times” in Denmark a fortnight later. As for his grunts and screeches at the Fillmore West, he sounds like he wishes he was fronting Steppenwolf.
The vicissitudes of a stop-start career meant that the 1980s were virtually a write-off for Lee. We next encounter him at the BBC in 1992, promoting a comeback album (Arthur Lee & Love – Five String Serenade) with an acoustic session for Radio 1’s Richard Skinner. Feted by a new generation, Lee would see his fortunes improve. Disc Two follows him on the promo trail to Amsterdam (for a shaky “Alone Again Or” and a half-remembered “Hey Joe”) and to 1993 and 1996 gigs in Massachusetts and Odense. Close-up microphones intrude on every faltering guitar chord (“Signed D.C.”), but they also bear witness to Lee’s rediscovery of his golden voice. That majestic, heavenly warble! This, we sense, is a vision of the old Arthur. When a young flautist is brought onstage for “She Comes In Colors” – the 48-year-old Lee was happy to revisit Da Capo by 1993, much to the audience’s delight – her songbird trills seem to sing of a musical renaissance. “7 & 7 Is”, tackled at thrilling speed in Odense, is further evidence of a prodigal return. Within months, however, Lee was in a California prison, gaoled for illegally discharging a firearm. His 12-year sentence symbolised his career: three strikes and you’re out.
Re-emerging in 2001 after an appeals court reversed the charge, Lee entered a new phase of his life in which he enjoyed near-heroic status among fans of ’60s psychedelia. Disc Three sees him at Glastonbury (a lovely “Andmoreagain”) and Roskilde, backed by Baby Lemonade – an LA psych quartet – and a chamber orchestra. Familiar with every note of Forever Changes, Baby Lemonade were able to pull off uncanny renditions of “The Daily Planet”, “Old Man” and “You Set The Scene” as if they’d played on the originals. Finally, Love’s recondite masterpiece became the hot-ticket, must-see attraction it should have been in 1968.
If the first three discs comprise good-to-very-good sound quality, Disc Four takes us into the crowd for 16 hand-held recordings from 12 gigs spanning 27 years. Opening with a 1977 harmonica solo (bewildering and brief), it wanders from blues improv to Hendrix cover (“Little Wing”) via – of all things – reggae. Ultimately it finds its way to “Rainbow In The Storm”, from Love’s final EP (“Love On Earth Must Be”, 2004), performed in Wrexham. The sound may lack fidelity, but the tapes are not short on historical significance. At the Whisky A Go Go in 1978, Lee is reunited with Bryan MacLean (who sounds wasted), while an extended “Smokestack Lightning”, from 2003, features Love’s classic-era guitarist John Echols and – incredibly – their first drummer Don Conka, subject of the immortal “Signed D.C.”. It’s a decent jam, too.
When the boxset ends in April 2004 (“Singing Cowboy”, Shepherd’s Bush Empire), Lee has become the reliable, punctual, globe-trotting artist he never set out to be, playing to the adoring fans he was too imperious to reach the first time round. Sadly, his rebirth couldn’t last. He succumbed to an acute strain of leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 61. Conka (in 2004) and MacLean (1998) had already preceded him.
A concert tribute to George Harrison, featuring Brian Wilson, the Flaming Lips, Norah Jones and more will be released as a film and album on february 26.
George Fest: A Night To Celebrate The Music Of George Harrison was recorded and filmed on September 28, 2014 at the The Fonda Theater in Los Ange...
A concert tribute to George Harrison, featuring Brian Wilson, the Flaming Lips, Norah Jones and more will be released as a film and album on february 26.
George Fest: A Night To Celebrate The Music Of George Harrison was recorded and filmed on September 28, 2014 at the The Fonda Theater in Los Angeles.
It will be available in 4 versions including 2xCD/DVD, 2xCD/Blu-Ray, 3xLP (180 gram) and digital download.
Produced by Dhani Harrison and David Zonshine, Harrison stated, “I’ve always imagined a small club show where my generation of musicians could cut loose on some of the deeper tracks from his career… So, in a totally new and vibrant way, I once again found myself taking the stage with some of my most treasured musical heroes to the sound of the most familiar music in my life… I hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I do. They are some of the best interpretations of my father’s songs I could have ever thought possible.”
The tracklisting is:
DISC 1 Introduction
Old Brown Shoe: Conan O’Brien
I Me Mine: Britt Daniel from Spoon
Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll): Jonathan Bates with Dhani Harrison
Something: Norah Jones
Got My Mind Set On You: Brandon Flowers
If Not For You: Heartless Bastards
Be Here Now: Ian Astbury
Wah-Wah: Nick Valensi
If I Needed Someone: Jamestown Revival
Art of Dying: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Savoy Truffle: Dhani Harrison
For You Blue: Chase Cohl with Brian Bell
Beware Of Darkness: Ann Wilson
DISC 2 Let It Down: Dhani Harrison
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth): Ben Harper
Here Comes The Sun: Perry Farrell
What Is Life: “Weird Al” Yankovic
Behind That Locked Door: Norah Jones
My Sweet Lord: Brian Wilson with Al Jardine
Isn’t It A Pity: The Black Ryder
Any Road: Butch Walker
I’d Have You Anytime: Karen Elson
Taxman: Cold War Kids
It’s All Too Much: The Flaming Lips
Handle With Care: Brandon Flowers, Dhani Harrison, Jonathan Bates, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Britt Daniel and Wayne Coyne
All Things Must Pass: Ann Wilson, Dhani Harrison, Karen Elson and Norah Jones
Spiritualized have improvised an album recorded along to the beehive audio feed.
The album, called One, is the soundtrack to artist Wolfgang Buttress’ multiple award winning UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo – an installation that highlighted the plight of the honeybee, focusing on the importa...
Spiritualized have improvised an album recorded along to the beehive audio feed.
The album, called One, is the soundtrack to artist Wolfgang Buttress’ multiple award winning UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo – an installation that highlighted the plight of the honeybee, focusing on the importance of pollination.
Pitchfork reports that the album was recorded by musicians Kev Bales and Tony Foster, featuring Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce and John Coxon, Icelandic group Amiina, Youth, cellist Deirdre Bencsik and vocalist Camille Buttress.
The recording sessions saw musicians improvising in the key of D along to a live audio feed of beehive sounds. Piano, Mellotron and lap steel were overdubbed later.
The album will be released on February 12 via Rivertones.
Cheap Trick have announced details of their first new album in five years.
Bang Zoom Crazy… Hello will be released in April 1.
The band have released a taster from the album - "No Direction Home", which can be heard below.
https://soundcloud.com/big-machine-label-group/no-direction-home
Ahead ...
Cheap Trick have announced details of their first new album in five years.
Bang Zoom Crazy… Hello will be released in April 1.
The band have released a taster from the album – “No Direction Home“, which can be heard below.
Ahead of the band’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame later this year, they will head out on a 30-date American tour from July until September, beginning at the DTE Energy Music Theatre, Michigan on July 14 and finishing in Florida’s Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre on September 23. Full Cheap Trick tour dates can be found by clicking here.
Brian Wilson has announced details of a world tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds.
The UK dates include two nights at the London Palladium. Tickets go on sale at 10am Friday January 29th at 9am from www.alt-tickets.co.uk.
Wilson will be joined by Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin for...
Brian Wilson has announced details of a world tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds.
The UK dates include two nights at the London Palladium. Tickets go on sale at 10am Friday January 29th at 9am from www.alt-tickets.co.uk.
Wilson will be joined by Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin for the tour. As well as the UK, concert stops include dates in Australia, Japan, Spain, Israel, and Portugal followed by a full American tour later this Summer.
Sunday, May 15: Bristol Colston Hall
Tuesday, May 17: Birmingham Symphony Hall
Wednesday, May 18: Cardiff St Davids Hall
Friday, May 20: The London Palladium
Saturday, May 21: The London Palladium
Tuesday, May 24: O2 Apollo Manchester
Thursday, May 26: Usher Hall Edinburgh
Friday, May 27: Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Sunday, May 29: Sage Gateshead, Newcastle
Tuesday, May 31: Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Wednesday, June 1: Nottingham Royal Concert Hall
It seems strange, in retrospect, that Martin Scorsese has never directed a movie about the music business. After all, for over 40 years now, he has pursued a fruitful career alternating between feature films and music documentaries. His concert films on The Band and the Rolling Stones have been exce...
It seems strange, in retrospect, that Martin Scorsese has never directed a movie about the music business. After all, for over 40 years now, he has pursued a fruitful career alternating between feature films and music documentaries. His concert films on The Band and the Rolling Stones have been exceptional; meanwhile his profiles on Bob Dylan, the blues and George Harrison have worked hard to explore the complexities of their subjects. All his music projects, though, gravitate towards a romantic, mythological and quintessentially Scorsese theme: rock’n’n roll as a force for personal liberation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI6Pg_lIB2M
Episode 1 of HBO’s new series Vinyl – directed by Scorsese – opens with a particularly instructive example of this. It is the early Seventies. Beleaguered record label boss Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) has lost faith in the music industry. Sitting alone in his car, parked in an insalubrious part of Greenwich Village to buy cocaine, we witness his breakdown. The first nine minutes of Vinyl take place entirely inside the car, full of jerky, blurred shots and tight close ups on Finestra’s face. But – wait! – what’s that noise? Serendipitously, Finestra has parked close to the Mercer Arts Center, and he is drawn from his existential crisis by the raucous sound of the New York Dolls in full flight. In a breathtaking shot travelling deep into the bowels of the Mercer, Scorsese shows Finestra first hand the redemptive power of rock’n’roll.
Admittedly, it would be pretty funny if at this point, Finestra said in voiceover, “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a record company executive.” Like GoodFellas or Casino, Vinyl is concerned with money: the bribes and the cons, sackings and whackings and the cultivation of high rollers. Although by the end of the first episode, there have been no mysterious burials out in the desert, you suspect they may not be too far behind.
But Vinyl isn’t entirely a Scorsese venture. He has directed the two-hour pilot and is an Executive Producer on the show, along with Mick Jagger. The project was cooked up by Scorsese and Jagger when they worked together on Shine A Light; at one point, The Departed’s scriptwriter William Monahan was employed to write a feature-length screenplay. Jagger’s original idea – for two friends in the music industry, and the ebb and flow of their relationship across many decades – mutated as the project moved around studios, before finally arriving at HBO. The showrunner here is Terence Winter, a Sopranos veteran who previously worked with Scorsese on Boardwalk Empire and The Wolf Of Wall Street.
But despite Vinyl’s lengthy gestation and the strong personalities of all involved, the imprimatur is entirely Scorsese’s. The voiceovers, flashbacks, period detail, impeccable soundtrack choices, freeze frame, tracking shots, violent outbursts… even the hysterical mugging between Finestra and his colleagues at American Century Records recall the banter between, say, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta in GoodFellas. Their mistrust of outsiders and an impulse to take care of business according to their own rules are all commonplace within a Scorsese picture. But there are other particular qualities to Vinyl: some specific to Scorsese, some less so.
Vinyl is set in 1973, the same year Scorsese made Mean Streets. Many of the episode’s locations – particularly those round Greenwich Village, where the director was raised – would be familiar haunts. The date is significant for other reasons besides. One sequence is bookended by a Led Zeppelin show at Madison Square Gardens and Kool Herc’s legendary hip-hop jam at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. In it, Finestra is chauffeured through New York’s streets at night. The car makes painfully slow progress – a burst water main is the culprit – allowing Scorsese’s camera to dwell on strange expressionistic details – abstract neon signs, the elongated shadows of pedestrians – that evoke the hallucinatory, nightmarish qualities of Taxi Driver.
In the background, meanwhile, the car radio drifts in and out of stations, providing a handy sound collage of contemporary voices: the King Biscuit Flower Hour, Humble Pie’s “Black Coffee”, an election broadcast by mayoral candidate Albert Beame, “All The Young Dudes”. In an interview in Entertainment Weekly, Scorsese explained, “New York in the 70s was at an all-time economic low point. Nothing worked. The subways were falling apart. The crime rate was sky-high. But then, at the same time, culturally speaking, it was a high point… The early 1970s, and 1973 in particular, was a time of great change in the music industry, and it all started in New York City – punk, disco, hip-hop, they all began that year right here in this city. So we decided to start there and see where it would take us.”
As you might imagine in such a vivid milieu, Finestra is surrounded by many colourful supporting characters – many of them fictional, a few conspicuously not. At home, there is his demure wife, Devon (Olivia Wilde), a former model (“Andy asked for you just the other night. Lou was with us,” says Borgen’s Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, a kind of Nico analogue). At American Century, meanwhile, Scorsese introduces us to Finestra’s lieutenants. There is the blustering A&R exec who can’t sign the right band, a business partner who inadvertently insults everyone he meets, a talented female A&R scout whose on-the-money tips are routinely ignored by her male bosses (Juno Temple, evidently having a blast). Elsewhere, there is a strong cameo from Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay as the belligerent owner of a chain of radio stations, unrecognizable beneath a pair of substantial walrus sideburns, and James Jagger as the English vocalist with proto-punk band, Nasty Bits. In flashbacks, Scorsese shows us Finestra’s entrance in the music business during the early Sixties: the money and influence of the Mob grease his rise, allowing Scorsese the opportunity to deliver a signature incident involving a baseball bat. In these sequences, Paul-Ben Victor excels as a vulpine executive who offers advice to Finestra. But again, this is classic Scorsese territory, recalling the way the young Henry Hill worked his way through the mob hierarchy, only here Finestra is pushing novelty hits rather than running numbers.
The depiction of ‘real people’ is more variable. A conversation with Robert Plant backstage at Madison Square Garden, for instance, finds Plant’s accent wandering amusingly between Cockney and Australian, though the depiction of Peter Grant more successfully nails his volatile temperament. It transpires that “The Zeppelin deal” becomes a critical plot point for the first episode. For future episodes, the show’s IMDB cast list includes David Bowie, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Hilly Kristal and Peter Tosh. Bobby Cannavale, incidentally, is excellent. His heavy-lidded eyes recall Al Pacino; though he is a warmer screen presence. In one boardroom scene, he and his partners are in final negotiations to sell American Century to German competitors.
“Fiscally speaking, “1972, American Century claimed 6 million dollars in profit,” notes one eagle-eyed German businessman. “Yet 92% of the records you released were, speaking frankly, flops.”
“Technically, yes,” nods Finestra. “But in reality, they only look like flops…”
Here, Iggy Pop answers your questions as only he knows how: with tales of knuckle duster run-ins, popping Lou Reed’s pills and, of course, appearing in insurance adverts. Originally published in Uncut’s January 2011 issue (Take 169). Words: Graeme Thomson
_______________________________
There ...
Here, Iggy Pop answers your questions as only he knows how: with tales of knuckle duster run-ins, popping Lou Reed’s pills and, of course, appearing in insurance adverts. Originally published in Uncut’s January 2011 issue (Take 169). Words: Graeme Thomson
_______________________________
There are few more influential and iconic figures in rock music than James Newell Osterberg. Having helped invent punk and lived to tell the tale, at 64 he continues to push the parameters of live performance. Today he’s hunkered down in his hut “by the edge of my famously filthy little river in Miami”, readying himself for The Stooges’ appearance at Hop Farm in July and the imminent release of Roadkill Rising: The Bootleg Collection 1977-2009, a sprawling 4CD set of remastered live bootleg recordings. Although he admits he’s now “occasionally guilty of discretion”, Pop still holds tight to the vestiges of his hard-won outsider status. “I’ve discovered I have a career and I’m not really thrilled about that,” he says. “I can see what it’s got me, but I don’t feel like I’m going to go to the next Vanity Fair Oscar party and say, ‘Hey, you’re a celebrity, I’m a celebrity, let’s get together and celebrate!’ Fuck off!” Thankfully he gives your questions a greater degree of latitude. Apart from the one about those insurance ads…
_______________________________
Iggy, why are you so awesome?
Lucy Knowles, Ashford Well Lucy, it’s probably just because you sense that, like all dogs, I need love. I seem to have been rewarded copiously late in life. Early on I was often referred to as The Man You Love To Hate, but now I notice as I skip through that people seem glad to see me. It’s partly the survivor thing – Oh my God, he lives, he breathes! – but there’s also the nature of all the stuff in which I was involved. It was considered a scourge when I did it but now it’s all been dredged up through the internet and some people feel a certain vicarious glee seeing that. But I’m guessing. I don’t really know.
Are you still a scholar of classical civilisation or have you moved onto a different historical period?
Al Ryan, San Francisco I’m still very interested in that, although I’ve been a little discouraged ploughing through a recent translation of Herodotus. I’m telling to you, dude, five pages of the Lydians versus the Scythians will really do you in. I’ve lately been interested in the science of trade and the beginnings of the global economy, the Dutch and the English in particular. I’m into Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brook, a wonderful book about trade with China and the Dutch East India Co.
When I saw The Stooges last September you did a killer version of “Open Up And Bleed”. It’s one of my favourite songs but only exists on sketchy live recordings. Will The Stooges record it (and other post Raw Power songs like “Head On” and “Heavy Liquid”) for your next album?
Mark Arm, Mudhoney Well, I’m interested in doing that sort of thing – not sure how James feels about it, but we’ll talk. “Open Up And Bleed” was a song we both wanted to do but it was pretty difficult working it up the right way. Even now I can’t do it every night. I say to James, “Oy vey, James, this song with the bleeding and the opening, the howling and the pain – can we skip it in Atlantic City?” It’s one of those choose-your-town numbers.
Iggy Pop has announced details of a new album, Post Pop Depression.
The album has been co-created with Josh Homme, and features his Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate and Dead Weather-man Dean Fertitia and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.
"I wanted to be free," explains Pop. "To be free, I neede...
Iggy Pop has announced details of a new album, Post Pop Depression.
The album has been co-created with Josh Homme, and features his Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate and Dead Weather-man Dean Fertitia and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.
“I wanted to be free,” explains Pop. “To be free, I needed to forget. To forget, I needed music. Josh had that in him, so I set out to provoke an encounter-first with a carefully worded text, followed by a deluge of writings all about me. No composer wants to write about nothing. He got revved up and we had a great big rumble in the desert USA.”
Scroll down to hear a track from the album, “Gardenia“.
The full tracklisting for Post Pop Depression is:
Break Into Your Heart
Gardenia
American Valhalla
In The Lobby
Sunday
Vulture
German Days
Chocolate Drops
Paraguay
After the chaos of the last few weeks, it’s gratifying to finally come across some good news. While not entirely unexpected, the return of Elizabeth Fraser is certainly welcome in a year that has so far amassed more than its fair share of dismal tidings. As far back as 2012, Fraser confirmed that ...
After the chaos of the last few weeks, it’s gratifying to finally come across some good news. While not entirely unexpected, the return of Elizabeth Fraser is certainly welcome in a year that has so far amassed more than its fair share of dismal tidings. As far back as 2012, Fraser confirmed that she had assembled an album’s worth of new material; but intriguingly her return to active service has taken a more unexpected form. In collaboration with her husband, Damon Reece, she had written the score for a new four-episode miniseries, The Nightmare Worlds Of H.G. Wells, which begins on Sky Arts on January 28. The score is Fraser’s most substantial work since the Cocteau Twins’ Milk And Kisses in 1996.
Fraser has spoken about her apparent reluctance to engage with music. In a rare interview with The Guardian in 2009, she spoke of her difficulties recalibrating after the break-up of the Cocteau Twins and her relationship with Robin Guthrie – “I’m swamped in feelings I can’t deny,” she told the Guardian in a rare interview in 2009. But reports of Fraser’s withdrawal from music have been greatly exaggerated. At this point, I’m reminded of the depiction of David Bowie as a JD Salinger-style recluse in the years between Reality and The Next Day – which seemed to ignore his busy workload of film and TV appearances, commercials or even a prolific and hands-on role curating a New York music and arts festival. Equally, Fraser has herself hardly been idle in the years since the Cocteau Twins’ split; but she has certainly chosen her projects meticulously.
Outside the Cocteau Twins, Fraser has become best known for her collaborations – the most successful, “Teardrop” with Massive Attack, was a Top 10 UK single. She also worked with Ian McCulloch, Future Sound Of London, Craig Armstrong (their track, “This Love”, is excellent), Michael Kamen, Peter Gabriel and Breton musician Yann Tierson. There have even been two singles: “Underwater” in 2000 and “Moses” in 2009.
On a larger scale, she added a touch of elfin magic to Howard Shore’s Lord Of The Rings scores, filling a role pitched somewhere between Enya and Annie Lennox. Yet the image persists of Fraser as an elusive and enigmatic presence – perhaps like Lorelei, Donimo or one of the other mysterious, illusory characters on the Cocteau’s album, Treasure. When Fraser took the stage for the first of two performances at London’s Meltdown festival in 2012, the cry that elicited the biggest cheer from the crowd was simply, “Where have you been?”
All the same, soundtracks seem to suit Fraser’s temperament. She can fulfill her creative impulses, but is subsumed within a bigger project; she is not required to step into the spotlight and perform – an aspect of being in a band she admitted she struggled with. Listening to part of the soundtrack in the trailer for the series below, it’s easy to see – perhaps erroneously – parallels between Fraser’s return to active service with The Nightmare Worlds Of H.G. Wells and Bowie’s decision to give a segment of “★” to another Sky original drama, The Last Panthers. Quite where Fraser’s return will go is anyone’s guess at this point – will there be a soundtrack album? or is this unrelated to the material she has amassed previously? – the fact that she’s making music again, and crucially allowing us to hear it, is simply enough for now.
PJ Harvey has announced details of her new album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.
The songwriter's ninth full-length album, the follow-up to 2011's Let England Shake, will be released on April 15th, 2016. The cover is pictured above.
The Hope Six Demolition Project, recorded at London's Somerset ...
PJ Harvey has announced details of her new album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.
The songwriter’s ninth full-length album, the follow-up to 2011’s Let England Shake, will be released on April 15th, 2016. The cover is pictured above.
The Hope Six Demolition Project, recorded at London’s Somerset House under the gaze of the public, consists of 11 songs, including lead single “The Wheel”, and is produced by Flood and John Parish.
Speaking about the album’s writing, which saw Harvey visit Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC, the songwriter says: “When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene. I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture.
“Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with.”
The Hope Six Demolition Project‘s tracklisting is:
The Community Of Hope The Ministry Of Defence A Line In The Sand Chain Of Keys River Anacostia Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln The Orange Monkey Medicinals The Ministry Of Social Affairs The Wheel Dollar, Dollar
In the new issue of Uncut, we pay tribute to David Bowie with 19 pages on the great man, who of course passed away on January 10, two days after releasing his stunning new album, Blackstar.
Inside the issue, many of his collaborators, including Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, Nile Rodgers, Mike Gars...
In the new issue of Uncut, we pay tribute to David Bowie with 19 pages on the great man, who of course passed away on January 10, two days after releasing his stunning new album, Blackstar.
Inside the issue, many of his collaborators, including Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, Nile Rodgers, Mike Garson, Ken Scott and Herbie Flowers, remember Bowie, while Uncut’s David Cavanagh pens a fascinating essay on his life and legacy.
“He wanted music that was on the cutting edge,” explains Let’s Dance producer Nile Rodgers, “that made people feel uncomfortable, but compelled then to listen.”
Also in our expansive Bowie piece, former Uncut editor Allan Jones remembers being sucked into a nasty tiff between Lou Reed and Bowie in April 1979: “The next thing I know, Lou is dragging Bowie across the table by his shirt and smacking him in the face…”
Also in the issue, Loretta Lynn looks back on her sparkling career, her wayward spouse, her legendary friends – from the Cash family to Jack White – and the spirits that surround her to this day.
Meanwhile, Uncut heads to Sunderland to meet the Prince-approved Field Music, and hear about their new album, Commontime, and the “ridiculous” nature of being in a band.
50 years on from Tim Hardin’s debut album, Uncut considers the singer-songwriter’s extraordinary music and harrowing life story. A tale of blood, arson, rooftop chases, Olympian drug abuse, bespoke carpentry and a deathless legacy of songs. “He was truly the wildest guy I’d ever met,” says one old friend. “It didn’t seem like anyone else’s rules of behaviour worked for him.”
Elsewhere in the new issue, The Pop Group take us through their intense, political 1979 single “We Are All Prostitutes”, and Mavis Staples – ahead of the release of her new album, Livin’ On A High Note – recalls the greatest records of her career, from The Staple Singers’ Freedom Highway to her Jeff Tweedy-produced You Are Not Alone.
Soundtrack composer and former Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell answers your questions, and Lucinda Williams outlines her life in music, while we meet new artists Floating Points and Cavern Of Anti-Matter, speak to Dave Davies about his onstage reunion with brother Ray to perform a Kinks classic, and talk to the returning Grant Lee Phillips, all in our front section.
Our albums section features reviews of new records from Animal Collective, Elton John, Steve Mason, Rokia Traoré and Rangda, and archive releases from Canterbury Scene pioneers The Wilde Flowers, Eric Clapton, This Heat and Bert Jansch.
We also review new DVDs about The Residents, Tubby Hayes, and The Last Panthers and Sicario, new films including Janis: Little Girl Blue, A Bigger Splash and Hitchcock/Truffaut, and books on Louisiana’s swampy musical heritage and Bowie’s Beckenham Arts Lab.
Our free CD, The Stars Are Out Tonight, features great new tracks from School Of Seven Bells, Rokia Traoré, Cavern Of Anti-Matter, Field Music, Freakwater, Josephine Foster, This Heat, The Wilde Flowers and Barry Adamson.
The new Uncut, dated March 2016, is out on Thursday, January 21.
Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem and PJ Harvey are just three of the acts confirmed to play at this summer's Primavera Sound.
The festival takes place in Barcelona on June 2-4, 2016, and will feature Brian Wilson performing all of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.
A host of other acts have also been announced...
Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem and PJ Harvey are just three of the acts confirmed to play at this summer’s Primavera Sound.
The festival takes place in Barcelona on June 2-4, 2016, and will feature Brian Wilson performing all of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.
A host of other acts have also been announced on the bill, including Tame Impala, Animal Collective, Sigur Rós, Beach House, The Last Shadow Puppets, Savages, Air, Deerhunter, Ty Segall And The Muggers, Thee Oh Sees, John Carpenter and Explosions In The Sky.
Dinosaur Jr, Kamasi Washington, Beirut, Parquet Courts, Shellac, Floating Points and White Fence will also head to Barcelona for this year’s Primavera.
Towards the end of Adam McKay’s new film, two characters stand in the empty trading flood of Lehman Brothers bank following the 2008 crash. “What did you expect to find?” asks one. His colleague shrugs. “I don’t know. Grown-ups?”
McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book presents th...
Towards the end of Adam McKay’s new film, two characters stand in the empty trading flood of Lehman Brothers bank following the 2008 crash. “What did you expect to find?” asks one. His colleague shrugs. “I don’t know. Grown-ups?”
McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book presents the subprime loan crisis as a screwball comedy, complete with to-camera asides. But perhaps the only same response to the loathsome skulduggery behind the 2008 financial crash is to laugh at it? Just as Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street presented the career of disgraced Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort as a hoot, so McKay pumps this particular round of despicable financial misconduct for all the laughs he can.
The Wolf Of Wall Street is a useful comparison. McKay brings a similar flexible narrative and free-wheeling style of filming to The Big Short – the flashbacks, freeze frames, jump cuts and multiple voiceovers familiar from many Scorsese films. All it needs is a montage sequence edited to “Gimme Shelter” to qualify for the Full Marty.
Unlike Belfort – whose crimes largely took place in the 80s – the subprime loan crisis is still a recent memory. How, then, do you make a scenario that left millions in America unemployed and homeless palpable to mainstream cinema audiences? McKay tries to overcome this by focusing on four characters who, while seeking to cash in on the crisis, qualify as outsider figures. His leads are two eccentric hedge fund managers –one-eyed Michael Burry (Christian Bale) and the Cartman-esque Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) – perma-tanned Deutsche Bank employee, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and a retired trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt).
Of the principals, only Baum and Vennett interact on screen. Burry is largely contained within the four walls of his office – a situation that suits his chilly, awkward character. Baum is McKay’s de facto lead: a ball of incandescent rage, routinely sent into paroxysms at the unfolding chicanery of the financial institutions. After Foxcatcher last year, Carrell continues to deliver solid dramatic work. Pitt’s Rickert – shuffling, disheveled and shapeless – recalls Philip Seymour Hoffman. Gosling seems to be playing a parody of himself.
McKay’s attempts to cover so much ground is not entirely successful. Cutting to Margot Robbie in a bath to explain subprime loans or Anthony Bourdain to in his kitchen to talk through Collateralized Debt Obligations are neat tricks, in keeping with the film’s skittish, exhilarating pace. But it becomes apparent that Burry, Baum and the rest are no better than the bankers themselves, regardless of how they are presented. The history of cinema is built on bad guys, from Tony Camote to Darth Vader; the difference is, unlike the banking community, they got their comeuppance.
When The Velvet Underground played San Francisco’s intimate, musician-friendly club The Matrix in late November/early December 1969, things were changing both for the band and for the city’s music scene. The Velvets were no longer the raging wild beast they had been during John Cale’s tenure: ...
When The Velvet Underground played San Francisco’s intimate, musician-friendly club The Matrix in late November/early December 1969, things were changing both for the band and for the city’s music scene. The Velvets were no longer the raging wild beast they had been during John Cale’s tenure: a deliberate shift pop-wards had resulted in their third album, released earlier that year, surprising fans with its folksy understatement and uncharacteristically sentimental attitudes; and they were preparing material for another album, their first for Atlantic, hopefully following the new label’s demand for a record “loaded with hits”.
San Francisco’s music scene, meanwhile, was still registering the queasy aftershock of the Manson Family Murders down the coast in Los Angeles. Most bands had already left the city, escaping to Marin County to avoid the huge influx of panhandling hippies and rubbernecking gawkers into the Haight Ashbury district. And a distinct shift in musical style had been signalled by the colossal success that year of local band Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose short, snappy little songs had scored them a run of hits through 1969 that included “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Green River” and “Fortunate Son”. The Velvets might have been forgiven for thinking that their new, neatened-up, pop-conscious approach would chime nicely with the changing conditions: was it really that far, after all, from “Proud Mary” to “Sweet Jane”?
All the same, they opted to open their shows with the old warhorse “I’m Waiting For The Man”, an echo of their earlier, darker inclinations. “It’s going to be a very serious rock’n’roll set,” Lou Reed teased the audience amiably. “I don’t want any of you to enjoy yourselves frivolously, because it goes against national policy. This is a song written under the influence of dreams, and it’s about one man’s journey from uptown to downtown.” What follows is a very different version from the urgent, implacable motorik of the first Velvets album: a slow, languid affair sauntering past the 10-minute mark on the string-bending swoons of limpid guitars, while Reed affects the casual, laissez-faire cool of a nightclub crooner. It’s bizarrely devoid of impact, almost trance-like, as if the song has been strained through the aesthetic of the third album; and not for the first time during their shows at the venue, it’s greeted initially with stunned silence, followed by a desultory smattering of applause.
It’s a red herring, in a sense, as thereafter the shows develop an itchy momentum through nippy rockers like “What Goes On”, “There She Goes Again” and “We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together”, built on Sterling Morrison’s frantic, choppy rhythm guitar, so feverish it almost trips over itself, and Mo Tucker’s forceful, take-no-prisoners snare shots. Reed’s guitar and Doug Yule’s organ, when called upon to solo, pursue small figures incessantly: compared to the expansive, freewheeling improvs the Matrix audience might be familiar with courtesy of such as the Dead and Quicksilver, the Velvets here are rudimentary and tight, disciplined rather than indulgent, and their performances hum with the new, minimalist aesthetic then developing a significant influence in New York art circles.
“I Can’t Stand It” is another itchy, rhythmic piece that finds the band in transition en route to Loaded, with Reed’s surreal, Dylanesque lines (“I live with thirteen dead cats/A purple dog that wears spats/They’re all living in the hall/And I can’t stand it any more”) offering few semantic clues. But there’s still room within the tight, itchy groove for Reed to essay an odd, modal guitar solo, through which his Ornette Coleman influence shines with a dark, confrontational gleam. You can sense the effect it’s having on the band’s chum Robert Quine, out in the crowd with his trusty cassette recorder, capturing it all for posterity. In a few years’ time, Quine will apply these lessons in his own “skronk” guitar stylings for Richard Hell & The Voidoids, and for Reed himself.
Sometimes, they try a bit too hard, as when Reed yelps as he launches into his solo in “Sweet Bonnie Brown/Too Much”, a pair of throwaway rockabilly-style songs featuring notably dull lyrics, about which his bandmates can barely hide the contempt in their desultory chorus responses. And two runs through “White Light/White Heat” are loose and raggedy, paradoxically rushed but stretched-out, the closest they come to losing their shape apart from the woefully wallowy “Ocean”, which features some of the world’s dullest organ soloing, and simply fails to command attention.
At other times, they are simply perverse, with a grim, antagonistic “Black Angel’s Death Song” all too accurately summarised by Reed’s smirking introduction: “This song we haven’t played in a really long time, because it used to empty clubs – as a matter of fact, when a club wanted to close for a while it would get in touch with us to play this song”. But overall, there’s a good balance throughout the sets between innocence and experience, fast and slow, benign and malign. The four versions of “Heroin” have a mesmerising, queasy grace, and the two lashes of “Venus In Furs” are stately, majestic, dark and velveteen, like a high-class hooker’s counterpane. The four versions of “Some Kinda Love” have a nodding, hypnotic momentum, with Reed again playing the worldly crooner; and there’s a lovely formal, faded glamour to “Pale Blue Eyes” that balances beautifully with the sweetness of the ensuing “After Hours”.
Substantial tranches of the Matrix Tapes have already appeared elsewhere, firstly in 1974 on the 1969: The Velvet Underground Live double album, and subsequently on 2001’s Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes. More recently, Matrix recordings comprised two of the six discs of the 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition of the Velvets’ third album, including the 37-minute version of “Sister Ray” included here, which offers the clearest indication of how the band had changed since the departure of John Cale. Starting out slow and relaxed, speeding up, then dropping back and surging forward periodically, it grooves along like a standard jam session. But it’s a far more measured acceleration and development than on the 1967 Gymnasium live recording included on the White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary Edition: there’s none of the original’s architectonic quality, that sense of musical plates shifting under forces beyond their control. Those days were well and truly gone – and soon, so would Lou Reed himself.
