The Allah-Las make their UK debut in the back room of a north London pub on a freezing December night, the inhospitable weather not something familiar to in their native Los Angeles, where it probably only gets this cold in disaster movies, palm trees turning brittle with frost, the ocean becoming ice, CGI snow drifts on Sunset Strip and Denis Quaid in a parka and Bermuda shorts standing square-jawed and wrinkled-kneed against the elements.
In celebration of Neil Young’s triple appearance in our review of 2012 (Americana and Psychedelic Pill in our top 50 albums and Waging Heavy Peace in our top 20 books of the year), here’s a look back at an unusually revealing interview with Neil Young (from our September 2007 issue, Take 127) – taking in car graveyards, his mother’s ashes and the truth about Archives and Chrome Dreams… “The Great Spirit has been good to me,” he says. Words: Jaan Uhelszki
_____________________
Hunter Davies, who in 1968 wrote the first authorised biography of The Beatles and now more than 50 years on has compiled and edited The John Lennon Letters, admits in his introduction that he has for the purposes of the book ‘rather expanded the definition of the word letter’, which immediately sounds bit slippery, especially when he also describes some of the material he has unearthed as ‘notes and lists and scraps’. This sounds rather unpromising, as if Davies is preparing the reader for disappointments to come.
Elvis Costello has announced an extensive UK tour for next summer.
The singer, who released his 24th studio album National Ransom in 2010, will play 16 dates across the UK in May and June next year.
The tour will once again feature Costello and his band asking members of the audience to spin a huge wheel and select the next song in the set.
Costello's original wheel tour took place in 1986, opening at the Los Angeles Beverly Theatre, before a three night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall.
Elvis Costello will play:
Jack White has said that The White Stripes will never get back together.
When asked if a reunion would ever be on the cards, the Nashville singer told Dutch news station Newsuur, "No. I don't think that could ever happen; it's all done. But the lord works in mysterious ways so there'll probably be something better come out of me one day. I hope so, I've got nothing better to do."
Morrissey has announced an extensive tour of North America.
The singer, who recently reissued his 1998 debut album Viva Hate, will play 33 dates beginning in Boston on October 5. The tour eventually closes in Atlantic City on December 8.
Morrissey will play his only UK show of the year at Manchester Arena on July 28.
The North American tour dates are:
10/05 - Boston, Massachusetts - Wang Theatre
10/06 - Waterbury, Connecticut - Palace Theater
10/10 - New York, New York - Radio City Music Hall
10/15 - Portland, Maine - State Theatre
David Byrne and Arcade Fire's Win Butler are set to appear together on stage to discuss Byrne's new book, How Music Works.
The event will take place on September 22, during the POP Montreal Festival in Canada. According to Pitchfork, the conversation will take place at the Ukranian Federation, co-presented by POP Montreal's Symposium and Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.
How Music Works is to be published in September by McSweeney's, the American publishing house founded by novelist Dave Eggers.
In tribute to the late Band legend, who died in April 2012, this week’s archive feature is a fascinating piece from October 2009’s Uncut (Take 149) – Barney Hoskyns travels to Levon Helm’s Woodstock barn for one of his Midnight Rambles, a musical hogroast-cum-celebration of the drummer’s life and legacy. “To me,” says Helm, “it’s just rock’n’roll…”
________________________________
Alex Chilton’s wild, idiosyncratic life after Big Star is examined in the new issue of Uncut (Take 180, May 2012), out now. But what happened before the demise of Chilton’s greatest group? They should have been rock superstars, but Rob Jovanovic explains how drugs, in-fighting and personal tragedy meant Big Star had to settle for being the biggest cult band of all time (from Uncut's Take 94, March 2005).
________________________________
