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Legendary New York club CBGB to re-open?

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Legendary New York club CBGB to re-open?

Legendary New York punk club CBGB could be set to reopen in a new location in the city. The nightspot, which closed in 2006, has been bought by a group of investors who are planning to set up a new annual festival and have also been eyeing up potential new sites, reports the New York Times. The four-day festival is due to kick off on July 5 and take place at around 30 venues across the city, showcasing 300 bands. Tim Hayes, one of the investors, claimed that the group are not trying to "recreate" the punk period, when the likes of Television, The Ramones, Blondie, Sonic Youth and Patti Smith all graced its stage. He commented:We're trying to continue the idea of supporting live music, making a lot of noise and being a part of New York City. The festival is one way we can do it. Eventually the club will be another way we can do it. The rights to the club's assets had been mired in legal disputes since the death of founder Hilly Kristal in 2007. However, after the disputes were settled, Hayes made an approach to Kristal's daughter Lisa Kristal Burgman in early 2011 about reviving the club. Hayes has declined to name the team of investors, but said they are "half a dozen guys who love music".

Legendary New York punk club CBGB could be set to reopen in a new location in the city.

The nightspot, which closed in 2006, has been bought by a group of investors who are planning to set up a new annual festival and have also been eyeing up potential new sites, reports the New York Times.

The four-day festival is due to kick off on July 5 and take place at around 30 venues across the city, showcasing 300 bands.

Tim Hayes, one of the investors, claimed that the group are not trying to “recreate” the punk period, when the likes of Television, The Ramones, Blondie, Sonic Youth and Patti Smith all graced its stage.

He commented:We’re trying to continue the idea of supporting live music, making a lot of noise and being a part of New York City. The festival is one way we can do it. Eventually the club will be another way we can do it.

The rights to the club’s assets had been mired in legal disputes since the death of founder Hilly Kristal in 2007.

However, after the disputes were settled, Hayes made an approach to Kristal’s daughter Lisa Kristal Burgman in early 2011 about reviving the club. Hayes has declined to name the team of investors, but said they are “half a dozen guys who love music”.

Dexys: London Shepherd’s Bush Empire, May 8, 2012

John Mulvey
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Dexys: London Shepherd’s Bush Empire, May 8, 2012

A couple or so weeks ago, Jack White requested that no photos to be taken at his London show: the audience should put down their phones and concentrate on the gig in a different way, was his implied suggestion. On Monday, the Dexys Twitter account (@dexysofficial) sent out this message: “Please feel free to use your phones to take images of the show and remember, look good. We will.” During last night’s concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, however, not many people are following the advice – few phones are being brandished. One good reason might be that most of the audience are of an age where it doesn’t occur to them to get phones out during a gig. More romantically, though, it could be that some shows are so memorable that their highs stick easily in the mind, that sometimes there’s no use for photographs. The first Dexys London show for nine years is like that: a remarkable spectacle where, for two hours, Kevin Rowland and his nine accomplices weave 11 new songs and a meticulously-chosen clutch of old ones into a sequence that is as rich, moving and powerful as anything I’ve seen in a long while. A few images come easily to mind: Rowland kicking the arch of the stage to propel himself off on another one of his manically choreographed marches up and down the stage; Big Jimmy Paterson, the most totemic of Dexys musicians, stepping up for his trombone solo on “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”; Mick Talbot ordering the musicians into the exuberant new coda of “Come On Eileen”, while Rowland and Pete Williams fly across the stage like pinballs. Williams’ role in the band is curious, as it happens: a benign foil to Rowland, his vocals – and presence – are mostly absent for the songs from “One Day I’m Going To Soar”. On “She Got A Wiggle”, he is required to lean on Rowland, nodding attentively at his declarations of lust, without even a microphone. The job he assumed in 2003, as second lead singer, recurs during the set of old tunes which follow, with him sharing the work on brilliantly rewritten versions of “Liars A To E” and “Old”. The pair of them shifting that “Too Rye Ay” song from second to first person, and defiantly hollering “I’m Getting Old”, is one of the many strikingly poignant moments in the show (the rewriting is capricious, mind: strange how the mocking of the CND remains, anachronistically, in “This Is What She’s Like”). There are dialogues to be played out, too, that have been worked on, on and off, since “Don’t Stand Me Down” was released. A necessarily epic version of “Until I Believe In My Soul” is interrupted by the “Officer And A Gentleman” routine, in which Williams, dressed as a policeman, questions Rowland about his “burning”, and other hard-to-articulate problems. The words, and the Samuel Beckett-meets-Eric Sykes tone, are mostly unchanged 28 years down the line. Hard-to-articulate problems are, of course, one of Rowland’s standbys, never more so than in the arc of songs that make up “One Day I’m Going To Soar”. It is part of the Dexys commitment to challenging their audience that the unreleased album is played out in its entirety before the old songs start. But the feel, the melodic punch, the emotional melodrama is so congruent with Rowland’s old work that one suspects it all feels instantly familiar – and not just to the serried ranks of distinguished music journalists that make up an unusually large part of the crowd. I blogged about a clutch of “One Day…” songs a few weeks ago, and those – the “Don’t Stand Me Down”-style opener “Now”, the Memphis lilt of “Nowhere Is Home” and especially, the early showstopper “Lost” – still stand out. If parts of the generally excellent album are undermined by slightly stiff arrangements and bland production touches, the live versions are predictably a whole lot sparkier and more intricate. Talbot, Paterson and the violinist Lucy Morgan (another survivor from the 2003 lineup) are allowed to add an occasional looseness to these obsessively rehearsed pieces, and there are new assets to the live band: the sainted drummer Dave Ruffy, who plays rather like a British Max Weinberg; and the guitarist Tim Cansfield, whose discreet rhythm lines often call to mind those of Teenie Hodges, especially on a simmering new version of “I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried”. The least satisfying part of “One Day…” remains an issue in the live show, though: the involvement on a couple of songs of Madeleine Hyland, a theatrical belter with something of Paloma Faith about her. It is a little awkward to see someone evidently trained in musical theatre, or at least trained in a very different way to Rowland and Williams – acting out the songs in what feels like a more conventional, less appealing register. She does, though, prove critical to the story of “One Day…”, to the lusty highs and agonising solipsisms that Rowland indulges in so brilliantly. For all the fire and flow of his tremendous band, and the ceding of vocal responsibilities to his deputies, it is still his night. A reiteration of what everyone here has long believed – that Rowland is one of the most complicated and compelling frontmen, and one of the greatest soul singers, that Britain has ever produced. From the folksy Irish ballad beginning of “Now” (shades of “Knowledge Of Beauty”), through to the wordless euphorics of “This Is What She’s Like”, Rowland’s voice remains astonishing. At first, he’s a little tentative, even nervous perhaps, but as he warms up, the energy and weird, untrammelled passion that have been with him for so long come roaring back to the fore. There are grandstand moments in “Lost”, “Thinking Of You”, the climax to “Incapable Of Love”, “Until I Believe In My Soul”, in the beautiful “It’s OK, John Joe” (in tone, if not in subject matter, a song that could plausibly be titled “Reminisce Part Three”). The whole thing, really, is incredible. At 16 or 17, the Dexys “Coming To Town” show in Nottingham was my first ever gig, Dexys were one of my very favourite bands, and I wasn’t convinced I’d ever see many better shows. In 2012, bizarrely, I feel much the same. I’ll try and make more sense of this later in the day, but in the meantime please add your thoughts if you’ve seen any of the shows – and of course please check out our Dexys cover story in the latest Uncut. Thanks. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

A couple or so weeks ago, Jack White requested that no photos to be taken at his London show: the audience should put down their phones and concentrate on the gig in a different way, was his implied suggestion.

On Monday, the Dexys Twitter account (@dexysofficial) sent out this message: “Please feel free to use your phones to take images of the show and remember, look good. We will.” During last night’s concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, however, not many people are following the advice – few phones are being brandished. One good reason might be that most of the audience are of an age where it doesn’t occur to them to get phones out during a gig.

More romantically, though, it could be that some shows are so memorable that their highs stick easily in the mind, that sometimes there’s no use for photographs. The first Dexys London show for nine years is like that: a remarkable spectacle where, for two hours, Kevin Rowland and his nine accomplices weave 11 new songs and a meticulously-chosen clutch of old ones into a sequence that is as rich, moving and powerful as anything I’ve seen in a long while.

A few images come easily to mind: Rowland kicking the arch of the stage to propel himself off on another one of his manically choreographed marches up and down the stage; Big Jimmy Paterson, the most totemic of Dexys musicians, stepping up for his trombone solo on “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”; Mick Talbot ordering the musicians into the exuberant new coda of “Come On Eileen”, while Rowland and Pete Williams fly across the stage like pinballs.

Williams’ role in the band is curious, as it happens: a benign foil to Rowland, his vocals – and presence – are mostly absent for the songs from “One Day I’m Going To Soar”. On “She Got A Wiggle”, he is required to lean on Rowland, nodding attentively at his declarations of lust, without even a microphone. The job he assumed in 2003, as second lead singer, recurs during the set of old tunes which follow, with him sharing the work on brilliantly rewritten versions of “Liars A To E” and “Old”. The pair of them shifting that “Too Rye Ay” song from second to first person, and defiantly hollering “I’m Getting Old”, is one of the many strikingly poignant moments in the show (the rewriting is capricious, mind: strange how the mocking of the CND remains, anachronistically, in “This Is What She’s Like”).

There are dialogues to be played out, too, that have been worked on, on and off, since “Don’t Stand Me Down” was released. A necessarily epic version of “Until I Believe In My Soul” is interrupted by the “Officer And A Gentleman” routine, in which Williams, dressed as a policeman, questions Rowland about his “burning”, and other hard-to-articulate problems. The words, and the Samuel Beckett-meets-Eric Sykes tone, are mostly unchanged 28 years down the line.

Hard-to-articulate problems are, of course, one of Rowland’s standbys, never more so than in the arc of songs that make up “One Day I’m Going To Soar”. It is part of the Dexys commitment to challenging their audience that the unreleased album is played out in its entirety before the old songs start. But the feel, the melodic punch, the emotional melodrama is so congruent with Rowland’s old work that one suspects it all feels instantly familiar – and not just to the serried ranks of distinguished music journalists that make up an unusually large part of the crowd.

I blogged about a clutch of “One Day…” songs a few weeks ago, and those – the “Don’t Stand Me Down”-style opener “Now”, the Memphis lilt of “Nowhere Is Home” and especially, the early showstopper “Lost” – still stand out. If parts of the generally excellent album are undermined by slightly stiff arrangements and bland production touches, the live versions are predictably a whole lot sparkier and more intricate.

Talbot, Paterson and the violinist Lucy Morgan (another survivor from the 2003 lineup) are allowed to add an occasional looseness to these obsessively rehearsed pieces, and there are new assets to the live band: the sainted drummer Dave Ruffy, who plays rather like a British Max Weinberg; and the guitarist Tim Cansfield, whose discreet rhythm lines often call to mind those of Teenie Hodges, especially on a simmering new version of “I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried”.

The least satisfying part of “One Day…” remains an issue in the live show, though: the involvement on a couple of songs of Madeleine Hyland, a theatrical belter with something of Paloma Faith about her. It is a little awkward to see someone evidently trained in musical theatre, or at least trained in a very different way to Rowland and Williams – acting out the songs in what feels like a more conventional, less appealing register.

She does, though, prove critical to the story of “One Day…”, to the lusty highs and agonising solipsisms that Rowland indulges in so brilliantly. For all the fire and flow of his tremendous band, and the ceding of vocal responsibilities to his deputies, it is still his night. A reiteration of what everyone here has long believed – that Rowland is one of the most complicated and compelling frontmen, and one of the greatest soul singers, that Britain has ever produced.

From the folksy Irish ballad beginning of “Now” (shades of “Knowledge Of Beauty”), through to the wordless euphorics of “This Is What She’s Like”, Rowland’s voice remains astonishing. At first, he’s a little tentative, even nervous perhaps, but as he warms up, the energy and weird, untrammelled passion that have been with him for so long come roaring back to the fore. There are grandstand moments in “Lost”, “Thinking Of You”, the climax to “Incapable Of Love”, “Until I Believe In My Soul”, in the beautiful “It’s OK, John Joe” (in tone, if not in subject matter, a song that could plausibly be titled “Reminisce Part Three”). The whole thing, really, is incredible.

At 16 or 17, the Dexys “Coming To Town” show in Nottingham was my first ever gig, Dexys were one of my very favourite bands, and I wasn’t convinced I’d ever see many better shows. In 2012, bizarrely, I feel much the same. I’ll try and make more sense of this later in the day, but in the meantime please add your thoughts if you’ve seen any of the shows – and of course please check out our Dexys cover story in the latest Uncut. Thanks.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist accuses band of “dishonouring” him

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Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist accuses band of “dishonouring” him

Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Jack Sherman has hit out at his former bandmates after he was not invited to attend the band's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last month. The band were inducted along with the Faces/Small Faces, Guns N' Roses and Beastie Boys at a ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio last month, and Sherman has criticised his former bandmates for not allowing him and Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro to not attend the ceremony. Sherman appeared on the band's first album and contributed material to their second, while Navarro later spent five years in the band and recorded One Hot Minute with them. However, both he and Navarro missed out, while the band's late founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, veteran John Frusciante and current six-stringer Josh Klinghoffer were included, though Frusciante chose not to attend the ceremony. Speaking to Billboard, Sherman said of his feelings about the snub: "It’s a politically correct way of omitting Dave Navarro and I for whatever reasons they have – that are probably the band’s and not the Hall's. It’s really painful to see all this celebrating going on, and be excluded." Sherman added that while he acknowledged he did not have an easy time in the band, he believes he "soldiered on under arduous conditions to try to make the thing work – that’s what you do in a job. That’s being dishonoured. I’m being dishonoured. And it sucks." Speaking on behalf of the band, lawyer Eric Greenspan said of Sherman's comments: "It’s not a decision made by the band. It’s made by the Hall of Fame. They determine which of the members, through their career, get inducted." Red Hot Chili Peppers will return to the UK and Ireland this summer to play three huge outdoor shows. The band will play Knebworth Park near Stevenage on June 23, Sunderland's Stadium Of Light on June 24 and Dublin's Croke Park on June 26.

Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Jack Sherman has hit out at his former bandmates after he was not invited to attend the band’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last month.

The band were inducted along with the Faces/Small Faces, Guns N’ Roses and Beastie Boys at a ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio last month, and Sherman has criticised his former bandmates for not allowing him and Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro to not attend the ceremony.

Sherman appeared on the band’s first album and contributed material to their second, while Navarro later spent five years in the band and recorded One Hot Minute with them.

However, both he and Navarro missed out, while the band’s late founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, veteran John Frusciante and current six-stringer Josh Klinghoffer were included, though Frusciante chose not to attend the ceremony.

Speaking to Billboard, Sherman said of his feelings about the snub: “It’s a politically correct way of omitting Dave Navarro and I for whatever reasons they have – that are probably the band’s and not the Hall’s. It’s really painful to see all this celebrating going on, and be excluded.”

Sherman added that while he acknowledged he did not have an easy time in the band, he believes he “soldiered on under arduous conditions to try to make the thing work – that’s what you do in a job. That’s being dishonoured. I’m being dishonoured. And it sucks.”

Speaking on behalf of the band, lawyer Eric Greenspan said of Sherman’s comments: “It’s not a decision made by the band. It’s made by the Hall of Fame. They determine which of the members, through their career, get inducted.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers will return to the UK and Ireland this summer to play three huge outdoor shows. The band will play Knebworth Park near Stevenage on June 23, Sunderland’s Stadium Of Light on June 24 and Dublin’s Croke Park on June 26.

Gaz Coombes on Supergrass reunion: “Who knows what I’ll say in five years?”

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Gaz Coombes on Supergrass reunion: “Who knows what I’ll say in five years?”
Gaz Coombes – former frontman of Supergrass – has said that he currently has "no interest" in a Supergrass reunion, but added: "Who knows what I'll say in five years?" The musician has also spoken out about the inspiration for his debut solo album, Here Come The Bombs, which is set for release ...

Gaz Coombes – former frontman of Supergrass – has said that he currently has “no interest” in a Supergrass reunion, but added: “Who knows what I’ll say in five years?”

The musician has also spoken out about the inspiration for his debut solo album, Here Come The Bombs, which is set for release on May 21. The album was co-produced by Sam Williams, who previously worked with Coombes when producing Supergrass’s 1995 debut album, I Should Coco.

Speaking to The Guardian, Coombes explained that album opener ‘Bombs’, was inspired by television reports about Libya. He said: “You see aerial footage of bombs dropping and it doesn’t seem real. But down there, it’s fucking mental.”

He added: “I got this feeling that there are a lot of people around the world who aren’t listened to and they’re being wronged. It had an effect on me – a very strange emotion – enough to make me start writing stuff down.”

Coombes plays every instrument on the new album, but explained that it wasn’t so he could say: “‘Hey look at me, I can play this stuff!'”, but rather an expression of spontaneity.

Gaz Coombes will play two UK shows later this month. Coombes will appear at Manchester’s Ruby Lounge on May 17 and London’s Bush Hall on May 25. He will also play a number of UK festivals this summer, including The Apple Cart Festival.

Richard Hawley: “Britain is no longer a civilised society”

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Richard Hawley: “Britain is no longer a civilised society”
Richard Hawley says his new album Standing At The Sky's Edge is a metaphor for the state of modern Britain. Speaking about the album title, he tells NME: "Sky's Edge is a place in Sheffield…But I used it as a metaphor more than anything, for being on the edge and how we have to decide what side ...

Richard Hawley says his new album Standing At The Sky’s Edge is a metaphor for the state of modern Britain.

Speaking about the album title, he tells NME: “Sky’s Edge is a place in Sheffield…But I used it as a metaphor more than anything, for being on the edge and how we have to decide what side of the line we’re on. The Government are using the recession to force through politics that will put us back 125 years of history”.

The album, which was released yesterday [May 7], is the Sheffield guitarist’s seventh studio album and the follow up to 2009’s Truelove’s Gutter. Hawley says that the album is darker than it’s predecessor because he felt it was “time to turn it up”:

“The government are really limiting us by closing libraries and reducing NHS funding. Kids are coming out of university £50,000 in debt and still end up flipping burgers. This is no longer a civilised society, the dignity of our sick and elderly is being taken away.”

He continued: “This has impacted on the sound and made me realise what’s important. We had to fight for those things and I just don’t want to see them taken back away. It’s pissed me off and it think it’s pissed every fucker off to be honest”

Hawley will play London’s O2 Academy Brixton on October 3, which will be his largest UK headline show.

Playing Bass With Elvis, Dylan, The Doors & More…

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Playing Bass With Elvis, Dylan, The Doors & More…

Jerry Scheff is surely not an unfamiliar name to readers of Uncut. I’d wager a horse most of you have more than one album in your collection that feature him on bass. Among the highlights of a lengthy and illustrious CV, he can count gigs with Elvis Presley, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Todd Rundgren, Richard Thompson, Bette Midler, Crowded House, Johnny Cash, T-Bone Burnett, Roy Orbison, Suzanne Vegas and Jimmie Dale Gilmour. Scheff has stories galore about most of these people in his autobiography, Way Down: Playing Bass With Elvis, Dylan, The Doors & More (Backbeat Books), which I’ve been reading over the weekend just gone. A couple of his anecdotes about playing with Dylan especially stood out. He joined Dylan’s touring band in May 1978, as a replacement for Rob Stoner, who’d been with Dylan since the Rolling Thunder tours. For unexplained reasons Stoner had suddenly found himself out of favour and been duly fired by Dylan. On June 1, Dylan as due to start a week-long run at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, which didn’t leave him much time to learn the songs for the show. In fact, as he recalls, barely half the set had been rehearsed when Dylan turned up one day and somewhat nonchalantly announced he’d written a batch of new songs he wanted to record, immediately. At which point, work on the live set stopped entirely and work on Street-Legal started, a mobile studio turning up not long after Dylan at the rehearsal studios where the album was recorded. This was an unscheduled interruption that meant when the band played the opening night of the LA shows, fully a third of the set consisted of songs the band had never played live together before, which seemed not to bother Dylan a proverbial jot. A couple of weeks later, Scheff was with Dylan in London ahead of the month-long European tour that ended with Dylan headlining the Blackbushe festival. The band was staying at some plush place near Hyde Park. One night, Scheff got a call in his room. It was Dylan. He wanted to know if Scheff was a reggae fan, which he was. Meet me in the hotel garage and don’t mention it to anyone else, Dylan told him. When Scheff turned up in the garage, he found Dylan at the wheel of a Mercedes he had stashed there, with backing singer Helena Springs and the band’s female percussionist, Bobbye Hall, already on board. Security around Dylan was usually pretty tight, but tonight Dylan had given them the slip and wanted to go to a club he knew to hear some live reggae and now drove the Mercedes there, parking, as Scheff remembers it, about a block away in what seemed to the bassist a rather rough-looking neighbourhood. Dylan then led them through darkened streets to the club. “We could hear the music from outside,” Scheff writes. “It was almost as if the outer walls of the club were throbbing. We stepped into a room where a few people were sitting around in folding chairs against bare walls; the music, already loud, was coming from the other side of a closed door. In front of us was a ticket booth made out of raw plywood. “Bob stepped forward and asked for four tickets. A guy in dreadlocks told him that you needed to be a member to gain entry, and that membership was £100 apiece. The band sounded great, though, and we were all getting turned on to what was happening on the other side of the door. Bob handed over £400. We had our hands stamped and in we went.” What they found on the other side of the door: a room with no chairs or tables, the walls lined with speakers pumping out recorded music and a single couple swaying in the middle of a dance floor otherwise empty, apart from a wine bottle. Undaunted, but out of pocket by nearly a thousand dollars, Dylan, laughing, then headed to another club, possibly the old Venue in Victoria, where Link Wray was playing and Sid Vicious hove into view at one point brandishing a flick knife. Years later, when Scheff like Stoner before him had been unceremoniously replaced in Dylan’s band, he was in the studio with drummer Jim Keltner. Keltner had himself recently been playing with Dylan and recalled his own sudden departure from Bob’s band. One day at the end of rehearsals, Keltner remembered, Dylan had taken him to one side and asked: “Jim, what guitar players do you like? I’m not digging the guitar players.” Loyal to his fellow musicians, Keltner told Dylan that he loved the guitar players they already had. Dylan was silent for a moment then looked at Keltner. “By the way,” he said. “I’m not digging the drums either.” Anyway, I need to get back to work on the issue we’re just finishing and then I’m off to Brighton for the Great Escape Festival. We’ll be at the Pavilion Theatre from Thursday to Saturday, so call by if you have a chance. Allan Pic: Jerry Scheff with Dylan at Blackbushe

Jerry Scheff is surely not an unfamiliar name to readers of Uncut. I’d wager a horse most of you have more than one album in your collection that feature him on bass. Among the highlights of a lengthy and illustrious CV, he can count gigs with Elvis Presley, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Todd Rundgren, Richard Thompson, Bette Midler, Crowded House, Johnny Cash, T-Bone Burnett, Roy Orbison, Suzanne Vegas and Jimmie Dale Gilmour.

Scheff has stories galore about most of these people in his autobiography, Way Down: Playing Bass With Elvis, Dylan, The Doors & More (Backbeat Books), which I’ve been reading over the weekend just gone. A couple of his anecdotes about playing with Dylan especially stood out.

He joined Dylan’s touring band in May 1978, as a replacement for Rob Stoner, who’d been with Dylan since the Rolling Thunder tours. For unexplained reasons Stoner had suddenly found himself out of favour and been duly fired by Dylan. On June 1, Dylan as due to start a week-long run at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, which didn’t leave him much time to learn the songs for the show.

In fact, as he recalls, barely half the set had been rehearsed when Dylan turned up one day and somewhat nonchalantly announced he’d written a batch of new songs he wanted to record, immediately. At which point, work on the live set stopped entirely and work on Street-Legal started, a mobile studio turning up not long after Dylan at the rehearsal studios where the album was recorded. This was an unscheduled interruption that meant when the band played the opening night of the LA shows, fully a third of the set consisted of songs the band had never played live together before, which seemed not to bother Dylan a proverbial jot.

A couple of weeks later, Scheff was with Dylan in London ahead of the month-long European tour that ended with Dylan headlining the Blackbushe festival. The band was staying at some plush place near Hyde Park. One night, Scheff got a call in his room. It was Dylan. He wanted to know if Scheff was a reggae fan, which he was. Meet me in the hotel garage and don’t mention it to anyone else, Dylan told him.

When Scheff turned up in the garage, he found Dylan at the wheel of a Mercedes he had stashed there, with backing singer Helena Springs and the band’s female percussionist, Bobbye Hall, already on board. Security around Dylan was usually pretty tight, but tonight Dylan had given them the slip and wanted to go to a club he knew to hear some live reggae and now drove the Mercedes there, parking, as Scheff remembers it, about a block away in what seemed to the bassist a rather rough-looking neighbourhood. Dylan then led them through darkened streets to the club.

“We could hear the music from outside,” Scheff writes. “It was almost as if the outer walls of the club were throbbing. We stepped into a room where a few people were sitting around in folding chairs against bare walls; the music, already loud, was coming from the other side of a closed door. In front of us was a ticket booth made out of raw plywood.

“Bob stepped forward and asked for four tickets. A guy in dreadlocks told him that you needed to be a member to gain entry, and that membership was £100 apiece. The band sounded great, though, and we were all getting turned on to what was happening on the other side of the door. Bob handed over £400. We had our hands stamped and in we went.”

What they found on the other side of the door: a room with no chairs or tables, the walls lined with speakers pumping out recorded music and a single couple swaying in the middle of a dance floor otherwise empty, apart from a wine bottle. Undaunted, but out of pocket by nearly a thousand dollars, Dylan, laughing, then headed to another club, possibly the old Venue in Victoria, where Link Wray was playing and Sid Vicious hove into view at one point brandishing a flick knife.

Years later, when Scheff like Stoner before him had been unceremoniously replaced in Dylan’s band, he was in the studio with drummer Jim Keltner. Keltner had himself recently been playing with Dylan and recalled his own sudden departure from Bob’s band.

One day at the end of rehearsals, Keltner remembered, Dylan had taken him to one side and asked: “Jim, what guitar players do you like? I’m not digging the guitar players.”

Loyal to his fellow musicians, Keltner told Dylan that he loved the guitar players they already had.

Dylan was silent for a moment then looked at Keltner.

“By the way,” he said. “I’m not digging the drums either.”

Anyway, I need to get back to work on the issue we’re just finishing and then I’m off to Brighton for the Great Escape Festival. We’ll be at the Pavilion Theatre from Thursday to Saturday, so call by if you have a chance.

Allan

Pic: Jerry Scheff with Dylan at Blackbushe

Hear: Animal Collective, “Honeycomb” and “Gotham”

John Mulvey
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Hear: Animal Collective, “Honeycomb” and “Gotham”

In case you missed them yesterday, I’ve embedded the two new Animal Collective tracks after the jump. Back into relative focus after the “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” thing, and with Avey Tare seemingly to the the fore; he almost seems to be rapping at the start of “Honeycomb”. Good stuff, anyhow - "amniotic", as ever, seems a salient word - but let me know what you think. I'm going to see the Dexys show tonight, so I'll try and post something tomorrow morning about that. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

In case you missed them yesterday, I’ve embedded the two new Animal Collective tracks after the jump. Back into relative focus after the “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” thing, and with Avey Tare seemingly to the the fore; he almost seems to be rapping at the start of “Honeycomb”.

Good stuff, anyhow – “amniotic”, as ever, seems a salient word – but let me know what you think. I’m going to see the Dexys show tonight, so I’ll try and post something tomorrow morning about that.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

The Stone Roses rehearsing without drummer Reni?

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The Stone Roses rehearsing without drummer Reni?
The Stone Roses have apparently been rehearsing for their comeback gigs without drummer Reni aka Alan Wren, according to Matthew Priest of Dodgy. Priest, who drums with the Britpop band, who have also recently staged a comeback, was being interviewed on XFM – via The Sun - when he made the commen...

The Stone Roses have apparently been rehearsing for their comeback gigs without drummer Reni aka Alan Wren, according to Matthew Priest of Dodgy.

Priest, who drums with the Britpop band, who have also recently staged a comeback, was being interviewed on XFM – via The Sun – when he made the comments. Priest said: “I bought tickets because The Roses were one of my favourite bands and Reni was playing. But I’ve heard rumours that Reni might not be playing – he’s not well apparently and they’re rehearsing with another drummer. They’ve sold a lot of the 250,000 tickets because of Reni – I’d want to see them with Reni.”

The Stone Roses’ rep has refuted this, saying that the band are currently rehearsing with “all four members”.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt has requested tickets to watch The Stone Roses’ UK reunion shows this summer, according to reports. The Hollywood A-lister is a big fan of the Madchester legends, says a source close to the actor, and has requested four tickets to see the band play at Heaton Park this summer while his wife, Angelina Jolie, is filming a new movie.

The gigs will take place from June 29 to July 1, with Primal Scream, Beady Eye and Plan B heading up the support bills on each of the three nights, while Bob Marley’s backing group The Wailers will play third on the bill for each of the shows.

Primal Scream will be joined by The Vaccines and Kid British on the opening night, while Saturday’s bill sees Professor Green and Hollie Cook slated to perform before Beady Eye. Plan B will play on the closing night after The Justice Tonight Band – which comprises The Clash‘s Mick Jones, Pete Wylie and The Farm – and Dirty North.

Meanwhile, a special collectors’ issue dedicated to The Stone Roses is currently available. Produced by the teams behind NME and Uncut, the magazine features the story behind Ian Brown and co’s rise to the top, the creation of their seminal debut album, the legal wrangles and lengthy delays behind their second LP Second Coming and their reunion late last year. The issue is available on newsstands and digitally.

Damon Albarn: “I’m making a new solo album”

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Damon Albarn: “I’m making a new solo album”
Blur frontman Damon Albarn has revealed that he is working on a new solo album. The singer, who recently denied that he is finished with both Blur and Gorillaz, told BBC Radio 4's Front Row that he is working on a new record "under his own name". Asked what he was currently working on, Albarn said...

Blur frontman Damon Albarn has revealed that he is working on a new solo album.

The singer, who recently denied that he is finished with both Blur and Gorillaz, told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row that he is working on a new record “under his own name”.

Asked what he was currently working on, Albarn said: “This week we’re mucking around with these Russian synthesizers in a very loose mind of doing some kind of record under my name. I suppose you could call it a solo record, but I don’t like that word. It sounds very lonely – solo. I don’t really want to be solo in my life. But yeah, I’m making another record.”

The singer has also labeled this year’s Olympics Games as “too corporate” and has said he and his bandmates are playing their Hyde Park show “for London” rather than as a celebration of the games.

The Essex band will headline London’s Hyde Park on August 12, topping a bill that also includes New Order and The Specials. The gig has been put on to coincide with the closing ceremony of the Olympic games, but Albarn has revealed that he was less than keen being seen to be too involved with the games.

Asked if he was “signed up to the Olympics”, Albarn said Blur would headline the gig “for London”. He said of this: “The corporate side I find a bit depressing. There’s too much of it [sponsorship]. A lot of people see it differently. We’re putting on another celebration for the official closure of the Olympic Games.”

He continued: “But we’re putting it on for London and people who hopefully want to sing their hearts out in a park. I’m signed up to the idea of regeneration in London and putting on a good account of ourselves; definitely.”

Albarn also spoke about Blur’s summer reunion and has said he is unsure that the band can ever “recreate the magic” of their previous Hyde Park show in 2009.

Asked what his plans with Blur were in the long-term, he said of the Hyde Park show: “I’m seeing it as a punctuation point. That can be whatever you choose to make it.” Then asked if he thought it could match their previous gig in the London park, he added: “I’m not foolish enough to think we can ever recreate that magic. That really was a career pinnacle.”

Along with playing at Hyde Park, Blur are also scheduled to headline Sweden’s Way Out West festival in August.

First Look – East End Babylon

Michael Bonner
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First Look – East End Babylon

Already, this year has provided plenty of good gear for fans of music documentaries. We've had Kevin McDonald's Bob Marley film and more recently, Lawrence Of Belgravia has capped a resurgence of interest in the idiosyncratic career of the Felt singer. You’d assume that the makers of East End Babylon are hoping that their film will prompt a similar rediscovery of its stars, the Cockney Rejects. The model here is Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple’s excellent documentary that did much to resurrect the reputation of Dr Feelgood. In fact, East End Babylon is directed by Richard England, Temple’s executive producer on Oil City Confidential. But unlike Dr Feelgood, history has not been so kind to the Cockney Rejects. As key players in the Oi! movement, they are tarred by association with far right groups and football hooliganism and, in a show at Birmingham’s Cedar Club in 1980, can claim the dubious honour of playing one of the most violent gigs ever documented. England does a very Temple thing by exploring the psychogeography of the Rejects’ native Canning Town, from the extensive bombing campaign during the Blitz to the slow running down of the docks during the Seventies. A hard life breeds hard people, he concludes. “In the 19th century, there was a saying: Never enter the East End without a loaded gun, and never, ever go there alone,” begins the opening voiceover from frontman Jeff Geggus. “Back in the 1970s, they may well have been saying that about our gigs.” As Jeff Geggus, his guitarist brother Mick and assorted band members, friends and family tell it, Canning Town was a “city of thieves”. Jeff Geggus claims that Parcelforce apparently won’t deliver there for fear of hijacking. “You could imagine Jack Regan and Carter down here every fucking day,” he continues. “They would have had a fucking field day chasing villains.” Today, the Geggus brothers – both of them big men – are clearly calmer than they were in their youth. There’s even something quite amiable about Jeff, in his sweary, slightly unsettling way, though critically, there is no one quite as funny, eloquent or charismatic as Wilko Johnson on hand to provide mercurial flair. Understandably, the Geggus brothers do a fair job of distancing themselves from their right wing following. I won’t make any claims for the Cockney Rejects’ music, but as a snapshot of a subculture it’s a fascinating film. East End Babylon opens in June

Already, this year has provided plenty of good gear for fans of music documentaries. We’ve had Kevin McDonald’s Bob Marley film and more recently, Lawrence Of Belgravia has capped a resurgence of interest in the idiosyncratic career of the Felt singer.

You’d assume that the makers of East End Babylon are hoping that their film will prompt a similar rediscovery of its stars, the Cockney Rejects. The model here is Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple’s excellent documentary that did much to resurrect the reputation of Dr Feelgood. In fact, East End Babylon is directed by Richard England, Temple’s executive producer on Oil City Confidential. But unlike Dr Feelgood, history has not been so kind to the Cockney Rejects. As key players in the Oi! movement, they are tarred by association with far right groups and football hooliganism and, in a show at Birmingham’s Cedar Club in 1980, can claim the dubious honour of playing one of the most violent gigs ever documented.

England does a very Temple thing by exploring the psychogeography of the Rejects’ native Canning Town, from the extensive bombing campaign during the Blitz to the slow running down of the docks during the Seventies. A hard life breeds hard people, he concludes. “In the 19th century, there was a saying: Never enter the East End without a loaded gun, and never, ever go there alone,” begins the opening voiceover from frontman Jeff Geggus. “Back in the 1970s, they may well have been saying that about our gigs.” As Jeff Geggus, his guitarist brother Mick and assorted band members, friends and family tell it, Canning Town was a “city of thieves”. Jeff Geggus claims that Parcelforce apparently won’t deliver there for fear of hijacking. “You could imagine Jack Regan and Carter down here every fucking day,” he continues. “They would have had a fucking field day chasing villains.”

Today, the Geggus brothers – both of them big men – are clearly calmer than they were in their youth. There’s even something quite amiable about Jeff, in his sweary, slightly unsettling way, though critically, there is no one quite as funny, eloquent or charismatic as Wilko Johnson on hand to provide mercurial flair. Understandably, the Geggus brothers do a fair job of distancing themselves from their right wing following. I won’t make any claims for the Cockney Rejects’ music, but as a snapshot of a subculture it’s a fascinating film.

East End Babylon opens in June

My Bloody Valentine – reissues

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My Bloody Valentine – reissues

In their early years, it was easy to dismiss My Bloody Valentine as just another cutie band, anoraked, bobbed and locked into an indie obsession with a 60s ideal of perfect pop on singles like “Sunny Sundae Smile”. Then in 1987 founder member Dave Conway left and was replaced by Bilinda Butcher, who reportedly wowed the group’s Kevin Shields, Colm Ó Coisóig and Debbie Googe by singing Dolly Parton’s “Bargain Store” at her audition. By the time the four-piece erupted on stage at Creation Records’ sweaty Doing It For The Kids event at London’s Town & Country Club in summer 1988, they had arrived at a place much closer to freak-rockers like Dinosaur Jr and Mudhoney. Except that where those American groups seemed to be sliding down a slope towards sleepy oblivion or lumpen rockism, MBV were possessed of a nervy, wired energy. Even when they were singing of soporific/narcotized dreamstates, they seemed to be conscious of the moment: when you wake, they said, you’re still in a dream. And they were no longer singing about sunny sundae smiles and strawberry wine, but sex, self-harm and clinical depression. Like the Mary Chain, they buried gorgeous melodies in veils of hiss and distortion, but unlike the Reid Bros, they didn’t have that retro rock ’n’ roll/surfadelic thing going on. It must be one of the most remarkable reinventions in rock history. What good can come of remastering My Bloody Valentine’s albums? The sound of their Creation releases is the polar opposite of all that such reconstructions attempt to unpick. The music’s surface seethes like bees fighting for the queen: it’s a sonic miasma, a hemorrhage of peaking-light overdrive. Voices buzz deep in the mix; guitars shiver and swarm. The ‘holocaust’ at the heart of “You Made Me Realise” – title track of the first Creation EP – is the ultimate anti-guitar solo: a gaping wind-tunnel howl of mounting inertia in which the group seem to drop away completely (they famously extended this abstract void to 15 or 20 minutes on stage, to the detriment of a generation’s eardrums). Loveless was recorded in mono. By its very nature, you’re never going to get clarity on the hazed instrumental mix, but I certainly feel I can hear more of what they’re singing about on these new editions. Unexpectedly, it’s 1988’s Isn’t Anything that comes off worst from the swab-down. Its initial strangeness now just sounds like a ramshackle tryout for what was to follow. Sure, “Lose My Breath” and “No More Sorry” are smouldering beauties, highlighting Butcher’s extinguished-torch vocals, and “I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It)” is a weirdly dignified take on dysfunctionality. But part of the deadly effect of “Sueisfine” was knowing that they were actually singing “suicide” even if the text was buried in the maelstrom. Now you can actually hear the words. It’s 1991's Loveless – presented here in two versions, mastered from ‘original tape’ and ‘original ½ inch analogue tape’, if you can appreciate the difference – that holds its own as one of the great rock albums, period. Recorded over three years, largely by Shields alone, its extensive ‘glide guitar’ and curious lack of low end add up to a soundworld no one could ever hope to replicate. “Only Shallow” opens with a grunge-grind, sampled guitars baying like horns, Colm Ó Ciosóig and Debbie Googe’s rhythm section scooping out deep furrows. “To Here Knows When” remains a masterly aural hallucination, its instrumental balance utterly unprecedented in rock. The guitars are ablaze, a constant alarm note sounds throughout the song, which otherwise trundles along over a programmed rhythm. Only Fennesz has since captured this sense of flaring embers, of a music glowing brightest even as it burns itself up. “Come In Alone” could have gone on forever, Shields spilling Television-style ropes of neon solo over its repetitive coda. “Soon” spot-welded the MBV tincture to an urgent hiphop beat, pointing to a future that never arrived. Loveless took a hefty bite out of Creation’s finances and a new deal with Island proved barren. Savour the music on these releases for what it is: a white dwarf that took three years to collapse. Rob Young

In their early years, it was easy to dismiss My Bloody Valentine as just another cutie band, anoraked, bobbed and locked into an indie obsession with a 60s ideal of perfect pop on singles like “Sunny Sundae Smile”. Then in 1987 founder member Dave Conway left and was replaced by Bilinda Butcher, who reportedly wowed the group’s Kevin Shields, Colm Ó Coisóig and Debbie Googe by singing Dolly Parton’s “Bargain Store” at her audition. By the time the four-piece erupted on stage at Creation Records’ sweaty Doing It For The Kids event at London’s Town & Country Club in summer 1988, they had arrived at a place much closer to freak-rockers like Dinosaur Jr and Mudhoney. Except that where those American groups seemed to be sliding down a slope towards sleepy oblivion or lumpen rockism, MBV were possessed of a nervy, wired energy.

Even when they were singing of soporific/narcotized dreamstates, they seemed to be conscious of the moment: when you wake, they said, you’re still in a dream. And they were no longer singing about sunny sundae smiles and strawberry wine, but sex, self-harm and clinical depression. Like the Mary Chain, they buried gorgeous melodies in veils of hiss and distortion, but unlike the Reid Bros, they didn’t have that retro rock ’n’ roll/surfadelic thing going on. It must be one of the most remarkable reinventions in rock history.

What good can come of remastering My Bloody Valentine’s albums? The sound of their Creation releases is the polar opposite of all that such reconstructions attempt to unpick. The music’s surface seethes like bees fighting for the queen: it’s a sonic miasma, a hemorrhage of peaking-light overdrive. Voices buzz deep in the mix; guitars shiver and swarm. The ‘holocaust’ at the heart of “You Made Me Realise” – title track of the first Creation EP – is the ultimate anti-guitar solo: a gaping wind-tunnel howl of mounting inertia in which the group seem to drop away completely (they famously extended this abstract void to 15 or 20 minutes on stage, to the detriment of a generation’s eardrums). Loveless was recorded in mono. By its very nature, you’re never going to get clarity on the hazed instrumental mix, but I certainly feel I can hear more of what they’re singing about on these new editions.

Unexpectedly, it’s 1988’s Isn’t Anything that comes off worst from the swab-down. Its initial strangeness now just sounds like a ramshackle tryout for what was to follow. Sure, “Lose My Breath” and “No More Sorry” are smouldering beauties, highlighting Butcher’s extinguished-torch vocals, and “I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It)” is a weirdly dignified take on dysfunctionality. But part of the deadly effect of “Sueisfine” was knowing that they were actually singing “suicide” even if the text was buried in the maelstrom. Now you can actually hear the words.

It’s 1991’s Loveless – presented here in two versions, mastered from ‘original tape’ and ‘original ½ inch analogue tape’, if you can appreciate the difference – that holds its own as one of the great rock albums, period. Recorded over three years, largely by Shields alone, its extensive ‘glide guitar’ and curious lack of low end add up to a soundworld no one could ever hope to replicate. “Only Shallow” opens with a grunge-grind, sampled guitars baying like horns, Colm Ó Ciosóig and Debbie Googe’s rhythm section scooping out deep furrows. “To Here Knows When” remains a masterly aural hallucination, its instrumental balance utterly unprecedented in rock. The guitars are ablaze, a constant alarm note sounds throughout the song, which otherwise trundles along over a programmed rhythm. Only Fennesz has since captured this sense of flaring embers, of a music glowing brightest even as it burns itself up. “Come In Alone” could have gone on forever, Shields spilling Television-style ropes of neon solo over its repetitive coda. “Soon” spot-welded the MBV tincture to an urgent hiphop beat, pointing to a future that never arrived.

Loveless took a hefty bite out of Creation’s finances and a new deal with Island proved barren. Savour the music on these releases for what it is: a white dwarf that took three years to collapse.

Rob Young

Beastie Boys’ Mike D: “I miss Adam Yauch so much”

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Beastie Boys’ Mike D: “I miss Adam Yauch so much”
Mike D of the Beastie Boys has spoken about the death of his bandmate, Adam Yauch. Yauch, who was also known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and succumbed to the disease on Friday [May 4], aged 47. Writing on the band's Facebook page, Mike Diamond said how much he missed his bandmate: "...

Mike D of the Beastie Boys has spoken about the death of his bandmate, Adam Yauch.

Yauch, who was also known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and succumbed to the disease on Friday [May 4], aged 47.

Writing on the band’s Facebook page, Mike Diamond said how much he missed his bandmate:

“I know, we should have tweeted and instagrammed every sad, happy and inspired thought, smile or tear by now. But honestly the last few days have just been a blur of deep emotions for our closest friend, band mate and really brother. I miss Adam so much.

He continued: “He really served as a great example for myself and so many of what determination, faith, focus, and humility coupled with a sense of humor can accomplish. The world is in need of many more like him. We love you Adam.”

Meanwhile, Ad-Rock aka Adam Horovitz, thanked friends and family for their ‘love and support’ on the Beastie Boys’s blog, saying he was “glad to know that all the love that Yauch has put out into the world is coming right back at him.”

Jimi Hendrix film to start shooting next month

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Jimi Hendrix film to start shooting next month

A Jimi Hendrix biopic, All Is By My Side, is to start shooting in Ireland in three weeks time, according to The Irish Film And Television Network. Starring Outkast's Andre 3000 as Hendrix, the film is reported to cover Hendrix' period in England during 1966 / 1967 as he worked on his debut album, Are You Experienced. The film is written and directed by John Ridley, whose previous credits include the screenplays for David O Russell's Three Kings and Oliver Stone's U-Turn.

A Jimi Hendrix biopic, All Is By My Side, is to start shooting in Ireland in three weeks time, according to The Irish Film And Television Network.

Starring Outkast’s Andre 3000 as Hendrix, the film is reported to cover Hendrix’ period in England during 1966 / 1967 as he worked on his debut album, Are You Experienced.

The film is written and directed by John Ridley, whose previous credits include the screenplays for David O Russell’s Three Kings and Oliver Stone‘s U-Turn.

Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’ album cover photographer dies

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Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’ album cover photographer dies
Jim McCrary, a former staff photographer for A&M Records who shot hundreds of album covers during his career, has died at the age of 72. McCrary shot the iconic, cat-featuring image for Carole King's 1971 album Tapestry, as well as over 300 other album covers, including for the debut album from...

Jim McCrary, a former staff photographer for A&M Records who shot hundreds of album covers during his career, has died at the age of 72.

McCrary shot the iconic, cat-featuring image for Carole King’s 1971 album Tapestry, as well as over 300 other album covers, including for the debut album from the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Carpenters debut album, Offering/Ticket To Ride and Joe Cocker’s live album, Mad Dogs And Englishmen.

The LA Times reports that McCrary died on April 29 following complications from a chronic nervous system disorder at a hospital in Palo Alto, California.

Record producer Lou Adler said: “He was so important both to me and my artists. Conceptually, he always understood what the person was about and was able to photograph their personality. A perfect example of that is the Tapestry album…. The idea of having the cat, that brought a personal feeling to it.”

McCrary also shot Michael Jackson for his Off The Wall album, but the pictures ended up being scrapped as Jackson wasn’t happy with the way that he looked in the photos.

The Who’s Roger Daltrey confirms that Keith Moon was invited to Olympics 2012 opening ceremony

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The Who’s Roger Daltrey confirms that Keith Moon was invited to Olympics 2012 opening ceremony
The Who's Roger Daltrey has confirmed that organisers of the London 2012 Olympics asked whether drummer Keith Moon – who died in 1978 – would be able to take part in this summer's celebrations. In an interview on US TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the frontman joked that the band's management had r...

The Who‘s Roger Daltrey has confirmed that organisers of the London 2012 Olympics asked whether drummer Keith Moon – who died in 1978 – would be able to take part in this summer’s celebrations.

In an interview on US TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the frontman joked that the band’s management had responded to the invitation by suggesting they try contacting the deceased rocker themselves by holding a séance.

He joked: “It could only happen in Britain. We are so organised. We got a letter – well, an email – requesting could Keith Moon attend the opening ceremony.”

He then added: “Our manager sent an email back saying, ‘Well actually he currently resides at Golders Green Crematorium, where he’s been for the last 34 years. But maybe if you got a round table, some candles and some glasses, you might be able to get him back [through a séance].”

Last week, it was announced that Duran Duran, Snow Patrol, Paolo Nutini and Stereophonics will play a huge show in London’s Hyde Park this summer to mark the start of the Olympics on July 27.

While this show will act as an accompaniment to the opening ceremony, Blur will headline a show in Hyde Park to celebrate the end of the games. They will be joined by New Order and The Specials on August 12 for the gig.

New Soundgarden album “probably October”

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New Soundgarden album “probably October”
Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell has revealed that the band's new album will "be out in probably October". Speaking to Rolling Stone, Cornell claimed the album will be mastered imminently. "I would say September but I'm just guessing October. We're pretty much done with everything." The album wi...

Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell has revealed that the band’s new album will “be out in probably October”.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Cornell claimed the album will be mastered imminently. “I would say September but I’m just guessing October. We’re pretty much done with everything.”

The album will be the Seattle group’s first album since 1996’s Down On The Upside. They recently released their first new track in 15 years, “Live To Rise”, on the soundtrack for the film, Avengers Assemble.

Soundgarden reunited in 2010, 12 years after they originally split up.

The band will come to the UK this summer to headline Hard Rock Calling festival in London. Soundgarden, who will also perform at this summer’s Download Festival, join Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon in headlining the event.

Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon: “Adam Yauch was a great lyricist”

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Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon: “Adam Yauch was a great lyricist”
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon has paid tribute to Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch and said he was a "great rapper and lyricist". The bassist has shared her memories of Yauch, who passed away on Friday (May 4) after a three-year battle with cancer, with NME and hailed the rapper's lyrics. She said: "He told me...

Sonic Youth‘s Kim Gordon has paid tribute to Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch and said he was a “great rapper and lyricist”.

The bassist has shared her memories of Yauch, who passed away on Friday (May 4) after a three-year battle with cancer, with NME and hailed the rapper’s lyrics.

She said: “He told me once that he really liked the lyrics to ‘Bull In The Heather‘. It surprised me that he had even listened to it. It meant a lot to me that he went out of his way to tell me that, coming from such a great rapper and lyricist.”

Gordon also spoke about the time her and Yauch wandered the streets of Tokyo with her 6 month old baby daughter Coco, and said his death was a “hugely sad moment”.

She added: “Yauch seemed happy to hang out with me and Coco as we wandered around Tokyo, which was unusual because no one else had babies at that point. Everyone else was busy taking advantage of their precious time in Tokyo.”

Yauch was diagnosed with cancer of the preaortic gland and lymph node in July 2009 and had been fighting the disease ever since.

In 1979, Yauch co-founded the Beastie Boys with Mike “Mike D” Diamond, who he met at school, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz. After starting out as a punk group inspired by Black Flag, the trio soon began experimenting with hip-hop.

The release of their first full album Licensed To Ill in 1986 broke them into the mainstrean by becoming the the first hip-hop album to top the Billboard album chart. In total, the band released eight albums including Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head and Ill Communication.

The group’s last album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, was released last year. It was originally planned for release in 2009 but was delayed after Yauch’s diagnosis. Adam Yauch is survived by his wife, Dechen Wengdu, and their daughter Tenzin Losel.

Richard Hawley – Standing At Sky’s Edge

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Richard Hawley – Standing At Sky’s Edge

As long as you’ve been briefed on Yorkshire local history, you know where you are with Richard Hawley. His 2009 album Truleove’s Gutter took its name from the site of an 18th century tavern whose effluent spilled into the River Don. His 2005 Coles Corner memorialized a junction outside a Sheffield Department store that was a rendez-vous for 1950s couples. Where his contemporary Jarvis Cocker has been a poet of the city’s sexual mores, Hawley’s best work has wistfully hymned Sheffield’s romantic ghosts, in a sequence of sumptuous Jim Reeves-style arrangements. Unless Sky’s Edge is revealed to be a forgotten Don Valley beauty spot, Standing At The Sky’s Edge marks a fairly major change of tack for the songwriter-guitarist-producer. If the title invokes a location, it’s a mystical one: some thundery, Zeppelinesque Valhalla, rather than Hawley’s usual stomping ground, the steep cobbled street. Likewise the music. The opener, “She Brings The Sunlight”, kicks the doors off with a wail of noisy, electric guitars, while the title track is a layered guitar landscape, with a vocal that recalls, of all people, The Doors. Musically speaking, at least. Hawley has washed out his pomade and grown his hair long. That’s not to say that this record is unrecognisable as the work of Richard Hawley. It is still after all a pretty sophisticated piece of retro music-making – only rather than painstakingly emulating the production values of the late 1950s and early 1960s, he’s embraced the echoes, middle eastern modality and wah-wah effects of someone hellbent on creating a heavy psychedelic guitar record. Still, psychedelic rock or not, there is a part of Richard Hawley that will always be a coal miner on a stone bridge, waiting for his girlfriend to arrive. Duly, fans of Hawley’s rueful view of love and relationships, his fine guitar playing, and magnificent singing voice will find them all present and correct here, if displayed in unexpected ways. “Time Will Bring You Winter” is a loping wah-wah rocker, it’s true, but underneath the din of the music you’ll discover the song is about the life cycle, as told in an English vocabulary of mossy lanes and shadowy churchyards. “Down To The Woods”, the best of the album’s heavy songs, is reminiscent of “1970” by the Stooges but suggests an unpredictable outcome to what appears at first to be an English pastoral idyll. And, although the record is bookended with heavy rock, Hawley unleashes his customary deep croonology in its excellent and very quiet middle section. Here, we find Hawley writing magnificently in a trio of songs which seem to be about how love is meant to be, and how it is really, for good and bad. “Seek It” juxtaposes a charming, slightly jaunty tune with a fabulously dry lyric – “I had a dream and you were in it/We got naked/Can’t remember what happened next/It was weird” – and features Hawley’s fabulously restrained playing. “Don’t Stare At The Sun” could be a Chemical Brothers title, but is ultimately all about how the everyday consolations of family are more important than waiting for cosmic revelations. “The Wood Collier’s Grave”, the only song you will hear this year to detail the thoughts from beyond the grave of a charcoal burner’s apprentice, is a tender folk ballad. So even when Standing... returns to its heavy mode in its last two numbers, the subject matter remains very much Hawley’s. Final track “Before” is the album’s mode in a nutshell, an attempt to reconcile his two sides, rocker and crooner; stargazer and earth-dweller. In a song part gentle U2 ballad, part Oasis guitar anthem, he suggests that for all the head-turning things the universe can offer, the realities of a familiar relationship and shared history are the things that really matter. The more Richard Hawley changes, evidently, the more he stays the same. Head from time to time in the clouds. Feet still very much on the ground. John Robinson Q&A This is a heavy, psychedelic-sounding kind of record. I don’t like the word psychedelic because it implies flowers and lollipops, and there’s none of that on this record at all. It’s quite dark, you know. In what way? I think I started writing when the Tories got in – it influenced a lot of the first song which was “Down In The Woods”. They were trying to sell off the forest land, and that had me really fucking outraged. ((i)Sheffield guitarist(i))Tim McCall’s passing was a catalyst for a lot of musical activity. He died walking upstairs carrying a baby blanket and a cup of tea - he tripped on his shoelace and broke his neck. It’s done all of our heads in. He was a fantastic guy, lovely bloke. There are some intimate, family moments like “Don’t Stare At The Sun”. I was left responsible for one of my children after quite a heavy night on hallucinogenic drugs. If anybody from the NSPCC is reading this I should say I was completely compos mentis – but things were still…whizzing and popping. How vividly you see everything on acid – the intense happiness of that was the beginning of the song. So are you going to grow your hair now? I can reliably assure you that when you called up before I couldn’t pick the phone up because I had grease in me hands, doing me quiff. INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

As long as you’ve been briefed on Yorkshire local history, you know where you are with Richard Hawley. His 2009 album Truleove’s Gutter took its name from the site of an 18th century tavern whose effluent spilled into the River Don. His 2005 Coles Corner memorialized a junction outside a Sheffield Department store that was a rendez-vous for 1950s couples. Where his contemporary Jarvis Cocker has been a poet of the city’s sexual mores, Hawley’s best work has wistfully hymned Sheffield’s romantic ghosts, in a sequence of sumptuous Jim Reeves-style arrangements.

Unless Sky’s Edge is revealed to be a forgotten Don Valley beauty spot, Standing At The Sky’s Edge marks a fairly major change of tack for the songwriter-guitarist-producer. If the title invokes a location, it’s a mystical one: some thundery, Zeppelinesque Valhalla, rather than Hawley’s usual stomping ground, the steep cobbled street. Likewise the music. The opener, “She Brings The Sunlight”, kicks the doors off with a wail of noisy, electric guitars, while the title track is a layered guitar landscape, with a vocal that recalls, of all people, The Doors. Musically speaking, at least. Hawley has washed out his pomade and grown his hair long.

That’s not to say that this record is unrecognisable as the work of Richard Hawley. It is still after all a pretty sophisticated piece of retro music-making – only rather than painstakingly emulating the production values of the late 1950s and early 1960s, he’s embraced the echoes, middle eastern modality and wah-wah effects of someone hellbent on creating a heavy psychedelic guitar record. Still, psychedelic rock or not, there is a part of Richard Hawley that will always be a coal miner on a stone bridge, waiting for his girlfriend to arrive.

Duly, fans of Hawley’s rueful view of love and relationships, his fine guitar playing, and magnificent singing voice will find them all present and correct here, if displayed in unexpected ways. “Time Will Bring You Winter” is a loping wah-wah rocker, it’s true, but underneath the din of the music you’ll discover the song is about the life cycle, as told in an English vocabulary of mossy lanes and shadowy churchyards. “Down To The Woods”, the best of the album’s heavy songs, is reminiscent of “1970” by the Stooges but suggests an unpredictable outcome to what appears at first to be an English pastoral idyll.

And, although the record is bookended with heavy rock, Hawley unleashes his customary deep croonology in its excellent and very quiet middle section. Here, we find Hawley writing magnificently in a trio of songs which seem to be about how love is meant to be, and how it is really, for good and bad. “Seek It” juxtaposes a charming, slightly jaunty tune with a fabulously dry lyric – “I had a dream and you were in it/We got naked/Can’t remember what happened next/It was weird” – and features Hawley’s fabulously restrained playing. “Don’t Stare At The Sun” could be a Chemical Brothers title, but is ultimately all about how the everyday consolations of family are more important than waiting for cosmic revelations. “The Wood Collier’s Grave”, the only song you will hear this year to detail the thoughts from beyond the grave of a charcoal burner’s apprentice, is a tender folk ballad.

So even when Standing… returns to its heavy mode in its last two numbers, the subject matter remains very much Hawley’s. Final track “Before” is the album’s mode in a nutshell, an attempt to reconcile his two sides, rocker and crooner; stargazer and earth-dweller. In a song part gentle U2 ballad, part Oasis guitar anthem, he suggests that for all the head-turning things the universe can offer, the realities of a familiar relationship and shared history are the things that really matter.

The more Richard Hawley changes, evidently, the more he stays the same. Head from time to time in the clouds. Feet still very much on the ground.

John Robinson

Q&A

This is a heavy, psychedelic-sounding kind of record.

I don’t like the word psychedelic because it implies flowers and lollipops, and there’s none of that on this record at all. It’s quite dark, you know.

In what way?

I think I started writing when the Tories got in – it influenced a lot of the first song which was “Down In The Woods”. They were trying to sell off the forest land, and that had me really fucking outraged. ((i)Sheffield guitarist(i))Tim McCall’s passing was a catalyst for a lot of musical activity. He died walking upstairs carrying a baby blanket and a cup of tea – he tripped on his shoelace and broke his neck. It’s done all of our heads in. He was a fantastic guy, lovely bloke.

There are some intimate, family moments like “Don’t Stare At The Sun”.

I was left responsible for one of my children after quite a heavy night on hallucinogenic drugs. If anybody from the NSPCC is reading this I should say I was completely compos mentis – but things were still…whizzing and popping. How vividly you see everything on acid – the intense happiness of that was the beginning of the song.

So are you going to grow your hair now?

I can reliably assure you that when you called up before I couldn’t pick the phone up because I had grease in me hands, doing me quiff.

INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

Adam Yauch 1964-2012

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Adam Yauch 1964-2012
Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch died aged 47 yesterday (May 4). The rapper's death was confirmed in a lengthy statement posted on the band's official website, Beastieboys.com. It began: "It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam "MCA" Yauch, fou...

Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch died aged 47 yesterday (May 4).

The rapper’s death was confirmed in a lengthy statement posted on the band’s official website, Beastieboys.com. It began: “It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam “MCA” Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer.”

Yauch, who was also known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer of the preaortic gland and lymph node in July 2009, and had been fighting the disease ever since.

Although his bandmates had said that Yauch had responded well to his treatment, he hadn’t appeared publicly with the band for some time, and did not attend the band’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last month as he was too unwell.

Yauch is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter, Tenzin Losel Yauch. He co-founded the Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike “Mike D” Diamond, who he met at school, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz. After starting out as a punk group inspired by Black Flag, the trio soon began experimenting with hip-hop.

The release of their first full album ‘Licensed To Ill’ in 1986 broke them into the mainstrean by becoming the the first hip-hop album to top the Billboard album chart and featured the massive worldwide hit ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)’. In total, the band released eight albums including ‘Paul’s Boutique’, ‘Check Your Head’ and ‘Ill Communication’.

The group’s last album, ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part Two’, was released last year. It was originally planned for release in 2009 but was delayed after Yauch’s diagnosis.

Yauch had an enduring passion for film. Working under a pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower, he directed many of the band’s music videos, including ‘So What’cha Want,’ ‘Intergalactic,’ and more recently ‘Make Some Noise.’ In 2002, he launched the film production company Oscilloscope Laboratories – a studio and distributor which he set up to put out his high-school basketball documentary Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot but later put out films including Kelly Reichardt’s drama Wendy and Lucy and street artist Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Alongside the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heavily involved in the free Tibet movement, co-organising the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in the late ’90s.

When Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of fame two weeks ago, Ad-Rock and Mike D read a letter from the absent Yauch: “I’d like to dedicate this to my brothers Adam and Mike,” he wrote. “They walked the globe with me. It’s also for anyone who has ever been touched by our band. This induction is as much ours as it is yours.”

Jack Black: ‘Nirvana were the last big rock band’

Tom Goodwyn
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Jack Black: ‘Nirvana were the last big rock band’

Tenacious D's Jack Black says he's saddened by a lack of great rock bands today. The comedy singer says he wrote the song 'Rock is Dead' on Tenacious D's new album 'Rize of the Fenix' because of the lack of massive rock bands that "drive kids insane". He tells Rolling Stone: "When you think about rock at its origin, and you think of The Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can towards The Beatles, there's no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of power and has that kind of creative magma." He adds: "I contend that the last band to really have that kind of power, I'm gonna say, was Nirvana. Who since Nirvana has been as big as Nirvana, in that way?" However, Black is a fan of Jack White – "Whatever he does is worth checking out - and his archnemesis, The Black Keys, are also tremendous," he says. He also namechecked the Foo Fighters: "The Foo Fighters. I loves me some Foos. But [rock music] does get thin after that." Tenacious D are currently streaming their new album 'Rize Of The Fenix' online in full, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to listen to the record. Dave Grohl, who has drummed on both of the band's previous records, has once again contributed to the album. The duo - Jack Black and comedian Kyle Gass - will release the album on May 14. It is the follow-up to 2006's 'The Pick of Destiny'. Tenacious D will play five UK shows this June in support of the album's release. They will play three shows at London's O2 Academy Brixton on June 5, 6 and 7, Manchester's O2 Apollo on June 10 and Glasgow SECC on June 12.

Tenacious D’s Jack Black says he’s saddened by a lack of great rock bands today.

The comedy singer says he wrote the song ‘Rock is Dead’ on Tenacious D’s new album ‘Rize of the Fenix’ because of the lack of massive rock bands that “drive kids insane”. He tells Rolling Stone: “When you think about rock at its origin, and you think of The Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can towards The Beatles, there’s no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of power and has that kind of creative magma.”

He adds: “I contend that the last band to really have that kind of power, I’m gonna say, was Nirvana. Who since Nirvana has been as big as Nirvana, in that way?”

However, Black is a fan of Jack White – “Whatever he does is worth checking out – and his archnemesis, The Black Keys, are also tremendous,” he says. He also namechecked the Foo Fighters: “The Foo Fighters. I loves me some Foos. But [rock music] does get thin after that.”

Tenacious D are currently streaming their new album ‘Rize Of The Fenix’ online in full, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to listen to the record. Dave Grohl, who has drummed on both of the band’s previous records, has once again contributed to the album.

The duo – Jack Black and comedian Kyle Gass – will release the album on May 14. It is the follow-up to 2006’s ‘The Pick of Destiny’.

Tenacious D will play five UK shows this June in support of the album’s release. They will play three shows at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on June 5, 6 and 7, Manchester’s O2 Apollo on June 10 and Glasgow SECC on June 12.

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