The line-up for this year’s Teenage Cancer Trust concerts has been confirmed. The week of shows runs from March 24 – 30 at its regular home, London’s Royal Albert Hall.
This year’s shows will feature two performances by The Who, along with Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols plus The Corrs and James Arthur. A comedy night features Micky Flanagan.
Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols kick off proceedings on Monday, March 24. Says Jones, “After an incredible 2024, we are itching to get going again this year and what better way than on home territory at a venue that wouldn’t have let us near it back in the day! Albert will be turning in his tomb. It’s an honour to help this great charity.”
Micky Flanagan leads a night of comedy on Tuesday, March 25.
James Arthur headlines on Wednesday, March 26 and The Corrs play on Friday, March 28.
The Who, meanwhile, play two shows: the first one on Thursday, March 27 and then on Sunday, March 31. Support comes from Level 42.
Tickets for this year’s shows are available from midday, January 31 from here.
Guitarist Carlos Alomar and bassist George Murray – the two surviving members of David Bowie’s ‘DAM Trio’ who backed him on the Berlin Trilogy of albums – will tour together this autumn for the first time since 1979.
The Back To Berlin Tour 2025 – honouring David Bowie and third DAM Trio member Dennis Davis, who both died in 2016 – will also feature Bowie’s Live Aid guitarist Kevin Armstrong, singer Cunio, drummer Tal Bergman, keyboardist Axel Tosca and backing vocalist Lea Lorien. The audiovisual element of the show will be overseen by Bowie archivist and video editor, Nacho.
The band pledge to faithfully perform songs from Low, Heroes and Lodger, some of which never found their way into Bowie’s live sets.
“Where other bands have toured Bowie’s songs extensively since his passing, these songs haven’t been performed the way they were meant to be. Until now,” says Alomar. “The Spiders From Mars are well known, but the DAM Trio remains rock and roll’s best-kept secret. It’s time to honour our legacy, including Dennis’s.
“The fans we’ve met along the way are the ones who have driven this. We feel obliged to do it because they’ve waited so long for us to return to these songs. This could very well be our last spin of Europe.”
The tour begins on November 7 at Berlin’s Metropol – fittingly just a short walk from Hansa Studios where much of the Berlin Trilogy was recorded. See the full list of dates below. Tickets go on general sale at 10am on Friday (January 31) from here.
Fri 7 Nov – Berlin, Metropol Sun 9 Nov – Oslo, Santrum Scene Tue 11 Nov – Gothenburg, Lorensbergsteatern Wed 12 Nov—Malmo, Slagthusets Teater Thu 13 Nov – Veji, Vejle Musikteater Sat 15 Nov – Eindhoven, Muziekgebouw Sun 16 Nov – Utrecht, Tivoli Vredenburg Tue 18 Nov – Zurich, Volkshaus Wed 19-Nov – Paris, Casino De Paris Fri 21 Nov – Antwerp, Stadsschouwburg Sun 23 Nov – Sheffield, Octagon Mon 24 Nov – Liverpool, Philharmonic Wed 26 Nov – Glasgow, The Old Fruitmarket, City Halls Fri 28 Nov – London, Barbican Sat 29 Nov – Bristol, Beacon Hall Mon 1 Dec – Dublin, Vicar St
The UK Americana Music Awards demonstrated the organisation’s evolving values on Thursday night, with a healthy proportion of female winners, and a definition of Americana which escaped the confines of country-rock to encompass blues, gospel and soul. There was much talk of the sustaining quality of “community” as the genre’s UK practitioners and supporters gathered, before contrastingly uplifting performances from Lyle Lovett and Candi Staton.
Hackney Church’s ancient walls ensured a resonant boom to The Heavy Heavy as they opened proceedings with sheets of rasping glam guitar. “Ah, Americana – what a week to be celebrating something with America in the title!” host Baylen Leonard then sighed, as the world digested Donald Trump’s inauguration and initial shock and awe acts. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings embody a very different idea of their nation, of course. They accepted the International Song Of The Year award for “Empty Trainload Of Sky” while away on tour, strolling at night near Sydney Opera House as they thanked veteran Beatles/Bowie engineer Ken Scott for his work on their latest album, Woodland. When this was duly named International Album Of The Year, Uncut editor Michael Bonner accepted the prize on the duo’s behalf, and invited the audience to raise a glass to The Band’s keyboard genius Garth Hudson on the week of his death. Jason Isbell also accepted International Artist Of The Year from somewhere on the road.
Robert Vincent won UK Song Of The Year for “Follow What You Love and Love Will Follow”. He preceded a performance of the song which set his loping acoustic guitar at the heart of Michele Stodart’s house band by noting its title’s aptness in harsh times: “The meaning of this song is everything that we should do.”
The value of these awards for the tight-knit group of musicians practising Americana in the UK was shown when Hannah White received UK Album Of The Year for Sweet Revolution. “I’m so grateful, I can’t speak!” she gasped. By the time she returned to win UK Artist Of The Year, White was choking back laughter and tears. Her performance of “Chains Of Ours” boasted swampy blues guitars recalling Daniel Lanois, rockabilly twang and country swing, before her voice gave a sultry, slurring, honkytonk noir edge to its finale.
UK Live Act Of The Year Kezia Gill was also in tears as she won. “When my husband and I had a dream board years ago of everything we wanted to achieve,” she said, ‘AMA’ was on it…just to be accredited to a community that I’ve tried so hard to be a part of means so much.” UK/Ireland Trailblazer award-winner and Irish chart-topper CMAT also noted ostracising by those who “didn’t really accept me as a country singer for a while”. Her irreverent, bisexual identity and her fanbase’s strong LBGTQ+ element cuts against the sometimes conservative country grain, though the vocal twang as she sang “I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!” was steeped in Nashville verities.
UK Instrumentalist Of The Year Kieron Marshall described a different sort of exclusion, stating: “People from my background don’t usually come to fancy events like this.” He came, he said, from “a council flat, heroin family, criminals, and I’m really grateful to music…I got here because of opportunity. And the one thing we can all do as a community is give opportunity.” Footage of the AMA’s outreach programme for ex-offenders’ music-making perhaps met this challenge.
The Grassroots Award to promoter David Messer also honoured those lifting musicians up behind the scenes, while Emerging Artist Of The Year Toby Lee, just 19 and a self-described “guy who lives on a farm in Cornwall”, belied his age with his big, confident voice and guitar swagger.
The American artists present undeniably dug deeper than their transatlantic disciples into Americana’s specific locale, history and imagery, beginning with International Album nominee and Old Crow Medicine Show founder Willie Watson. His self-titled 2024 album’s song “Real Love” found its narrator “chained to the heart of a ghost” and “shadows in the eyes of the people that I used to know”, as his voice shivered to the song’s redeemed conclusion.
Kyshona’s “The Echo”, from her album Legacy, dug into a personal genealogy making her the great-great-great-grandchild of a freed South Carolina slave. “LA Woman”-eerie keyboard chimes supported her voice’s rich gospel-blues boom, as she laid out a history rarely acknowledged in her current Nashville home.
International Trailblazer award-winner Lyle Lovett was the first taste of real American stardust, but the Texan was all humility as he considered the night’s young talents, striving at work they loved. “That sort of life is what I wish for my children,” he said quietly. He recalled his 1987 UK debut playing London’s Mean Fiddler, and the local agents who had let him “play halls I had dreamed of seeing”. “Those memories are important to me,” he said simply. His band, attired like their leader in the black suits and crisp white shirts of country gentlemen, appeared to play his beautifully crafted classic “If I Had A Boat”. Throwing his head back, Lovett looked to the church’s rafters as if glimpsing heaven.
Candi Staton topped even that as she won a richly deserved Lifetime Achievement Award, having wrested uplifting art from a lifetime of bitter blues. “First, I want to thank you God that I’m standing here with you,” she said, in a voice brooking no argument. “I’m going to do what I love until the Lord calls me home,” she added, almost breaking down as she peered out at family members in the crowd.
The all-star finales traditional at such events are usually shambolic affairs. Staton’s presence at the heart of “You Got The Love” made this one intensely moving. It’s a song of deceptively harsh romantic blows, relieved by its ecstatic chorus. Violin and cello gave orchestral sweep to the assembled 22 musicians, and Lovett cheekily interpolated “Young Hearts Run Free” as Staton grinned. Staton herself, though recently retired from touring, raised her voice one more time, bringing her gospel-soul truth to this church and the crowd to their feet. The young women next to her danced and sang, and hugged her with awed delight at the end. As with this music and its awards’ best moments, she had lent them the energy to move on up somewhere better.
Award Winners:
UK Artist Of The Year Hannah White
UK Album Of The Year Hannah White - Sweet Revolution
UK Song Of The Year Robert Vincent – “Follow What You Love and Love Will Follow”
UK Instrumentalist Of The Year Keiron Marshall
International Artist Of The Year Jason Isbell
International Album Of The Year Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Woodland
International Song Of The Year Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – “Empty Trainload of Sky”
Live Act Of The Year Kezia Gill
International Lifetime Achievement Award Candi Staton
In this month's issue of Uncut, we celebrate The Band's 30 greatest songs. As a special bonus, here's another 10 songs we didn't have room for in the magazine, as chosen by Richard Thompson, Jim James, Nathan Salsburg, Amy Helm, Steve Wynn and more...
In this month’s issue of Uncut, we celebrate The Band’s 30 greatest songs. As a special bonus, here’s another 10 songs we didn’t have room for in the magazine, as chosen by Richard Thompson, Jim James, Nathan Salsburg, Amy Helm, Steve Wynn and more…
GOIN’ TO ACAPULCO (The Basement Tapes, 1975) TOM RUSSO, ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER: Every now and then I return to The Basement Tapes, and this song in particular. On the face of it, the character Dylan paints is kind of desperate and pathetic, but the delivery and the ragged, soulful backing The Band bring to the song elevates his longing into something religious. You can feel the self-loathing hangover he is about to crash into once the tequila wears off. Obviously having Dylan as a songwriter doesn’t hurt, but The Band do something all great backing bands do – know your role and stick to it. They get out of the way of the vocal, and only step in with the lightest touches to help it take flight. No individual is doing anything remarkable, but the sum of the parts is instantly recognisable and iconic. You can tell they’re still feeling it out, but the essence of the song is there. Doing anything more would be a bit tacky. There is a Jim James & Calexico version with soaring vocals and horns, which is great in a different way, but to me, the original version is still the best. Maybe it’s demo-itis, but there is magic in the first few renditions of a song, when the concrete hasn’t set on it yet. They’re in the zone, riding the chord changes, and we’re lucky enough to be sitting on the couch in the corner, hearing the song be born.
TOO MUCH OF NOTHING (The Basement Tapes, 1975) LILLY HIATT: My parents [singer-songwriter John Hiatt and film sound editor Isabella Wood] listened to The Band a lot when I was growing up, and of course I knew stuff like “Up On Cripple Creek”. But when I was in college I got into vinyl with my roommate, and I bought Stage Fright. So that’s what kind of locked in my love for The Band. Every song on there resonated. Stuff like “Stage Fright” and “The Rumour” just sounded so free. “Too Much Of Nothing”is a very special song to me too. When I was at a turning point in my life – I think it was 2016, when I put a new band together and we went on the road – John, the guitar player, played The Basement Tapes in the van. I’d never really listened to that record before, but it just gave me a feeling of a sense of freedom and belonging again, with these new friends I had. It really hit me that I was turning a page and that everything was going to be okay. I always liked the sad-sounding songs with forlorn melodies, and “Too Much Of Nothing” has that. Hearing that song opened up a new mindset for me. I was about to make some music of my own again and I was making these connections with new people. And I was on the tail-end of heartbreak, which takes its time. So this was just the beginning of putting that behind me. And remembering how music moves you through the difficulties of life. I love The Basement Tapes because it sounds like they’re all just having a lot of fun. And they’re all so relaxed. Those lyrics – “Say hello to Valerie / Say hello to Marion” – are just so cool. When we were listening to it in the van, I was sitting there thinking, ‘What is Dylan talking about?’ The Basement Tapes is still mysterious to me. It’s like, ‘Where’s he going with this?’ But it seemed like his friends, The Band, were liberating that in him. Dylan sounds loose and happy, like he’s with his buddies. The combination of him with those guys seems like they’re just cutting loose.
BESSIE SMITH (The Basement Tapes, 1975) NATHAN SALSBURG: When I was 13 – playing Nintendo, listening to my mom’s copy of The Basement Tapes and having zero familiarity with a historical personage named Bessie Smith – the image called to mind by this song was of my grandmother’s first cousin. Aunt Bessie was a large and kindly old white lady from rural Western Kentucky who made delicious yeast rolls and lived in a tiny apartment in a grim six-storey senior-living facility with two small windows looking out over a liminal zone of auto-body shops and an interstate highway. That mental association endured long after I discovered the singer Bessie Smith – brightest star in the pre-World War II female ‘blues shouter’ pantheon – and, somewhat wilfully, it still does, as appreciating the song is made considerably easier if you can avoid associating the subject with the hugely successful recording and performing artist. If you can’t, you may find the whole conceit grating: a young white guy’s fantasy of the Empress of the Blues’ “sweet love” pining away for him down the road, suspended in history and vague circumstance, like the ‘old-time blues’ she sings. Of course, the trick may in fact be to associate the narrator with someone other than Rick Danko. He wouldn’t have had much of a chance with my Aunt Bessie, either.
LONG BLACK VEIL (Music From Big Pink, 1968) BILL MACKAY: There are some really potent things in The Band’s version of this song. When you’re doing a cover, there are ways to do it where you use the musical elements outside the voices, or outside the story, to accentuate the words. On “Long Black Veil”, it feels like they use certain musical elements, consciously or not, to sharpen the tale that’s unfolding. One thing that hit me was the accentuation of the piano in the chorus about the woman’s steps traipsing through the hills, in this hypnotic kind of way, like a distant staccato sound. And the organ, at various points, really seems to me to be in this ethereal area, as if supporting the idea of somebody speaking from beyond the grave. It seems like that spaciousness is in there, yet it’s subterranean too. It’s ghostly. In the second verse, when the judge is asking for the narrator’s alibi, there’s something very low – either a trombone or organ – that really seems to push that idea of an imperious judge and the seriousness of the trial. Listening to The Band’s voices, Levon, Rick and Richard all seem to be characterised by hurt in a lot of places. And with different flavours of hurt. With Levon, there’s something about him that’s very defiant in a lot of his vocalisations, with real strength, but also anger too. In Richard Manuel there’s often a weariness and a resignation in his voice. And with Rick Danko there’s this plaintive yearning. Beyond that, it seems to me that they harmonised on this song differently than a lot of groups might’ve done. There’s something natural about the way their voices mix, unlike The Beach Boys, who all had different vocal qualities but in harmony they could often sound like a chord. But The Band’s voices are really distinct. It seems like they’re branches from the same big oak tree – they’ve developed differently and tangle in different ways, so you hear all the different timbres of their voices. I think that yearning and that weariness kind of pulls them together. It really fits this story, which is so devastating.
IN A STATION (Music From Big Pink, 1968) JIM JAMES, MY MORNING JACKET: The last time I saw Richard was in a space station out near the edge of the known universe. I guess he could tell I was feeling a little lost and so, in a fatherly gesture, smiled and motioned for me to follow. We began to walk through the halls and streets of the station and up the face of a man-made mountain inside of the “Natural Surroundings” dome placed within the middle of the ship’s massive complex inner workings. This was a place built to feel just like home, where many of the plants and animals were contained – both for farming and survival, but also for beauty. The designers wanted everyone to try and maintain some sense of connection to the natural world we had to leave behind when we left earth. I could tell he was trying to show me some greater truth here, so we silently sat and gazed for a while. Off and on he would hum some beautiful melody I knew from somewhere but could not quite place. Eventually I stretched out on the ground and drifted off to sleep in the artificial moonlight of the dome’s 24-hour earth cycle. As the neon sun began to rise and bring its light to life, I drowsily came to in that strange in-between – uncertain if I was dreaming or awake. I noticed that he was already up, or perhaps had never even fallen asleep, and sat cross-legged, gazing out from our mountaintop over the green landscape dotted with people working in it far below. “Isn’t everybody dreaming?” I asked. “Then the voice you hear is real,” he whispered. Out of all the idle scheming, I was grateful he had given me something to feel.
THE UNFAITHFUL SERVANT (The Band, 1969) RICHARD THOMPSON: I would argue that the Band’s second album is one of the strongest in the history of rock/popular music, although it doesn’t fit comfortably into any genre, being a perfect blend of American roots – rock‘n’roll, jazz, Appalachian, gospel, R&B, blues and country. Three great vocalists, rhythm section to die for, wonderful songs, killer guitarist, and Garth as the genius behind the keys! “The Unfaithful Servant” has biblical undertones in the title and the story, but the lyrics borrow from country and popular music, and possibly Dylan – but not to take away from their originality of style. Musically, you could say The Band pretty much invented this laid-back, four-square rhythm with songs like “The Weight”. The vocal by Rick Danko is yearning and heartfelt, but the icing on the cake are the horns. I always loved the tracks where the group played the horn parts themselves, with that slight Salvation Army creakiness. The Allen Toussaint stuff is slicker clearly, but for emotion… Apparently Garth went back in with John Simon after the track was laid down, and they added soprano sax and tuba – an unlikely blend, but they achieve something remarkable here. Note little touches like the B5 under the minor 6 chord on the bridge, and the fact the song ends each section a semitone above the tone centre of the piece. A joy of a piece of music among many joys on this album, equalled in achievement by little since.
ROCKIN’ CHAIR (The Band, 1969) PETER BREWIS, FIELD MUSIC: When we first started doing Field Music, The Band were very important. Me and my brother [David] and Andy [Moore], who’s still an occasional third member, listened to the brown album a lot in our 20s. That sort of looseness, the idea of The Band playing together. I remember watching a classic albums episode on the brown album, where they said they’d rehearse a song during the day, get drunk at night, then in the morning they’d try to start recording it, having learned it the day before. That’s what we ended up trying to do. We’d rehearse a song in the afternoon and then almost half-remember it in the morning. We thought it would give some mystical looseness to it, some extra Band vibes to it. We actually recorded “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” for our first single release. I think we did it quite well, but just thought, ‘This is stupid, I don’t know why we’ve done it.’ But we loved them so much that we actually tried to do a cover of it. Three lads from Sunderland probably shouldn’t be singing about the South rising again! “Rockin’ Chair” is one of those songs where you can really hear the voices on it. You really hear the looseness. They’re essentially doing three-part harmonies. You tend to think of three-part harmonies as a technical thing, like The Beatles or The Eagles used to do, a homogenous thing. But The Band aren’t like that at all. The three of them – Manuel, Danko and Helm – have similar voices, but they’re also very sort of personal. They blend, but not in a homogenous way. And it makes it feel more polyphonic. So it’s their individuality, I suppose, that comes through on “Rockin’ Chair”. Not to dismiss Robbie Robertson as a songwriter, but I think it’s the singers who make the song feel like an old one. It’s definitely got a similar feel to John Wesley Harding going in. There’s lots of rhymes in “Rockin’ Chair”, which might seem trite in the hands of another songwriter, but it never does here. And I’ve never figured out why it feels so authentic to me. I can’t put my finger on it, which is maybe the whole thing about The Band themselves. The song almost makes you believe in some kind of magic, something intangible. Even if you break it down, it still doesn’t reveal everything about itself.
DANIEL AND THE SACRED HARP (Stage Fright, 1970) IAN FELICE, THE FELICE BROTHERS: What I love about this song is the strangeness of it. The theme itself is not unusual, we all know countless parables about the loss of one’s soul by the pursuit of power. But there’s a theatricality to the arrangement and vocalisation of the song that gives it a unique quality. The tale is a Faustian one about a character named Daniel. There’s no defined setting in the song, although some would argue that the reference of a whippoorwill places it in an earlier, mythical America. Daniel finds a way, through deception and wealth, to acquire a sacred harp that he believes will grant him salvation or some kind of undefined power. Of course, he immediately sees the folly of his actions and confides in his brother and father who offer him little sympathy. The transaction ultimately leaves him soulless and damned. The song has two main vocalists, Rick Danko (Daniel) and Levon Helm (the narrator) and opens with a chorus they sing in harmony, bringing to mind the tradition of rural choral music that the title references. The chorus doesn’t happen again until the end, which bookends the tale with the strange image of Daniel dancing merrily through a field of clover holding the instrument that will ultimately spell his doom. The Band never played this song live. It features Richard Manuel on drums, which I always love and gives the song a special quality. I rank the trading of vocals between Levon and Danko to be one of the best examples of this classic hallmark of The Band’s style.
4% PANTOMIME (Cahoots, 1971) STEVE WYNN: Robbie Robertson was one lucky guy. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great songwriter and all. One of the best. You don’t need me to tell you that. But he also happened to have been blessed with three of the best singers on the planet to deliver his muse. Amazing. On my own personal favourite Band song, “4% Pantomime”, Robbie gets dealt a lucky hand from the bottom of the deck by picking up yet one more great singer on board in Van Morrison, setting his compositional contraption into motion with Van and Richard Manuel duking it out like songbird versions of Frazier and Ali, while grousing about bad tour routing and shady poker tables. They start out lightly trading jabs and then it’s a full flurry of fists by the last minute to a split decision, Van laying out a fierce rat-a-tat combo on “without the slightest blush” while Richard plays rope-a-dope. Then Van wildly flails on the final chorus before they hug it out in a barrage of “la-la”s at the end. It’s glorious. With singers like that, you could put a couple of chords behind an email to your agent about a venue screwing up the hospitality rider and still have a stone classic. But this song is more than that. There’s some truth in the ‘it’s the singer, not the song’ maxim, but a catalogue of great songs makes it all work better. And Robbie’s got plenty.
ATLANTIC CITY (Jericho, 1993) AMY HELM: It’s not my favourite ever song of theirs, but “Atlantic City” is special because it reminds me that I got a front row seat to watch the reinvention of one of the great singers in The Band: my dad. And I got to watch it happen in real time. My father was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998 and went through treatments and lost his voice completely. He couldn’t sing a note, he could just whisper, so he focused on drumming. Then after years and rehab, he started to slowly sing again at his Midnight Rambles that he built in Woodstock at his home. At those concerts, he took these tiny steps towards reinvention. And the first tiny step that he took towards singing again was leaving the drum kit, coming up to the front of the stage with his mandolin in hand, and trying to sing “Atlantic City”. Sometimes the notes were there, and sometimes they would fall out from under him because of the scar tissue and the damage done from radiation on his vocal chords. So I got to stand next to him at a microphone. He’d have me sing unison and hold the melody for him a little bit, because sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn’t. And I guess I include it as a Band song because it took such courage and brave commitment to serving the song that got him to that point. I also think that choosing to cover it on one of their ‘90s albums – in their second iteration of The Band, without Robbie – is just a cool chapter in any band’s history anyway. What do you do when you’ve reached your peak and you’re trying to reinvent yourself? How do we keep moving as working musicians? How do we find the songs that fit? And where do we find that magic of those voices, twisting around on that chorus? I think the recorded version of “Atlantic City” is a beautiful testimony to them continuing to try to do that, in the midst of everything you could possibly imagine to pile on top of yourself: drugs and everything beyond, then his reinvention and rediscovery of his voice in the 2000s at The Midnight Rambles. When I was very little, I didn’t really understand what The Band was. I thought The Band was Rick Danko’s band, and the only song I really cared about was “Stage Fright”, because that was my favourite. So when I was six or seven years old, I’d peek around the corner if I was at a show, and watch them do that song. And my dad was Rick’s drummer. That’s kind of how I thought of it in my mind. Which is as it should’ve been! Stuff like …Big Pink was never really played around the house. It was mostly Ray Charles and Muddy Waters that my dad would play around the house, not The Band’s records. What made them unique? Three voices that are so distinctive as lead singers, but that actually blend in that harmonic overtone. That’s unusual, right? Garth added a colour and a tone to it that kicked it way out of anything else that it could have been categorised as. And Robbie’s guitar-playing alone had its own kind of grit and differentiation. Someone gave me a bootleg of them when they were Levon And The Hawks. I was listening to some of it – I think it was Richard singing “Lucille”, or maybe it was my dad, I can’t remember – but they’re singing these Chuck Berry and Little Richard tunes. And they were all so young. I go to my dad, “How did you guys sound like that by the time you were 17? It’s not just that you could rip into those notes and sing that music with such technique and prowess, but it’s that your own voices were emerging. I don’t hear you imitating anyone. I actually hear Richard’s whole thing emerging.” And he was like, “Well, it wasn’t that we were such geniuses. It’s because we were playing seven days a week, and on Sundays, we were playing a matinee and a late show. And after we were done playing these shows, we’d go to a rehearsal space and play for another two hours.”
UNCUT: You’re getting a lifetime achievement nod at the UK Americana Awards. Are you surprised to be categorised as Americana? CANDI STATON: Not really. I’ve been doing Americana music for 10 years or more. I didn’t know I was doing it, it’s just songs I like to sing.
Presumably you would have heard country music on the radio when you were growing up in Alabama? Oh yeah. My mother wouldn’t let me listen to anything except country music and the Christian stations. We couldn’t listen to the blues – she thought it was the devil’s music. With country, the only thing different is the music. The lyrics say the same thing: let’s go get drunk, I’ll meet you on the corner. What my mother always liked was at the end of every country show, they sang a gospel song. She thought that made it OK.
There are a few gospel numbers on your new album, Back To My Roots… We’re doing songs my sister and I learned together. I also covered “Shine A Light” – I think the Rolling Stones are gonna really like my version. I did it as much like Mick Jagger as I could, with my vocals, but I now know why they wrote it. It was because one of their band members [Brian Jones] passed away, and it’s in remembrance of him.
What are your memories of recording at the FAME studio in Muscle Shoals? That’s a book within itself. I worked with Rick Hall for eight years straight. We got with Capitol Records and to make my name a household name, they spent over a million dollars. We went on a seven-state tour. We would have dinners, five courses with Dom Pérignon. I was a little country girl. I was so scared, I would be shaking in my shoes. I was green as grass.
You stopped singing secular songs for a while. Why? Everything was changing, and I had so much competition. You had Aretha out there. You had Chaka Khan. You had Gladys Knight. If my record came in with theirs, who do you think the DJs would pick? So I was kicked to the backburner. I dealt with the chitlin circuit, basically. I had all these blues songs.
It’s a tough school, the chitlin circuit… Yeah, it was my college. I graduated from it – I learned how to do shows. Sometimes I’d dress in the kitchen, sometimes in the bathroom. There was nowhere to put my gown on, so I would dress in the back of my limo. The chitlin circuit was a teaching experience. When disco came out, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
What is it about “Young Hearts Run Free” that makes it so popular? It has such a wonderful story behind it. I laugh about it sometimes – that’s my life story in three minutes. I was with a guy that had threatened my life, he threatened my mother’s life, if I ever left him. People that don’t understand say, ‘Why you been married so many times?’ I had to, I didn’t want to be alone, but I couldn’t find the kind of man I wanted. And when I got him, he turned out to be a monster.
Where do you go after Back To My Roots? This is my last record, I’m not going to do any more albums. I’ve done 33! I’ve done my civic duty. I have given to the world all I need to give!
The UK Americana Music Awards take place at London’s Hackney Church on January 23
Candi Staton’s Back To My Roots is released by Beracah Records in February
Now’s your chance to put a question to one of the great voices of British folk-rock. Maddy Prior, of course, is best-known for co-founding Steeleye Span – the band she still fronts today, 56 years on. In fact Steeleye Span are currently readying a new album for release later this year, and will tour the UK throughout April and May (see the full list of dates and buy tickets here).
As well as also making numerous albums with The Carnival Band, June Tabor and Martin Carthy, Prior has collaborated with everyone from David Bowie to Mike Oldfield, Jethro Tull to Status Quo. And next month, she’ll make an appearance on the new Everything Is Recorded album, singing a song co-written by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig.
So please send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday, January 27 and Maddy will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.
A surprising amount of good announcements and discoveries so far means a lot of stuff we've played thus far this year has been brand new. Key entries are Tobacco City's Cosmic Americana, Florist's rarified indie folk and Brown Spirits' super heavy kosmiche as well as Ex-Vöid's fizzy racket, Eiko Ishibashi's bewitching jazz grooves and Silver Synthetic's easygoing choogle. Plenty of familiar faces, too - Throwing Muses, My Morning Jacket, Lonnie Holley etc - and a lovely cover of The Passions' "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" by Andy Bell, Dot Allison and Michael Rother, which has come a long way since the prototype version Andy's been playing in his electronic solo project, GLOK. Please enjoy...
A surprising amount of good announcements and discoveries so far means a lot of stuff we’ve played thus far this year has been brand new. Key entries are Tobacco City‘s Cosmic Americana, Florist‘s rarified indie folk and Brown Spirits‘ super heavy kosmiche as well as Ex-Vöid‘s fizzy racket, Eiko Ishibashi‘s bewitching jazz grooves and Silver Synthetic’s easygoing choogle. Plenty of familiar faces, too – Throwing Muses, My Morning Jacket, Lonnie Holley etc – and a lovely cover of The Passions‘ “I’m In Love With A German Film Star” by Andy Bell, Dot Allison and Michael Rother, which has come a long way since the prototype version Andy’s been playing in his electronic solo project, GLOK. Please enjoy…
Dylan will now perform at the Tulsa Theater on Tuesday, March 25. On the venue’s website, the show is branded with the Rough & Rowdy Ways tour logo. The “2021 – ’24” date stamp from previous tour literature has been removed, though, implying the tour is now an ongoing project.
Tickets go on sale on January 25.
It’s been a good start to the year for Dylan. The success of the A Complete Unknown biopic has given Dylan’s catalogue a healthy bump. According to Billboard, Dylan’s weekly streaming numbers have grown by roughly 150% since before the film was released in America in December.
As they gather round the corner table in Norwich’s Gonzo’s restaurant, it would be hard to mistake the exotic ensemble of big hair, bold hats, flouncy shirts and leather trousers sported by the various members of Bad Touch as belonging to anything other than a rock’n’roll band. “We have always wanted to be a feelgood rock band,” says lead singer Stevie Westwood. “You can be a sexy, moody rock band, or you can be a feelgood rock band. We are definitely the second.”
Formed in Norfolk by Westwood and guitarist Dan Seekings with bassist Michael Bailey, Bad Touch have recently taken on two new members – drummer Brad Newlands and guitarist Pete Lance. The band were inspired by a youthful love of hard rock acts like Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC, as well as the showmanship of local heroes The Darkness.
The new lineup hits the road in March for an eight-date tour with The Dust Coda, which will see Bad Touch headline shows in Newcastle, Nottingham, Glasgow and their home city of Norwich, as well as playing London’s O2 Academy Islington. The band will play tracks from the three albums they have released on Marshall, including Kiss The Sky, recorded at the legendary Rockfield studio, and their most recent record, Bittersweet Satisfaction, recorded at Marshall’s Milton Keynes studio.
Signing to Marshall felt like a homecoming for Bad Touch. After playing shows around Norwich and nearby Peterborough and Cambridge, Bad Touch entered Marshall’s Ultimate Band competition in 2013 and found themselves in the final five, which meant performing live in Milton Keynes in a showdown with their four rivals. Bad Touch won the event, which meant endorsement from Marshall and a spot on the Download festival lineup. The exposure gave Bad Touch a foothold outside the Anglia region and was followed by a UK tour supporting The Quireboys, where their thrilling live show brought them to the attention of a wider circuit of riff-hungry rock fans.
“The competition was a great way into the Marshall family and they have really taken care of us,” says Seekings. “Since then, I have only used Marshall amps. We stayed in touch and when they started the record company, they asked us to sign. It felt like we’d come full circle and we are part of the family. If I need to borrow something, they will always help. Last Christmas they sent us all Bluetooth speakers and headphones. I got this box at home and thought it was sent to me by mistake, but it was a Christmas present from the label.”
Indeed, so close is the relationship between label and band that when Marshall wanted someone to test drive the new studio, they invited Bad Touch to Milton Keynes to record with producer Chis Sheldon, whose credits include Foo Fighters, Pixies and Therapy?.
Bad Touch recorded an upbeat version of Edwin Starr’s “25 Miles”, and their current live set includes an even more unlikely cover – Alanis Morissette’s “Hand In My Pocket”. “People really don’t expect it,” says Seekings. “We started it almost as a joke, but we do it a bit like The Black Crowes and it’s become really popular.”
It’s a track that Westwood particularly enjoys performing as it feels like a special moment for fans – this isn’t a song they have committed to record, so the only way to hear it is by getting to the show. That reflects Bad Touch’s long-standing love of live performance, something that once saw them play 280 gigs in a single year. The group work hard at perfecting their live show and include drums solos, guitar solos and moments of audience interaction – all designed to deliver a memorable experience for fans.
Seekings highlights the importance of growing up with The Darkness as the local heroes. “They put on a great rock’n’roll show in a way that not many bands can do these days,” he says. “They play every gig like it’s Wembley Stadium and that’s what we aspire to. We work hard on the live act. We know we have written good songs, but we don’t just walk on and play them the way we recorded them, say goodbye and leave. We want people to come, to get involved and go home having had a great time.”
Photo: Jeff Pitcher
City To City: Norwich Bad Touch sing the praises of the city’s busy live scene
‘‘The thing about Norwich is that it’s about two hours from everywhere,” says Brad Newlands, Bad Touch’s new drummer and a resident of the West Midlands town of Cannock. But with three of the band still living in East Anglia, Norwich remains Bad Touch’s main base and Uncut meets the band in Gonzo’s, a funky burger restaurant where the walls are adorned with pop culture memorabilia. The band are delighted to see Die Hard is being silently played on a big screen, while Newlands taps along to the soundtrack of classic rock and indie.
Gonzo’s is an ideal spot to talk about the virtues of Norwich as it is nextdoor to sister venue Voodoo Daddy’s, a basement space that hosts regular live shows for Norwich’s busy live scene. “There were three shows I could have gone to just this weekend,” says metal-loving bassist Michael Bailey, who is planning to see a local grindcore band that evening at one of the city’s clubs.
Like most bands, Bad Touch started local. Their first shows were in their nearest pub, the Cherry Tree in Dereham, a town about 15 miles outside Norwich. The next step saw them join the Norwich live circuit with regular gigs at The Brickmakers and King Edward VII. The Brickmakers, which once hosted a young Ed Sheeran, remains a mainstay of the live scene having survived a rent raise through the support of locals, including Dave Rowntree of Blur, who was then on Norfolk County Council. However, the King Edward VII has closed – and Bad Touch were invited to play the closing night, a bittersweet occasion that allowed them to pay respects to a landmark. “It had been crucial to our development,” says Stevie Westwood. “It was the first place where we could play loud, get paid and get better.”
Here Norwich’s relative isolation proved to be a benefit, as it gave Bad Touch a secure environment in which to develop their live show, while the infamous restraint of the Norwich audience encouraged them to work hard at building rapport with the crowd. The city’s location means that Norwich isn’t always on the touring circuit, despite the presence of the LCR at the University Of East Anglia, which holds 1,500 and has hosted acts from The Who to The Flaming Lips. Bad Touch have played LCR once, in support of a rapper. “It was a very strange show,” says Westwood. “I remember looking at the audience of 14-year-old girls looking up at us and having the worst time of their lives – but maybe one of them ended up forming a band.”
Another important venue is the Arts Centre, where Richey Edwards once carved “4 Real” into his arm after a gig by the Manic Street Preachers. It’s been a staple on the indie circuit for generations. “One of my favourite gigs was seeing Towers Of London at the Arts Centre when I was 15,” says Seekings. “It was rowdy and crazy and exciting. Norwich isn’t always on the circuit – some bands completely miss it out – so when a decent band comes through, it’s a big deal.”
When Bad Touch did begin touring the country, Norwich’s location meant long hours in the tour van – which is the ideal time to listen to music through the band’s Marshall headphones or the Middleton Bluetooth speaker. Bad Touch have become so fond of Marshall gear that new guitarist Pete Lance is trying to persuade his wife to have some Marshall amps in the bedroom. “We could use a Marshall stack as a bedside table or a place to throw your clothes,” he grins. “It would look so cool.”
Eager to show off the charms of Norwich – a city that once had a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week – Bad Touch lead Uncut from Gonzo’s through the centre to St Benedict’s Street. This was once a music mecca and still has a couple of record shops and places selling guitars and drums. “When we were growing up, St Benedict’s Street was nothing but music stores and record shops,” says Seekings. “It was like the Denmark Street of Norwich. It had two Cash Converters and the big one only sold music gear.” As bassist Bailey notes, that is where he picked up his first guitar.
Photo: Jeff Pitcher
Vinyl is still king at record shops like Soundclash, Circular Sound and Press To Play. The window of the latter is adorned with classic LPs including Sgt Pepper and Led Zeppelin II, covers eerily bleached as white as bone after decades of exposure to sunlight. Inside, the owner is celebrating the shop’s 27th anniversary that weekend, delighted to have seen vinyl come back into fashion since he opened the doors in 1997. As the band thumb through the racks, Seekings explains that nearby Soundclash played an important role in the local scene as it was where people went to buy gig tickets in pre-internet days.
The tour of Norwich takes in a couple of pubs and a church before ending at the Waterfront, a blue-fronted 700-capacity riverside venue that has hosted Paul Weller, Nirvana, Arctic Monkeys and Amy Winehouse. It’s a home venue for Bad Touch who will be headlining there in March during their UK tour with The Dust Coda. The band are looking forward to the show, as they rarely play their home city these days. “We aren’t really on the local scene as we are now a national band, so we can’t wait to play here in March,” says Seekings, delighted by Norwich’s still-thriving music scene. “No matter how it gets beaten down, live music never goes away.”
Alto saxophonist and bandleader Marshall Allen, member of avant-garde jazz ensemble Sun Ra Arkestra since 1957 and the group’s leader since 1995, turned 100 years old on May 25, 2024. Less than one month later, he entered the studio to record Lights On A Satellite with the full 24-member configuration. Pitched as a tribute to Allen and his remarkable tenure with the ensemble, the album is a fantastic ride along well-travelled spaceways, balancing Ra compositions with an eclectic mix of early 20th-century American music.
Alto saxophonist and bandleader Marshall Allen, member of avant-garde jazz ensemble Sun Ra Arkestra since 1957 and the group’s leader since 1995, turned 100 years old on May 25, 2024. Less than one month later, he entered the studio to record Lights On A Satellite with the full 24-member configuration. Pitched as a tribute to Allen and his remarkable tenure with the ensemble, the album is a fantastic ride along well-travelled spaceways, balancing Ra compositions with an eclectic mix of early 20th-century American music.
The Arkestra was formed in the mid-1950s by pianist/keyboardist Sun Ra, who would make a name for himself as a seriously prolific composer, tightly disciplined bandleader, explorer of experimental music and philosophy, and pioneer of Afrofuturism. He claimed to be from Saturn and was equally captivated by ancient Egypt and the Space Age. Both of these elements were brought to life onstage, where the Arkestra dressed in elaborate, science fiction-esque costumes inspired by his fascinations. Ra led the Arkestra, an ensemble fluid in both name and lineup, until his death in 1993 and in the process carved a role as one of the most influential figures at the intersection of jazz, space and the experimental. Ra’s stature only grew after his passing, while the Arkestra continued on. It was first led by longtime Arkestra saxophonist John Gilmore, who died only two years after Ra. Next in succession came Allen, who continues to lead the group to this very day.
Allen’s background is a bit more down to Earth. He served in the 92nd Infantry Division during WWII and was stationed in France, where he remained after being honourably discharged. This gave him the opportunity to study music at a Paris conservatory, cutting his teeth playing throughout Europe for several years. When he finally returned to America, he first encountered the music of Sun Ra in a Chicago record store. The storeowner sold Allen one of Ra’s demos, then informed him that the musician was often around, regularly practising and always searching for new talent. Allen told The Guardian in early 2024, “We went up to the boiler room where Sun Ra was rehearsing. He was talking about outer space. I was saying: ‘What kind of band is this? I want to be in this band!’”
You might say it was all cosmic history from there. Allen joined the Arkestra and never left, honing the singularly expressive tone of his saxophone and frequently working as Ra’s right-hand man. His flexible style and irrepressible tone were perfectly suited to shift between modes, moods and possibly even dimensions. It’s dizzying to behold the vast Arkestra discography, but Ra is said to have recorded over 200 albums with the band – and that doesn’t even include anything recorded after his death.
Which brings us back to Lights On A Satellite, a welcome new recording from a maestro who has seen it all and then some. The titular track is a terrific way to open the set, a gentle piano melody in conversation with a tapestry of saxophones, carried along on the wave of a full-fledged orchestra. Stand-out solos abound throughout: James Stewart’s explosive tenor saxophone on “Reflects Motion”, Farid Barron’s limber piano on “Images”, Knoel Scott’s yearning baritone on Sun Ra staple “Tapestry From An Asteroid”. One of the few non-Ra compositions by another jazz musician is “Dorothy’s Dance”, written by one-time Arkestra trumpeter and fellow innovator Phil Cohran. The album even includes what could be considered the world premiere of Ra’s slowburn, swinging 1955 composition “Baby Won’t You Please Be Mine”, a piece unearthed by Allen in his estate six years ago but only recently added to the ensemble’s repertoire. The Arkestra breathes completely new life into “Holiday For Strings”, a classic American composition best known for its use as a mid-century variety show theme song. Their version swings but steers mostly clear of novelty territory, the original’s vague pleasance transformed into an exuberant fantasia studded with free jazz saxophone shrieks and an agile guitar solo.
Sun Ra’s power exists, in part, due to the polyphonic sweep of his influences, expertly bridging the swinging big band of his first life as Herman Blount with the far out, cosmic explorations of his second coming as Saturn’s son. That breadth is lovingly captured here, a fitting tribute to Allen’s own terrific musicianship, intuitive leadership of the band and continued stewardship of Ra’s music.
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For more than 55 years, The Last Poets have been documenting a dystopian world. Formed in the cultural mayhem that followed Martin Luther King’s murder in 1968, they quickly became legendary for their incendiary verses – from “Wake Up Nigger” to “White Man’s Got A God Complex” – which are always cited as an early incarnation of hip-hop. They were filled with witty, shocking and provocative lines, but the presentation was often deliberately austere. If their early disciple Gil Scott Heron would leaven his political diatribes with some soothing baritone crooning, The Last Poets denied us such bourgeois deviation: not once did they even hint at singing, and for a long time the only instrumentation that backed them was stark sound of a conga or djembe drum.
For more than 55 years, The Last Poets have been documenting a dystopian world. Formed in the cultural mayhem that followed Martin Luther King’s murder in 1968, they quickly became legendary for their incendiary verses – from “Wake Up Nigger” to “White Man’s Got A God Complex” – which are always cited as an early incarnation of hip-hop. They were filled with witty, shocking and provocative lines, but the presentation was often deliberately austere. If their early disciple Gil Scott Heron would leaven his political diatribes with some soothing baritone crooning, The Last Poets denied us such bourgeois deviation: not once did they even hint at singing, and for a long time the only instrumentation that backed them was stark sound of a conga or djembe drum.
It fitted the rather joyless ideological zone they often inhabited. On their most famous poem, “When The Revolution Comes”, they describe a utopia where “guns and rifles will take the place of poetry and essays”; where “women will be women and men will be men”; where “faggots won’t be so funny”; where you should “speak not of revolution until you are willing to eat rats to survive”. Rats, you say? Blimey. No wonder that the one segment from that track that everyone sampled was the despairing final line: “until then, niggers will party and bullshit and party and bullshit…” Partying and bullshitting certainly sounds preferable to eating rats.
“When The Revolution Comes” is one of eight early poems revived on this album. But here, instead of spartan hand percussion, they’re now upholstered by a full Afrobeat band – assorted London jazz luminaries, assembled and directed by Nigerian bassist Kunle Justice – playing the kind of confrontational, politically charged funk associated with Fela Kuti. It’s a musical genre that fits them like a glove.
This isn’t the first time they’ve featured musical accompaniment. Often the settings have been suitably bleak, like the digi-funk backing that Bill Laswell provided for several of their LPs in the 1980s and 1990s, or the brittle dub that backed 2018’s Understand What Black. Sometimes they were cerebral, like the beatnik jazz of 1972’s Chastisement, or the free improv of 1973’s At Last. But, on Africanism, the backing builds organically on the drum rhythms that they traditionally use. “Two Little Boys”, a poem about the horrors of drug abuse, starts with just a conga drum before a full Afrobeat band seamlessly kicks in after 40 seconds. It’s like a shift from monochrome into vivid colour.
The backing was actually recorded remotely – original frontmen Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin Hassan recorded their parts in Brooklyn, while the musicians were in London, using drum tracks that had been laid down in a Lewisham studio in 2019 by Fela’s right-hand man Tony Allen, only a few months before he died in the early weeks of the Covid pandemic.
These poems are all more than 50 years old and some have a whiff of homophobia, sexism and antisemitism about them. There is something amusingly prudish about “Gashman”, which admonishes (black) men for preferring sex to revolution (“bitches with big afros and nice bodies turning would-be revolutionaries into gashmen”); while the unchanged lyrics to “Related To What” contain references to Diana Ross, Tom Jones, Roy Wilkins, Nat Turner and Richard Nixon that almost require historical footnotes.
But all these poems sound better than ever; the irony is that, as with so much of the hip-hop that The Last Poets paved the way for, the musical backing makes the grim lyrics sound quite inappropriately exciting. A version of the apocalyptic “This Is Madness”, all wah-wah guitars and ecstatic horn freakouts, is absolutely thrilling. “New York, New York”, which regards the Big Apple with a mix of awe and horror, sees the hypnotic Afro-jazz band provide a running sonic commentary on the lyrics, including a terrific sax solo from Courtney Pine.
Oyewole and Bin Hassan have always said that their poems serve as an internal dialogue within a specific African-American community, and as such this can leave outsiders feel as if they are eavesdropping on a private argument. Does this matter? Maybe it does on the furiously funky version of “Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution”, a track that might have you grooving in your seat, hooting with shocked laughter, and possibly concerned that you shouldn’t be hearing it at all. It is as hilarious as it is disturbing and uncomfortable – the embodiment of The Last Poets at their best.
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According to the Toronto Star, Hudson “passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York”.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Hudson co-founded The Band in the mid-’60s, having previously played with Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm in The Hawks.
Although he was best-known for playing the Lowrey organ, Hudson also played accordion, saxophone and range of other instruments.
Hudson played on all 10 of The Band’s studio albums, their two albums with Bob Dylan (The Basement Tapes and Planet Waves) and their live albums, including Rock Of Ages and The Last Waltz.
Speaking in this month’s Uncut, Benmont Tench of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers said, “I’m always trying to capture the magic of Garth’s Lowrey organ on my own Hammond… There’s a purity to [The Band’s] art, their vision, and you can’t overestimate the influence they’ve had on others.”
Hudson also enjoyed a successful career outside The Band. His debut solo album The Sea To The North was released in 2001 and he released two albums as a member of Flying Burrito Brothers‘ spin-off, Burrito Deluxe with Sneaky Pete Kleinow: 2002’s Georgia Peach and 2004’s The Whole Enchilada.
In 2005, he formed his own 12-piece band, the Best!, with his wife, Maud. The Hudsons also released a piano-accordion-vocal album, Live At The Wolf, in 2005.
An in-demand session musician, Hudson also worked with Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen and collaborated with many others, including Mercury Rev on their 1999 album, Deserter’s Songs.
In 2007, Garth and Maud appeared at the 100 Club in London – you can read Uncut‘s report from the night by clicking here.
He continued to work on solo albums by his former colleagues in The Band while, in 2010, he produced Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration Of The Band, featuring Canadian artists covering songs that were recorded by the Band, including Neil Young, Cowboy Junkies, Mary Margaret O’Hara and Bruce Cockburn.
Hudson’s last public appearance was in April, 2023, when he performed Duke Ellington‘s “Sophisticated Lady” at a house concert in Kingston, New York.
As Andy Cairns stands outside the Limelight club in central Belfast, he recalls a Therapy? show at the venue many years before. Cairns had come straight from his day job at a tyre factory and was changing out of his work clothes in the car park opposite, when his car was surrounded by the RUC demanding to know what was going on. That was par for the course in Belfast during the Troubles, and although the city has changed a great deal over the past three decades, the Limelight is still standing and so are Therapy?.
That instinct for survival informed the name of Therapy?’s most recent album, Hard Cold Fire. Released by Marshall Records and recorded at the label’s studio in Milton Keynes, the title came from Belfast poet Louis MacNeice. “He talks about people from the north of Ireland having a ‘hard cold fire’,” says Cairns. “It’s a reference to the basalt that is indigenous to the terrain, but we thought it represented our longevity. Like Belfast, we have been resilient and determined and we have weathered with time.”
Therapy? were formed by Cairns and bassist Michael McKeegan in 1989. Drummer Neil Cooper joined in 2002, meaning even the new boy has more than two decades of Therapy? under his belt. Hard Cold Fireis a diverse album and the band have always straddled genres, combining rock, punk, metal and industrial noise since debut single “Meat Abstract”. By 1992, Therapy? were enjoying chart success with “Teethgrinder” and “Screamager”, building an audience that remains loyal to this day.
Speaking on a day off between concerts in Dublin and Belfast, Cairns says the band’s success has a lot to do with their early days, when Cairns and McKeegan were immersed in a DIY scene populated by idealistic kids who wanted to escape sectarian strife. “In music, religion didn’t matter,” says McKeegan, something that came as a relief in a town where everything could be examined to discern your background, from your choice of drink to your favoured taxi service. In a city at war with itself, Cairns and McKeegan had to work harder to make things work.
“Music meant more to us,” says Cairns. “Bigger bands wouldn’t come to Belfast and the bands that did tended to be metal, punk and indie. I loved Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones but I was open-minded. If there was a gig in town, I’d go whether it was Jesus And Mary Chain or Erasure. Finding places to practise wasn’t easy and we only had two record shops, so you had to put the hours in. That’s why we’ve never taken it for granted.”
Hard Cold Fireis Therapy?’s best-selling record since the late 1990s. It followed 2020’s Greatest Hits (The Abbey Road Session), another Marshall album that saw Therapy? refresh some of their biggest numbers for a new audience. “We decided to record our 12 Top 40 hits at Abbey Road in one day,” says Cairns. “Some of these versions are much better than the originals, like ‘Opal Mantra’, which came out very quickly on the back of ‘Screamager’. Now it has more heft and sounds a bit like Killing Joke.”
Therapy? have already been with Marshall for almost a decade. Cairns has seen labels come and go, so speaks from a position of authority when he praises the relationship he has with the label. It’s a company that ticks important boxes and which, like Therapy?, has earned a reputation for endurance.
“I am a sucker for things that work, whether it’s the amps or the Marshall Bluetooth speakers and earbuds,” he says, admitting that he does most of music listening at home through a Marshall Middleton speaker. “I don’t like paying the earth for something that doesn’t work. I will play a Marshall amp in a different way to somebody in a hard rock or a classic rock band but I know the Marshall can do that for me. Since we signed for Marshall records, we’ve seen attendances improve and we have made better records. We made the last one at the Marshall studio, which has the classic Neve console. That record sold well because it has all the elements that Therapy? do best – propulsive basslines, compelling drums, catchy riffs and lyrics that look good on the back of a T-shirt. Over the years the attention can wander, but right now we are very focused.”
Photo: Jeff Pitcher
City To City: Belfast
Andy Cairns reveals the Belfast venues that have fostered the city’s music scene
Few cities in the UK have changed as much as Belfast in the past 30 years, but Andy Cairns knows that that’s a good thing. It’s why he wants to meet at the Oh Yeah music centre, which only opened in 2007 and is a symbol of Belfast’s bright future. “What I love about Oh Yeah is that it’s a sign of hope for Northern Ireland,” he says. “This place is so important for young bands. When Michael and I were growing up, we never had anything like this. Other than Good Vibrations record shop, there was nothing to help us get started.”
Oh Yeah does the lot. Located in the charismatic Cathedral Quarter, there’s a venue space, a rehearsal room and a studio, plus offices for music-related business. Oh Yeah run outreach programmes for young musicians while downstairs there’s a small record shop and cabinets crammed with flyers, records and posters covering the history of Northern Ireland music – Therapy? included.
Aside from donating paraphernalia, the band have performed acoustic shows at Oh Yeah, and occasionally use the rehearsal space and studio. Every year, Oh Yeah organises the NI Music Prize, and in 2014 the Legends award went to Therapy?. The ceremony takes place at Ulster Hall, arguably Belfast’s most prestigious music venue and the scene of Cairns’s first proper gig as a teenage punk. “Siouxsie And The Banshees on September 5 1979,” he says. “I was 13 and I was wearing a Dennis The Menace punk jumper my mum knitted. We were the youngest people there, and I went from elated to terrified. Everybody was older and cooler than us. But the moment the band came on, everything melted. I was buzzing for weeks.”
Photo: Jeff Pitcher
This experience convinced Cairns he wanted to become a musician. He attended more gigs at Ulster Hall and Crescent Art Centre, joining a punk community that transcended religious barriers. The scene centred round Caroline Records on Ann Street and the legendary Good Vibrations record shop on Great Victoria Street, where Cairns and his friends could learn about music. Good Vibrations released records by local bands like The Undertones, The Outcasts and Rudi, all of whom Cairns loved – he describes Therapy? as updating the classing Northern Ireland punk sound for the 1990s. From the roof of Oh Yeah he points out graffiti on the site of old punk venue The Harp. It reads “The Undertones… are shit”, a reference to a photo from the back of the band’s first single.
That’s very Belfast. The music history is there, but you need to know where to look. Were it not for a small plaque, you could walk past a blank wall on College Square North and never realise it was the location of the Maritime Hotel, where Van Morrison brought R&B to Belfast with Them.
With that in mind, Cairns heads for Limelight, the rock club where Therapy? played some of their earliest shows. Here is more Undertones graffiti, plus an entire wall of Marshall amps above the bar. That reminds Carins of one of the advantages of being signed to Marshall – access to the factory next to the studio, something that is very handy for a guitarist who has been using Marshall amps since 1992. The company even made four custom amps for the recent tour. “They play really well,” he says of the amps. “The minute I plug in my Gibson SG, it sounds exactly how I want. And I can go anywhere in the world and know somebody will be able to supply a Marshall amp that will sound exactly like I need it to.”
Back in the late 1980s, Therapy? were still playing their hometown for free beer and an education. “Limelight was our first big thing,” says Cairns. “When the band started there wasn’t anywhere to play. There was one rock bar and they liked our music but because we didn’t have long hair they wouldn’t let us perform. Then the Limelight opened. We started in the Saturday afternoon 2-5 slot. There was a club night on Thursday and we’d bring along Tad and Mudhoney seven-inches for the DJ to play and the dancefloor would clear.”
From Limelight, it’s a short walk to the Ulster Hall, a venue that Therapy? have headlined numerous times, including a memorable night in 2009 when they were photographed backstage with Northern Ireland peers Ash, DivineComedy and SnowPatrol, all of whom had enjoyed success despite growing up in a divided city. Every visit to Ulster Hall has significance for Cairns. “When I went to a gig at Ulster Hall I liked to be in the same spot right at the front,” he says. “When we played Ulster Hall for the first time in 1992, I realised that somebody would be standing in the same place with their heart racing feeling exactly the same way I used to when I was waiting for the band to come out.”
It’s that personal connection that ensures Therapy?’s shows at Ulster Hall are always special – their gig in November sold out in days. When Therapy? toured in the 1990s, the nervous support act would invariably come to Cairns and ask for advice on where to go in Belfast to avoid trouble. That doesn’t happen anymore, and that’s why Cairns doesn’t mind when he looks across the road from Ulster Hall and sees another new tower block raising above the streets. “There are a lot of new buildings here, but that’s great,” he says. “I don’t live in the past. I see all the change as a symbol of Belfast’s future.”
Neil Young has today unveiled the first single by his new band neil young and the chrome hearts, entitled “big change” (the accompanying press releases insists that “the band name and track title are in lower case”).
Joining Neil Young in the chrome hearts are Spooner Oldham (Farfisa organ), Micah Nelson (guitar), Corey McCormick (bass) and Anthony LoGerfo (drums). The single has been co-produced by Young and Lou Adler. Hear it below:
According to John Hanlon, Young’s long-term mixing engineer, “big change” is “in-your-face loud irreverent rock’n’roll paint splatter on the canvas in the vein of a Jackson Pollock painting.”
No chrome hearts album or tour dates have been announced as yet, although the press releases also states that, “Once again, Neil Young is looking at all aspects of life in 2025, and working to find the way forward. Big changes are ahead. Go with him.”
The film director David Lynch has died aged 78. The creator of films including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and Mulholland Drive and, with Mark Frost, the TV series Twin Peaks, had recently revealed an emphysema diagnosis.
The film director David Lynch has died aged 78. The creator of films including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and Mulholland Drive and, with Mark Frost, the TV series Twin Peaks, had recently revealed an emphysema diagnosis.
Lynch’s fellow filmmakers have paid fulsome tribute. In a statement, Steven Spielberg wrote:
“I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade… The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”
#RIPDavidLynch, a gracious man and fearless artist who followed his heart & soul and proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage, who starred in Wild At Heart, told Deadline that he was “a singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time.”. He continued: “He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”
Kyle MacLachlan – star of Blue Velvet, Dune and Twin Peaks, wrote on Instagram:
“David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human. He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are. They are our breath.
“While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own.”
From Uncut’s May 2007 issue (Take 120). We spoke to David Lynch for our Film By Film feature, covering his classic movies from Eraserhead and Wild At Heart through Twin Peaks on TV and his late classics, including Mulholland Dive. “They say that films are like children,” he told Stephen Troussé. “And I love all of my children, except for one child named Dune.”
Does the director of Wild At Heart and Blue Velvet look back over the past three decades and see a pattern to his career? “It’s weird, I see it as a year to make a film, a year in between films. Something like that,” he chuckles. “So I’m surprised when people ask my age, because I feel I’m much younger. They say that films are like children. And I love all of my children, except for one child named Dune.” Here he is, then, one of cinema’s true greats…
ERASERHEAD
Lynch’s first feature, shot over a period of five years, was he said, “My Philadelphia Story”. An instant hit on the midnight movie circuit, it marked the beginning of long working relationships with Jack Nance and Catherine Couslon.
LYNCH: I kept running out of money to make the film. I eventually took a paper route, delivering The Wall Street Journal. I loved that route! Philadelphia… is my greatest influence. Eraserhead really grew out of that experience. I have three children and they’ve watched it for sure! I don’t know how they feel. You’d have to ask them!
I asked a theatre director friend to recommend someone to play Henry, and he recommended two people. I only ever met Jack Nance. You see, Henry had to have that hair. And what was very fortunate – and meant to be – was that Jack had a particular type of hair that could be teased and held. It was perfect.
The midnight slot put Eraserhead on marquees of theatres for up to four years. It was so important for Eraserhead to find that home and that’s where Mel Brooks saw it. I heard he was going to see it and determine whether I was going to direct The Elephant Man based on that screening. And I said, “Well, it was nice knowing you guys, but it’s over.” But on the contrary, Mel, bless his heart, loved it. Mel is a very special human being. There’s a lot of very special human beings in Hollywood… and some not-so-special human beings, too.
FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT MAY 2007/TAKE 120 IN THE ARCHIVE
We already know their ubiquitous singles, and their world-beating albums. As you’ll discover in this new magazine, in addition to their artistic achievements, The Police must also have been the world’s most self-aware band.
As they freely confess in the classic interviews we’ve picked from the archive for you here, this wasn’t a band to keep their cards close to their chest or their motivations to themselves. Forming to take advantage of punk. Ditching their original guitarist when he couldn’t keep up. Frankly discussing the economics of the trio format.
For all their unanimity of image – three good-looking blonde lads, a strong Breton shirt/suit jacket game – very quickly, their distinct characters emerge in print. Stewart Copeland, a garrulous American whose glib and cynical wit is clearly a gift to anyone holding a tape recorder. Andy Summers, a laconic older statesman whose wisdom encourages him to keep his own counsel, wryly teasing those he meets. And then there’s Sting, who has simply never encountered a moment’s self-doubt about his ability to do anything.
Interestingly, this miraculously doesn’t make him obnoxious. Instead, Sting maintains a refreshing candour. Yes, he is ambitious. Yes, he wants to make the most of his opportunities. Yes, he wants to make a great deal of money. No, his working class roots do not make him feel uncomfortable in a big house in Hampstead.
The music which has brought him there is among the most commercially successful of its era, and on the following pages we have reviewed each of the albums in depth to follow its development. They would make bigger albums with more instantly-recognisable hit singles, but it’s hard to argue that it ever got better than the second album Reggatta de Blanc. The title punned on their white reggae mode, but on the record they extended far beyond that joky remit – the guitar playing of Andy Summers taking songs like “Bring On The Night” off in an unexpected and even vaguely psychedelic direction.
When Melody Maker’s Allan Jones meets the band at about this point in 1979, he finds Sting characteristically self-possessed, a new kind of rock star ready for a new level of success that his music will bring.
“I don’t take drugs. I don’t even smoke dope,” he tells Allan. “I don’t mean to sound boring but I don’t have any habits that vast amounts of money will exaggerate.
“I know I’m arrogant,” he continues. “But it’s largely a professional arrogance. It’s a useful tool for me. If I wasn’t arrogant, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am.”
Enjoy the magazine. You can get a copy from us here.
Rocking out in the margins, Julian Cope has been on a roll in recent years. 2020’s Self Civil War was his finest record in 25 years, and 2022’s England Expectorates was almost as good (bonus points for the melodic nail-bomb of “Cunts Can Fuck Off”). Then came last year’s Robin Hood, without Cope’s name on the packaging, and now Friar Tuck, also mysteriously cloaked. It appears, as all his music has since 1997’s Rite 2, on Cope’s own Head Heritage label (a vinyl edition is on its way too, his first since 2017’s Drunken Songs): that means home recordings and low production values on one hand, but direct and fluid expression on the other. Basically, he’s free to do what he wants, with all the good and bad that entails.
Rocking out in the margins, Julian Cope has been on a roll in recent years. 2020’s Self Civil War was his finest record in 25 years, and 2022’s England Expectorates was almost as good (bonus points for the melodic nail-bomb of “Cunts Can Fuck Off”). Then came last year’s Robin Hood, without Cope’s name on the packaging, and now Friar Tuck, also mysteriously cloaked. It appears, as all his music has since 1997’s Rite 2, on Cope’s own Head Heritage label (a vinyl edition is on its way too, his first since 2017’s Drunken Songs): that means home recordings and low production values on one hand, but direct and fluid expression on the other. Basically, he’s free to do what he wants, with all the good and bad that entails.
Mostly, on Friar Tuck, that leads to an exhilarating 40 minutes. It doesn’t have the madcap range of 1991’s Peggy Suicide or the following year’s Jehovahkill, records on which Cope explored the rough and ready, first-take ethos he’d discovered on 1989’s Skellington and 1990’s Droolian, but these 12 songs are brimming with a breezy vitality that’s not always been present on Cope’s epic releases over the last couple of decades.
If you’ve heard any of those, you know in part what this record sounds like: distorted wah-wah guitars, DI’d electro-acoustic guitars, drum machines and Mellotrons armed with the very tapes used on Tangerine Dream’s Atem. And yet Friar Tuck also reaches out sonically to synth-string funk on “In Spungent Mansions”, chiming, Smiths-esque melancholy on “1066 & All That” and slow-burning drone-rock on the seven-and-a-half-minute “Me And The Jews”.
“The Dogshow Must Go On” is the earworm here, a sub-two-minute garage charmer that moves from a krautrock Stooges groove (reminiscent of 1995’s “Queen/Mother”) to the kind of post-punk Cope pursued on his own solo debut, World Shut Your Mouth, 40 years ago. In stupendous and hilarious Cope-ian fashion it references Crufts, the Gurteen Stones, Jesus Christ and “a new people critical of canine love”, but the overall meaning remains thrillingly slippery: is this a rallying pro-dog message from someone who’s owned miniature schnauzers named Smelvin and Iggy Pup? Or is that missing the point entirely? Cope similarly makes no attempt at accessibility on the closing miniature, “Will Sergeant’s Blues”, where he’s surely taking the piss out of Ian McCulloch’s vocal style, even as he sings about Eeyore selling off Thousand Acre Wood for fracking.
Elsewhere, Cope’s drift is clearer when he looks back from the vantage point of his late sixties. “I didn’t think I’d get to live this long,” he croons on “Done Myself A Mischief”, “I’ve been so many people/And I’ve been just one.” “In Spungent Mansions” takes a look at his Liverpool punk pal Pete Burns, who he always remained fond of: “Exquisite and otherly/And each one on the dole… And I had scabies…” On the organ-driven motorik of “Four Jehovahs In A Volvo Estate” he zooms into a moment from his childhood, when a friend’s religious family moved away, ruining Cope’s Subbuteo championship. “Now I’m stuck trashing my preteen little brother,” he laments. “I hope Jehovah finds your house and causes degradation…”
Yet what of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck? What about this myth has so intrigued Cope, a man usually interested in the more rock-solid monuments of prehistory? “It’s a secret,” he tells Uncut, and clues are few and far between here. “R In The Hood”, like “Eve’s Volcano (Covered In Sin)” put through a dub echo chamber, talks of “peace” in contradictory terms before concluding “everybody wants a peace of the action”. Inside the booklet there’s a map suggesting Tuck came from the north of Scotland, journeyed to Sherwood Forest and ended up heading to the Crusades via “the Jewish Port of Mara Zion” in Cornwall.
Perhaps Cope identifies with the Merry Men’s anti-authoritarian views, as echoed in a poem, “Flibberty Gibbet On The Jibbet”, in the album’s booklet, where he seems to call for the hanging of Liz Truss (then again, Truss would no doubt agree with Hood’s libertarian drive against taxation). Whatever Cope’s motivations, just head to the poem’s opening lines and luxuriate in his continuing garbled genius: after all, no-one else is going to rhyme “Keir Starmer” with “Martin Bramah”.
Q&A
JULIAN COPE
Three albums in three years… are you on a bit of a creative roll?
No, I’m working at a speed that is very comfortable to me. But I am somewhat reborn, yes. These past 30 years, I’ve felt an obligation to make art that is Useful.
“Four Jehovahs In A Volvo Estate” – is this a recollection from your childhood?
Duncan Gray, poor kid. We’re right in the middle of the season and he has to move to the Orkneys because his knobhead parents believe bullshit. Funnily enough, their Volvo estate had screamed stability until they sodded off.
What has specifically inspired the album, musically?
I just try to replicate sonically the current state of my Melted Plastic Brain. So I like Novelty a lot and I live in a world of Intense Melody. So I like to deliver my vocal messages over a heady brew of crusty Brechtian garage rock – wah-guitars, marching drums and two Mellotron 400s filled with tape frames from Tangerine Dream’s 1973 epic Atem. Proper musical necromancy. Three sounds per frame with handwritten descriptions, too. Even have the rare black cases for all three. On Robin Hood, I alluded to them when I played the “Atem” theme during “An Oral History Of Blowjobs”.
Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake is awaiting a delivery of logs to his cottage in the Clyde Valley when Uncut catches up with him. “There’s no gas supply here,” he says. “Last year I had storage heaters, and they were really, really expensive. Hence the logs.” On the upside, Blake’s move to the countryside a year ago has yielded an album of glorious autumnal songwriting in collaboration with Love And Money frontman James Grant and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. “Norman’s place is really lovely,” says Butler. “Every time I go there it’s just a peaceful few days.”
Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake is awaiting a delivery of logs to his cottage in the Clyde Valley when Uncut catches up with him. “There’s no gas supply here,” he says. “Last year I had storage heaters, and they were really, really expensive. Hence the logs.” On the upside, Blake’s move to the countryside a year ago has yielded an album of glorious autumnal songwriting in collaboration with Love And Money frontman James Grant and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. “Norman’s place is really lovely,” says Butler. “Every time I go there it’s just a peaceful few days.”
Now settled under the moniker Butler, Blake & Grant – “I think I’d like to be Steven Stills,” jokes Grant – the group have done everything in the wrong order. They went on tour before they had any new songs, after being thrown together for their initial shows by Creeping Bent label boss Douglas MacIntyre, who also curates live events in Scotland under the Frets banner. “Me and James had tentatively talked about doing something together,” says Blake. “And I’ve known Bernard from way back.”
“Bandwagonesque was my courting record with my wife,” reveals Butler. “We’ve always kept in touch with Norman. James I didn’t know until recently, but I knew what a fantastic songwriter he was.”
The live shows were a success, but the album arrived almost by accident after Blake invited Butler and Grant to his cottage. “We didn’t plan to record it,” says Butler. “We were just sitting in Norman’s living room in front of the fire. There’s a couple of sofas and we were facing each other. James had a song. Norman wrote and finished something really quickly, and then I wrote something. As the first song came out, I said to Norman, ‘Have you got any gear? You know, recording equipment?’ He appeared with some mics and a computer and we set it up on the table. We weren’t really listening back to anything. We just thought, ‘We’ll record everything that happens.’”
“We all had fragments,” adds Blake. “I have loads of little fragments on my phone. A lot of these ideas wouldn’t work for the Fanclub, so it’s a great opportunity to be creative.”
“Some of the songs were written and recorded four hours later,” enthuses Grant. “For me, working like that was brilliant. It’s the antithesis of what my records have been about. It was like, ‘Yeah, sounds good. Let’s move on.’”
The cosy, collaborative fireside ethos might suggest Butler Blake & Grant have made a folk record, but Butler urges caution. “It’s not really about woolly jumpers and acoustic guitars. I’m not influenced by the type of songwriting, the style or format, I’m influenced by the fact that Norman and James are brilliant. They’re so talented and clever.”
On the other hand, “James has played with Capercaillie,” says Blake. “I’ve played with [fiddler] John McCusker a few times. And Bernard has his association with Bert Jansch. If you take all of our interests in music and the fact that it’s an acoustic record, it’s in the folk area.” “It’s definitely a 1970s-type sketch,” decides Grant. “There’s a track called ‘Bring An End’ – Bernard played a solo and he was like, ‘I think I’ve gone a bit Brian May here.’ There’s fuck all wrong with that! When you’re working with Norman and Bernard, it’s like having Ray Davies and David Gilmour in your band. They just do things that you like.”
Butler, Blake & Grant is released by 355 Records on March 28
For a while there, across the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s, Terry Riley became the friendly face of contemporary minimal composition. There he was, grinning amiably, superimposed over trees and sky on the cover of his best-known album, 1969’s A Rainbow In Curved Air, a countercultural goofball maverick with chops to spare, his music both spiraling in its hypnotic power, and remarkably easy to get on with. He crops up again in all kinds of contexts – an album with the Velvet Underground’s John Cale, who he also replaced in La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s ’60s drone-dream collective, the Theatre of Eternal Music; collaborations with free jazz legend Don Cherry; an inspiration for The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”; myriad versions of his masterpiece of cellular composition, In C.
For a while there, across the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s, Terry Riley became the friendly face of contemporary minimal composition. There he was, grinning amiably, superimposed over trees and sky on the cover of his best-known album, 1969’s A Rainbow In Curved Air, a countercultural goofball maverick with chops to spare, his music both spiraling in its hypnotic power, and remarkably easy to get on with. He crops up again in all kinds of contexts – an album with the Velvet Underground’s John Cale, who he also replaced in La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s ’60s drone-dream collective, the Theatre of Eternal Music; collaborations with free jazz legend Don Cherry; an inspiration for The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”; myriad versions of his masterpiece of cellular composition, In C.
While contemporaries like Philip Glass and Steve Reich became more conservative as the years passed (Glass’s work started to echo the likes of Bartok), and Riley’s one-time colleague La Monte Young devoted his time to willed semi-obscurity, a relative disappearance in line with Young’s demands for cultural and financial recognition, Riley seemed to simply, well, get on with it. Perhaps the ace in his hand was his preternatural capacity for the little cells of melody that bob to the surface in most of his music; it’s charming stuff on the surface, as this first vinyl reissue of 1980’s Shri Camel makes plain, but with much depth, both musical and extra-musical.
Shri Camel summed up a body of work and a process of exploration for Riley. He began composing it in 1975 for Radio Bremen in West Germany and performed an early version of it there; the version documented on this album was recorded in 1978 in San Francisco, though it didn’t see release for several years. It was also his final album for the CBS Masterworks series, which chimes with a general decrease of interest in minimalism from major labels at around this point; artistically valid and gorgeous to listen to, the stuff just didn’t sell particularly well. It’s possible that Riley’s alignment with the stoned-out-of-our-gourds hippie consciousness of the late 1960s counterculture meant he was out of vogue at the time, too.
It all seems rather unfair, looking back, particularly given the rigour with which Riley approached his music. These weren’t the minimalist meanderings of a wasted chancer; Riley was a deeply in tune, widely studied composer-artist whose embrace of approaches like just intonation, the tuning of musical intervals such that they are ‘pure’, and not ‘equal temperament’ like Western tuning, meant the end result of his fiercely intelligent compositions was a cyclical, dizzying hall-of-mirrors where everything seemed to shiver and vibrate just outside of everyday consciousness. That hall-of-mirrors effect was amplified by Riley’s use of delay systems – for Shri Camel, he used a Yamaha organ modified with digital delay and tuned to just intonation.
That digital delay gifts Shri Camel its glissing slip-and-slide and its strange sense of sharp, attenuated dreaminess. You can hear it pretty much immediately, when the thin, reedy drone that underpins “Anthem Of The Trinity” has glittering arpeggios dancing across its wafer-like landscape, with Riley playing both his own melodies and patterns, and the various registers of the organ, off each other. If the drone is the bedrock of the composition, Riley’s organ playing, his extemporisations around a number of themes, gives Shri Camel not just its near-haptic sensuousness, but also its spirit of ascension, as though Riley’s pushing the listener through and beyond the clouds.
After all, Shri Camel is, in some ways, devotional music. By the time of its composition, Riley had already spent a number of years as a formal disciple of the Indian classical singer, Pandit Pran Nath, who trained and performed in the Hindustani ‘Kirana Gharana’ music apprenticeship tradition, a particularly rich and lyrical style: Pran Nath’s was an especially pared-back, slow, ascetic take on this tradition, which can be heard in the paced movements of some of Riley’s compositions, and the work of Young and Zazeela, as well. Riley’s fondness for Nath was simply expressed: he called Nath “the greatest musician I have ever heard.”
It is, perhaps, Nath’s precision that is so important to the music Riley makes on albums like Shri Camel. Even though there are playful moments on this album – the luxuriant, blissful trilling of “Celestial Valley”, for example, where the organ-and-delay sound both like pattering rain and a storm of hail, somehow at the same time – there’s an attention to detail here, particularly to the detail of tone, that’s clearly drawn from Riley’s lessons with Nath, and broader still, his knowledge and embrace of Indian classical music. Shri Camel emerges from a period in Riley’s life where he was deeply invested in the Indian classical tradition, turning his attention to just intonation and the deceptive simplicity of delay and repetition to make music that has a rich, resonant core, a sense of deep play, and a bravura mash of minimalism and improvisation.
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