Bear with me a minute while I blow away a few of these cobwebs. Yeah, that’s better. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I went yesterday to a screening of Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, his film of The Rolling Stones in concert at New York's Beacon Theatre. I’m sure that given my very public affection for the Stones, for which I am occasionally slapped around by readers in whose lives, quite mysteriously as far I’m concerned, the band loom less significantly, no one is going to be left in a shocked or breathless condition, heads reeling in gob-smacked surprise, by my reaction. I fucking loved it. John’s already posted a fascinating response to the film on his Wild Mercury Blog, elsewhere on www.uncut.co.uk - which anyone interested in either the Stones or great writing about rock music should go to now -and I’ll be reviewing it at no doubt windier length in the issue of Uncut that will coincide with its official release in April, so I won’t say too much about it here, although I am sore tempted to invite you to pull up a chair while I wax what they call lyrical about the thing, the Stones’ enduring excellence and the technical brilliance with which Scorsese has captured what was obviously a barnstorming performance. Biting my tongue, though, I’ll just mention one of many highlights – Buddy Guy’s show-stealing version with the Stones of “Champagne And Reefers”, which pretty much brings the house down and ends with a suitably-awed Keith Richards taking off his guitar – an old favourite, apparently, of Keith’s, probably with its own name, like something you’d call a pet – and giving it to Buddy. “Here, man,” Keith tells the blues veteran, who looks at him, handsomely baffled. “It’s yours.” It occurs to me to also mention here a fantastic new book, also due out in April, from Jonathan Cape, called Sway, written by Zachary Lazar. Like last year’s Eat The Document – which told the story of a suburban American mother’s secret history as a member of the Weather Underground terrorists via her son’s obsession with The Beach Boys, in which Denis Wilson and Arthur Lee had fictional cameos – it’s that rare thing: a novel that convincingly and intelligently touches upon rock’n’roll and the people who make it, and apart from Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street and Thomas McGuane’s Panama, there haven’t been too many of them. Sway, however, compellingly tracks the linked histories of the Stones, film maker Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beausoleil, the failed young rock star who became a murderous acolyte of Charles Manson, and thus therefore takes in both the slaughter of Sharon Tate and her friends by the Manson Family and the grim events that followed when the Stones played Altamont. I’ll be reviewing that in our May issue, also, so enough for me at the moment

Hey, I've just posted a review of Vampire Weekend at London ULU, over at my own daily blog, Wild Mercury Sound. Cheers.

Given how everyone has fixated on their Ivy League background, the sticky-floored ambience – the quintessential redbrick-ness - of ULU shouldn’t be quite right for Vampire Weekend. Surely, we should all be watching them in an immaculate marquee, in the grounds of an Oxford college, shortly before a long and intense reading party in the Cotswolds? Anyone else as bored as I am of all the class anxiety and stereotyping that seems to have attached itself to this band? I worry a little that their entertaining subversion of orthodox rock language might become something of a millstone for Vampire Weekend, because it’s so easy for the reactionaries to snipe about ‘privilege’ and ‘preppiness’ and so on, and ignore the fact that they’re a quite excellent band. I suppose I’ve written about all this before, when I tackled Vampire Weekend’s album, so I’ll just direct you to a couple of interesting blogs about Ezra Koenig’s fiction and the American collegiate perspective on their schtick. What would be more valuable, I guess, is to focus on how enjoyable their show was. Strange night, mind. After 35 minutes of spindly, precise, exuberant pop music, Vampire Weekend are just starting to get into their stride. It’s striking how accurately they can reproduce the intricacies of that album; Koenig’s guitar playing and the drummer, especially, are vigorously proficient in contrast to the sloppiness of so many other post-Strokes indie boys. Occasionally, I’m disturbingly reminded of Fine Young Cannibals, not least in the way Koenig and the bassist bump into each other as they follow their jerky trajectories around the stage. Then, though, the fire alarm goes off (just after Damon Albarn leaves the gig, if you’re in the mood for dubious conspiracy theories). The venue is evacuated, the fire engine arrives, there is the minuscule possibility of a well-mannered riot kicking off outside. And fortunately, after half an hour, the show starts again. And now, Vampire Weekend are even better; funnier (Koenig refers to the “ULU Nation”); more relaxed, though the music remains satisfyingly highly-strung. There’s some wry, meta amusement to be had from the fact that they warm up again by covering Tom Petty’s “American Girl” – a song which The Strokes, their supposed role models, have often been accused of plagiarising, of course. A new song features more explicit musical references to Township Jive than anything on the debut album, and then the home straight is a terrific, mildly unhinged run of “Campus”, “Oxford Comma” and a wonderful “Walcott” that suggests this skinny, odd but catchy music can sound big and impressive, too. Judging by some of the people I saw at the gig, I suspect they’re going to be everywhere this summer: give them a go. Oh, and one more link: this seems to be the short film Ezra Koenig made which generated Vampire Weekend’s name. Quite sweet, really.