Last year at Latitude, the Uncut Arena played host to one of Africa’s very finest bands, Tinariwen. This year, we’re thrilled to welcome their Malian compatriots, Amadou And Mariam, who’ll be headlining our stage on the Friday night at Latitude.
There are a few records around the Uncut office at the moment that I think I could responsibly class as disappointing, not least the new Mercury Rev album, which ambitiously finds them trying to reinvent themselves as whimsical cosmic ravers.
PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage.
PAUL Simon and Crowded House were the billed main headliners but if the phalanx of photographers snaking its way across the field during The Bangles’ Saturday set is anything to go by, the biggest star at this, the fifth Cornbury Festival, is an inconspicuously turned out gent and a lady we take to be his wife who are making their way, as casually as possible, down into the throng around the stage.
Previously, Radio 4 has hosted its arts magazine show, Loose Ends, from Latitude. Loose Ends returns this year, to the Radio 4 stage, along with satirical comedy The Now Show, Roger McGough's Poetry Please and current affairs programme, Broadcasting House. But surely the most impressive presence on the Radio 4 bill is the legendary panel game, Just A Minute.
It is, by most standards, quite an entrance. Joan Wasser arrives onstage at Club Uncut with a mug of tea in one hand, a bouquet of flowers in the other, and a pair of giant plastic sunglasses that appear to have some kind of beaklike noseguard attachment. They’re so preposterous, in fact, that Wasser can’t bring herself to sing in them. For the rest of the long, hot night of this Joan As Police Woman solo show (her bandmates are waiting for her in Florence), they’ll act as an occasional prop to add emphasis to her between-song chats. About Uncut, say, and what she always thinks of first when she hears the magazine’s name. . .
