Reading about the South By Southwest festival tends to produce, in me at least, a mix of empathetic fatigue and terrible envy, and last week’s bombardment of tweets, blogs, news stories was no different.
The distraction of a Laura Marling blog yesterday has had the knock-on effect of making this week’s playlist longer than usual: 27 tracks/albums in all.
It’s easy – and probably useful, sometimes – to lambast major labels for what looks from the outside like chronic short-termism. The climate is, understandably I guess, a neurotic one, and those days are long gone when labels would work long-term with a select group of trophy artists, whose usefulness to the company was more silvery and nebulous, more about cachet than quick profit.
Nick Cave took part in an 'In Conversation' session covering his life and career earlier today (March 12) as part of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
Speaking at the Austin Convention Center with New York based author Larry Ratso Sloman, the Bad Seeds frontman admitted that he first joined a band in order to get "girls and booze", telling the packed out audience that "it actually works!"
Shameless plug coming your way! This Thursday, March 14, the next in our ongoing series of Ultimate Music Guides hits the shops. This one is dedicated to The Smiths.
The world and nearly everyone in it has been reduced to trembling excitement by the return of David Bowie, but for some of us there is another recent resurrection perhaps even more miraculous and just as unexpected, a comeback by The Replacements, who today release online the Songs For Slim EP, their first new recordings in more than 20 years.
The Columbia Albums Collection, the new 17-album boxset from Blue Öyster Cult, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2013, and out now. The collection unsurprisingly includes the band’s signature hit, ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’, and in this piece, originally published in Uncut’s November 2010 issue, the band discuss the writing and recording of their “trans-awesome” tune, perhaps the spookiest FM staple ever. “Nothing like The Byrds”, apparently… Words: Jaan Uhelszki
