Tabla de contenidos para December 2019 en MOJO

Laurie Anderson Anderson’s music, words and ideas have bewitched since 1981’s O Superman. Her moving essay on late husband Lou Reed’s lyrics – taken from I’ll Be Your Mirror (Faber) out in November – starts on p56. Songs From The Bardo, her LP with Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith, is out now. Ethan Russell The first band Russell photographed was Blue Cheer, but the California native was still a novice lensman when he arrived in the UK in 1968. Less than a year later, he had become court snapper to Britain’s rock aristocracy. His shots of The Rolling Stones – telling the story of their watershed Let It Bleed LP – are previewed from p44. Quinton Winter Quinton is an award-winning and New York Times best-selling illustrator. A proud…

“THE MORE YOU THINK, THE MORE YOU stink” might not be the ideal motto for a magazine with MOJO’s aspirations to authority and wisdom. Nevertheless, the instructions of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s old producer David Briggs have a certain raw appeal. How can a group of musicians untether themselves from expectation, and tap into the most intuitive and spontaneous forms of expression? According to what Young tells MOJO’s Tom Doyle this month, the means to that end for Crazy Horse are manifold: high altitude, no setlists, no rehearsals, a little weed. “That’s the focus, y’know,” he reveals, in a wide-ranging and entertaining new interview. Rather like Crazy Horse jams, this latest edition of MOJO contains many unexpected digressions. In the midst of our epic interviews and reviews, you’ll hear…

Kenny Hollywood Magic Star (DECCA, 1962) The Tornados’ spaced-out instrumental Telstar was huge across the world. Then its composer and producer, Joe Meek, added some words, sung by Welwyn Garden City teen Kenny Plows. Winsome, lovelorn, with a death-disc shiver, it failed to hit. Sarah Vaughan Peter Gunn (FROM SINGS THE MANCINI SONGBOOK , MERCURY, 1965) Mancini’s 1959 cop show theme – later a massive twanger for Duane Eddy – gets a brassy, screwball vocal remake, where the voice they called Sassy smoulders about dates with swingers and spousal kiss-offs. Sammy Davis, Jr You Can Count On Me (FROM THE SONG AND DANCE MAN , 20TH CENTURY, 1976) Where Sammy takes the Hawaii 5-0 theme and adds words of eternal fealty (“call me – on Devil’s Day” (eh?)). Intriguingly, the…

“IT’S ASTOUNDING how much stuff has survived,” says Clash historian Robert Gordon McHarg III. “Everybody did such a great job keeping it all in their archives. The London Calling story is such an amazing period for the band and it has actually, like, been told before, but this is a new way of telling it. So hopefully there’ll be surprises for everyone.” Surprises galore can be found in the stunning 120-page, hardback scrapbook of documents, photos, lyrics-in-progress, artwork, press cuttings, objects and ephemera McHarg has prepared to accompany a special 40th anniversary reissue of The Clash’s mightiest album. Having drawn upon the personal annals of Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, photographer Pennie Smith, on-tour war artist and designer Ray Lowry, journalist Kris Needs, roadie Johnny Green, DJ Barry ‘Scratchy’ Myers and…

“Everything’s so gentrified and Spotify’y.”YOUNG GUV AKA BEN COOK GIVEN HIS name is Young Guv, Ben Cook often finds people assuming he’s going to be a SoundCloud rapper, a musical cousin of Lil Pump or Young Thug. That is, however, one musical genre the 35-year-old singer-songwriter has so far swerved in a career that has included playing guitar with Toronto hardcore heroes Fucked Up, creating languid ’80s luxe-pop with Yacht Club and Cheap Trickery with The Marvelous Darlings, and writing starry top-level demos for, rumour has it, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson. Now with his third and fourth albums as Young Guv (GUV I appeared in August, GUV II in October), the prolific Cook has created music that picks up the Big Star-loving echoes of the ’90s: Teenage Fanclub, The…

DRUMMER MARK ‘ROOSTER’ COSBY (below, b.1961) played in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra before becoming Mike Joyce’s drum tech in The Smiths. He was touring the US with Siouxsie And The Banshees when he met Julian Cope in 1987, who he joined as percussionist for 1988’s My Nation Underground. Staying for the mighty 1991-94 trilogy of Peggy Suicide, Jehovahkill and Autogeddon, where he also contributed guitar and saxophone, Cosby left Cope’s orbit in the late ’90s. He also worked with the Pixies and Sinéad O’Connor. His bandmate Donald Ross Skinner hailed his “singular and passionate style”. PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILM-MAKER ROBERT FRANK (b.1924) published his first book of images, 40 Fotos, in Switzerland in 1946. Moving to America, he started shooting fashion pictorials for Harper’s Bazaar. Making his name as a…

THE SOLO CLASSIC Mark Lanegan Whiskey For The Holy Ghost  ★★★★★ SUB POP, 1994 Discovering Astral Weeks was recorded in three days, Lanegan aspired to a comparable transcendent spirituality on his second solo album. It took him three years, waylaid by drugs and his obsessive perfectionism (producer Jack Endino had to physically prevent him throwing the tapes in a river) but he pretty much got there: 13 masterfully arranged, beautifully sung lysergic-folk meditations on the darkness beneath the light. THE LAST CALL Screaming Trees Dust  ★★★★ EPIC, 1996 The final Screaming Trees album, recorded in LA amid crushing mutual antipathy, still carried traces of Lee Conner’s corny psych fixation. Yet with a warm-hug George Drakoulias production, Lanegan’s mournful commentary on vanquished hope came wrapped in killer tunes. Josh Homme joined…

ME OH MY (Irony Bored, 2009) Le Bon’s solo debut felt like a door slowly opening on an alternate universe – part Bagpuss reverie, part obsessional fever-dream. Minimal guitar and junk shop keyboards sketch out psych pop perfection like Vashti Bunyan morphing with Syd Barrett. “Baby, I’m headed for the black,” she sings on Sad Sad Feet; yet the limelight was calling, distantly. MUG MUSEUM (Turnstile, 2013) After the freaky VU rockin’ of Cyrk (2012), the first album of Le Bon’s ‘LA period’ revisited the spare landscapes of her first,only with a more neo-new wave slant. Duke underlines her knack for sustained vocal crescendos; I Think I Knew duets limpidly with dreampop Yank Perfume Genius; Wild’s clashing discords scare the horses. Spills and thrills. REWARD (Mexican Summer, 2019) The mature…

Peter Buck: We’d released Out Of Time and Automatic For The People and had huge success, but we hadn’t toured in five years and we’d spent a lot of time apart. When we met up eight months after Automatic, we found we were all looking forward to being on the road, so we started writing material in that direction. Michael Stipe: We all wanted to tour: [drummer] Bill Berry demanded it. The last two records were very slow and meditative so we set out to create a record that was much louder and brasher, a record that turned out to combine rock and irony, taking distance from the medium. Another jumping-off point was glam, which had inspired my predecessors and had been introduced to me through punk rock. “THE TOUR…

Jeff Lynne’s ELO ★★★★ From Out Of Nowhere COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP “Lynne has an ability to recalibrate his craft for the current era.” PEOPLE TEND to underestimate Jeff Lynne. Mention ELO and they think of spaceships, OTT arrangements, cheesy vocoder FX, and silly lyrics like “Whama-lama-bama-lama, rock’n’roll is king”. They mistake his modesty for modest abilities, take for granted the skills required to make such dense music seem so simple. Publicly, at least, Lynne too makes light of himself and “my little songs” – a phrase he often applies to his work, even when he’s playing the songs with a 13-piece band to 60,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. Musicians, however, take Jeff Lynne seriously. In his recent interview with MOJO, Pete Townshend explained that his new novel-cum-musical, The Age Of Anxiety,…

Jim Moray ★★★★ The Outlander MANAGED DECLINE. CD/DL/LP This so clearly evokes the early folk revival spirit, it’s practically a homage to Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. Simple, wide-eyed, entirely traditional, its percussive, stripped-down form also has moments of quiet instrumental invention. Josienne Clarke duets on Lord Gregory and the familiarity of the material – John Barleycorn, When This Old Hat Was New, The Leaving Of Liverpool, etc – scarcely demeans its warmth. Luke Daniels ★★★★ Old Friends & Exhausted Enemies WREN. CD/DL Rightly recognised for his instrumental guitar/piano virtuosity and experimental ideas, Luke Daniels diversifies further, incorporating the poetry of Chaucer, Burns, Browning, Auden and others into his strong songwriting. Additional gravity comes from bass and drums (Jenny Hill, Signy Jacobsdottir) plus intriguing additions (strings, a choir and Chinese…

Ben Bryden ★★★★ Figure Of Eight CIRCAVISION. CD/DL Last spotted reworking fellow Scot Ivor Cutler’s prickly melodics, this New York-based tenor saxophonist showcases his compositional smarts and a beckoning tone across laments for failed relationships and his homeland that brim with passion and yearning. The rough and tumble with guitarist Phil Robson peaks on a sprint through Billy Joel’s She’s Always A Woman, but Bryden’s thoughtful originals ace the pack. Led Bib ★★★★ It’s Morning RARENOISE. CD/DL/LP Punk-jazz pioneers Led Bib channel improvisational chemistry anew on an ever-evolving song cycle, anchored by the addition of North Sea Radio Orchestra’s mezzo-soprano Sharron Fortnam. Their talents coalesce on the 11-minute Fold – a flip through an old FM radio dial that bristles and broods with atmospheric shifts. The reined-in approach succeeds in…

Cliff Martinez ★★★ Too Old To Die Young MILAN. CD/DL/LP The feeling you get from watching all 13 hours of Nicolas Winding Refn’s hallucinatory neon noir is something akin to jet-lag, euphoria and fear, all awash in your head. Cliff Martinez’s score, while undeniably brilliant, occupies that same space: stealth gamelan jitters supplementing the sci-fi metallic unease of a silver-paper migraine behind the eyes. Bryan Senti ★★★★ American Dreamer PHANTOM LIMB. DL Unease is the dominant mood of this creeping minimalist score to Derrick Borte’s intense portrait of middle-American economic collapse. Subtly terrifying, Senti’s spare electronic world moves almost imperceptibly from calming to unsettling, a world where ambient no longer means calming, but simply the barely-there presence in your immediate surroundings. Fenella ★★★★ Fehérlófia FIRE. LP Composed as a reimagined…

Sam Amidon’s Fatal Flower Garden  Totemic crate-digger Harry Smith’s belief in deep cultural connections is borne out this month in two separate musicologicallyinspired projects. UK-based Sam Amidon pays tribute to Smith’s admirable obsession with collecting 78s from the 1920s and ’30s, on a four-track EP of covers drawn from Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music, entitled Fatal Flower Garden. Inspired by Smith’s passion for esoteric magic, Amidon channels the fervour and dread on one highlight, Train On The Island, with bluegrass fiddle and banjo, vocal roaring and whistling. Sixty years ago, venerable musicologist Alan Lomax, assisted by Shirley Collins, travelled through Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina, making 70 hours’ of field recordings of traditional music from lone fiddlers to Pentecostal congregations, discovering Mississippi Fred McDowell…

Bob Dylan (Featuring Johnny Cash) ★★★★★ Travelin’ Thru: Vol 15 1967-1969 COLUMBIA SONY/LEGACY. CD/DL/LP “At a time when rock was ‘us’ and country was ‘them’, here were two men having a musical conversation on shared roots.” MAYBE IT'S the modest size, as compared to the recent hefty, 14-CD Rolling Thunder Revue box, that makes this 3-CD set feel like a warm, light breeze. Or maybe it’s the vibe – relaxed and casual but focused; a million miles from mid-’70s Dylan leading a ragtag circus on a sprawling North America tour. In Travelin’ Thru, we have Dylan in Nashville, in the late ’60s, recording John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait, working with a stellar band of Nashville cats and with Bob Johnston, the famed, maverick producer who first brought…

The Electric Banana ★★★ The Complete De Wolfe Sessions GRAPEFRUIT. CD Or, when The Pretty Things made library music for TV and film (Dr Who! Norman Wisdom!), under a pseudonym. Three late-‘60s LPs of light beat with brass, hard rock and wah wah psych. Unusual. IH Various ★★★★ Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures Volume 5 KENT SOUL. CD Fifteen years after his death, Godin delivers another 25 ballads of pain, heartache and pleading that’ll also uplift. Familiars (Gladys Knight, James Carr) are for once upstaged by Judy White, Dee Dee Warwick and Carolyn Sullivan’s stark Dead! GB Various ★★★ Go Mod! The Anthology CHARLY. LP This 16-track double vinyl gatefold-sleeved snapshot spanning 1957 to ’67 is aimed at beginners with a tracklisting weighted towards the big hitters; Green Onions, Night…

Just missing the cut is Will Powers’ Dancing For Mental Health, the 1983 satirical self-help album devised by photographer Lynn Goldsmith. Winwood co-wrote half of the eight songs, contributed keyboards and guitar, and helped to create the stripped-down New York City synth-funk sound that fellow collaborator Nile Rodgers said helped to define the pop sound for the next few years. The best live overview is 2017’s Greatest Hits Live. Documentary-wise, the BBC’s English Soul is available on YouTube, while the Traffic Live At Santa Monica 1972 DVD (Cherry Red) is steep but amazing. The most recent and thorough biography is John Van der Kiste’s While You See A Chance (Fonthill, 2018).…

Richard Thompson Royal Albert Hall, London AT HIS 70th birthday party, it is as hard as ever to fault Richard Thompson’s manners. He has invited a multitude of friends and family to help him celebrate, and each of them are granted an extended moment for themselves. Even when you’re one of the greatest guitarists and songwriters of the past 50 years, it still seems rather bad form to upstage the guests. So it is that this tribute show becomes a showcase for Richard Thompson’s self-effacement as much as his genius. Over three and a half hours and 34 songs, he cedes the spotlight to an eccentric and illustrious glut of collaborators: David Gilmour, Bob Mould, Loudon Wainwright III, Derek Smalls, Hugh Cornwell, Maddy Prior, assorted Carthys and Watersons and, of…

1 TEARS LOVE’S EASY COCTEAU TWINS 4AD 2 THINK MINUTE FOR THE A HOUSEMARTINS GO! DISCS 3 STATE NATION OFNEW THE ORDER FACTORY 4 ROUGH ASK THE TRADE SMITHS 5 DICKIE DAVIES EYES HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT PROBE PLUS 6 STUPID REALLY THE PRIMITIVES LAZY 7 SHIT SMELLS MIX LIKE… ALIEN SEX FIEND ANAGRAM/CHERRY RED 8 HANG THE SOUP -TEN! DRAGONS RAW TV 9 SESSIONS THE PEEL NEW ORDER STRANGE FRUIT 10 RED CUT LORRY DOWN YELLOW LORRY RED RHINO…

INDEPENDENT PURVEYORS of fine, Nobel-winning publications since 1929, Faber & Faber’s music division, Faber Social, has released volumes no serious reader can ignore. These include such memoirs and band biographies as: Viv Albertine’s To Throw Away Unopened and Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys; Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz’s Beastie Boys Book; Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt’s All Gates Open: The Story Of Can; Kim Gordon’s Girl In A Band; Jeff Tweedy’s Let’s Go (So We Can Go Back); Cosey Fanni Tutti’s Art Sex Music and Mick Houghton’s Fried & Justified, plus works about Prince, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, Tom Waits, and more! One lucky reader will win 25 of these covetable editions, so get in the game by completing Six Million Dollar Dellar’s crossword, and send…

HELLO SEPTEMBER 1978 It was my first day at Birmingham Poly’s college of art. I didn’t even do art at school but I’d taken some photographs and maybe they thought I would liven the place up a bit. I was wearing a pair of dress trousers and this crazy woman’s jacket and some winkle-picker boots, and I realised I was walking behind the guitarist from [local band] Dada, and the drummer from TV Eye and The Prefects [David Twist]. I couldn’t believe it – people from actual bands! People I would have been far too scared to talk to at The Crown or The Golden Eagle. “I thought it had been an absolute triumph.”STEPHEN DUFFY I didn’t talk to them the first day or the second day. But a couple…

“IT’S NOT my place to explain what we do collectively,” Madness voice Suggs told MOJO three years ago. “But if we did a book there’d almost have to be an explicit agreement that we’d all speak about it completely and utterly honestly… that’s why people write their autobiographies when they’re old – you can just say what fucking happened, ’cos half the people are dead, the others don’t fucking care any more and the rest just like to be mentioned!” That book is now with us. Before We Was We finds all seven members reflecting on the truths, travails and larks of their formative years, their early days as The Invaders and miracle year 1979, when they became part of the British pop landscape. It’s a Hogarthian tableau of a…

1 LEONARD COHEN THE GOAL  A haunting minute of solo piano, Spanish guitars, that unmistakable gravelled voice: Leonard’s first posthumous song from the Thanks For The Dance album tells us, “the goal falls short of the reach.” Find it: YouTube 2 LUCY DACUS DANCING IN THE DARK  Located, the female in Bruce’s hymn to disaffection. Her smooth diction’s not like his anguish, but it’s still heartful, invigorating. Find it: streaming services 3 DRY CLEANING VIKING HAIR Scrabbly post-punk mixes art school humours, tedium and something more. From the Boundary Road Snacks And Drinks EP. Find it: YouTube 4 BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN  Anaïs Mitchell and a gang of National/Bon Iver outriders make spectral capital out of a Napoleonic War-era English…

In the midst of so much psychedelic activity, the lyrics of the Grateful Dead often went unnoticed by casual listeners. To their fans, however, Dead songs were more folk fables than cosmic fantasias; frontier narratives about outlaws and gamblers that brought myth and heft to the band’s radical Americana. The chief architect of all this was Robert Hunter, the band’s main lyricist. An accomplished musician, Hunter formed a bluegrass duo with Jerry Garcia as early as 1961, but never played live with the Dead. Instead, after LSD tests for the CIA, Scientology, amphetamine addiction and exile in New Mexico, he reconnected with Garcia and became his enduring writing partner, articulating the band’s sepia-tinted vision. Hunter also collaborated with Bob Dylan and released 10 solo albums, even as he became more…

FROM OUTSIDE, BLACK AS PITCH STUDIO looks anonymous: the garage annex to a 1920s Spanish-style house in the northern Los Angeles satellite of Glendale. The only hint of otherworldly activity is fixed to the side entrance: a large door knocker with a baby demon clamped in the grinning jaws of a bearded horned devil. Inside sits Mark Lanegan, grinning and bearded, but far from the diabolic figure that cut a punchy, druggy path through ’90s grunge as singer in Screaming Trees, then supplied growl and gravitas to Queens Of The Stone Age, after Josh Homme became the Trees’ rhythm guitarist in 1996. The room teems with books, paintings, and photographs: of David Bowie, William S. Burroughs, Sid Vicious – resonant subjects for a man whose quest for truth has often…

SOON AFTER SOUNDCHECK ON A hot July Sunday afternoon, Betty Wright sits in the bowels of London’s Barbican arts complex, dyed red hair tied back while her face is lightly brushed with make-up. Dressed in black sweater and slacks, she holds herself erect. Later, she will be resplendent in spangled dress and cape, the latter discarded as she channels pain and joy in soul ballads and funky R&B originals. There is humour, too, on-stage and in conversation, tempered by the harder realities of a lifetime in the business. As hubbub rises backstage, she shouts for quiet while she’s being interviewed. These days, she expects to be heard. It wasn’t always so. “Because of my age, I think a lot of it was… not even being taken advantage of,” she sighs,…

DEBORAH HARRY WALKS INTO THE ROOM AS IF LITTLE HAS changed since 1976. It is a typical mid-summer day in New York City, gruesomely hot and sultry, and the production office at SIR Studios is a tiny, claustrophobic mess. But the singer and defining face of Blondie takes a seat with cool, natural glamour: at once playfully girlish and regally minimalist, dressed entirely in queen-of-the-night black except for a shocking-pink baseball cap. Harry is partly hiding behind large, tinted sunglasses, and her namesake hair is now a more sandy shade of sunlight. But whenever a smile spreads across her broad, distinctive features or her eyes light up with challenge, the effect is immediate and familiar. Just turned 74, Harry is still a beautiful and commanding presence – with a deep…

(from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1969) January 1969. Slouchy LA band The Rockets have been inducted into Neil Young’s world, renamed Crazy Horse, and hit on a primordial throb that serves them and their boss, on and off, for the next 50 years. First, they observe the last rites of their old life via a spectral folk song, with a starring role for a Rocket who didn’t get a regular gig with Young, fiddler Bobby Notkoff. “These guys didn’t act like they were in the studio,” recalled producer David Briggs of that first session. “They acted like it was the end of the world.” (from Live At The Fillmore East, recorded 1970, released 2006) The quintessential Crazy Horse jam, written while Young was consumed with a 103 degree fever,…

• June 24, 2017 saw ELO play Wembley Stadium: so big a deal Jeff Lynne wrote a song about it on his new album. As well as the sights and sounds of “60,000 rocking out”, Time Of Our Life mentions Jeff talking to “my friend Phil”. This is only the latest cameo in the Jeff Lynne story for Phil Hatton, a Birmingham musician who’s been Jeff’s personal assistant for many years,a role that’s involved him in stellar Lynne productions for the likes of Roy Orbison, George Harrison, The Traveling Wilburys and The Beatles’ Anthology. “I’ve known Phil since he was about 14,” says Jeff. “He’s just a great guy.”…

SCOTLAND Assai Records 33 Union Street Dundee DD1 4 BS 01382 205671 1 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh EH3 9AT 0131 228 3943 Europa Music 10 Friars Street, Stirling FK8 1HA 01786 448623 Mo Fidelity 126 Murray Street Montrose, DD10 9JG 07870 491240 NORTH WEST 81 Renshaw Street Liverpool L1 2SJ 01517071850 Action 47 Church St, Preston PR1 3DH 01772 884 772 / www. action-records.co.uk Five Rise Records 30c Park Road Bingley, West Yorks BD16 4QF 01274 512867 Grind and Groove Records 58 Cavendish Street, Keighley BD21 3RL 07483 156867 Piccadilly Records 53 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JR 0161 839 8008 Vinyl Cafe 44 Abbey St, Carlisle CA3 8TX 01228 522845 X Records 44 Bridge St, Bolton BL1 2EG 01204 384579 TNT Records Ltd 86 Duke St Barrow in Furness Cumbria LA14…

• Over half a century ago, maverick record producer Bob Johnston (above left) lured Dylan to Nashville, and Dylan kept coming back. For John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline (1969) Johnston brought in country session men like Charlie McCoy, Kenneth Buttrey, Pete Drake, Bob Wilson, Norman Blake and Charlie Daniels. He also arranged for Dylan and Johnny Cash to go in the studio together. “They got their guitars, tuned them and we started requesting songs,” Johnston told this author in 2002. “Two and a half hours later Dylan said, ‘We’re finished.’ We sat around and heard it and I said, Well, that will never happen again.”…

The Storm Won’t Come / Tobacco Road (with Hugh Cornwell) / Peaches (Cornwell) / The Most Beautiful Girl In Hollywood (Cornwell) / Blues In A Bottle (Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks) / Jack O’Diamonds (Hutchings, Mattacks) / Down Where The Drunkards Roll (Dave Pegg) / Turning Of The Tide (Bob Mould) / If I Can't Change Your Mind (Mould) / Withered And Died (Kate Rusby, Danny Thompson) / As The Lights Go Out (Rusby) / The Bonnie Lass O’Fyvie (Marc Ellington) / Turtle Dove (Martin Carthy) / Fine Horseman (Marry Waterson, Carthy) / The Great Valerio (Eliza Carthy) / Hug You Like A Mountain (Eliza Carthy) / Beeswing (Alistair Anderson) / Madame Bonaparte (Anderson) / Persuasion (Teddy Thompson) / Ghosts In The Wind (Danny Thompson, Mattacks, Christine Collister) / Sweetheart On…

Stuart A. Staples VOICE OF TINDERSTICKS What music are you currently grooving to? Mac Miller’s Swimming. It’s a great piece of work, obviously tinged with sadness, but it doesn’t make it better because he died so young. The composition, the depth, the feeling – there’s a real joyousness in that creativity. I’m trying to extricate myself, but my wife likes it. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Nina Simone’s Wild Is The Wind. She kept it so minimal, though she could do everything. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Showaddywaddy’s Under The Moon Of Love, from a shop called Simons in Gedling in Nottingham. I don’t know if I was a fan, but I was glued to…

…having left the set of the new James Bond film because she considered her cameo too short, GRACE JONES (right) is back in the studio, promising, “Something wicked this way comes”… AIR’s Nicolas Godin is preparing a concept piece saluting architectural greats including Le Corbusier, Konstantin Melnikov and John Lautner. Guests include Alexis Taylor, Cola Boyy and Kadhja Bonet: “I took enormous easure in getting out my vocoder for four of the tracks,” adds Nicolas… Joey Molland of BADFINGER is recording a new long-player, promising songs that, “harken back to that powerpop/rock sound I began my career with” …those heroes of Brit-funk LIGHT OF THE WORLD are crowdfunding a new album with the noble aim to “continue to keep the spirit of Jazz Funk music alive” … last month GUNS…

“Well you know, it’s hard to pick one. I had a couple of records that did that. I was playing the drums aged 10 to Queen’s Live Killers and Adam & The Ants’ Kings Of The Wild Frontier, and I loved the Jackson 5 when I was younger. Also, Abbey Road is my favourite Beatles album, but I love Help! too. But, and I know it sounds so stupid and I wanna sound smart and pick The Velvet Underground or something way more cooler, really it’s obvious – it’s The Beatles’ Red and Blue greatest hits. When John Lennon died in 1980 they put them out. I’d sit listening to them on my little cheap record player, at home in Laguna Beach. I was eight – the Red one [’62-66]…

“I WAS never in anyone’s band – I was always the first member,” Ric Ocasek stated one afternoon in 2011, speaking with his signature reserve: in a soft, hypnotising cadence, often on the verge of inaudible but lined with an unmistakable, steely authority. The founding singer-guitarist and ruling songwriter of The Cars, America’s biggest hit machine of the new wave era, was recalling his long years of research and design preceding that Boston-born band’s live debut on New Year’s Eve, 1976 at an Air Force base in New Hampshire. There had been a long parade of ambitious and failed combos: Milkwood, Richard And The Rabbits, Cap’n Swing, to name three, all including loyal singer-bassist Benjamin Orr but formed to Ocasek’s strict specifications. “They always had to do my songs,” he…

1 Teenage kicks: the young Mark Lanegan. 2 Dogs of war: Screaming Trees backstage at Fulham Greyhound, February 21, 1990, (from left) Mark Lanegan, Van Conner, Sean Hollister, Gary Lee Conner. 3 Field music: the Trees’ final touring line-up, 1996 (from left) Lee Conner, Josh Homme, Lanegan, Van Conner, Barrett Martin. 4 Blood brothers: Lanegan and Greg Dulli, AKA The Gutter Twins, ready to plumb the depths, 2008. 5 Sunday morning coming down: Isobel Campbell takes Mark for a walk in the country, 2008. 6 Deaf school: Queens Of The Stone Age, 2002 (from left) Dave Grohl, Troy Van Leeuwen, Nick Oliveri, Josh Homme, Mark Lanegan. 7 I am the wolf: Lanegan on-stage in Oslo, November 14, 2017. 8 Lanegan with (from left) Laetitia Sadier, John Cale and Anja Plaschg…

Hard To Stop (Alston, 1973) Hard to credit that Wright is still in her teens as she warns of no good men (title track) or predatory women (Baby Sitter, Gimme Back My Man) to funky Southern soul grooves and the catchy pop aim of Sweet Wonder. Highlight of Wright’s first stage. Live (Alston, 1978) A convincing live singer whose raps are liberally laced with humour, BW here gives later period favourite Tonight Is The Night, the disco-paced Where Is The Love, a 100mph Lovin’ Is Really My Game and a medley showing off amusing skills as an impersonator. Mother Wit (Ms. B, 1987) Breaking free to set up her own label, Wright mixed slinky ’80s dancers (Ms. Time; Miami Groove) with trademark slices of emotional life (No Pain (No Gain),…

ON A HIGH RIDGE IN DEEPEST WEST Wales, up a tangle of lanes, past rusting machinery, felled trees and quarries, sits the hamlet of Penboyr. Here, in a stone-fronted cottage set back from the road, a retired couple are about to take their dog for a walk – a bold move as the autumn weather is threatening wildness. Their daughter is making coffee in the kitchen and finding the biscuits, before she hugs them goodbye, and we settle into the small, stone-walled living room. “Two days being looked after,” says Cate Le Bon, smiling. “It’s been a treat.” Le Bon grew up here, and has returned to visit family – a brief 48-hour window between festival appearances and recording sessions in Paris and the US. Outside, it’s bleakly beautiful, not…

“LOU REED MAKES NO BIG DEAL OF THE STORIES HE’S TELLING. THERE’S NO JUDGMENT.” Ezra Furman CANDY SAYS (from The Velvet Underground, 1969) anohni: Candy Says reveals Lou’s understanding of the outsider experience. I sang it as the encore every night on the Raven tour [2002] with him, and it was his vehicle for introducing me as a singer to his audiences around the world. Singing Candy Says with Lou accompanying me on the guitar was always a monumental experience. “Candy says I’ve come to hate my body and all it requires in this world”: the line could be read specifically as a recognition of body dysmorphia, or drug addiction, but ultimately I think it resonated with Lou in a more wide-ranging existential way. The song is very, very…

DEBBIE IS: A coy but perilous vamp CATALOGUE NOTE: Some good technique here. Background is interestingly textured, and there’s lots of character in the subject’s attitude. If only ooked more like Debbie Harry. DEBBIE IS: A ubist fantasy CATALOGUE NOTE: There’s a ivid ‘outsider art’ spect to this ortrait, with arry reduced to ormal elements f hair, mouth nd, of course, yes – which, lightly unsetlingly, follow you around the room. MOJO’s favourite, by a short head. DEBBIE IS: A cheesecake fetish item CATALOGUE NOTE: A knowing pastiche in the softcore style of more innocent times. Although the shadowing around the eyes suggests something of the Undead. Hmmm. DEBBIE IS: An angry sunflower CATALOGUE NOTE: Vivid and enthusiastic use of the colour yellow; the fingers on the left hand (never…

“I grew up on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere after smoking some great weed back in ‘69 in high school when that came out. I listened to After The Gold Rush, I listened to Harvest, but I didn’t pay attention to those. I was into the rock’n’roll, the two electric guitars, drums and bass. David Briggs, Neil’s dear friend and long-time producer, brought me under his wing [as a recording engineer]. I worked with David first on Trans remixes in ’82, ’83. Never met Neil. But I knew someday I’d get that call if David and Neil started out a new record, and in 1990 I got that call and we went up there to the ranch [Broken Arrow, south-west of San Jose, CA] in April to make Ragged Glory.…

There was a 15-year gap between the previous two ELO albums, but this one comes just four years after Alone In The Universe – why the sudden creative surge? “I think it must have something to do with me enjoying playing live again. It’s been fantastic. I’ve had more fun these last five years doing music than I ever had before, in the old days of touring. It’s so much fun to tour now because everything sounds so much better. We’ve got the right equipment, we’ve got a nice 13-piece band and they’re all great musicians. I’m just chuffed to be in the band, really!” How did the album come about? “Well, the record company asked me to do one. I was working on it in 2018, before we went…

Black Marble ★★★★ Bigger Than Life SACRED BONES. CD/DL/LP A New Yorker moved to LA, Chris Stewart’s third BM album parlays those new horizons into a full-contrast, happy-sad electronic pop record. With swaying synths, popping drums, synth melodies and wistful lyrics, it’s Depeche Mode for the juicing era. JB Common Holly ★★★★ When I Say To You Black Lightning DALLIANCE RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP Montreal’s Brigitte Naggar probes relationship politics in a voice that’s confiding, emotive, yet detached enough to be observational. Her second LP is all restrained, subtly shifting post-grunge dynamics. Highly engaging. JB Rachael Dadd ★★★★ Flux MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES. CD/DL/LP A This Is The Kit associate pushing similar emotional buttons with her precise vocal melodies, there’s a hint of Wicker Man weird in Dadd’s elemental acoustic daydreams. Palaeontologist ponders: “Was…

www.vinylwhistle.co.ukEmail: thevinylwhistleshop@ gmail.com Twitter: @whistle_shop Instagram: vinylwhistle Tel: 0113 426 0588 39 Otley Road, Headingley, Leeds, LS6 3AB Located in the heart of Headingley, approx. 10 minutes drive from Leeds city centre, The Vinyl Whistle opened its doors to music and vinyl lovers for the first time in July 2019. The store buys and sells a wide variety of new, used and collectable vinyl, encompassing all genres and prides itself on its especially impressive indie/Manchester scene collection. Offering fresh, award-winning coffee and vegan, home-made cakes in a relaxed setting, The Vinyl Whistle is a must-visit destination when searching for vinyl in Leeds.…

WHEN STEVE Winwood released his second solo album, Arc Of A Diver, on New Year’s Eve 1980, he was just 32 years old and already a music industry veteran of more than 20 years standing. Raised amidst the suburban greenery of Birmingham’s Perry Barr, by an extended family of performers and a father who was a part-time bandleader and saxophonist, Winwood was a prodigy, a shy and reserved child who could literally play any instrument he wanted – saxophone, piano, mandolin, guitar, trumpet – and copy any tune he heard, whether it be Bach, Oscar Peterson or Wesleyan hymns. After the 12-year-old Steve started playing upright piano in his older brother Mervyn ‘Muff’ Winwood’s jazz band, he also discovered Ray Charles and, in Muff’s words, “became a soul singer overnight”,…

The Black Keys Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles IN A DRESSING room in an Art Deco theatre on the opening night of the Let’s Rock tour – The Black Keys’ first show in four years – Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach are explaining to MOJO why they split. The short answer: touring. “Going out for years and years, from when you’re young, and then crossing into your mid-thirties, you just feel like your life is fucking getting sucked out of you,” Carney says. “You have to stop,” Dan Auerbach agrees. “We’ve got to have a nice balance where we’re able to create music at least twice as much as we’re on the road – that’s sort of the equation. And when we create music, we’re also able to be home and…

MARC NARKED  1 Marc Almond (above left) hits out at Radio 1 for what he claims is an official blacklisting of his new single Ruby Red. “They’ve called me an unsavoury character,” he says. BRAGG NICKED  2 Billy Bragg is arrested and charged with cutting the wire around a nuclear bunker near Norwich. He is one of 600 arrested on the same day, many of whom had trespassed at US bases. RIP TRACY  7 Tracy Pew, bassist with The Birthday Party and later The Saints and briefly The Bad Seeds, dies from a brain haemorrhage. He is 28 years old. MARR HURT  14 The Smiths cancel their set at an Anti-Apartheid concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall after Johnny Marr is injured in a serious road accident in Manchester. FREAK…

I recently discovered the rock band Help Yourself (which had a strong link with Man). I was amazed to realise that the title of their album The Return Of Ken Whaley comes from the name of their bass player coming back to the fold. Are there other examples of bands quoting their own members’ names in songs or album’s names? Apart from the obvious Ballad Of John And Yoko. Vincent Prieux, Lyon, France Fred Says: Name-checking band members in song titles was quite prevalent in the era of jazz and swing. In 1936, for instance, Duke Ellington offered Concerto For Cootie for his trumpeter Cootie Williams; in 1950 Stan Kenton saluted his players with sides titled Maynard Ferguson, June Christy, Art Pepper and Shelly Manne; and later still Miles Davis…