Tabla de contenidos para August 2021 en MOJO

Dr Jennifer Otter Bickerdike The author of Why Vinyl Matters, Jennifer’s Rock N Roll Confidential podcast starts in August, with guests including Johnny Marr, Blake Schwarzenbach and Will Sergeant. From California, she now lives in London with husband James and dog Alfie. Her new book about Nico is extracted from p52. Andy Fyfe The first time Kiwi native Fyfe interviewed Crowded House was for NME in 1994, just three weeks after Paul Hester had left the group. After moving to the UK in 1988, Andy worked on the staff at NME, Select and then Q, and has contributed to MOJO since 2005. In this issue, he reconnects with Neil Finn & Co from p32. Jim Herrington Jim has photographed the greats, near-misses and never-weres of the music/celebrity world for decades,…

E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk ON APRIL 7, FRED DELLAR SUBMITTED his crossword for MOJO, as he had done every month for over 20 years. It was, as ever, a small masterpiece of cunning, playfulness and immense musical wisdom: a place where Earl Scruggs and Earl Sweatshirt could share a clue, where Bob Lind, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ramsey Lewis and Anthrax all had a part to play, and Dusty Springfield was always welcome. It has proved, though, to be Fred’s final crossword. Sadly, this most trusted and beloved of MOJO stalwarts passed away on May 15, a fortnight before his 90th birthday. As so many of you will know, Fred has been a critical part of MOJO for most of our existence: curator of Time Machine, infallible fount of knowledge on the Ask…

The Good Earth Swinging London (SAGA, 1968) Before hippy wigs in Woolies, a bilious Carnaby Street knock-off on Marcel Rodd’s attitude-over-budget label provides campery and naffness galore. The Good Earth later birthed Mungo Jerry, but calling the last tune Unwashed, Unwanted was tempting fate. Various Jack The Tab (CASTALIA RECORDINGS, 1988) Hedging its bets with the subtitle “Original UK Acid Dance Freakbeats,” naughty Genesis P-Orridge and Richard Norris present their idea of acid house (trippy voice samples, funky breakbeats) without, it seems, having heard any actual acid house. The Charlie Parkas The Ballad Of Robin Hood (PARANOID PLASTICS, 1980) Complete with bogus 2-Tone sleeve, this ska version of the TV theme sung by ex-Cricklewood Palais star Dick James was actually by Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias singing in questionable accents.…

“CALLING SOMETHING Sufi can lead to misunderstanding,” warns Arooj Aftab down the line from her home in Brooklyn, keen to move on from the “ambient neo-Sufi” tag given to her 2015 debut, Bird Under Water. So what do you do when your sound is distinctly sui generis, the deceptive complexity of Terry Riley snuggling up to the soulful passion of Abida Parveen, the ethereal lighting of Elizabeth Fraser captured in the same bottle as the pastoral Nick Drake? “It’s minimal with repetitive structures,” she explains. “A peaceful, love-oriented, intoxication music.” Born in Saudi Arabia, Aftab was raised in Lahore, where she had a few cover versions go viral. “I quickly realised I didn’t have the skills or resources. I had a bigger vision and I had to pursue it, leave…

GARAGE GUMPTION The Moving Sidewalks The Complete Collection ★★★★ ROCKBEAT, 2012 The teenage Gibbons christened his ‘66-68 combo in the spirit of The 13th Floor Elevators: “If they were going up, I was going further.” This 2-CD box presents that freaked-out mission in its entirety, including a thoroughly unhinged whack at The Beatles’ I Want To Hold Your Hand and a 1968 LP, Flash, with Gibbons pointing the way to his next band in Joe Blues. SMALL BEARD BOOGIE ZZ Top Tres Hombres ★★★★ LONDON, 1973 After two albums of straightforward licks, the songwriting kicks in on ZZ’s first gold record: Gibbons’ frantic-telegraph riff in Waitin’ For The Bus; the elliptical slither of Jesus Just Left Chicago. Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers is an anthemic call to arena fun. But…

PEERING AT THE HIPSTERS AROUND THE SWIMMING POOL AT THE DIVE MOTEL, a refashioned 1950s-era motor lodge in east Nashville, Yola looks like a visiting Romulan ambassador. The bright May day illuminates her green, yellow and black striped dress, lavender-tinged tresses and two angular slashes of electric green eye shadow. As we step into one of the hotel’s kitschy rooms for our interview, it turns out that the topic of Star Trek is not only a quick path to the 37-year-old singer’s heart, but a good frame for understanding her music. “I grew up on Star Trek: Next Gen,” she says. “I just love the Data character, his relationship with everyone and the quest for what is humanity and human nature. Science fiction and art ask the big questions.” And…

FAMILY ★★★★ Music In A Doll’s House (Reprise, 1968) A Brit-psych classic, establishing the band as unusual, inventive writers and their singer as a one-off who could do sinister, stirring or soulful as the fancy took him. Comes with strings arranged by a young Mike Batt (his first gig) and a cameo from Brit jazz legend Tubby Hayes. FAMILY ★★★★★ Family Entertainment (Reprise, 1969) Opening with the meandering folk-jazz of The Weaver’s Answer, some argue this record is the birthplace of progressive rock, such is the invention and vision on show in unusual songs by Chapman, Whitney and soon-to-depart bass, violin and voice man Ric Grech, each track bang on trend and trying something new with the form. FAMILY ★★★★ Bandstand (Reprise, 1972) Still refusing to do what’s expected, Family…

The Velvet underground & Nico ★★★★★ The Velvet underground & Nico (Verve, 1967) While the Velvets would quickly resent Andy Warhol for foisting Nico on them, it’s impossible to imagine the band’s epochal debut without the extra chill, shadow and unAmerican otherness she brought to it. And beyond all its other qualities, All Tomorrow’s Parties’ meld of baroque and drones would provide a path for all Nico’s best subsequent work. Nico ★★★ Chelsea Girl (Verve, 1967) She would disown the arrangements (especially the flutes) but there’s not a lot wrong with her solo debut: good songs (especially Jackson Browne’s These Days, debuting here, and Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With Mine); tasteful orchestrations; plus Nico’s inimitable graveyard tones, at their lugubrious best on Tim Hardin’s Eulogy To Lenny Bruce. Nico ★★★★…

TEARS DRY ON THEIR OWN (Back To Black, 2006) Constructed around Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – here, more statement of pure abjection than declaration of love’s all-conquering power – this beautiful study in romantic hopelessness unfolds in the Hopper-like “blue shade” of a hotel room. “He walks away, the sun goes down” – it’s a relationship’s final frame on endless repeat. I HEARD LOVE IS BLIND (Frank, 2003) There’s a filthy, flirty Sands Hotel playfulness to this role-reversing revenge fantasy, an all-cats-are-grey apology for infidelity that sees Winehouse argue she only slept with another man because he resembled her boyfriend: “He’s just not as tall but I couldn’t tell/It was dark and I was lying down.” IN MY BED (Frank, 2003) Another Frank power move, this track separates love…

What was your aim for Private Space? “To expand our horizons and establish a sound that felt timeless, rather than retro. The band’s communal Spotify playlist, ‘Indications Inspirations’, used to feature Little Anthony And The Imperials, Sam Cooke, The Shirelles – vocal groups and sweet soul stuff. But while we were working on Private Space, it was all disco, ‘bedroom R&B’ and cats doing really cool stuff today. We wanted to discover new things about ourselves.” Is the song-title Private Space an allusion to lockdown? “It’s one of a handful of songs we began in late 2019, and it was about being with someone in a crowded place but seeing only them in the room and, like, really wanting to get them out of there so you can get it…

★★★★ Animal CHRYSALIS/PARTISAN. CD/DL/LP Curious meeting of minds’ second musical hybrid. NEWLY DISCOVERED creatures tend to lurk at the unassuming end of the miracle-of-life spectrum: barnacles, moths, lungfish. Animal, the striking second collaboration between Laura Marling and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay – is a more dramatic fusion of musical DNA, a synthetic cryptid apparently hothoused under some sinister green light. There are modular Moogs and clarinet, post-punk chill and horror-film creep; Phantom Limb smears Lambchop and Young Marble Giants on the same slide; Paradise sounds like a girl-group made up of John Carpenters. It’s an evolution that particularly suits Marling, giving her words and voice a lab-coated coolness, opaque yet urgent lyrics – “We have some work to do,” for example – delivered with high seriousness. There’s a slight hollowness in…

Satomimagae ★★★★ Hanazono RVNG INTL. CD/DL/LP A garden where we feel secure, flowering in urban Tokyo. PART OF Tokyo’s long-standing acid-folk scene, Satomimagae has been writing music since 2003, but only recording for the past decade. Although her sound betrays certain debts to Japanese ‘new music’ of the early ’70s, releases such as 2014’s Koko and 2017’s Kemri were less about nostalgia than ghosts, the guileless ‘beautiful young generation’ sound filtered through age, history, sadness and decay. Hanazano, which translates as “flower garden”, feels somewhat different. The ghosts are still there, but Satomimagae’s landscapes now feel more secure, empathetic, and hypnotic, conjuring up sounds akin to the spectral northwestern folk sound of Liz Harris’s Grouper or Jesy Fortino’s Tiny Vipers. A first listen might be all about surfaces and textures…

Laura Nyro ★★★★★ American Dreamer MADFISH/SNAPPER MUSIC. LP ON MR BLUE (Song Of Communications), the opening track of her 1978 album Nested, Laura Nyro reports a phone conversation with a lover. “He said, ‘Sweetheart, look, you know what happens when we get together/I mean I’ve heard of liberation, but sweetheart – you’re in outer space.’” Too free, too untethered, too much – it was the kind of accusation that followed Nyro for most of her life. “If anybody could be miscast, it’s me,” she said in a 1970 interview with Bessie Smith biographer Chris Albertson. “That’s been my problem, because if you put my music in the wrong place, it becomes a freak.” Finding the right place for her music – and for Nyro herself – has never been a…

Recently-released Seeking New Gods is the seventh Gruff Rhys album, yet all his erstwhile bandmates enjoy extracurricular activity too. Cian Ciaran has four albums under his own name, and together with Dafydd Ieuan has composed several TV soundtracks, winning a BAFTA Cymru award in 2011. Ieuan is a member of The Peth, fronted by former SFA singer Rhys Ifans and including Guto Pryce, and has also released two LPs in The Earth, featuring Catatonia guitarist Mark Roberts. Pryce is one half of Gulp, alongside his partner Lindsay Leven, the couple releasing two albums of cinematic dreampop. Huw Bunford, meanwhile, was in Pale Blue Dots and has composed music for films. In 2020, SFA sans Gruff released the debut Das Koolies single, It’s All About The Dolphins.…

PRODUCER, bassist and guitarist COUNT DUBULAH (b.Nick Page, 1960, below) first came to prominence as part of techno fusionists Transglobal Underground in the early ’90s. His other projects included Temple Of Sound, the Ethiopian/Jamaican soundclash Dub Colossus and further explorations of the musics of Syria, Greece and beyond. Writing in tribute, Peter Gabriel spoke of Page possessing “warmth, a generous musicality and a really original intelligence.” STAFFORDSHIRE DRUMMER JOHN HINCH (b.1947) played in bands including The Pinch, Bakerloo Blues Line and Hiroshima, the latter with vocalist Rob Halford. The two later joined Brum metallers Judas Priest. Hinch played on the band’s 1974 debut Rocka Rolla, but left the group after that album’s tour, later working in management with acts including Fashion, The Bureau and Uli Jon Roth. CHARLESTON, South Carolina…

BEEP, BEEP, NO 1 John Lennon crashes his Austin Maxi into a ditch while on holiday in the Scottish Highlands with Yoko Ono and their respective kids (all above). Stitches are required. On July 9 he rejoins the rest of The Beatles in London to resume recording Abbey Road. GOODBYE, BRIAN 3 Brian Jones, who was dismissed from The Rolling Stones in June, is found dead at his farmhouse in East Sussex. Two days later the Stones dedicate their free concert at Hyde Park to him: Pete Townshend and Jim Morrison both publish poems in Jones’s memory. MOST PECULIAR 11 David Bowie’s Space Oddity is released in time for the moon landings. It will become a UK Number 5 hit in November, taking until April ‘73 to reach US Number…

FRED DELLAR’S crossword should be on this page. Until recently, he would also be hosting the Time Machine and Ask Fred sections, as well as sharing his expertise and taste as a reviewer. Each contribution was essential, as a lifetime of curation, data-gathering and enthusiasm came together in words guaranteed to inform and entertain. Sadly, Fred left us on May 15, just two weeks shy of his 90th birthday. Born on May 29, 1931 in Willesden, north-west London, he recalled of his youth, “I spent all of my pre-teen years in a fish and chip shop – right up to the moment when a German bomb blew the roof off our Earlsfield establishment.” Called up to do his national service in 1950, he was posted to Bomber Command Headquarters at…

“CAN YOU hear me?” says Stranglers bassist JJ Burnel from his home in the south of France. “I’m outside and the mistral is blowing…” He should be in the UK to put the finishing touches to The Stranglers’ 18th LP Dark Matters, but a positive coronavirus test forced a U-turn en route to the ferry in early May. “I had no symptoms,” he says. “Was it a false positive? Was I immune? Or just god-like, ha ha!” As is common in The Stranglers’ world, levity touches on more serious matters. Dave Greenfield, the group’s keyboardist since 1975, played on eight of the 11 songs before succumbing to Covid on May 3, 2020. The recording sessions, which started in late 2018 and continued over the next six months, were for the…

OUT NEXT MONTH, Alice Coltrane’s Kirtan: Turiya Sings captures the godmother of spiritual jazz at the peak of her practice. Originally a private press cassette, elements of it were heard on The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the superb 2017 Luaka Bop comp which won new legions of admirers and was MOJO’s Reissue Of The Year. But this edition is something rarer still, and captures the Detroit jazz innovator’s unadorned original passes for the album: just her Wurlitzer and voice, put down live in one take. “It goes back to the sessions she played for her students each Sunday,” says producer Ravi Coltrane, her son, saxophonist and curator, “when the Wurlitzer became her primary voice.” Coltrane’s spirituality helped her overcome the trauma of losing her husband, bebop sax god…

Honky Tonk Angel (POLYDOR, 1972) A mind-expanding, slide-guitar driven take on funk, folk and jazz, with a killer version of Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home and choppy Stax funk workout Toe Hold. Charisma and technical virtuosity shine through. We The People (POLYDOR, 1973) Folky originals showcase her talent, covers of Jack Bruce show her versatility. Her unaccompanied Farther Along is spiritually sound, her take on Glenn Yarbrough’s wicky wacky folk Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven celestial. The Real Ellen McIlwaine (KOT’AI, 1975) Opening with her discombobulating take on Stevie’s Higher Ground, McIlwaine’s strongest LP also boasts covers of John Lee Hooker and Albert King. The originals, like Down So Low, are equal parts heart-rending and thrilling.…

1 THE SMILE WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS The surprise of Glastonbury’s livestream from May 22: Thom Yorke (above), Jonny Greenwood and Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner’s new band. Their intriguing set peaked with this Cure-esque glower. Find it: Twitter@thesmiletheband 2 THE BEACH BOYS BIG SUR Time to retire those old Landlocked bootlegs, as this serene Cali beatitude is officially release. From the Sunflower/Surf’s Up outtakes box set Feel Flows, released on July 30. Find it: streaming services 3 SHARON VAN ETTEN & ANGEL OLSEN LIKE I USED TO Alchemical results from this indie hook-up, as Springsteen meets late Abba’s epic pop theatre. Find it: YouTube 4 MOUSE RAT THE PIT The grunge revival starts here, with the debut from Pawnee, Indiana’s second-best band. Parks & Recreation fans will already know…

THE MYTHOLOGY IS SEDUCTIVE. TUNES CUT ON THE LAM – THE Rolling Stones “oiled up and running hot”, said guitarist Keith Richards later – in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. One of them tested live, less than a week later, at the Altamont Speedway show where the death knell of the ’60s rang. You couldn’t make it up. But this was December 1969, and only three songs – Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, You Gotta Move – came out of that storied session. Before it would finally emerge in April 1971, Sticky Fingers’ creation story would get far messier. That the Stones survived 1970 at all is remarkable enough. The extraction from manager Allen Klein came with a monster bill for deferred tax. Negotiations to establish their own record label under the umbrella…

Durand Jones & The Indications ★★★★ Private Space SECRETLY CANADIAN. CD/DL/LP IF THE PAST is indeed a foreign country, then Durand Jones & The Indications are such regular visitors that they no longer have to show their passports at immigration. Certainly, they’ve spent long enough there to have adopted the local customs and to be able to pass themselves off as natives. Forming almost a decade ago while students at Jacobs School Of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, Jones and his bandmates were united by a love for classic soul and R&B. Theirs was no casual, passing fancy. Their two previous albums, 2016’s self-titled debut and 2019’s American Love Call, reveal a painstaking ear for the vernacular and technique of the soul music of half-a-century ago. This ability is in part…

David Crosby ★★★★ For Free BMG. CD/DL/LP THERE MAY be no better measure of the long miles David Crosby has travelled in excess and survival than his reading on this album of Joni Mitchell’s title song. Originally on her 1970 LP Ladies Of The Canyon, For Free has been in Crosby’s live repertoire for nearly as long. A 1977 concert performance on Allies, a lacklustre 1983 album with Crosby, Stills and Nash, betrays its time: Crosby on the verge of his dark ages, shattering Mitchell’s crystalline waltz with exaggerated bravura. Here, Crosby delivers the revelation in that passing moment with a street musician – the distance between pure art and mere celebrity – as a pilgrim come home, in a warm, humbled tone with guest singer Sarah Jarosz and elegant,…

Various ★★★★ Changüí – The Sound Of Guantánamo PETALUMA. CD The sound of ungentrified old Cuba, direct from the fields and village squares. IT’S LIKE finding 50 rough, discarded demos for the Buena Vista Social Club: recorded in situ in the rural parts of the eastern province of Cuba, where back-breaking labour is interrupted by impromptu parties that last all weekend, this 3-CD box set, curated by journalist Gianluca Tramontana, is arguably the first in-depth survey of the folk music that gave birth to a revolution. You can feel the heat, the dust and the rum, but the real magic comes from the tres (the Cuban guitar, strung in three pairs, with a distinctive metallic twang) and percussion, the sort of lightning that needs to be captured as it happens,…

Amenra ★★★★ De Doorn RELAPSE. CD/DL/LP/MC Belgium’s hardcore crusaders’ seventh, with more moments of delicate beauty than before. Colin H Van Eeckhout’s spoken word confidences are offset by vocals from Oathbreaker’s Caro Tanghe, guitar/drum onslaughts and blood-curdling screams that peak on Ogentroost. Peace Flag Ensemble ★★★ Noteland WE ARE BUSY BODIES. DL/LP Keith Jarrett and Talk Talk vapours suffuse Saskatchewan jazz collective’s pastoral debut. Be it cascading Human Pyramid or pensive Presentism, bright trumpet and wilted sax punctuate Jon Neher’s piano improvs. Gemma Cullingford ★★★★ Let Me Speak OUTRÉ. CD/DL/LP Ode To Billy Joe retold in deadpan Sprechgesang set to a subatomic pulse is just one highlight on this solo debut from half of Norwich duo Sink Ya Teeth. See also: Wide Boys’ space pop, skewering far-right hate with sampled…

● According to Columbia label head Clive Davis, Laura Nyro was famous for asking session musicians and sound men for “blue” or “orange” sounds. You Don’t Love Me When I Cry, from New York Tendaberry, was, she said, “warm pale blue with a few white caps on it”. But it wasn’t just colours that drove her synaesthesia: while recording 1976’s Smile, she was once asked by co-producer/arranger Charlie Calello what she wanted a song to sound like. “Charlie,” she said after a moment’s thought, “I want it to be like my chair.”…

Bricolage ★★★★ Bricolage CREEPING BENT. CD/DL/LP Sole 2009 LP by Glasgow art school quartet who split on single The Waltzers’ release day (a sugary swirl of The La’s and ELO). Produced by Altered Images’ Stephen Lironi, wistful retro pop with skills to match smarts, ripe for rediscovery. JB Eboni Band ★★★ Eboni Band WE ARE BUSY BODIES. DL/LP This marriage of Motown and West Africa is intriguing in its potential but disappointing in reality. Five songs, produced by Art Stewart (Marvin Gaye, Rick James) with US and Ivory Coast musicians, range from generic party-time funk-disco (Sing A Happy Song) to lightly Afro-flavoured groovers. CP Rico ★★★★ Jama Rico 2-TONE. LP In 1982, the veteran Jamaican trombonist ignored fashion and cut no-fooling, vintagesounding jazzy-reggae and ska with Jamaican/British players including Tommy…

● Will Sergeant saw his first gig on May 13, 1972, at Liverpool Stadium. Along with mates Dave and Steve Mazenko and Steve’s girlfriend Pauline (“head to toe in cheesecloth and denim”), they see Status Quo supporting Slade. Other key Stadium gigs include Dr Feelgood and Sensational Alex Harvey Band. ● The Bunnymen’s music press debut was an early 1979 Sounds writers’ chart, where Andy Courtney cited a “private tape” song called World Shut Your Mouth. The Bunnymen had no such song and had recorded no such tape. Years later, Julian Cope used the title for a song of his own. ● Arriving for a gig in Leeds to find a Mini blocking the club’s load-in entrance, the Bunnymen bounce the car down the street. They later discover it belongs…

1 OH HAPPY DAY THE EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS BUDDAH 2 MENDOCINO SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET MERCURY 3 THE BALLAD OF JOHN AND YOKO THE BEATLES APPLE 4 AQUARIUS/ LET THE SUNSHINE IN (THE FLESH FAILURES) THE 5TH DIMENSION LIBERTY 5 HONKY TONK WOMEN THE ROLLING STONES DECCA 6 TOMORROW TOMORROW THE BEE GEES POLYDOR 7 GIVE PEACE A CHANCE PLASTIC ONO BAND APPLE 8 ISRAELITES DESMOND DEKKER & THE ACES EMBER 9 I WANT TO LIVE APHRODITE’S CHILD MERCURY 10 DIZZY TOMMY ROE STATESIDE…

Joan Armatrading SHE, HERSELF AND HER What music are you currently grooving to? I’m busy rehearsing so I’m listening to my own stuff. If I’m sitting about relaxing with friends I’ll play something classical – Beethoven, Purcell, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, you name ‘em, I’m gonna like ‘em. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? At the moment I’m really enjoying Kanye West’s Jesus Is King, in his religious phase. It’s a great album, but I wouldn’t say any album was my favourite of all time. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? I can’t remember the order, but I got a Free LP and the first Led Zeppelin album, I’d have been about 19. I loved Led Zeppelin, still…

…on receiving the eighth Woody Guthrie Prize in May, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN spoke of his debt to the folk giant and revealed, “We have a record coming out soon that’s set largely in the West” …“beats are rollin’” say THE PRODIGY (right) of their new LP …Ronald Isley has been working with DR DRE. It’s expected to be part of Dre’s long-awaited concept epic Detox, which was first announced on 2002 and was cancelled before rising again; other voices that’ve been linked to the project include Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Jay-Z …THE CULT are continuing to work with Tom Dalgety on their new LP. “We’ve been digging away at that for the last year and a half,” guitarist Billy Duffy told the Tone-Talk guitar channel. “The philosophy in the Cult camp…

John Hiatt I think it was about ‘63. I was 11. I was already playing guitar at home [in Indianapolis], already finger-poppin’ and grooving. My elder brother had a set of bongos, I’d beat on those, and pots and pans, driving my mother crazy. Then I heard Fingertips on the radio. It started with the MC bringing him out, calling him a 12-year-old genius, and the rhythm started. I think Stevie starts playing bongos, then harmonica. It’s a minute before he starts singing. Man, it seemed like it went on forever. The recording was live, and I’d never heard anything that exciting, or someone so talented do so many things in the course of how many minutes it was! It had everything that I think music brings to the table,…

BARELY 10 MINUTES AFTER HE PICKS UP the phone on a recent afternoon, singer-guitarist Billy F. Gibbons answers the day’s big question without even being asked. “They’re in the studio today!” he exclaims in his deep, sandpaper drawl. ‘They’ are his ZZ Top bandmates of the last half-century: bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard. While Gibbons is on the line from his pandemic refuge in one of Las Vegas’s oldest residential neighbourhoods – a house he and his wife Gilligan have dubbed Rancho G – the rhythm section is in Houston hammering at new material for ZZ Top’s first album in a decade. “The high card I was able to pull was writing songs,” Gibbons says of his lockdown year, which began with the cancellation of his venerable group’s…

CROWDED HOUSE ★★★ (Capitol, 1986) Sparky debut, home to the everlasting Don’t Dream It’s Over. Alongside the jaunty pop of Something So Strong and Now We’re Getting Somewhere are songs about suicide (Hole In The River) and obsessive love (Love You ‘Til The Day I Die), extremes that contain all of Crowded House’s fizzing essence. TEMPLE OF LOW MEN ★★★★ (Capitol, 1988) Left alone by Capitol after the success of Don’t Dream…, Finn’s natural melancholy poured through gems such as Into Temptation, Mansion In The Slums and Better Be Home Soon. One US critic called it “sanctimonious self-pity”, entirely missing the point of the true fan’s deep-cut album. WOODFACE ★★★ (Capitol, 1991) The CSN-like Weather With You’s radio ubiquity in 1992 cemented the band’s future in the UK and Europe,…

EASTER MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1960. AS PART OF THE LOCAL BANK holiday amusement, the Palais De Danse on Humberstone Gate in Leicester is holding an afternoon hop. Coming on stage are Palais regulars The Rockin’ Rs, regarded as one of the city’s best rock’n’roll outfits, scrappy but authentic, with an intense frontman, 18 years old for just over a week: Roger Chapman. Chapman has already established a reputation for tearing through Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Fats Domino numbers in blue suede brothel-creepers and a long black drape jacket, occasioning one outraged fellow performer to complain to the Palais’ promoter about his hiring “a dirty old Ted… with a voice like a cheese grater”. Galvanised by Fats Domino’s Blue Monday aged 14, Chapman began his audio odyssey drawn to the…

CHRISTA PÄFFGEN’S LIFE WAS EXTRAORDINARY FROM THE START. BORN ON OCTOBER 16, 1938 in Cologne, Germany, she spent time in a brutal orphanage. After the war, which claimed the life of her father, Willi, she moved with her mother Grete to Berlin, where the daughter’s unusual height and razor cheekbones gained her entry to the fashion world. Soon she was the star of striking covers of Elle and Vogue magazines, and photographer Herbert Tobias suggested a name change: Nico. After a role in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita made her an icon at 22, and affairs with Alain Delon – resulting in the birth of a son, Ari, in August 1962 – and Bob Dylan, a pattern established: Nico, seemingly aloof, coldly beautiful, would be constantly chased, a prize to…

What do you remember of the Muscle Shoals sessions for Brown Sugar, Wild Horses and You Gotta Move? I just checked in my diaries I wrote at the time, we were there for just three days between concerts and cut a great track each day. You played Wurlitzer on You Gotta Move – was that common? I would sometimes play other instruments, as I did with Brian [Jones] in the old days. That song didn’t need a bass, and so I played electric piano. Sticky Fingers is kind of a hotchpotch. Some of it’s from Muscle Shoals; the bulk from various UK sessions between February and October ‘70; Sister Morphine from 1968. Why did it take so long to come together? On most albums we added tracks from earlier that…

THE SHANGRI-IAS I CAN NEVER GO HOME ANYMORE (Red Bird single, 1965) A US Number 6 for the Queens girl group. Long sections of deadpan spoken word from Mary Weiss – telling of a runaway teen and the tragic impact on her mother – up the gothic ante, while the girls’ unvarnished voices lend a documentary verité. Like punk Spector. SARAH VAUGHAN SARAH VAUGHAN WITH MICHEL LEGRAND (Mainstream, 1972) Late-ish Vaughan but as “Divine” as ever, with an extra-rich bluesiness in her lower register. Winehouse would cite Deep In The Night, the closing song from this collaboration with the French film music maestro. You can see how its frank sensuality and theme of early-hours longing hit home. NEIL DIAMOND BLUE DESTINY (from In My Lifetime, 1996) Diamond called this 1958…

● Private Space was preceded this spring by a new version of the group’s early B-side Cruisin’ To The Park, re-recorded with Mexican-American group Y La Bamba to salute the Indications’ early adopters in the Chicano low-rider community. “When we started touring back in 2017, on the West Coast the Chicano folks would come out in droves to see us, pulling up out front of the venues in their low-rider cars,” says Jones. “The first time I realised how much soul meant to the Chicano community, we were playing this tune called Should I Take You Home by [‘60s Chicano soul singer] Sunny Ozuna and the Sunliners [pictured], and the whole crowd started singing along. They respected and embraced us for doing that song and giving props to Sunny Ozuna.…

Chrissie Hynde ★★★★ Standing In The Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan BMG. CD/DL/LP CHRISSIE HYNDE has never been shy about singing other people’s songs. Over the years she’s snuck all sorts of covers into setlists or onto albums. Not to mention her previous solo album, Valve Bone Woe, which was all covers, from Charles Mingus to Barbra Streisand to Nick Drake. Now, two years later, comes another covers album, only this time they’re songs by just one artist: Dylan. Like Valve Bone Woe – which came about after Hynde found a lost mixtape she’d made years earlier of favourite songs and decided to record them herself – Standing In The Doorway is something of a lucky accident. But where Valve... was made in the studio, with about 50 musicians,…

Maridalen ★★★★ Maridalen JAZZLAND. CD/DL/LP Norwegian trio’s minimalist, beatless debut; an album with few precedents. RECORDED IN a picturesque wooden church near the old stone ruins of St Margaretakirken, Maridalen’s debut speaks powerfully of its scenic surroundings. Field recordings of rushing water and birdsong detail the opening Koral, its spare harmony given texture by Anders Hefre’s intimately breathy baritone sax. The similarly sedate Blir Det Regn I Dag, Tru? allows Jonas Kilmork Vemøy’s trumpet to lead us on a yearning journey through their surrounds, while Inga and Vals Fra Bjølsen – both jaunty waltzes by Maridalen’s stately standards – are held down by Andreas Rødland Haga’s sasquatch double bass stomp. At once modern and sepia-toned, Maridalen is an immersive low-end dreamworld that distils distant Nordic jazz variants (Nils Petter Molvær,…

Podcasts “…Things should start to get interesting right about now.” Journalist John Harris quotes from Mississippi, the Love And Theft track, to kick-off the latest episode of Is It Rolling Bob? Celebrating Dylan’s 80th alongside regular hosts Kerry Shale and Lucas Hare, Harris is great: insightful and funny – especially recalling his close encounter with Dylan at the O2 (spoiler: Charlie Sexton loves The Fast Show). Online music journalism archive Rock’s Backpages looks back over 100 episodes of their podcast: a conversational tour of their library with guests like writer Caroline Boucher and her excellent Zappa and Beefheart anecdotes. Podcasts are ideally suited to such niche exploration as For Your Ears Only, a series on film and TV music hosted by actress Jodhi May and featuring such composers as Ludwig…

Ian Carr’s Nucleus ★★★★★ Roots BEWITHRECORDS. CD/DL/LP “IT’S BASICALLY already hip-hop.” Thus one veteran UK turntablist explains the enduring allure this previously hard-to-locate 1973 Vertigo landmark’s amazing title-track has for the blunted beats fraternity. Edited down from its original 40 minutes to a pithy nine and a half, Roots is at the same time one very long breakbeat, and as close as fully homegrown British jazz ever got (pretty damn adjacent in this case) to the entrancing fluidity of Miles Davis in his John McLaughlin phase. The best I can do for a capsule description is Fela Kuti trying to cover Billy Cobham’s Spectrum with David Axelrod in the control room. Maybe you’re a Nucleus neophyte, keen to put the closing number on Direct Hits back in its original context.…

Sisters With Transistors ★★★★ Dir: Lisa Rovner MODERN FILMS. C/ST A film celebrating the unsung heroines of electronic music. “Composers were traditionally old, dead white men – but electronic music gave you the freedom to define any world you wanted,” says Laurie Spiegel, the New York composer whose 1986 Music Mouse instrument was one of the earliest forms of music software. Along with artists like Delia Derbyshire in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Pauline Oliveros at the 1960s San Francisco Tape Music Centre, and Éliane Radigue, who studied musique concrète with Pierre Schaeffer before creating her own beautiful analogue synth-scapes, Spiegel was a vital part of the evolution of electronic music. This film, narrated by Laurie Anderson with rare archive footage, in-depth interviews and experimental sonic textures, is like an extended…

Enjoyed the Ram feature in MOJO 331, but something that’s always puzzled me is why the 1971 single The Back Seat Of My Car was a flop in the UK. Just a year after The Beatles split you would have thought one of them playing a trombone underwater with boxing gloves on would have been a hit, so what went wrong? I would imagine there have been a few other singles down the years that have looked like sure-fire hits but died a death. Does anyone know of any and why? MOJO says: In the same week that George Harrison’s Bangla Desh was at Number 12, Paul and Linda McCartney’s The Back Seat Of My Car should have done better than Number 39. Was it a little meandering, too long…