Tabla de contenidos para January 2022 en MOJO

Justin Metz Award winning digital artist Justin Metz’s work has appeared on the covers of Time, The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic. He enjoys bringing ideas to life and being involved at every stage of the creative process. (He illustrates MOJO’s Lead LP, p81) Grayson Haver Currin Grayson hiked 2,653 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail this Summer before beginning a road trip across the US. He cut the drive short to fly home to North Carolina and trail The Rolling Stones through the American South for MOJO. (See p70). Stephen Worthy MOJO’s Electronica columnist, Stephen has been writing about bleeps for the mag since 2008. This month, he interviews Floating Points’ Sam Shepherd. “I used to see Sam DJ at a sweaty, rammed…

“LOOK AT those people down there. They look like ants.” “They are ants. We haven’t taken off yet.” This aeroplane window dad-joke is a venerable gag, having been used by Billy Connolly in the 1977 movie version of Are You Being Served?, and by Bob Newhart in his monologue The Grace L Ferguson Air Line, way back in 1960. Black Country, New Road’s new record is called Ants From Up There, but they assure MOJO it’s got nothing to do with antique comedians. “We had this really long list of titles,” says bassist Tyler Hyde. “We also considered ‘Bug Stuff’, ‘Lifting Up A Log And Seeing A Tiny Little Wood Louse’, ‘I’ve Seen Bugs’ and, a close second, Bird Song! [sic]. A lot of the music is kind of buggy,…

THE ORIGINAL PLAN HAD BEEN TO meet in the crypt cafe of Christ Church, Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor’s 18th century east London edifice with the gothic rocket-style tower. But Jason Pierce arrives at four, just as the crypt is closing, so an alternative venue is found in the upstairs room of a former 17th century coffee-house. The changed location suits Pierce’s appearance. At 55, and still teen-skinny in torn, sheepskin-lined jacket, band T-shirt and jeans, the chief executive of Spiritualized® now has the appearance of a handsomely dilapidated Georgian intellectual, albeit one happier to observe than lead a conversation. Charming, funny and so softly spoken his voice barely registers on MOJO’s recorder, Pierce is willing to address all aspects of his singular music career. There’s Spacemen 3: the visionary, mythologised group…

THE LINE (Self-Released, 2009) An apprentice work pieced together over four years in between acting jobs. Lindeman was immersed in the buzzing Toronto indie scene, but this unpredictable laptop bluegrass evinces a doughty independence. “Even though it’s a very flawed record I was very proud of it because it was mine,” she says. ALL OF IT WAS MINE (You’ve Changed, 2011) The sleeve design makes Lindeman look like some lost contemporary of Karen Dalton and Emmylou Harris, and she sounds rather like one, too. These 28 minutes of rueful finger-picked folk, seeded with rustic imagery of milkweed and lilacs, are hold-your-breath delicate, but the songwriting is too sharp-eyed to sound precious. LOYALTY (Paradise Of Bachelors, 2015) Soft and spare, this two-hander with Afie Jurvanen reflects its wintry origins but not…

AARON FRAZER Voice, and flams, of Durand Jones & The Indications. Tako Tsubo by L’Impératrice, this fantastic Parisian band, who are the keepers of the French boogie sound that was popular in the late ’70s and ’80s, but who also feel very contemporary in a time when you’ve got Nile Rodgers producing Dua Lipa and disco-infused Top 40 sounds. Also Yola’s Stand For Myself, I think [producer] Dan Auerbach just knocked it out of the park with that one and I love how she embraced influences outside of soul and country and made it a little more daring. Then in a year that has been a little fraught, I find myself coming back to Curtis Mayfield’s Curtis. It’s like my compass, it’s all there in that record: how to write,…

THE FIRST TIME I met Charlie Watts I tried to get him evicted. I was at Olympic Studios and one of my first evening sessions as a tape op was with Glyn Johns on Sticky Fingers. I turned up at seven o’clock, not knowing that Stones sessions never started on time. At 8.30, I was alone in the control room when two figures walked into the studio. I wasn’t into the Stones and R&B – my background was film music – so I thought, Who the hell are these two? I called security, it turned out it was Charlie and Bill Wyman. I got to know the Stones, and they later asked me to go to Paris and engineer Some Girls. Charlie would arrive at the studio, take off his…

★★★★ Storm Queen ATO. CD/DL/LP Elemental folk-blues from Melbourne enigma. ACTOR GRACE Cummings came late to musical performance, visceral 2019 debut Refuge Cove crackling with an analogue feel. Now, sound still pared to just acoustic guitar, fiddle and piano, she further unleashes her psyche in a voice of throaty, Diamanda Galas-style intensity. Gritty with outback dust and the scarring of the bushfires, Heaven is glorious and brutal – “Ave Maria!” roars Cummings, in awe of the land’s majesty, before spitting: “There is no God...” Freak has the open-heart intensity you’d find in Alary Margaret O’Hara, a survivor’s plea for the misfit: “Don’t blink your eyes/You don’t want to cry/C’mon, freak, and sing! ” It’s ludicrously moving. Dreams could be a tender Scott Walker tone poem, Up In Flames feels like…

Ichiko Aoba ★★★★ Windswept Adan BA DA BING. DL/LP Seventh LP from Japanese composer/guitarist evokes a serene aquatic world. Strains of Satie and Glass in her elegant guitar arpeggios and the sparse orchestrations. Aoba’s hushed voice makes for an immersive meld of indie-folk, classical and jazz. Mike Etten ★★★ Love Wash DULL TOOLS. CD/DL/LP Belying its Spinal Tap-ish title, this solo debut for Etten – a veteran of several Brooklyn bands – brims with heartfelt intensity. Its best country-folk songs come dappled with drones and psychedelic layers to unpeel, sounding lushest on Across The Flats. Various ★★★ Heavenly Remixes 1&2 HEAVENLY. CD/DL/LP Since its beginnings in 1990, Heavenly have commissioned countless remixes of their diverse roster, from Doves to Working Men’s Club. Now collected on two volumes, 2’s ’90s highlight:…

★★★★ Another Side LIGHT IN THE ATTIC. CD/DL/LP Long-lost ’70s ‘folk’ album by legendary funk/ R&B guitarist. REISSUES label Light In The Attic excels at digging up really fine obscurities, and this album is both. Not that Leo Nocentelli’s particularly obscure – he has a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, but for playing guitar with artists like The Meters, Otis Redding and The Temptations and writing songs sung by Bootsy Collins, The Neville Brothers and Etta James. Still, as the title says, there was once another side. He recorded these 10 songs more than 50 years ago between gigs and sessions at a time when mellow singer-songwriters ruled, opening with an acoustic Thinking Of The Day and closing with a very cool cover of Elton John’s then-new hit Your Song. There’s electric…

Cluster ★★★★ Cluster 71 BUREAU B. LP After Kluster, Roedelius and Moebius’s 1971 debut as Cluster brings radiophonic howls from the bowels of an alien space craft, with interstellar/psychedelic electronics and urgent rhythmic figures coming over the listener in huge and terrifying waves. Still sounds new. Lilys ★★★★ Better Can’t Make Your Life Better SUNDAZED. LP Now back on vinyl, the Lilys’ fourth album, a detail-perfect 1996 pastiche of that mid-’60s moment when garage rock morphed into psychedelia. Levi’s ad soundtrack Nanny In Manhattan proved an unlikely hit; the brutish Kinks-y power chords and acid-dipped chamber-pop of mini-epic Shovel Into Spade Kit is the standout. Yusuf/Cat Stevens ★★★★ Teaser And The Firecat UMC. CD/DL/LP 50th anniversary box set of 1971’s sensitive-singer-songwriter-with-mainstream-instincts apogee. Opener The Wind sets the tone of seeking,…

Before heading into the further reaches of the Bobverse, heed the example of The Dylanologists (Simon & Schuster, 2017), David Kinney’s exploration of Dylan’s hyper-fixated fanbase. Long famed for their presenteeism (particularly during the frenzied mid-years of the Never-ending Tour, much of it recounted here), Kinney’s interviewees are not simply road rats in search of a brush with the master’s garment, but lucid witnesses to what it means to be in thrall to a voice that somehow captures their own. Published before the advent of Genius, The Dylanologists denies us their views on crowd-sourced critical theory (the bane of any interaction between present-day Bobcats), but otherwise this stands up as an absorbing, non-sneery guide to the contact-high delivered by rock’s most absent idol. Conversely, for the dark side of Dylan…

MARLEY SHOT 3 Bob Marley (above) is shot twice when seven men invade his Kingston home. The political rivalries surrounding the Smile Jamaica Concert two days later are blamed; injured, Marley plays anyway, but leaves for Nassau after. ROD RULES 4 Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright) spends its fourth week at US Number 1. Tonight, Rod plays Leicester’s Granby Halls. BAH, HAMBURG 11 It’s reported that a December 1962 tape of The Beatles at Hamburg’s Star-Club is being readied for release via the Double H Licensing Corporation. FALSE HOLSTS? 18 The estate of Gustav Holst declare themselves unhappy with electronic versions of the composer’s 1918 suite The Planets by Patrick Gleeson and Isao Tomita. The two albums are released as planned. PATTI PARTIES 31 Patti Smith welcomes…

Robby Krieger HAIL, GUITAR DOOR! What music are you currently grooving to? Well, the stuff I’ve got in my car is Indian music, Ravi Shankar. Jazz too – John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, stuff like that. I listen to rock too, but there’s not much I relate to. I’m waiting for the ’60s to start up again! What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It might be Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan. I discovered him while at private school as a teenager. A lot of people hated it when he went electric, but I liked it. I saw him at Long Beach with his electric band while on acid, and really dug it. I know he must’ve been on acid when he wrote Subterranean…

…in an interview in October with newspaper La Stampa, PETER GABRIEL (right) confirmed a new album was “closer than you think” and that he was working on 17 new songs …CATE LE BON’s Pompeii (You will be forever connected to everything) lands in February 2022. “The world is on fire but the bins must go out on a Tuesday night,” she comments. “I put a groove behind it for something to hold onto” …the current Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible-led line-up of THE DAMNED – not the 1976 version with Rat Scabies and Brian James, who play reunion gigs next February – are recording a new album, out next year. As Captain diplomatically told MOJO, the original formation making new music has “not been spoken about” …the reformed BOO RADLEYS –…

Geno Washington And The Ram Jam Band Hand Clappin’ Foot Stomping Funky-Butt… Live! (PICCADILLY, 1966) A sweat-drenched supercharge through ‘60s soul’s greatest hits: Uptight (Everything’s Alright), (I’m A) Road Runner, Hold On, I’m Comin’ and more, recorded live at Pye Studios in front of Geno’s fan club. Geno Washington And The Ram Jam Band Hipsters, Flipsters, Finger-Poppin’ Daddies (PICCADILLY, 1967) More explosive ‘live club soul in a studio’ fun: rough and ready takes on Day Tripper, I Can’t Turn You Loose and In The Midnight Hour bring the proverbial house down. Geno Washington The Return Of The G (KOOKOOLAND, 2003) Washington goes against type with co-writer Sam Maitland on his 2003 comeback outing, embracing Chicago R&B (Blues Master), Latin rock (Walking With The Gods) and something akin to trip-hop with…

1 Lord can you hear me: the 18-year-old Jason Pierce playing with Spacemen 3. 2 Split personalities: Pierce (left) and Pete Kember, 1991, just before the release of the final Spacemen 3 album. 3 Heart and soul: Pierce with erstwhile Spiritualized bandmate and partner Kate Radley, 1997. 4 Spiritualized in rehearsal at Pierce’s house in Rugby, 1991 (from left) Mark Refoy, Jon Mattock, Will Carruthers, Pierce and Radley. 5 Out of sight: Pierce on-stage with Spiritualized at Primavera Sound, Barcelona, June 1, 2012. 6 Ladies and gentlemen, the perfect prescription: Spiritualized cook something up in the lab in 1997 (from left) Damon Reece, Pierce, Radley, Sean Cook. 7 The doctor will see you now: Pierce enjoying a spot of night tripping with Dr. John at Manhattan Studios, March 3, 1996.…

“Laura Nyro was like a cord that came out and attached itself to me. I recognised my direction in Laura Nyro. She was like nothing else of that time. I fell in love with her and in doing so loved myself a little more. I can see people not feeling related to her music because it had a kind of Broadway thing, and she sang a little out of tune. But all the things about her made me love her more – her flaws and her courage to have flaws. I think of her as being a really great teacher. And a great teacher is one you don’t get stuck in, you pass through and it sticks to you like pollen. They’re pollinators.”…

75 BLK JKS Abantu/Before Humans (GLITTERBEAT) 74 GRUFF RHYS Seeking New Gods (ROUGH TRADE) 73 STEPHEN FRETWELL Busy Guy (SPEEDY WUNDERGROUND) 72 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Quietly Blowing It (MERGE) 71 EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY Yellow (MOVEMENTT) 70 BLACK MIDI Cavalcade (ROUGH TRADE) 69 DINOSAUR JR. Sweep It Into Space (JAGJAGUWAR) 68 LORETTA LYNN Still Woman Enough (LEGACY) 67 AC/DC Power Up (COLUMBIA) 66 LUCY DACUS Home Video (MATADOR) 65 GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR G_d’s Pee At STATE’s END! (CONSTELLATION) 64 TONY ALLEN There Is No End (DECCA) 63 HOWLIN RAIN The Dharma Wheel (SILVER CURRENT) 62 PARQUET COURTS Sympathy For Life (ROUGH TRADE) 61 STEVE GUNN Other You (MATADOR) 60 CEDRIC BURNSIDE I Be Trying (SINGLE LOCK) 59 BILLY F GIBBONS Hardware (CONCORD) 58 RYLEY WALKER Course In Fable (HUSKY PANTS) 57…

IT’S BEEN an astonishing year for Warren Ellis. First, there was his involvement with Nick Cave on MOJO’s Number 5 Album Of The Year, the surreal, cinematic and emotionally staggering Carnage, and the intimate, life-affirming post-lockdown tour that came in its wake. He also released what must surely be one of the most strange, illuminating and wonderful ‘music’ books ever, in the shape of Nina Simone’s Gum. He collaborated with Marianne Faithfull on her poetry passion project, She Walks In Beauty, and, perhaps more unexpectedly, opened up Ellis Park, a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra for “special needs” animals that can no longer be returned to the wild. “What a purple patch for a nearly 60-year-old,” he laughs as MOJO lists all the reasons for calling. “But you know, work is…

Neil Young & Crazy Horse ★★★★ Barn REPRISE. CD/DL/LP SO STRONG is their spiritual bond, it’s worth acknowledging that Neil Young has made three times as many albums without Crazy Horse as with. “That’s why they’re so special,” he told MOJO in 2018. “If I’d made Crazy Horse my band on every record, I’d have made a lot fewer records. You can’t keep on doing the same things over and over again.” At 76, however, perhaps Young is more inclined to enjoy the moments he and his favoured group have left. Barn is his second successive Crazy Horse outing, and as with 2019’s Colorado its utilitarian title indicates where it was made: yup, a barn, in the Colorado Rockies. The two records also share a ramshackle aura: live recordings, balancing…

★★★★ Back In Nashville RCA/LEGACY. CD/DL/LP The King’s final Nashville studio recordings, undubbed and cut loose. SAM PHILLIPS, Elvis’s first producer, once said, “Generally I didn’t go for overdubbing. Still don’t, even if they get 94 tracks. I understand all the techniques and all the bullshit but I just don’t see the spontaneity.” What you have here are the 82 prime recordings from Presley’s March, May and June 1971 sessions at RCA Studio B in Nashville, stripped of the musical embellishments added prior to their ’70s release, leaving just the man himself singing a mixture of a gospel, folk, pop and Christmas songs, live in the room with the band. In every instance, the unvarnished original beats the familiar overdubbed version hollow. Early Mornin’ Rain loses the unnecessary cloying backing…

THE ZOMBIES formed in St. Albans as schoolboys, had their first worldwide hit with She’s Not There in 1964 and then, after three years’ solid touring, problems with management and nobody wanting to issue their brilliant Odessey & Oracle album, fell apart in 1968. At that point, singer Colin Blunstone was, he once told me, “An exhausted 22-year-old, drained mentally, emotionally and physically.” And given that it was still a relatively new form, it’s no wonder he thought, ‘That’s it then, I’ve done pop music,’ and signed up to become a clerk in a company selling insurance. The following year, producer Mike Hurst started calling Blunstone at work and persuaded him to sign a new deal with Deram under the name Neil MacArthur, a project beginning, rather bizarrely, with a…

Ugly Custard Ugly Custard KALEIDOSCOPE, 1970 AS SUCH way-out Library Music catalogues as Jonny Trunk’s The Music Library and David Hollander’s Unusual Sounds have shown, background sounds-to-order frequently came wrapped in deranged cover art that would never have survived in the civilian pop world. Yet, when the sessioneers who played it defected to above-ground rock bands, they sometimes took the design aesthetic with them. Try the oddly taxidermised dog with boggly eyes on Hungry Wolf’s self-titled 1970 debut of brassy grooves (later recycled as Music For A Young Generation on the KPM label), or the loopy comic strip livery of Shel Talmy-produced soul rockers Rumpelstiltskin the same year. With vocalist Peter Lee Stirling, those bands also featured drummer Clem Cattini, guitarist Alan Parker and bassist Herbie Flowers. All seasoned session…

M.D., trumpeter and trombonist JOHN ROSSALL (below, b.c.1946) spent the ’60s in the Mike Leander Showband and the Boston Show Band who later changed their name to The Glitter Band and became the backing group for disgraced sex offender singer Paul Gadd in 1973. The same year they began releasing their own material, with Rossall co-write Angel Face hitting Number 4 in April 1974. He went solo in 1975, and was later threatened with legal sanctions over the disputed Glitter Band name. In 2020, with help from The Nightingales and others, Rossall released his farewell album The Last Glam In Town. JAMAICA-BORN singer/ guitarist/songwriter DELBERT ‘NGONI’ McKAY (b.c.1954) was a founder member of Southall reggae institutions Misty In Roots, Rock Against Racism stalwarts who popularised UK reggae with albums including…

1 GLEN CAMPBELL’S 20 GOLDEN GREATS GLEN CAMPBELL CAPITOL 2 ARRIVAL ABBA EPIC 3 22 GOLDEN GUITAR GREATS BERT WEEDON WARWICK 4 GREATEST HITS FRANKIE VALLI & THE 4 SEASONS K-TEL 5 100 GOLDEN GREATS MAX BYGRAVES RONCO 6 SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE STEVIE WONDER MOTOWN 7 DISCO ROCKET VARIOUS K-TEL 8 GREATEST HITS ABBA EPIC 9 20 ORIGINAL DEAN MARTIN HITS DEAN MARTIN REPRISE 10 A NEW WORLD RECORD ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA JET…

HELLO AUTUMN 1967 Hello for me was the day we all met in our apartment on Hindemithweg in Cologne. It was pretty large, spacious enough that from time to time we could host friends. I’d asked Holger [Czukay, bass] if he was interested in making a group, he said, “Yes, I’m very interested.” He was teaching at a boarding school in Switzerland and he brought Michael [Karoli, guitar], who was his pupil. Surprisingly, Jaki [Liebezeit, drums] showed up too. He was the drummer of the most known, famous free jazz group in Germany [The Manfred Schoof Quintet] and I had asked him if he knew somebody who plays – my idea of a professional drummer was Max Roach kind of style. Jaki said, “Yes, I’ve found somebody, it’s me.” All…

NO SPOILERS I PROMISE, BUT THE architect behind MOJO’s favourite album of 2021 describes their masterwork on page 59 as “quite a niche idea”. On the face of it they’re probably right, but that engrossing 46 minutes of music – and again, you really should wait a few pages for the big reveal – tells us something about how our listening habits and tastes can adapt to the moment, and how our range can be far greater than we often assume it to be. Much of 2021, like much of 2020 before it, has been out of necessity contemplative, and we hope the music, books and films we’ve highlighted in MOJO – and, indeed, MOJO itself – have provided some help as we all navigate these difficult times. This issue…

I picked this up in Montreal in ’74. This is how it went when I first listened to it. The album kicks off with an instrumental take of Hey Jude with barely competent horn playing. Hmm. Then the drums join in… and, what, this drummer [Larry Clark] is either completely mad or can’t drum at all. It stumbles along then a whole big band arrives in a hard edit. Second track is a quartet, Marcus on tenor, Herbie Hancock, Miroslav Vitous and Bob Moses (the “proper” drummer). Musicianly ‘A Team’ fusion of the era. Third. Omigod. Clark is back, drumming and singing a verse of Tom Thumb’s Blues. His singing is worse than his drumming. Only a minute long but dreadful. Straight into wild soprano laid over smooth tenor. End…

I’M MUCH more mellow and laidback now,” promises Matt Johnson, AKA The The. These are not words often associated with ’80s LPs such as Soul Mining, Infected and Mind Bomb, where the Stratford-born auteur gene-spliced post-punk and pop to conduct unflinching examinations into extreme emotional states, a world in flames and, as a song from 1992’s Dusk powerfully stated, how Love Is Stronger Than Death. There was, however, a lengthy hiatus after 2000’s Naked Self, broken by a surprise tour in 2018. Johnson is full of praise for his current group and film director Tim Pope, who, that year, helped him make the new live-at-the-Royal Albert Hall concert movie The Comeback Special. Filmed days after Johnson’s father Eddie passed away, the pin-sharp performance runs the full gamut of The The,…

JOURNALIST AND photographer Frank Mastropolo was still in high school when he went to the Fillmore East – New York’s grittier cousin to San Francisco’s Fillmore West – on its opening night on March 8, 1968. On the bill promoted by the venue’s tough-talking kingpin Bill Graham? “Tim Buckley, Albert King, and Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company,” says Mastropolo, mentally backtracking to a mythic soundspace of dope smoke, the psychedelic illuminations of the Joshua Light Show and perfect acoustics for rock, blues, jazz and beyond. “The place was packed and buzzing from the start,” he says. “It was a revelation.” The young Mastropolo, who’d watched movies at the Fillmore back when it was the Loews Commodore in the early ’60s, became a regular, catching three-band/twice-nightly bills…

Dig in! For rock, folk, acid techno and festive rap. 1 BLONDIE/FAB 5 FREDDY YULETIDE THROWDOWN An early blueprint of Rapture, recorded Christmas-style for the Flexipop ’zine in 1981? The raps have a lot of ding-dong attitude. It’s now remixed by Cut Chemist for a vinyl EP. Find it: streaming services 2 JACK WHITE TAKING ME BACK (GENTLY) JW’s solo comeback arrives in two versions: stuttering techno-flash heaviosity and this rinky-dink Hot Club De Nashville rethink. Find it: streaming services 3 TODD RUNDGREN & THE ROOTS GODIVA GIRL Immaculate ’70s soul with Rundgren high-singing goofy lyrics likening his true love to a big ol’ box of chocolates. Find it: YouTube 4 JAKE XERXES FUSSELL LOVE FAREWELL The artful folklorist’s new find: a 19th century soldier’s goodbye, gently updated. Will Oldham…

THE IGNITION Spacemen 3 ★★★★★ Playing With Fire (FIRE, 1989) Recorded as the band began its protracted disintegration, this is the pinnacle ofthe Spacemen 3 drone rock sound, an alchemical transformation of Jason Pierce and Pete Kember’s creative misery into exquisite euphoric melancholy. Songs such as How Does It Feel? and Lord Can You Hear Me? blend English LSD whimsy with elemental gospel tropes and eerie melodic purity, while Revolution exists somewhere between the summer of ’67 and the student riots of ’68. THE LIFT-OFF Spiritualized ★★★★★ Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (DEDICATED, 1997) “What is Spiritualized used for?” read the prescription that came with the album’s original pharmaceutical-style packaging. “Spiritualized is used to treat the heart and soul.” A 70-minute experiment in the forms of gospel,…

NOVEMBER 1994. Wrapped in a voluminous black shawl, Laura Nyro was meant to be discussing the art of songwriting before her show at north London’s suitably gothic 19th century Union Chapel but she was clearly much keener practising on her dummy keyboard: an illustration of Nyro’s commitment to the task, of serving her songs and similarly imperious cover versions as best she knew, but not the interview that MOJO was anticipating. When an assistant announced that Ms Nyro had to eat, we had to admit defeat, and our conversation disappeared into the ‘one that got away’ pile. Knowing that Nyro died of cancer three years later, aged just 49, her words that afternoon, in the fading light, are that much more valuable. Finally, in what would be her very last…

RECORDING HER UPCOMING SIXTH ALBUM AS THE WEATHER STATION WAS, says Tamara Lindeman, “the craziest three days of my life”. It was early March 2020. Lindeman had written 10 songs that didn’t suit the expansive mood of her as-yet-unreleased fifth album, this year’s lauded, revelatory Ignorance, but were too good to waste, so she convened half-a-dozen musicians at a studio near her home in Toronto’s West End to record not so much a follow-up as a companion or coda. Piano-based and acoustic where Ignorance’s production had echoed mid-’80s epics by Talk Talk and The Blue Nile, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars will emerge early in 2022. “I didn’t even tell anyone I was making this record,” she says. “I didn’t know if anyone was ever…

20 LEWIS TAYLOR Lewis Taylor (BE WITH) Double vinyl reissue of sonic auteur Lewis Taylor’s gloriously mood-altering R&B debut from 1996; a bubbling hot, psychedelic soul stew beloved of Bowie, Elton John, D’Angelo and MOJO’s Jim Irvin. 19 CARROLL THOMPSON Hopelessly In Love (TROJAN) A 40th anniversary remaster for Carroll Thompson’s lovers rock debut added extended 12-inch mixes, to ensure that its tender blend of Jamaican roots, US soul and romantic ’70s pop still lingered. 18 BUZZCOCKS Complete United Artists Singles 1977-1980 (DOMINO) Their initial run of 12 totemic pop punk singles on repro 7-inch vinyl, with the original Malcolm Garrett sleeves and a booklet by Clinton Heylin. Turned out swell after all. 17 JOHN LENNON/PLASTIC ONO BAND John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (CAPITOL/UMC) The real Primal Scream as Lennon let…

Tony Palmer: I’d interviewed Frank Zappa for [1968 documentary] All My Loving. He was the kind of guy I needed to make some sense about pop music, and we saw eye to eye on the state of music, and the world. A while later, his manager Herb Cohen said Frank wanted to make a film. [Mothers record label] MGM would only agree to finance the film if Zappa brought in a director, a safe pair of hands. Enter Muggins. Frank Zappa: 200 Motels is a mixed media presentation, a combination of a film, an opera, a television show, a rock’n’roll concert. It all tells a story of when you go on the road, it makes you crazy. TP: The idea of a film about life on the road struck me…

“MY FIRST impressions of Charlie Watts? He was just the loveliest bloke. He was totally uncomplicated and obviously lived to play. Equally, he never changed from the day I met him to the last time I saw him. He was totally unaffected by the success of the Stones, in his personality or in his attitude to other people. In the studio, he was as reliable as any musician I’ve ever worked with. Always on time, in fact always early. Never rattled by anything. On the drums, simplicity was the key. He started out with four drums in his kit: two toms, snare drum and a bass drum. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he ended up with 60 years later. It’s hard to talk about ‘feel’ – it’s indescribable really…

David Bowie ★★★★ Brilliant Adventure [1992-2011] PARLOPHONE/ISO. CD/LP IN WHICH David Bowie sloughs off Tin Machine and his late-’80s despond, while facing the onset of middle age and reversing into the future. Covering the years during which he was contracted to Victory/Savage (1990-1993) and BMG/Virgin (1995-1999), Brilliant Adventure comprises the five albums Bowie released in the 1990s plus a June 2000 live concert recorded for the BBC, 3-CDs of contemporary singles/mixes and outtakes, and a complete disc of the cancelled Toy album (a further Toy:Box is scheduled for January). In January 1992, Bowie turned 45: in late April, he married Iman Abdulmajid. He canned Tin Machine and went back to work on a solo album with Nile Rodgers. Released in March 1993, Black Tie White Noise took over a year…

“‘SO… UH… the High Holy Days are over,’ Bob announces, as we wrestle ardently on his bed. I’m awash in his sensuality. His eyes embrace me… His earring softly strokes the skin on my cheek…” If you’re of the opinion that where Bob Dylan is concerned there’s no such thing as Too Much Information, maybe you haven’t read backing singer Britta Lee Shain’s Seeing The Real You At Last, “awash” as it is in similarly ripe detail of their ’80s affair – less Behind The Shades; more 50 Shades Of Bob. That said, Shain’s startling memoir is not a great deal more ‘specialist’ than much of the extraordinary quantity of print lavished on Dylan as successive generations of fans, critics, biographers, academics, trashrats and former amours wrestle ardently with this…

John Peel’s Punk Special airs DECEMBER 10 This Friday night, the Sex Pistols were meant to be playing Lancaster University’s student union. On paper, they were a week into their Anarchy In The UK tour with Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers and The Clash (co-headliners The Damned had already been kicked off the tour before playing a single gig). But like all but three of the nationwide trek’s initial dates, tonight’s show had been cancelled. Why? Try the group’s fabled appearance on ITV’s London area news show Today on December 1, when interviewer Bill Grundy unwittingly provoked the Pistols to use such verboten TV words as “shit”, “bastard” and “fucking rotter”. Shocking the tea-time audience, after just four minutes the Pistols were national hate figures, condemned as harbingers of nothing less than…

Women are gaining greater recognition these days as film directors, but perversely, I don’t know of any female record producers. There must have been some, can you please enlighten me? Stephen Davies, via e-mail MOJO says: Ethel Gabriel is often hailed as the first major label female producer, and helmed an estimated 2,500 records in her career, including Perez Prado’s 1955 smash recording Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White. Other eminent examples include Sonia Pottinger, who spent 20 years producing such reggae stars as Phyllis Dillon, Ken Boothe and Culture; Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson, who had production and co-production credits on rap landmarks Rapper’s Delight, The Message and White Lines (Don’t Do It); Sylvia Massy, who’s produced Tool, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Babes In Toyland, among…