Innehållsförteckning för Jul-2018 från UNCUT

Riff-hounds take note: the latest of Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guides to break cover focuses on the reassuringly heavy work of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, from “Evil Woman” to 13 via Bark At The Moon . Expect brand-new album reviews and hair-raising archive interviews… Still in shops: our Ultimate Genre Guide to Britpop, a definitive tribute to the era of Blur vs Oasis, Jarvis’s bum-waggle, Suede, Elastica, Weller, Manics, rounded corners and lager/shouting. But if that’s not quite your cup of sugary tea, the deluxe edition of our Nick Cave Ultimate Music Guide is coming soon… The Secret 7” initiative returns for 2018 touting unique vinyl singles from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Buckley, The Clash and Primal…

JIM JAMES Uniform Distortion ATO On which the My Morning Jacket man cranks up his amp, presses record and has a blast. Think a lo-fi Z , with a hint of “Highly Suspicious”... DIRTY PROJECTORS Lamp Lit Prose DOMINO Swift and stunning return to form from Longstreth and co, deftly deconstructing folk-rock and neo-soul with the aid of Robin Pecknold and Empress Of. DAVE EVANS The Words In Between EARTH RECORDINGS For fans of Nick, Bert and John, a recently rediscovered despatch from the early’70s Village folk scene (Bristol’s Clifton Village, that is…) INFINITE MUSIC A Tribute To La Monte Young FIRE Taped live in Lisbon last year, Sonic Boom, Celine Wadier and Zombie Zombie’s Etienne Jaumet enter the dreamhouse. HERE LIES MAN You Will Know Nothing…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH 8/10 QUESTIONS, questions, so many questions. Three verses into “Hangout At The Gallows”, the opening song on Father John Misty’s emetic sequel to Pure Comedy, Mr Tillman is lining them up like dominoes in a Cold War metaphor. “What’s your politics?” he croons, “What’s your religion?/What’s your intake, your reason for living?” An odd chorus for the first tune on a pop record, but that’s how it goes. There are 29 questions in total on the record, not counting repetitions. Some of them occur in the course of Tillman’s comic narratives – coming from the mouth of a cocktail barman in “Mr Tillman” (“Would you like a Regalo on the patio?”) or the voice of Noah (in “Hangout At The Gallows”), who calls to enquire: “Jesus,…

The FJM album this feels closest to, musically, may be Fear Fun . Was there any attempt to get back to your ‘roots’? GFC was a lot like Fear Fun in that I was working with someone new [Jonathan Rado] in a pretty low-stakes situation. You’ve also got a lot of me overdubbing myself, which lends the rhythm tracks overall a certain seasickness. Pure Comedy was such an epic – musically, lyrically and texturally. Was this album a direct reaction to that? In hindsight, the ennui in Pure Comedy would probably have more naturally suited itself to the mid- to lo-fi production style of this album. Conversely, expensive-sounding heartbreak ballads always go over pretty well, so… just goes to show what I know about all…

What impact did Sweden have on the album? I had been on a sort of pilgrimage for a few years, trying to find a place of grace and gentleness to release my creativity, and simply breathe. When I met and heard Dungen’s music, I guessed Sweden might have nourished their music from the root. I felt this aura of kindness and purity of the heart; I sensed roughness and cold, too. I was attracted by the northern seasons’ contrast and their modern civilisation living at peace and needing nature. How did the breakdown in “Cross My Heart” develop? I remember starting with this Brazilian flow inspired by Marcos Valle, then it turned into listening to Todd Rundgren, Todd Terje, Stereolab, and watching Disney Fantasia clips. I created this…

This feels like your most powerful solo record yet... There was an agenda I had for the first two records that I felt had been achieved. Partly establishing me and the band as a live band. That is still my context. It’s a really useful one. But I didn’t have too many restrictions going into this record. I just knew I wanted to make a Modern Rock Record - whatever that was. It was more about a feeling than a concept. In some ways it’s like a modern version of early ’80s BIG MUSIC – Simple Minds, the Bunnymen, the Banshees... Big music is a good way of putting it. All those guys were always older than me but I was in the audience. I have to say there is…

Produced by: Matthew E White (except “Lost”, produced by Natalie Prass) Recorded at: Montrose Recording Studio, Richmond, Virginia Personnel: Natalie Prass (lead vocals), Alan Parker (guitars), Devonne Harris (keyboards), Cameron Ralston (bass), Pinson Chanselle (drums, percussion, piano), choir: Charnise Archie, Ashleigh Banks, Amber Bethea, Kionna Harris, Alana Nichols, Danielle Nichols, Briana Vaughn, Brandi Wellman, Raven Worlds, directed by Joseph Clarke; Anna Bishop, Treesa Gold, Stacy Matthews, Adrian Pintea, Ellen Riccio (violin); Kim Ryan, Molly Sharp, HyoJoo Uh (viola); Jason McComb, Schuyler Slack, Peter Greydanus, Beth Judson (cello); strings arranged by Trey Pollard and conducted by Taylor Barnett…

There’s been a lot of anticipation around the release of Hope Downs . What sort of pressure did that put on you? We were aware that a decent amount of people would be paying attention to us for the first time. I don’t think it bothered us, though. We were more excited about the songwriting possibilities that a full-length can offer, being able to stretch out and make a point. The first two EPs were essentially collections of singles. You recorded the album in an old house in the outback. Why? We’re most comfortable recording together in a room, which is the way we recorded the first two EPs, live in our practice space. Studio recording is a little sterile. We recorded in the Australian winter, when…

The Album Collection Vol 2, 1987–1996 COLUMBIA 7/10 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN was exhausted. By early 1987 he’d been on a years-long world tour for Born In The USA and found himself trapped in the role he had created for himself, restrained by the responsibilities of being The Boss for millions of fans. So he retreated to his home studio, where he wrote and tracked a new batch of wounded love songs, playing all the instruments himself. “After USA I wasn’t ready for producers, a big band or any band,” he writes in his 2016 memoir, Born To Run. “The music was too personal… My first full record about men and women in love would be a pretty rough affair. Filled with inner turmoil, I wrote to make sense of my feelings.”…

NEKO CASE & HER BOYFRIENDS BLACKLISTED (BLOODSHOT, 2002) In the early 2000s Case recorded numerous sessions with members of Giant Sand and Calexico, and many of those songs ended up on her third album, which spins country music out into dark tales of haunted highways, lady pilots and serial killers. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS MASS ROMANTIC (MINT RECORDS, 2000) The debut from the Pacific Northwest supergroup includes contributions from frequent Case collaborator Carl Newman and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, but Case emerges as the band’s star, especially on “Letter From An Occupant” when she trades her twang for pop power. NEKO CASE FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD (ANTI-, 2006) Case’s breakout album: a wholly original and mysterious vision of American music and tales of class warfare and wrecks on the highway. Garth…

1964: Having formed as The Earwigs in Phoenix, Arizona, schoolfriends Vince Furnier, Dennis Dunaway and Glen Buxton form the core of The Spiders. They later add Michael Bruce and Neal Smith. 1967: Renamed The Nazz, the group relocates to LA, where they morph into Alice Cooper. Furnier adopts a shock-rock image partly inspired by Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? . June 1969: Debut LP Pretties For You is released on Straight Records, followed a year later by Easy Action . Neither causes a stir. November 1970: “(I’m) Eighteen” is released as a single. It reaches No 21 in the US, after which parent album Love It To Death is an international hit,…

HAIR’S Broadway poster – a psychedelic red, green and yellow photograph of a big-haired hippy – was instantly recognisable and played a role in popularising the musical. It featured actor Steve Curry and was designed by Ruspoli-Rodriguez, who was drawn by Curry’s curly hair, which he paired with a mirror image of the actor underneath. The Broadway poster defined the way Hair would be marketed round the world – many of the international productions picked up on the red, yellow and green colour scheme, while the London programme cover took the Curry photograph but rendered it in shades of silver and black. Red, green and yellow were also the colours of the bead necklaces that Broadway producer Michael Butler presented as a gift to…

A CAMBODIAN SPRING OPENS MAY 18 Intimate and unique portrait of three people caught up in the chaotic and often violent development that is shaping modern-day Cambodia. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY OPENS MAY 18 The best science-fiction movie you’ll see on the big screen this month. Monoliths, star gates and HAL. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY OPENS MAY 24 Latest Star Wars spin-off. Stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the voice of a robot. BOBBY ROBSON: MORE THAN A MANAGER OPENS JUNE 1 Footballing legend saluted in this new documentary. Ferguson, Mourinho, Lineker et al p(l)ay tribute. ISMAEL’S GHOSTS OPENS JUNE 1 Director Arnaud Desplechin assembles a classy cast – Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard – for drama about a missing wife. BOOK CLUB OPENS…

1. Hangout At The Gallows 2. Mr Tillman 3. Just Dumb Enough To Try 4. Date Night 5. Please Don’t Die 6. The Palace 7. Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest Of Them All 8. God’s Favorite Customer 9. The Songwriter 10. We’re Only People (And There’s Not Much Anyone Can Do About That) Produced by: Josh Tillman, Jonathan Rado, Jonathan Wilson, Trevor Spencer Recorded at: Five Star Studios, Los Angeles Personnel includes: Josh Tillman (vocals, piano, bass synth, guitar, drums, “finger pick thing”, Mellotron, tambourine, harmonica, sleigh bells), Jonathan Rado (bass, DX-7, piano, electric guitar, synthesiser, organ, Mellotron, Wurlitzer), Elijah Thomson (bass), Jon Titterington (synthesiser, glockenspiel, piano, trumpet, Wurlitzer, accordion), Jonathan Wilson (guitar, organ), Natalie Mering (vocals), David Vandervelde (electric guitar), Mark Ronson (bass), Gabe Noel (cello, bass, slide), James…

ACTRESS X THE LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA Lageos NINJA TUNE 7/10 Techno doyen’s classical dalliance Dance music and orchestras are having a wretched time thanks to the pipe’n’slippers renditions of Ibiza and Haçienda classics, so it’s encouraging to hear Actress’ Darren Cunningham making the most of his relationship with the LCO, which began with a Barbican Centre collaboration two years ago. Cunningham seldom takes the easy way out – the sounds for this project were inspired by the architectural layout of the Barbican – and here uses the LCO’s stems to try his hand at Xenakis-style brutalism, most successfully on “Momentum”. Elsewhere, the conventional sound palette leads to a number of fragrant compositions, which will do Actress’ cold, hard image no good at all. PIERS MARTIN AMMAR 808 Maghreb United GLITTERBEAT…

Heaven And Earth YOUNG TURKS 8/10 ONE hundred and one years since the first jazz record, Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s 1917 cut “Dixie Jass Band One Step”, was committed to wax, jazz itself ought by rights to be a museum piece – as relevant to a 21st-century popular music audience as fencing, or falconry. True, the genre itself has now come to occupy a niche, largely fraternised by a select band of scholars and greying enthusiasts. Yet the music itself remains in good health, thanks to the vitality of a number of dreamers and visionaries who still find something meaningful and profound in the genre’s intermingling traditions. One such figure is Kamasi Washington. A gentle giant from Inglewood, a city in Los Angeles immortalised in verse as ground zero for…

1. Frontier Man 2. The Club 3. Oh Dear! 4. Limited Edition Heart 5. Take That Call 6. Drones In The City 7. Negative Vibes 8. Same Old Song 9. Architecture Of Amnesia 10. Selfies In The Sunset Produced by: Gruff Rhys Arrs and orchestrations: Stephen McNeff & The National Orchestra Of Wales Recorded at: Toybox and Playpen, Bristol; Lynchmob Studio, London; Acapela, Pentrych, near Cardiff Personnel: Gruff Rhys (vocals, guitar), Stephen ‘Sweet Baboo’ Black (bass, tenor bass), Osian Gwynedd (piano), Kliph Scurlock (drums), Lily Cole (vocals on “Selfies In The Sunset”)…

You postponed recording to rewrite the album. How wholesale were the changes you made? I gave myself two months, to give myself the opportunity to completely rewrite the record. In the end, it’s about half old and half new. What were the main changes from your debut? I recorded the last record in 2011 and 2012, when I was 25, and I’ve grown a lot from then. When you turn 30, you just don’t care any more. Make your own rules and build your own path — that’s how I’m living my life right now. So, I was very specific about what I wanted. On the last record, I was still learning how to be in the studio with a full band, strings and horns. I was taking it all…

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 8/10 THERE’S an alternate universe in which Otis Redding’s private jet lands safely on December 10, 1967, where Otis returns to the Stax studio in Memphis, completes his single “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay”, and puts it at the centre of a radical album that transforms soul music as we know it. Redding goes on to thrive, the star of the Monterey Festival becoming the thread that links ’60s Stax, ’70s Motown, flower power and the sonic advances of Hendrix, Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder. In the real world, of course, Redding’s Beechcraft H18 crashes into Lake Monona, killing him and his touring band, with only trumpeter Ben Cauley surviving. A week later, Redding’s funeral in his hometown of Macon, Georgia, attracts around 5,000…

DISC ONE – Mixed Up: Remastered 2018 1. Lullaby – Extended Mix 2. Close To Me – Closer Mix 3. Fascination Street – Extended Mix 4. The Walk – Everything Mix 5. Lovesong – Extended Mix 6. A Forest – Tree Mix 7. Pictures of You – Extended Dub Mix 8. Hot Hot Hot!!! 9. The Caterpillar – Flicker Mix 10. Inbetween Days – Shiver Mix 11. Never Enough – Big Mix DISC TWO – Remixes 1982-1990 1. Let’s Go To Bed - Extended Mix, 1982 2. Just One Kiss - Extended Mix, 1982 3. Close To Me - Extended Remix, 1985 4. Boys Don’t Cry - New Voice Club Mix, 1986 5. Why Can’t I Be You? - Extended Mix, 1987 6. A Japanese Dream (12″ Remix, 1987 7.…

THE SPECIALS The Specials 2 TONE, 1979 The magnificent debut featured exuberant covers (“A Message To You Rudy”, “Too Hot”) and outstanding originals (“Too Much Too Young”, “It’s Up To You”), packed with scathing social commentary, all set to a blue-beat you could dance to. The addition of Neville Staple on vocals brought authority to their interracial ethos. 10/10 THE SPECIALS BBC Sessions EMI, 1989 While 1980’s More Specials successfully branched out from ska, the BBC Sessions is a great way of tracing the drift away while hoovering up classic singles like “Gangsters” and “Friday Night, Saturday Morning”. Also includes the excellent mash-up of “Long Shot Kick The Bucket”/“Liquidator”/ “Skinhead Moonstomp”. 9/10 TERRY HALL & MUSHTAQ The Hour Of Two Lights HONEST JON’S,…

Next month promises a load of great stuff… that we can’t yet tell you about. Great stuff we can tell you about, though, includes Jim James’ Uniform Distortion , Olivia Chaney’s Shelter , and Dawes’ Passwords , the latter produced by Jonathan Wilson. In the dusty archive trunk, there are remastered vinyl reissues of Teenage Fanclub’s five Creation albums, a deluxe edition of the Grateful Dead’s Anthem Of The Sun and some wonderful unearthed music from David Sylvian and Holger Czukay. There’s also a rediscovered album from overlooked folk hero Dave Evans in the works for a July release. TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC.COM…

DURING Ray Davies’ lengthy legal tussles with various managers, publishers and record labels, he had cause to call on the services of Allen Klein, the notorious music industry fixer. Klein invited Ray to his wedding anniversary party, where, among plastic-covered furniture, he witnessed pop’s most ruthless operator dance the foxtrot as Bobby Vinton sang “Blue Velvet”. “That was at his home in Queens, I think it was, the kind of place for someone who’d done well but had no taste,” recalls Ray. “That’s another side of Allen Klein, because he was a family man, and his son is in the business, too. Bobby Vinton was one of his big acts, and when he sang ‘Blue Velvet’ he got on the dancefloor with his wife. Touching – if it hadn’t have…

“I THINK it was in Jamaica that John formulated the ideas that became Pil, the sonic experiments of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby mixed with his love of krautrock like Can, Tangerine Dream. He came back with a very clear vision of what he wanted to do and then assembled this team to execute it. John was too smart just to be a Sex Pistol. He didn’t want to be defined by the stupid monster punk had become. It was like a ladder, punk, and some people got stuck on the first rung. “Gunter Grove wasn’t easy. They all had a different state of normal – but that’s what made it interesting. It led to that warped, paranoid and claustrophobic music, with this space so you could put yourself…

WHEN Case is working at WaveLab Recording Studio in Tucson, Arizona, she practises what engineer Chris Schultz called “distracted listening”. She’ll walk the two or three blocks to a newsstand called the Crescent Tobacco Shop and return with an armload of magazines from all over the world. While her friends are figuring out their parts, she’ll flip through the issues and tear out images and articles that intrigue her. She may appear to be lost in her periodicals, but she’s paying close attention. “She has the ears of a bat,” Schultz says. “You know you’re in trouble if she stops reading and pokes her head up. That’s what nobody wants to see. She’ll say something like, ‘Did you really mean to play that?’ No! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…

MOST songwriters are delighted to leave the drudgery of their day jobs behind for a rootless life on the road; Ray LaMontagne, though, is clearly cut from a different cloth. “It was extremely hard,” he says from his Massachusetts farmhouse. “I was making real in-roads at home with a timber framer, and that’s really what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a timber framer. Being a singer-songwriter wasn’t any aspiration of mine in the least.” Despite his reluctance, the power of LaMontagne’s earthy voice and affecting songs quickly propelled him into the life of a Grammy-winning musician on a major label. Those first few records didn’t leave LaMontagne fulfilled, though, but as he takes Uncut through his seven albums to date, he explains that a spiritual change earlier…

THE BEATLES Abbey Road 1969 This is the first album I remember recognising as a connected body of songs. When I was three years old, I thought these songs were fairy tales and assumed my parents were playing the album for my benefit. We could hear the whole recording on vinyl at home, but our VW Bug had an eight-track player with a broken speaker, so we only got half the instrumentation and sometimes only backing vocals. Both versions, partial and full, sounded equally great to me. I’m not one to choose a favourite Beatles album, but this one has a special place, being my first real album memory. HARRY NILSSON The Point! 1971 This was introduced to me by a boyfriend of my mum’s, and I fell in love…

THE Switzerland of popular cliché, a land of chocolate-box Alpine villages and shady banking practices, is probably the last place you’d expect Sleaford Mods to make any headway with their stark and sweary brand of socio-realist punk-rap. But when we catch up with Jason Williamson midway between shows in Neuchâtel and Zurich, he is effusive about the band’s Swiss following. “People like the authenticity, I suppose,” he reasons. “We’ve kind of got nothing to lose, me and Andrew. We’re reaching 50, doing what we’re passionate about, and I think that comes through.” He accepts that not every reference to daytime TV and defunct provincial supermarket chains will translate, but his rage against the everyday grind (and affection for life’s small mercies) is universal. Switzerland, says Williamson, isn’t so different from…

DORY PREVIN Mythical Kings And Iguanas UNITED ARTISTS Tillman’s love of Previn is not new, but her influence on his writing seems increasingly obvious. On this 1971 album Previn looked under the bonnet of her problematic marriage to the conductor André Previn. Her delivery is light and her music playful, but the words, when you isolate them from the delicate melodies, are devastating. GEORGE HARRISON All Things Must Pass APPLE The overdubbing and the use of Mellotron suggest that Tillman’s love of The Beatles’ “White Album” isn’t far below the surface, but the finished article is closer to the pastoral ennui of Harrison’s 1970 solo epic. Harrison used his new-found freedom to investigate American roots music. Tillman is heading in the other direction, burying his roots in melodic ennui. NICK…

1. Cross My Heart 2. Breathe In, Breathe Out 3. Desert House 4. Var Har Du Vart 5. Quand Les Larmes D’un Ange Font Danser La Neige 6. Visions Of Someone Special, On A Wall Of Reflections 7. Shirim Produced by: Melody Prochet, Fredrik Swahn, Reine Fiske, Gustav Ejstes Recorded at: Solna, Sweden Personnel: Melody Prochet (vocals, drums, soundscape sculpting, electric guitar, violin, Juno arpeggios, Mellotron, tuning pedal, organ, whistle), Fredrik Swahn (Mellotron, sound engineering, bass), Reine Fiske (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, Mellotron, tambourine, drums, violin, percussions, castanets), Gustav Ejstes (piano, organ, vocals, guitar, human beatbox, percussions, scream, flute), Johan Holmegard (drums), Nicholas Allbrook (poetry)…

Lifted is the much-anticipated fifth album from Texas-based tunesmith Israel Nash. Due in July on LOOSE and recorded at his own Plum Creek Sound studio, the LP sees Nash and his regular band joined by Austin’s Latino funksters, Grupo Fantasma, plus Kelsey Wilson and Sadie Wolfe from fellow locals Wild Child. Nash’s cosmic visions were partly inspired by the methodology of John Cage, using randomised sounds and music. “It’s all about finding, searching for little sparks of inspiration,” he explains. “It may be a sound, a groove, a colour, or even an object.” The end of June sees the return of Dawes with Passwords , on which they’re reunited with early producer Jonathan Wilson. Singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith has called the new songs “an attempt to…

Earth 1. Fists Of Fury 2. Can You Hear Him 3. Hub-Tones 4. Connections 5. Tiffakonkae 6. The Invincible Youth 7. Testify 8. One Of One Heaven 9. The Space Travelers Lullaby 10. Vi Lua Vi Sol 11. Street Fighter Mas 12. Song For The Fallen 13. Journey 14. The Psalmnist 15. Show Us The Way 16. Will You Sing Produced by: Kamasi Washington, Michael Harris Recorded at: Electro-Vox Recording, Henson Recording Studio, Stagg Street Studio, all Los Angeles Personnel includes: Kamasi Washington (tenor saxophone), Cameron Graves (piano), Brandon Coleman (keyboards, organ, vocoder), Miles Mosley (upright bass and electric bass), Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner (electric bass), Tony Austin (drums), Ronald Bruner, Jr (drums), Ryan Porter (trombone), Patrice Quinn (lead vocal)…

This is a record of quite intimate songs with a huge orchestral backing: can you explain? My last three records have been biographical about other people, whereas this album is about what’s going on in my daily life. I am a fan of orchestral pop records and it was an experiment for me – I’ve never used a full symphony orchestra before. There are records where I think it works well: Serge Gainsbourg records, Lee Hazlewood productions, even Curtis Mayfield records. Babelsberg is bleak at times; do you despair of the modern world? It’s not necessarily critical. It was recorded at a particularly worrying time for everyone, I think – a time of political uncertainty and paranoia. “Selfies In The Sunset” is that idea of taking photos of…

“I was setting up to overdub the electric guitar and he said, ‘I’ll see you on Monday’” STEVE CROPPER O TIS REDDING didn’t have an ego no matter how big he got. There was too much work to be done, he didn’t have time for egos! He knew how important he was, how big he was. His managers knew and they knew they’d sell a lot of records. He started the song on an acoustic guitar, and I said, “It’s got to have an acoustic guitar,” so I played the rhythm guitar and acoustic on the session. The last time I saw Otis I was setting up to overdub the electric guitar parts and he said, “I’ll see you on Monday.” I said, “All right man, have a great…

DUCK BAKER Les Blues Du Richmond: Demos And Outtakes 1973–1979 TOMPKINS SQUARE 8/10 Part prequel, part sequel: versatile fingerpicker’s early days redefined Like many dedicated folk musicians rising against the grain in the ’70s, Duck Baker never quite emerged as a household name. But for those aware of his 45-year recording career, his dazzling guitar proficiency and smooth amalgamation of countless genres – from blues to bluegrass, folk to free jazz – stand as benchmarks. Baker’s complex, technically daunting approach, blending melody and countermelody with myriad mood shifts, entices. The set’s first half-dozen tracks unearth early demos, when Baker was shooting for a record contract. “Maple Leaf Rag”, per Scott Joplin, might be basic ragtime, but is still played with precision and verve; the spidery “Homage To Leadbelly” toys with…

IT is an unfeasibly sunny April afternoon at Ray Davies’ Konk Studios in north London. The complex sprawls discreetly, Tardis-like, through several semis in genteel suburban Hornsey. Upon learning I arrived via the A406, London’s notorious North Circular, Davies murmurs, “I wrote a song about the 406 once. It’s called ‘Aggravation’…” Davies knows about aggravation. Indeed, it seems to have proliferated exponentially through much of his career. The famously violent aggro that constitutes such a storied part of The Kinks’ legend led to the aggravation of their being banned from touring America for much of the ’60s, which in turn helped precipitate the business and subsequent legal aggravations that prevented Ray from accessing his due songwriter’s royalties for several years. It’s a cruel trail of toppling dominoes that brought this…

“IF you have chickens, you’ll never get another tick,” Neko Case explains, just as one of her three dogs climbs up in her lap. “Even if they don’t lay eggs for you, it’s so worth it to have them out there eating ticks. They’ll go to bed every night like they’re supposed to. I have a rooster, but he’s not an early riser. He goes off whenever he wants, but it doesn’t bug me too much.” Case is sitting in her studio in St Johnsbury, Vermont, a small town just 50 miles south of the Canadian border. A converted theatre in the back of the town’s old post office, the studio looks like Case’s own museum, full of personal memorabilia and assorted bric-à-brac collected over a 20-year career. Critically, though,…

“SO many people think Johnny Cash was a felon,” says WS ‘Fluke’ Holland, “but the only time he was ever in prison was when we were performing in one! Except for one time when we played down in Mississippi.” Following a show at Mississippi State University on May 11, 1965, Cash went walkabout in Starkville. “I went back to the hotel, but Johnny went out wandering around in some guy’s yard. They called the sheriff, who came and put him in jail.” Cash was arrested for public drunkenness, though his defence was that he had just been picking flowers. “When they found out who it was they let him out,” says Holland. “Now, in the little town they have a big show every year – the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’…

THE first Hair album was Hair: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording (RCA Victor, 1967), a recording of the original off-Broadway cast, featuring Walker Daniels, Gerome Ragni, Jill O’Hara, Sally Eaton and Shelley Plimpton. It includes a couple of songs that didn’t make it to Broadway, like O’Hara’s “Climax”, a song about orgasms. Hair: Original Broadway Cast Recording (RCA Victor, 1968) followed and went to No 1 for three months, winning a Grammy and selling three million copies. It was one of the last big-selling Broadway soundtracks, and was bought by people who wouldn’t have touched “real” hippy music. Similarly, songs from Hair were covered by Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand and The Lemonheads, while the single of “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by The Fifth…