Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i UNCUT

“I WENT from the theatre to appearing on this huge hit record and then on to The Clash, thrown into a whole other milieu which really had nothing to do with me. As a kid from St Louis, what did I know about the struggle under Margaret Thatcher? The trajectory was crazy.” Singer and actor Ellen Foley is reflecting on her formative years of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Having initially sought a career on Broadway, she’d toured with the National Lampoon show where she met Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman. The upshot was a starring role on 1977’s mega-platinum Bat Out Of Hell, with Foley taking the powerhouse female lead on the epic “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”. Before long she was mixing with the likes of Ian…

“Chasing the humour in conversation is a precursor to writing songs” WHEN Rodney Crowell picks up the phone, he’s sitting exactly where you imagine him to be – on his back porch in Tennessee, guitar in hand, working on a song. “I live on top of a hill, surrounded by forest,” he says, describing the scene. “I’m looking at a mature weeping cedar of Lebanon, a couple of cedrus diadoras, some Japanese maple, some ancient cedar trees and an early spring vegetable garden. There’s a pool of water that’s reflecting the sun and a hummingbird just came by a moment ago. It’s pretty idyllic, I would say.” Yet that doesn’t mean the songs always flow. “I’ve learned, after years and years of doing this, that inspiration is the byproduct of…

LOS HERMANOS Los Hermanos ABRIL MUSIC, 1999 Though he wasn’t yet a primary songwriter or player, the debut album by Amarante’s first rock band put him on the map in Brazil in a big way. Breakout single “Anna Júlia”, a ’60s-indebted rock anthem, remains the band’s most popular song, while the Amarantepenned “Quem Sabe” displays a more aggressive side of the songwriter not often heard today. 7/10 LITTLE JOY Little Joy ROUGH TRADE, 2008 Amarante joined forces with The Strokes’ Fabrizio Moretti after the pair met at a music festival, and formed the trio Little Joy with vocalist and noted Scientologist Binki Shapiro. The band’s self-titled debut is a mixed bag of lo-fi indie touchstones, alternately cute and confident, with a concluding track that portends Amarante’s solo work to come.…

1 Barely Alive 2 Dancing Away In Tears 3 Diamond Studded Shoes 4 Be My Friend 5 Great Divide 6 Starlight 7 If I Had To Do It All Again 8 Now You’re Here 9 Whatever You Want 10 Break The Bough 11 Like A Photograph 12 Stand For Myself Produced by: Dan Auerbach Recorded at: Easy Eye Sound, Nashville, TN Personnel: Yola Carter (vocals), Dan Auerbach (guitar, percussion), Sam Bacco (perc), Tom Bukovac (guitar), Aaron Frazer (drums), Nick Movshon (bass), Ray Jacildo (organ, vibraphone, glockenspiel), Russ Pahl (guitar), Mike Rojas (keys), Billy Sanford (guitar), Bobby Wood (keys), Andy Gabbard (backing vocals), Matt Combs (strings), Raymond Mason (horns), Ashley Wilcoxson, Brandi Carlile (backing vocals), Dan Dugmore (steel guitar), Alfreda McCrary, Ann McCrary, Regina McCrary (backing vocals)…

1 Lovely Joan 2 Cannily, Cannily 3 My Son Tim 4 Tralee Gaol 5 Shallow Brown 6 Chaney’s Tape Dream 7 Bring Me Home Pt 1 (The Dear Irish Boy) 8 Bring Me Home Pt 2 (I Would Not Live Always) 9 Bring Me Home Pt 3 (An Buachaillin Ban) 10 Come, Me Little Son Produced by: Brendan Jenkinson Recorded at: Oxford Lane Studio and Sonic Studio, Dublin Personnel: John Francis Flynn (vocals, whistles, guitars), Ross Chaney (drums, Tascam, synthesiser), Brendan Jenkinson (synthesiser, clarinet, electric guitar), UltanO’Brien (fiddle), Phil Christie (keyboards), Consuelo Bresci (additional vocals), Saileog Ní Ceannabháin (additional vocals)…

Ptah, The El Daoud IMPULSE, 1970 Recorded at John Coltrane’s old home studio on Long Island, an all-star quintet sets out on the journey from straight-ahead modern jazz towards the exotic and the sublime, with majestic improvising from two great saxophonists, Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson. Heading in the opposite direction, the track “Turiya And Ramakrishna” movingly demonstrates the depth of Alice’s roots in gospel and the blues. 9/10 Universal Consciousness IMPULSE, 1971 By transcribing Alice’s arrangements for strings, Ornette Coleman helped her realise this ambitious project. With a battery of drums manned by Jack DeJohnette, Rashied Ali and Clifford Jarvis, she creates a form of abstract impressionist jazz featuring bright slashes of violin, wriggling skeins of organ improvisation and silvery cascades of harp against a background of thunderous percussion.…

Three later works that represent a more relaxed but political singer Mother’s Spiritual COLUMBIA, 1984 Some were put out by the tonal shift of Nyro’s eighth studio album: the furious romance of the songs she wrote in her teens and twenties now overtaken by thoughts on motherhood, feminism, and environmentalism. For others, this is a visionary record: a profound rumination on female experience. 8/10 Laura: Live At The Bottom Line CYPRESS, 1989 Those familiar with the intensity of early-career Nyro will be struck by the laidback, light-hearted tone of this live album, recorded at the legendary New York venue in 1988. There are six new songs here, all similarly relaxed in tone. Nyro’s voice is still an instrument of strength, though coloured by decades of smoking. 7/10 Walk The Dog…

BARIS MANÇO 2023 YAVUZ PLAK, 1975 MERVE DASDEMIR: It’s his most weird, experimental record... to me it’s his coolest album. It didn’t do well when it came out because it was slightly political. JASPER VERHULST: It has this science-fiction vibe, almost. There are a lot of synths, some longer tracks also. It’s like his concept album. SELDA SELDA TÜRKÜOLA, 1976 DASDEMIR: I grew up listening to a lot of Selda and Baris Manço. This is her best record, easy. VERHULST: The Finders Keepers release is a compilation but it has a lot of tracks from this album and it has the same cover. There’s a new reissue of it on Pharaway Sounds and that’s the album as it was originally released. FIKRET KIZILOK ZAMAN ZAMAN YONCA, 1983 DASDEMIR: He’s from…

JONATHAN Poneman at Sub Pop called me out of the blue sometime early in 1990. They wanted me to work with Nirvana. He said they would be as big as The Beatles. I thought he was just being cheeky. A couple of days later, Bleach turned up at Smart, my studio in Madison, Wisconsin. I thought it was pretty one-dimensional except that one song, “About A Girl”, which to me did sound like a Lennon-McCartney composition, an amazing melody with a great arrangement. We scheduled a week to record and about six weeks later Nirvana showed up in the Sub Pop van, pretty bedraggled. Krist was really friendly, Chad [Channing], who was drumming, seemed nice, Kurt was very likeable, quiet but polite. I fed them up at this blue-collar bar…

THERE was also a surfeit of guest musicians on There’s A Riot Goin’ On – among them Bobby Womack. He was also recording upstairs in Bel Air, laying down two albums, Communication and Understanding , in the space of a week. “I was in a creative frame of mind,” Womack told NME in 1976. “That was right at the time I met Sly. I’d been divorced and he was hanging free – a little too free as it’s turned out, but it was good for me because I needed to release that energy.” Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1984, Womack described the period as “blowing as much coke as I could blow. And drinking. And smoking weed and taking pills. Doing that all day, staying up seven, eight days. Me…

September 14, 1983 Amy Winehouse is born in North London 2003 Now with 19 Management, Amy releases her first album, the jazz-tinged Frank , with Salaam Remi on production duties 2004 Amy and Salaam win an Ivor Novello award for “Stronger Than Me” 2005 She meets Mark Ronson and the two collaborate on six tracks for Back To Black April 30, 2007 The song “Back To Black” is released in the UK 2008 Amy wins a record-tying five Grammys for Back To Black July 23, 2011 Amy is found dead in her Camden home…

VARIOUS ARTISTS ROCKABILLY STARS VOLUME 1 EPIC, 1981 I discovered this when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. It was a great introduction to that music – it has everybody from Mac Curtis to Carl Smith, Link Wray, but the highlight for me was Charlie Rich. He’s definitely one of the greatest singers I ever heard. His songs “No Headstone On My Grave” and “I Feel Like Going Home” completely ruptured my idea of rock’n’roll. It didn’t sound like old music at all, it sounded like brand new fresh music. The Clash, for one, were calling from that kind of music and it was nice to hear the history of it. I still have that same vinyl copy with me wherever I move to. X LOS ANGELES SLASH,…

“They were very switched on, image-wise”MARTYN GODDARD AS punk swept the nation in 1977 and ’78, time was moving so fast, The Jam’s regular sleeve photographer Martyn Goddard forgot he’d amassed stacks of fascinating outtakes from those now-iconic shoots at his tiny studio on Kensington Church Street. “Every day I was photographing a different band,” says Goddard. “I did Sham 69, The Cure, I did a band called The Jolt… although the shoot before The Jam was Acker Bilk!” The sessions were “done very quickly, and once the art department had pulled the picture [for the sleeve], the rest of the negatives went into my files in the loft. I’d forgotten all about them.” Despite the rapid turnover of new wave hopefuls, The Jam – whom Goddard first snapped for…

JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ Local Valley CITY SLANG “We can’t know for sure what’s next / But we’re in this together”. Surprisingly rousing tunes from the Gothenburg troubadour, in English, Spanish and Swedish. MEGA BOG Life, And Another PARADISE OF BACHELORS Recorded in studios up and down the US West Coast, Erin Birgy’s fifth is a dense, fantastical odyssey, touching on folk-rock, ’80s pop, exotica, sci-fi and dialectical behaviour therapy. THE SMILE “Opposites” UNRELEASED “I’m quitting unexpectedly…” One of several ace, knotty grooves unveiled by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s exciting new splinter group during the Glasto livestream. LUGGAGE Happiness EP HUSKY PANTS Continuing his mission to revive Chicago post-rock, the next release on Ryley Walker’s label – following his own majestic Course In Fable – is this EP of grinding Slint-style…

1 Oscar Wilde (Came Here To Make Fun Of You) 2 Perfume & Decay 3 The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes 4 Di Kreutser Sonata 5 I Refuse To Believe (You Could Love Me) 6 Ones + Zeros 7 Time & A Rifle 8 Ordinary World 9 1(1)1 10 Yer Little Black Book Produced by: John Parish Recorded at: Rockfield Studios, Monmouth Personnel: John Murry (vocals, guitar), Nadine Khouri, Hopey Parish (backing vocals), John Parish (guitar, piano, bass, perc, variophon, organ, Fender Rhodes, bass synth), Johnny Boyle (drums), Tali (piano, bass), Joe Jones (electronics), Joe Harvey-Whyte (pedal steel), Lizzie Evans (handclaps), Drew Morgan (cello)…

1 Path Of Wellness 2 High In The Grass 3 Worry With You 4 Method 5 Shadow Town 6FavoriteNeighbor 7 Tomorrow’s Grave 8 No Knives 9 Complex Female Characters 10 Down The Line 11 Bring Mercy Produced by: Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein Recorded at: Halfling Studio, Portland Personnel: Corin Tucker (guitar, vocals), Carrie Brownstein (guitar, vocals, keys), Bill Athens (bass), Galen Clark (clavinet, Wurlitzer, Rhodes), Vince LiRocchi (percussion, drums), Brian Koch (drums), Angie Boylan (drums)…

“THE album is like a window into my mind, my life experiences, my politics, my hopeful and sentimental sides, and my hope for humanity at large. I want to be an example of nuance, because the media does not want to portray [ black women ] in a way that is nuanced. Often people come out all guns blazing and they don’t navigate nuance. Instead of punching out of the gate with absolutely everything I have, I’m going to really try and navigate nuance. “I studied my creative process to the point where I knew what kind of state my brain needed to be in to generate ideas and knew what time of day my ideas turn up, and so the whole process was, ‘OK, I’m going to start writing…

How did you go about reclaiming these traditional songs? From my perspective, certain songs require different treatments. The lyrics are quite antiquated on some of the material, and how I connect with them informs the arrangements. “Lovely Joan”, for example, represented this weird kind of fairytale-scape for me, so I wanted to put that into a floaty, dreamlike kind of space. How much of this album has been a voyage of discovery for you? Having grown up playing traditional instrumental music, it wasn’t until I was 19 or 20 that I really discovered the singing aspect. I got hooked on The Watersons, which was the gateway into it. This is my first solo project, so it’s a culmination of the last 10 years of singing these traditional songs and finding…

What was the thinking behind the selections? It’s a combination of musical, intellectual and emotional processes functioning all at once. I see Rastafarianism as a faith based on a magical presumption (that Haile Selassie, crowned king of Ethiopia in 1930, is God). From believing this idea, Rastafarians are able to emotionally and intellectually throw off the shackles of colonialism and a past history of slavery – to reinvent themselves as proud lions rather than victims. There’s an interesting relationship between religiosity and entrepreneurialism in the Studio One ethic. I think Rastafarianism, Clement Dodd’s entrepreneurship and the high sense of righteousness in everyone involved are all a manifestation and reflection of the same thing: black pride and self-worth as the tool by which to enrich lives and art, and they are…

THERE’S a rumbling deep beneath Vondelpark – more precisely, emanating from the Vondelbunker, a Cold War nuclear shelter under a bridge in one of Amsterdam’s biggest parks. These days, it’s a volunteer-led space for cultural events and houses practice rooms where bands, including Alt1n Gün, rehearse. “It’s a proper bunker!” laughs Merve Dasdemir, the band’s singer and keyboardist. “We have a very nice space there,” says bassist and founder Jasper Verhulst. “Though there are no windows and there’s not a lot of air in there.” At the Vondelbunker, Alt1n Gün can rehearse whenever they want. But there’s not been much call for that lately. There’s Covid, of course. But before that, the band’s busy gig schedule meant little practice was necessary. “We used to play a lot,” says Dasdemir, “so…

WHO could have anticipated that when Nirvana entered Sound City Studios in May 1991 they were about to make history? Certainly, it seems, not the band themselves – according to drummer Dave Grohl, “We thought, ‘Hopefully we’ll get to achieve the success of a band like Sonic Youth, and each get to have our own apartment!’ That was the extent of our ambitions.” It transpired, of course, that Nevermind’s success transformed not only the lives of the band and their affiliates – but the lives of many millions more, who found a deep connection with the band’s music and, especially, the lyrics of Kurt Cobain. It’s a far cry from the band’s beginnings, in the American northwest. For this story, we join the band during a period of transition. Following…

UNCUT: What do you remember about the first time you, Kurt and Dave played together? KRIST NOVOSELIC: It flowed, it sounded good, it was immediate. It just fell into place, there was no awkwardness. Dave is such a good musician, he rose to the occasion – or we rose to him, whichever way it happened. It just seemed natural and Dave was easy to hang out with. I think he moved in with Kurt. That took a lot of courage, to move into an apartment with him! Dave knew the Bleach material, but we were already writing songs for Nevermind. We had some songs: some we would just make up on the spot, others Kurt had some ideas for. We were really serious about rehearsing. We had this barn in…

AUG 23, 1991 Reading Festival NOV 4, 1991 Bierkeller, Bristol NOV 5, 1991 Astoria Theatre, London NOV 6, 1991 Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton NOV 8, 1991 The Word NOV 10-25 European leg NOV 26, 1991 University of Bradford NOV 27, 1991 Hummingbird, Birmingham NOV 28, 1991 Top Of The Pops broadcast/Octagon, University of Sheffield NOV 29, 1991 Calton Studios, Edinburgh NOV 30, 1991 QMU, University of Glasgow DEC 1, 1991 The Southern Bar, Edinburgh DEC 2, 1991 The Mayfair, Newcastle DEC 3, 1991 Rock City, Nottingham DEC 4, 1991 The Academy, Manchester DEC 5, 1991 Kilburn National Ballroom DEC 6, 1991 Tonight With Jonathan Ross broadcast…

A WHOLE NEW THING (1967) Sly & The Family Stone’s debut was loaded with intricate arrangements. “Advice” resembled avant-garde composer Terry Riley as much as soul radio. “Trip To Your Heart” took its own title literally with dense, swirling harmonies and a freakout ending. DANCE TO THE MUSIC (1968) “A repetitive theme interspersed with shtick” was how Family Stone manager David Kapralik described “Dance To The Music”– but it was brilliant shtick. The album was more, and less, of the same, including a 12-minute medley that predicted the disco remix. LIFE (1968) The first Family Stone album that adds up to more than the sum of its parts: the hooks punch throughout. But it’s still a tad straight-laced compared with its successors – it took a shade more wildness to…

Released: October 27, 2006 Written by: Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson Produced by: Mark Ronson Recorded at: Daptone Studios, Chung King Studios (NYC), Metropolis Studios (London) Highestchart position: UK 8; US 19 Personnel includes: Amy Winehouse (vocals), Binky Griptite (guitars), Nick Movshon (bass), Homer Steinweiss (drums), Chris Elliott (orchestral arrangements), Victor Axelrod (piano), Chris Tombling, Warren Zielinski, Everton Nelson (violin), Jon Thorne, Katie Wilkinson, Rachel Bott (viola), Andy Mackintosh (alto sax), Jamie Talbot (tenor sax), Dave Bishop (baritone sax) Frank Ricotti (percussion)…

CONFUSION (JACQUES TATI, 1974) Tati conceived the follow-up to Playtime as a satire on the society of the spectacle. Thanks to contacts at Island Records’ French office, Sparks – fresh from  their pop annus mirabilis – were lined up to play US technicians, visiting a rural French TV station to share their Yankee know-how. Sadly, Tati’s failing finances and health meant the film was never produced, although a would-be title song eventually surfacing on 1976’s Big Beat album. ROLLERCOASTER (JAMES GOLDSTONE, 1977) From the sublime to the ridiculous is a characteristic Sparks move. Ron and Russell described the collapse of the Tati collaboration as their greatest regret. They soon rued their appearance in this George  Segal/Richard Widmark disaster movie flop as their biggest mistake. Stepping in after the Bay City…

NO other group has been collated quite like the Dead, largely thanks to the efforts of a fiercely devoted community of Deadheads who’ve been trading live tapes and bootlegs since the late ’60s. The band’s decision to record most of their shows, employing influential fans as curators, has been a smart move too, resulting in live recordings series like Dick’s Picks , Road Trips and Dave’s Picks . The ‘Dave’ in question is the Dead’s legacy manager and audiovisual archivist, David Lemieux. He has the enviable job of overseeing the band’s entire tape stash, housed in a climate-controlled facility within a larger Warner Music Group building in greater LA. “The Dead did a little over 2,300 concerts, and 75 per cent or more of those were recorded,” he explains. “There…

WHITE ON WHITE Directed by Théo Court Starring Alfredo Castro Streaming from June 30 Cert To be confirmed 8/10 MARTIN EDEN Directed by Pietro Marcello Starring Luca Marinelli, Jessica Cressy Opens June 4 Cert 15 8/10 SWEAT Directed by Magnus von Horn Starring Magdalena Kolesnik i Opens June 25 Cert To be confirmed 6/10 THE REASON I JUMP Directed by Jerry Rothwell Opens June 18 Cert Tobe confirmed 7/10 DEERSKIN Directed by Quentin Dupieux Starring Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel Opens July 16 Cert 15 7/10…

Celebrations are in order this month. As PJHarvey marks 30 years since her debut single, "Dress", we reveal our Deluxe, expanded Ultimate Music Guide to all things Polly Jean. This updated edition includes new reviews of the recent demo releases alongside classic archival encounters from Melody Maker , NME and Uncut ... And another anniversary: onsale on June 21, The BeatlesMiscellanyAnd Atlas celebrates 60 years of the Fabs' recording professionally. It's a left-field history of The Beatles told in graphs, stats, maps, minutiae, seating plans, miscellaneous observations and their entire UK discography. Although postponed last year, The Doc n' Roll Film Festival are screening some of the films from their 2020 programme during June and July - as well as two new releases. You can find full details at docnrollfestival.com/films ,…

1 Drama 2 Maré 3 Tango 4 Tara 5 Tanto 6 I Can’t Wait 7 Tao 8 Sky Beneath 9 Eu Com Você 10 Um Milhão 11 The End Produced by: Rodrigo Amarante Recorded at: Amarante’s home studio; MCJ Studio, Los Angeles Personnel: Rodrigo Amarante (guitars, bass, electric piano, organ, percussion, drums, harpsichord, Mellotron, vibraphone, celeste, banjo, tenor saxophone), Paul Taylor (drums), Todd Dahlhoff (bass, double bass, backing vocals), Andres Renteria (congas), David Ralicke (tenor and baritone saxophones, flugelhorn, trombone, trumpet), Moreno Veloso (backing vocals), Cornelia Murr (synthesisers, backing vocals), Daniel Castanheira (bamboo blocks, percussion effects, bongo, darbuka, conga, sapo), Danny Bensi (violins, violas, celli)…

The new album starts with a song that evokes the 1995 Oklahoma bombing. Some people will listen to the opening of the song and think of Timothy McVeigh, but with over 200 mass shootings in the USA clocked before the calendar clicked into June, it could be about a lot of people. Christ, it is about a lot of people. What prompted the cover of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”? I told John Parish that I always like to include a cover on each of my records. I played him a bunch and he picked “Ordinary World”. He played bass on it, came up with the Led Zeppelin-style groove on it. How did Parish come to produce the album? I’ve known John for the guts of a decade. When we started…

How is your relationship now – has it changed over the years? BØE: It changes all the time. We tend to see ourselves as the other’s opposite, that’s a part of our identity, but then having spent so much time together during all these years, we’ve realised we are very similar in many ways. ØYE: You could say we’re like brothers or we’re like an old couple. You take each other for granted so much, and you don’t really have a choice to not have the other person in your life, so that opens up for very spite-y, venomous little attacks, sarcasm, stuff like this. With some of the songs on this album, it was like a constant battleground for five years, about which direction it should go in. BØE:…

When The Devil Goes Blind NERO’S NEPTUNE, 2010 A prolific songwriter from Duluth, Parr takes an irreverent approach to American folk and blues traditions, not unlike another certain folkie from Minnesota. On his first LP recorded in a professional studio instead of his home or yard or wherever, the past is a playground, where truth is pliable and everything is raw material for weird, wiry songs such as “Mastodon”. 8/10 Stumpjumper RED HOUSE, 2015 After self-releasing several albums, Parr signed with the Minnesota label Red House and released his first album with a full band. Produced by Brad Cook, it retains his ramshackle aesthetic, as though every sound emanates from that hole in his guitar. Parr tackles the old murder ballad “Delia”, but the best moments are his own philosophical…

THE recent popularity of Alice Coltrane’s music among a new generation of listeners can be a puzzle to longtime admirers of her late husband’s work. A distinguished John Coltrane scholar who teaches at an American university told me earlier this year that, while his students are extremely enthusiastic about Alice, they listen to John and don’t understand what the fuss was about. And one of the less ecstatic reviews of the recent Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders album observed that the music seemed to be doing little more than trying to replicate the mood of Alice’s recordings at their most trance-like and undemanding. Yet from the work of her nephew Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus) to explicit homages paid by Paul Weller, Laura Veirs, Sunn O))) and others, the textures and flavours of…

MARC ALMOND Enchanted (reissue, 1990) CHERRY RED 6/10 Ambitious 1990 album expanded Still riding high after a No 1 single with Gene Pitney, Almond obviously had big plans for this sixth studio album. Alas, his desire to draw on world-music flavours and up the orchestral ante clashed with producer Bob Kraushaar’s insistence on sticking close to the pop sound still dominating the charts at the time. Listening now, the songwriting is still robust on the ebullient, insistent “Death’s Diary”, the grandiose “Madame De La Luna” and the hypnotic “The Sea Still Sings” – they also sound better on the lo-fi accompaniment attempted on the demo versions included here. Elsewhere, though, the europop bobble cramps Almond’s sweeping romantic style. A stirring exception is the Stephen Hague-produced symphonic pop journey of “A…

1 Freddie McGregor – I Am A Revolutionist 2 The Silvertones – Burning In My Soul 3 Wailing Souls – Without You 4 Devon Russell – Jah Jah Fire 5 Trevor Clarke – Sufferation 6 The Gladiators – Sonia 7 Judah Eskender Tafari – Always Trying 8 The Viceroys – Ya Ho 9 Im and Count Ossie – Give Me Back Me Language And Me Culture 10 The Gladiators – Serious Thing 11 The Prospectors – Glory For I 12 Wailing Souls – Things And Time 13 Pablove Black – Inner Peace 14 The Gladiators – Peace 15 Horace Andy – Mr Jolly Man 16 Wailing Souls – Rock But Don’t Fall 17 Albert Griffiths and The Gladiators – Righteous Man 18 The Viceroys – So Many Problems…

UNCUT: Can you still remember the very first time you, Kurt and Krist played together? DAVE GROHL: Absolutely. It was in a rehearsal space in a warehouse district south of Seattle. I knew the album Bleach, but before I flew up to audition for the band I had memorised it. When we sat down to play for the first time in this little damp, dank, disgusting rehearsal space, that I think belonged to either Mudhoney or Tad, we locked in perfectly immediately. Plus, they hadn’t had anyone to sing back-up vocals before, so Kurt encouraged me to sing the back-up harmonies that he had put on the album but had never sang live. Within one minute we knew that this was the right thing to do. It doesn’t happen often,…

“WE were staying at this corporate apartment complex called the Oakwood, which a lot of musicians call the ‘Cokewood’. One night after coming home from the studio, we turned on the TV and Kurt and I watched this graphic documentary on underwater birth. It was sort of beautiful and funny to see these newborns squirming through water. Kurt had some sort of obsession with birth and reproduction and anatomy, and I think there was something about that image that he really connected with. I guess it was maybe the innocence of it all. Originally we wanted to name the album ‘Sheep’, and were talking about the cover being an overhead shot of a field full of Winnebagos and trailers. Then we saw that documentary and brought it up to the…

WE remember Amy Winehouse now as a towering icon of popular culture, a tragic totem of natural talent in an unfeeling world – but back in 2005 she was just another young singer flitting in and out of the public eye. Those eyeliner swooshes were mere wingettes, her beehive in larval form. She’d released Frank two years earlier and enjoyed the first flushes of fame in the UK but was little known in America, where Frank would not even get a release until 2007. When she wasn’t contractually obliged to be on stage, Amy would be holding court in Camden pubs, revelling in the attention and falling hard, fast and very publicly for Blake Fielder-Civil. What she wasn’t doing much of was writing. She’d gained a bit of a reputation…

SINÉAD O’Connor suggests she may have been channelling The Boomtown Rats when she decided to tear up a photo of the Pope in a high-profile Saturday  Night Live appearance in 1992, her fellow Dubliners having shredded pictures of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John on a 1978 edition of Top Of The Pops. In more deferential times, her bid to highlight clerical child abuse in Ireland seemed like an act of career suicide, but the way she puts it in her loose-slung memoir Rememberings, it was actually the moment when she took back control. “Having a No 1 record derailed my career and tearing the photo put me back on the right track,” she explains. A punky kleptomaniac whose upbringing was scarred by her mother’s mental health issues (and death in…