Former Boston Celtics big man Kendrick Perkins can't seem to get over the fact that Kyrie Irving simply didn't want to play in Boston any longer. Perkins has vented about his issues with Irving on numerous occasions, the most recent coming Tuesday night when he sat in as an analyst on the Celtics-Rockets NBC Sports Boston broadcast.
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As the first half came to a close, Perkins noted how many Celtic supporters were in the building at the Toyota Center in Houston, and how it makes him "want to throw up" thinking of how Kyrie chose to play for the Brooklyn Nets instead.
Says Perk (H/T Yahoo Sports):
"When I was playing for the Celtics I never really focused on the crowd or the fans. I was so locked in," he said. "Now that I'm an analyst, I'm retired, it's amazing how many Celtics fans there are around the world.
"Do you hear these chants right now? Let's go Celtics. And Kyrie Irving didn't want to play here. Every time I think of that guy, I want to throw up."
As mentioned, this isn't the first time that Perkins has publicly criticized the 27-year old All Star. Following Boston's playoff exit last season, Perk described Kyrie as a "bad leader" and someone who can't carry his own team. A month later, he said he "lost all respect" for Irving.
We're sure this isn't the last time we'll hear the retired enforcer bash the Nets' point guard, or his teammate Kevin Durant.
Nardia’s New Single “Is It You” Is a Dreamy Slow Burn About Longing, Mystery—and Emotional Mastery
Some songs don’t just hit the ears—they hit the heart, hard. And “Is It You,” the latest single from Australian artist Nardia, doesn’t ask for your attention—it quietly demands it.
Released as the first taste of her upcoming album Own Every Scar, “Is It You” is a slow-burning meditation on connection, curiosity, and the disarming vulnerability of asking: Could you be the one? With minimalist production and sultry restraint, Nardia’s voice floats front and center—stripped and powerful. There’s nothing extra here. No vocal acrobatics for show. Just pure feeling, delivered with the type of honesty that makes time slow down.
Bob Marley Album By Album
From Uncut’s March 2019 issue [Take 262]. Bob Marley’s bandmates and collaborators chart the musical evolution of a reggae superstar…
“All the albums are great,” proclaims Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett as he casts an eye over The Wailers’ mighty back catalogue. “I played on them all, and I love them all.” Still touring with an incarnation of the band that includes guitarist Donald Kinsey, the original Wailers’ bassist guides Uncut through the records that delivered reggae from the ghettos of Kingston to stadia around the world, making Bob Marley a superstar in the process. Featuring rifts, shootings, spliff-related studio disasters exile, fish curries and ultimately tragedy, with supporting roles for Chris Blackwell and his Island team, as well as latter-day Wailers’ guitarist Junior Marvin, the band’s story is hardly lacking in drama. Through it all, the music developed and deepened.
“With each album, we changed something,” says Family Man, who has lived up to his nickname by fathering 14 children. “I and I were in deep meditation of the works we were doing. We rehearsed, meditated, prepared ourselves every day to record, making sure we never missed a beat.”
THE WAILERS
Catch A Fire
(Island, 1973)
Having recorded with Lee Perry, The Wailers sign to Island and make their international debut, a ground-breaking blend of roots reggae and Western rock textures
ASTON ‘FAMILY MAN’ BARRETT [BASS]: We’d been working with Lee Perry at Randy’s Studio, 17 North Parade, Kingston. It was a wonderful vibe, nice, no complaints. Bob and Lee got along great, until we moved to the next stage! The first time I met Chris Blackwell was at his house at 56 Hope Road, where Bob later lived. It was a musical conversation. His interest was in the music, he had records piled up to the ceiling. We listened to music he had and talked about the music we would develop together, a crossover of pop and R&B. I liked it.
TONY PRATT [ENGINEER]: Chris had hatched this idea of merging reggae with rock, to appeal to FM-listening rock audiences. Accessibility was important; I think that’s the view Bob took. Bob was already in charge. He was the focal point, with his special charm and personality. His ability to tell a story was very special.
BARRETT: Bob was the leader. My memories of recording the album are of a togetherness vibe. The singers would write songs along with input from the musicians. We smoked a little herb and drink Red Label wine, got the vibes while we laid the tracks down. My favourite is “Rock It Baby”, one of the newer songs we did.
PRATT: Bob arrived in London with the tapes and we started from that point. They were on eight-track, a couple on four-track, so we dubbed them up to 16-track and kept recording. There were vocals that Bob wanted to do again, and keys player ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick played a big part. When Wayne Perkins came in, he struggled with the beat. We were trying to put guitar on “Midnight Ravers”. We ran the track a couple of times, then he waved at me to stop and said, “Rabbit, can you tell me where the fuck the one is?!”
FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT MARCH 2019/TAKE 262 IN THE ARCHIVE
Members of Jane’s Addiction tease new music without Perry Farrell
The members of Jane’s Addiction appear to working on new music together – but without frontman Perry Farrell.
The band had a tumultuous 2024. After reforming with their original line-up of singer Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery, they released their first new music together for 34 years in the form of the single ‘Imminent Redemption’.
However, during a show in Boston on their North American tour in September, Farrell punched Navarro in the face, leading to the immediate cancellation of the tour and the band’s hiatus due to “a continuing pattern of behaviour and the mental health difficulties” of Farrell.
Now, it seems that Navarro, Avery and Perkins might be back in the studio together again. In a video posted to Avery’s Instagram in which he tagged in his former bandmates, the bassist said: “Writing some more new lines to some of Stephens drumming. Look forward to getting some Mr Navarro on them. 2025!”
The post was then shared by Perkins, but no further information about any collaboration has been shared. Navarro and Avery did form the band Deconstruction in 1993 after the initial dissolution of Jane’s, so it is possible that the musicians are referring to a potential revival of that group.
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NME was present for Jane’s Addiction visit to London’s Roundhouse last summer, and wrote in a four-star review: “Jane’s use the set at The Roundhouse to showcase some new material. This time around, only unreleased track ‘Imminent Redemption’ makes the setlist — a percussive, tribal-inspired belter that is soon to become a classic at their live shows. ‘Ocean Size’ and ‘Three Days’ follow, with the latter becoming a nearly 15-minute-long proggy rendition that transforms an already impressive song into a force of its own.
“This is the last one because I don’t need you to give me a fucking hand to get me to come back out,” Farrell nonchalantly says, confirming there will not be an encore and introducing final track ‘Stop!’. And like that, without any further bells or whistles, the band leave the stage proving that nearly four decades after forming, they’re still a force to be reckoned with.”
Bob Dylan The Philosophy Of Modern Song
When people talk about Bob Dylan’s “born again period,” they can miss the point. If there was a determining spiritual rebirth, it didn’t happen in the late-1970s, but two decades earlier, when the Hibbing kid with a headful of Hank Williams and Little Richard vowed to dedicate his life to song. It became a never-ending baptism; he immersed himself in that river and never emerged, just swum deeper, followed the river to the sea and got tangled up in a polygamous marriage with all the siren mermaids. Speak to anyone who has spent time playing music with him, and chances are they’ll eventually tell you something like this: “Bob knows more songs than anyone I know.”
- ORDER NOW: Bob Dylan is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut
- READ MORE: On the road with Bob Dylan
You should be careful what you rely on in his memoir, Chronicles, but you can believe Dylan when he writes in there about the fervour that gripped him as a young performer: “Songs to me were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic.”
Speaking with Newsweek around 1997’s Time Out Of Mind, Dylan was unambiguous: “Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.” He reiterated the point to The New York Times: “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs […] You can find all my philosophy in those old songs.”
But what kind of religion, what philosophy is this? The answer comes blowing like a desert wind through the 300-odd pages of his genuinely extraordinary new publication, The Philosophy Of Modern Song.
When it was first announced, this book, billed as Dylan writing “essays focusing on songs by other artists,” sounded intriguing enough. But even those who knew to take that description with a pinch (or a pillar) of salt might be unprepared for what lies between the covers. Glancing at the contents page tells you Dylan writes about Marty Robbins’s light, waltzing 1950s pop-western ballad “El Paso”. But it doesn’t set you up you for lines like this: “In a way, this is a song of genocide…” Similarly, knowing that there’s a chapter on Webb Pierce’s 1953 recording of “There Stands The Glass” doesn’t lead you to expect a nightmare jam on the My Lai massacre that leads to the image of a dead astronaut buried in a Nudie suit.
There are sixty-six songs covered – and it’s the kind of book that leaves you twitchy and itchy wondering just why that particular number was chosen – ranging across the musical map without any obvious design, from Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” to Johnnie Ray’s “Little White Cloud That Cried”; from “London Calling” to Nina Simone owning “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”.
Sometimes, in passing, Dylan offers concise, almost-straight pen-portraits of the singers and writers in question, sketching out touching tributes to the likes of Townes Van Zandt and John Trudell, the cosmic greatness of Little Walter. Mostly, though, his essays are strange, hypnotic sermons: “The song of the deviant, the pedophile, the mass murderer,” he suddenly lets fly over Rosemary Clooney’s kooky mambo “Come On-A My House”.
Often the chapters are split into two sections, with the consideration of the song prefaced by a riff that looks to get inside the feel of it, like warm-up exercises for a method actor building a character, or an attitude of performance. Some of these are just hilarious, like the relentlessly escalating incantation explaining exactly how extremely mighty and not-to-be-trod-upon those blue suede shoes actually are. Many more become intense, obsessive little narratives, delivered in a voice that suggests a defrocked hellfire preacher caught in a doomed noir parable. “Desire fades but traffic goes on forever,” muses the drained, desperate protagonist of the perfect micro-fiction Dylan offers up to serve Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman”.
The night time in the big city feel marks this as a development from Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show. His collaborator on that, Eddie Gorodetsky, is thanked up front, and the Theme Time vibe is unavoidable in the audiobook, with Dylan’s host joined by an all-star gallery of narrators including the Big Lebowski reunion of Jeff Bridges–John Goodman–Steve Buscemi alongside giants like Rita Moreno and Sissy Spacek.
But the physical book, quite beautifully designed by Theme Time’s Coco Shinomiya, is the prime artifact. Dylan’s copious illustration selections build a parallel world that sets his words vibrating, while guarding their secrets, and cracking weird deadpan jokes. None of the images are captioned. You either know that’s Sam Cooke with his arm around Gene Vincent, or you don’t. You pick up Julie London calling on the telephone, or not. Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster roll eternally in their surf, Jack Ruby steps in when you least expect, Richard Widmark goes for his gun, Johnnie Ray crumbles up and cries, and, yes, there goes Supercar soaring into the blue.
Other names recur repeatedly in the text – Frank Sinatra becomes a particularly persistent phantom – but the figure you almost catch sight of most here is Bob Dylan himself, slipping between pages like a fugitive reflection in a shattered hall of mirrors. The mischievous feeling that he’s writing about himself – or, perhaps, all the ideas of himself he’s had to put up with – flickers again and again, and not merely when he suggests Elvis Costello “had a heady dose of Subterranean Homesick Blues” while writing “Pump It Up”.
“There’s lots of reasons folks change their names,” Dylan offers, while discussing Johnny Paycheck. “Like with many men who reinvent themselves, the details get a bit dodgy in places,” he writes about the “Ukranian Jew named Nuta Kotlyarenko.”
Want to know what Dylan thinks about divorce? About getting old? About switching style? About alienating a fanbase? How it feels to try and explain a song? Why he tours so much? It’s all here, or seems to be. Wonder what happened to the protesty guy? Well, here he is, comparing modern times to a fat undernourished child, or pretending he’s writing about Edwin Starr’s “War”: “And if we want to see a war criminal all we have to do is look in the mirror.”
Serious, playful, insightful, outrageous, disturbing, hilarious and sly, foul-mouthed and angelic, steeped in blood and lusty thoughts, it’s less musicology than a gnostic gospel with a literary tap-dancing routine thrown in. It’s a church built in a funfair, filled with trapdoors. It’ll set your hair on fire.
The Philosophy Of Modern Song by Bob Dylan is published by Simon & Schuster
Robert Plant says the idea of reuniting Led Zeppelin doesn’t “satisfy my need to be stimulated”
Robert Plant has discussed playing Led Zeppelin songs live and the idea of reuniting the band, saying it wouldn’t “satisfy my need to be stimulated”.
- READ MORE: Led Zeppelin – rank the albums
The legendary band split up in 1980 following the death of drummer John Bonham. They have since reunited several times, most recently in 2007, but only for one-off gigs. At his solo shows, Plant often performs Zeppelin songs though.
Speaking to The Los Angeles Times in a new interview, Plant, who released a new collaborative album with Alison Krauss this year, discussed revisiting the songs and one particular performance of ‘Immigrant Song’ a few years ago in Iceland.
“I know that the full, open-throated falsetto that I was able to concoct in 1968 carried me through until I was tired of it,” he said of his voice. “Then that sort of exaggerated personality of vocal performance morphed and went somewhere else.
“But as a matter of fact, I was playing in Reykjavík, in Iceland, about three years ago, just before COVID. It was Midsummer Night and there was a festival, and I got my band and I said, ‘OK, let’s do ‘Immigrant Song’.’ They’d never done it before. We just hit it, and bang — there it was. I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I could still do that.'”
Asked whether he would reunite Led Zeppelin to do more of the same, he responded: “Going back to the font to get some kind of massive applause — it doesn’t really satisfy my need to be stimulated.”
Last year, Plant commented on heritage bands who stay together for decades, likening them to “hanging onto a life raft”.
He said: “Most musicians form a band, then they stay in the band until it’s over – 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, whatever it is – and it starts to look sadly decrepit. It’s like people hanging onto a life raft, or staying in a comfortable place.”
Earlier this year, the frontman opened up about Led Zeppelin‘s reputation for rock ‘n’ roll excess, saying that much of what’s reported is “incredible exaggeration”. He said: “I can’t get my head around it now, I’m so far away from [it]. You can read bits and pieces media-wise but it was so far removed from what it was. The best thing to do was imagine that a lot of it was an incredible exaggeration and most importantly we were able to go home and get new perspective and grow up.”
In other Zeppelin news, former bassist John Paul Jones recently re-recorded the band’s 1971 version of ‘When The Levee Breaks’, with assistance from 17 musicians from around the world including Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins, as well as husband-and-wife duo Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
Ringo Starr unveils details of new EP, ‘EP3’
Ringo Starr has unveiled details of a new EP called ‘EP3’.
The Beatles drummer has said the project will be released on September 16 via Universal.
A press statement said that Starr recorded the four new songs that make up ‘EP3’ at his Roccabella West home studio. He said he worked with long-time collaborators on the project including Steve Lukather, Linda Perry, Dave Koz, José Antonio Rodriguez, and Bruce Sugar.
After its digital release, physical copies of ‘EP3’ will be available from November 18 on CD, 10-inch vinyl, and a limited-edition translucent royal blue cassette. You can pre-order the album here.
‘EP3’ Tracklist:
1. ‘World Go Round’
2. ‘Everyone and Everything’
3. ‘Let’s Be Friends’
4. ‘Free Your Soul’
The project is described as a collection of “feel-good lyrics” and “easy-breezy melodies”. Starr also sings and drums on every track.
Speaking about the project, he said: “I am in my studio writing and recording every chance I get.
“It’s what I have always done and will continue to do, and releasing EPs more frequently allows me to continue to be creative and give each song a little more love.”
Meanwhile, late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and Starr are set to set to feature in a new documentary.
Let There Be Drums!, which is due to be released in cinemas on October 28, is being directed by Justin Kreutzmann, son of The Grateful Dead’s drummer Bill Kreutzmann.
According to Deadline it “examines the essential role drumming plays in great bands and how music passes from generation to generation.” It is set to feature one of Hawkins’ final interviews before he died in Bogotá, Colombia on March 25 at the age of 50.
Along with Starr, it will also include Stewart Copeland of The Police, Stephen Perkins from Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and ex-Guns N’ Roses sticksman Matt Sorum.
Kreutzmann took on the project “to talk to the world’s most influential drummers in hopes of better understanding his father and the instrument that defined his life.”
Perry Farrell’s Porno For Pyros reunite at Welcome To Rockville
Perry Farrell‘s Porno For Pyros reunited on stage at Welcome To Rockville festival last night (May 22) – see what went down at their first full show in 26 years below.
The band, who have been periodically active since the 1990s, were filling in for Jane’s Addiction, who pulled out of their set at the last minute due to Dave Navarro’s ongoing battle with COVID, as Farrell explained in a statement.
Discussing Navarro’s “long bout with COVID,” Farrell revealed that the Porno For Pyros line-up for their first full show in over 25 years – they reunited in 2020 for a Lollapalooza livestream – would feature himself, Stephen Perkins, Peter DiStefeno and Mike Watt.
“Rockville, although we are blue that Jane’s cannot be with you at this time due to Dave’s long bout with COVID, I am still coming to Daytona,” Farrell said in the statement.
“We’ll play some Jane’s songs for you as well, but for now let’s recall: My boat’s capsized it’s gonna sink to the bottom. I can see the lights on the shore…”
See footage from the set below.
View this post on InstagramView this post on InstagramView this post on InstagramAdvertisementA large portion of Welcome To Rockville this weekend ended up being cancelled due to bad weather conditions, with sets from Guns N’ Roses, Korn and more unable to go ahead.
“Tonight’s cancelation at Welcome To Rockville was a massive disappointment,” Slash tweeted. “We were really looking forward to the show. But the weather had other ideas. We sympathise with all you guys who got rained out along with us, it fucking sucks. Another time, sooner than later!”
Later this year, Perry Farrell’s Jane’s Addiction will tour the arenas of the United States with another Welcome To Rockville headliner, The Smashing Pumpkins.
General sale tickets to the ‘Spirits On Fire’ tour are on sale now and available to buy here.
MC5 announce first album in over 50 years and US tour dates
MC5 have announced their first album in over 50 years and a series of US tour dates.
- READ MORE: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has turned into a museum. Time for change
The band took to Instagram earlier today (March 9) to post a video, which you can view below, featuring old footage of the punk veterans and a snippet of the album’s title track ‘Heavy Lifting’. The song also features Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello.
MC5 have reformed with original member Wayne Kramer, Pollo Elastica’s Brad Brooks, Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction), Vicki Randle (Mavis Staples) and guitarist Stevie Salas.
AdvertisementThe new LP, which is due to drop later this year, will be the band’s first proper studio effort since 1971’s ‘High Time’ and sees Kramer collaborating with Morello, Kesha, Jill Sobule, Tim McIlrath, and Alejandro Escovedo.
The band will also hit the road for a US tour in May, dates for which you can view below.
View this post on InstagramTickets for the shows will go on sale this Friday (March 11) and further information is available via Kramer’s Facebook page here.
Meanwhile, MC5 were recently nominated for this year’s Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame alongside Eminem, Kate Bush, Beck, Eurythmics, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Rage Against The Machine, A Tribe Called Quest, Carly Simon, Judas Priest, Fela Kuti, New York Dolls, Dionne Warwick, DEVO and Pat Benatar.
It is the Detroit rockers’ sixth nomination over the years ahead of the final shortlist in May.
AdvertisementA body of more than 1,000 artists, industry members and historians will help decide which five acts out of the 17 will progress into the final round of induction consideration. Fans also have the chance to contribute to the selection process by voting every day here or at the museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
Foo Fighters, Jay-Z and Tina Turner all featured in the 2021 cohort of inductees alongside The Go-Go’s, Carole King and Todd Rundgren in the Performers category. Kraftwerk, Gil Scott-Heron and Charley Patton, meanwhile, each received the Early Influence Award.
Bob Dylan With Special Guest George Harrison 1970: 50th Anniversary Edition
On his return from the Isle Of Wight festival in September 1969, Bob Dylan moved himself, his wife and their three children – Sara was heavily pregnant with a fourth – from Woodstock to Greenwich Village. Settling into a townhouse on MacDougal Street, he tried to reconnect with the sort of life he had known after first arriving in New York from Minnesota. Early in 1970 he began recording the tracks that would not only complete Self-Portrait in time for a June release but provide the material for New Morning, which made its appearance in October. There would be enough left over for Columbia Records to issue a rag-bag album called Dylan in 1973 in response to his defection to David Geffen’s Asylum label.
All that activity, achieved in 10 sessions between March and August, resulted in some of his most widely reviled music. He even reviled it himself, with brisk thoroughness, in the pages of Chronicles Vol 1: “I just threw whatever I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it.” So much for Self Portrait. He was barely kinder to New Morning, even though it was hailed in some quarters as a return to the truth path: “Maybe there were good songs in the grooves and maybe there weren’t – who knows? But they weren’t the kind where you hear an awful roaring in your head. I knew what those kind of songs were like and these weren’t them.”
In that mood, goodness knows what he would make of this latest archival trawl. Collecting further offcuts and floor-sweepings from those sessions in a compilation originally given a very limited release as part of his management’s continuing exercise in extending his copyright holdings, it acts as an appendix to Vol 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), released in 2013.
AdvertisementThe more perspective we gain on the long arc of Dylan’s career, the more clearly we understand his lifelong habit of trying things out, discarding some discoveries, metabolising others. This is his own process, beholden to no-one, enabling him not just to converse with the spirits of all those who went before but to commune with himself, reshaping his gleanings into 60 years’ worth of self-expression.
The 74 tracks included in these three CDs, recorded at 10 separate sessions between March and August, are not the work of a man gripped by inspiration. In scale they range from isolated fragments to several absorbing takes of a song – “Went To See The Gypsy” – on its way to near-greatness. There are covers, from a single verse of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Universal Soldier” to a mercifully truncated stab at Jay And The Americans’ “Come A Little Bit Closer”, via an ardent version of Eric Andersen’s “Thirsty Boots”, an intense but sludgy “Long Black Veil”, a likeable “Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies”, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” touchingly crooned against Al Kooper’s funeral-parlour organ, and a cheerful “Jamaica Farewell” that most clearly reveals the presence of the heavy cold that affected his singing throughout the New Morning sessions. “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue”, with David Bromberg on guitar, sits somewhere between the sublime voice-and-piano take used on the B-side of “Watching The River Flow” and the kitsch flourishes of the band-and-voices version on Dylan.
He takes another look at some of his own older songs. “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” is recast as a slow blues over a “Smokestack Lightnin’” riff, its wistfulness replaced by raw hurt. Other novelties include a harmonica intro to “Winterlude” and a lolloping Nashville-style full-band arrangement of “Song To Woody”. His inveterate fondness for trying songs in different time signatures reaches a bizarre peak in a version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, which he sings in 6/8 over a 4/4 rhythm section.
Those looking forward to the results of the May 1 session with George Harrison had better restrain their excitement. Lively versions of two Carl Perkins rockabilly songs, “Matchbox” and “Your True Love”, are the highlights of a session that it would be a kindness to describe as informal. There’s a Harrison guitar solo on “Time Passes Slowly” and his harmony can be heard on “All I Have To Do Is Dream”. Dylan’s respectful treatment of McCartney’s “Yesterday”, although marred by a missed chord change, is also from the Harrison session, but the guitar solo may be by an uncredited Ron Cornelius.
The return to New York turned out to be a mistake. “It was a really stupid thing to do,” Dylan said 15 years later. The hippie stalkers who had made the young family’s life a misery in Woodstock were now laying siege to his MacDougal Street home and the egregious AJ Weberman was rooting through his garbage. “Everything had changed,” he concluded. This music – transitional and provisional, both tentative and revealing, such a puzzle at the time – was his response.
Dion Blues With Friends
Tear-stained teen idol in the 1950s, fringe-jacketed folk troubadour in the ’60s, streetwise urban soul poet in the ’70s, pew-rattling gospel testifier in the ’80s. Dion Francis DiMucci has worn coats of many colours during his lengthy career, but his most favoured tones have always been blue. Despite the unassuming title, it’s clear this album is a long-standing passion project, which, in all honesty, may not have garnered anywhere near as much attention were it not for the level of A-list assistance.
It’s by no means the first time Dion’s corralled famous pals and fans to boost a record’s profile. In 1989, shortly after his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, DiMucci released Yo Frankie, produced and arranged by Dave Edmunds, with contributions from Lou Reed, Paul Simon, kd lang and Bryan Adams. Almost inevitably, Edmunds’ trademark retro sound palette resulted in an overly slick exercise in nostalgia, but Blues With Friends, while inescapably imbued with bygone vibes, is much more personal, more organic.
The Edmunds role here is handed to Wayne Hood, the Florida-based producer, engineer, arranger and session musician whose CV swings from Richie Sambora to Pink to Les Paul. It’s to Hood’s eternal credit that after handling multiple overdubs of guitars, basses, keyboards and drums himself, the 14 tracks (all written or co-written by Dion) manage to sound like the work of a tight-knit combo playing in unison. It’s the strength of this sonic backdrop that allows the big-name guests to dovetail into the party with ease.
AdvertisementResisting the temptation to fill the album with familiar blues standards might have seemed risky on paper, but DiMucci’s original songs (some first heard on previous albums) serve as illustrations of what can be done by taking tentative strolls away from the genre’s template. “Can’t Start Over Again” is blues at its most hayseed and rustic, Jeff Beck’s dextrous picking complementing the laconic back-porch country groove.
There’s a swampy, Southern menace to “My Baby Loves To Boogie”, with John Hammond Jnr’s harmonica trading off DiMucci’s self-mocking lascivious growl, an emotionally affecting yearning to the Van Morrison duet “I Got Nothin’” (with added Joe Louis Walker guitar for good measure), and a wide-grinned rockabilly yelp to “Uptown No 7”, with Stray Cat Brian Setzer riding shotgun and channelling both Carl Perkins and Louis Jordan.
It was originally written in a more straightforward gospel style, but as with many cuts on the record a fresh perspective was found during the recording process, singer and producer receptive to the various hues of light and shade each guest brought with them. “Hymn To Him” was first recorded by DiMucci in the mid-’80s for a gospel project, and suffered from suffocating blanket of synthetic drums in keeping with the prevalent production techniques, but its transformation here is remarkable.
Initially intended as a straight duet with Patti Scialfa, DiMucci claims he was surprised when her superstar spouse Bruce Springsteen turned up as well, offering to add a guitar solo. The result is an overhaul that transports the song to the dark, mythic Americana that ran through last year’s Western Stars, a much better fit for the lyric’s soul-searching and taking stock: “Do you walk in the shadows?/Are you dreams swept with fears?/Does your heart will with sadness/With the night drawing near?”
It’s perhaps unavoidable that the far-reaching star power of Springsteen and Paul Simon means their contributions to Blues With Friends will attract the most media attention, but that’s not a problem when they happen to be arguably the best two tracks. Simon’s contribution to Yo Frankie was a harmony vocal on “Written On A Subway Wall”, its title lifted from a line in “The Sound Of Silence”, although it’s another iconic figure from the decade of seismic social change that both men acknowledge here. The soft shuffle of “Song For Sam Cooke (Here In America)” is inspired by conversations Dion had with the soul crooner and civil rights activist in 1962, and the hostile looks they drew walking together in public: “Down the block I saw the people stop and stare/You did your best to make a Yankee boy aware.” It’s a powerful taking of America’s political temperature, in keeping with much of Simon’s own writing, not to mention Cooke’s landmark “A Change Is Gonna Come”.
In many ways, the use of “blues” in the title is a misnomer. A tidy catch-all pivot, maybe; a starting point for rich exploration of the variety of American popular music by a veteran who has previously tried most of them on for size.
AdvertisementThird Man Records to release unearthed 1973 Johnny Cash live album
Third Man Records, the label founded by Jack White of The White Stripes, has announced that it will be releasing a newly unearthed Johnny Cash live album.
Read more: Go behind the scenes in the childhood home where Johnny Cash grew up
Recorded in 1973 as part of ‘A Week To Remember’ – a week of concerts put on by Columbia Records and record executive Clive Davis – the man in black’s performance at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles will be made available for the first time ever on July 31.
Entitled ‘A Night To Remember’, the 2 LP set features a gold foil LP jacket, a “double vintage white LP,” a gold 7″ featuring two “unreleased Forever Words pieces by Ruston Kelly and a mystery artist,” and a DVD of the performance.
AdvertisementThe collection features guest appearances from June Carter Cash and Carl Perkins, a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ and some of Cash’s biggest hits at the time like ‘I Walk The Line’ and ‘Hey Potter’.
‘A Night To Remember’, which will be released as Third Man Records’ Vault Package No. 45, will also include behind-the-scenes, backstage footage from the 1973 show. You can pre-order it here.
Third Man Records, in conjunction with Sony Music and the estate of Johnny Cash are ecstatic to release @TMRVault 45- Johnny Cash, A Night to Remember. Learn more and subscribe here: https://t.co/BlVZyGoFbp pic.twitter.com/TBkkZL6NQ4
— Third Man Records (@thirdmanrecords) June 29, 2020
‘A Week to Remember’, which started on April 29, 1973, also included performances from Miles Davis, the Staple Singers, Bruce Springsteen, and Earth, Wind and Fire.
The album’s tracklisting is as follows:
1. ‘Big River’
2. ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’
3. ‘The City Of New Orleans’
4. ‘Ballad Of Barbara’
5. ‘A Boy Named Sue’
6. ‘Going To Memphis’
7. ‘That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine’ with Carl Perkins
8. Medley: ‘Hey Porter/ Folsom Prison Blues/ Wreck Of The Old 97/Orange Blossom Special’
9. ‘I Walk The Line’
10. ‘Jackson’ with June Carter Cash
11. ‘If I Were A Carpenter’ with June Carter Cash
12. ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’
13. ‘Help Me’ with June Carter Cash and Larry Gatlin
14. ‘Lord, Is It I?/The Last Supper’
15. ‘If I Had A Hammer’ with June Carter Cash
16. ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ with June Carter Cash and Carl Perkins
17. ‘Daddy Sang Bass’ with June Carter Cash and Carl Perkins
18. ‘Folsom Prison Blues (outro)’Advertisement
Elsewhere, a live recording of the last concert performed by The Stooges’ original lineup will be released by Third Man Records on August 7. The release celebrates the 50th anniversary of the concert, which took place on August 8, 1970.
Entitled ‘Live At Goose Lake: August 8th 1970’, Third Man claim to have found the recording “buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse.”
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