Hit Singles
Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 reviewed: documenting the dawn of a legend
Photo: Sandy Speiser/Sony Music Archives The young Dylan, hollering his head off The first time we hear Bob Dylan on this fabulous 8CD, 168-track boxset, it’s Christmas Eve 1956. Dylan’s high school trio, The Jokers – Bob Zimmerman (vocals and piano), Larry Keegan and Howard Rutman (vocals) – are whomping through Shirley And Lee’s “Let The Good Times Roll” in a version recorded on a 78rpm acetate at the Terlinde Music Store in St Paul, a bus ride from the 15-year-old Dylan’s home in Hibbing, Minnesota. It’s barely a minute long, not much more than a gloriously raucous din,...
Roger Eno “I thrive on atmosphere”
EMMYLOU HARRIS“Wrecking Ball” (from Wrecking Ball)ELEKTRA, 1995All my choices are about atmospheres. That’s what I thrive on. If something gives me a feeling, it doesn’t have to be a narrative, it just has to be something that presses the atmosphere button. When Danny (Lanois) produces, he puts this whole hinterland into a song. The first few times you hear it, you’re listening to Emmylou’s voice, which isn’t exactly shoddy, but subsequently what you hear is this beautiful tonal landscape supporting it. He gives you somewhere else to live for a few minutes. When Cecilie (Eno, Roger’s daughter) and I...
Millie Jackson: “I’m doing it for you!”
How did you get started in music?There was a club in Harlem that everybody used to hang out in. Somebody dared me to go on stage and sing. Somebody saw me, liked me, and I ended up with a contract. I didn’t quit my day gig until my second album. I sang on the weekend and worked at Schraftt’s, the candy people. I was the first black waitress at 61 Fifth Avenue. You kept working, even though you had a record contract?Yeah, cos I knew it wasn’t going to last. I ain’t had no training or nothing....
Buzzcocks and The Stranglers live in Leeds: punk veterans in fine fettle
“Are you ready to rock, Leeds?” yells Steve Diggle, somewhere in Buzzzcocks’ 45-minute sonic blitzkrieg. The silver-haired guitarist turned 70 this year, but his schoolboy grins and excitable demeanour have been unchanged for decades, and he retains the curious mannerism of breaking off mid-solo to point at (a possibly imaginary) someone in the crowd. Following lead singer/main songwriter Pete Shelley’s death in 2018, Diggle is now the sole remaining founder member of the Manchester punks whose stellar singles and albums lit up the charts in the late ’70s, influencing the likes of REM, The Smiths and Nirvana. Accordingly, he...
50th anniversary edition of Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night to include six bonus tracks
On November 28, Warner/Reprise will release a new 50th Anniversary Edition of Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, complete with six bonus tracks – two of those previously unreleased. Included on the new release are versions of “Lookout Joe” and “Walk On”, both recorded during the original 1973 album sessions at S.I.R. in Los Angeles. “Lookout Joe” replaces the version that was recorded at Young’s Broken Arrow Studio and subsequently included on the original release of Tonight’s The Night. Advertisement These versions of “Lookout Joe” and “Tonight’s The Night (Take 3)” have never been released. “Everybody’s Alone”, “Raised On Robbery”...
Thurston Moore to publish new book on free jazz
Thurston Moore is to publish NOW JAZZ NOW: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings via his Ecstatic Peace Library imprint. A collaboration between Moore, fellow musicians Mats Gustafsson, Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee and music writer Byron Coley, the book spans 277-pages of album art, labels, sleeve notes and collector musings on their life-long obsessions of record collecting, with a focus on the recorded history of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation. Advertisement The book is published on December 5 and is available to pre-order here.
Listen to “House Of Dead Memories”: Sugar’s first new music for thirty years
Sugar – the band formed by Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis – return with their first new music for thirty years. You can hear their comeback single “House Of Dead Memories” below. Advertisement Says Mould, “Sugar was a meteorite. I spent all of 1991 writing and performing new material at solo shows. David and Malcolm had never met but I was certain we three would work well together. “Sugar was a workhorse. After weeks of rehearsal in early 1992, we spent three months recording Copper Blue and Beaster. By summer 1992, the...
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere a sentimental take on Bruce’s own private Nebraska
“I’m just trynna find something real in all the noise,” mumbles Jeremy Allen White, all brooding, ursine intensity as Bruce Springsteen at the heart of Scott Cooper’s new biopic. “You find something real,” reassures Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau, “I’ll deal with the noise.” There’s a similar ambition to Deliver Me From Nowhere. Though there are wilder, noisier, more barnstorming chapters in the Springsteen biography, writer-director Cooper asks us to dial down the volume and focus in on the Boss’s quietest, strangest, most revealing episode: the year of 1981-82, when he came off the road in the...
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition the myth is real!
Nebraska occupies a pivotal place in Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue, but for some that has never been enough. Ever since the legend of Electric Nebraska – Nebraska’s band-recorded alter ego – emerged, fans have wanted to unpick the knotty relationship between Nebraska and Born In The USA and hear electrified E Street versions of this sombre acoustic album. As recently as June 2025, Springsteen was denying Electric Nebraska even existed – and nothing appeared on the recent, epic Tracks II set – but the mythical album is finally here, thanks to the deus ex machina of Deliver Me From Nowhere,...Recent Posts
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