Table of contents for Issue 287 in MOJO

“I’M A BIT OF A SCAVENGER. THINGS GET STUCK IN MY HEAD.” Artists including The National, Sharon Van Etten and Elbow’s Guy Garvey have long been advocates for This Is The Kit’s spry latter-day folk music. More admirers should come flying from the forest with Moonshine Freeze, the ensemble’s fourth album and their first for Rough Trade. This Is The Kit centre on Kate Stables, who grew up in Winchester in Hampshire and who has now lived in Paris for over a decade – along with husband and group guitarist Jesse D Vernon. Kate is half of one of the two sets of twins produced by her school-teacher parents. “My father was always making and playing instruments,” says Kate. “Mum would play fiddle and mandolin and they’d be the band…

“IT WAS EXACTLY THE KIND OF MUSIC I WAS LOOKING FOR.” “It was 1986. I was listening to a lot of 4AD and Factory bands, and discovering a lot of music from the ’70s. I think the first time I connected with The Colour Of Spring was the video for Life’s What You Make It, on a Saturday morning kids’ show. I responded to the extraordinarily Gilmour-esque guitar line, which wasn’t something you expected from a so-called synth pop group, because until that album Talk Talk had been seen as contemporaries of Duran Duran or Tears For Fears. So I bought the album, one of the first compact discs I ever bought, from Our Price in Hemel Hempstead. I was entranced. I love the music of the ’80s but it…

“WE’D JUST BE BUGGERING ABOUT TRYING DIFFERENT THINGS… IT WAS PLAYTIME.” In 2013, Genesis Publications released the limited edition book Transformer, wherein Lou Reed and his confidante and photographer Mick Rock illustrated Reed’s evolution from 1972 to 1980 in images and words. Reed’s last public appearances, in London and New York, were to promote it; upon his death on October 27, 2013, Rock put a stop to sales. Three years on, in time for the Transformer album’s 45th anniversary, it’s been decided to make it available once more. A hand-bound 11.5” x 15.5” large format volume in an edition of 2,000, each copy has been signed by Rock and stamped by the Lou Reed estate. It arrives in a slipcase with a facsimile lyric sheet, a 7-inch picture disc of…

SEPTEMBER 21 Guitarist Ariel Bender quits Mott The Hoople and is ’ replaced by former Bowie sideman Mick Ronson. It s announced that Ronson has already recorded with Mott and is on the single Saturday Gig, which CBS are to release in mid-October. His first appearance with the group will be at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on December 6. The former Spiders From Mars leader will perform some of his own material during Mott’s act, and will be involved in production and arrangements for the live show.…

“DAVID RESUSCITATED THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY AS A TRIBUTE TO RICK WRIGHT.” GUY PRATT “THERE WERE ALL SORTS OF MEMORIES AND GHOSTS HANGING AROUND THE PLACE.” DAVID GILMOUR “COMING BACK AND SEEING THE STAGE and everything, it was quite overwhelming really. It’s a place of ghosts… in a friendly way,” said David Gilmour, on his first visit to Pompeii for a full 45 years. For Gilmour, the ghosts of the ancient Roman city were literal – in the bodies buried under volcanic ash and calcified by Mount Vesuvius in AD79 – as well as spiritual: his return serving as a reminder of Pink Floyd’s visit to the same venue in 1971. That year, British director Adrian Maben had had the idea to combine sculpture, “in some…

The National &#9733&#9733&#9733&#9733 Sleep Well Beast 4AD. CD/DL/LP THERE HOPEFULLY comes a point in every band’s life where they suddenly hit their stride, where their instrumental chops and creativity are in sync, and all this chimes with the expectations of their audience. For The National it was 2010 when they released the big selling High Violet. As a stylistic template it was a curious mix of the introverted and the epic, a shadowy and brooding sound with guitars and electronics stirred by Bryan Devendorf’s circling drum patterns into an inward-looking dynamic that makes the group’s considerable power feel oddly internalised. The follow-up, 2014’s Trouble Will Find Me, had much in common with its predecessor, although it had a bittersweet, lighter, more open sound. In anticipation of Sleep Well Beast, all…

Nick Lowe Solo Albums 1982-1990 YEP ROC. CD/DL/LP NICK LOWE’S self-deprecating ’70s nickname Basher nodded to his no-nonsense, one-take “bash it out” production style. He could function that way because of his deep understanding of how songs worked, as revealed during his time as the driving force behind pub rock’s early tenants, Brinsley Schwarz, and Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile as singer/bassist/guitarist/songwriter/enthusiast, at which time he was also producing Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, The Damned, Dr. Feelgood, The Pretenders, Carlene Carter, John Hiatt and more. After the Brinsleys, Lowe had recorded The Jesus Of Cool (1978) and ’79’s Labour Of Lust, enjoying Top 12 singles with I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass and Cruel To Be Kind, the latter also hitting 12 in the US. The next three years were gobbled…

Why was singer Skeeter Davis banned from the Grand Ol’ Opry in the ’70s? Marilyn Black, via email Fred says: Skeeter raised the ire of the Opry hierarchy in December 1973 after an incident in which she criticised the Nashville police force. The row began when the Christ Is The Answer Crusade and their 30 trucks hit Nashville. On Saturday, December 8, on a break between spots on the Opry, Skeeter saw several Jesus people arrested at the local shopping centre, where they were accused of harassment. When she returned to the Opry stage, she told the audience, “This is really something that I should share… they’ve arrested 15 people just for telling people that Jesus loves them. And that really burdened my heart, so I thought I would sing…

“ADAM SAID, ‘IF YOU THINK YOU’RE ANY GOOD WE’RE READY TO GO’.” HELLO JAN 1980 I was working with [Liverpool band] Dalek I Love You, learning the ropes in production. When I was waiting to meet the head of A&R [at Phonogram], I got chatting to Ian Tregoning, who along with his brother Max ran Do It Records. I went to see him in Camden and he played me a few bits and pieces by the then-line up of Adam And The Ants A ts – – he h played l d cassettes c tt s through th h an a old Ansafone – and asked me if I wanted to see if I could do anything with them. When I came back with my tape it was the week…

F, AS ACCORDING TO DAVE MARKEY’S CLASSIC documentary, 1991 was the year punk broke, then the following year saw it genuinely exert its grip on mainstream culture. A defining moment saw Nirvana effectively curating the Reading Festival bill on the Sunday, August 30. No other act had wielded the power to do so in the history of the festival, highlighting both how huge Nirvana were but also how far the entire US alternative underground scene had come in the space of two years. This bespoke MOJO compilation is a reflection of that scene and of its emergence, gathering together 15 tracks whose power has remained undimmed during the course of the last 25 years or so. Some of the artists included here played Reading in that fateful year, others merely…

THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO “WORKING WITH BARRY I THOUGHT, MAYBE I’M AS GOOD AS THEY SAY I AM!” To have your career scuppered once by the Bee Gees’ feuding might be deemed a misfortune; for it to happen twice seems like carelessness. Yet the ’70s solo career of P.P. Arnold, who found late ’60s fame as the Small Faces’ backing vocalist and with her own recordings for Andrew Oldham’s Immediate label, is more complex than that. Her tale of triumph and tragedy is to be told via a fascinating new album, The Turning Tide, which collects unreleased material from the period produced by Barry Gibb, Eric Clapton and guitarist Caleb Quaye. Eight tracks date from late 1969, when she first hooked up with Gibb,…

“I WAS ALWAYS EXCITED BY HORROR AND FILMS FROM THE 1970s.” It is 33 years since Charlotte Gainsbourg and her late dad Serge scandalised France with Lemon Incest; since then she has made her name primarily as an actress, most notoriously in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and Nymphomaniac. She’s also managed to record three studio albums: Charlotte For Ever (1986), with Serge writing and producing; 5:55 (2006), with Jarvis Cocker and Air; and IRM (2009), with Beck. Now, however, she’s decided to take control. “On the previous albums, I was there to say what I wanted to sing and add a few words,” she says. “In my mind, though, it was not enough, I was not a proper writer. Beck said you have to try to write the worst song…

“MY GUITAR GOT STOLEN AND WE HAD TO RANSOM IT BACK.” I’d describe myself as… currently employed, which is nice, as it’s been a while. Still unmanageable though, and unknowable even to myself. It’s a long life, I still have a lot to learn. Music changed me… by completely freeing me. It was always of utmost importance. Even before I heard The Beatles I listened to the radio or my dad’s Glenn Miller records. There was something about it that touched something in me that some people might have thought of as spiritual. It’s been a great companion, a way to deal with a lot of stuff. I’ll play guitar and write songs every day. Not to name drop, but I was having dinner with John Paul Jones and he…

1 BASIL KIRCHIN I START COUNTING (DEMO) (from 1970 film; available on Fuzzy-Felt Folk, Trunk, 2006) “Basil Kirchin was one of those fascinating figures and a very complete, omnivorous musician: he started in big bands, went off to India, came back and started doing all kinds of experimental music. He felt he had a philosophical duty to keep pushing. This is a beautiful demo for an early Jenny Agutter film. It’s really well-made and sung, from a golden age of playing and recording. It has a real directness – it’s about this interior moment of someone reflecting and trying to figure out meaning. You feel like you’re being spoken to, but it’s very mysterious. It’s got that kitchen sink-y ’60s feel, so it’s like a time machine, too.” 2 SCOTT…

“THE BASS LINE… TRANSFORMS ME TO A DIFFERENT PLACE.” Despite growing up in a middle-class district of Kingston, Jamaica, Keron Salmon was a hip-hop head for much of his youth. “Music needs to be thought-provoking for me to enjoy it and really find value in it,” he explains, “and hip-hop music, just like reggae, has its conscious side as well as its secular side. I used to listen to a lot of Dead Presidents, Wu Tang, Nas and Rakim, who deal with conscious issues in their music, even if they might touch upon some things we might not consider conscious.” Part-way through his teens, he experienced something of an epiphany via exposure to Rasta-oriented performers whose firebrand deliveries held hip-hop undercurrents. “It’s not until I got to soak in some…

“HE SAID, ‘YOU AND I ARE GOING TO BE AS BIG AS LENNON & McCARTNEY’.” PART 1 “LIKE A STEAM TRAIN” Dury musician and co-writer Chaz Jankel recalls ambition, anger and musical freedom. “In 1976 I’d joined Ian in the Kilburns, and we’d played together for about nine months. He was the king of the pub circuit, but I think he felt dissatisfied, tired even . When I asked him if he fancied writing some songs, he said, ‘God, yeah’. He started accepting less gigs and we started writing. We were both prolific, I’d go to his third floor flat opposite the Oval (nicknamed ‘Catshit Mansions’) and we’d work from midday to 10, 11 in the evening. I had my Wurlitzer electric piano parked there and he had this basic…

“CHRIST THIS BAND ARE GOING TO BE BLOODY BIG.” Sounds SEPTEMBER 13 The 13th? It’s unlucky for some. Especially if Friday-connected (it was). But Supertramp didn’t see it that way. For on that date in 1974, A&M released the band’s third album, the one that was to change their lives. I’d followed the progress of the band since they’d stuck out their self-titled debut LP in summer 1970. I liked it, as did a Sounds reviewer who called it “a brilliant collection of rock songs”. Later, in an early piece on the band, I wrote, “I doubt if it did enough to keep [A&M boss] Herb Alpert in bed socks socks for for a a week week. . And And the the band band’ss drummer had a breakdown about that…

IT WAS FEBRUARY 1968. AT ONLY 18 YEARS OF AGE, Cat Stevens was already a fallen pop star. It was only 15 months since his debut UK Top Too T 30 hit, the odd, orchestrated ballad I Love My Dog, which he’d chased with the punchy if equally strange baroque pop of Matthew And Son (Number 2) and, in this age of blooming love and peace, anachronistic thumper I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun (Number 6). However,,, the chart positions of his subsequent releases traced a sharp downturn. Exhausted through overwork and overimbibing, Stevens was suf---fering from a nasty cough – quickly diagnosed as a symptom of tuberculosis. Subsequently sent to the King Edward VII hospital in Midhurst, West ee Sussex, he was ordered not to work for a year...…

AT 8.30 ON A SIMMERING ATHENS SUMMER EVENING, THE FOO Fighters are shortly due to begin their first ever live concert in Greece when Dave Grohl is beckoned over by the theatre manager. A grave-looking woman, she explains that her venue has hosted many notable performers, but nothing quite like his band. “Nothing so…” She waves her hands, looking for the right word. “Nothing so… ” “Loud?” offers Grohl. The theatre manager looks at him, a little doubtfully. “Please take care of our building.” Situated low on the southern slopes of the Acropolis, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus was built in the classic semi-circular Roman design between 160 and 174AD, by a wealthy Athenean intellectual in honour of his wife. Destroyed by Heruli barbarians in the third century,…

The Young ’Uns &#9733&#9733&#9733&#9733 Strangers HERETEU. CD/DL A passionate celebration of unsung heroes and three-part harmonies. TEESSIDE’S misleadingly named Young ’Uns have finally made an album to match the formidable live reputation. There is nothing intrinsically new in what they do; their roaring three-part harmonies follow a lineage of Swan Arcade and Coope, Boyes & Simpson, while – from Ewan MacColl on – social commentary has long been an intrinsic part of folk song. But what differentiates this is the exceptional songwriting quality – searingly contemporary, but firmly rooted in a glorious tradition. Great songwriters currently abound in modern Brit folk, and Sean Cooney is right up there with them, with brilliantly crafted narratives of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Dark Water is the emotional tale of a Syrian refugee’s…

“STAY WITH ONE GREAT GROOVE AND MILK IT.” My 11-year-old son recently heard 10cc’s Dreadlock Holiday playing at a skate-park. “Dad, what’s THIS?! “ he asked, affronted. “It’s horrible.” I could totally see his point. That record marked the moment when I parted company with one of my favourite bands. I’d previously considered them a rich playground of chops and humour, like a British Steely Dan, loving the salty playfulness of Sheet Music and forever in thrall to them for the peerless I’m Not In Love, which still catches my breath, but Dreadlock Holiday showed me I’d become allergic to the wit-over-emotion formula. Like the “clichés, toupées and threepées” gag in Silly Love, its moment had passed. That “you had to be there” quality of I0cc’s legacy hasn’t endeared it…

“WE ARE VERY, VERY SHORTLY CUTTING SOME NEW STUFF.” Keith Richards Alongside the music, The Rolling Stones’ ’60s were full of incident, with Altamont, the Redlands bust, the Rock And Roll Circus and the free concert in Hyde Park just a few of the events scoured into the collective consciousness. Amidst Richard Havers’ new hardback broadcast-biography The Rolling Stones On Air In The Sixties, another flashpoint is illuminated in all its weird fascination: the band’s falling out with the BBC in 1964. As well as being handsomely illustrated and providing a wealth of info about the group’s appearances on radio, TV and beyond, the book reproduces lots of supporting documentation from the archives to thrill the inquisitive. Brian Jones’s bold letter from January 2, 1963, for example, asks for a…

“WE HAD THE ANTHEM: SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL.” “Charlie, Norman, Johnny Turnbull [guitar] and me had played together for years, as Loving Awareness. When that finished, we all started doing sessions, and one that Charlie and Norman did was for New Boots And Panties!! The next thing is, they wanted t d a a band b d on on the th road d, so o they th brought John and me in. We did three days rehearsing in some tunnel in south London. The first song we did was Wake Up And Make Love With Me, and the chemistry was there immediately. With Ian there was a vibe of having known him for ages. They were impressed because we were were so so tight tight. . Add…

“HIS IMPAS-SIONED ROAR CAME FROM A PLACE OF HONESTY AND UNEASE.” THE LEGACY Album: Hybrid Theory (Warner Bros., 2000) The sound: Korn and Limp Bizkit may have shaped the late-’90s nu-metal sound, but LP’s debut connected more widely. Tracks such as In The End and One Step Closer achieve the rare feat of capturing millennial angst by way of big pop hooks, straightforward raps, and Bennington’s emotionally heightened choruses, which, though nihilistic, are shot through with light and hope. Only one band have sold 30 million copies of a single studio album this century, and that is Linkin Park with their 2000 debut Hybrid Theory. Much of their success was down to the vocal interplay between rapper Mike Shinoda and singer Chester Bennington, whose impassioned roar came from a place…

N THE TEA ROOM OF A BIJOU NOTTING HILL GATE HOTEL, DURING A particularly violent heatwave, the first Mael to join MOJO is Russell, the singing Spark. Appearing bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he’s actually a bit discombobulated, having flown in from Los Angeles the day before, and requiring sleeping pills to counter the red-eye affect. In casual, albeit carefully co-ordinated, clobber – between horizontal-striped polo shirt and socks are checked trousers, plus red-soled shoes – Russell is a marked contrast to his older brother Ron, the instrumental/songwriting Spark, who soon arrives, in buttoned-up white shirt and sombre blue tie, despite the weather, black suit trousers hoiked up past his waist, and dressy black brogues. His thinning, slicked-back hair, like Russell’s more boyish cut, is likely to be acquainted with black dye…

WHEN THE trio of Yusuf/Cat Stevens, guitarist Alun Davies and producer Paul Samwell-Smith reconvened at ICP Studios in Brussels in 2014, 36 years after they’d last worked together on 1978’s Back To Earth, they were surprised to find how easily they picked up where they’d left off. “It was wonderful for me,” says Samwell-Smith, “because after the enormous success of the Cat Stevens stuff and then a long period of silence and not doing anything with him, to find myself in the studio with him was extraordinary. He sits in a chair with a guitar in his lap and he sings and plays something and it’s just magic.” Davies thinks that the nature of the material – some of it written in the ’60s, some of it more recently…

(Epic single, 1972) The seven-year-old Dave Grohl’s mind is blown on hearing this nine-minute slab of troglodyte synth-prog on the 1976 K-Tel compilation Block Buster . “The other songs on the record were KC & The Sunshine Band, [Silver Convention]’s Fly Robin Fly… When the needle got to Frankenstein, everything changed. First of all, it was an instrumental where each player seemed to get a moment of solo. This just jumped out of the record player and hit me. It was the riff and the drums, I hadn’t heard anything that heavy. Frankenstein is one of the greatest riffs of all time: instantly memorable. The keyboards sounded like voices, and the drum solo in the middle had this energy I hadn’t heard from anything else. The fact that it was…

USHED ON-STAGE IN A WHEELchair, clothed in a surgical gown and blonde fright wig, Kurt Cobain’s chaotic arrival at the 1992 Reading Festival was the punkest happening so far in an already tumultuous year. It was 11 months since the release of Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind , had established the trio as their generation’s defining band, but their procession had already turned into a catalogue of crises. The February 24 wedding of Cobain and Hole’s Courtney Love had sparked a tabloid feeding frenzy, fuelled by the couple’s barely concealed drug use. The six months since had regularly called the future of the band into question and would feed into the bleak symbolism of their third and (it would prove) final studio album, In Utero . But in the meantime,…

The Horrors &#9733&#9733&#9733&#9733 V CAROLINE. CD/DL/LP AFTER THREE years of golden slumber and suave side-projects, canny five-man pop collective The Horrors awaken in their communal clubhouse, rub the kohl out of their eyes and ask themselves that burning question: what next? Their answer is a lusty, decisive “The future!”, but when you’re gifted with an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop and immaculate taste, the plethora of potential routes can leave one a little spoilt for choice. Their magpie eyes scanning wildly, they junk the dusty garage gear that launched their career and redraw their Year Zero as 1979, specifically the point where Gary Numan and his Tubeway Army fired up their synthesizers and aimed Are ‘Friends’ Electric? at an unsuspecting singles chart. There are synthesizers all over V, The Horrors’ fifth…

Mogwai &#9733&#9733&#9733&#9733 Every Country’s Sun ROCK ACTION. CD/DL/LP TWENTY YEARS on from their debut, post-rock cornerstone Mogwai Young Team, this Lanarkshire-hatched massive have lately sculpted a tasty sideline as film soundtrackers extraordinaire. Since scoring 2006’s Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait – an abstract affair which triumphed commercially, thanks to its Franco-Algerian star’s infamous head-butt in that year’s World Cup Final – they’ve clinched a succession of plum commissions, including Atomic, Mark Cousins’ 2016 documentary about life under the nuclear shadow. Airing that one live, alongside Cousins’ visuals last year in Berkeley, California, 16 audience members were apparently stretchered out. The once-lairy Scots’ high-volume potency remains beyond question. In the beginning, Mogwai took the artfully poised experimentalism of US ‘posties’ like Tortoise and blasted it heavenwards with punk-metal energy, alongside powerfully…

“SHINING A TORCH INTO EVERY COUNTER-CULTURAL CORNER, GOLDBERG REVEALS A KIND OF WARFARE.” In Search Of The Lost Chord: 1967 And The Hippie Idea &#9733&#9733&#9733&#9733 Danny Goldberg ICON. £14.99 1967 was the year that smiled, the high point of pop’s cultural revolution when youth, music and public displays of warmth and d p pleasure e g gave everything y g a psychedelic glow. The world was anew, “a place where happiness reigned … and music played ever so loudly”, whispered a young girl on Traffic’s Hole In My Shoe. Who could not believe? Danny Goldberg’s In Search Of The Lost Chord is fancifully titled and comes with a raised-text, ‘all about the feeling, man’ cover. It’s vivid, passionate and told in a warm, Book At Bedtime manner. It even begins…

“WITH THE BAND NOW COOKING, PLEASURES ABOUND HEREAFTER.” Van Morrison Porchester Hall, London Escaping a sultry summer’s monsoon, Van fans pack what Historic England describes as a “double-height assembly hall” boasting “tripartitle coffered ceiling with hefty modillion plaster decoration and original light fittings. Oak and walnut panelling, the sides treated as two tiers of arcading. The whole effect exceptionally sumptuous and surviving remarkably preserved.” No less remarkably preserved is the voice of Van Morrison, at 72 just two decades younger than this august listed venue near his west London roost. Exceptionally sumptuous too is much of his forthcoming new album, Roll With The Punches (tonight’s show is being filmed to promote it), especially the superb covers of Jimmy Rushing and Count Basie’s Goin’ To Chicago and Bo Diddley’s I Can…