| UNCUT |
| Introducing Uncut’s special David Bowie issue |
UNCUT
• March 2016
• FREE CD: The Stars Are Out Tonight
• Our free CD, The Stars Are Out Tonight, features great new tracks from School Of Seven Bells, Rokia Traoré, Cavern Of Anti–Matter, Field Music, Freakwater, Josephine Foster, This Heat, The Wilde Flowers and Barry Adamson. VA Uncut: The Stars Are Out Tonight
Duration: 69:45
Tracks:
01 Open Your Eyes (School of Seven Bells) 4:21
02 Tu Voles (Rokia Traoré) 4:03
03 Tardis Cymbals (Uncut Edit) (Cavern of Anti–Matter) 7:51
04 Rainbow Ends (Emitt Rhodes) 3:21
05 Disappointed (Field Music) 3:06
06 A2 (Prins Thomas) 7:36
07 Cardinal Cross (Mount Moriah) 2:57
08 Ultimate Care II Excerpt Eight (Matmos) 4:04
09 The Asp and the Albatross (Freakwater) 3:10
10 To Melt the Moon (Rangda) 6:13
11 The Garden of Earthly Delight (Josephine Foster) 5:52
12 Planet Sizes (Steve Mason) 4:19
13 Memories (The Wilde Flowers) 1:36
14 Evil Kind (Barry Adamson) 6:09
15 Twilight Furniture (This Heat) 5:07
• The new Uncut, dated March 2016, is out on Thursday, January 21.
• Featuring great new tracks from School Of Seven Bells, Rokia Traore, Cavern Of Anti–Matter, Field Music, Freakwater, Josephine Foster, This Heat, The Wilde Flowers and Barry Adamson
• Introducing Uncut’s special David Bowie issue
• In the new issue of Uncut, we pay tribute to David Bowie with 19 pages on the great man, who of course passed away on January 10, two days after releasing his stunning new album, Blackstar.
• Inside the issue, many of his collaborators, including Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, Nile Rodgers, Mike Garson, Ken Scott and Herbie Flowers, remember Bowie, while Uncut’s David Cavanagh pens a fascinating essay on his life and legacy.
• “He wanted music that was on the cutting edge,” explains Let’s Dance producer Nile Rodgers, “that made people feel uncomfortable, but compelled then to listen.”
• Also in our expansive Bowie piece, former Uncut editor Allan Jones remembers being sucked into a nasty tiff between Lou Reed and Bowie in April 1979: “The next thing I know, Lou is dragging Bowie across the table by his shirt and smacking him in the face…”
John Mulvey, January 18, 2016
• February 26, 1976. At the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, the 17th night of the Isolar tour came to its traditional close. As the stark, expressionist spectacle reached its climax, David Bowie fired an imaginary arrow into the air. On cue, his lighting director plunged the stage into darkness. Cut to black.
• Thirty feet from the stage, the photographer John Rowlands took the picture which adorns the cover of Uncut this month, and which Bowie reputedly counted as one of his favourite images of himself. In the midst of the grief and chaos which has engulfed the music world this past week, it occurred to us that Rowlands’ shot would be a fitting one to use on the front of this special issue of our magazine, one which we’re rushing into the shops a little earlier than planned: you should be able to find it in the UK on Thursday.
• I can think of few words I like less than “iconic”, and the way it’s casually bandied about in journalism, often to the point of meaninglessness. Nevertheless, it seems apposite here. No rock star has understood the iconic possibilities of his art more than Bowie; has grasped the mythic potential of what he does. “He believed in costume, and theatre, choreography, set design, lyrics, the right producer, the right engineer,” says bassist Herbie Flowers, one of the many Bowie associates who were so generous to us with their time and tributes. “He could do everything.”
• Time and again in the interviews collected in this month’s Uncut, there is testimony to the range and complexity of Bowie’s genius and character. A master of bold gestures and otherworldly glamour on one hand, a deeply humane friend on the other. We hear of a touching gift for producer Ken Scott; a brilliant practical joke at the expense of Brian Eno; a memorable last encounter with one of Blackstar’s gifted lieutenants, Donny McCaslin. Bowie contained multitudes, and David Cavanagh has reflected on that in a 5,000–word memorial piece remarkable for its scope, erudition and emotional heft.
• “Assessments of Bowie’s legacy came from every corner of the culture, every place where a culture prevailed,” Cavanagh writes, “and when you added up his significance to all of them, he seemed to have had a number of simultaneous lifetimes… In each encomium his fearlessness was a common theme. His uncanny ability to see into the future – and then promptly shape it – was another.”
• To complement all this, we’re also making our Ultimate Music Guide to Bowie available again, in case you missed it when it was on sale last summer (That’ll be in the shops on Thursday, too, though you can now order one from our online shop). The format is the same as usual with our UMGs: in–depth album reviews, coupled with unedited interviews from the NME and Melody Maker archives. Now, of course, some of those interviews inevitably take on a terrible new poignancy. In 1977, Bowie tells Allan Jones about how fatherhood has changed him. His son’s future is what concerns him. “My own future slips by,” he says. “I’m prepared for its end.”
• “There are still so many people on an immortality kick, though, and it amuses me now,” he continues. “We’ll do anything in our power to stay alive. There’s a feeling that the average lifespan should be longer than it is. I disagree. I mean, we’ve never lived so long. Not in any century that man’s been on this planet.
• “Not so very long ago, no–one lived past the age of 40. And we’re still not happy with 70. What are we after exactly? There’s just too much ego involved. And who wants to drag their old decaying frame around until they’re 90 just to assert their ego? I don’t, certainly.”
• Back in Uncut, 2016, it’s striking how much Bowie permeates our own culture. In pieces filed long before his death, artists as diverse as The Pop Group and Clint Mansell note his influence. The memoirs of his landlady, with whom he lodged for nine months in 1969, turn up on our Books page. And among other sad deaths logged in our Not Fade Away section, there is an obituary for Brett Smiley, one of those fated glam starlets whose careers were launched in the wake of Bowiemania. We can’t escape Bowie this month — and, thankfully, we never will.
• He’s told us not to blow it, after all…
• http://www.uncut.co.uk/ Notes:
♣ 50 years on from Tim Hardin’s debut album, Uncut considers the singer–songwriter’s extraordinary music and harrowing life story. A tale of blood, arson, rooftop chases, Olympian drug abuse, bespoke carpentry and a deathless legacy of songs. “He was truly the wildest guy I’d ever met,” says one old friend. “It didn’t seem like anyone else’s rules of behaviour worked for him.”
_____________________________________________________________
| UNCUT |
| Introducing Uncut’s special David Bowie issue |
• March 2016
• FREE CD: The Stars Are Out Tonight
• Our free CD, The Stars Are Out Tonight, features great new tracks from School Of Seven Bells, Rokia Traoré, Cavern Of Anti–Matter, Field Music, Freakwater, Josephine Foster, This Heat, The Wilde Flowers and Barry Adamson. VA Uncut: The Stars Are Out Tonight
Duration: 69:45
Tracks:
01 Open Your Eyes (School of Seven Bells) 4:21
02 Tu Voles (Rokia Traoré) 4:03
03 Tardis Cymbals (Uncut Edit) (Cavern of Anti–Matter) 7:51
04 Rainbow Ends (Emitt Rhodes) 3:21
05 Disappointed (Field Music) 3:06
06 A2 (Prins Thomas) 7:36
07 Cardinal Cross (Mount Moriah) 2:57
08 Ultimate Care II Excerpt Eight (Matmos) 4:04
09 The Asp and the Albatross (Freakwater) 3:10
10 To Melt the Moon (Rangda) 6:13
11 The Garden of Earthly Delight (Josephine Foster) 5:52
12 Planet Sizes (Steve Mason) 4:19
13 Memories (The Wilde Flowers) 1:36
14 Evil Kind (Barry Adamson) 6:09
15 Twilight Furniture (This Heat) 5:07
• The new Uncut, dated March 2016, is out on Thursday, January 21.
• Featuring great new tracks from School Of Seven Bells, Rokia Traore, Cavern Of Anti–Matter, Field Music, Freakwater, Josephine Foster, This Heat, The Wilde Flowers and Barry Adamson
• Introducing Uncut’s special David Bowie issue
• In the new issue of Uncut, we pay tribute to David Bowie with 19 pages on the great man, who of course passed away on January 10, two days after releasing his stunning new album, Blackstar.
• Inside the issue, many of his collaborators, including Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, Nile Rodgers, Mike Garson, Ken Scott and Herbie Flowers, remember Bowie, while Uncut’s David Cavanagh pens a fascinating essay on his life and legacy.
• “He wanted music that was on the cutting edge,” explains Let’s Dance producer Nile Rodgers, “that made people feel uncomfortable, but compelled then to listen.”
• Also in our expansive Bowie piece, former Uncut editor Allan Jones remembers being sucked into a nasty tiff between Lou Reed and Bowie in April 1979: “The next thing I know, Lou is dragging Bowie across the table by his shirt and smacking him in the face…”
John Mulvey, January 18, 2016
• February 26, 1976. At the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, the 17th night of the Isolar tour came to its traditional close. As the stark, expressionist spectacle reached its climax, David Bowie fired an imaginary arrow into the air. On cue, his lighting director plunged the stage into darkness. Cut to black.
• Thirty feet from the stage, the photographer John Rowlands took the picture which adorns the cover of Uncut this month, and which Bowie reputedly counted as one of his favourite images of himself. In the midst of the grief and chaos which has engulfed the music world this past week, it occurred to us that Rowlands’ shot would be a fitting one to use on the front of this special issue of our magazine, one which we’re rushing into the shops a little earlier than planned: you should be able to find it in the UK on Thursday.
• I can think of few words I like less than “iconic”, and the way it’s casually bandied about in journalism, often to the point of meaninglessness. Nevertheless, it seems apposite here. No rock star has understood the iconic possibilities of his art more than Bowie; has grasped the mythic potential of what he does. “He believed in costume, and theatre, choreography, set design, lyrics, the right producer, the right engineer,” says bassist Herbie Flowers, one of the many Bowie associates who were so generous to us with their time and tributes. “He could do everything.”
• Time and again in the interviews collected in this month’s Uncut, there is testimony to the range and complexity of Bowie’s genius and character. A master of bold gestures and otherworldly glamour on one hand, a deeply humane friend on the other. We hear of a touching gift for producer Ken Scott; a brilliant practical joke at the expense of Brian Eno; a memorable last encounter with one of Blackstar’s gifted lieutenants, Donny McCaslin. Bowie contained multitudes, and David Cavanagh has reflected on that in a 5,000–word memorial piece remarkable for its scope, erudition and emotional heft.
• “Assessments of Bowie’s legacy came from every corner of the culture, every place where a culture prevailed,” Cavanagh writes, “and when you added up his significance to all of them, he seemed to have had a number of simultaneous lifetimes… In each encomium his fearlessness was a common theme. His uncanny ability to see into the future – and then promptly shape it – was another.”
• To complement all this, we’re also making our Ultimate Music Guide to Bowie available again, in case you missed it when it was on sale last summer (That’ll be in the shops on Thursday, too, though you can now order one from our online shop). The format is the same as usual with our UMGs: in–depth album reviews, coupled with unedited interviews from the NME and Melody Maker archives. Now, of course, some of those interviews inevitably take on a terrible new poignancy. In 1977, Bowie tells Allan Jones about how fatherhood has changed him. His son’s future is what concerns him. “My own future slips by,” he says. “I’m prepared for its end.”
• “There are still so many people on an immortality kick, though, and it amuses me now,” he continues. “We’ll do anything in our power to stay alive. There’s a feeling that the average lifespan should be longer than it is. I disagree. I mean, we’ve never lived so long. Not in any century that man’s been on this planet.
• “Not so very long ago, no–one lived past the age of 40. And we’re still not happy with 70. What are we after exactly? There’s just too much ego involved. And who wants to drag their old decaying frame around until they’re 90 just to assert their ego? I don’t, certainly.”
• Back in Uncut, 2016, it’s striking how much Bowie permeates our own culture. In pieces filed long before his death, artists as diverse as The Pop Group and Clint Mansell note his influence. The memoirs of his landlady, with whom he lodged for nine months in 1969, turn up on our Books page. And among other sad deaths logged in our Not Fade Away section, there is an obituary for Brett Smiley, one of those fated glam starlets whose careers were launched in the wake of Bowiemania. We can’t escape Bowie this month — and, thankfully, we never will.
• He’s told us not to blow it, after all…
• http://www.uncut.co.uk/ Notes:
♣ 50 years on from Tim Hardin’s debut album, Uncut considers the singer–songwriter’s extraordinary music and harrowing life story. A tale of blood, arson, rooftop chases, Olympian drug abuse, bespoke carpentry and a deathless legacy of songs. “He was truly the wildest guy I’d ever met,” says one old friend. “It didn’t seem like anyone else’s rules of behaviour worked for him.”
_____________________________________________________________