Issue 25
March 2005
Cover star – Joni Mitchell
Word shuffle
1) P16 – a full page photo by (then schoolboy) Mark Makin from Dylan’s seminal 1966 concert at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester .
2) P44 – obituary of Johnny Carson by Andy Gill. “An instinctive liberal, Carson’s deft Watergate jibes undoubtedly contributed to the downfall of Richard Nixon, though he also dished it out to Democrats too, on one occasion joking that former Governor of California Jerry Brown had admitted smoking marijuana in the ’60’s, “but didn’t exhale!”
3) P109 – a page of album reviews. David Hepworth reviews surround sound versions of some classic Clapton releases and Andrew Harrison writes about Electric Six and their ‘Senor Smoke’ album. “…their key thematic concerns of fornication, pyromania, electric demons, in love and naked pictures of your mother and not going to trouble ‘Late Review’.”
4) P128 – the I-Pod randomizer feature with Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips. It throws up ‘Program’ by Silver Apples, 2 tracks by The Police (“I love The Police. I’ve MP3’d all their records. Even that sucky remix of ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ where they rearranged it and wrecked the whole song and they couldn’t even blame a remixer ‘cos they did it themselves!”), ‘Tell Me Why’ by Neil Young, Mahavishnu Orchestra’s ‘Resolution’, ‘Deep One Perfect Morning by The Jesus and Mary Chain (“How many bands wouldn’t be here if not for them? We used to sound just like them and wear the same clothes too. They invented a new way of wearing black so you didn’t look like a goth”) and “You’ve Been Flirting Again’ by Bjork.
5) P26 – Stuart Maconie reviews the Cardiff Tsunami Relief charity concert. “The moment the words had left his lips, Damon Gough AKA Badly Drawn Boy surely regretted encouraging the crowd to ‘get a Mexican wave going’. But as said wave rippled across the vast terraces, tiers and stands and the 61, 000 people in Cardiff’s Millennium stadium – all of them beaming and oblivious to insensitivity – he must have been satisfied that he’d got away with it.”
Interesting – Mark Ellen meets Francoise Hardy and discovers she likes PJ Harvey, Dido, Norah Jones, Beth Gibbons and Annie Lennox. She has markedly less enthusiasm for Kate Bush (“Too sharp, too high, too much…shrieking”), Joni Mitchell, Debbie Harry, Madonna (“I don’t like the way she moves. She is very vulgar. It doesn’t appeal to me to get to know her work any better”) or Joan Baez.
Christopher Bray declares that David Thomson’s ‘The Whole Equation – A History Of Hollywood’ “…may be the best book ever written on the mystery of the movies.”
Andy Kershaw talks to Pete Paphides about his departure from Radio One: “Basically I was ostracized. It wasn’t any one thing. It was a culmination. They would arrange things like the annual group photo shoot where all us DJs were supposed to pretend we were best mates . And I wouldn’t be invited. Another time they’d put this aluminium plaque outside our office, with the names of all the people that worked there. And my name wasn’t on it. It was as though I’d been airbrushed out! Like a politburo photo.”
John Naughton interviews The Goodies and they talk about The Footlights. John asks if there was a competitive atmosphere:
“Tim: It wasn’t competitive, actually because everyone helped each other.
Graeme: Because you were up next, you tended not to heckle people.
Bill: People would encourage you to come up with something different. Clive James dominated it all for quite a long time and in the process became the oldest mature student in history. He was about 50 by the time he left. And Germaine Greer as well.”
Longer article
Mark Ellen travels to Montreal to interview Rufus and family.
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