News, Views and Music Issue 34 (Intro)

June 5:

♫ Welcome dear readers to another weekly run through of all the illustrious and entertaining news, reviews and music about your favourite artists. As you have probably noticed, we’re still waiting for the internet to be restored at the library but this issue should hopefully be uploaded on time now that Mike is back in Skelmersdale. No anniversaries of big events for you this week – instead just the usual news round up and some more reviews for you…

                                   

♫ Johnny Cash News: A mention of honourable AAA member Johnny Cash, who this month sees the release of no less than two posthumous products. The first is an album entitled ‘Johnny Cash Remixed’ which has a handful of unpublished recordings (mostly live it seems) alongside some of Johnny’s Greatest Hits. The second is a documentary DVD entitled ‘Johnny Cash’s America’ which focuses on Johnny’s civil rights leanings and his includes lots of footage of the man in black alongside more recent interviews with friends and fans old and new.

♫ CSNY/Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane/Janis Joplin/The Who News: A new deluxe edition of the ‘Woodstock’ film is being prepared for the 40^th anniversary of the world’s most famous rock festival. Although the anniversary won’t be until August this year, it looks as if the new 4 DVD set will be available a bit before that and features nine hours of footage with some three hours of unreleased material. Looking at the reviews of this set that have already been published, it looks as if one disc will contain the 3 ½ hour director’s cut version of the film that has been out since around the millennium, plus another disc containing ‘woodstock diaries’, the three-part 1990s series containing then unpublished material from most of the groups who played at the festival. The other two discs will contain new material never seen before and although other details are still sketchy it will provide more unseen Airplane footage and the first ever footage of the Grateful Dead at the event. Whether there will be additional CSNY/Janis/Who footage is unknown, but it does exist for all three artists if contractual difficulties can be sorted in time. More news if and when we hear it…

♫ Neil Young News: Neil’s cutting it a bit fine, even for him, for cancelling his mammoth thirty-years-in-the-making ‘Archives Volume One’ box set, due for release on June 8th. So that leaves us with only one possible explanation – could it be that this box set, cancelled at least a dozen times over the years, really is coming out as planned this week? Wow. The odds against that were higher than CSNY lasting through a whole reunion without splitting up! Just in case though – check next week’s column to make sure Neil didn’t cancel at the last minute as he always does… 

                           

     

♫ Anniversaries (June 5^th-11^th): As Davy Jones of the Monkees would put it, Hey Hey Ra Ra Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse. In other words, it’s the birthdays column – so happy birthdays to Clarence White (guitarist with The Byrds 1968-72) who would have been 65 on June 7^th had he not died in that awful crash in 1973 and Bill Kreutzmann (drummer with the Grateful Dead 1965-95) who turns 63 on June 7^th. Anniversaries of events this week include: the Rolling Stones make history by being the first band to receive royalty payments from Russia, following the relaxation of laws banning Western Music as ‘subversive’ (June 5^th 1976); The Beatles record at EMI studios for the first time, officially to audition and record demos of possible future songs – the recording session results in the single release of ‘Love Me Do’ in October (June 6^th 1962); the Rolling Stones release their first single – a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘C’mon’ – almost a year to the day later (June 7^th 1963); Brian Jones officially leaves the Stones just a day and six years later (June 8^th 1969); the Beatles hold a ‘welcome home’ concert at Liverpool’s Cavern Club following their many months away in Hamburg – this is the concert generally reckoned by most Beatleologists to be the turning point in their career (June 9^th 1962); Janis Joplin plays on stage with her first (and best) band ‘Big Brother and the Holding Company (June 10^th 1966) for the first time; Radio Stations across America deliver the shock news that The Who’s Roger Daltrey has died in a car crash – well, it’s a shock to him at least, as the news is actually that Pete Townshend had a minor injury from a car crash in which Daltrey wasn’t involved (I bet the group did storming versions of ‘La-la-la Lies’ and ‘It’s Not True’ the night that news broke out!; June 11^th 1966) and finally, following on from Brian Wilson’s legendary ‘fire’ tapes (when a fire broke out near the studios the night of playing eerie music mimicking flames for the Beach Boys’ abandoned Smile project), the Rolling Stones suffer a less reported studio fire at Olympic Studios on June 11^th 1968 during sessions for ‘Beggar’s Banquet’ (were they recording ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ at the time?).