Jarvis and co shoot for a happy ending...

I must confess that, until very recently, I hadn’t really heard of Mike Cooper; more evidence, I guess, of the apparently boundless reserves of records from the early ‘70s still to be reissued (the Bob Carpenter album, due to be released on No Quarter in the autumn, is another great example I should write about soon).

Deep into 2001’s Southern Rock Opera , there’s a point where Patterson Hood produces a mission statement for the Drive-By Truckers – and for an enlightened generation of bands from below the Mason-Dixon line. “You think I'm dumb, maybe not too bright,” he sings, “You wonder how I sleep at night/Proud of the glory, stare down the shame/Duality of the southern thing.”

How does it feel, to be pathologised? A few of you might wonder as much, picking up with some trepidation David Kinney’s “The Dylanologists: Adventures In The Land Of Bob”. For here is a book that purports to expose the eccentricities of Bob Dylan’s most obsessive fans, who – imagine! - spend all their money on bootlegs, rarities and ephemera, follow the Neverending Tour around the world, crowd the front rows of his gigs, meticulously work through his lyrics for meaning and echo. Not to be paranoid here, but is Kinney talking about us?

Like everything else, Noel Gallagher had an opinion about debut albums. “Definitely Maybe was the young, eager, wanting to get out there and fucking blow the world away album,” he told Uncut in 2000. As Gallagher claimed on many occasions, he’d been strategising a debut album, in whatever form, since his teenage years. With such apparent forethought, it’s no wonder that when Definitely Maybe appeared in August, 1994 it redrew the parameters of indie rock, filling a void left by The Stone Roses and gave Alan McGee’s Creation Records a world-class act.

In the same way that Marshall amps revolutionised rock music, allowing heavy rock and metal to flourish, loop pedals have changed the state of play for solo performers. No longer having to rely on real-time performing, the first two acts on tonight at the final night of Club Uncut at The Great Escape have been able to take folk to stranger, new climes.

After last night's Hold Steady-headlined first night, Uncut's stage at The Great Escape continues tonight (May 10) with an opening set from Serafina Steer.

The storms battering the South Coast have blown themselves out by the time Club Uncut reconvenes for another year at The Great Escape festival. It’s after midnight and very nearly pitch-black in the Dome Studio just before our first night’s headliners, The Hold Steady, dramatically hit the lights, then the stage. “As the song says,” Craig Finn promises, “we’re gonna have a real good time together.”

About ten years ago, I had a series of conversations with some people preparing a new edition of Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Music. Their aim, it seemed, was to take the 84 tracks originally compiled from Smith’s collection of 78s, and subject them to a vigorous digital clean-up. How much better would these songs sound, was their reasoning, if all the grit and static was removed, leaving the performances unsullied and sharp?

I was reminiscing with an old friend over the weekend about The Specials, his favourite band. Our chat brought us to the great 1979 2-Tone Tour that featured The Specials, supported by Madness and The Selecter, a snapshot of which now duly follows.