I was struck by a couple of tweets this morning from Peter Watts (@peter_watts and the author of this month’s Ramones cover story in Uncut). The first ran, “I read the word 'liminal' in the Standard the other day. I think that's psychogeography's 'hippie wigs in Woolworths' moment.”

There’s a story about Brendan Gleeson meeting unsuccessfully with a Hollywood agent to discuss furthering his acting career overseas. This was in the mid-Nineties, and until then Gleeson had largely worked in television, mostly in his native Ireland, with only a handful of minor film roles to his credit. Admittedly, Gleeson had come late to acting: he’d been a secondary school teacher in Dublin before taking up acting full time in 1991 and was now in his early forties.

It’s recently been announced that a rare live recording of Syd Barrett guesting on guitar with The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band in Cambridge in July 1972 is to be released – so now seems like a perfect time to revisit the extensive tribute we published in Uncut just after Barrett’s death in July 2006 (Take 112, September 2006). As well as a fantastic piece written by David Cavanagh, we hear from Syd’s friends, collaborators and admirers, including David Bowie, David Gilmour, Mick Rock, Peter Jenner, Damon Albarn, Julian Cope and Kevin Ayers. Shine on…

“I want to be mothered,” Mark Kozelek sang in 1993 on “Mother”, one of the more startling tracks on the second Red House Painters album. “I want you to give attention to my belly button/Mother, I want to have bobby pins stuck in my ears.”

Anyone who’s read any of Robert Gordon’s previous books, like Can’t Be Satisfied, for instance, his great biography of Muddy Waters, will no doubt be looking forward to Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion, Gordon’s history of the legendary Memphis label, which is published this month by Bloomsbury.

Sometimes, with Bill Callahan, the focus on his records is so unwaveringly on his lyrics, it is tempting to treat them as recited poetry rather than actual music. On an old Smog record like “The Doctor Came At Dawn”, say, the music seems barely there; just a little shading to point up the melodic undertow of a baritone that often wanders closer to speech than song.

When you’re in the business of writing about/codifying/making up a musical scene, it always helps if you can locate its nexus. Reading the small print on record sleeves, a good few of the American musicians negotiating the space between roots music and avant-garde jamming these past few years - part of what used to be called free folk, for a while - all turn out to have recorded at Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York.

Sometime last autumn, maybe, an EP called “Artorius Revisited” by Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band was quietly released in limited quantities. Last time he surfaced around 2006/2007, in a quixotic, thwarted and mostly transcendent musical career that now stretches back some three decades, Head and his longest-lasting configuration, Shack, were signed to Noel Gallagher’s Sour Mash label. It didn’t last.

The new issue of Uncut has just gone on sale. The Kinks are on the cover and inside we have exclusive interviews with Ray and Dave Davies, who tell us what it will take for them to get back together to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary in 2014, so we’ve titled this month’s free CD after one of their early hits.

Religious dissidents and juvenile delinquents, Greenwich Village and Potsdamer Platz, doomed soldiers and vacuous celebrities... David Cavanagh files the epic, definitive review of The Next Day. From Uncut's April 2013 (Take 191) issue. _______________