Los Angeles quartet the Allah-Las have the most perfect of backstories for a group making such informed, articulate pop music. Three of the group’s members met while serving time at the legendary LA record store, Amoeba, one of the best ways to learn your craft and do your listening, all while getting paid to schlep CD cases and LP sleeves into the aisles and across the counter. They’ve been playing together since late 2008, slowly chipping away at a vision that’s equal parts genteel psychedelia, ’60s beat movement, and softly strummed, post-Byrdsian jangle-pop.

The Rolling Stones are to play a surprise gig in Paris tonight as a warm-up for their forthcoming dates in London and New Jersey. The group made the announcement on Twitter, writing: "The Rolling Stones are playing a short warm-up gig tonight, Thursday 25th Oct, in Paris." Newspaper Le Parisien reports that the show will take place at Trabendo. A small, 700-seat theatre in the Parc de la Villette area of Paris.

The classic '86 solo album, lavishly packaged with extras...

Back from the bargain bin, a lost piece of southern-soul-baring...

The 1965 The Rolling Stones documentary Charlie Is My Darling is set to be officially released for the first time. The 50-minute film was shot by Peter Whitehead in September 1965 when the Stones did a two-date tour of Ireland after "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" hit the charts. Although bootleg copies have been available, the film was never officially released.

When it comes out in the autumn of 1974, Gene Clark's No Other seems to me like an album everybody should hear, nothing short of a masterpiece.

Calexico’s new album, Algiers, is reviewed in the current issue of Uncut (October 2012, Take 185) – so we thought we’d take a trip back to April 2003 (Take 71), when Uncut’s John Mulvey flew out to Tucson, Arizona to discover more about the duo’s redrawing of the alt.country map. __________________________

Anyway, with the release of Bob Dylan’s Tempest looming, I was thinking the other morning about a time when albums just, you know, came out. What seemed to happen was pretty straightforward. There’d be a story in Melody Maker announcing a new album by one of your favourite bands that usually gave the record a title, track listing and release date. The week the album came out, there’d be a review, maybe an interview and perhaps a full-page ad somewhere in MM, often with tour dates attached. On the day the album came out, you went to your local record shop – in my case, Derek’s in Water Street in Port Talbot – and you bought it. How simple it all seemed. Of course, when I actually started working for Melody Maker in 1974, I found there was a bit more to it, although not much more usually than a launch party. This was basically an excuse for the band, their mates and assorted journalists to have a bit of a piss-up and could hardly be described as an integral part of a carefully-plotted promotional campaign, unless you were Led Zeppelin and the party was a debauched affair in Chislehurst Caves involving naked nuns and the like, in which case the event would get a bit of a write-up in the red tops.

Please excuse the wholly shameless plug, but I thought you might like to know that the next in our series of Ultimate Music Guides goes on sale tomorrow (September 6) and this one is dedicated to Paul Weller.

John Fogerty’s show supporting Bruce Springsteen at London's Hyde Park is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, out now (dated September 2012). So, for this week’s archive feature, we delve back to March 2006 (Take 106), when the Creedence singer, guitarist and songwriter talked Uncut through all of his legendary band’s singles. Interview: Bud Scoppa __________________________