Alex Chilton’s wild, idiosyncratic life after Big Star is examined in the new issue of Uncut (Take 180, May 2012), out now. But what happened before the demise of Chilton’s greatest group? They should have been rock superstars, but Rob Jovanovic explains how drugs, in-fighting and personal tragedy meant Big Star had to settle for being the biggest cult band of all time (from Uncut's Take 94, March 2005). ________________________________

The new Uncut isn't on sale until Thursday, which is March 29. But here’s a quick run-down on what’s in it, which is a lot, so you may want to pull up a chair.

Jack White has debuted his second solo single 'Sixteen Saltines' online, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to listen to the track.

The Raconteurs have announced details of a new live DVD, which is titled 'Live At Montreux'.

Seminal band call it a day with 'astonishment at all we have accomplished'

In the second week of May, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings drove from Los Angeles to Nashvillle. The journey took 31 hours, and Welch filmed a small portion of it on her iPhone. The clip is framed by an open car window, and outside you can see the flooded Mississippi stretching away from the edge of the road to the horizon: a new inland sea for the beleaguered American South.

This is the second part of a lengthy piece I wrote for Uncut earlier this summer. The first part is here.

Hear Thriller, Illum Sphere and Shed's reworkings

The breakthrough fourth album, reissued with a trove of demos...In 1986, REM’s elevation to umpty-million-selling ubiquity, dominant influence and stadium marquees appeared other than inevitable. The Georgia quartet had released, in breakneck succession, two critically adored albums (1983’s Murmur, 1984’s Reckoning) and a third (1985’s Fables Of The Reconstruction) which was a much more expansive but nonetheless nervy and flawed record.

The new issue of Uncut is out sometime this week, and among many other things it contains an interview I did a few weeks back with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings in Nashville.