John Cale said some nice things on working with Charli xcx in an interview with Rolling Stone:
Energy and vivacity mixed with a real knowledge of music, far different from her own. An awareness of cultural shifts on the precipice — how to harness it all whilst not losing her own identity. She’s smart, fun, a bit of a whirlwind, and always curious. Yeah, it’s her laser-focused desire to absorb all that life offers — and try it on for size!
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 12 John Watts looks back on the recording of the Swimming In Thunderstorms and Til The Oceans Overflow albums. Special attention for the No Bohemia and Cuban Rain Falling songs. And he discusses the new album X-Ray Serenade once again, which is due for release on September 4th 2026.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 11 John Watts looks back on the recording of the This is My Universe and Building Bridges albums. Special attention for the World Go Round and Damascus Disco songs. And he discusses the new album X-Ray Serenade once again, which is due for release on September 4th 2026.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 10 John Watts looks back on the recording of the Morethanmusic album. Special attention for the Heart of New York and Perfect Timing songs. And he discusses the new album X-Ray Serenade, due for release on September 4th 2026.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 9 John Watts looks back on the recording of the Real Life is Good Enough and It Has To Be albums. Special attention for the Zydeco and Brothers songs.
English guitarist Chris Spedding has been a well-respected session player and sideman for 50 years. He picked some highlights for an interview with Guitar World. On working with John Cale:
I liked John because he was one of the few people who'd take a chance. He'd change tempos, keys and the order of songs because he was interested in improvising. Some of the other members of the band were kind of freaked out by that because it's not the rock 'n' roll thing.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 8 John Watts looks back on the recording of the BigBeatPoetry and Ether albums, and his collaboration German DJ Ingo Wörner. Special attention for the BigBeatPoetry and Promenaders songs.
Live Boots - Live At Emerald City 1981 is supposedly the first of a series of XTC recordings. This show has been circulating among collectors in rather bad sound quality, but none other than Andy Partridge has overseen the mastering for this Record Store Day release (April 18), so it will definitely be an upgrade. Did he sign off on the horrible artwork as well? 2500 copies of the 2LP are available worldwide.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 7 John Watts looks back on the recording of the Stream and 13 Stories High albums, with special attention for Protection and Angel of Gardinia.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 6 John Watts looks back on the recording of the Destination Paradise and Kamikaze Shirt albums, with special attention for Further From Love (still a live favourite today) and Human Beings.
Anil Prasad interviewed keyboardist Richard Barbieri for his Innerviews website about Japan, Porcupine Tree, his solo career and his latest album Hauntings:
I’m always searching for that little spark that lights the flame and leads the way. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been a lot more introspective and thinking about things. Also, this has to do with my age and the kind of career I’ve had. I look back a lot and try to make sense of things, and I do tend to internalize.
I realized I was quite obsessed with this nostalgic feeling I had for things, and not just for things that happened, but for things that didn’t happen. They would get into my dreams as recurring events, places, and characters. It got me thinking about reality and how much of it is real.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 5 John Watts discusses bringing back the band after the demise of The Cry. He looks back on the recording of the Reveal and Fish Head albums, with special attention for The Perfect Day and Say No, his favourite songs from that period.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 4 John Watts discusses his solo albums and the start of his new band The Cry. The reformation of Fischer-Z will be covered in the next podcast, which goed live on March 6.
Bill Wyman is still in awe with the sound of his Dallas Tuxedo bass, which he purchased for about £8 back in the day. He played it on almost all Rolling Stones albums, with songs from Sticky Fingers as his favourites. From an interview in Guitar Player:
'I Got the Blues' was probably one of the best songs I ever did with that one. 'Sister Morphine,' from the same LP, is another — a lot of the slow, bluesy things, the ballady things, songs where I wanted it to sound like a string bass. I can sort of slide on it because there are no frets, and I can almost get a little bit of that slap sound playing it with the thumb. I play every other bass with a pick, but I use my thumb on that one.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 3 John Watts discusses the aftermath of the release of the Red Skies Over Paradise album, and going solo with One More Twist in 1982. He had to do all of the band stuff himself around that time anyway, so going out on his own made perfect sense then.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 2 John Watts discusses the writing of So Long and Berlin, and dissolving the band in 1981 on stage in Italy.
New Wave band Fischer-Z have launched a podcast to tie in with their 50th anniversary. In Episode 1 John Watts discusses the process of picking his 24 favourite songs plus an interview with keyboard player Steve Skolnik. The featured song is Pretty Paracetamol from the World Salad album.
Anil Prasad interviewed guitarist Phil Manzanera for his Innerviews website about Roxy Music, his solo career and the neverending quest for exploring new sounds:
I've got a constant desire to do new things and to see what is in this strange thing called the mind. It’s quite a complex piece of human equipment, which at nighttime goes berserk and takes you all over the place in the strangest possible way. And you wake up thinking, "What was that?"
One way of channeling that creatively is in doing music that doesn't rely on you writing it, but rather focusing on improvised music, and just seeing what comes out. And it's always been a bit like that for me in terms of my desire to just play and not think about it, and then see what happens.
Anil Prasad interviewed singer Colin Blunstone about the mono reissue of The Zombies classic Odessey and Oracle, still being able to hit the high notes at 80, and the longevity of The Zombies for his Innerviews website. About the reissue:
This is how it was mixed when we first recorded it. And I think it has got something special to it. It certainly seems more to the point with me, and crisper and warmer. I just think it's fantastic.
There's been interest in going back to the original tapes and remastering this record as we heard it way back. We first started recording this in 1967 and it wasn’t released until 1968. I think it's wonderful that there's the interest and commitment from people that want to go back and do this.
Amanda Petrusich has written an in-depth piece about Phish for The New Yorker. She spoke with all band members and gets to the heart of the matter of the band's modus operandi.
Musically, Phish braids three major elements: formal composition, improvisation, and—despite what you may have heard—pop hooks. (Fervent fans tend to favor the more sprawling songs, but the band’s most streamed tracks—“Farmhouse,” “Sample in a Jar,” “Bouncing Around the Room”—are bona-fide earworms.) These elements might appear to be in opposition to one another, but the band’s capacity to hold them in balance is arguably its defining achievement; all three are crucial, in different ways, to whatever trapdoor occasionally opens up mid-set. Anastasio and I spent dozens of hours parsing the physics of it. “Last night got so deep,” he texted me one morning, after Phish had played its second of four shows at Moon Palace, a resort in the Riviera Maya, in Mexico. “Gratitude, emotions, heavy heavy hurt anger explosion, safe space to let feelings go. Fear, confusion. Sometimes the guitar is the only place it’s safe to let that out.” He pointed me toward a particular jam, during “Twenty Years Later,” the track that closes “Joy,” the band’s twelfth album, from 2009. It’s hard not to understand the lyrics, which Anastasio wrote with Tom Marshall, as a rejoinder to excess:
I can hold my breath for a minute or so
Five days without food is as long as I’ll go
I didn’t sleep once for four days and three nights
I once didn’t stop for seven red lights
