MOJO January 2021

Frazey Ford VANCOUVER SOUL What music are you currently grooving to? I’ve been revisiting Nina Simone’s live 1968 album, ‘Nuff Said! She’s the master of impeccable, sparse groove. I also love Khruangbin and Leon Bridges’ collaboration EP, Texas Sun, and Deva Mahal’s cover of her dad’s [Goffin & King cover] Take A Giant Step. I’m newly obsessed with an Ethiopian nun and solo pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. She’s otherworldly. Joan Armatrading’s Whatever’s For Us, was my summer go-to record. Jennifer Castle’s Monarch Season is dreamy. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It would have to be Al Green, I’m Still In Love With You. I’ve listened to it thousands of times. I never tire of it. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? When I…

WHEN PEOPLE LOOK BACK ON 2020 in years to come, I doubt it’ll be a few album releases they think about first. Nevertheless, as venues remain shuttered, along with so much else of what we normally take for granted, the sustaining value of a long-playing record has become more pronounced than ever. The 75 albums that MOJO’s writers have chosen as the best of 2020 for this issue aren’t all escapist, or celebrator y, or nostalgic for a less complicated world than the current one. They are, though, a great reminder that cultural life endures - and helps us endure - through even the hardest times. Hopefully you’ll find some new favourites in this special issue; it’s been a good year for our music. Against the odds, it’s been a pretty…

NEW ROSE BY The Damned - AKA the first British punk 45 - was released on October 22, 1976. Almost 44 years later to the day, on October 21, London’s Roundhouse played host to a socially distanced press conference to announce the reformation of the original group for a UK tour in July 2021. Hosted by Don Letts, the matter-of-fact event belied its unexpected nature. Such were the historic business and personal differences within the ranks that bassist/guitarist Captain Sensible once quipped in MOJO that if the primal quartet of himself, guitarist/songwriter Brian James, drummer Rat Scabies and frontman Dave Vanian should ever again be in the same room, not all might emerge alive. Yet today all was cordiality. They’d be playing “the early stuff that we all played together,” James confirmed.…

Andre Williams The Greasy Chicken (FORTUNE, 1957) Top wino R&B laffs, with whacky sound effects and accents, from the storied survivor of the blues. The follow-up to his 1956 hit Bacon Fat, this predates 1968’s also-gas- tric-juicy Pig Snoots, which he released as the Natural Bridge Bunch. Ancient Grease Mother Grease The Cat (MERCURY, 1970) Hard bluesy rock with progressive tendencies from South Wales: trippy lyrics about finding true reality - “Aphrodite dressed in rainbows, pass the wine,” don’t mind if we do - but nothing, sadly, about getting your mum to slather Tiddles in unguents. Atomic Rooster Nice’N'Greasy (DAWN, 1973) What made grease the dream in the ‘70s? The Grease Band, Greasy Truckers, Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon… anyway, here Atomic Rooster’s soulful blues rock comes in a lovely fag-stubbed-out-in-a-fried- egg sleeve. DO NOT look at the German cover. Royal Trux Sunshine And…

MARIANNE FAITHFULL’S forthcoming album interprets the 19th century British Romantic poets, assisted by Bad Seeds multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis and producer Head. Yet it very nearly didn’t come to pass. In early April, just weeks into lockdown, the singer spent three weeks in hospital with Covid-19. In her first interview since recovery, Faithfull admits she’s still feeling the aftershocks. “I really hurt my lungs,” she says. “This, after smoking most of my life and having emphysema. And my short-term memory is affected. But I’m told that when you have coronavirus as badly as I did, that happens. But your memory comes back, and mine is coming back. And my lungs are coming back too. And I’ve made a beautiful record.” “Your memory comes back… my lungs are coming back too.”MARIANNE FAITHFULL She Walks In…

…announcing last month that he’d left Motown after 59 years to sign a deal with Republic Records, STEVIE WONDER (right) announced that his new LP will be entitled Through The Eyes Of Wonder. He also spoke of possibly releasing a collection for his mother, Gospel Inspired By Lula, through Motown …a YouTube clip posted by photographer Mick Steff in October showed DURUTTI COLUMN mastermind Vini Reilly at home in Manchester, improvising on his Fender Strat. Said Vini, who suffered a stroke in 2010, “as flawed as it is technically… it’s a lot better than it has been.” MOJO understands that socially distanced recordings for a new album have been made …speaking to Guitar.com, IDLES’ Lee Kiernan said they’d already begun their next record. “There’s, like, 30 songs,” he revealed. “We…