The Go-Betweens - May 1999 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - May 16th, 1999

‘Hair is important,” began Robert Forster, the co-frontman of the Go-Betweens, Australia’s criminally underrated band, in an article on haircare for the Manchester fanzine Debris in 1987. “Hair is placed fairly and squarely upon your head, to be admired and cared for. At a younger age, I almost drifted into hairdressing, and thankfully didn’t, but…

Jim O’Rourke - April 1999 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - April 11th, 1999

Jim O’Rourke’s latest album, Eureka, features delicately finger-picked acoustic guitar, funereal New Orleans jazz, a Bacharach and David cover, and ambient washes of abstract sound, buoyed up on imaginative string arrangements. It is provocative and intelligent, asks subtle questions about how and why we consume music, yet is tuneful enough to sing in the bath…

Roky Erikson - March 1999 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - March 14th, 1999

Things started to go wrong for Thirteenth Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson when he was arrested for possession of six marijuana joints in 1969. Faced with statutory imprisonment by the State of Texas, Roky cunningly pleaded insanity on the basis of having taken 300 LSD trips, and so spent three years in Rusk State Hospital…

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - November 1998 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - November 22nd, 1998

You’d think the number of forgotten talents to dig up, canonise and induct into the music hall of fame would be finite. The 1990s have seen the back catalogues of Gram Parsons, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny annotated and anthologised. By now there’s a familiar pattern to these critical resurrections. Stage one involves the CD…

George Kuchar - October 1998 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - October 25th, 1998

For a year or so now, Pulp’s guitarist Mark Webber has pursued a second career as an arts impresario, organising exhibitions and screenings. His latest project is an overview of the 1960s American underground cinema scene, showcasing 99 films by directors whose influence is felt today upon David Lynch, Martin Scorsese and John Waters. It…

Graham Coxon - August 1998 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - August 9th, 1998

In December 1968, the former Jefferson Airplane drummer and Moby Grape guitarist, Skip Spence, checked himself out of a mental institution and motorcycled to Nashville to record his solo album, Oar, in four days, before disappearing back into pharmaceutical oblivion. In 1972, the manic depressive English folk rocker Nick Drake silently abandoned the master tapes…