Julian Cope on 6 Music

ARCH DRUDE IN FOR IGGY POP

We’ve had some stellar radio stand-ins on 6 Music for Jarvis Cocker of late, and this week we get the Arch Drude packing the Iggy Confidential slot on Friday 22nd, 7pm, for two hours of psychedelia – a must-listen, surely. Who knows what qualifies as psychedelic in Cope’s hefty book – I mean, Sleep’s Dopesmoker DEFINITELY, though that ain’t gonna make it onto a two-hour Friday night trip – but we may well get sunburned freak outs, acid fry-ups and sunnO)))shine daydreams cocktailed with the likes of Roky Erikson, Sky Saxon, Can, early Floyd and prime Love.

Floyd and Love have gotta be a cert for the playlist surely, because they’ve inspired and named Cope’s location-free festival that’s happening Right Now, every day this month, wherever YOU are:

SydArthur Festival

Buddhist appropriation entirely intended, SydArthur is a tribute to tenyearsgone Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee who passed away just 28 days apart in July/August 2006.

As ever, Cope needs little encouragement to evoke the Cosmic Order, the ancients, the gnostics and the sha-manics in rock n roll, and so the SydArthur Festival – a festival of the mind, of the head – is now a Thing on Head Heritage. Check the calendar and note that JC’s broadcast is George Clinton’s birthday. Parliafunkadelic on the playlist?

Line all of this up next to Uncut magazine’s fine fine fine Arthur Lee/Love feature last month and you can’t help but fire the Love revival machine so an in-through-the-side-door review may be on its way v soon.

Tune in Friday, turn it ON.

(br)Exit music

REWIND JUNE: ENDUM BLUES + ROLLINS ON AIR

Revolution blues? No way is this a revolution, despite some claims. No, it’s the referendum blues and we got a nasty, nauseous dose, but surely no such shitefest a title as Referendum Blues actually exists in song form so we might as well just stumble On the Beach, shakey and shaken, for a ditch-weary Revolution Blues by that man Young: sinister and unsettling, yet musically pure-as.

And while we’re rejecting faux claims, what about the Far-Age call for a brexit independence day? Independence from what, a consensual union that we signed up for? Fuckwit. There was an independence day this week though, and it’s an obvious thing to do but sometimes you gotta be obvious to banish the loony tunes and KEEP SANE… leap to the Superunknown and take in that low-end 4th of July chug. Soundgarden, yes. Music always wins.

Anyway… we need (a) soul to lift sunken spirits. But who?

HENRY ROLLINS, ON UK RADIO. Sitting in for Jarvis Cocker on the 6 Music Sunday Service for four weeks, he’s as pure an example of a music obsessive as you’re likely to hear and he’s got the tunes to back it up. Guerilla Toss, Ngozi Family, Soccer Team… who are these bands? And why do they all sound like they could be your new favourites??? Of course, Rollins has his inside-the-biz stories, but he also knows when he knows nothing, and it’s that counterbalance, that utter helplessness in the face of mind-blowing music, that make for some vital radio listening. You might still be able to catch a couple of episodes on the iplayer.

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Rollins tracklist: old school iplayer

Right, time to get outta this short late unravelled-by-brexit Rewind. Could have said a few words about a new Melvins album, Three Men and a Baby – as satisfyingly warped-heavy as only Melvins know how – but, as of last week, it’s not the new Melvins album any more, is it? Basses Loaded just came out. Looks like Melvins will figure pretty heavily in the next few weeks.

’til next time!