ON page 94 of this month’s issue you’ll meet Jelloman. There is, of course, a yarn attached to his colourful alias. But for the purposes of our story, his real name is Paul Vile – and when we meet him in downtown Philadelphia, he’s telling us about his elder brother Kurt’s single-minded pursuit of music. “Our dad took us to his old house and opened up his closet,” says Paul. “All these seven-inch records spilled all over the floor. My dad gave me some random toys he had, but Kurt got all the records. He became a complete music nerd from that moment on.”
ON page 94 of this month’s issue you’ll meet Jelloman. There is, of course, a yarn attached to his colourful alias. But for the purposes of our story, his real name is Paul Vile – and when we meet him in downtown Philadelphia, he’s telling us about his elder brother Kurt’s single-minded pursuit of music. “Our dad took us to his old house and opened up his closet,” says Paul. “All these seven-inch records spilled all over the floor. My dad gave me some random toys he had, but Kurt got all the records. He became a complete music nerd from that moment on.”
You’ll find plenty more on the power of music elsewhere in this issue. Earth, Wind And Fire’s Ralph Johnson, for instance, explains how their celebratory fusion of jazz, blues, gospel, soul, funk, R&B and disco carried a deeper purpose: “The idea was to lift up your fellow man by way of the music and the messages in the music. There was a higher calling.”
Or Tori Amos, who reveals how her rapturous songs are guided by her ever-present Muses. “It’s a calling,” she tells our new recruit, Kate Hutchinson. “I’m a lioness, so I hunt for frequency and how to tell the story.”
Then, of course, there is our cover star, Tom Waits, for whom the transformative nature of music has been a guiding principle for five decades. “When you’re at one of his shows, you can tell there’s more going on than just a concert,” says Beck, a longstanding admirer. “There’s something theatrical, somewhere between Samuel Beckett and burlesque, with a carnivalesque invocation of the strange. He seemed to inhabit the spirit of some of these older forms of performing, but with a modern sense of the absurd.”
As ever, please let us know what you think about the issue (and this month’s spiffy covermount CD, compiled by Kurt Vile). Please also take note of our new email address for your letters: uncut.ed@kelsey.co.uk.
And if you haven’t already spotted this elsewhere on the site, Club Uncut – our former live night from the late ’00s – is making a comeback. You can find all about our first official show at London’s Third Man Blue Basement venue here…
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