Yo La Tengo - July 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - July 13th, 1997

The centre of the New Jersey trio Yo La Tengo’s 1993 album, Painful, features a blurred polaroid of a plate of French fries. Neil Young’s French fries. Yo La Tengo’s guitarist Ira Kaplan, a moon-faced thirtysomething once described as “the Jewish Jimi Hendrix”, had lunched with the grandfather of grunge in a New York restaurant…

Bill Hicks - March 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - March 2nd, 1997

At the time of his death from pancreatic cancer three years ago, the American comic Bill Hicks was revolutionising stand-up comedy. A regular on David Letterman’s television show at home, here he could sell out West End theatres. With a brooding, rock-star-like stage presence, Hicks was feted by comedians such as Rob Newman and Sean…

Eleventh Dream Day - February 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - February 16th, 1997

Rick Rizzo, guitarist and songwriter of the Chicago band Eleventh Dream Day, is growing into contemplative maturity. He’s embarking on the traditional “difficult” later career phase, without ever having enjoyed the commercial success that ought to precede cult status. After more than a decade at the helm of the most consistently overlooked American band of…

Pavement - February 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - February 2nd, 1997

‘Notebooks out, plagiarists!” ran the sleeve notes of the Fall’s 1991 album Shiftwork. The veteran Manchester band’s frontman, Mark E Smith, tends towards an inventive paranoia, but in the case of the American indie quintet Pavement, he couldn’t have been more right. Their acclaimed 1991 debut, Slanted and Enchanted, was the sound of the Fall’s…

Derek Bailey - January 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - January 19th, 1997

Drum’n’bass, the clubland hybrid of recycled reggae bass parts, dance-music technology and impossibly fast beats, that three years ago was just an unwelcome and unfathomable pirate-radio intrusion into the FM waveband, has crossed over into the mainstream. Its big names, Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald, have made critically acclaimed albums, the clatter of jungle…

Vic Chesnutt - November 1996 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - November 10th, 1996

Once a self-confessed “street bum, a complete drunk”, and wheelchair-bound since a car accident in 1983, Vic Chesnutt was first coerced into recording in 1988 by Michael Stipe, REM’s vocalist. Since then the 32-year-old songwriter from Athens, Georgia, has delivered five critically acclaimed, low-key and wryly humorous albums, and his big-label debut for Capitol Records,…