Billy Jenkins - May 1998 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - May 31st, 1998

Guitarist Billy Jenkins’s new release, True Love Collection, a set of seven 1970s pop standards, has more in common with Vic Reeves’snovelty cash-in record I Will Cure You than with any of the innovative music he’s made in the past two decades. “Well, I’m getting older and trying to cross over a bit more to…

Robert Fripp - November 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - November 30th, 1997

‘Since 1992 it has again been possible to discuss without whispering the music of 1969-1976,” writes King Crimson’s Robert Fripp in the sleeve notes to the recently issued early-1970s live collection The Night Watch. “But I offer no apology for the transparently pratty music played by young dopes wearing satin.” Who does he mean, exactly?…

Son Volt - November 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - November 2nd, 1997

There is a new wave of young American “alternative country” bands daring to re-evaluate their national music heritage. Nashville pedal steel guitars now sit easily in the kind of independently minded acts that would once have considered them heresy. They draw in fans old enough to remember country rock’s first wave of the Byrds and…

Rachel’s Rex - October 1997 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - October 5th, 1997

Late last month, Cecil Sharp House, the English Folk song Society HQ in Regent’s Park, hosted the UK debut for Rex and Rachel’s, twin leading lights of a hardy hybrid strain of American post-rock dynamics and folk classical sensibilities. A 500-strong crowd on plastic seating saw Rachel’s showcase last year’s essential Sea & the Bells…

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…