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,…

Dirty Three - September 1996 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - September 29th, 1996

September 1995, past midnight in an unlicensed downtown Los Angeles coffeehouse. The door is sealed with heavy wrought-iron work, and its front steps have recently played host to a drive-by shooting. The staff can’t recommend anywhere in the area safe enough to find a real drink, and the crowd affects a studied, West Coast indifference…

The Fall - June 1996 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - June 23rd, 1996

I am sitting in a pub in an industrial estate in Manchester with Mark E Smith, 36 years old and founder and leader of the Fall. Whippet thin and wiry, he’s dressed in a smart black designer shirt, speaks in a cautious whisper out of the left corner of his mouth, and, over the course…