LATEST UPDATES:
JUKEBOX lots of new songs to hear playlist
MINUS ZERO/STAND OUT Records closure click
CLASH 1982 interview with Joe Strummer click
ESN4 from 1983 retyped & unseen photos click
PENETRATION new line up; new interview click
THE PITCH headlines from recent interviews click 

Viv Albertine is best known as guitarist with the Slits who were active from 1976 to 1982. When they split she abandoned music until last year when she relearnt her instrument and started to write new songs. Viv describes:

• Her very modest return to the stage that began with open mic nights in front "a fisherman and a lady in a bobble hat leaning on the bar hiccupping".
• "I feel more like that picture of a teenage boy - lonely in his room - pouring out his troubles."
• Not knowing how people would respond to her new songs. "I thought people might laugh at me because it might sound like really old music or mad music."
• The timelessness of the photo on 'Cut' and what she learned later about its special appeal to a certain area of the band's audience.

Dave Ruffy's 'CV' reads like a 'who's who' of left field pop over the past 30 years. His drum credits include the Ruts, Prefab Sprout, Aztec Camera, Waterboys, Sinead O'Connor and Kirsty MacColl. It tells:

• How he started out working in a record shop in Cannon Street selling second hand rock records.
• The unusual two-pronged audition to find the final Ruts member that began with 'doing a night together' (without musical instruments).
• Taking time off from the Ruts to moonlight with Laurel Aitken at the height of the 2 Tone / ska movement.
• A very candid recollection of Malcolm Owen's demise and how the remaining members were affected.

The Pitch - Julien Temple Interview click here

Julien Temple is a hugely talented film-maker, who at the time of this interview had just made 'Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten', his third major punk documentary. Julien offers very considered but honest responses. The story tells:

• How Julien wanted to capture the contradictions in Joe's life and how Joe had struggled to reconcile them. Portraying this struggle became Julien's own struggle and making the film got him in a mess.
• In 1976, it was easier to work with the Sex Pistols than the Clash because Joe was intent on hiding his middle class background but based on the premise that 'it takes one to know one', he couldn't hide it from the rather well spoken Julien.
• The rivalry between the managers of the Pistols and the Clash was probably stronger than anything that existed between the bands.
• It's important to include Sting in all of his films, "Just as a warning of how bad it can get."

He was close to the Clash, the Slits and John Lydon during times when these artists would have been practically under siege. He was inspired by the punk movement to pick up a super 8 camera and reinvent himself as film maker. In 1976, he was DJ at the Roxy club during its original 100 day run. He played reggae and brought in his mates to work behind the bar where they used their skills to make spliffs they would sell to the punks.

• In 1978 his 'Punk Rock Movie', which compiled unique images of the movement up to that point, broke box office records at the ICA in London.
• In 2000, he directed the Grammy winning Clash documentary 'Westway to The World'.
• Although he would go onto to join Mick Jones in Big Audio Dynamite in 1984, his first appearance on stage was in 1976 with Patti Smith at Hammersmith Odeon: he played air guitar!
• In 2005 he made 'Punk:Attitude' and disputes the idea that punk began and ended in the late 70s. He says, "If it happened back then well… it can happen again. And when you look around these days, it sure bloody needs to."