Nora Forster — wife of John Lydon, mother of The Slits’ Ari Up — has died at age 80
Nora Forster, a music promoter and mother of the late Slits frontwoman Ari Up who married John Lydon in 1979, has died after living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Nora Forster, a music promoter and mother of the late Slits frontwoman Ari Up who married John Lydon in 1979, has died after living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Main Man Records this spring will release Hero: A Tribute to David Bowie, an ultra-limited white-vinyl LP — the label says just 300 copies are being pressed — that features The Alarm and members of Blondie, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Heaven 17 and more honoring the Thin White Duke. Full details right here.
Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs. All releases due out this Friday unless noted. Titles out this week include U2’s new album ‘Songs of Experience,’ a reissue from the Sex Pistols, and an album by Cindy Wilson of The B-52’s.
Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs. All releases due out this Friday unless noted. This week’s releases include titles from R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, The Fall, Alex Chilton, Devo, Sex Pistols and more.
The Sex Pistols’ 1979 interview compilation Some Product will be reissued in an expanded 3CD set — and rechristened More Product — later this month, with the original, out-of-print disc supplemented with two bonus discs featuring rare and unreleased interviews. See full tracklist here.
John Lydon will tour North American arenas this summer, but not with Public Image Ltd. or the Sex Pistols — no, the erstwhile Johnny Rotten will play King Herod in a new touring production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” that also will feature members of Incubus, *NSYNC and Destiny’s Child.
This week’s new releases include Blu-ray reissues of ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ and Tears For Fears’ ‘The Hurting’ on Blu-ray, plus a reissue of The Verlaines’ 1987 compilation ‘Juvenilia’ and a five-record box set from Stiff Little Fingers.
For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we bring you the full hour-long performance by Public Image Ltd. on the West German TV show “Rockpalast” in 1983, a 13-song set that recently was released on both CD and DVD — but the folks at the RockpalastOfficial YouTube channel put it online.
Tonight’s “Saturday Night Live” season finale was notable for its final appearances by a number of soon-to-be-former castmembers, including, in all likelihood, Fred Armisen, who reprised his Ian Rubbish punk character with a live band that included Kim Gordon, Steve Jones, J Mascis, Carrie Brownstein, Aimee Mann and more.
This week’s new releases include expanded reissues of albums from R.E.M. (‘Document’), Sex Pistols (‘Never Mind the Bollocks’), INXS (‘Kick’) and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, plus new music from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, with Yoko Ono, and Mark Eitzel, John Foxx and The Cure’s Robert Smith.
For fans, one of the highlights of the Sex Pistols’ upcoming ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ box set is the “lost” 1977 studio demo of “Belsen Was a Gas” with John Lydon’s vocals, the controversial Holocaust-themed song billed as the only “original Sex Pistols composition of the era thought not to be recorded.”
John Lydon will bring his reconvened Public Image Ltd. back to the U.S. for its first North American tour in two years this fall, playing 18 dates in the U.S. and Canada throughout October and into early November, culminating with the previously announced appearance at the FunFunFun Fest in Austin, Texas.
Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This edition includes items about New Order, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Steve Kilbey, The Stone Roses, The Mission, Bad Religion, Killing Joke, Sex Pistols, They Might Be Giants and more.