The US media is abuzz at the moment with the rumoured line-up of a massive concert, held at the site of Coachella, the music event which is held at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, California. The proposed concert is to be held between October 7th-9th.

We've purposefully held off - until now - mentioning this, as we tend to avoid rumours, but with the gathering pace on reporting, there seems to be some likelihood with the likes of Billboard and the LA Times reporting that Goldenvoice Entertainment, Coachella's promoters, are looking at the following line-up: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, The Who, Neil Young and Roger Waters. Roger last performed at Coachella in 2008. Neil Young's manager is quoted as saying that "You won't get a chance to see a bill like this, perhaps ever again..."

With each headliner rumoured to be in line for $7million appearance fee, tickets - if the show goes ahead - are likely to be very expensive, but with so many legends performing, it could be argued that you should get value for money. More information as we get it.

In the meantime, Roger recently spent some time with Tavis Smiley, host of an eponymous show on the US television station PBS (Public Broadcasting Station), a non-profit organisation. The interview aired on February 29th, and can be seen below. Our thanks to Christopher Allard for letting us know about this interview!

Later this month, the Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton, London, is the scene of a special screening of director Roddy Bogawa's fascinating documentary, Taken By Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis. The screening, on April 28th at 8:30pm, is accompanied by a Q&A with producer Orian Williams, and Rupert Truman from StormStudios. Tickets are now available to buy for the event. The film is a 15 certificate so those younger than that will not be admitted.

The film is an absorbing and affectionate look at the incredible body of work created by Storm Thorgerson and his colleagues in Hipgnosis and StormStudios. Full of archive footage, along with more recent interview material - featuring the likes of David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant and more - the 85 minute film, shot over a three year period, is something that music fans of all persuasions will thoroughly enjoy. Storm's unique way of working comes across clearly, revealing the lengths he would go to, to realise his visions and ideas.

It's a documentary about one man’s artistic journey amidst technological change and its affect on image-making and our collective memory and culture. For over forty years using 12” x 12” album covers as his canvas before his untimely passing in 2013, Storm Thorgerson created some of the most iconic images in the history of rock and roll. Eschewing computer manipulation in favour of building massive sets and tableaus, staging performances and actions and “doing it for real” in what he called “mind movies” and “photo paintings”, Thorgerson deliriously and relentlessly confounded expectations of the relation of images and music, hyper-realism and the everyday, and the role of the record sleeve at the intersection of art and commerce.

The film is now available on DVD and download, and heartily recommended - as our review of the DVD release notes. The DVD is housed in a digipak with some typically excellent design work by StormStudios, honouring their friend and colleague, and can be ordered from www.TakenByStormFilm.com. If you are yet to see it, here's the trailer...

Something slightly different on the horizon today - a newly designed pack of Pink Floyd The Wall playing cards. To be released on August 1st, via Aquarius, the company who produce the ever-popular annual Pink Floyd wall calendar, it is a standard pack of cards, but customised so that the Kings, Queens and Jacks all feature a classic image from The Wall project, and every card has a background of bricks.

The pack of cards are selling at a cheap price from most Amazon stores, and can be ordered through the following links: Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, and Amazon Spain. Not least, this might be a good, low-priced add-on item if you are trying to spend enough on Amazon for the free postage/shipping option they have!

There is of course scope for another more general pack of Pink Floyd related cards, which would help us on the punning front - Shine On You Eight of Diamonds coming to mind as I started typing this - with a wider array of imagery. There have been a few different designed packs over the years and they always seem popular, not least as a quick and simple present.

This month, on April 9th, New York City's Ace Hotel was fortunate enough to host one of a handful of recent conversations with David Gilmour and Polly Samson, ahead of Gilmour’s sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. Pictures with this report are by Elizabeth Anne Hellings and Ed Lopez-Reyes.

Over the years, Polly Samson and David Gilmour’s artistic marriage has been received by many with a certain degree of ambiguity – maybe even agnosticism given the obscurity of writing credits on albums (to the extent they are noticed in the age of iTunes) and the relative privacy Samson and Gilmour seem (somewhat impractically) partial to.

The event at New York City’s Ace Hotel, one of only a handful of programs like it in recent months, presented a unique opportunity to shed light on this partnership in significant depth. In fact, an event that could have been mistakenly dismissed as an addendum to a very tight Gilmour touring schedule turned out to be a pivotal dialog that contextualized the magnitude of Samson’s influence on the guitarist and underscored its paramount role in sustaining his creative drive. It provided insight into the artistic plane Gilmour inhabits these days and provided perspective of the world that Samson and Gilmour share with many contemporaries: a world that is, frankly, somewhat alien to those that are principally if not exclusively attached to Pink Floyd’s Gilmour and in which Gilmour’s music can be derivative of experiences and daily occurrences far removed from the elements the shaped the 50 year old band.