Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
TOWARDS THE LIGHT
So it has been a little over two weeks now, and I can report that progress has been made. The combination of pharmaceuticals, cognitive behavioural therapy and aversive therapy seems to be doing the trick. I’m feeling much lighter. Thanks to the nightly medication, I’ve stopped dreaming about record shops and actually had a conversation […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #5 (A FINAL GLANCE)
Being the merciful conclusion of a multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music Let’s cut to the chase. Here are the 2017 albums of newly recorded (or, in a couple of cases, newly released) music that found their way into the Vinyl Connection cave during the year. All had merit and brought aural […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #4 (WINTER)
Being an multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music JUNE The question posed at the end of May was resoundingly answered in June. The log of purchases book shows over two pages of entries, ending just one shy of a half-century. Book me into the clinic, doctor. This boy needs vinyl detox. Or […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #3 (AUTUMN)
Being an multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music MARCH Taking a stall at a record fair is good for the soul. A chance to reduce the holding a little, clear some shelf space, clean the springs. Bullshit. Though it wasn’t when I started doing fairs in the mid-90s. Then I was flogging […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #2
Being an multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music FEBRUARY On-line consumerism is a trap, isn’t it? I seem to succumb to the siren call of internet shopping in the late evenings. But is there more to the pattern than time of day? Is it more frequent, perhaps, at the end of a […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #1
Being an multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music JANUARY On vacation you often have to settle for charity shops for your crate-digging fix. Sometimes you’ll be lucky and the local Sunday market coincides with your time in a sea-side town, but not necessarily. Even if it does, chances are the solitary box […]
WORLD RECORD AUSSIE CHRISTMAS
Friends of Vinyl Connection will know of the interest we have in the Australian World Record Club for its marvellous album cover designs of the sixties and early seventies. I want to share with you one of my favourites, acquired recently from Mrs Helen Cameron of Keilor Park (via my local Op Shop). Picking up […]
BOLD AS LOVE
This is the final instalment in the thoroughly incomplete ‘1967’ series. The other two dozen albums can be found here. Seems fitting to end with the incendiary, psychedelic music of Jimi Hendrix and his second release from that storied year. Steven Newstead returns to take us on a tour of Jimi’s cosmos… There was a lot […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT, SO CLEAR
It’s a Friday night in the late nineties. Steven and I are lounging around talking shit about music. A single slice of Capricciosa sits uneasily in the grease-stained box and half a bottle of red stands on the coffee table. The pizza gets ignored; we’re either too full or too polite to take it. Not […]
ARE YOU THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE?
It opens with a delicate piano piece, an ambient overture. “The struggle of the magicians, part three”. Credited to composer Thomas De Hartmann and mystic cum guru Gurdjieff (1866 – 1949), this is a lovely neo-classical piece that seduces with a gently pastoral beauty suggesting the magicians aren’t straining too hard. Next is a wispy […]
VARIOUS ARTISTS GO DECADE DIVING
1957 Folk, Pops ‘n Jazz Sampler [Elektra SMP-3] Country tunes rub shoulders with calypso jazz in this time capsule from the early days of long-playing records, when tracks were known as ‘Bands’ and the previous volume was available for $2 from your dealer. At $17.50 in today’s money, that seems quite expensive. Love the album […]
DEBUTING AT #01
We’ve all bought magazines with ‘free’ CDs. Sometimes for the mag, other times for the disc, occasionally for the challenge of removing the latter from the former without destroying the cover… but what about a magazine with an LP attached? Or is it an LP hidden in a magazine? First published in Germany in October […]
