Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
BIRDS OF PARADISE
Browsing the ‘Cover Pairs’ posts for the compilation/deletion project, I came across SEABIRD [COVER POST #37]. Having written on Chick Corea’s Return to Forever—my first ECM album and a record that still brings great enjoyment—it’s time to tell you about a favourite feel-good album, Paradise Volume One by Australian composer/musician John Sangster. Now Mr Sangster […]
COVER PAIRS COMPILED [PART FOUR]
Another compilation of the ‘Cover pairs’ posts from the early days of Vinyl Connection. (The other comps are linked at the bottom of the page) In case you were wondering, the name of each pair post was a song title. Hope you find something to enjoy. * #51 BREAKFAST CLUB Larry Coryell / Alphonse Mouzon – […]
4 x 4
To be honest, I’ve forgotten how many post series have been begun and abandoned after two or three articles. Sometimes the ideas have been good, but limited (Art on your Sleeve, for example). Others have driven a theme until it was out of gas (the ‘Car‘ series of album covers springs to mind). However most series […]
STRANGE THINGS
This week I noticed that Vinyl Connection was about to turn four. There have been a few stutters, but we are still spitting out regular posts on everything from 60s folk to twenty-first century electronica, from funked up Miles Davis to European Prog. Along with periodic celebrations of album cover art, of course. Vinyl Connection has […]
HOUSE OF JANSCH
In 1967 Bert Jansch was highly regarded in folk circles but still some months away from forming breakthrough folk-rock-jazz five-piece band Pentangle with his six-string mate John Renbourn. He had, however, released three guitar+voice albums plus another with Renbourn. Bert had also been hanging out with Donovan where he had been enough impressed with the trappings of pop […]
MELLOW FELLOW
We are in a TV studio in London, and the aspirant Music Quiz champion in the spotlight has chosen Donovan’s sixties music as his special topic. Having already netted points for the musician’s birth name and place (Donovan Phillips Leitch, born Glasgow, May 1946) and his first album release (What’s bin did and what’s bin […]
JUST SOME JOSEPH LOOKING FOR A MANGER
He was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Montreal. His father, who had an engineering degree but ran a clothing business, died when he was nine years old. During degree studies that were solid rather than stellar, he did receive one endorsement indicating future directions: an award for creative writing. A member of the […]
10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT PAN
1 Pan is the Greek god of Nature, of untrammelled wilds and rustic settings. He is the player of music, the companion of nymphs, the patron of shepherd and flocks, and a bit of a lad with the ladies. Goat from the waist down, crowned with curling horns, it is sometimes written that Pan is […]
WORLDS IN A MAGICIAN’S HAT
Yesterday I ran a beginner’s dungeon for a group of children between the ages of 11 and 15 (plus an embedded 50-something). Today I’m recovering. The convalescent state rekindled a process of memory-mining around my introduction to the prince of all role-playing games, an excavation that began last year when I read David M. Ewalt’s […]
SPIRITS IN THE SKY
Having received polite encouragement to pursue the ‘Curiosity Corner’ series from indulgent readers, I rushed off to compile a list of candidates, pulling out LPs and CDs with butterfly abandon. I thought about the 1956 Folkways album, Folk Music of Jamaica, then jumped to the recent haul of library records and the battered Heavy Rock […]
SPIRIT OF PEACE
There was a poster I recall seeing many years ago that captured those difficult times with insight and humour. It came to mind this week. The quote is variously attributed to Ashleigh Brilliant, Aunty Acid, Jennifer Yane and Author Unknown. I reckon it’s Brilliant. As one does in trying times, I turned to music. Something […]
CASSETTES COLLATED
A few years back I came across a seemingly serious new event: International Cassette Day. Apparently some misguided souls were entirely genuine in wanting to reenergize this obsolete and never-very-good-in-the-first-place medium on the back of the (then) nascent vinyl revival. Well, LPs are certainly going strong, but thankfully cassettes remain consigned to the back of the audio wardrobe in […]
