Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
BARRON PLANET
What links Shakespeare, composer John Cage and actor Leslie Nielsen? What, for that matter, do robots, tape loops, and the invention of the micro dress have in common? Still scratching the old cranium? How about this: A connection between electric tonalities, Anne Francis, and monsters from the unconscious mind. Loosely based on The Tempest, Shakespeare’s […]
SPACEMILLS OF YOUR MIND
It is late. The television is the only light in the room. You slouch, alone, on the couch. The movie you’ve been determinedly watching through to the endless final credits has been disappointing. What were people raving about? Unfulfilled, you surf a few channels, hoping for…what? Something to prod you out of this torpor; a […]
SOUNDTRACK
How do you file the soundtrack albums in your collection? The Vinyl Connection library has them alphabetically under ‘Soundtrack’, a nice little section sitting snugly between Sonic Youth and The Soup Dragons (the CDs) and a bigger vinyl section sandwiched comfortably twixt The Someloves and Joe South. If you browse any collection of soundtrack albums […]
7 STEAMIN’ ALBUM COVERS
When the boy was little we took an afternoon drive around the ring road to Altona, home of Victoria’s Railway museum. To me it seemed, on that Autumn afternoon, a windswept mausoleum, but the youngster enjoyed clambering up, through, and around the old steam engines. Despite their size (big to enormous), it seemed to make sense […]
WINNER TAKES IT ALL
Tomorrow I’m playing a third match in the Watsonia Tennis Club Championships. Lots of members enter multiple events; Open Singles and Doubles, A Grade Men’s, Parent and Child Doubles, Mixed. Given my level of fitness, I decided to enter just one event, especially as the boy was decidedly cool on the idea of playing competition tennis […]
SPACE TRUCKIN’
Well into the second decade of the 21st Century, it is wonderfully anachronistic that bands are still twisting the kaleidoscope of psychedelia. One such is Toronto’s Comet Control. Based around the songwriting partnership of guitarists Chad Ross and Andrew Moszynski (whose relationship pre-existed musically in the psych-metal band Quest For Fire), Comet Control released their […]
7 SMOKIN’ ALBUM COVERS
It may be anti-social these days, but not long ago a cigarette was considered a cool accessory to casually include in your album cover portrait. This selection ranges from the ultra hip to (attempts at) confrontation. Yet remember, however good the artwork, it’s still very bad for your health, kids. * * * * * * * […]
RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH
Perhaps it was the screening of the Hobbit films on TV this week, but for some reason I found myself wanting to revisit Middle Earth to wrap up of the Lord Of The Rings series from a few months ago. It returns us to where we began, with John Sangster and Hobbits. Sangster has written a […]
HIGH CONTRAST
With a morning to myself and a pile of chores, I sat with the start-me-up coffee and pondered what to spin. What would get me going for a few hours of productive office work? How was I feeling today? Pretty heavy, actually. A chesty cough and a bit distracted by a knotty work issue. Something […]
GROWN-UP FAN
I learned the word verisimilitude from WS Gilbert, he of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, The Gondoliers… all those melodious light operas so beloved of earlier generations. The quote in question comes from arguably the best known of them all, The Mikado. I was about twenty years old and had just discovered […]
PERFECTION OF CIRCUMLOCUTION
What do we make of a new release by a rock veteran? As stars drop from the sky with numbing regularity, do we celebrate the simple act of survival inherent in creating new music? Perhaps triumph is tempered by a niggling disquiet. What if, Bowie-like, this is a last hurrah; a pre-planned final chapter for […]
THE BOURNE SYNTHESIS
Pianist / composer Matthew Bourne has been working in the area of improvised jazz for a number of years, but on acquiring an original Lintronics Advanced Memory Moog he became enamoured with the possibilities offered by this vintage analogue synthesiser. After having the device painstakingly restored, Bourne used the Memory Moog in performance and later […]
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