Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
TWISTING THE KNIFE AWAY
“We never do anything with my friends, it’s always yours,” she said. It was true. In fact I had not realised until this moment that Penny had friends. She’d appeared at the educational institution where I worked without any visible attachments and in the months we’d been seeing each other, none had been forthcoming. If that […]
8 ALBUM COVERS THAT SCREAM “EIGHTIES!”
With this selection of bold and colourful 80s album covers, I’ve tried to steer away from the dead obvious – rolled up jacket sleeves, bushels of big hair, heavy metal cartoon covers – yet capture something of the vibrant self-belief embodied in these sleeve designs. Naturally there were many others vying for inclusion – Joe Jackson’s Beat Crazy and Cyndi Lauper’s […]
A MUCH NEEDED VOID
First up, apologies to those of you who have been awaiting this review for longer than you should have awaited it. The fault was mine entirely in that I was confused because I thought I had three different albums to listen to again but it seems that I sort of didn’t. More one-and-a-bit. Let me tell you […]
REGA-L AFFIRMATION
Imagine the excitement. First turntable purchase in over twenty years. Frown at the brain-bending decision: what to get? Stagger under the swirling weight of unanswerable questions. What will suit the rest of the system best? How does a Hi-Fi shop audition translate to a suburban lounge-room? Quiver at the realisation this is the biggest purchase—after […]
SHORTS
Three brief reviews of albums newly acquired or recently revisited * GARY WRIGHT—THE DREAM WEAVER [Warner Brothers 1975] The truth is, I bought this as part of an Op Shop haul simply because it was in good nick and I have a soft spot for the cheesy 1975 radio hit, ‘Dream Weaver’. But it’s actually […]
STRUT REDUX
If you survive initial rock and roll success, what follows is very much like growing up in public. To be sure, survive is a potent word in this context. So many musicians have gone to join the choir invisible it’s a wonder that there are enough left to form a band. Yet numerous artists who […]
OF RINGS AND SWEDES
How to approach Bo Hansson’s Lord of the Rings? Having played it so often over many decades, the chances of this reviewer listening dispassionately are about the same as Gollum opening a secondhand jewellery store. It must be said that not everyone likes the Swedish keyboard player’s album. In its early days, MOJO: The Music Magazine […]
RETURN OF THE SILVER THING
By the time I found the resources—both personal and financial—for a first trip out of Australia, it was so long after most of my peers had ‘done Europe’ that my plans caused barely a wrinkle in the social fabric. Yet the very idea ruffled my feathers, furrowed my brow, and tended to turn my […]
THE TWO LIBRARIES
LORD OF THE RINGS — A BOOK AND MUSIC STORY PART II — THE TWO LIBRARIES Most of Australia’s population (then and now) cluster in the major cities, meaning that most of those aspiring to further education after secondary school do not, by necessity, need to live away from home. So I was a day-release patient, commuting from the south-eastern […]
THE FELLOWSHIP OF BOOKSELLERS
LORD OF THE RINGS — A BOOK AND MUSIC STORY PART I — THE FELLOWSHIP OF BOOKSELLERS After high school finished there was a clear message from the parental end of the dinner table that the young scion was not to be lazing around all summer relaxing and recovering from the stresses of exams, but […]
PROLOGUE: CONCERNING HOBBITS, AND OTHER MATTERS
Needing to choose a book to read and reflect upon for a literature project in his Grade 5 class, I was surprised and delighted when the boy asked to borrow The Hobbit. Other than some pathetic attempts to conquer Lego: Lord of the Rings on the Play Station, we haven’t really done much Tolkien in the family […]
10 SPACIER ALBUM COVERS
Space: The Vinyl Frontier This is the second voyage of the starship Vinyl Connection, its mission to collect space-themed album covers for your extra-terrestrial enjoyment. (The first voyage was here) Most of these are curated. That is, I’ve used the Connection tractor-beam to draw in covers to make a (hopefully) pleasing and aesthetically interesting constellation of covers. The […]
