Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
12 BOWIE REFLECTIONS
I — Busting Up My Brains For The Words It was the re-release of the 1969 album, now with a Ziggy-era cover photo and an actual name: Space Oddity. Bought second-hand, probably from Bentleigh Sewing and Records. Full of strange folky songs delivered with theatrical flourish. A poet’s voice surely, writhing with angst and intensity, […]
BEREFT
No words at present. Just a couple of mediocre photos. Ashes to ashes, Funk to funky * (Words here)
SPIRITS AND GREMLINS
Last summer holidays I made a two hundred and fifty kilometre round trip to visit a Sunday Market. A mate was holidaying nearby –or rather, we were staying near the newly acquired beach house of he and his partner– and I discovered that Geoff (unlike Vinyl Connection readers) had not been to the Kongwak Market. So off we […]
A KIND OF 2015 LIST
Biggest crush What does it mean when you go, in a mere few months, from never having heard of an artist to buying four albums new? Probably that you have too much time on your hands and money in your pocket. Nevertheless, I became very taken with the lively retro-electronica of Zombi. They combine elements […]
REAL GONE 2015 [PART 2]
EDGAR FROESE (6 Jun 1944 — 20 Jan 2015) Having enjoyed the Tangerine Dream concert at the Melbourne Town Hall in November last year, and absolutely loved the ACMI film-performance of Sorcerer a week later (concert report here, Sorcerer here), it was a massive shock to hear of the band’s founder’s death a couple of […]
REAL GONE 2015 [PART 1]
CHRIS SQUIRE (4 Mar 1948 — 27 Jun 2015) The death of the co-founder and energetic mainspring of Yes was reported in the mainstream media. For some, that might be telling indictment of how mainstream the progressive music of the band became, but I’d beg to differ. Squire was an outstanding bass player and his […]
YULETIDE MEMORY
The year I undertook a part-time theatre/drama/acting course at the National Theatre Drama School was, without doubt, one of the best for quite a while*. Yet at the end of the year I was uncertain about the future. Was it worth trying to further develop my acting skills? Could I sandpaper them into something that […]
THANKS FOR DROPPING BY
For some blogs, fifty-five thousand page views is an average week. For Vinyl Connection it is the culmination of over two-and-a-half years of posts. That’s OK; a mass audience was neither the goal nor expectation. Still, it is a little milestone worth marking, so I dipped into the VC catalogue and pulled out spreadsheet entries […]
10 TERRIFIC ALBUM COVERS* – PART 2
* ADDED TO THE VINYL CONNECTION COLLECTION DURING 2015** ** And whose music is terrific too! This is the second part of what was going to be a quicky but quickly became an epic. * Having the double CD did not deter me from snapping up this 4 LP live set on beautiful blue vinyl, apparently a […]
10 TERRIFIC ALBUM COVERS* – PART 1
* ADDED TO THE VINYL CONNECTION COLLECTION DURING 2015** ** And whose music is terrific too As album cover art is something of a passion here at Vinyl Connection, I thought I’d share some of the covers that have given pleasure on their arrival at Vinyl Connection headquarters, and include a word or two about the music. […]
A NEW COLLABORATOR AND A NEW SOUND
In 2001 David Bowie released what is without doubt the oddest compilation of his career. Which is saying something, there having been over 40 collections of his music across five decades. This one was called All Saints, with the subtitle telling you exactly what you were getting: Collected Instrumentals 1977 – 1999. The story goes that […]
SUNBURY RISES
It was late in 1979, and the shop was closing. Naturally, there was a closing down sale. While un-tempted by appliances or transistor radios, I remember having my eye on one of the albums reclining in the slowly thinning racks of records. Over the course of a few weeks I’d um-ed and ah-ed. Not weeks […]
