Author Archives: Vinyl Connection
TUBULAR RIDGE
I Wanting to build upon his established mail order record business, Richard Branson went into retail. The first Virgin store opened above a shoe shop at “the cheaper end of Oxford Street”1 in 1971. By Christmas the following year, Branson and his team had “fourteen record shops: several in London and one in every big city”1 […]
TIME OUT IN PLEASANTVILLE
A couple of evenings ago Ms Connection and I wanted to collapse onto the couch for a bit of screen time togetherness. As it was a week-night and we’ve found that anything too exciting disrupts fragile sleep patterns, it was agreed that something gentle and preferably funny was the order of the night. So I […]
BLUE NIGHT [COVERART #50]
* Andreas Vollendender – Down to the Moon [1986] Eric Clapton – Pilgrim [1998] Rush – Fly by Night [1975] Ashra – New Age of Earth [1976] * “Blue Night” by Michael Learns To Rock [2000] * 50 word short stories triggered by the above sequence are welcome and can be posted in ‘Comments’ 🙂
STITCHING TOGETHER JAZZ, ROCK AND FUNK
When Miles Davis went electric at the end of the 60s he may not have actually ‘invented’ jazz-rock (or fusion, if you prefer) but he certainly plugged some serious voltage into it. What’s more, the musicians who played on the seminal Miles albums In a Silent Way (1969), Bitches Brew (1970), and Jack Johnson (1971) […]
KINDA BLUE [COVERART #49]
* amon düül II – phallus dei [1969] acoustic alchemy – positive thinking [1998] eno moebius roedelius – after the heat [1978] john abercrombie – timeless [1974] * feature image blue nile – hats [1989]
TURNED OUT NICELY
I remember buying my copy of Jethro Tull’s Stand Up at a Record Fair many years ago. The stall belonged to a guy I knew vaguely from the public radio station I presented on, 3 PBS FM. He was part of the Heavy Metal crew. Their show preceded Late Night Shopping on a Friday evening and […]
VINYL HUNTER GATHERER GOES INTERSTATE
When finding themselves in a different city, any vinyl hunter-gatherer worth their turntable will attempt to visit as many music shops as possible in the available time. Art Galleries? Phooey. Historic Buildings? Only if they contain Record Shops. What we want are records. Lots of them. Vinyl Connection was in Adelaide last week, and had […]
JB YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN!
One of the most successful Music, Sound and Electrical Goods retailers in Australia is JB Hi-Fi. There are over 160 stores in every state and territory of this wide brown land. But that is not how it began. Originally there was one JB Hi-Fi store just as there was one John Barbuto, the man who […]
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Posters, lyric sheets, merchandise order forms, glimpses of other mouth-watering titles from the same record company… lots of different bits of paper have been inserted into LPs over the years. They are not our concern today. Here, in ascending order of magnificent silliness, are Vinyl Connection’s six favourite ALBUMS WITH EXTRAS. 6. ROTOGRAVURE – […]
THE AMAZING PUDDING
David Gilmour reflected that Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd’s first album of the 70s, was “us blundering about in the dark” [1, p.92]. Keyboard player Rick Wright does not remember it fondly. “Looking back it wasn’t so good” [2, p.82]. For his part, Roger Waters would prefer the suite be “thrown into the dustbin and […]
A COVER ART QUIZ [#1]
Looking for fun ways to invite people to visit Vinyl Connection, I decided to try using Facebook by posting a ‘Cover Quiz’ on the Vinyl Connection Facebook page. But then I thought, “The WordPress crew would probably enjoy this too”. So here it is. Rules below. (Bossy, huh?) * * Here are 12 album covers (CD […]
LET’S GO TO BED [COVERART #46]
Things are crook at Chez Vinyl Connection. Ms Connection feels fowl. The boy has a swine of an earache. I’m sick as a dog. * Atomic Rooster – Atomic Rooster [1980] / Various Artists – Shelter Special Sampler Album [1972?] – Various Artists – Full Boar [1979] / Blodwyn Pig – Ahead Rings Out [1969] – […]
