Category Memoir with Music
HILLAGE RIFFAGE
In some ways, packing for a year in a different hemisphere is easier than preparing a suitcase for two weeks at the beach. I pondered this conundrum back in 1996 as I prepared for an extended relationship cultural exchange in Germany. Often the answer to the question “How many? How much?” was answered with the […]
TOWERS OF STRENGTH
Nowadays it is not that easy to connect with the sense of geopolitical tension that pervaded the early 80s. The threat of war —and here we are talking about nuclear conflict, not yer pussy tanks, napalm and barking M16 stuff— was seriously canvassed across the northern hemisphere. Sabres were rattled, bugles blown, hands were wrung […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
LUCKY MAN
From the woozy fanfare opening ‘The Barbarian’ to the final swooping moog solo panning between the speakers at the end of ‘Lucky Man’, via the stroked grand piano strings of ‘Take a Pebble’ and the dystopian drama of ‘Knife Edge’, I know the first Emerson Lake and Palmer album very well indeed. But it wasn’t […]
SONG TO ODYSSEUS
I We tended to play Dungeons and Dragons without music in the background. Distractions could be dangerous — while you were tuning in to Bauhaus or Tangerine Dream, the chances were you’d get smeared by a troll or jumped by some pesky hobbit thief. But during the refreshment breaks (food, drink, mind altering substances, as […]
FAVES AND WAVES
Some time in mid-1999, a music-mate and I decided to compile our one hundred ‘Best Albums Of All Time’ lists to celebrate the end of the millennium. To make things more interesting, a handful of other friends and acquaintances were invited to do the same. As you might imagine, there was considerable discussion (if not […]
FOUR MOMENTS IN POOLE
“I’ll be in meetings all day but you can take the car and go exploring.” My friend Jo was zooming down the M3 from London towards the coast, expertly nipping in and out of traffic and dodging belching lorries as I sat in the passenger seat feeling very much on the other side of the […]
HOT SABBATH
It was well after leaving High School that I acquired my first stereo. Sure, the family home had several devices capable of emitting music: a Bakelite mantle radio in the kitchen, my Father’s Elcon reel-to-reel tape recorder, the sideboard sized stereogram in the lounge, all polished wood and frowning classical records. But all of these […]
SUNDANCES
One Saturday afternoon in October 1976 I rode my bicycle round to Rod Amberton’s place to watch a total eclipse. It seemed like a friendly thing to do, given that this sort of solar phenomenon only occurred every few decades and Melbourne was, apparently, a prime location from which to view it. Assuming the clouds […]
AGHARTA GLASSES
There have been occasions when Vinyl Connection has grouched about how much stuff is required to step outside the house. We have been heard to talk movingly of those long gone, halcyon days when a chap simply strolled breezily out the front door unencumbered by anything other than his thoughts. Nowadays it requires a hold-all […]
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