Category A PERSONAL APPROACH
ETERNAL WARRIOR RETURNING
One of the tell-tale signs of the activated Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer is how their speed increases when they approach a Record Store. Up on the balls of their feet, there is a pronounced spring in the step as the shortest possible distance from here to the records is calculated with pinpoint precision. Breathing may be more […]
KIDSBOP! – LESSONS IN BRAINWASHING YOUR CHILD
I was always going to fertilise my child’s life with music. In utero he heard Miles Davis In A Silent Way almost every night of the third trimester. His mother and I loved the album and often relaxed into its kind of blue groove, so why wouldn’t it enhance the development of a soon-to-be-released little […]
HALF MAN HALF MACHINE
After Melbourne University and I parted company – not on speaking terms – I needed to plug the gap left by going to uni and not studying (more on my favourite diversion, the Rowden White Library, here). The record store where I worked 6 hours a week offered me a full-time position. At that time […]
OH! OH! HERE HE COMES
Every shop has a selection of permanent fixtures. Not the cash register or the window dummy but those stock items that sit. Then get dusted. Then sit some more. Bentleigh Sounds, the record and electrical goods store where I worked for a good part of the 70s and early 80s was no exception. Although I […]
HOW DO YOU THINK IT FEELS
1 The last time I recall pulling out a Lou Reed album was to refresh my memory of Rock n Roll Animal for one of a series of articles on the joys of ‘live’ albums. I didn’t actually need to play it again – it’s an album whose slashes and strokes are burned into my […]
Homemade Halloween
Made the CD a while ago – quite suitable for Halloween I reckon. The music is great B-Movie fun. Well, the boy thought so anyway. And, to complete the picture, a portrait from the Ozzie period (earlier this evening).
AUTUMN ALMANAC
Born in Melbourne, Australia on 25th October 1941: singer Helen Reddy. Her song ‘Delta Dawn’ was a #1 hit in the liberating year of 1973. Diary – Turned on the transistor and heard that dreadful song about the jilted woman who goes crazy. I’m going crazy trying to work out what to wear to school […]
OF FLEAS AND FAUST
Like a down-market department store for heads and hippies, Goesunder Flea Market in the heart of Melbourne’s retail district was the unlikely venue for an import record shop, yet that is where I first encountered Krautrock. It was my first year at the university, a 15 minute walk north of the city centre. I was […]
THE ART OF TEA
The on-line forum is a strange beast. Often it is a series of blokes (the record collector groups are almost all male, you know) taking turns at “show and tell”. The bargain of the century, my latest rarity, the best, the worst; there is no real dialogue or any genuine discussion but there is lots of […]
BIRTH AND DEATH OF A WORLD
Not long ago I wrote about an unscheduled month in the UK in the late 90s. A side trip to Wales was mentioned and that is where our story begins today. Every music tragic knows that it is not civic architecture or religious edifices that get the music hunter-gatherer’s pulse a-quickening; it’s record shops. We […]
HERE IS A SUNRISE. AIN’T THAT ENOUGH? [Power Pop!]
“JANGLY CHORD-RICH GUITAR ROCK WITH TIGHT HARMONIES OFF-BEAT LYRICS SING-ALONG CHORUSES AND A MIDDLE EIGHT TO DIE FOR (PERHAPS)” Sometimes you just happen to be in the right newsagent at the right time. So it was deep into the yuletide season of 1993. Hunting for a clutch of Christmas cards and hoping that there was […]
Lost and Found
Back in the late 70s and early 80s television stations were not the all-night amphetamine driven beasts of today. They went to bed each night at a reasonable hour. Some, like Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC, often said goodnight well before there was any danger of turning into a pumpkin. Usually a piece of music […]
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