Category A PERSONAL APPROACH
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
KEEP OR CRATE?
Record collectors know how there slowly accumulates, around the gems and the sparkling finds, a considerable meterage of albums having an unsteady foothold on the beachhead of the collection. Those LPs plucked from the bargain bin where they rightly languished; that gap-filling reunion album that should have stayed where it was; the so-called ‘supergroup’ that […]
TOMITA – A TRIBUTE
Japanese synthesiser pioneer Isao Tomita died in the first week of May at the age of eight-four. Inspired by Robert Moog’s electronic instruments and the work of Wendy Carlos, Tomita produced a substantial catalogue of studio albums in addition to several live releases and a significant body of soundtrack work. In a previous post, I wrote briefly about […]
THE ROAD TO RESTRAINT
I remember seeing a striking cover on shelves in the mid-70s… a slender wrist rises up, clasping a silver ingot like a futuristic advertising photograph. The skin tones are dull, muted, as the shot is taken against a bright white light, a small bright rising star behind the argent rectangle. Behind, surrounding all, a deep […]
TAKING FLIGHT
What was it drew me to pick up the blue on blue album with a banking seabird, wingtip to water, blurring the sea to azure glass? Was it the sense of movement as the bird fused air and liquid with breathtaking confidence and grace? Perhaps the sea itself; pale like an ice floe, smooth as […]
RSD 16: COMMUNITY AND COMPETITION (QUIZ #3)
Chatting to several Record Store owners in the lead up to this year’s ‘International Record Store Day’ there was a sense the hype has well-and-truly overpowered the original idea. The releases were patchy, the prices exorbitant (and margins reduced); there was a sense of store owners being blackmailed via RSD propaganda into ordering LPs of […]
IS YOUR DEODORANT STRONG ENOUGH?
Just recently, while introducing an album with significant input from Steve Winwood, (Stomu Yamashta’s GO), I wrote about Terry Hounsome’s Rock Record 7. To illustrate both the intricacies of the book and the impressive count of Winwood appearances, I cited an example of an album not worth pursuing. With self-assurance and confidence, it was noted that […]
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 […]
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