Category a) Sixties and earlier [0 – 1969]
HALF A CENTURY OF EXPERIENCE
Sometimes you miss music the first time around. That was true for me and Jimi Hendrix, the man who set fire to the cosy cottage of sixties pop music. The ex-paratrooper landed with a multi-hued explosion in the UK, producing not one but two key albums in the seminal year of 1967. Old friend and […]
DUST-MY-BLUES
Ever had those mid-week, demanding-boss, traffic-jam, forgot-to-get-milk-on-the-way-home-so-partner-was-pissed-off blues? If it was 1967 you had a number of musical options to sooth your troubled western mostly-white electric-urban-blues soul. Loose the bad vibes, lose the hyphenated sentences, enter the transatlantic none-more-blue worlds of John Mayall and Paul Butterfield. You might imagine John Mayall was dismayed by the […]
SEEKERS, CATS AND CONVERSATIONS
When looking back at a year in pop, there’s a strong pull to pick out the gems, the keepers, the game-changers. All well and good, but such a focus ignores what the record buying public actually forked out for. Recall how The Beatles crowning achievement “Strawberry Fields” b/w “Penny Lane” was kept from the UK […]
DEAD FIRST
Here’s a poser for you. Link Nirvana with The Grateful Dead in three steps. Time’s up. 1. Kurt Cobain’s partner was Courtney Love. (Some implicate her in his death) 2. Courtney Love is the daughter of Hank Harrison. (Estranged daughter. Dad is one of those who blamed her for Cobain’s suicide) 3. Harrison has written […]
BIRTHDAY GREETINGS BOTTLE OF WINE
The idea of a brief album review is quite appealing. Can a meaningful commentary be jammed into, say 200 words? A little while back, a number of bloggers took up that challenge, with interesting results. Vinyl Connection’s contributions are here and here. But what about reviewing an album using no words at all? That was the gauntlet […]
STRANGE THINGS
This week I noticed that Vinyl Connection was about to turn four. There have been a few stutters, but we are still spitting out regular posts on everything from 60s folk to twenty-first century electronica, from funked up Miles Davis to European Prog. Along with periodic celebrations of album cover art, of course. Vinyl Connection has […]
HOUSE OF JANSCH
In 1967 Bert Jansch was highly regarded in folk circles but still some months away from forming breakthrough folk-rock-jazz five-piece band Pentangle with his six-string mate John Renbourn. He had, however, released three guitar+voice albums plus another with Renbourn. Bert had also been hanging out with Donovan where he had been enough impressed with the trappings of pop […]
MELLOW FELLOW
We are in a TV studio in London, and the aspirant Music Quiz champion in the spotlight has chosen Donovan’s sixties music as his special topic. Having already netted points for the musician’s birth name and place (Donovan Phillips Leitch, born Glasgow, May 1946) and his first album release (What’s bin did and what’s bin […]
JUST SOME JOSEPH LOOKING FOR A MANGER
He was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Montreal. His father, who had an engineering degree but ran a clothing business, died when he was nine years old. During degree studies that were solid rather than stellar, he did receive one endorsement indicating future directions: an award for creative writing. A member of the […]
SPIRIT OF PEACE
There was a poster I recall seeing many years ago that captured those difficult times with insight and humour. It came to mind this week. The quote is variously attributed to Ashleigh Brilliant, Aunty Acid, Jennifer Yane and Author Unknown. I reckon it’s Brilliant. As one does in trying times, I turned to music. Something […]
R E S P E C T
I Never Loved A Man The Way That I Love You was one of four—count ‘em, 1-2-3-4—albums released under Aretha Franklin’s name during 1967. Four albums for two different labels. And that’s the key point of Lady Soul’s ’67 story. Aretha released her first long player, Songs of Faith, way back in 1956 when she was […]
LOVERS IN TOKYO — CURIOSITY CORNER #1
This occasional series* will present something a little unusual from the Vinyl Connection collection We’ll open proceedings with this album of middle of the road smoothness from the catalogue of the Australian World Record Club. Regular readers will know that WRC cover art is something of a passion round these parts and there you have the entire […]
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