Category b) Seventies [1970 – 1979]
DARK SIDE OF THE VALLEY
When you think about the world-straddling colossus they became in the latter half of the 70s, it is easy to forget that Pink Floyd started life as just one spray of colour in the kaleidoscope of Swinging London. Like many bands of the 60s, Pink Floyd embraced side projects and commissions. After all, it was […]
JACK JOHNSON — SAY IT LOUD
Racism, discrimination, a rock manifesto, sex, sport, violence and audio editing. Buy a ticket, this album has it all. Oh, and it’s a soundtrack too. Coming off the recording sessions that produced In A Silent Way (released July, 1969) and Bitches Brew (April, 1970), it was clear that Miles Davis was determined to move his music-making […]
SPACEMILLS OF YOUR MIND
It is late. The television is the only light in the room. You slouch, alone, on the couch. The movie you’ve been determinedly watching through to the endless final credits has been disappointing. What were people raving about? Unfulfilled, you surf a few channels, hoping for…what? Something to prod you out of this torpor; a […]
WINNER TAKES IT ALL
Tomorrow I’m playing a third match in the Watsonia Tennis Club Championships. Lots of members enter multiple events; Open Singles and Doubles, A Grade Men’s, Parent and Child Doubles, Mixed. Given my level of fitness, I decided to enter just one event, especially as the boy was decidedly cool on the idea of playing competition tennis […]
RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH
Perhaps it was the screening of the Hobbit films on TV this week, but for some reason I found myself wanting to revisit Middle Earth to wrap up of the Lord Of The Rings series from a few months ago. It returns us to where we began, with John Sangster and Hobbits. Sangster has written a […]
HIGH CONTRAST
With a morning to myself and a pile of chores, I sat with the start-me-up coffee and pondered what to spin. What would get me going for a few hours of productive office work? How was I feeling today? Pretty heavy, actually. A chesty cough and a bit distracted by a knotty work issue. Something […]
Dear Herr Froese
I met you soon after Tangerine Dream turned five albums old. Colleagues Chris Franke and Peter Bauman helped you craft the timeless Phaedra for new label Virgin. Purchased by instalments from my Friday/Saturday Record Store job, I took the album home one mid-winter night to a bedroom warmed by the faint splutter of a kerosene heater, […]
WAHNSINN
Tarot by Walter Wegmüller is one of those wonderful, dotty follies of vinyl packaging that transcend normal expectations with bravura wackiness. Released on the Cosmic Couriers label ((Die Kosmischen Kuriere, for those who do Deutsch) in 1973, it hovers near the very peak of my LP Grail list. I’ve never held a copy, never even […]
SHORTS
Three brief reviews of albums newly acquired or recently revisited * GARY WRIGHT—THE DREAM WEAVER [Warner Brothers 1975] The truth is, I bought this as part of an Op Shop haul simply because it was in good nick and I have a soft spot for the cheesy 1975 radio hit, ‘Dream Weaver’. But it’s actually […]
STRUT REDUX
If you survive initial rock and roll success, what follows is very much like growing up in public. To be sure, survive is a potent word in this context. So many musicians have gone to join the choir invisible it’s a wonder that there are enough left to form a band. Yet numerous artists who […]
OF RINGS AND SWEDES
How to approach Bo Hansson’s Lord of the Rings? Having played it so often over many decades, the chances of this reviewer listening dispassionately are about the same as Gollum opening a secondhand jewellery store. It must be said that not everyone likes the Swedish keyboard player’s album. In its early days, MOJO: The Music Magazine […]
vinylconnection.com.au 