Category b) Seventies [1970 – 1979]
DEACON DAN
Over the past two-and-a-half years, Vinyl Connection has avoided writing about many of its long-term favourite albums. How to put the love into words? Can something fresh be discovered? Steely Dan’s sixth album is a case in point. It has long been a favourite —as seen in those troublesome ‘Best’ lists— yet I have baulked […]
’77 JAZZ FUNK STRIP
Jazz has nearly as many sub-genres as metal, and that is really saying something. Having stumbled across the jazz-funk of The Crusaders in the early 80s, I began exploring this laid-back but groovy territory, finding it an enjoyable late-night adjunct to the frantic fusion I’d been fuel-injecting for nearly a decade. So I accumulated albums […]
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 […]
LISTENER’S DIGEST #1: BJH, JT, MUTTON BIRDS, BLOSS & SCHULZE
While we love celebrating album cover art here at Vinyl Connection, it’s worth remembering that those sleeves contain records (or, ahem, CDs). So for this first edition of (yet another) occasional feature called “Listener’s Digest” I have chosen four albums that appeared in Album Cover posts over recent months. Variety being the ear-spice of musical life, […]
ART ON YOUR SLEEVE #3 – JETHRO TULL
An occasional series featuring LPs boasting ‘fine art’ on their covers, with commentary on the music and something about the art. #3 JETHRO TULL – Minstrel in the Gallery [1975] THE MUSIC After the patchy but commercially successful Warchild (#2 in the US), Jethro Tull’s eighth album was an energetic and consistently excellent return to form. Combining […]
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 […]
PINK EARS AND TANGERINE NIGHTMARES
THE MUSIC OF TANGERINE DREAM, PART TWO After Electronic Meditation, Klaus Schulze moved on from Tangerine Dream, leaving band leader Edgar Froese in need of a replacement. There was a young musician Froese had encountered in the Berlin scene as the drummer of Agitation Free (a brilliant, inventive band I hope we’ll get to at […]
ALMANAC PLAYLIST – 21 JULY
Today I employed the Almanac Strategy © for my ‘work at home’ playlist. This is what it yielded for the 21st of July. The information in italics is sourced from various internet sites. There are links to youtube videos for most featured songs. 1947 Born on this day, Cat Stevens, singer, songwriter. 1967 UK No.2 single ‘Matthew And Son’, […]
10 ALBUMS TO SAY YES TO
Following the recent departure of Yes co-founder and bass supremo Chris Squire, it seems fitting to revisit the music of a band central to 70s ‘Prog’ who continued to make music through every subsequent decade. Who would have thought that the song-writing partnership that began when Jon Anderson and Chris Squire hit it off in […]
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 […]
ROCKY ROAD
Just watched part one of Blood and Thunder, an excellent new doco on the Albert music company and its place in Australian rock history. Fast paced and carefully researched, it told a story well known to music fans but worth hearing again. How the Young family of Glasgow took the ten pound assisted passage to […]
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