Category b) Seventies [1970 – 1979]
MATI AND THE MUSIC [PART TWO]
This article is the second part of a feature on the album covers of artist Mati Klarwein. The first part is entitled More Than Abraxas. The life of a peripatetic artist is one of change and blending influences. Mati was a great traveller and enthusiastically soaked up images of culture and mythology from the many countries […]
LIVE SORCERY
There is a narrow apron of stage in front of the large cinema screen. It is packed with electronic keyboards, monitors, desks and associated musical paraphernalia. In the coloured half-light, four figures ease their way through the maze of stands and leads and seat themselves at their respective consoles. A slow-moving gentleman in a leather […]
MELBOURINE DREAM
Amongst fans of electronic music, you can well imagine the flutter of excitement when it was announced that German pioneers Tangerine Dream were coming to Melbourne as part of the annual Music Week. Their first visit this century. With the venerable Edgar Froese now in his 70s and a recent CD entitled Phaedra Farewell Tour […]
MAC ATTACK! FLEETWOOD MAC 1970 – 1974
Let’s take a trawl through the pre-mega-stardom early 70s catalogue of Fleetwood Mac. Why? Because they figured in last week’s Vinyl Connection article, Graham: A Record Store Tale. Also because this period is often over-looked: sneered at by the British Blues League who thought Peter Green was a major six-string deity and shunned by the […]
GRAHAM: A RECORD STORE TALE
Customers coming into our little suburban record store to buy music seemed to fall into several categories. There were the positively vague. “That song on the radio, it goes Do-de-Do-de Dum Dum Dum… Got that one?” There were the negatively vague. “Don’t suppose you know what that new album’s called, the one with the zither […]
MORE THAN ABRAXAS
When you think of album art, some classic images spring to mind… – those four blokes on the London zebra crossing, – that angular tubular bell suspended over sky-sea-shore, – the underwater baby boy lured by an angler’s dollar bill. Though it is harder to capture in a few words, the cover of the second […]
[RE-] LIVING IN THE SEVENTIES
When Skyhooks played Melbourne Uni’s Wilson Hall in 1974 they were just about to erupt into the charts with their game-changing debut album. There was a buzz around the band and the big hall was packed with the ‘I’ve heard they’re good’ curious, the ‘saw them at Martini’s ages ago’ hip, and the ‘Who’s playing […]
BB KING RIDES THE FRANKSTON LINE
Every month the postman would deliver a ‘Classical Music’ LP from the Australian branch of the World Record Club. Often, under the watchful eye of my mother, I’d get to carefully liberate the new disc from its square cardboard mailer, but I had insufficient status to actually play records on the stereogram. That was a […]
STRANGE FANTASTIC DREAM
The legendary Australian progressive band Spectrum went into cryogenic storage in mid-1973. When you think of the departure of a band – especially a well-regarded one with a series of albums to its credit – you tend to think of record company neglect or audience indifference. That image doesn’t quite fit the last year in Spectrum’s […]
PLEASURE SPLINTERS
When an artist wears their influences on their sleeve, your response is likely to depend on what side of the shirt you are looking at. If it is front on: fresh new patterns and design, then delight will erupt and you won’t give a rat’s arse about what went before. Contrariwise, in the view from behind […]
NICE SAMPLE, JOE
Sunday was a lovely day in Melbourne. A little early haze then some Spring sunshine. We played family football in the park – soccer and Aussie rules as befits a child of mixed parentage – then back home for lunch on the back veranda. For the first time since Winter, I opened the window and […]
DIGGING THE AGE OF PLASTIC
Last Sunday, bright and early, I packed the car with six crates of records, a box of CDs, another of 45s and a sandwich and drove off to the Box Hill Record Fair. It’s something I’ve been doing fairly regularly for quite a while. About fifteen years in fact. This realization made the sunny morning […]
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