Category b) Seventies [1970 – 1979]

THE JOYS OF MUSIC TRIVIA – or – “Oh, I know that one, it’s…”

Last Friday in Melbourne was chilly. Cold even. Not altogether surprising, it’s winter and we’ve just passed the shortest day. But there was activity in the suburbs, as Vinyl Connection presented a Live Music Trivia Quiz at one of our favourite Record Stores, Quality Records…plus. It is a lovely store, with books, DVDs and CDs […]

ANOTHER COVER IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY

Along the broad and crowded highway of record collecting there are some fascinating diversions. One I enjoy involves albums that appear with different sleeves in different parts of the world. It is not a particular obsession of mine; I have several, but we need to know each other better for them to be revealed in […]

LIVE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM [Second Set]

Perhaps the only truly honest concert recordings are ‘bootlegs’: verbatim transcriptions of what happened on a particular night on a particular stage. Containing and disclosing all the fluctuations in energy, rambling introductions, musical missteps and extraneous noises just as they were, they truly tell it like it was. Not surprisingly, bootlegs tend to be the […]

LIVE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM [First Set]

One of the first ‘live in concert’ recordings I connected with was “Yessongs”. A sprawling preposterous triple live album with a fold-out Roger Dean cover to match, it was large canvas. The compositions of Yes were complex and structured, executed with dextrous musicianship; they needed the space. To feel the charge and brio surging through […]

MORE TURNTABLE TRAVELS

Record covers encapsulate both art and functionality. They convey information through words and images, via style or typeface, they invite or confront, reveal or mislead. Some of my favourites radiate a sense of place that reaches out across time and space, tickling wonder and tugging at imagination. “Late for the sky” with its daylight sky […]

TURNTABLE TRAVELS

As far as travelling was concerned, I was a late starter. Most of the people I knew had been somewhere outside of Australia, even if it was just a package trip to Bali (cue song, Redgum, 1984). Many had done the Europe thing and had come back somehow wiser, more knowing, more confident… more something. […]