Category d) Nineties [1990 – 1999]

ORGANS OF HEARING

Decade Diving  (Round 3) 1966 A left-hand piano figure rocks up and down before a bluesy right hand enters, along with drums and bass. It’s cool, it’s groovy, it’s ‘My sweet potato’, the opening cut on And Now!, Booker T & The MG’s third album. But hang on a minute, shouldn’t we be hearing organ? […]

CATASTROPHY AVERTED

Back in the old school days of the 90s you learned about music on paper. I, for example, was an avid reader of MOJO: The Music Magazine, a UK monthly full of solidly researched features and well written reviews. I guess it is the mark of a loyal and trusting reader to purchase albums based […]

DECADE DIVING #1

Several ‘Album Anniversary’ posts have appeared here at Vinyl Connection. We have cruised to Köln with Keith (Jarrett), raved about Relayer and hung out with the Minstrel In The Gallery forty years on. Sometimes it’s just too hard to resist the lure of the decade-driven ‘It was twenty (thirty, forty) years ago, today…’. Yet I’ve […]

BLUE VELVETS

One of the albums featured in 10 Terrific Album Covers – Part 2 was Live MCMXCIII by The Velvet Underground. At the time I was a trifle dismissive. Having the double CD did not deter me from snapping up this 4 LP live set on beautiful blue vinyl, apparently a ‘Black Friday’ release from 2014. Haven’t […]

10 TERRIFIC ALBUM COVERS* – PART 2

* ADDED TO THE VINYL CONNECTION COLLECTION DURING 2015** ** And whose music is terrific too! This is the second part of what was going to be a quicky but quickly became an epic. * Having the double CD did not deter me from snapping up this 4 LP live set on beautiful blue vinyl, apparently a […]

10 TERRIFIC ALBUM COVERS* – PART 1

* ADDED TO THE VINYL CONNECTION COLLECTION DURING 2015** ** And whose music is terrific too As album cover art is something of a passion here at Vinyl Connection, I thought I’d share some of the covers that have given pleasure on their arrival at Vinyl Connection headquarters, and include a word or two about the music. […]

A NEW COLLABORATOR AND A NEW SOUND

In 2001 David Bowie released what is without doubt the oddest compilation of his career. Which is saying something, there having been over 40 collections of his music across five decades. This one was called All Saints, with the subtitle telling you exactly what you were getting: Collected Instrumentals 1977 – 1999. The story goes that […]

LISTENER’S DIGEST #2: YOUNG, FOCUS, SEA AND CAKE, TPOTUSA, SCHOENBERG

Having been doing the single parent thing for well over a day now, our appreciation of Ms Connection’s contribution to the good life at chez Vinyl Connection is shooting up the charts with a bullet. Amongst the chores, errands, boy-wrangling and general infrastructure maintenance there has, nevertheless, been space for spinning a few discs. Here are […]

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, […]