Category ACROSS THE DECADES
1972 COUNTDOWN: #15 — 11
15 BIG STAR — #1 RECORD Antecedents: Beatles, Byrds. Contemporaries: Badfinger, Raspberries. Descendants: R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw, Teenage Fanclub. Definition: Jangly chord-rich guitar rock with tight harmonies, off-beat lyrics, sing-along choruses and a middle eight to die for. Highlights: “The Ballad Of El Goodo”; “Feel”. Further Reading on Power Pop: Here Is A Sunrise [Released April […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #20 — 16
20 ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND — EAT A PEACH Simultaneously a tribute and a stop-gap after the untimely death of Duane Allman, Eat A Peach is slightly schizoid. A big double album, it includes three unreleased studio tracks featuring Duane, three live tracks from the Fillmore concerts, and three new studio songs without Duane. Yet the […]
BARKING AND BEAUTIFUL
For a brief article to do justice to Kate Bush’s 1985 magnum opus Hounds Of Love it would need to be written in colour. It would have washes of luminous chalk, splashes of oil pastel, shafts of vivid acrylics and tendrils of lava lamp pink. Shapes would pulsate with passion, creep along midnight forest trails […]
CINEMATIC GOLD
In 1982 I was deeply immersed in the Student Union of the tertiary institution where I’d just finished a degree. It was an exciting, intense time full of meetings, negotiations, and nights spent strategising how to improve the lot of the student population. We were young and relatively clueless, but deeply committed. Often by late […]
SPOOKY MEDITATION
Juilliard trained but restless, clarinetist Tony Scott left New York at the end of the 1950s to travel and absorb musical influences from around the world. After visiting Japan he released Music For Zen Meditation And Other Joys (1965). This album of gentle, spacious music features Shinichi Yuize playing koto and Hozan Yamamoto on shakuhachi. […]
SAUCERFUL OF SYD
The debut album by Pink Floyd was a teacup full to the brim with whimsy and swirling acid drenched psychedelia, courtesy of founding member Syd Barrett. The sad tale of Syd’s decline is well known yet remains poignant; how he simply stopped playing during concerts, becoming unreliable in both engagements and relationships. The pressure to […]
SHOOTOUT AT THE ZEPPELIN CORRAL
Recently I read an entertaining article from the Washington Post about comparing different pressings of LPs and a chap whose life mission it is to establish the ‘best’ version.* The audiophile in question is a person of very strong opinions, and very confident in expressing them. It reminded me of the time I was asked […]
MILES’ BLUE FIRE
Revered as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time, Kind of Blue is kinda slippery to get a handle on. Not a frustrating kind of slippery like soap in the bath, nor the dodgy kind of slippery of a pub deal too good to be true; what Kind of Blue offers is […]
SEVEN YEARS OF TEN YEARS AFTER
Guitar slinger Alvin Lee had been playing for several years before the group Ten Years After coalesced just in time to get a residency at London’s famed Marquee Club in late 1966. Having fleshed out their sound by adding piano player ‘Chick’ Churchill, the band signed with Decca’s progressive Deram label on the back of […]
GET UP, STAND UP
Having celebrated the Bob Marley boxed set just recently, I thought it would be a nice follow-up to share this piece, written for Discrepancy Records. * Singing along to “Is this love” or “I shot the Sheriff”, it’s easy to forget the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers is, at the core, a revolutionary […]
SOFT MACHINE 1975 – 1978
There is so much change and restless creativity in the Soft Machine catalogue it can take quite a while to get one’s head around it. Took me years. The first two albums explode with Sixties eccentricity, mischief, and brain-pinging energy. But then there is an apparent u-turn into the sprawling, magnificent Third; an album demanding […]
1972 JAZZ — THE TOP 10
10 THE CRUSADERS — 1 Unlike Miles, The Jazz Crusaders and others in the jazz community, I was not listening to Sly and the Family Stone in the early 1970s. Fact is, I wasn’t really listening to anything other than Top 40 AM radio station 3XY on my transistor. So when, much later, I stumbled […]
