Category ACROSS THE DECADES
RAINBOW VINYL — RED
Although UK musician David Kubinec has had a long career spanning a huge period of time*, I’m not really familiar with his work and only purchased this 1978 LP because I’d rarely encountered coloured vinyl in the seventies. Although Kubinec is a keyboard player, it is the guitarists who stand out on this album: Ollie […]
JON HASSELL, SONIC EXPLORER
PRESS STATEMENT from Jon Hassell’s Family JULY 26, 2021 Our beloved Jon M. Hassell – iconic trumpet player, author, and composer – has passed away at the age of 84 years on June 26th 2021. After a little more than a year of fighting through health complications, Jon died peacefully in the early morning hours […]
1971 LIVE [PART 2]
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends… The second (and final) part of Vinyl Connection’s pick of 1971 live albums, counting up to #1! * 5 TRAFFIC—WELCOME TO THE CANTEEN In terms of personnel, this is an ‘in between’ Traffic album. In fact it isn’t even credited to the band. In-again out-again […]
1971 LIVE [PART ONE]
By the close of the 1960s the technology and knowhow for recording live music had improved substantially. Sure, the results were patchy on many occasions, but overall live albums had become much more listenable. Here (and in the forthcoming Part Two) we trawl through Vinyl Connection’s 1971 “Live” holding, counting ‘up’ to my favourites. 13 […]
1971—WHERE ARE WE UP TO?
Almost half-way through the year. Almost half the time allocated for this 50th anniversary survey. So how are we going with this delve into Vinyl Connection’s 1971 holding? It would appear, on the basis of the pictorial evidence above, a good start. Yet this gallery, I am crestfallen to report, displays but a quarter of […]
1971, SINGER SONGWRITERS #1
The early 1970s saw the emergence of the singer-songwriter as an acoustic force in popular music. If you played something—commonly piano or guitar—and wrote your own material, why bother with a band? All that negotiating and compromise, pah! Do your own thing, (wo)man. Do it yourself. So albums boasting a single person’s name on the […]
AUTUMN 1971, MELBOURNE
Typing the title, a southern hemisphere companion to the previous post, I found myself wondering what was going on for me during autumn of that year. Not much, really. I was doing more-or-less exactly what my son is doing fifty years later: plodding through Year 10 in a suburban Melbourne secondary school. He’s sitting behind […]
SPRING 1971, GERMANY
Achim Reichel was part of The Rattles, a German pop/beat band who had a 1969 hit with “The Witch”. It’s an edgy late psychedelic single that’s worth checking out (if you like that kind of thing). After going solo, Reichel immersed himself in exploring the magic of guitar effects, releasing a number of albums through […]
MILES AWAY
It’s the biggest single slab of music by a single artist in the entire Vinyl Connection collection. More titles than anyone needs, I suspect, and certainly more than I care to admit to. Why do I always come back to Miles? Perhaps the answer is simple. Miles Davis was an innovator, talent spotter, restless musical […]
WITHIN HEARING
A selection of what has been spinning at Vinyl Connection headquarters recently “Audio Diary 2014-2018” is a 5-CD set of live King Crimson, and a ripper! Full of brilliantly realised versions of KC music both vintage and newer, it is at times glorious and at others pummelling. Just the way we like it. Released in […]
CHILLED BUT WARM
Thunder rumbled around the pre-dawn purple, but burrowing under the doona I got another hour’s sleep. Maybe more a doze. When I crawled out it was light; brighter than expected given the vague sleep-penetrating sounds of heavy rain earlier. The morning blind raising ritual let in more light and more weather. The rain wasn’t rain, […]
FEBRUARY 1971 — PART TWO
Continuing our trawl through Vinyl Connections holding from February 1971, and beginning with an absolute classic. [Part One here] Pretty much everyone agrees that Carole King’s second LP is a flawless album that boosted singer-songwriter artists towards the top of the first division. And not just in the US and Canada where the LP was […]
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