Category ACROSS THE DECADES
I NEED DIRECTION
A Catholic Education Bandwagonesque Thirteen Grand Prix Songs From Northern Britain Howdy! The millennial year was a challenging one. Having formed a strong and passionate connection with a new partner, I was dismayed to hear that she was decamping to her English homeland for an indeterminate period. This was not my fantasy of how the […]
IMMUNOLOGY REPORT
Is a world of hardening national borders an expression of a global hardening of hearts? UK based multi-national group Vanishing Twin hope not, and on their 2019 album The Age of Immunology invite us to open our ears and minds to a vision of music sans frontières. Formed in Britain in 2015 around the talents […]
LAB REPORT
There are only so many times you can say g’day to a workplace acquaintance before you find yourself talking about music. This well known fact was supported by extensive laboratory research at the second-last university I worked for. One morning, queuing at the best caffeine source on campus, I struck up a conversation with a […]
ALBUM COVER QUIZ – THE SEVENTIES
A long time ago (about a year) we ran a series of Album Cover quizzes on various decades. We covered three epochs (60s, 80s, 00s) but skipped over Vinyl Connection’s favourite decade, the Seventies. Welcome, then, to the post-sixties comedown. * THE RULES Below are fourteen album covers (CD sized) resting on a 12″ LP. […]
BRIGHT SKY BLUE
White Music Go 2 Drums and Wires Black Sea English Settlement Mummer What an amazing band XTC were. Few rock outfits have produced such an interesting and diverse catalogue of albums, nor shown the kind of growth and development the lads from Swindon demonstrated across fourteen albums between 1978 and 2000. From angular post-punk through […]
THE ROAD GOES EVER ON
Songs For Beginners Wild Tales Earth & Sky Innocent Eyes Songs For Survivors This Path Tonight Sipping black tea and staring at the pirouetting ghosts in a bush campfire are conducive to having a bit of a sing. I learned this when I participated in the Adventure Camping program of the Anglican Department of Christian […]
I’LL BE GONE (BUT NOT YET)
The silver-haired gentleman in the skull motif shirt may have had an iPad to remember the set list, but the singing was strong and the words tumbled out like freshly minted coins. The band were great—tight and energetic—and their fearless leader even managed a few quirky dance steps during an uptempo number. At a time […]
SATAN 🖤 PSYCHEDELIA
The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones No.2 Out Of Our Heads Aftermath Between The Buttons Their Satanic Majesties Request Derided by some at the time as a second-rate Sgt Pepper or a cynical (and late) cash in on so-called Summer of Love psychedelia, Their Satanic Majesties Request is, simply put, neither. Full of great uses […]
IN ORBIT AROUND THE SATELLITE HEART
Hear It Is Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips Telepathic Surgery In A Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares) Hit To Death In The Future Head Transmissions From The Satellite Heart By the mid-90s Compact Discs were the only game in town for listening to music. Prices had dropped and the volume being sold meant […]
ECHOES
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn A Saucerful Of Secrets More Ummagumma (½ live–½ studio) Atom Heart Mother Meddle Meddle (1971) was the first Pink Floyd album I owned. Purchased second-hand from Bentleigh Sewing & Records, probably in late 1973 or early ’74, its centrepiece, the side-long “Echoes” mesmerised me as I sat in the […]
VALE, DALE
Richard Anthony Mansour, child of a Lebanese father and a mother with Polish-Belarusian roots, died on 16 March 2019 at age 81. Known to the world as Dick Dale, the guitarist credited as a founding force in the creation of surf guitar had a sound that was big on reverb and steeped in middle-eastern scales. […]
GIVING IT ALL AWAY
My mate Steven (writer of the Vinyl Connection Hendrix posts) passed on a copy of the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ DVDs. For those unfamiliar with this revered TV music show, it ran from 1971 to 1988 in the UK, featuring an eclectic array of rock artists performing in a tiny studio. The DVDs include comments […]
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