Category ACROSS THE DECADES
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 […]
FROND FRIENDS: INTERVIEW WITH NICK SALOMAN
Coinciding with the recent-ish release of Bevis Frond’s latest album, We’re Your Friends, Man, Vinyl Connection was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with the band’s founder and well-spring, Nick Saloman. VC: Hello Nick. Thanks for talking to Vinyl Connection once again. NS: Always a pleasure, Bruce VC: Congratulations on the latest release. A […]
BEVIS IS BACK, MAN
As mentioned recently, Vinyl Connection was delighted to have a chance to meet and greet the latest Bevis Frond album. We’re Your Friends, Man was released late in 2018 and is a genuine old-fashioned double album containing 20 slabs of fresh Frondness spread across two CDs or four sides of vinyl. For those not familiar […]
THE FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT
When it came to writing songs for his first solo album after leaving Steely Dan, Donald Fagen heeded that timeless advice to authors, write about what you know. The record was The Nightfly and the year was 1982, though you wouldn’t know it from the cover. Fagen is photographed in a Peter Gunn era radio […]
FIRE DOWN BELOW
You know how in Facebook there are those little numbers in red squares that magically appear? What are they about? Some appear to be called ‘Notifications’ but often are just FB trying to sell marketing tools. Others seem to be congratulating me on someone liking something. It all seems so trivial and pointless I usually […]
GENTLEMEN TAKE POLAROIDS
The stereo in our living area has an old Sony CD player that clunks a bit but still works fine. I could replace it, but it has a capacity that is sometimes very useful. It is a five-disc changer. For those unfamiliar with such fancy modern technology, this machine allows you to load up to […]
COLOURS OF EDEN
A breeze skating a frozen pond. A face that doesn’t match its name. Wonder and anguish entwined. The task of capturing the elusive, strangled beauty of Talk Talk. I could try to net these butterfly phrases, compile them, pin them, offer them to you in a month or two as a display-board eulogy for Mark […]
A BOX AND A HOLE
I don’t often pre-order records. Has to be something pretty special and I have to be feeling expansive (pre-ords are always expensive) and patient (the lead time is usually considerable). But having missed out on the multi-CD issue of Bowie At The Beeb back at the turn of the century, I was determined not to […]
1969 ARCHIVE DIVE (PART 2)
Here is the second part of an archeological post featuring 1969 albums that have appeared at Vinyl Connection over the past six years. The month (in brackets after the title) shows the release date (if known) and there is a link to the original post. Despite the passage of half a century, there is some […]
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
Prior to 2017’s Tomorrow Forever, the last Matthew Sweet album of original material was 2011’s Modern Art. In between was the third volume of Under The Covers, the charming series recorded by Sweet and ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs. Matthew Sweet’s personal circumstances had changed considerably in the intervening years: he re-located away from Los Angeles to […]
BACK TO THE PAVILION
You are a young guitarist, talented and hard-working, and join a band of school mates. It’s 1967 and everyone is forming bands, so why not? And this one has promise, it records a debut album in 1969 that is well-regarded but doesn’t sell a whole lot, possibly because of its biblical title or maybe because […]
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