Category ACROSS THE DECADES
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 […]
SONG TO ODYSSEUS
I We tended to play Dungeons and Dragons without music in the background. Distractions could be dangerous — while you were tuning in to Bauhaus or Tangerine Dream, the chances were you’d get smeared by a troll or jumped by some pesky hobbit thief. But during the refreshment breaks (food, drink, mind altering substances, as […]
FIELD TESTING THE THEORY
It is a funny thing, the vinyl hunter-gathering lifestyle. Although I have a number of tasty records in transit from exotic locations world-wide (all right, you got me; from the US and UK), the prospect of a record fair last Sunday was too good to miss. A leave pass negotiated, off I trotted, returning home a […]
YOU SCROOGE, YOU LOSE
Having had a crack at describing categories of record collectors (called Vinyl Hunter-Gatherers around these parts), this post continues looking at further case studies, your correspondent once again being the mandated patient. Sorry, that should read ‘volunteer’. Enthusiast (B): ‘Excellent — a very satisfying find. Wonder if I can swing a discount’. Chicago — Live […]
EARTH AND MOON
Sometimes reading blogs can be expensive: you read, you like, you must have… the purchase is a direct result of reading a particular post. Other times, I’ve noted indirect references to an artist rated highly by the writer and somehow added a pencil note to the old cerebral cortex. An example is the band Earth, alluded […]
DIGGING
TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF VINYL HUNTER-GATHERERS While admiring the melodic pop savvy of Paul McCartney, I’ve never felt compelled to follow his solo career that closely. I was always a Lennon man. Yet you cannot help picking up info and vibes about an album —a magazine article here, an on-line mention there— which eventually resulted […]
DEACON DAN
Over the past two-and-a-half years, Vinyl Connection has avoided writing about many of its long-term favourite albums. How to put the love into words? Can something fresh be discovered? Steely Dan’s sixth album is a case in point. It has long been a favourite —as seen in those troublesome ‘Best’ lists— yet I have baulked […]
MINIMAL RAINBOW
From an imagined podcast… It is generally agreed that ‘minimal music’ appeared in the mid-60s, arising out of the US avant-garde scene in which John Cage was a principal figure. Most writers and commentators, Sitsky for example, list La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass as the key composers. A study of […]
INCOMING! [EARLY EDITION, SPRING 2015]
Here is a selection of the music that has crossed the threshold of the Vinyl Connection den of musiquity this month, with some notes on the why-s and wherefores. ♦ The Nice – Ars Longa Vita Brevis [1968 / Let Them Eat Vinyl, 2014] The second album by the sometimes psychedelic, proto-prog band who were by […]
’77 JAZZ FUNK STRIP
Jazz has nearly as many sub-genres as metal, and that is really saying something. Having stumbled across the jazz-funk of The Crusaders in the early 80s, I began exploring this laid-back but groovy territory, finding it an enjoyable late-night adjunct to the frantic fusion I’d been fuel-injecting for nearly a decade. So I accumulated albums […]
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, […]
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