Category ACROSS THE DECADES
KEEPING TIME
It is easy to forget how many great songs R.E.M. wrote. Forty years on from their formation and a full decade after the band called it a day, the band’s legacy as one of the most successful indie bands of all time is assured. That legacy is in full view on In Time 1988-2003: The […]
OINK, WOOF, BAA
Released in 1977, Animals remains one of Pink Floyd’s most politically charged and emotionally potent albums—a snarling, dystopian masterpiece that channels the disillusionment of a generation into a five-track conceptual epic. Loosely inspired by George Orwell’s allegorical story Animal Farm, the album trades the surreal psychedelia of early work The Piper at the Gates of […]
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE | PART TWO
An Interview with Fiona McQuarrie Vinyl Connection: Firstly, congratulations on the recent publication of your book on Fountains of Wayne (J-Card Press, March 2025). It’s great to have something more substantial than a magazine article to dive into. Fiona McQuarrie: Thank you! When this project first came my way, I was very surprised that there […]
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE | PART ONE
Scrolling Bluesky in search of vinyl thrills, a post caught my eye. It was a book, its rectangular profile standing out amongst square LP covers and rotating records. Nothing flashy about the cover, but an instant spark of interest in the name: Fountains of Wayne. Such a hip little band, one that should have been […]
LOW: A CREATIVE HIGH
Born in Brixton, South London, David Robert Jones—known to the world as David Bowie—was a creative child who formed his first band in 1952 at the age of fifteen. After his unsuccessful self-titled debut LP in 1967, Bowie stepped back from pop music for a while and studied mime and drama with Lindsay Kemp. When […]
MOMENTARY PINK
After The Final Cut (1983), Pink Floyd were no more. So decreed Roger Waters, key lyricist and driving creative force in the band. But guitarist David Gilmour had other ideas and in 1986 he began working with drummer Nick Mason in the floating studio he had created on the magnificent houseboat Astoria, moored along the […]
GRANT HIM A LISTEN
Early in the twenty-first century it seemed that, finally, the jazz loving world was starting to pick up on guitarist Grant Green. Hallelujah! His rhythmic playing being neither complicated nor particularly flashy, Green stayed off the radar of casual jazz fans for far too long. Yet he was all over bebop and worked with many […]
GOOD LUCK
Rock behemoths Pink Floyd cast a long shadow across popular music, from the 60s to the 80s and beyond. Perhaps that is why Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has produced just five studio albums in a six decade career; the band that bought him fame, fortune and friction has tended to dominate his creative life. Luck […]
BOB BRINGS IT BACK
A few days ago we escaped a summer scorcher by retreating to the coolth of an air-conditioned cinema. The film was James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, the newly released biopic of the early career of Bob Dylan. Featuring a riveting performance by Timothée Chalamet, the film tracks Dylan’s career from his arrival in New York […]
KID REMEMBERS
Sonically daring and lyrically challenging, Radiohead’s follow-up to the hugely successful OK Computer was the result of much suffering. Thom Yorke endured a psycho-emotional crisis during the extensive world tour following OK Computer’s success while the whole band agonised about their ‘direction’. Yet somehow they managed to both renew their sound and create an album […]
CAPTAIN’S STRANGE VOYAGE
One of the wonderful things about popular music is the way it has splintered into a thousand sparkling threads, like a fireworks display in slow motion. There are more genres, sub-sections, and styles than could be examined in a lifetime… and it all started less than seventy years ago. Yet despite the best efforts of […]
MEETIN’ JIMMY SMITH
Growing up in a musical family, young Jimmy Smith learned piano and later, double bass. When he switched to organ in the mid-1950s after hearing Wild Bill Davis, Jimmy combined the two instrumental skills, utilising the bass pedals of his Hammond B3 to fill out the lower end of his sound. While this made the […]
