Category Particular platters
ART ON YOUR SLEEVE #1 − PROCOL HARUM
An occasional series featuring LPs boasting ‘fine art’ on their covers, with words about the music and something about the art #1 PROCOL HARUM – Exotic Birds and Fruit [1974] THE MUSIC By 1974, the massive success of Procol Harum’s debut single was a long time gone. Not that the band had disappeared; more gently but […]
MAGIC MUSHROOM
As part of a rationalisation of his music storage and delivery system, my friend BB gave me a box of CDs to take along to the next Record Fair. Comprising largely jazz from the more exploratory end of the spectrum and progressive music of the kind that defies genre labelling, BB had transferred the music […]
UNCANNY MASTERPIECE
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING A reflection in two parts by a grateful subject I Has there been a more spine tingling opening to an album than the beginning of In The Court Of The Crimson King? An interstellar wind approaches from the depths of nowhere, fades, then explodes into one of the […]
YOU’LL NEVER COME BACK
I was thrown out of Melbourne’s signature university at the end of 1976, having accumulated an impressive collection of ‘F’ grades. That’s not ‘F for Fail’ – though it certainly is well below the plimsoll line of the good ship Pass Mark – but the F at the end of the series A – B […]
DRIFTING DOWN THE ENDLESS RIVER
SIDE ONE – NEEDLE DROP It’s the first week of summer but you wouldn’t know it. Skies are sullen and there is a sneering, chilly breeze. More like late Autumn, really. I’m sitting in front of the stereo, having just dropped the stylus on the first side of the final Pink Floyd album. On the […]
LIVE SORCERY
There is a narrow apron of stage in front of the large cinema screen. It is packed with electronic keyboards, monitors, desks and associated musical paraphernalia. In the coloured half-light, four figures ease their way through the maze of stands and leads and seat themselves at their respective consoles. A slow-moving gentleman in a leather […]
MAC ATTACK! FLEETWOOD MAC 1970 – 1974
Let’s take a trawl through the pre-mega-stardom early 70s catalogue of Fleetwood Mac. Why? Because they figured in last week’s Vinyl Connection article, Graham: A Record Store Tale. Also because this period is often over-looked: sneered at by the British Blues League who thought Peter Green was a major six-string deity and shunned by the […]
[RE-] LIVING IN THE SEVENTIES
When Skyhooks played Melbourne Uni’s Wilson Hall in 1974 they were just about to erupt into the charts with their game-changing debut album. There was a buzz around the band and the big hall was packed with the ‘I’ve heard they’re good’ curious, the ‘saw them at Martini’s ages ago’ hip, and the ‘Who’s playing […]
BB KING RIDES THE FRANKSTON LINE
Every month the postman would deliver a ‘Classical Music’ LP from the Australian branch of the World Record Club. Often, under the watchful eye of my mother, I’d get to carefully liberate the new disc from its square cardboard mailer, but I had insufficient status to actually play records on the stereogram. That was a […]
STRANGE FANTASTIC DREAM
The legendary Australian progressive band Spectrum went into cryogenic storage in mid-1973. When you think of the departure of a band – especially a well-regarded one with a series of albums to its credit – you tend to think of record company neglect or audience indifference. That image doesn’t quite fit the last year in Spectrum’s […]
UNEARTHING TREASURE
If ‘The Tourist’ is your favourite song on OK Computer, then you’re more than likely to fall in love with Cocteau Twins. That elegiac, yearning quality embedded in the best Thom Yorke vocals infuses Elizabeth Fraser. Perhaps you know her voice already. The Cocteau Twins song most people know is ‘Song to the Siren’, a […]
SOMETHING’S OUT TO GET YOU
Confessional songwriters have never been a particular favourite round these parts. I have a tendency to snap, “Speak for yourself!” followed by the chastened acknowledgment, “Oh, you are.” Yet for a while I’ve been yearning for an artist to tackle the themes we citizens of a certain age are confronting. Not global warming or China’s emergence […]
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