Category Particular platters
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A GAS NEW BAG
It is utterly impossible to view Led Zeppelin without filters. Their image as quintessential ‘rock gods’ of the seventies, the bombast of the music, an incredible popularity that endures to the present… in some ways they have become untouchable. The curation of the Zeppelin catalogue has been restrained compared to some (hello Estate Hendrix!) and […]
STEVE REICH STILL HAS A PULSE
Minimalist composer Steve Reich turned 82 during 2018. (Interestingly, his musical peers Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Philip Glass all became octogenarians in the last couple of years too). So Reich has been pursuing his singular exploration of repetition and phase for a lifetime. Pulse/Quartet was released this year on the Nonesuch label. It […]
EIGHT 1968 ALBUMS
…I WANTED TO TELL YOU ABOUT BUT RAN OUT OF TIME Here then, in synopsis, are a batch of brilliant LPs any twenty-first century collection should be proud to include. This post should be read in the context of the entire year of 1968 features; here we have an addendum, not a summary. The ranking […]
WHITES OF THEIR EYES
I remember the first copy vividly. Bentleigh Sewing and Records, that oddest of retail combinations, lurked down the western end of Centre Road, owned by veteran sole-trader Bill McAndrew. Those entering his domain seeking records had first to negotiate the labyrinth of sewing machines and associated paraphernalia that crammed the front of the shop. As […]
INSIDE
A while back, in response to what I perceived as heinous omissions from a well-known book, I began compiling a list of “101 More Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”. I thought this addendum could provide a focus for occasional Vinyl Connection posts. Sadly, the project stalled, largely because I couldn’t get the list […]
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