Category Jazz & Jazz-Rock
DESTINATION: PARIS
Saint Germain. A Parisian boulevard where Jean-Paul Satre strolled, or a football team from the same city. Perhaps the French liqueur made with elderflowers. Those of a theosophical persuasion will want to bend your ear with tales of Saint Germain, an eighteenth century mystic, philosopher and ascended master. Whatever that is. While all the above […]
THE NATURE OF DAN
It was no secret. Steely Dan fans knew the 1980 LP Gaucho was the last offering from studio perfectionists Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. They’d reached a pinnacle of consummate musicianship with their penultimate album Aja and were done with Dan. In fact, they were done with each other. So the buzz of excitement around […]
IT’S A KNOCKOUT!
When Jeff Beck died suddenly in January 2023 it sent shockwaves through the rock community. With a career spanning an extraordinary six decades, the legendary British guitarist had numerous groups of his own while always being available for collaborations. Over the years he worked many times with pal Rod Stewart, while also lending his six-string […]
1973 COUNTDOWN: #73 — 71
After initiating planning and sorting for 73 FROM ’73 in the middle of 2022, somehow the project got delayed; again and again. A number of the schedule blowouts arose from life intruding on music activities, annoying incursions I hoped had been redirected towards more gainfully employed bloggers as I mooched towards retirement; but in fact […]
TIMELESS
Cascading keyboard notes and flurries of guitar; soon they are dancing through a frenetic dialogue as dextrous as it is energising. Welcome to “Lungs”, the unexpectedly manic opening to Timeless, the entrancing 1975 album by John Abercrombie. “Lungs” was composed by the keyboard player Jan Hammer, he of Mahavishnu Orchestra fame. In group leader Abercrombie, […]
GOOD(BYE) FRIDAY
Jeff Beck 24 June 1944—10 January 2023 🖤 Yukihiro Takahashi [YMO] 6 June 1952—11 January 2023 🖤 Renee Geyer 11 Sep 1953—17 January 2023 🖤 David Crosby 14 Aug 1941—19 January 2023 🖤 Tom Verlaine [Television] 13 Dec 1949—28 January 2023 🖤 Burt Bacharach 12 May 1928—8 February 2023 🖤 Wayne Shorter 25 August 1933—2 […]
73 FROM ’73 | AN INTRODUCTION
From the time I first extracted the more than three hundred 1973 albums in the VC collection I knew that 73 FROM ’73 would be a challenging project. And that was before I’d even researched the holes in the stash. No New York Dolls! Betty Davis overlooked! Where’s Aerosmith? Oh, the shame. Then I mulled […]
BOXING DAY [PART 2]
More CD boxed sets that somehow found their way into Vinyl Connection headquarters during 2022. * This beautifully curated set has facsimile album covers, including the gatefolds. Several albums have bonus tracks, mostly live, and the booklet is high quality too. All in all, a set I was delighted to have as I’ve never owned […]
BOXING DAY
Let’s get the bleeding obvious out of the way from the start. I love vinyl and have acquired more than a couple of discs this past year. But it sure is an expensive obsession. One of the features of my 2022 purchasing has been the discovery of how many excellent CD boxed sets are out […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #4 — #3
4 NEU! — NEU! ‘Hallogallo’ fades in with a repeated guitar dot over a strange percussive clack. It insinuates itself into the room and your consciousness, an hypnotic groove, repetitive yet captivating. Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of Neu! The beginning of the Neu! story is part of the early Kraftwerk story. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger […]
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