Category GENRE SPECIFIC
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…
Carlos Santana was rather busy in 1973. Early in the year he got together with British master-guitarist John McLaughlin to continue working on the exciting, spiritual music that appeared on the under-appreciated Love Devotion and Surrender. To celebrate the end of recording they went out to buy a snappy white suit which the cover shot suggests that […]
WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS…
During the wildly exciting process of compiling the new Vinyl Connection Index page it was noted by the VC auditor that many months have elapsed since we last ventured into the sweaty mosh pit of live recordings. How better to remedy that lamentable oversight than by tackling that monster of vinylosity, the triple live album? […]
WENT TO SEE A STANDING STONE
I like to think I was a druid in a previous life. It’s not about the hooded robe or doing despicable things to small furry animals. No, it’s about Neolithic megaliths. You know, standing stones. Yep, if it wasn’t for the absence of sanitation, decent food and (most importantly) electricity, I’d be an enthusiastic candidate […]
THE WINDOW AND THE WALL
In the late 80s I was living alone in a small house in Footscray, an inner-west suburb of Melbourne nestling between industrial docklands and a waste management terminal. Bunbury Street was quite special not for any Oscar Wilde association but because a railway line ran underneath it, lengthwise. It was a goods line from the […]
ETERNAL WARRIOR RETURNING
One of the tell-tale signs of the activated Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer is how their speed increases when they approach a Record Store. Up on the balls of their feet, there is a pronounced spring in the step as the shortest possible distance from here to the records is calculated with pinpoint precision. Breathing may be more […]
HALF MAN HALF MACHINE
After Melbourne University and I parted company – not on speaking terms – I needed to plug the gap left by going to uni and not studying (more on my favourite diversion, the Rowden White Library, here). The record store where I worked 6 hours a week offered me a full-time position. At that time […]
WALKING TOWARDS SUNSET
Chapter One: A potted history from 1963 – 1967 Being an ambitious but ultimately ludicrous attempt to summarise the early days of blues legend John Mayall. Skip to Chapter Three if uninterested in early British blues. John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers started playing London’s famous Marquee Club in late 1963. In the following year they […]
OH! OH! HERE HE COMES
Every shop has a selection of permanent fixtures. Not the cash register or the window dummy but those stock items that sit. Then get dusted. Then sit some more. Bentleigh Sounds, the record and electrical goods store where I worked for a good part of the 70s and early 80s was no exception. Although I […]
TRANSCENDENTAL (NEW) MUSIC
Josef Zawinul wrote the melody ‘In a silent way’ after visiting his Austrian family for Christmas. It is a wistful, almost folky melody that you can hear on the composer’s self-titled 1971 album. But more famously and influentially the tune became the title for a 1969 album that indicated a far-reaching change of direction for […]
OF FLEAS AND FAUST
Like a down-market department store for heads and hippies, Goesunder Flea Market in the heart of Melbourne’s retail district was the unlikely venue for an import record shop, yet that is where I first encountered Krautrock. It was my first year at the university, a 15 minute walk north of the city centre. I was […]
BIRTH AND DEATH OF A WORLD
Not long ago I wrote about an unscheduled month in the UK in the late 90s. A side trip to Wales was mentioned and that is where our story begins today. Every music tragic knows that it is not civic architecture or religious edifices that get the music hunter-gatherer’s pulse a-quickening; it’s record shops. We […]
CLOSE TO PERFECTION
CONTEXT Just in case it isn’t immediately obvious, music is a passion and hobby here at Vinyl Connection. There are several thousand titles in the collection and no imminent danger of a growth plateau. [Picture here, if you will, the crestfallen expression on Ms Connection’s face.] Close to the Edge sits high on my list […]
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