Category GENRE SPECIFIC
1972 COUNTDOWN: #10 — #8
10 DEEP PURPLE — MACHINE HEAD 1970’s Deep Purple In Rock and 1971’s Fireball set the bar high for British heavy rock. Yet Deep Purple managed to top those two fine records with their seventh long-player, Machine Head. Prosaically named after the metal gear arrangement that adjusts the tension on guitar strings, the music is […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: RECAP
72 FROM ’72 is reaching a climax. The top of the mountain, the pick of the bunch, the pinnacle of all things musical in 1972. The Top 10. As we launch into the final few posts, here is a list of all the albums covered in the countdown so far, with links to the original […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #15 — 11
15 BIG STAR — #1 RECORD Antecedents: Beatles, Byrds. Contemporaries: Badfinger, Raspberries. Descendants: R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw, Teenage Fanclub. Definition: Jangly chord-rich guitar rock with tight harmonies, off-beat lyrics, sing-along choruses and a middle eight to die for. Highlights: “The Ballad Of El Goodo”; “Feel”. Further Reading on Power Pop: Here Is A Sunrise [Released April […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #20 — 16
20 ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND — EAT A PEACH Simultaneously a tribute and a stop-gap after the untimely death of Duane Allman, Eat A Peach is slightly schizoid. A big double album, it includes three unreleased studio tracks featuring Duane, three live tracks from the Fillmore concerts, and three new studio songs without Duane. Yet the […]
BARKING AND BEAUTIFUL
For a brief article to do justice to Kate Bush’s 1985 magnum opus Hounds Of Love it would need to be written in colour. It would have washes of luminous chalk, splashes of oil pastel, shafts of vivid acrylics and tendrils of lava lamp pink. Shapes would pulsate with passion, creep along midnight forest trails […]
SPOOKY MEDITATION
Juilliard trained but restless, clarinetist Tony Scott left New York at the end of the 1950s to travel and absorb musical influences from around the world. After visiting Japan he released Music For Zen Meditation And Other Joys (1965). This album of gentle, spacious music features Shinichi Yuize playing koto and Hozan Yamamoto on shakuhachi. […]
MILES’ BLUE FIRE
Revered as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time, Kind of Blue is kinda slippery to get a handle on. Not a frustrating kind of slippery like soap in the bath, nor the dodgy kind of slippery of a pub deal too good to be true; what Kind of Blue offers is […]
SEVEN YEARS OF TEN YEARS AFTER
Guitar slinger Alvin Lee had been playing for several years before the group Ten Years After coalesced just in time to get a residency at London’s famed Marquee Club in late 1966. Having fleshed out their sound by adding piano player ‘Chick’ Churchill, the band signed with Decca’s progressive Deram label on the back of […]
SOFT MACHINE 1975 – 1978
There is so much change and restless creativity in the Soft Machine catalogue it can take quite a while to get one’s head around it. Took me years. The first two albums explode with Sixties eccentricity, mischief, and brain-pinging energy. But then there is an apparent u-turn into the sprawling, magnificent Third; an album demanding […]
1972 JAZZ — THE TOP 10
10 THE CRUSADERS — 1 Unlike Miles, The Jazz Crusaders and others in the jazz community, I was not listening to Sly and the Family Stone in the early 1970s. Fact is, I wasn’t really listening to anything other than Top 40 AM radio station 3XY on my transistor. So when, much later, I stumbled […]
1972 | A JAZZ SIX-PACK
Before the end of the 72 From ’72 series there will be a selection of my favourite jazz albums from the year in question. In the meantime, here is a somewhat random half-dozen 1972 albums that have tickled the jazz fancy over the years. * When I acquired this from Bentleigh Sewing & Records in […]
MAN FROM THE EAST
Classically trained percussionist Stomu Yamashta recorded for Island Records between 1972 and 1976, releasing seven albums of extraordinarily creative and enjoyable progressive music. With elements of formal composition, jazz-rock, electronica and progressive rock, Yamashta’s ability to fuse East and West into an intriguing and entertaining whole was remarkable. Although I have most of the Island […]
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