Category ODDS & SODS
RSD 16: COMMUNITY AND COMPETITION (QUIZ #3)
Chatting to several Record Store owners in the lead up to this year’s ‘International Record Store Day’ there was a sense the hype has well-and-truly overpowered the original idea. The releases were patchy, the prices exorbitant (and margins reduced); there was a sense of store owners being blackmailed via RSD propaganda into ordering LPs of […]
TOWERS OF STRENGTH
Nowadays it is not that easy to connect with the sense of geopolitical tension that pervaded the early 80s. The threat of war —and here we are talking about nuclear conflict, not yer pussy tanks, napalm and barking M16 stuff— was seriously canvassed across the northern hemisphere. Sabres were rattled, bugles blown, hands were wrung […]
12 BOWIE REFLECTIONS
I — Busting Up My Brains For The Words It was the re-release of the 1969 album, now with a Ziggy-era cover photo and an actual name: Space Oddity. Bought second-hand, probably from Bentleigh Sewing and Records. Full of strange folky songs delivered with theatrical flourish. A poet’s voice surely, writhing with angst and intensity, […]
BEREFT
No words at present. Just a couple of mediocre photos. Ashes to ashes, Funk to funky * (Words here)
A KIND OF 2015 LIST
Biggest crush What does it mean when you go, in a mere few months, from never having heard of an artist to buying four albums new? Probably that you have too much time on your hands and money in your pocket. Nevertheless, I became very taken with the lively retro-electronica of Zombi. They combine elements […]
REAL GONE 2015 [PART 2]
EDGAR FROESE (6 Jun 1944 — 20 Jan 2015) Having enjoyed the Tangerine Dream concert at the Melbourne Town Hall in November last year, and absolutely loved the ACMI film-performance of Sorcerer a week later (concert report here, Sorcerer here), it was a massive shock to hear of the band’s founder’s death a couple of […]
REAL GONE 2015 [PART 1]
CHRIS SQUIRE (4 Mar 1948 — 27 Jun 2015) The death of the co-founder and energetic mainspring of Yes was reported in the mainstream media. For some, that might be telling indictment of how mainstream the progressive music of the band became, but I’d beg to differ. Squire was an outstanding bass player and his […]
10 ALMANAC ENTRIES FROM 1955
Chuck Berry records his first single, “Maybelline”, for Chess Records in Chicago [May 21]. Despite the vitality of his early songs and his significance as a writer/performer, surprisingly few of his singles crossed over from the R&B charts to the upper echelons of the pop hit parade. * “Rock Around the Clock” becomes the first […]
EXAMPLE 22 – AN INTERVIEW WITH NICK SALOMAN
A new Bevis Frond album is cause for celebration. So when Example 22 arrived in the post recently, there was a surge of excitement in Vinyl Connection land. Surfing a wave of Bevis energy, I contacted the band’s founder and enduring mainspring about an interview and was delighted by his prompt acceptance. What follows, then, […]
FLOYDITTIES
What do you do when you have the entire catalogue of an artist, the ‘Best of’ albums, most titles on at least two formats, plus a goodly selection of bootlegs? If you answered, ‘See your therapist’, you get points plus that special superior feeling that attends the suspicion a fellow music lover may just be […]
PINK DISCO
It is amazing what you’ll buy when the need for vinyl outweighs good sense. I’m not sure what mood I was in a few weeks back when the best I could bring home was an album of disco versions of Pink Floyd songs, but it may have been certifiable. Ignoring a raft of warning signs […]
AN EVENING WITH HERBIE HANCOCK AND CHICK COREA, MAY 2015
The Melbourne International Jazz Festival began in 1998, co-incidentally the year that the Ms Connection/Vinyl Connection international festival kicked off too. Seventeen years on, both are still going strong though artists in both arenas seem to be a touch more, er, mature. Seasoned. Venerable. Ah shit. We’re all older. Nevertheless, when we noticed that the […]
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