Category Records
SEA OF JOY
My friend over the back fence invited me to come and hear his latest LP. Greg was two days older than me and we’d been playmates since our Mums met on the maternity ward. But in terms of musical sophistication, Greg was years, worlds, away from me. Not in terms of understanding how music worked; […]
CSN – LONG TIME GONE BUT STILL FRESH
On 28th June 1969 the self-titled album by Crosby, Stills & Nash entered the US charts. It reached #6 and stayed around for an impressive 100 weeks. Two singles were released – Nash’s jaunty ‘Marrakesh Express’ and Stills’ extended ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ – both reaching the Top 30. So much for the data. What […]
“TRUE COLOURS” – NO LOOSE ENZ
True Colours was the fifth album by New Zealand band Split Enz. It is a lively, tuneful, sometimes edgy, sometimes melancholy pop rock treat. The album’s first single ‘I Got You’, was supremely catchy, highly successful, and written by the latest addition to the band, twenty-one year old Neil Finn. First, an executive summary of the Split […]
ANOTHER COVER IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY
Along the broad and crowded highway of record collecting there are some fascinating diversions. One I enjoy involves albums that appear with different sleeves in different parts of the world. It is not a particular obsession of mine; I have several, but we need to know each other better for them to be revealed in […]
LIVE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM [Second Set]
Perhaps the only truly honest concert recordings are ‘bootlegs’: verbatim transcriptions of what happened on a particular night on a particular stage. Containing and disclosing all the fluctuations in energy, rambling introductions, musical missteps and extraneous noises just as they were, they truly tell it like it was. Not surprisingly, bootlegs tend to be the […]
LIVE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM [First Set]
One of the first ‘live in concert’ recordings I connected with was “Yessongs”. A sprawling preposterous triple live album with a fold-out Roger Dean cover to match, it was large canvas. The compositions of Yes were complex and structured, executed with dextrous musicianship; they needed the space. To feel the charge and brio surging through […]
MORE TURNTABLE TRAVELS
Record covers encapsulate both art and functionality. They convey information through words and images, via style or typeface, they invite or confront, reveal or mislead. Some of my favourites radiate a sense of place that reaches out across time and space, tickling wonder and tugging at imagination. “Late for the sky” with its daylight sky […]
TURNTABLE TRAVELS
As far as travelling was concerned, I was a late starter. Most of the people I knew had been somewhere outside of Australia, even if it was just a package trip to Bali (cue song, Redgum, 1984). Many had done the Europe thing and had come back somehow wiser, more knowing, more confident… more something. […]
Vinyl Hunter Gatherers
Just recently someone said that the city where I live has more record shops per capita than anywhere else. The claim may not be factual, of course; there are always hollow boastful claims being made about something or other. But I want it to be true because that is what I call a liveable city. […]
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