Veteran British blues-rockers Groundhogs deserve respect. They were there, in one form or another, from the early days of the UK blues explosion, taking their name from a John Lee Hooker song (‘Ground Hog Blues’) and backing the legend on his mid-60s visit to old Londinium. After a debut album in 1968 showed them in […]
Ordering a book from the dreaded ‘Big River’ company, I was lured by the ‘on your list’ bait and, of course, bit. The item was a CD I’d removed from an order months ago, something that had caught my attention but not fully hooked me in. On a whim, I added it to the cart; […]
Teaching English at the Volkshochschule Wiesbaden was one of the highlights of my time in Germany. The Head of the Language Department seemed delighted to have someone who actually had a teaching qualification. Though this was correct in principal (I did indeed have a Bachelor of Education) I’d never actually taught in schools nor practiced […]
Is Vangelis the Greek Jean-Michel Jarre? Is Jean-Michel the French Klaus Schulze? Is all European synthesiser music the same? If you answered ‘No’ to all three questions, go to the top of the class. Vangelis O. Papathanassiou was born in the town of Agria some 120 km north of Athens as the seagull flies, or […]
In the holiday post a few weeks ago—Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer Goes Surfing—there was a 1971 George Benson LP of which I wrote, ‘Hoping I haven’t re-purchased it, misled by a different cover’. The brain is a funny old organ and some of the organ stops don’t work as smoothly as they once did. When the catalogue […]
If I delay writing, I’ll stall for sure. Too much information will kill the personal resonance. What do I do with this Chick-shaped hole? Attempting to cover a sixty year career is daunting. … a few of the thoughts tumbling through the Vinyl Connection brain box as the news of Chick Corea’s death hits home. […]
“ROCKIN’ ALL OVER THE WORLD” …A series of posts featuring an artist from a country that has topped the Vinyl Connection WordPress stats map for a particular period. You can read more about the project here, but essentially it’s an excuse to dig deeper into the collection and share some discoveries. This post is the […]
King Crimson, captained by the redoubtable Robert Fripp for well over half a century, have never been timid about re-jigging the rigging and giving the band’s back catalogue a lick of varnish. As time has passed, the offerings—aimed squarely at cashed-up Boomers—have become more lavish. But unlike some artists (or their estates… not looking at […]
Rockin’ All Over The World #9 — Britain The British progressive blues-rock scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a fertile, swirling, multi-coloured circus. Various hybrids of rock and other styles were progressively blended (or mangled, depending on your point of view) to produce inventive albums full of delightful musical surprises. Often these […]
Rockin’ All Over The World — #8 Vikings, fjords, Slartibartfast, and homesick parrots. Such are the images springing to mind when Norway comes up in conversation. But did you know it has a reigning King and a conservative female Prime Minister? That the Norse people invented Thor before Marvel comics? Most of the population of […]
Lovely seaside holiday. Not as many hot days as one might have wished for but on the upside, fewer occasions to squeeze into the wetsuit and do an impression of a beached whale. Or one of those waddling penguins that look way, way cuter than a middle-aged man in neoprene. The Kongwak Sunday Market is […]
The Vinyl Connection Music Catalogue is quite large, but relatively simple in structure. Artist name, Album name, Year, Format, and a general field into which I push anything from colour of the vinyl to a bonus DVD. There are all kinds of useful or interesting things that could be included: date of purchase, original or […]
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