Vinyl Connection approached Mike Rudd, founder of Australian rock legends Spectrum, Ariel and various other musical entities, for a cyberchat. Mike kindly consented. VC: Anniversaries are often a mixed blessing. How did you approach this particular milestone: fifty years? (By the way, what actually happened in 1969?) MR: Well, to start off with, the 50thtag […]
The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones No.2 Out Of Our Heads Aftermath Between The Buttons Their Satanic Majesties Request Derided by some at the time as a second-rate Sgt Pepper or a cynical (and late) cash in on so-called Summer of Love psychedelia, Their Satanic Majesties Request is, simply put, neither. Full of great uses […]
Hear It Is Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips Telepathic Surgery In A Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares) Hit To Death In The Future Head Transmissions From The Satellite Heart By the mid-90s Compact Discs were the only game in town for listening to music. Prices had dropped and the volume being sold meant […]
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn A Saucerful Of Secrets More Ummagumma (½ live–½ studio) Atom Heart Mother Meddle Meddle (1971) was the first Pink Floyd album I owned. Purchased second-hand from Bentleigh Sewing & Records, probably in late 1973 or early ’74, its centrepiece, the side-long “Echoes” mesmerised me as I sat in the […]
The first Vinyl Connection post was on 10 May 2013. Six years later, forty-odd posts shy of 500, we’re still going. From a personal perspective, 2019 has thrown up challenges to posting regularly. I’m not complaining, mind you. To grizzle about having paid writing work would be disingenuous and just plain wrong. But I do […]
Richard Anthony Mansour, child of a Lebanese father and a mother with Polish-Belarusian roots, died on 16 March 2019 at age 81. Known to the world as Dick Dale, the guitarist credited as a founding force in the creation of surf guitar had a sound that was big on reverb and steeped in middle-eastern scales. […]
My mate Steven (writer of the Vinyl Connection Hendrix posts) passed on a copy of the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ DVDs. For those unfamiliar with this revered TV music show, it ran from 1971 to 1988 in the UK, featuring an eclectic array of rock artists performing in a tiny studio. The DVDs include comments […]
Coinciding with the recent-ish release of Bevis Frond’s latest album, We’re Your Friends, Man, Vinyl Connection was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with the band’s founder and well-spring, Nick Saloman. VC: Hello Nick. Thanks for talking to Vinyl Connection once again. NS: Always a pleasure, Bruce VC: Congratulations on the latest release. A […]
As mentioned recently, Vinyl Connection was delighted to have a chance to meet and greet the latest Bevis Frond album. We’re Your Friends, Man was released late in 2018 and is a genuine old-fashioned double album containing 20 slabs of fresh Frondness spread across two CDs or four sides of vinyl. For those not familiar […]
A cold winter’s day in England; frost layering the ground even mid-morning. But I didn’t care, I was visiting Stonehenge for the first time and totally in thrall to the mystery of these most famous standing stones. I envied those who had visited them in the past, being able to walk between the towering neolithic […]
When it came to writing songs for his first solo album after leaving Steely Dan, Donald Fagen heeded that timeless advice to authors, write about what you know. The record was The Nightfly and the year was 1982, though you wouldn’t know it from the cover. Fagen is photographed in a Peter Gunn era radio […]
You know how in Facebook there are those little numbers in red squares that magically appear? What are they about? Some appear to be called ‘Notifications’ but often are just FB trying to sell marketing tools. Others seem to be congratulating me on someone liking something. It all seems so trivial and pointless I usually […]
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