The stereo in our living area has an old Sony CD player that clunks a bit but still works fine. I could replace it, but it has a capacity that is sometimes very useful. It is a five-disc changer. For those unfamiliar with such fancy modern technology, this machine allows you to load up to […]
A breeze skating a frozen pond. A face that doesn’t match its name. Wonder and anguish entwined. The task of capturing the elusive, strangled beauty of Talk Talk. I could try to net these butterfly phrases, compile them, pin them, offer them to you in a month or two as a display-board eulogy for Mark […]
I don’t often pre-order records. Has to be something pretty special and I have to be feeling expansive (pre-ords are always expensive) and patient (the lead time is usually considerable). But having missed out on the multi-CD issue of Bowie At The Beeb back at the turn of the century, I was determined not to […]
Here is the second part of an archeological post featuring 1969 albums that have appeared at Vinyl Connection over the past six years. The month (in brackets after the title) shows the release date (if known) and there is a link to the original post. Despite the passage of half a century, there is some […]
Prior to 2017’s Tomorrow Forever, the last Matthew Sweet album of original material was 2011’s Modern Art. In between was the third volume of Under The Covers, the charming series recorded by Sweet and ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs. Matthew Sweet’s personal circumstances had changed considerably in the intervening years: he re-located away from Los Angeles to […]
You are a young guitarist, talented and hard-working, and join a band of school mates. It’s 1967 and everyone is forming bands, so why not? And this one has promise, it records a debut album in 1969 that is well-regarded but doesn’t sell a whole lot, possibly because of its biblical title or maybe because […]
It is utterly impossible to view Led Zeppelin without filters. Their image as quintessential ‘rock gods’ of the seventies, the bombast of the music, an incredible popularity that endures to the present… in some ways they have become untouchable. The curation of the Zeppelin catalogue has been restrained compared to some (hello Estate Hendrix!) and […]
Minimalist composer Steve Reich turned 82 during 2018. (Interestingly, his musical peers Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Philip Glass all became octogenarians in the last couple of years too). So Reich has been pursuing his singular exploration of repetition and phase for a lifetime. Pulse/Quartet was released this year on the Nonesuch label. It […]
As many readers know, we love anniversaries here at Vinyl Connection, especially the ones ending with a zero. One decade, two decades, three decades, four… And of course the half century! Over the past couple of years we have featured many albums from 1967 and 1968 and reckon it’s a tradition worth continuing. But because […]
…I WANTED TO TELL YOU ABOUT BUT RAN OUT OF TIME Here then, in synopsis, are a batch of brilliant LPs any twenty-first century collection should be proud to include. This post should be read in the context of the entire year of 1968 features; here we have an addendum, not a summary. The ranking […]
I remember the first copy vividly. Bentleigh Sewing and Records, that oddest of retail combinations, lurked down the western end of Centre Road, owned by veteran sole-trader Bill McAndrew. Those entering his domain seeking records had first to negotiate the labyrinth of sewing machines and associated paraphernalia that crammed the front of the shop. As […]
A while back, in response to what I perceived as heinous omissions from a well-known book, I began compiling a list of “101 More Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”. I thought this addendum could provide a focus for occasional Vinyl Connection posts. Sadly, the project stalled, largely because I couldn’t get the list […]
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