Friends of Vinyl Connection will know of the interest we have in the Australian World Record Club for its marvellous album cover designs of the sixties and early seventies. I want to share with you one of my favourites, acquired recently from Mrs Helen Cameron of Keilor Park (via my local Op Shop). Picking up […]
This is the final instalment in the thoroughly incomplete ‘1967’ series. The other two dozen albums can be found here. Seems fitting to end with the incendiary, psychedelic music of Jimi Hendrix and his second release from that storied year. Steven Newstead returns to take us on a tour of Jimi’s cosmos… There was a lot […]
It’s a Friday night in the late nineties. Steven and I are lounging around talking shit about music. A single slice of Capricciosa sits uneasily in the grease-stained box and half a bottle of red stands on the coffee table. The pizza gets ignored; we’re either too full or too polite to take it. Not […]
It opens with a delicate piano piece, an ambient overture. “The struggle of the magicians, part three”. Credited to composer Thomas De Hartmann and mystic cum guru Gurdjieff (1866 – 1949), this is a lovely neo-classical piece that seduces with a gently pastoral beauty suggesting the magicians aren’t straining too hard. Next is a wispy […]
1957 Folk, Pops ‘n Jazz Sampler [Elektra SMP-3] Country tunes rub shoulders with calypso jazz in this time capsule from the early days of long-playing records, when tracks were known as ‘Bands’ and the previous volume was available for $2 from your dealer. At $17.50 in today’s money, that seems quite expensive. Love the album […]
We’ve all bought magazines with ‘free’ CDs. Sometimes for the mag, other times for the disc, occasionally for the challenge of removing the latter from the former without destroying the cover… but what about a magazine with an LP attached? Or is it an LP hidden in a magazine? First published in Germany in October […]
My first job in tertiary Student Services was at an Institute of Technology in the industrial inner-west of Melbourne. The institution was, in all truth, more interesting than my job. But the team was diverse and lively, and it was here I first entertained the notion of becoming a counsellor. It would mean more study, […]
Compilations. Collections of tracks by various artists. They have been around as long as long-playing records and aren’t stopping any time soon. We’ve bought them, made them, mocked them and sometimes even played them. They are ubiquitous. Everyone has some, everyone files them differently. Various Artists. Compiled albums. They include tacky TV specials and curated […]
Are you onboard with Kraftwerk? The Deutsche electronic music pioneers are far better known now than when they created their definitive romantic/ascetic albums in the seventies. In fact a halo of electronic divinity now surrounds a band whose membership grew then shrunk and at one point even toured a set of robotic dummies instead of […]
Here we are at the last post (cue mournful bugle) of the 1977 series. And how better to wrap it up than by highlighting albums named by Vinyl Connection readers as favourites from that fruitful and varied year. Enjoy. * 7 Talking Heads—Talking Heads: 77 A strange yet fascinating oddity; tense with studied nonchalance like […]
In the penultimate instalment of the Ten From ’77 series we have five albums whose only commonality is their position on the edge (or in some cases, way outside) the domain of pop music. At Vinyl Connection, forays into lesser known territories are infrequent, yet it is off the well-trodden path that most of my […]
10 Steve Khan — Tightrope I first encountered Steve Khan’s name in the credits for other artists… Steely Dan, Michael Franks, The Brecker Brothers… this was clearly an in-demand guitarist of great talent. So when I found the first album under his own name, it was not at all difficult to take a punt. Opening […]
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