I remember where but not which. The shop was in Princes Gate Arcade, down the end in a kind of cul-de-sac where only record hunters and lost commuters ended up. I remember a big window, counter, racks—sparsely distributed around a loungeroom-sized space—and bean bags where you could audition an LP of your choice under headphones […]
Considered to be the Big Bang of the Summer of Love, Monterey International Pop Music Festival (to present its full and rather ambitious name) was conceived and planned by a small group led by John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas. Their hope was to give pop music the status awarded to jazz and […]
Where do you file your ‘Various Artists’ albums? By title in the A-Z? In their own section? Luckily that’s not what we are here to discuss and anyway it was extensively canvassed not long ago. Today we’re here to pay respect to one of the best compilations of all time, Nuggets. Curated by guitarist Lenny […]
It has been a very spiritual week here at Vinyl Connection. This, I hasten to observe, has nothing to do with matters of belief, but to the arrival of two albums that explore, in very different ways, the meditative state. Alice Coltrane founded the Sai Anantam Ashra ashram in 1983 and ran it until she […]
Syd Barrett and The Pink Floyd invented salted caramel in 1967 [Hieronymus Botch, Paisley Curtains website] While Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason studied architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic in London, Syd Barrett enrolled in Art and Design at the Cambridge School of Art. Contemporaries of young Syd, interviewed later on the strength of […]
I’ve got a bike. You can ride it if you like It’s got a basket, a bell that rings and Things to make it look good. I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.* Despite painful learning as to the aptness of the name ‘stinging nettles’, it was one of the […]
Sometimes you miss music the first time around. That was true for me and Jimi Hendrix, the man who set fire to the cosy cottage of sixties pop music. The ex-paratrooper landed with a multi-hued explosion in the UK, producing not one but two key albums in the seminal year of 1967. Old friend and […]
In 1977, being on a trial separation from the University of Melbourne (it ended in divorce) I was working at Max Rose Electronics in suburban Melbourne. At the time I was deeply into prog heavyweights Yes for the playing, the complexity, even the unfathomable lyrics. All the things smart-arse music journalists were queuing up to […]
There are 40+ Tangerine Dream albums in the Vinyl Connection collection~. Apart from the obvious focus on synthesisers and electronic devices, the one thing they all have in common is Edgar Froese. Herr Froese founded the experimental band in 1967 (more about the beginnings here) and was at the helm through many journeys: as they […]
We’ve spent quite a lot of time in 1967 recently. (Running tally here) Time to pogo forward ten years to 1977 and one of the ‘first wave’ punk bands, The Vibrators. Pure Mania was released in June 1977 Is it ‘true’ punk? There is some debate amongst sad (now middle-aged) former punks as to whether […]
Ever had those mid-week, demanding-boss, traffic-jam, forgot-to-get-milk-on-the-way-home-so-partner-was-pissed-off blues? If it was 1967 you had a number of musical options to sooth your troubled western mostly-white electric-urban-blues soul. Loose the bad vibes, lose the hyphenated sentences, enter the transatlantic none-more-blue worlds of John Mayall and Paul Butterfield. You might imagine John Mayall was dismayed by the […]
Back in the seventies I listened to quite a few singer-songwriters as I made a feeble attempt to be one myself. Wrote a few tunes, performed at a few threadbare church-connected coffee shops, gave it away (both the church part and the songwriting). But along the way, I listened to some artists who really were […]
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