Since publishing our recent feature, co-authored with special guest contributor Gromit, there has been a flurry of activity at the Vinyl Connection letters desk. Here is a selection. * G’day mate. Got this really unusual album, released in 2009. Sort of punky energy with some really wild squalls of noise above deep underlying grooves. There’s a […]
For those unfamiliar with British slang, the word ‘supergrass’ was a media invented term for a Premier league police informer. It appeared in the early 70s as part of the circus around some high-profile trials of underworld figures. For folk who don’t know the British band Supergrass, they were formed in 1994. Their first album […]
On the Vinyl Connection coffee table is On Some Faraway Beach, David Sheppard’s 2008 biography of Brian Eno. It is a substantial and thoroughly researched tome covering the birth, growth, education and unfolding of non-musician Brian Peter George Jean-Baptiste de la Salle Eno. Sheppard even demystifies the preposterous name. Now Mr Eno is a most interesting […]
The Sixties began in the summer of 1956, ended in the October of 1973 and peaked just before dawn in 1 July, 1967 during a set by Tomorrow at the UFO Club in London. So begins the entertaining memoir of Joe Boyd, educated middle-class American and key player in the much mythologised ‘swinging London’ scene […]
An occasional series featuring LPs boasting ‘fine art’ on their covers, with words about the music and something about the art #1 PROCOL HARUM – Exotic Birds and Fruit [1974] THE MUSIC By 1974, the massive success of Procol Harum’s debut single was a long time gone. Not that the band had disappeared; more gently but […]
There was a time when one of Vinyl Connection’s favourite recreations was reading a print biography of an artist while concurrently working through their catalogue of recordings. Soundtracking a music journey, you could say. Genesis, Fleetwood Mac, Zappa – all have provided entertaining reads and enjoyable playlists. A more recent print adventure was the idea […]
As part of a rationalisation of his music storage and delivery system, my friend BB gave me a box of CDs to take along to the next Record Fair. Comprising largely jazz from the more exploratory end of the spectrum and progressive music of the kind that defies genre labelling, BB had transferred the music […]
A gentle four note phrase hovers, a small colourful bird on the wing, leading, beckoning, from bush to branch. It is still, early, a breath of dew on the lawn where lines of cut grass betray yesterday’s mowing. The bird trills as the light brightens, slowly at first. The melody becomes more insistent. Then the […]
Summer at Vinyl Connection often means a beach holiday, preferably with some walking options nearby to satisfy the more active half of the VC partnership. This year we have just returned from ten days in Gippsland, a coastal region two hours south-east of Melbourne. When the weather does not shout ‘Beach!’, we visit various towns and […]
So here is the Vinyl Connection New Year’s Resolution: To post a weekly diary of all – I mean all – new music arrivals at Base Camp Connection. The good, the bad (as in “that’s really, bad, man”) and the ugly. It’s been tried before and lasted two posts, there has been a holiday edition, even an […]
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING A reflection in two parts by a grateful subject I Has there been a more spine tingling opening to an album than the beginning of In The Court Of The Crimson King? An interstellar wind approaches from the depths of nowhere, fades, then explodes into one of the […]
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more” Players who departed in 2014 included… * Rik Mayall [March 7, 1958 – 9 June, 2014] Tommy Ramone [January 29, 1952 – July 11, 2014] Doc Neeson (The Angels) [January 4, 1947 […]
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