Being a report from the arrival lounge of a hopeless music addict, with annotations. Day Three Holidays are great for Vinyl Hunter-Gatherers. First stop is Goldmine CDs & Records. Even though the used vinyl holding is much smaller than the ‘New’ section, it often comes through with a couple of interesting LPs or at least a […]
In these parts the financial year begins on 1st July. A good time for fiscal resolutions and for a vinyl addict with fast diminishing storage space and finite resources to ponder stemming – or at least reducing – the flow. The original idea was to have a purchase-free month. Catch up with some listening. Cleanse […]
My friend over the back fence invited me to come and hear his latest LP. Greg was two days older than me and we’d been playmates since our Mums met on the maternity ward. But in terms of musical sophistication, Greg was years, worlds, away from me. Not in terms of understanding how music worked; […]
Last Friday in Melbourne was chilly. Cold even. Not altogether surprising, it’s winter and we’ve just passed the shortest day. But there was activity in the suburbs, as Vinyl Connection presented a Live Music Trivia Quiz at one of our favourite Record Stores, Quality Records…plus. It is a lovely store, with books, DVDs and CDs […]
On 28th June 1969 the self-titled album by Crosby, Stills & Nash entered the US charts. It reached #6 and stayed around for an impressive 100 weeks. Two singles were released – Nash’s jaunty ‘Marrakesh Express’ and Stills’ extended ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ – both reaching the Top 30. So much for the data. What […]
True Colours was the fifth album by New Zealand band Split Enz. It is a lively, tuneful, sometimes edgy, sometimes melancholy pop rock treat. The album’s first single ‘I Got You’, was supremely catchy, highly successful, and written by the latest addition to the band, twenty-one year old Neil Finn. First, an executive summary of the Split […]
Along the broad and crowded highway of record collecting there are some fascinating diversions. One I enjoy involves albums that appear with different sleeves in different parts of the world. It is not a particular obsession of mine; I have several, but we need to know each other better for them to be revealed in […]
Perhaps the only truly honest concert recordings are ‘bootlegs’: verbatim transcriptions of what happened on a particular night on a particular stage. Containing and disclosing all the fluctuations in energy, rambling introductions, musical missteps and extraneous noises just as they were, they truly tell it like it was. Not surprisingly, bootlegs tend to be the […]
One of the first ‘live in concert’ recordings I connected with was “Yessongs”. A sprawling preposterous triple live album with a fold-out Roger Dean cover to match, it was large canvas. The compositions of Yes were complex and structured, executed with dextrous musicianship; they needed the space. To feel the charge and brio surging through […]
Record covers encapsulate both art and functionality. They convey information through words and images, via style or typeface, they invite or confront, reveal or mislead. Some of my favourites radiate a sense of place that reaches out across time and space, tickling wonder and tugging at imagination. “Late for the sky” with its daylight sky […]
As far as travelling was concerned, I was a late starter. Most of the people I knew had been somewhere outside of Australia, even if it was just a package trip to Bali (cue song, Redgum, 1984). Many had done the Europe thing and had come back somehow wiser, more knowing, more confident… more something. […]
Just recently someone said that the city where I live has more record shops per capita than anywhere else. The claim may not be factual, of course; there are always hollow boastful claims being made about something or other. But I want it to be true because that is what I call a liveable city. […]
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