Tag Archives: album reviews
CAPTAIN’S STRANGE VOYAGE
One of the wonderful things about popular music is the way it has splintered into a thousand sparkling threads, like a fireworks display in slow motion. There are more genres, sub-sections, and styles than could be examined in a lifetime… and it all started less than seventy years ago. Yet despite the best efforts of […]
MEETIN’ JIMMY SMITH
Growing up in a musical family, young Jimmy Smith learned piano and later, double bass. When he switched to organ in the mid-1950s after hearing Wild Bill Davis, Jimmy combined the two instrumental skills, utilising the bass pedals of his Hammond B3 to fill out the lower end of his sound. While this made the […]
ROLLING THUNDER REVIEW
A number of Bob Dylan’s 60s songs have become part of the tapestry of popular culture. He was a lightning rod for the folk revival and the emerging protest movement. As a result, it is tempting to think of Dylan as an introverted singer-songwriter, a strumming folkie who presents his songs in an unassuming way […]
CONTRACT OF LOVE
He is a powerful voice backed by a forceful band, an entertainer who shirtfronts his fans while elevating them; a singer-poet-preacher who roars about suffering while channelling exaltation. He is Warracknabeal born global citizen Nick Cave, and his latest album is Wild God. If you follow Cave’s music, you already know that Wild God has […]
MUSIC VON HARMONIA
Although the German Top 40 of the late Sixties and early Seventies remained resolutely traditional and cringingly bland, elsewhere this was a highly creative time for German rock music. Beyond the safe confines of radio-friendly singles dwelt tribes of restlessly inventive and determinedly non-Anglo-American musicians creating some of the most interesting and exciting music of […]
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A buzzing, industrial sound, a bass pulse, somewhere in the distance a noise, a scream. Distorted guitars offer a grinding melody that rolls like a broad dark river cluttered with storm flotsam. The tune evokes “Oh Shenandoah”, a classic American folk song. After a couple of minutes, when the melody is kicked up an octave, […]
1974 COUNTDOWN | #35 — #31
#35 EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER — WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS… Being a fan of keyboard-driven progressive music there was never any doubt about acquiring EL&P’s document of the Brain Salad Surgery tour, released in August 1974. In one sense it is an overblown example of the live record plugging the previous studio album: every song from BSS is here. […]
1974 COUNTDOWN | #59 — #55
#59 DAN FOGELBERG — SOUVENIRS With Joe Walsh on guitars, Don Henley and Glen Frey guesting, plus backing vocals from Graham Nash, you could be forgiven for thinking Dan Fogelberg was a cut-price one-man Eagles. Except Souvenirs is no mark-down album, offering great songs in a melodic country-rock vein. This is an LP I taped […]
1974 COUNTDOWN | #64 — #60
#64 STEVIE WONDER — FULFILLINGNESS’ FIRST FINALE Compared to the sharp-edged focus of Innervisions, FFF is a mellow affair. Working pretty much on his own, Wonder delivers a selection of fine songs which are broadly about relationships and the journey of connection. “Boogie on reggae woman” and “You ain’t done nothin’” are obvious standouts; surely […]
1974 COUNTDOWN | #74—#70
#74 MACKENZIE THEORY — BON VOYAGE How fitting to begin another COUNTDOWN voyage with an album called Bon Voyage. How ironic saying “Hello” to another epic trek through more than six dozen albums (selected from a pool of around three hundred) with a ritual phrase of farewell. How ambivalent was your correspondent about attempting this […]
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