1970s
graeme.thomson
We surely all know the story of Sixto Rodriguez by now. The Detroit-born singer-songwriter made two fine albums in the early 1970s, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, before swiftly vanishing. As he descended into obscurity his music slowly rose to find its audience, most notably in South Africa, where he became a star in absentia and a blank canvas upon which numerous outlandish myths could be projected: he was in jail for murder; he was a heroin addict; he was dead; he had committed suicide on stage.The recent documentary Searching for Sugar Man tells the story of his musical resurrection Read more ...
theartsdesk
10cc: TenologyKieron Tyler10cc occupied a strange place. Balancing cleverness and humour, pop and the musically complex with an archness that was never far, they nonetheless managed to fix themselves, limpet-like, to charts. As this, their first box set, amply makes clear, they were about more than the singles and well-known albums like The Original Soundtrack. The four CDs and DVD reveal 10cc as mad scientists whose inventions were more disciplined than the complex stew of ingredients would suggest.Tenology – geddit: a typically 10cc-ish pun on phrenological head on the cover – Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The remix album is an ungainly beast. The worst feel like a sign of creative bankruptcy while even the best feel like a shameless cash-in on a successful project. Hopelessly devoted fans might still call it a win-win situation, but to outside ears it doesn't matter how hot the hotshot producers are, the lingering echo of a remix album is often the sound of a product being milked dry.And so to Mogwai's A Wrenched Virile Lore, which takes it cue from 2011’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (the title is almost an anagram, a remix, of the earlier title). The genre-trouncing Glaswegians have Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Jam: The GiftThomas H GreenGiven his continued artistic renaissance, it’s currently rather unfashionable to suggest Paul Weller was never better than with The Jam. Nonetheless, a trawl through their back catalogue will assure most this was the case. Musically, it’s arguable but lyrically it’s definitive. The Gift was The Jam’s sixth and final album, released in the spring of 1982. The trio were at the peak of their powers, riding chart success that melded punk’s snarl with Weller’s suburban angst, including, in “Going Underground”, one of the greatest and most furious songs ever to hit Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia AlbumsKieron TylerThis box set is several cuts above the usual major-label, no-frills cheapo collection gathering together a selection of an artist’s albums. Produced with evident care, it’s a superb tribute to a distinctive soul great. The clam-shell box contains Withers’ nine albums, originally issued between 1971 and 1985. Each disc comes in a card reproduction of the original album sleeve, even including a facsimile of the fold-out triptych cover to 1972’s Still Bill. Liner notes, annotation and a brief, newly written introduction from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ennio Morricone: In ColourKieron TylerThe recent release of Berberian Sound Studio raised the level of interest in Italian film soundtracks. From the moment Ennio Morricone’s compositions for the spaghetti westerns of the Sixties attracted attention, it became obvious that Italy operated to a different metronome than the other filmmaking nations. Morricone will always be a prime interest, not least because he has made so much music, in a bewildering array of styles. This exceptionally good value, neatly packaged clam-shell box collects eight of his soundtracks from 1969-1979 over four discs. Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Pop is a cruel mistress. Watching numerous BBC4 rockumentaries, such as the recent one on Squeeze, a pattern emerges. You make it, go through an imperial phase when you can do no wrong, then the honeymoon ends. The records are still great but the parade has moved on. This struck me again listening to the 10th studio album from Madness, which comes complete with a classy Peter Blake sleeve design. But despite plenty of TV coverage and an unforgettably moving profile-boosting performance of “Our House” on the Buck House roof at the Diamond Jubilee concert I cannot see this album topping the Read more ...
David Nice
The prospect of adventuring from one unpredictable day to the next in the course of Michael Tippett’s Triple Concerto, and from dawn to twilight in just over an hour’s orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring, seemed very much weighted in the English composer’s favour. Frankly, had Mark Wigglesworth only conducted Siegfried’s Funeral March in this concert’s second half, he would have consolidated an already glowing reputation as a top-notch Wagnerian. That he and the BBC Symphony Orchestra burned their symphonic way through Dutch percussionist Henk de Vlieger’s audacious, unbroken “orchestral Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Over the past few years, the 1970s have made a cultural comeback. On television, there’s been Life on Mars and White Heat, in the bookshops tomes by Dominic Sandbrook, in the theatre revivals of plays such as Abigail’s Party, all to the soundtrack of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The decade that time forgot has become the decade you can’t escape. But can a documentary about the Westminster politics of 1974-79 really make gripping drama?At first the signs seemed almost positive. After all, the cast includes Philip Glenister - Mr Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes - and the live soundtrack Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Even now, as revelation after revelation about what really went on backstage at Television Centre in the 1970s play out in the tabloids, there seems something almost wholesome about the heyday of the televised beauty pageant. Compared to the daily barrage of heavily sexualised images we are bombarded with from the moment we wake as consumers of contemporary culture - bare arses before the watershed, fake orgasms selling shampoo, Kate Middleton’s tits on the evening news - the swimsuits the contenders paraded up and down in looked positively demure.Beneath the surface, however, there’s Read more ...
theartsdesk
A.R. Kane: Complete Singles CollectionJoe MuggsIn my early teens, circa 1988, certain records would appear on The Chart Show indie chart countdown on a Saturday morning, records that hinted disquietingly at something far beyond the standard categories of rock, dance, indie and the rest. “Birthday” by The Sugarcubes, for example, or “You Made me Realise” by My Bloody Valentine. Perhaps the one that haunted me most, though, was “Baby Milk Snatcher” by A.R. Kane, a narcotic fog of blurred guitars, dub echoes and an insistent, insinuating vocal that obeyed only its own idiosyncratic rules of Read more ...
theartsdesk
R.E.M.: Document 25th Anniversary EditionKieron TylerAlthough the band themselves have not lasted out the 25 years since the release of their fifth album Document, R.E.M. haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. The memory will live, fed by reissues. Document built on the more straightforward approach of its predecessor, Lifes Rich Pageant, and was issued in the wake of their breakthrough hit “The One I Love”. A re-promoted “It’s the End of the World as we Know it (and I Feel Fine)” gave them another hit in early 1988. Both singles were included on the album. At this point R.E.M. were Read more ...