Karen Black’s connection with music was never hidden. In Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville she played a country singer. In 1970’s Five Easy Pieces she was a would-be country singer. In Nashville, two of the songs she sang were self-penned. She also dueted with Kris Kristofferson in 1972’s Cisco Pike.

A new band called the Sex Pistols played their fifth live show on 28 November 1975. The appearance at a ball at Kensington’s Queen Elizabeth College got them their first mention in the press. New Musical Express remarked “they are all about 12 years old. Or could be 19.”

Instability coursed through the Yardbirds in 1966. When their first studio album Yardbirds was issued in July, the band seen on stage was not the one which had made the album. Bassist and in-house producer Paul Samwell-Smith had left between its recording and release. His replacement was session player Jimmy Page. In time, Page switched to guitar to play alongside Jeff Beck, and guitarist Chris Dreja moved to bass. Next, Beck was off and the new four-piece Yardbirds had one guitarist: Jimmy Page.

Rory Graham’s first words as he comes on stage are: “Well this is a bit weird, isn't it? It's been a while.” After a run of cancelled gigs, the band haven’t performed live for a year and a half – which feels, says Rory, “a bit like missing a testicle.”

Anatomy aside, we all get it. While I knew how much I had missed live music, the depth of intense emotional response to this band's sound and lyrics; the overwhelming energy connection between artist and audience and the transformative healing power of music is another level at this gig.

The latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl combines the best new sounds on plastic with the vinyl reissues that are pressing buttons. Ranging from heavy rockin’ book-style boxsets to the funkiest summertime 7”s, all musical life is here. Dive in.

VINYL OF THE MONTH

This Is The Deep The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1) (B3)

Empty Sky, Elton John’s first album was released in June 1969. Now, an album titled Regimental Sgt. Zippo has turned up. It’s marketed as “The debut album that never was.” The 12 tracks are annotated loosely as having been recorded from November 1967 to May 1968.

While recognisably a John Grant album, Boy From Michigan brings on board something new and unprecedented – an outside producer. Welcome, Cate Le Bon. Among her previous production credits are Deerhoof and Tim Presley, whom she’s collaborated with on an album. As these and her own releases attest, she’s not going to steer anyone towards the mainstream.

With a third wave of Covid-19 being widely predicted in the media and the UK live music scene still not back on its feet after the last one, audiences must take their gigs however they are served up. Given the news coverage, I admit to having visions of the Hare and Hounds being set up like a school examinations room, but in the event it was not so bad.

Dungen’s October 2005 appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien was incongruous. Here was a Swedish band on an independent label, singing in their native language, playing live on coast-to-coast mainstream US TV. The show’s host making a great play in his intro of trying to pronounce their name compounded the sense that this was a band of outsiders which had been mistakenly invited to the banquet.

In its first issue of 1979, Melody Maker included an article by Jon Savage on a Los Angeles band named Screamers. “They're ambitious, talented and they want it all NOW,” he wrote. “And they'd sell their grannies (if they have any left) to get it.” He noted their “astute combination of the right proportion of the familiar and the novel, highly, saleable. They're really quite concerned about that particular aspect.”