In November 1975, UK music weekly New Musical Express included an article by Charles Shaar Murray titled “Are You Alive To The Jive Of The Sound Of '75.” Recently in New York, he was revealing what he had discovered.The bands looked at – and he saw most saw live – in his prescient round-up were Blondie, The Heartbreakers – “the first N.Y. punk supergroup” – a “new-look” New York Dolls, The Ramones, The Shirts, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television and Tuff Darts. Image Central to what he covered in this remarkable role call was a venue: the Read more ...

For Richard Hawley, a “little banger” is a top-notch single, one condensing everything about the performance and performer into what can he held on one side of a seven-incher. A flab-free, power-packed record. And it’s a mark of his discrimination that anything fitting the bill is a grade-A killer.Little Bangers From Richard Hawley's Jukebox Volume Two follows-up a correspondingly styled comp issued in 2023. As before, 28 tracks are selected: indeed, the first collection was titled 28 Little Bangers From Richard Hawley's Jukebox. For a second time, Link Wray crops up. This time, well-known Read more ...

“One pure sonofabitch 45. The record to put them high in the national charts. Top five at least.” In October 1976, the weekly music paper Sounds was unequivocal about Eddie and the Hot Rods’ “Teenage Depression” single.Over at Melody Maker, the tone was similarly frothing: “Everything about the single [released 29 October] works – the explosive power, the convincing presence and the intense sound. They are the first of the new-wave punk bands to trail blaze into the national chart.” Image Depending on how their music was defined, this was so Read more ...

Following the 2010 release of The Fallen By Watch Bird, Jane Weaver has gone on to issue a further four conventional albums – there are also remix sets, reconfigurations, collaborations and soundtracks. A new album is planned for 2026.Before the release of The Fallen By Watch Bird, Weaver had issued two albums, a mini album and was a member of Kill Laura and Misty Dixon. She first appeared on record in 1992. Image Looking for markers within all this is evidently a challenge. Which releases are the most significant, the ones marking step- Read more ...

The opening track  – “Ālibek’agnimi” (“አልበቃኝም” in its original title) – is a cool, close-to six-minute soul instrumental on which the organ suggests an at-least passing familiarity with Booker T. Jones. The tempo is slow, the moodiness enhanced by a smoky, wandering saxophone.Next, the similarly lengthy “Ānichī keto gidi yeleshimi” (“አንቺ ከቶ ግድ የለሺም”). Slightly less leisurely, its clipped guitar follows a reggae pattern. Again, despite a section of keyboard vamping and stabbing brass, the saxophone is what stands out. Wandering up and down the scale it then settles, fusing Read more ...

Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong is the debut album by the London-based duo Woo. Originally issued on the Sunshine Series imprint in May 1982, it was subsequently picked up for a 1987 US release by the LA-based Independent Project Records label. After this, Woo's second album, It's Cosy Inside, came out in 1989 on Independent Project Records. There was no UK version of the follow-up album back then; a US reissue on Drag City followed in 2012.When Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong appeared in the UK in 1982, NME’s review said “How strange that in a year so packed Read more ...

“This is our last concert, ever. And we’d love to do you for now on our last concert ever…” After the words peter out, a ragged, yet blistering, five-minute version of “(I Can’t Get no) Satisfaction” explodes from the stage. Show over, The Rolling Stones leave Hawaii’s Honolulu International Center to…what?It’s not as noteworthy a stitch in rock’s rich tapestry as David Bowie’s 3 July 1973 announcement at the Hammersmith Odeon that “not only is it the last show of the tour, but it's the last show that we'll ever do.” Or even George Harrison’s “that's it, then. I'm not a Beatle anymore” Read more ...

The stylish gentlemen pictured above are Crimson Earth, a band active from 1970 to 1976. Regardless of their longevity, the Dorset-based outfit failed to attract national attention and didn’t release any records. There was an audition for EMI, local media support and a deal with a Bristol booking agency but cigars were not forthcoming.Even so, a 1972 tape of the band has been disinterred and one track from it – the explosive, irresistible “Heathen Woman” – was included earlier this year on the agenda-setting Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy!!, an extraordinary, wild-ride compilation of never- Read more ...

UK prog-rockers Gracious! acquired their exclamation mark when their first album was released in July 1970. Up to this point, they were Gracious. Barney Bubbles, who designed their LP’s sleeve, added the symbol without asking or telling anyone.The sleight typifies the story of Gracious! The band had breaks, but their path through the music business was bumpy. They recorded a second album between January and March 1971, but split in August that year before it was scheduled for release. When the LP was issued in April 1972 the band were not informed. The label “just flopped it out there with no Read more ...

Heard now, 50 years after its release, Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon sounds like what it became: part of the musical template for Jean-Michel Jarre’s 1976 international breakthrough and also as an integral component of the records The Orb began attracting attention with in the early Nineties. Beyond the aesthetic ripples, a specific aspect of the May 1975 album was and is also significant.Rubycon was one of the first albums by a rock – in its loosest meaning – band to seamlessly incorporate the use of a sequencer. Those with the budget for the gear and the attendant technical know-how could Read more ...

The opening track initially seems straightforward. To begin “Sons of Art,” Michael Garrick runs up and down his piano keyboard. Norma Winstone adds wordless vocals which weave in and out of his sparkling arpeggios. Then, the bass arrives. Drums kick in. So do the tenor sax and trumpet. After a climax around the two-minute mark, what begins as pacific turns turbulent. The conventional has become unpredictably experimental.To conclude the album, an extraordinary nine-minute piece which, on one hand, sounds like dawn breaking and, on the other, a collision between the contrapuntal and a free- Read more ...

Axis: Bold As Love, the second album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, was released in the UK during the first week of December 1967. In America, it came out in January 1968. Now, it is the subject of a multi-disc box set titled Bold As Love.Why this puzzling new title – “Bold as Love” is the track closing the album – has been chosen is unknown. No reason for losing the word “Axis” is given in the accompanying book, or in the promotional material: which describes this as a “box set containing [the] landmark 1967 album Axis: Bold As Love.” Image Read more ...