sun 08/09/2024

1970s

Music Reissues Weekly: Peter Baumann - Phase by Phase: The Virgin Albums

When the first solo album by Tangerines Dream’s Peter Baumann was released in the US in 1977, its promotion was striking. Press advertising (pictured below left) said “he possesses the infinite vision that has made his group one of the most...

Read more...

A Chorus Line, Sadler's Wells review - high-kicking fun that's low on pathos

A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musical theatre’s hoofers in the spotlight. “As welcome as a rainbow after a thunderstorm” was Clive Barnes’s summation in the New York Times.It...

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Sex Pistols - Looking For a Kiss in Kristinehamn

After Sex Pistols have played “New York,” the fourth song in their set, someone from the audience shouts “Anarchy in the U.K.” "We've already played it, you fucking idiot" responds Sid Vicious. They have. It was the first song they did at...

Read more...

Album: X - Smoke & Fiction

X, although beloved of music journalists, are one of American punk’s most under-acknowledged. They took a tilt at fame in the mid-Eighties with the radio-friendly Ain’t Love Grand album and its lead single “Burning House of Love”, but it wasn’t to...

Read more...

Album: Blues Pills - Birthday

Swedish-American four-piece Blues Pills are new to this writer but have been around since 2011. Their fourth album makes me wonder why.Of its 11 songs, judged purely on sheer pop-rock chops, nine have real legs. If a friend had put Birthday on and...

Read more...

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery includes many of the artists’s most iconic political photomontages. Beginning in the 1970s, Kennard created images that by speaking truth to power, gave protest movements like CND (...

Read more...

Blu-ray: The Conversation

“I don’t care what they’re talking about,” says the best bugger in the business, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). “I just want a nice fat tape.”In the minor-key masterpiece Francis Ford Coppola made in the brief interlude between The Godfather (...

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Tomorrow's Fashions - Library Electronica 1972-1987

The conundrum central to library music is that it was not meant to be listened to in any normal way. Yet, in time, this is what happened. What ended up on the albums pressed by companies like Bruton, Chappell, De Wolfe and others was heard by...

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Barry Ryan - The Albums 1969-1979

In April 1985, The Damned’s Dave Vanian was speaking with Janice Long on her BBC Radio 1 show. He said “Barry Ryan and Paul Ryan have been sadly forgotten. Everyone waxes lyrical about Scott Walker which is marvellous but this is absolutely superb....

Read more...

Album: Deep Purple - =1

Ever since their 2013 album Now What?! hard rock veterans Deep Purple have been on a roll, both creatively and commercially. They’ve seemed a revitalised force. An album of covers aside, their output since has also sold/streamed multitudes. Not bad...

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Atlanta - Hotbed of 70s Soul

Michael Thevis made his money from pornography. In the Seventies, his Atlanta warehouses were stuffed with most of America’s porn. Nationally, Thevis was the main distributor. Looking for something less edgy to fund with his profits, he turned to...

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Angelic Upstarts - Teenage Warning

NME’s Paul Morley reviewed Angelic Upstarts’ debut album, the newly reissued Teenage Warning, in August 1979. He pointed out that they were “seen as the successors to Sham 69.”The assessment made sense. Their encore song was a version of Sham's...

Read more...
Subscribe to 1970s