1970s
Kieron Tyler
The title comes from the lyrics of “Andy Warhol”: track two, side two of David Bowie’s late 1971 album Hunky Dory: ”Put a peephole in my brain, Two new pence to have a go, I'd like to be a gallery, Put you all inside my show.” The new pence reference recognised Britain’s recent adoption of decimalised currency. Whatever the album’s sales on release it was only in 1972 that Bowie hit the single’s chart with “Starman”, the proof he was more than 1969’s “Space Oddity” one-hit wonder.In 1971, Marc Bolan and T.Rex were cleaning up as a singles phenomenon. “Ride a White Swan”, issued in 1970, was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the Lovebox Festival, which was named after their fourth album. Their last albums, the Black Light/White Light pairing, arrived a decade ago, and mined Eighties electronics to decent effect. Such biographical positivity is included to counterpoint the fact their latest album is a yacht rock horror story, possibly seeking the ears of Balearic ironists Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What happens when the hits dry up? And what happens a little further down the line, as the years of being on the charts recede into the past? For Helen Shapiro, the questions are answered by the intriguing Face The Music: The Complete Singles 1967–1984, a 25-track compilation collecting all her pop singles from the period covered by the title. Her work in jazz is not heard. The latest tracks were originally issued by Charlie Gillett’s Oval label and became her final singles.Helen Shapiro is the UK’s first home-grown female pop star. At age 14, she charted high in 1961 with “Don’t Treat me Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Sky’s 12-part documentary series The Movies is an unabashed celebration of American cinema. Barrages of clips make it an entertaining survey of Hollywood (and occasionally Off-Hollywood) through the years. Downplaying film as art, and scarcely trenchant about its engagement with society and politics, however, this chronicle errs on the side of dutiful. Enthusiasm gets you only so far.It’s also marred by its breathlessness. No sooner has a single movie or the work of an important director or actor or a significant trend been identified then it’s onto someone or something new. That’s not to say Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This documentary about the 1970s activist movement Rock Against Racism comes with festival prizes and much acclaim. It’s certainly a nostalgic feast for those old enough to remember when punk and reggae musicians were purposely united and it’s a timely release in the age of Grenfell, Windrush and Brexit. The filmmakers behind White Riot doubtless intend not only to celebrate the surviving veterans of a heroic movement, but also to encourage the current generation faced with resurgent racism. Director/editor Rubika Shah pays heartfelt homage to the now greying radicals who, as Read more ...
Sarah Kent
September 18th is the 50th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death, an appropriate moment to release Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary exploring the vexed question: was it murder, suicide or a tragic accident? Trying to unravel this conundrum, director Tim Conrad sifts through the evidence, speculates about the crucial unknowns and, rather unconvincingly, creates possible end game scenarios. But groping around in such murky waters only stirs up a lot of mud and the death of the world’s greatest guitarist remains stubbornly obscure.The post-mortem found that Hendrix drowned in his own vomit Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The standard recitation goes like this. In the early Seventies a London scene evolved, centring on bands playing in pubs. Music was taken back to the grassroots. Finesse was unnecessary. What happened was dubbed pub rock and it laid the ground for an even more basic style: punk rock. Pub rock fed into and helped foster punk rock.This is charted by Surrender To The Rhythm: The London Pub Rock Scene Of The Seventies and 1978: The Year The UK Turned Day-Glo, a pair of three-CD sets. Although the specifics of 1977, the year punk was most boldly platformed are leapfrogged, the two packages Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
So far this year, Live at Goose Lake August 8th, 1970 is 2020’s most exciting archive release. The album is a previously unknown soundboard recording of The Stooges playing at Jackson, Michigan’s Goose Lake Festival. The event was formally billed as Goose Lake Park – International Music Festival. Also on were Faces, Ten Years After, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The James Gang. As well as The Stooges, other Michigan bands booked included Bob Seeger, SRC, The Litter and more. It’s estimated that there were 200,000 attendees over the three days. The event was filmed and, although what was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A skim though the track listing confirms that this is no typical soul compilation. Actress and some-time pop singer Connie Stevens crops up. So does Johnny Mathis. Such seeming quirks are fitting as Thom Bell was never a typical arranger, producer or songwriter. There’s much more to the story than the timeless O’Jays and Stylistics hits he created for Gamble and Huff’s label Philadelphia International Records.Ready Or Not – Thom Bell's Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions 1965–1978 collects 23 tracks which Bell arranged, produced or wrote, or any combination first two and the last. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bill Nelson’s views on his band Be-Bop Deluxe’s debut album are measured. In the essay accompanying its reissue, he writes “Axe Victim is one brief snapshot of a band in the process of becoming something else…a modest beginning, flawed but not without charm. And not the end of the story. I’ll always be grateful for the way that it helped launch a more appropriate vessel for my music, a ship which sails onward to this very day.” He sees the album as transitional.When it was issued in June 1974, NME’s dismissive Ian MacDonald was less restrained in his review: “I confidently predict that Be-Bop Read more ...
joe.muggs
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death. On top of that there’s a constant layer of narrative about the endless pressures of racism on black British musicians, told brilliantly both explicitly and in the micro-details of 1960s and '70s life.Maybe most devastating thing of all, though Read more ...
joe.muggs
When does the avant-garde become folk? Both of the participants in this album have certainly been on the very cutting edge of sound-making, on multiple occasions. Conrad Schnitzler was a student of radical artist Joseph Beuys and leading light in the utopian thinking and radical soundmaking of 1970s West Germany as a member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Frank Bretschneider was, bravely, an underground musician in East Germany in the 1980s, in partnership with Olaf Bender – and, again with Bender and later with Carsten Nicolai, in unified Germany in the 1990s and on was responsible for some Read more ...