Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
After a band’s back catalogue has been reissued countless times, any new release needs a fresh approach to attract attention. Archives and collections can be scoured to find previously unissued tracks. There might be otherwise unknown recordings released under aliases, or maybe something which escaped via an obscure continental soundtrack album. But on their own, such discoveries aren’t enough. They need to be married-up with the familiar. Hence what can be a last-resort release: a complete works collection.A few bands can have their original master tapes mucked about with to offer a new spin Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Saunders' Ferry Lane” elegantly paints a picture of revisiting an empty, out-of-season neighbourhood to reflect on an old relationship. It’s cloudy and begins raining. The grass where the couple lay is dead. Birds have flown away. The gentle arms which held the narrator are gone. “I find no present comfort for my pain” sings a forlorn Sammi Smith. Swelling strings darken the mood, as does a plaintive pedal steel.Discomfort of a different kind is addressed by Billie Jo Spears’ up-tempo “Mr Walker, It's All Over.” After leaving Garden City, Kansas for New York to work, she fetches coffee for Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anyone in San Francisco on 15 and 16 June 1968 would have had a tough choice if they wanted to see live music. On Saturday the 15th, Big Brother & the Holding Company and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown were playing The Fillmore. That night, The Charlatans were on at The Straight Theatre. The Sunday saw Big Brother billed with The Steve Miller Blues Band, Dan Hicks (without The Charlatans), Sandy Bull and Santana at The Fillmore. On both dates, Booker T & the MG's headlined The Carousel Ballroom.At the Carousel, the Booker T combo was supported by local stars It’s A Beautiful Day. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The book included with this splendid box set dedicated to British jazz innovator Chris Barber includes a series of quotes paying tribute to his standing. Billy Bragg says "Chris Barber's influence on British popular music, be it through playing jazz, creating skiffle or promoting R&B, has been immense. His role in inspiring the world-beating British groups of the 1960s cannot be overestimated."Van Morrison declares “It is very apparent to the critical observer that all roads lead to Chris, from the skiffle with Donegan period, through Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny and Brownie and the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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.Hollywood logic usually dictates that an actor with musical inclinations – however shaky – issues a record. Hence releases by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Peggy Lipton, Annette Funicello and a million more. Yet nothing from the evidently musically capable Karen Black. (In 1965, there had Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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.”The same day, The Count Bishops released their debut record, the four-track, seven-inch EP Speedball. It’s reissued on pink vinyl with new mastering which doesn’t seek to sound as clear as possible in a straight-from-the-tape way, but instead adds a punch lacking on an original pressing. It sounds authentically vintage, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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. All this happened between mid-June and the end of November 1966.There had already been upsets. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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.Regimental Sgt. Zippo is great. The album opens with “When I Was Tealby Abbey”: string-drenched psychedelic pop easily as good as the early Blossom Toes or a Mark Wirtz confection. As the album goes on, what was being absorbed is evident. The Zombies are in there. “And the Clock Goes Round” has the rolling piano chassis of The Left Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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. The frazzled song they played was “Panda”, from their recent third album Ta det lugnt.This wasn’t their first brush with the mainstream. Three years earlier, their also-independently issued second Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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.”Asked about record company interest, keyboard player Tommy Gear said "Yes, many offers for off-beat kind of things, we don't feel compelled…I mean, why should we? What's having a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Early last month, Donovan issued his extraordinary new single “I am the Shaman”. Recorded at David Lynch’s Los Angeles studio, it was produced by the polymath director and fellow transcendental meditation devotee. The accompanying video was also directed by Lynch. The powerful “I am the Shaman” haunts. It also confirms that Donovan remains an active force.He first entered the public consciousness on 22 January 1965. On that date, Donovan Leitch wasn’t yet signed to a record label but the producers of the weekly pop show Ready, Steady, Go! put him in front of the cameras in the first of three Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“All the best bits of Dylan and the Velvets with a post-punk Eighties edge to it.” That’s how Alan McGee described The Loft to NME in November 1984. Their first single, “Why Does the Rain”, had come out on his Creation label that September. Their next, “Up the Hill and Down the Slope”, arrived in April 1985.It was some claim. The interview coincided with the release of the debut single by another rising Creation band, the Jesus and Mary Chain. McGee went on: “Jesus and Mary Chain are the shock troops in this war on pop, they'll smash down doors which more subtle bands like The Loft will Read more ...