1960s
Kieron Tyler
Dino Valente: Dino ValenteDino Valenti’s reaction to his sole solo album being credited to Dino Valente isn’t recorded, but any confusion probably wouldn’t have mattered as he had such high-profile cheerleaders. Before its release in October 1968, Ralph J Gleason, then America’s most important commentator on rock and pop, called Valenti – who died in 1994 – “an underground Bob Dylan”. After its release, Lillian Roxon, New York’s most trenchant observer of musical trends, said he was “a macrobiotics-solar-energy legend”. In Rolling Stone in January 1969, Ben Fong-Torres repeated the " Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
We all know the backstory of the Mighty Mac, the breakups, the betrayals, the addictions and now, finally, the reunion. These days they're more like the Mellow Mac with the emotional hatchets buried, lingering hugs on stage, and tender tales of their time as struggling Seventies hippies. Few other bands, not even Abba, have mined their private lives for inspiration to the same extent. Unlike today's manufactured pop-ettes who invent relationship strife to grab column inches and make themselves more interesting (Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, I'm looking at you), heartache has always been at Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We know, not least through her own account, of Marianne Faithfull's colourful progress as winsome Sixties pop star, lover of Mick Jagger, junkie on the streets of Soho and her artistic rebirth as gravel-throated chanteuse. Here, her frequently gruelling trawl through archives from the 1930s and '40s helped to explain how she became the artist she is, while throwing up some morbidly fascinating details about the inner workings of the Third Reich.At the core of the film was her mother Eva, whom the young Marianne first came to know while growing up inside her cramped little house in post-war Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Classroom ProjectsIt starts with a plummy voice: “The poems, the words and the music on this record all come from children at primary schools, boys and girls of eight, nine, 10 and 11 years old.” Although the introduction to Classroom Projects sounds like a BBC continuity announcement from a lost era, what follows is more than entertainment. This collection of tracks from albums made by and for British schools is enlightening. Compiled here are music concrête, folk, chamber experiments and songs written about road safety. All of it is amazing.An important release, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Roky Erickson & the Aliens: The Evil One Roky Erickson: Don’t Slander Me, Gremlins Have PicturesRoky Erickson is usually depicted as America’s Syd Barrett: the leader of a pioneering psychedelic-era band who took too many drugs, had mental health issues and then dropped off the face of the earth. But unlike Barrett, or even his American contemporary Skip Spence, Erickson returned from the abyss.In 1980 he pulled off the remarkable coup of releasing an album on the British major label CBS. That first solo album – untitled in the UK (but usually referred to as Five Symbols due to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marianne Faithfull hasn’t got much time for her 1968 starring vehicle The Girl on a Motorcycle. In her autobiography Faithfull, she described it as “terrible…soft porn” and said of her co-star Alain Delon that he was a “pompous git". The trailer promised that while seeing it “you know the thrill of wrapping your legs around a tornado of pumping pistons”.The Girl on a Motorcycle was ludicrous, but not as bad as all this suggests. A game attempt at a trangressive coupling of sexual abandonment with the power of the motorbike, it was awarded an “X” certificate for it’s UK release. Faithfull Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beach Boys: Made in CaliforniaMade in California is a fantastic thing. Six CDs slot into the inside of the back cover of an LP-sized, full colour hardback book with a padded cover. As an artefact, it’s a triumph. As a career-spanning summary of the best of The Beach Boys’ music it’s flawless. Quibbling about individual tracks which aren’t included is possible, but ultimately pointless. Everything which needs to be heard is here. Made in California is a statement of who The Beach Boys were, are and even – as revealed by some of the originally unreleased tracks – who they could have Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Tony Hancock stopped producing the work on which his reputation rests the best part of half a century ago. He still casts a long old shadow. Many years before BBC Four embarked on its series of biodramas, a life of Hancock starring Alfred Molina captured some of that hulking self-disgust. More recently Paul Merton has become a one-man module in Hancock studies, even going so far as to re-enact some of the old Half Hours. The absence of the real thing only served to remind the audience of Hancock’s ineffable charisma.There is always the danger, when contemporary comics make reverential films Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sly & the Family Stone: Higher!Sly & the Family Stone’s hits “Dance to the Music”, “I Want to Take You Higher” and “Stand!” delivered a sharp wake-up call to the American charts in a period when psychedelia meant new styles of pop were becoming less concise and the mellow vibes of Laurel Canyon were about to begin reducing energy levels. Sly Stone’s gang showed that music could go to fresh places without losing vitality and precision. The case doesn’t need to be made that Sly Stone – born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 – is one of America’s greats, but Higher! makes it anyway with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s always irritating being told “you had to be there”. Even more irksome is when some author, film director or nostalgic creative decides to record – naturally, they “fictionalise” it – their contribution to some golden era or significant event for posterity. Whether they’re being truthful, bigging themselves up or playing fast and loose with history is beside the point. They’re saying they were there. Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air is the French director and writer’s entry in the canon and, shockingly, it’s great.It’s great because Assayas has thoughtfully crafted a rich, Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Next Monday Bob Dylan releases Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), the tenth volume of his Bootleg Series which casts new light on one of his most maligned records, 1970's Self Portrait. Two days beforehand a selection of his pastel portraits will go on display at the National Portrait Gallery. (Both events, naturally, will be reviewed on theartsdesk.) At 72, popular music's most mercurial character is still throwing curveballs. For half a century now successive generations have wrestled with Dylan's mutations; mostly we pick and choose and settle for – at best – a partial understanding. His Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Eddie Noack: Psycho – The K-Ark and Allstar Recordings 1962–69Eddie Noack’s 1968 single “Psycho” was virtually unknown until Elvis Costello released his cover version in 1981. By that time, Noack had been dead for three years. After its resurrection “Psycho” was recognised as one of the strangest songs ever. Although musically it is straight, George Jones-styled country, in its lyrics an unrepentant killer describes his actions to his mother – whom he had just killed. There was no redemption, no punishment, no pay off. Just the cold refrain “You think I’m psycho, don’t you mama?”“Psycho”, Read more ...