Table of contents for Issue 546 in Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag TICKET TO WRITHE I thought I was the only one to keep old tickets from gigs - really enjoyed last month’s article [RC 545]. It got me thinking about all the artists I’ve seen that are no longer with us, the bands in their heyday that went their separate ways, and performers still pushing the envelope… My first real gig at the age of 16 was Genesis at The Gaumont, Southampton, performing The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a jaw-dropping event. Gabriel left a few months later. At the same venue, Earth, Wind & Fire with Santana, Joan Armatrading, and The Movies with Supertramp, Comsat Angels with The Yellow Magic Orchestra, OMD with Gary Numan - a rich tapestry of music history.…

This issue, Terry Staunton transcribed, and provided the intro for, the interview with Paul Simon undertaken by Elvis Costello (p74) - two of his alltime heroes in one neat front cover package. For Max Bell, Steely Dan’s (p58) second album was the sound of summer ‘73 at his friend Mark’s home in Belsize Park where his American mum made him tuna/mayo ‘n’green pepper Saturday sandwiches US-style washed down with Chocolate Nesquik and they played Boddhisattva and snooker. Ecstasy. Kevin Harley is a music/film journalist. Thirty years after Seven/Laid soundtracked his post-grad life, he caught up with Jim, Tim and Saul from James (p66) to plot their 40-year trek from indie innocents, baggy-adjacent T-shirt titans and neo-stadium outsiders to revitalised veterans. As this month’s RC Interview (p48) came to a close,…

Nine Mile Station LP, with Fernando Perdomo (Marshall Crenshaw), Cherry Red, 21 July. ■ Willie Nelson Good Times, Music On CD, 14 July, Energy Follows Thought book, William Morrow, 31 October. ■ Rick Deitrick The Unguitarist 5CD, with Gentle Wilderness, River Sun River Moon, Coyote Canyon, Homegrown, unissued Sage And Sand, signed card, Tompkins Square, 16 June. ■ Bob Dylan: Mixing Up The Medicine book, with 900 images from the Bob Dylan Archive, Tulsa, on Callaway Arts, 24 October. ■ Tell Everybody!, with The Black Keys, Eagles’ Joe Walsh, Easy Eye Sound, 11 August. ■ Waylon Jennings Lonesome, On’ry And Mean/Honky Tonk Heroes/This Time/The Ramblin’ Man 2CD, with bonuses, BGO, 30 June. ■ Ray Price Four Classic Albums Plus 2CD, with Sings Heart Songs, Talk To Your Heart, San Antonio Rose, Greatest Hits, eight…

A 30-track set of rock songs, including nine originals, is in the offing from Dolly Parton. She sings alongside Richie Sambora (exBon Jovi), Sting, ex-Journey’s Steve Perry, Heart’s Ann Wilson, Howard Leese, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes, Kid Rock, John Fogerty, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Waddy Wachtel (James Taylor), Peter Frampton, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Chris Stapleton, Miley Cyrus, Pink, Brandi Carlile, REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin, Elton John, Debbie Harry, Melissa Etheridge, Lizzo, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx, John 5, Simon Le Bon. Linda Perry, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Michael McDonald, Ronnie McDowell With The Jordanaires, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Artimus Pyle. Dolly Parton Rockstar 2CD, pink 4LP, are…

OPINION Born Susan Whitby, Lora Logic was just 15 when she defined X-Ray Spex’s 1977 debut single Oh Bondage Up Yours! with her wailing sax playing. A year later she formed her own group, Essential Logic, blazing a trail through post-punk with a series of innovative EPs and singles and an album, 1979’s Beat Rhythm News (Waddle Ya Play?), that showcased a Brechtian dramatic flair. Her 1982 solo album, Pedigree Charm, a similar mix of free jazz and new wave, and a stint in the Red Krayola followed before she left the music industry, joining the Hare Krishna community where she was reunited with X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene in Juggernaut. She went on to play on X-Ray Spex’s 1995 Conscious Consumer then resurrected Essential Logic in the early 2000s and…

BEE GEES The Bee Gees were international superstars: rivals to The Beatles in the lare 60s; bigger than Abba in the late 70s; returning like Lazarus with a No 1 in the late 80s; feted elder statesmen who could still produce Top 5 hits in the late 90s. Still, the Gibbs rarely seemed to fit the pop scene around them; there was never an obvious place to file their music. The exception was a period in the mid-to-late 70s when the Zeitgeist seemed to emanate from them. And it began with the Main Course album in 1975… In the outside world of May 1974, Paul McCartney and Wings were in both the UK and US Top 10s with Jet, a joyous rocker with nods to reggae, fizzing synth lines, a…

Pet Shop Boys Smash - The Singles 1985-2020 Parlophone 0190295021962 (3CD/3CD/2BD, 6LP) Whereas other synth duos conformed to the quiet/loud stereotype, the Pet Shop Boys offered an irresistible blend of quiet and quieter. Chris Lowe consolidated the Dave Ball/Vince Clarke stoic mystery and Neil Tennant was a pop star people would want at their dinner party. Arch, older, knowing, he exuded a weary classlessness as he told his tales of love, longing and the suburban underbelly. Pet Shop Boys offered a masterclass of minor variants on the same theme, fully aware that although fashions will change, the hardcore will stay, the transients will drift away, but will one day return and be delighted to find all the ingredients are still the same. So far, so the Corn Flakes of pop;…

Contemporary Records was founded in 1951 by Lester Koenig, a noted Hollywood screenwriter who, after being blacklisted for his alleged left-wing sympathies by the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities, turned to producing jazz records for a living. With the recruitment of top audio engineer Roy DuNann, arguably the west coast’s answer to Rudy Van Gelder, Koenig built a label that was noted for its impeccable sound and played a key role in the rise of cool jazz in the 1950s. Last year Craft began an audiophile reissue program called Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series, which now continues with the long-deleted West Side Story Craft), by ANDRE PREVIN & HIS PALS, who offer cool interpretations of tunes from Leonard Bernstein’s famous musical. Previn, who went on to become a noted conductor in…

Sleeping Gas (Zoo CAGE 003, 7″, UK, 1979) £20 First pressing of the debut single, without the Zoo Records logo. “It all happened so quickly when Sleeping Gas came out, but at the back of my mind it was always, ‘You’re just messing around here, it isn’t going anywhere,’” Cope says in the Culture Bunker liner notes. “It was a real turning point for me.” Bouncing Babies (Zoo CAGE 005, 7”, UK, 1979) £16 Even harder to find than when it was coveted by The Freshies in 1981, but never particularly beloved by departing Teardrops organist Paul Simpson: “I thought it was a bit too quirky, I needed either beauty or darkness and wasn't seeing either. Leaving was my best chance of survival.” When I Dream (Mercury TEAR 1, 7″, UK, 1980) £10…

Rudy Tambala on inventing a genre and why this set sounds better than the originals Did AR Kane really invent ‘Dreampop’? Alex and I came up with the term. We were into lucid dreaming and astral projection, and used to experiment with that. We’d put ourselves into a semi-hypnotic state so that when we went to sleep we’d wake up in a dream. We would hear melodies, wake ourselves up and record them. Alex said he’d like our songs to be the soundtrack to people’s dreams. People started giving us names – ‘the black Jesus & Mary Chain’, ‘a noise band’ or ‘psychedelic’. None of these really fitted, so we called ourselves ‘dreampop’ because that’s what we are, and after a while that became a genre for a certain type…

Given the album sessions span a dozen years, which was the oldest song and which the newest? Oldest? I began writing How Good It Feels in 1968! Swan Lake gave me the inspiration for the melody all those years ago. That’s why I was hesitant to finish it; it always felt like someone else wrote that song. A powerful 60- piece orchestra now actually plays a tribute to Swan Lake within the song - twice! The newest song would be The Boy Who Knew How to Climb Walls. Sadly, it’s relative for many young souls caught in war zones with little hope of prospect beyond the walls. The album seems like a summary of your songwriting journey, past and present. Yes, that’s true - and it’s taken me about 12 years…

After the orchestral albums, how did you approach working with hip-hop? I tried to emulate it, and you can’t emulate it… This is the most provincial version of it. But what I’m trying to do is get the balance of talking in a way that you can explain the vague points of a story in quite a narcissistic way and still have a song… I was just nicking those mechanisms to try and explain my story, because I’m from this indie man-talk world where everyone just talks about themselves and doesn’t sing and then puts some music behind it. And it’s a bit of a Ponzi scheme, really. I was just trying to think of a different angle on it. Does the album title speak to feelings of realising your…

Bob Stanley on questionable fashions, underrated classics and Mo & Ringo’s synth jams What made you write Children Of The World? They’re obviously incredible songwriters. And the whole way in which they engage with the outside world and the outside world engaged with them is unlike any other group really. So I thought it was a good story to be told. The narrative around them always changes. They were a laughing stock for a long time, obviously through no fault of their own - apart from maybe bad fashion choices. The first thing anyone thinks of is the disco era. But they were huge in the 60s. At the end of ’67 they really did seem like the heirs to The Beatles. That didn’t last long, because they imploded quite…

SOUTH EAST Across the Tracks - ‘On busiest corner of hip pest city, open seven days. Thousands of rarities in the shop that aren’t on the net. All genres, including classical and new CD promos, nothing mundane. Collections bought.’ 110 Gloucester Road, Brighton BN1 4AF. Tel: 01273 677906. edfrombrighton@tiscali.co.uk www.acrossthetracksrecords.com Alan’s Record & CD Shop - ‘Diggers paradise! Over 18,000 quality used 7“/12” LPs/CDs. Specialising in Reggae, Soul, Jazz, Rock, Hip Hop, Dance. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:30am, Wednesdays by appointment only. Independent and stubbornly individual.’ 218 High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9AY. Tel: 0208 883 0234. alanrecordman@tiscali.co.uk Ben’s Collectors Records - Long standing record shop in the heart of Guildford with an ever changing large stock of records cds & cassettes at the most reasonable prices in…

The Staple Singers Uncloudy Day (Fontana 688 515 ZL, LP, UK, 1966) £25 A decade and more before Stax Records were secularising the Staples to grab R&B and pop hits, rhe then-quintet were demonstrating they were the finest gospel family group ever. With Mavis’ growling and whooping contralto wrenching every bit of emotion from the songs of faith and Pops’ echoey electric guitar showing his Mississippi blues roots, these tracks recorded In the 50s for Chicago’s Veejay Records are truly timeless. Andrae Crouch No Time To Lose (Myrrh MYR1188, LP, UK, 1984) £5 In the 60s, singer, songwriter, and choir leader Crouch, with his group The Disciples, understood that first the rhythms of Motown and later the thrust of Los Angeles funk could be integrated into gospel. He was to…

I once monitored an interview between Alice Cooper and US pop princess Ke$ha for the Guardian’s culture section and, another time, for the same publication, invigilated a summit meeting between Todd Rundgren and a member of UK electronica outfit Hot Chip. Close but no cigar. No, this issue’s front cover interview with Paul Simon by Elvis Costello is of an entirely different order: one of the finest UK songwriters of the postpunk era in conversation with one of the preeminent US songwriters of the postwar era, on the occasion of the latter’s extraordinary new album, exclusively conducted for Record Collector. Hopefully, you will forgive us for allowing the hour-plus conversation to run, virtually verbatim, over nearly a dozen pages (including, natch, a detailed discography of Simon’s solo oeuvre). I was…

The book is a collection of articles for magazines and album/box notes. When did you start writing about rock’n’roll, R&B and country? I was making rockabilly records tor labels like Stacy, Wizz and Dauphin before I was writing about music. My first sleevenotes were for my album, God Made The Blues, cut with two black preachers in 1964, for George Alpert’s Folk Art label. By 1980, projects were coming along pretty steadily, including a Les Paul reissue, Early Les Paul, which I pitched to Capitol in 1981. Did you have to update many of your original sleevenotes for the book? Absolutely. Most of the chapters were expanded with additional interviews and things that I’ve learned about the artist’s place in music history. There’s a lot of new thinking and new…

Neal Martin is one of the world’s leading wine writers, having written for influential US critic Robert Parker and published an award-winning book on the wine region of Pomerol. Taking over coverage of Bordeaux from Parker prompted The Sun headline: “World’s Top Plonk Expert Is An Essex Boy”. Seeking to liven up the rather stuffy world of wine writing, he blends cultural references, most of all music. He currently lives in Guildford, though spends half the year travelling the world tasting wine, which to quote his friends constitutes the “jammiest job ever”. What do you collect, and why? My first record was Our House by Madness in exchange for two tokens on the back of a cornflakes packet. I became a local DJ when I was about 16. That’s when…

TENPOLE TUDOR Real Fun (7“, acetate, UK, 1980) £50 There is something special about acetates - the promise of a different mix or version, or even an unreleased take of a certain song. The exclusiveness and elusiveness, the smell. Acetates are metal discs covered with a thin layer of vinyl on which music is cut. They’re usually made to give artists and producers an idea of what the music will sound like on a finished record. Acetates are cut in very small runs. In fact, quite often they’re unique pressings and, due to the thin layer of vinyl, not exactly suited to repeated playing. I have several acetates which I dearly love - mostly because of that very same exclusiveness and elusiveness. And the smell. This particular acetate, Tenpole Tudor’s Real…

THE CAN Monster Movie (Music Factory SRS 001) £3,750 Krautrock four-tracker from 1969, limited to 500 copies. (eBay item number: 266182610864) Supplied by eBay THE BEATLES Introducing… (See Jay VJLP 1062) £11,772 Recorded in 1963, released in 1964. First run with “Ad” back cover (eBay item number: 155519264150) Supplied by eBay THE BEATLES “White Album” (Parlophone PMC 7067/8) £8,000 First pressing. The ‘hundreds’ numeral has not been printed. Hence ‘4 40’. (eBay item number: 225516159618) Supplied by eBay U2 Mysterious Ways (Island 2801 542) £1,605 A Brazilian promo CD, released in 1991. (eBay item number: 185706148189) Supplied by eBay THE REPLACEMENTS Let It Be (Twin Tone TTR 8441) $3,821 Signed by the band during their show at O’Cayz Corral in Madison, Wisconsin. Supplied by Popsike JUTTA HIPP With Zoot Sims…

I’ve just been on tour with Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (R.E.M, Minus 5) and Linda Pitmon (Minus 5). Once you’ve done all the tour stuff like picking up your dirty clothes from the hotel floor and chucking them into a bag, climbing on board the tour bus, looking like the weird people who haven’t got jobs in motorway services and eating beige stuff, you get to the soundcheck. So, one soundcheck, as I’m idly doodling away on my ’59 Gibson Melody Maker (oh, yeah!) playing the licks from The Beatles’ version of Bad Boy, Scott turns to me, smiling from behind his shades: “I love the bad double tracking on that song,” he says. Drugs, guns and pimping were the order of the day for Lazza So do I.…

Prog-minded punks or psychedelicised pop saboteurs? However you look at them, you’ll arguably never be as baffled by The Flaming Lips as the band themselves. In RC 510, frontman and creative spearhead Wayne Coyne guided us through 10 landmark Lips albums, from the DIY hit’n’hope of Oh My Gawd!!!… The Flaming Lips (1987) to the lysergic alt-rock of Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (1993), the immersive format fuckery of Zaireeka (1997), the hip-hopinspired art-rock of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002) and beyond. Now, as the group celebrate their 40th anniversary and mark 20 years of Yoshimi… with a 5LP box set and tour, Coyne, now a father of two, is back via Zoom, talking from his hotel room ahead of a live show in Knoxville, Tennessee — to tell…

STEELY DAN Hello, one and all. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker always were a couple of wiseacres. Too cool for school. “We don’t cater for critics,” as Fagen once said. Failenough. They didn’t suffer fools gladly and weren’t interested in sycophantic praise, either, maintaining, “There is a substantial body of opinion which holds that Countdown… was the best Steely Dan album, bar none. Generally speaking, the type of person who holds this position is not the sort of individual you want sitting across the table from you at a dinner party, especially one where alcoholic beverages are being served. You get, we trust, the general idea.” We did. It was Jay Black, lead singer of the pop group Jay And The Americans, who dubbed the odd couple “the Manson and Starkweather…

This is your fourth major compilation in 40 years, and the singles continue to come - do you still write with ‘the hit' in mind? We don’t think it’s possible now to have a big chart hit (unless under freak circumstances) because of how the charts work these days but we still aim to write songs that to us sound like “hits”. It’s both a discipline and a creative challenge to attempt to come up with songs that sound fresh and “hooky” and sort of irresistible, in other words like a hit (if only in our dreams). This is a marvellous collection. What were your favourite compilation albums growing up? Are there any you would allow in an all-time Top 10, as opposed to single artist/group albums? Growing up I…

Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos Craft) is the stuff of dreams, a deep dive seven-disc set into the Soulville USA vaults to unearth 146 demos, a mammoth 140 of them previously unissued, which shed light on the label’s behind-the-scenes creative genius at work. CDs one to three comprise demos of songs that were released by artists at Stax or its imprints, including Volt, We Produce, and Enterprise. We get to glimpse the processes behind familiar work, from Mack Rice’s radically-differenttothe-final-recording acoustic demo of Respect Yourself, a 1971 hit for the Staple Singers, here raw and garage-y, to the remarkably identikit Homer Banks demo for (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right. Written with Carl Hampton and penned for the Emotions but shelved, it gave Luther…

Dub, a kind of reverse musical castration in which the studio engineer removed most of the body but kept the balls, took its first faltering steps in the early 70s with the pioneering experiments of Linford Anderson and Clancy Eccles, but took off in the 1973-74 period when numerous producers including Lee Perry, Prince Buster, Clive Chin and Keith Hudson unleashed dub LPs in quick succession. JOE GIBBS and his talented engineer ERROL THOMPSON were in the forefront of the trend, releasing the painfully expensive Dub Sequeldo LP on white label only, and following it with a succession of albums throughout the decade, all seven of which are now collected on the 4CD set Joe Gibbs & The Professionals: The 1970s Dub Albums Doctor Bird). That first album finds Errol T. exploring…

After a slight lull in the ongoing programme of Italian library LPs being repressed regardless of quality but often based on their current market value, we have a new old LP coming our way that is worthy of a column inch or two. Indefinitive Atmosphere Sonor) by GIOVANNI TOMMASO is quite unique for a number of reasons. Firstly, it really doesn’t sound or behave like a library record. It originally came out in 1970 on the legendary SR (Sermi Film) label, which seemed to operate somewhere in the sludgy grey area between a private pressing/experimental label and a place where interesting composers could issue work to film studios for possible use in new productions. It’s more of a jazz album than a library album. The settings are minimal, with room for improvisation…

REVIEWS Bad//Dreems Farmer & The Owl/BMG Cat No TBC (CD, LP, Cassette) Fourth album from erudite Aussie rockers In the tradition of home-turf forebears the Saints and Midnight Oil, Adelaide’s Bad//Dreems pair ferocity of delivery with intelligent lyrics, Hoo Ha!’s 13 filler-free songs pushing both aspects emphatically to the fore. Written during Covid-enforced downtime, it’s an engaging, inventive album likely to thrill fans of The Fall and IDLES. Waterfalls sets the tone, Ben Marwe’s megawatt charisma powering spoken vocals over a stripped, efficient backing of memorable riffs and driving drums, building a tension released in the explosive chorus. Marwe flits seamlessly to a melodic, sung delivery, his cut-and-paste lyrics assembling earcatching images which reflect the planet’s current chaotic state, framed artfully by his bandmates with raw live energy (Jack), post-punk…

Bob Dylan Shadow Kingdom Columbia 19658767481 (CD, 2LP) Released in July 2021, Shadow Kingdom was Bob Dylan’s reaction to the pandemic wresting him from the road. While for many other artists, a streamed concert was a needs-must way of connecting with fans, live from their hastily-tidied living room, for Dylan it presented another opportunity (see Chronicles, the Rolling Thunder Revue doc, pretty much everything else) to toy with his expectant audience. Firstly, his choice of material - when Shadow Kingdom was announced, many of us expected plenty of 2020’s sublime Rough And Rowdy Ways. A press release promised a “live” concert of “songs from his extensive renowned body of work”, and yet, the film began with the words “The Early Songs of Bob Dylan” and featured 12 reinterpretations of songs…

The Sound Of 007 Amazon Prime The songs, the scores, the stories It takes some nerve, in a film examining the music of Bond movies, to call the franchise’s most celebrated composer John Barry “a dick”, but Duran Duran’s John Taylor pulls no punches. Lyricist Don Black, a more frequent collaborator, is considerably more diplomatic when he describes Barry as “difficult”, and it’s these stripes of candid contributions that make this such a lively, informative documentary. From Monty Norman’s iconic signature theme to the breathy passion of Billie Eilish’s No Time To Die, the secrets of Bond music are laid bare by director Mat Whitecross, be it Bono’s “really bad” guide demo for Tina Turner on Goldeneye, or Jack White describing his “divisive” song for Quantum Of Solace as “the…

This Devon shop has been around for years and has made great efforts to be part of the local community, rooted in a shared passion for music, something that will resonate with collectors. Joint owner Roger Cox (with input from Jackie Fenner and Charlie Salter) outline this and more to Steve Burniston. And check out those prog and Beatles rarities… Tell us about the shop and the kind of music you sell. The store has been part of the Newton Abbot community for 20 years. My partner Marsha and I have owned Phoenix Sounds since 1 July 2022 and loving every minute! Since taking over the store, we have increased the amount of secondhand and new release vinyl that we stock. We daily see new people coming into our store…

Did you ever think you’d be going for 40 years? No, I never imagined it. I never think too far ahead or make long-term plans, so I’m surprised that the band is still here. You formed Shorten Knife to escape a mundane job. I was in a big company as an office worker for too years and 15 days. The co-workers were kind to me, but I wanted to do something creative. How’s the 40th Anniversary tour been? Very good. We started on 2 March and, at nine weeks, it’s the longest tour of my life. You always play the UK. I really like British rock music from the 60s and 70s, which influences our music. That’s why there’s a match up with our British audiences. How did you choose…

This month: MIKE STRINGER OF SPIRITBOX How have you been preparing for the tour? I’ve prepared all the interludes and been practicing the full set as much as possible. Do you have any pre-/postshow routines? Pre-show, we stand in a circle, put our hands in, describe where we are and what we’re about to do, then scream at one another to get rid of the jitters. Courtney [LaPlante] and Josh [Gilbert] also have a tea, to help their voices. Will you be playing anything that you rarely perform? The Mara Effect Pt 3, Eternal Blue. Are there any venues that you’re particularly looking forward to? Two nights at London Roundhouse - pretty cool. Will you check out your tour supports? We’re huge fans of Intervals and After The Burial. Will…

This month: Yes, Queen’s Park Rangers Football Ground, Saturday 10 May 1975 I was a prog rock fan back in the 70s and Yes were one of the top bands. However, recent albums had not matched the heights of Close To The Edge, Fragile etc, while the new album, Relayer, was - at best - a slow-burner. Perhaps it was the start of the prog rock rot which would see similar-minded mates ditch the likes of Yes, ELP and Floyd, who had all become predictable and boring, in favour of the excitement and danger of punk within the next two years. On an overcast day my friend, Bunty, drove me and my mates, Andy and Stan, up to Shepherd’s Bush, London. I recall it being chilly all day at the…

How come you’re back now? I had a big bag of tunes that I wanted to record, and an album every 10 years isn’t pushing things too much. Tell us about it. It’s more like the early Mother Earth records, when we had the freedom to do whatever struck our musical fancy. Were there any amusing episodes during its creation? My producer, Roger Alan Nichols, is one of the funniest motherfuckers that I know. We laughed all the time swapping jokes and just finding weird things funny. It made the whole process a joy. How long did it take? There were starts and stops due to Covid - eight months. What have you been up to during the interregnum? Playing festivals and gigs, and recording with friends Corky Soegel’s Chamber…

The Boo Radleys Giant Steps 2LP, orange, purple 2LP/10”, two bonuses, marble 2LP/12”, four, Two-Piers, 1 September. Pelican The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw silver 2LP remix, four bonuses, Thrill Jockey, 21 July. Rory Gallagher unissued All Around Man 3LP, 2CD, Universal, 7 July. Bonfire’s re-recorded Point Blank MMXXIII yellow, green LPs, CD, Fireworks MMXXIII orange, red LPs, CD, Don’t Touch The Light MMXXIII purple, white LPs, CD, AFM, 22 September. Sandwell District Feed-Forward LP, unissued bonus. The Point Of Departure, 28 July. Grandaddy Sumday. Sumday Twunny 4LP box, bonuses including demos, Dangerbird, 1 September. The Durutti Column Time was GIGANTIC… When We Were Kids 2LP, CD, five bonuses, London, 30 June. Klaus Nomi, Simple Man, Encore, In Concert LPs, box adding cassette, T-shirt, bag, badges, klausnomi.com, 16 June. Roisin Murphy Hit Parade…

RISING COST OF A FALLING-APART WORLD I was a big Bauhaus fan and after the band split up made sure to buy the solo output of lead singer Peter Murphy as well as the Love And Rockets stuff released by the other three. I seem to recall that there was a long delay in the release of Murphy’s first solo LP - Should The World Fail To Fall Apart which I bought upon release from Virgin Megastore in Tottenham Court Road, London, some time in 1986. Like many Bauhaus fans, I have been to more than one of their reformation tours and during that time Peter Murphy has still maintained his solo career. As they are now seen as legends of goth, I wonder if my copy of Should The…

Not Forgotten OBITS Tina Turner was always destined for greatness. Ike Turner thought so. “My jaw literally dropped,” he said when the singer, born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939, got onstage with him at the East St Louis Manhattan Club one night in 1957 and scorched her way through BB King’s You Know I Love You. Then, when a singer failed to show in late ’59 at a recording session he’d booked, Tina stepped up and the result, 1960’s A Fool In Love, became the first of six US R&B Top 10 45s for the pair; each one defined by her sandpaper rough rasp, part-church, part-blues club. At the same time, she and her backing group, The Ikettes, tore it up onstage as a part of the Ike &…

MICHAEL TIMMINS Cowboy Junkies’ guitarist on the country-rockers’ current outing What film could your new set soundtrack? It deals with the concept of impermanence, so The Father, Inception, or Night Of The Living Dead. Is there anything still unissued? Cassettes of early rehearsals/studio recordings on ¼ inch tape; 2” 24-track tape; live DATs; DA88 tapes; hard drives. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? Margo [Timmins] has sung on lots of other people’s songs, and Alan [Anton] and I have done a few film soundtracks. Who would you like to produce? Taylor Swift. Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? Hunger Project’s The Same Inside 7”, at home. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? The Record Peddler,…

THE TIME HAS COME TO SHOOT YOU DOWN… WHAT A SOUND (Lovely Sorts Of Death, no cat no, 500-only various coloured LPs, US, 2013) £200 The Stone Roses’ debut album, plus Fools Gold, resurrected as celestial space-rock propelled by nitro synths for Record Store Day’s 2013 Black Friday event. PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN (Lovely Sorts Of Death, no cat no, 500-only multi-coloured LP, US, 2012) £150 In which Wayne Coyne dons a jester’s hat and leads a revolt through King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King. THE FLAMING LIPS AND STARDEATH AND WHITE DWARFS WITH HENRY ROLLINS AND PEACHES DOING THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (Warner Bros 5235411, 5,000-only “seafoam green” LP + CD, US, 2010) £40 A hardcore punk and an electroelash provocateur lend…

Miles Davis and Darryl Jones, 1985 This was my first connection with Miles, seeing him play live and taking photos of him during his visit to the North Sea Jazz festival. With giants like John Scofield on guitar, Bob Berg on tenor, Bobby Irving on keyboards, Darryl Jones on bass, Vincent Wilburn on drums and Steve Thornton on percussion I will never forget this concert. This photo with Darryl Jones, who joined The Rolling Stones in 1993 after Bill Wyman had left the band, breathes rock’n’roll with the lights in the back and the chemistry and energy between Darryl and Miles. Art Blakey, 1989 This portrait of Art Blakey is a snapshot during a Bird Award ceremony. You don’t always have to have the musician’s attention to make a good…

Congratulations From Elvis Costello’s Kojak Variety (Rhino 8122764872, 2-CD, UK, 2004) £20 The bonus disc on the deluxe reissue of Costello’s 1995 covers collection includes this sparse demo of a track from Simon’s eponymous 1972 release, one of 10 made specifically for, and sent to, country legend George Jones as suggestions for a future album. “Like many fans, I had often been frustrated and disappointed by the inferior songs he had sometimes been obliged to record,” Elvis wrote in his liner notes. “I’ve no idea what Mr Jones thought of the tape, or if he ever even received it.” Peace Like A River From Hommage À/ Tribute To Paul Simon (Du Rêve Et Des Disques DRCD09105, CD, Canada, 2006) £10 A defiant protest song (“You can beat us with wires, you…

REVIEWS From The Vaults The Singles 1980-89 Cheny Red QPDROPDCT 29 (3CD) It would be rude not to… Although they played bills with the 2-Tone greats, Bad Manners had a glorious stupidity that the other groups didn’t possess. Of course, their closest role models, Madness, had plenty of pranking amid their skanking but from the off they had a dark side that added extra shade to the nutty. Not so with Bad Manners – big songs that embraced gibberish, fat men dancing to reggae, reworking Offenbach, love songs to strong lager and blow up dolls. While others took the Night Boat To Cairo, Bad Manners took the Night Bus To Dalston. Walking In The Sunshine, however, is a bona fide classic, pure blue sky reggae. Of course, it all gets a…

The Teardrop Explodes Culture Bunker 1978-82 Universal UMR 3894490 (6CD, 7LP) Pop music has long been a conduit through which frustrations are aired. The Stones couldn’t get no satisfaction, the Temptations couldn’t get next to you, and Kylie couldn’t get you out of her head, but Manchester power poppers The Freshies had a particularly specific concern on their 1981 single, I Can’t Get Bouncing Babies By The Teardrop Explodes. Frontman Chris Sievey (soon to reinvent himself as Frank Sidebottom) voiced the woes of many Teardrops fans stymied in their pursuit of the group’s rare-ish second release, but those same collectors should be cock-a-hoop at the arrival of this multi-disc set. In addition to every single and attendant B-side issue during the band’s five-year lifespan on the first two discs, here’s…

A.R. Kane A.R. Kive [A.R. Kane 1988-1989] Rocket rgirl 133 (3CD, 3LP) Despite collaborating with Colourbox on a UK No 1 single, and notching up two chart-topping independent albums, AR Kane seem to have been pretty much forgotten about. The London duo, Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli (formerly an advertising creative at Saatchi & Saatchi), made only three albums during their lifespan. By the third (not included here), the inspiration had more or less dried up. A handful of 90s bands (Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno, Slowdive) professed admiration, but beyond that their progeny is virtually non-existent. The truth is no one sounded remotely like them in 1988 and nor does anyone today. Few other bands of the era drew from such a deep well of influences: free jazz, ECM, experimental/avant-garde…

Cat Stevens/Yusuf King Of A Land BMG/Dark Horse 538856902 (CD, LP) The career arc of Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, is unique. A 60s pop sensation, he rode the 70s singer-songwriter boom before changing his name and giving it all up for religion. Now, at age 74, he’s returned to music as Yusuf/Cat Stevens and will be filling Glastonbury’s Sunday Legends spot this month. No surprise, then, that a new album is coming at us - his 17th, fascinatingly released on the Dark Horse label founded by the late George Harrison and run by his son Dhani. Both Stevens and Harrison were, of course, both spiritually inclined, though it’s still curious not to see the familiar Island label. The dozen songs on offer range widely in…

Baxter Dury I Thought I Was Better Than You Heavenly HVNLP 214 (LP) Last time RC spoke with Baxter Dury, around the release of 2020’s The Night Chancers album, Dury felt he had reached the end of one line of creative thought. “That’s enough men talking over the fucking music, orchestras, whatever, that you need,” he said. “If I ever speak another morose atonal sentence again over music, I’ll jump off the balcony.” A subsequent best-of, Mr Maserati, rounded off a 20-year career of inthe-moment self-examination with an indication of what would come next: on a new song, D.O.A., Dury sounded no less morose than before, though now he spoke over narcotic beats which made explicit a love of hip-hop that had influenced the swagger, if not the sound, of…

Bee Gees - Children Of The World Bob Stanley Nine Eight Books, £22 ISBN 9781785305641, 352 pages Having written two brilliantly sparky, ambitious and authoritative books - Yeah Yeah Yeah and Let’s Do It - that somehow succeeded in telling the story of pop music from long before it was known by that name, Bob Stanley has turned his attention to the rich and revelatory tale of the Bee Gees. Stanley’s working subtitle was “The Bee Gees in pop” and from the outset, he emphasises music’s formative influence on them and latterly, how they dominated the pop landscape. It’s not as academic as that sounds. We’ve all read pop biographies where the formative years are a slog. Here Stanley uses the music of the day (ingeniously, each chapter begins with…

Augustus Pablo/ Rockers All Stars Pablo Meets Mr Bassie/Mr Bassie Special! Rough Trade RT 0395 S Rough Trade’s founder Geoff Travis quipped that after this release - the label’s second single - it was all downhill. The best jokes contain a little truth. This really was a fabulous record and anybody who released it was making a rod for their own back: how can you follow it? Wisely, the label took the Monty Python route and did something completely different. I’ve loved the work of Augustus Pablo since I started listening to reggae (about three weeks ago), but as time has passed, his music hasn't aged or worn out; it has become more profound, more apt, a dependable, utterly solid connection to the soul that’s always there when you need…

NEXT ISSUE: AUGUST 2023 (on sale 13 JULY) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 19 JUNE Please email your advert (word doc/excel file/plain text) to: listings@recordcollectormag.com NEW Postal address: Record Collector Listings, Diamond Publishing Ltd, 2nd Floor, Saunders House, 52-53 The Mall, Ealing, London W5 3TA Following issue: SEPTEMBER 2023 (on sale 10 AUGUST) Deadline: Monday 17 JULY…

Laura Cantrell June (23) Leeds Brudenell (26) Wavendon Stables (27) Sunderland Fire Station (28) Glasgow St Luke’s (29) Hebden Bridge Trades Club (30) London Islington Union Chapel July (1) Easton Park Farm Maverick Festival (3) Birmingham Kitchen Garden Café (4) Nottingham Old Cold Store (5) Manchester Night & Day (7) Winchester Twyford St Mary’s Church (9) Bristol Hen & Chicken (10) Oxford Wesley Memorial Church The Cult July (4) Cardiff Castle (5) Halifax Piece Hall (6) Scarborough Open Air Theatre Def Leppard July (1) London Wembley Stadium (2) Lytham Lytham Festival (6) Glasgow Green Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds July (21) Amersham PennFest (23) Nottingham Wollaton Park Splendour Festival (28) London Crystal Palace Bowl (30) Brighton On The Beach August (5) Saffron Waldon Audley End (19) Caldicot Castle (20) Sedgefield Hardwick…

London: Herbie Hancock, 28-29 July, The Unthanks, 10 September, Barbican. ■ Josh Turner, 13-14 July, Hue & Cry, 17 October, Islington Union Chapel. ■ Regina Spektor, Royal Festival Hall, 15-16 July. ■ Mac DeMarco, Hackney Empire, 30-31 July, 1 August. ■ Limp Bizkit, Pendulum, Gunnersbury Park, 13 August. ■ Bebe Rexha, Shepherd’s Bush O2 Empire, 28 July. ■ John Mayer, Greenwich O2, 18 March 2024. ■ Bobby Rush, 17-18 July, Corduroy, 15 September, Forge. ■ Joan Armatrading Symphony No 1, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 24 November. ■ John Grant, 23 September, NEU!’s Michael Rother, 3 February 2024, Barbican. ■ Azymuth, 16-18 June, Ricki Lee Jones, 28 June, Camden Jazz Café. ■ Siouxsie Sioux, Limehouse Troxy, 6-7 September. ■ The Go! Team, Camden Roundhouse, 10 February 2024. ■ Rammstein’s Till Lindemann, Wembley OVO…

This month: Mike Garson Born 29 July 1945, in Brooklyn, New York City, pianist Mike Garson has, throughout his lengthy career, worked with a diverse array of musicians from both the rock and jazz worlds. Most celebrated for his extensive studio and live work with David Bowie, Garson’s discography contains more than a few surprises. He began playing classical piano at the age of seven before switching to jazz in his late teens, at which point he started gigging professionally wherever he could find employment. He found summer work in upstate New York hotels, supplying backing for comedians and itinerant singers — an environment which provided essential practical experience. “When I sit down, I don’t take any singer or group for granted” After graduating from Brooklyn College with a degree…

This month: Arrows Arrows are a neglected wonder. Too late for glam, too early for punk, too rocky for chart pop, the Anglo-American trio’s contribution to music is greater than you might expect. No only did they fill the giant platform shoes left by the Bay City Rollers when the Scottish popsters decided they’d had enough of their TV show Shang-A-Lang, but they also created one of the greatest records ever, I Love Rock’N’Roll. The story begins with New Yorker Alan Merrill (formerly Allan Sachs), who had been born under a musical sign. He was the son of renowned jazz vocalist Helen Merrill and clarinettist/saxophonist Aaron Sachs who played with Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday, and his cousin was the legendary Laura Nyro. “We’d go up on the roof and…

CODA Al Green Let's Stay Together (London SHU 8430, LP, UK) £30 I grew up in Oakland, California and the house was filled with music. When I was five, I told my mum I wanted to be a famous singer and this album reminds me of that time, my early childhood when it was on non-stop and I would sing along to it and copy Al Green’s way of singing. I got to see Al Green perform in his 70s prime. He was sensational. The Jackson 5 Greatest Hits (Tamla Motown STML 11212, LP, UK) £5 I’m the youngest of three music-obsessed brothers and this was a pivotal record for us. We loved The Jackson 5, we knew their history, their individual names — Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Michael, Jermaine —…