Table of contents for Issue 547 in Record Collector

JUST THE TICKET In the June issue [RC 545], there was an article about collecting gig tickets. I amassed quite a few in the 70s, when I first went to see bands and, living in London, I would travel regularly to the Marquee. Normally, I would join the queue and get in on the night, and many times they sold out, so I became a member of the club, which meant I received their listings in advance and could send off for a ticket by post, all for the princely sum of two shillings a year in 1971. I'm sending a picture of a ticket that I bought, because I seem to remember turning up to find the Marquee was closed and the gig was cancelled. I have looked up…

Jeremy Allen enjoyed talking to the leading lights - darks? - of Goth (p74) for our genre special: Arthur Brown, Alien Sex Fiend, Andi Sex Gang (and that's just the A's). They all built reputations on being abominable. Naturally, they were all lovely. Having reached record-buying age during the NWOBHM, Rich Davenport considers Raven (p64) among its finest, most consistent exponents, and investigates their renaissance in this issue. Rich's book, Horsetrousers, is available now, and he's appearing at the Morecambe Poetry Festival in September. A freelancer for over 35 years - cough, wheeze - Paul Rigby talks (on and on and…) about collectables in RC's Most Wanted section (p36). He also talks about music and the stuff you play it on, Hi-Fi, over at theaudiophileman.com. David Stubbs finally got to…

The Eric Church Country Heart, Restless Soul exhibit, including clothing, guitars, is at Nashville Country Music Hall Of Fame to June 2024. ■ Mirror Tree, with Leonard Cohen collaborator Michael Gold, Innovative Leisure, 8 September. Due: July (21) Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grappelli Nuages, BHM (28) Barbara Dickson John, Paul, George, Rirtgo & Bert, Blood Brothers, Seven Ages Of Woman, B4 Seventyfour 2CD, Chariot August (4) Martina McBride The Time Has Come/The Way That I Am/Wild Angels/Evolution 2CD, BGO (11) Gail Davies The Game/I'll Be There/Givin’ Herself Away/What Can I Say 2CD, Morello, Barbara Dickson Live In 1976/77 2CDs, Chariot September (8) Old Crow Medicine Show Jubilee, ATO (22) Colbie Caillat Along The Way DL. Blues Joe Bonamassa Blues Deluxe Vol 2 CD, blue LP, box with CD, blue LP, Blues Deluxe CD, smoke LP, slipmat, three plectrums, two stickers, J&R…

Cherry Red's ever-expanding roster is set to take in the pcst-punk Fast Product label and its successor, Pop:Aural, featuring Gang Of Four, The Mekons, The Human League, Scars and The Fire Engines; the Criminal Damage punk stable, incorporating The Membranes, Ausgang, The Stills, Twisted Nerve, Destructors, Dead Man's Shadow, Look Back In Anger and Stunt Kites; The Oppressed Oi! Oi! Music, Fatal Blow, Dead And Buried, and a box of demos, live and unissued cuts; “50 or so albums” of The Fall audio/video recordings, mainly live, plus Mark E Emith's The Post Nearly Man and Ed Blaney collaboration, The Train; latter-day Jack Bruce albums, including Silver Rails, Shadows In The Air, More Jack Than God and live sets, plus his debut 1965 single; Kevin Ayers Diamond Jack And The King Of Pain;…

HIP-HOP: 90s REVISITED Dudley Jaynes picks a selection of early-to-mid90s sought-after treasures In RC 374 we celebrated 90s hip-hop. It was then that the genre made its bid to become one of the most widely consumed music forms across the world. Now, given the rapidly rising prices of some releases from this era, it's time to revisit the decade, with an array of picks that includes the most expensive record from these shores. These hip-hop treats include some standard but expensive albums, as well as some very limited pressings which weren't commercially released. While many hip-hop albums from this period still only fetch modest prices, the surge of interest in vinyl seems to be fuelling a bubble that shows no signs of bursting. This highlights the importance of these artists.…

OPINION In stark contrast with the misinformation and backstabbing aimed at Glen Matlock on his departure from the Sex Pistols in 1977, their reunion in 1996 saw the bassist reinstated and his significance in the bands history re-evaluated. After spending the late 70s and 80s in a succession of shortlived bands, and a stint with Iggy Pop, Madock channeled the momentum from the Pistols’ 90s revival into an ongoing solo career. On his sixth album, Consequences Coming, his Pistols-era knack for a sharp tune is paired with politically charged lyrics. “Its a word to the wise,” he tells Record Collector. There's an upbeat energy to the performances on Consequences Coming. Do you still get a buzz from making new music? Yeah, there's life in the old dog yet. When you're…

SWANS “I try to make records that are like a film,” says Michael Gira, speaking via Zoom from Berlin where he is preparing for a tour, “and that comes from listening to those early Pink Floyd albums, or The Doors. But also, going even further back, to my parents having musical albums like South Pacific — or Disney records, which are very cinematic. And that's still what I try to do.” For those who associate Swans with their pulverising, eviscerating work of the early 80s, with album titles such as Filth and tracks including Raping A Slave, it might feel like a stretch to imagine that Snow White or Hollywood musicals had even the remotest role in their conception. Swans, however, with Gira as the constant member since 1982, are…

RAVEN Most headbangers would point to Birmingham as die place where Black Sabbath spawned heavy metal, at the close of the 60s. Vital stages in the genre's development also took place in the Black Country, in the mid-70s, as Judas Priest put metal up on bricks outside Rob Halford's Walsall council house, hotwired it, and drove it into the future. Pinpointing a hub for the genre's late-70s rebirth as the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal is trickier; London had Iron Maiden, Diamond Head continued metal's Midlands lineage, Saxon put Yorkshire on the map, but there's a strong argument to be made for Newcastle as the epicentre of the NWOBHM. Home to Neat Records, synonymous with the movement, Newcastle boasted a remarkable quantity of bands. Alongside cult favourites like Fist,…

GOTH SPECIAL At The Horror Show! exhibition at Somerset House in London recently, something evil was lurking in the darkened basement of the south wing. To imbue the place with a sense of the macabre, patrons were met with the nine-and-ahalf-minute goth-dub masterpiece, Bela Lugosi's Dead, by Bauhaus, in full and on repeat, as they stepped into the exhibition space. Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy intoning about bats, bell towers and the undead is the perfect way to start this trawl through the UK's goth counterculture from the 70s to the present as your eyes dart from a devilhorned Marc Almond to a vampiric Thatcher, with an impressionistic splurge called Post Viral Fatigue by modern Bake Off celebrity goth Noel Fielding bringing things up to date. Walk a few metres more at…

For a movement supposedly fixated on death, goths appeared to be indulging in a fair bit of joie de vivre at the Batcave nightclub in London between 1982 and 1985. Inaugurated by Specimen members Olli Wisdom, who sadly died last year, and Jon Klein, who joined Siouxsie And The Banshees in 1987, it was set up as a ruse to give their glam band somewhere to play. “Olly was an entrepreneur,” remembers Jon Klein, “and the idea was that we'd do stuff ourselves and not just try to get gigs on the circuit.” Wisdom and Klein spotted Jonny Slut with his magnificent death-hawk one night at the club, and immediately recruited him as keyboard player in Specimen, despite his apparent lack of experience or playing chops. “I got into the…

The gold standard for modem jazz was established in the mid-to-late 50s by the pathfinding MILES DAVIS QUINTET, which famously introduced the world to John Coltrane and quickly became feted as one of the finest small groups in jazz history. The band initially recorded for Bob Weinstock's Prestige label before being snapped up by Columbia Records, where Miles would stay until 1985. Now reissued on audiophile vinyl as part of Craft Recordings’ resurrection of the Original Jazz Classics imprint, Workin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet ( OJ C/Craft Recordings) was released in 1960 on Prestige but was recorded four years earlier during two extended sessions that allowed Miles to fulfil his contractual obligation to the label and jump ship to Columbia. Thanks to meticulous all-analogue mastering by Kevin Gray, the album sounds…

Take Me To The River/Found A Job//Love Goes To Building On Fire/ Psycho Killer (Sire SIR 4004/SAM 87, 7” double-pack, gatefold p/s, 1979) £15 Sire in the UK certainly made a fist of trying to break Talking Heads in their early days, as typified by this delightful doublepack, which brings together two of the greatest tracks from More Songs About Buildings And Food with a limited edition of the group's first two A-sides. Speaking In Tongues (Sire 92 37711, LF) 50,000-copy, clear vinyl, in Robert Rauschenberg package. 1983) £40 If any pop group would invite a neo-Dadaist painter to design a clear plastic package to house their new album with rotating discs with collages, it would be Talking Heads. Japan, ever the inventive home of the strong limited edition, released…

Tom Waits Closing Time -ANTI ATI 87476 TCL 1 (2LP) In 1972, Asylum Records was home to rising singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell, Judee Sill, and Jackson Browne – the hippest record label on the planet. Although its boss, David Geffen, brought a blue-denim casual look to corporate management, beneath his laidback Laurel Canyon exterior there lay a ruthless, predatory instinct that made the music moguls of old seem tame by comparison. Geffen had a nose for sniffing out and exploiting fresh talent, so when he was tipped off about an unknown 23-year-old singer/ songwriter called Tom Waits, he went down to The Troubadour, a small but hip Hollywood venue, to catch him live. Blown away by Waits, Geffen signed him to Asylum, bringing in former Lovin’ Spoonful member and Tim Buckley…

Josh Homme on channelling his anger, making up silly words and dealing with loss on the new QOTSA record The last six years sounds like it's been a lot? I've never learned much in such a short period of time. And I'm really actually thankful. I've always been an agent of big change. But perhaps I've always been an instigator of that. And this time around, I'm receiving the great change. And so really, it was a wonderful education, this message of acceptance that I've always been preaching to myself. It's such a beautiful thing when you accept something and appreciate it for what it truly is. You've lost some of your closest friends… Yeah, gone way too young. And there's about eight folks in the last year and a…

Depeche Mode Sounds Of The Universe - The 12” Singles Sony 19658765351 Seven 12” singles of mixes built around Depeche Mode's 2009 Sounds Of The Universe album. They were among the first of the 80s bands to fully grasp the dancefloor possibilities of synthpop, and even as they grew more rock oriented, they still knew how to point their tunes at the clubs. There are remixed gems aplenty here, with more than 30 revisions, reworks, cheeky tweaks and thundering reboots from the likes of Peter Bjorn & John, Roger Sanchez, house master Ralphi Rosario etc. Highlights include Paul Woolford's popping analogue synth stripdown of Hole To Feed, which has yawning depths when you play it on a big system; Thin White Duke's numbing motorik take on Wrong, and the bangin’…

Sell Vinyl/CDs direct to RC readers, call us on 0208 752 8172 or Email listings@recordcollectormag.com NEXT ISSUE: SEPTEMBER 2023 (on sale 10 AUGUST) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 17 JULY 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: OCTOBER 2023 (on sale 7 SEPTEMBER) Deadline: Monday 14 AUGUST…

This month: CHARLIE SIMPSON OF BUSTED How have you prepared for the tour? We started talking in September 2022 about celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Busted, but the main preparations start in August a month of rehearsals in London. Will you be playing anything that you rarely perform? It's mainly a Greatest Hits - fan favourites. We tend to stick to the same set-list every night, as the lighting and pyros need to be organised and designed in advance and relate to specific songs. Are there any venues that you're particularly looking forward to? London 02 is always a momentous occasion. Such a huge room. Epic. Will there be any guests at all? I can't give too much away at this point. What else is in the offing? We're releasing…

The conception of Rick Wakeman's latest album, A Gallery Of The Imagination, began at the age of five. Rick's childhood piano teacher taught him that musicians with instruments are like an artist with paint, something he carried through his life, creating sonic paintings through his compositions. Among the prog influences and soaring Moog solos, Wakeman treats the ears to two solo piano numbers, which reflect Rick's classical roots and love of the romantic period. Courtesy of Madfish, we have the super deluxe limited edition (featuring CD, DVD, vinyl, and book) up for grabs. To be in with a chance of winning, please tell us where Rick journeyed to, back in 1974: a) White Rock, b) Round Table, c) The Centre Of The Earth…

This month: Dave MacRae You'd be hard pressed to find a more accommodating musician than Dave MacRae, who earned his stripes playing with a diverse circle of scene-stealers ranging from Buddy Rich to Chet Baker, Robert Wyatt to Bill Oddie. MacRae was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1943. “My first musical influences were from my parents,” he informs RC. “My mother was a pianist who enjoyed ‘light classical’ and accompanying various singers in the neighbourhood. She read everything and played nothing ‘by ear’. My father played the violin in a kind of country [Scottish] style with the fiddle on his lap, thus avoiding the pain of holding it under the chin - my brother and I both played the violin for a while, and I know how that feels!…

Shirley Bassey You Take My Heart Away (United Artists UP 36260, 7”, UK, 1977) £3 Martin Rushent started as a tape operator at Advision studio and worked his way up the ladder to Head Engineer on sessions for artists as diverse as Fleetwood Mac and Osibisa. One of his last sole engineering credits was for Shirley Bassey's You Take My Heart Away LP, whose title song appeared in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky film and was also issued as a single with a Rushent engineering credit. The Stranglers (Get A) Grip (On Yourself) (United Artists UP 36211, 7”, card p/s, UK, 1977) £12 Rushent got his big break as a producer when Andrew Lauder, head of A&R at United Artists, agreed to let him work with The Stranglers. Rushent captured lightning with…

Goth Is something you recognise as soon as you see it, or at least you think you do. Like punk, it's in the eye of the beholder and you're as likely to get it wrong as right, especiaiiy when it comes to judgments about authenticity. Only someone who truly gets punk can tell what is legitimately punk and what is sped-up pub rock or whatever. Same goes for goth: there's little denying the surface apparel and accoutrements, but which artists and records actually are goth? How can you tell? What elements are crucial? Is ironic grandeur key? Camp magniloquence? Can a synthpop record be goth? Are goth and shoegazing synonymous? How about goth, post-punk and positive punk - are they all the same thing? These are some of the questions…

NEWS The growing market for Dolby Atmos releases saw two seminal recordings premiered at Dolby's London HQ in May. RC weighed up the new treatments, beginning on 22 May with the wondrous sounds of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which revealed a deeper, wider sonic scope in the Atmos Mix. The event was hosted by RRPG editor, Daryl Easlea, along with Atmos producer, David Kosten. They detailed the meticulous process of going back to the original 1973 tapes, lifting out hundreds of musical passages to polish, piece back together, and filter, through the Atmos prism. The process was supervised by Oldfield via Easlea, and the results are sensational. Kosten admitted that Oldfield hadn't offered his opinion about the results, but attendees gave it a unanimous thumbs-up. Three days later, the Dolby…

Katy Perry's One Of The Boys 15th Anniversary Edition is due on blue LP in October as part of a box adding two new cuts on violet 7”, along with a 2024 calendar featuring unpublished album outtake photos. It's accompanied by the Teenage Dream Teenager Edition coloured 2LP, adding the bonus Complete Confection, plus alternate sleeve and poster with unpublished album outtake photos. Additionally, there's a Prism 10th Anniversary Edition splatter 2LP with three bonus tracks, holofoil packaging and a 12-page Deluxe photobook with unpublished album outtake photos. Katy Perry One Of The Boys, Teenage Dream, Prism LPs, Katy CATalog Collector's Edition 5LP/7” box are on Universal, 20 October.…

Hawaii-born Jess Labrador aka Chasms is a musician, producer, mastering engineer, and sound designer based in Los Angeles, California. Blending skittering beats, textural synths, sparse guitar embellishments, and her delicate vocals, Labrador creates a narcotic mix of ethereal, electronic pop with a melancholic dub and trip-hop pulse. Her deeply personal work as Chasms has always felt like an unveiling. For over a decade, Labrador has released music and toured under the moniker and returns with a third full-length LP titled Glimpse Of Heaven on Felte records. Following the 2019 album The Mirage, which was a potent meditation on grief and loss, Glimpse Of Heaven trades in washes of reverb for starker moments of closeness and intimacy. An exploration of the personal inventory and reckoning necessary to move forward in life,…

No 6: Gloria's Record Bar, Battlefield Road, Glasgow In the mid-1950s, Betty Blint had a dress shop on Glasgow's south side, just a short walk from the famous Hampden Park football ground. Her daughter Gloria often had record tokens to spend and would frequently come home with her latest purchase. One day a thought came to Betty: why not sell some records here, alongside the dresses? A small number were duly ordered and displayed, and mother and daughter were so surprised at the interest and the sales figures that the dresses were dropped and the record side took over. By the start of the 1960s, Gloria's Record Bar was establishing itself as a well-stocked local record shop, with friendly and knowledgeable staff. Betty and Gloria would frequently be on-site but…

I remember all those years ago when it was a funny idea that musicians would have careers after their twenties, like rock music was Logan's Run and Mick Jagger would be shot on his 30th birthday. And I remember how rock stars struggled in their thirties, neither young nor old, and had to wait until the invention of CDs and Q Magazine to become successful in their forties. I remember musicians in their fifties being lauded for longevity, and then releasing albums in their sixties whose blaclk and white covers showed craggy faces lined by time and drugs and room service. And now those musicians are in their seventies and their eighties and they are neither clapped out as we assumed, nor too old to rock'n'roll, but instead, in many…

Before ABC there was Vice Versa, a Sheffield-based electronic group arising from the same scene that produced avant-futurists such as Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA and The Human League. However, when Martin Fry turned up to interview the group, they asked him to join them, albeit initially not as a vocalist. By 1980 they had transmogrified into ABC and in 1981 had their first hit with Tears Are Not Enough, white funk with a kinship to the likes of Haircut One Hundred. However, there was a sense that ABC had something else about them. This was fully realised in their debut album, the Trevor Horn-produced The Lexicon Of Love. Melding the grandeur of a more gracious cinematic age with contemporary funk rhythms, it was one of the pop pinnacles of 1982…

Cop (1984) An upgrade of their 1983 debut Filth, improving on its declaration of intent, achieving singularly punitive and overpowering effects through use of decelerated tempo, abrasion, and tape loops. White Light From The Mouth Of Insanity (1991991) Following an unsuccessful dalliance with a major label, White Light… was released on Gira's own Young God label and sees the first shaft of blazing light feature in the group's music. Soundtracks For The Blind (1996) Intended, so to speak, as a swansong, Soundtracks represented a potential, cinemascopic lease of life for Swans, only for Gira to put the group on hold for a decade and a half. My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky (2010) Swans’ glorious return, a partial revisiting of the “sonic intensity” of early…

We thought they were the next Iron Maiden. For us, Raven were heroes. We [became] fans because they spent so much time in New York. We got to meet them, hang out and tour together. Scott Ian, Anthrax Raven were my favourite Neat Records band. [At] the Mayfair rock disco in Newcastle every weekend, as soon as the riff to Don't Need Your Money exploded from the PA, I was headbanging like a maniac. One of the finest metal bands to come out of Newcastle. Jeff “Mantas” Dunn, Venom Inc, Venom In 1981, I walked into a bicycle shop in Wallsend, which had a small record section. I asked to hear Don't Need Your Money by Raven. After the opening lick, I said, “I'll buy it.” Rock Until You Drop…

A goth playlist Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put A Spell On You (1956) The Velvet Underground – Venus In Furs (1967) The Doors – The End (1967) Scott Walker – My Death (1967) The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown – Fire (1968) Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Chile (1968) Leonard Cohen – The Butcher (1969) Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970) David Bowie – The Bewlay Brothers (1971) T.Rex – 20th Century Boy (1973) Suicide – Ghost Rider (1977) Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi's Dead (1979) Joy Division – Atmosphere (1980) Alice Cooper – Clones (1980) Siouxsie & The Banshees – Spellbound (1981) The Birthday Party – Release The Bats (1981) DAF – Der Mussolini (1981) Christian Death – Dogs (1982) Sisters of Mercy – Temple of Love (1983) Marc & The Mambas – Black Heart (1983) Southern Death Cult – Moya (1983) Sex Gang Children – Sebastiane (1983) The Cramps – Human…

Suede 30 Suede Demon DEMREC 1112 (2CD, LP) On those occasions when Suede needed a reboot, they would often look to their debut for guidance. Thirty years on from its release, you can see why. Across the years, the album has often been discussed in terms of its proto-Britpop ‘moment’. But it holds up superbly freed from that context as a deeply distinct and thrillingly flash statement of what Suede do, creating its own world while doing practically everything it can to grab the attention. With punk energy, glam theatricality, rock swagger, Smiths-ian virtuosity, pop melodies and hints of British art-rock to hand, the album thrives in the push-pull between the melancholia of humdrum certainty and a sense of yearning for more, for transformation. It exists in a state of…

After two albums on Stax, THE EMOTIONS joined Columbia and between 1976 and 1981 put out a further five long players. These - 1976's Flowers, 1977's Rejoice, 1978's Sunbeam, 1979's Come Into Our World and 1981's New Affair - are collected with bonuses over three discs on Don't Ask My Neighbors The Columbia/Arc Recordings ( Soulmusic). Together they usher in a new and incredibly commercial era for the female trio with producer/Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White offsetting their super soulful voices with jazzy washes and righteous funk. OTIS REDDING’S Otis Forever: The Albums & Singles 1968- 70 ( Rhino) rounds up the King of Soul's four posthumous albums plus mono versions of the corresponding 24 singles for a superlative six LP set. Limited to 1,000 copies only, the albums are issued…

What's your favourite ever various artists compilation? Don't say Lenny Kaye's Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. That's far too obvious. How about Rough Trade Shops Rock And Roll 1 released by Mute in 2002 and yet to receive its implied sequel? Perhaps you're more partial to No New York or Now 29. One of them was overseen by Brian Eno. Can't remember which. Rephlex's Music From The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, you say? Well, that's more like it. Congratulations. You've just talked your way into a second date. But before this bottle of Rioja goes to our heads, here are three contenders yearning for your aural affections. Brown Acid - The Sixteenth Trip ( RidingEasy) kicks off with seven minutes of delectable scuzz courtesy of The Seeds. While…

Blur The Ballad Of Darren Parlophone 5054197660160 (CD, LP, Cassette) You've got to give it to them. Most artists tagged “heritage act” might use a new album to boost the fanfare around a reunion tour (Blur are celebrating their 35th anniversary with their biggest-ever headline shows, at London's Wembley Stadium, in July), but they would also more likely than not double down on the nostalgia with a self-referential collection designed to guide longterm fans and curious newcomers back to the career-making catalogue that still fills venues and fuels swift sales at the merch stall. But Damon Albarn resolved that The Ballad Of Darren, Blur's first new album since 2015's The Magic Whip, should be a “reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now”, and he's delivered on that promise.…

PJ Harvey I inside The Old Year Dying Partisan Records PTKF 3032 (CD, LP) Of late, Polly Harvey has occupied creative spaces just outside the spotlight. Over-exposed in ill-judged 2019 documentary A Dog Called Money, she diverted her offstage attentions to soundtracks for TV (Bad Sisters, The Virtues) and theatre (All About Eve). Meanwhile, vernacular verse novel Orlam mapped out thorny Dorset territory far from the sax-squalling shows for 2017's The Hope Six Demolition Project, Harvey's last album/ tour proper. Though Harvey says she feared the loss of her grip on music in this period, she relocates her purpose on her 10th album. Coloured by her extra-curricular ventures, I Inside The Old Year Dying bristles with mystery and mood, occupying more intimate territory than Let England Shake's allusive war songs…

Call on 020 8752 8172 or email stockists@metropolis.co.uk for more information or to sign up today! 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…

ASIA'S 2008 album, Phoenix, makes its first appearance on vinyl as a 2LP set (out now on BMG) - the second of four critically acclaimed ‘reunion’ releases (2007-2012) featuring vocalist and ex- King Crimson man John Wetton, guitarist Steve Howe and keyboardist Geoff Downes from Yes and drummer Carl Palmer from Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Sleeve art is by Roger Dean. To be in with a chance of winning one of two copies on vinyl, please tell us which is not an ASIA album: a) Aqua, b) Apple, c) Astra…

This month: Sweet, London Hammersmith Odeon, 1978 My Geography ‘A’ level result suffered thanks to bunking off school with my mate, Simon, to see Sweet. This was their first live appearance in England for four years and the anticipation was heightened by the recent chart success of Love Is Like Oxygen, from the album, Level Headed. It had been Noel Edmonds’ record of the week, no less. The choice of support was puzzling, to say the least. It was (now late) Bob Williamson, a Mike Harding contemporary from Bolton, riding high on his version of the Brotherhood Of Man song, Kippers For Tea [a pastiche of Save Your Kisses For Me], It seemed that only Simon and | appreciated his efforts, as the crowd drowned him out, prompting him to…

Singer-songwriter on her first studio set in 11 years How come you're back now? Because I have support, and I'm mentally and spiritually poised to come back with a whole new attitude, material and lifeforce. This is where I get to tell my story with the clarity and sense of purpose that I always meant to. I actually get to enjoy being Sophie B Hawkins! Tell us about the new album. Free Myself perfectly bookends [1992 debut LP] Tongues And Tails as a new beginning. Any amusing episodes during its creation? We were filming the Better Off Without You music video, and Nigel Dick, the director, said, “Everything I just shot will be lost. There's a poster in the background, so we can't use the footage. We'll be sued by…

On 9 June, a 43-year-old temporary warehouse worker at MPO France disc pressing plant in Le Mans, Sarthe, France, was sentenced to eight months’ prison for stealing and re-selling copies of Taylor Swift's Speak Now (Taylor's Version), due for release 7 July. Two months were for breaking conditions of a suspended sentence for previous offences, two-dozen of which included theft, drug trafficking, fraud and criminal damage, with six months for the new offences. The re-recorded 2010 set adds six new songs, including collaborations with Fall Out Boy and Paramore's Hayley Williams. it's out on various formats, including coloured vinyl LPs. The offender acquired 10 CDs from a pallet and sold two at 25 Euros each via LeBonCoin.fr, then, in the following week, four at 50 Euros a pop. MPO France…

Public Body Big Mess (Fat Cat FAT LP 173, LP, 2023) As you might begin to ascertain from the album title, Brighton post-punk outfit Public Body deal in all manner of contemporary mundanity and social commentary, expertly observed here across 10 brutally honest, often self-deprecating tracks. Recorded using a 70s Woolworths guitar amp and with the help of an old Yamaha drum machine, this debut LP can be ordered on limited edition gold vinyl directly from Fat Cat Records and from the band's webstore. There's also a special ‘translucent purple’ version, available to buy now in UK record shops. Island of Love Island of Love (Third Man, TME 877 V, LP, 2023) Island of Love whose original name was apparently Love Island before they opted for a moniker which wouldn't…

TAYLOR SWIFT Reputation (Big Machine BMRC00600G) $13,600 Double album limited-edition from 2017 on translucent orange vinyl. (eBay item number: 266258978969) Supplied by eBay THE MAGNETICS I Have a Girl (Ra-Sel R 7104) $10,091 Northern soul rarity from 1967 with Love And Devotion on the flip. (eBay item number: 204335191976) Supplied by eBay VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO (Verve V6-5008) $7,600 Original pressing still in its shrink wrap… which is still shrinking judging by the top right-hand corner. (eBay item number: 394614756689) Supplied by eBay PINK FLOYD Discovery (EMI TOCP 71147 62) $7,200 Sixteen CDs with obi strip around the box. (eBay item number: 134144172797) Supplied by eBay SONNY CLARK Cool Struttin’ (Blue Note 1588) $4,657 Four-track hard bop jazz outing from 1958. Supplied by Popsike CHARLIE FEATHERS Defrost Your Heart (Sun…

BRANDY CLARK Country songwriter-to-the-stars on her latest solo set What film could your new set soundtrack? One yet to be made with a wide range of emotions. Is there anything still unissued? I had a band with my mum and one of my best friends out of high school and there are some CDs of that. With whom would you like to make a split 7“? Brandi Carlile. Who'd you like to produce? Patty Loveless. Do you recall when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? Homecoming Queen. Sheryl Crow also recorded it, so Warners put both on a single for Record Store Day. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? Sight & Sound in Centralia/ Chehalis, Washington. What was your first purchase? The Judds,…

The Lexicon Of Love (Neutron/Mercury NTRS 1, Printed inner, 1982, £10) ABC's debut album, indisputably among the greatest debut albums ever made. Melding quasisymphonic treatments with hard funk rhythms, it was the perfect vehicle for Fry's extravagant, lovelorn lyricism. How To Be A… Zillionaire! (Neutron/Mercury NTRH 3, gatefold, printed inner, 1985) £10 ABC's third album, revolving around the nucleus of Fry and Mark White, saw them reinvent themselves in “cartoon” format, long in advance of Gorillaz, featuring non-musical “performers” Fiona Russell Powell (aka Eden) and David Yarritu. Yielded How To Be A Millionaire and Be Near Me. Alphabet City (Neutron/Mercury NTRH 4, printed inner, 1987) £8 With some production assistance from Chic's Bernard Edwards and inspired by a period in which Fry and White lived in New York's Alphabet City,…

PHAROAH SANDERS Thembi (Impulse! AS-9206, US, 1971) £80 Lonnie Liston Smith's tenure with Pharoah Sanders’ group proved seismic, His experimental playing on electric keyboards on this final effort with the saxophonist provided a cosmic, meditative foil to Sanders’ seething free jazz workouts, creating new tributaries in the nascent spiritual jazz style. “With Pharoah and I it was very organic the first time we played together it just worked. I understood that Pharoah was trying to get more sound out of his saxophone and doing things that other people hadn't done and I was trying to get more sound out of the grand piano. It just all came together, and we didn't have to rehearse that much. We were all trying to expand the music and we were talking about peace…

DEXYS You really can't miss Kevin Rowland. Strolling towards our allotted rendezvous down Bethnal Green Road, the dean of Dexys cuts a dash in sailor-stripe top, blue turned-up jeans, cool white trainers and red beret. He looks fabulous, though maybe less flamboyant than he does in the video for I'm Going To Get Free, the lead-off single for Dexys’ new album, The Feminine Divine. Filmed on this very same thoroughfare, I'm Going To Get Free finds Rowland sashaying down the street in wide-legged crimson suit and fedora, like some impossibly dandified 1920s gangster. It's small wonder that he managed it at all, given last year's motorbike accident that left him in traction and led to the cancellation of a Dexys tour. He's still getting used to walking properly again, he…

Alien Sex Fiend Who's Been Sleeping In My Brain? (Anagram EMC 8002) £15 Proudly abominable goth, way ahead of its time. Bauhaus Burning From The Inside (Beggars Banquet BEGA 45) £20 Final album in their first phase is an underrated gem. The Chameleons Script Of The Bridge (Statik STATLP 17) £80 Anthemic indie-goth from Rochdale, Cocteau Twins Head Over Heels (4AD CAD 313) £30 Epic indie daydreams from Grangemouth trio. The Creatures Feast (Wonderland SHELF 1) £20 Siouxsie and Budgie stuck a pin in Hawaii and went on a quixotic adventure. The Cure Japanese Whispers (Fiction FIXM 8) £20 It might be a singles comp, but it holds together like a great pop album, following their “dark trilogy”. Echo & The Bunnymen Porcupine (Korova KODE 6) £20 Goth-adjacent neo-psychedelia from…

How does it feel listening back to the album? There were times, especially when we got to Head Music and A New Morning, where I found it difficult to look back on the record from the dark place we were in because it was so full of optimism. Now, I love looking back because I can see what we've kept, that kind of aggression, theatricality and passion. I can see a very young band there, the exuberance of a band realising they're good… It's quite a showy record. There's nothing dowdy about it. What were your touchpaper songs on the album? The Drowners for sonic excitement. It has this kind of internal motor. With Pantomime Horse, it was strange for me having grown up with Brett and then hearing his…

Talking Heads Stop Making Sense Rhino 603497832835 (2LP) When the original Stop Making Sense album came out in the UK in October 1984, just ahead of the movie, there was, for this listener, an acute sense of disappointment. It was the group's second live album in two years, a single LP full of fairly standard, seemingly truncated workouts of their best-known numbers, and four songs about swamps and houses from the previous year's Speaking In Tongues. Whereas the first try-outs in 1980 with Talking Heads’ expanded T-Funk line-up were big proper experiments, with room for error and improvisation, by 1983, even though the Heads were rather a blazing ninepiece ensemble, it all seemed watered-down, generic soul-gospel delivered too fast. Then, the film arrived. Combining the visuals with that sound made…

The Sound The Statik Records Years EDSEL EDSL. 0145 (5CD) In the riveting song Total Recall, the late Adrian Borland sang, “I can see a distant victory… there'll be another time, another time”. It'd be heartwarmingly Hollywood if, 35 years on from their split, born outsiders The Sound were revered as the post-punk prophets they were, astride Mount Olympus with their peers. Yet without the massive mythology industry of, say, Joy Division or The Cure, they remain esoteric cult heroes. This, of course, only serves to fan the flames of the ardour of those who loved them, and who will be moved and stirred by this 5CD box of their 198485 work, which can justifiably call itself definitive. It's thorough, regarding that specific period, and thrilling. At Korova in the…

Queens Of The Stone Age In Times New Roman… Matador OLE 47 CD (CD, 2LP) It's hard to ignore the context that comes with the eighth Queens Of The Stone Age album. The six years since 2017's Mark Ronson-produced Villains has been a period of personal disaster for frontman Josh Homme. There's been tragedy - he's lost a number of close personal friends, including Taylor Hawkins and Mark Lanegan - but there's also been an unsavoury, unedifying public divorce from Brody Dalle that has seen contentious legal action amid claim and counter claim of domestic violence and child abuse (on the latter Homme has been officially vindicated and handed custody of the couple's three children). All of this is laid bare on In Times New Roman… - only QOTSA's fourth…

1964: Eyes Of The Storm Paul McCartney Allen Lane/Penguin Press, £60 ISBN 9780241619711, 336 pages Shot to get you into my life Has anybody reacted to the hysteria of extreme fame in as level-headed a way as Paul McCartney? Countless wannabes have folded under a fraction of the pressure that came with the success The Beatles were experiencing in 1964. Here, McCartney writes, “Success gave us total freedom.” The 275 photographs in this sumptuous collection - the pick of almost 1,000 taken by the Beatle during that landmark year - reflect McCartney's perspective. Yes, the pandemonium that followed the band everywhere they went is palpable in many of these photos. But rather than the burn-out and angst that you'd expect from images of a group in a similar position today,…

Mike Lewis and Phil Goode are the co-owners of Vinyl Vault, situated just off the High Street in Cheltenham, These record business stalwarts met at record fairs. Indeed, they organise fairs at Cheltenham Town Hall four to five times a year, jointly with Vinyl Bank Record Fairs. Mike tells Steve Burniston all about it. Tell us about the shop, including its history and the kind of music you sell. Prior to opening our shop and due to redundancy, we both enrolled on a government self-employment course in small business. We began with a small area within a bric-a-brac basement shop, hence our name, Vinyl Vault, although we did at first consider Disc Dungeon, but decided that it sounded too gloomy. We evolved and now occupy the whole basement. This year…

Bruce Cockburn August (24) Oxford 02 Academy (25) London Shepherd's Bush 02 Empire (26) Kettering Greenbelt Festival Graham Nash August (29) Basingstoke Anvil (30) Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion September (1) Birmingham Moseley Folk & Arts Festival (2) Blackpool British Country Music Festival (11) London Theatre Royal Drury Lane (12) Manchester Bridgewater Hall (14) Gateshead Sage (15) Buxton Opera House (17) Cardiff St David's Hall (18) Bath Forum (20) Nottingham RCH (21) Glasgow RCH Ocean Colour Scene August (18) Margate Dreamland (20) Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion (24) Halifax Victoria December (3) Bournemouth 02 Academy (4) Bristol Beacon (7) Belfast Telegraph Building (11) Liverpool Uni Mountford Hall (12) Sheffield 02 Academy (14) Norwich UEA (15) Wolverhampton Halls (16) London Hammersmith Eventim Apollo (18) Glasgow 02 Academy SWANS August (12) Manchester…

This month: Mighty Baby It seems apt that this month's Under The Radar examines progressive rock band Mighty Baby as we are offering readers the opportunity to buy a copy of their debut LP pressed on red vinyl, courtesy Ace Records and limited to 250 numbered copies. Mighty Baby were born in the mid-60s when Roger Powell (drums), Mike Evans (bass), Alan King (guitar), Pete Watson (guitar) and Reggie King (vocals) accrued a reputation as one of the top club bands in the UK serving up sets mixing elements of soul and mod. Aptly named The Action, they signed to Parlophone and a slew of singles produced by George Martin followed. Although they started in 1965 with covers of Land Of 1000 Dances/In My Lonely Room, by 1967 The Action…

CODA Elvis Presley Le Roi du Rock n Roll (K-Tel EP 001, LP, gatefold, France, 1976) £5 With its artwork all in French, this Elvis doublealbum - 40 PLUS GRAND SUCCESS…! - had animated graphics in brieht reds, yellows and blues. As a kid I devoured it. I knew every song by heart and spent my teenage years with a hair dryer and foam shaving cream, whipping my hair into an Elvis quiff. My first love. Years later, my dream of performing Elvis came true when I was asked to sing at The Berkeley Ball in Berkeley Square and sang Burning Love to a backing track, just before Peter Andre came on. Now that's rock'n'roll. David Bowie Hunky Dory (RCA SF 8244, 1st pressing, orange label, lyric sheet, laminated sleeve,…