Table of contents for Issue 542 in Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag MULLINS IT OVER Your new Spotify Playlist [RC 541] is a nice touch. Usually, when reading you, I pull out some vinyl by a featured artist or article and read away. Your tagline - The Magazine You Can Hear - got me thinking of SFX, that short-lived (only 19 issues) magazine circa 1981-82 trailing ‘A Fat Hour Of Music, News & Interviews’ and available as a C60 cassette. Only 75p fortnightly. Anyone else buy this, like me? My pile of these taped gems, I now sadly regret selling in Loot magazine for twice the price to some fashion student. However, I did recently come across an actual copy of Issue No 11, the Paul McCartney interview one - it's a great listen.…

For this issue, Prog's Associate Editor, Jo Kendall, spoke to Alan Parsons (p58), to Easy Star All Stars (p86) about the wondrous Dub Side Of The Moon, heard about Jill Furmanovsky's new Dark Side book (p84), and grabbed insider Floyd nuggets from Guy Pratt, Durga McBroom and Theo Travis (p86). Sadly, The Goons were unavailable for comment. Mike Barnes, author of A New Day Yesterday: Progressive Rock & The 1970s, ponders the effect that hearing The Dark Side Of The Moon and seeing Pink Floyd in concert had on his young mind (p8O), and interviews John Fiddler about Medicine Head's similarly-titled album. Joe Geesin, whose father Ron worked on Atom Heart Mother, appeared on a Pink Floyd album aged six months, and 10 years ago interviewed Nick Mason for RC (he's…

The Rolling Stones tribute Stoned Cold Country CD, LP, with Ashley McBryde, Brooks & Dunn, Maren Morris, Brothers Osborne, The War And Treaty, Elle King, Marcus King, Little Big Town, Zac Brown Band, Lainey Wilson, Steve Earle, Eric Church, BMG, 10 March. ■ Joan Baez Am I Pretty When I Fly? book, Ingram, 18 May. ■ Hack-Poets Guild Blackletter Garland CD, LP, with Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp, Nathaniel Mann, One Little Independent, 10 March. Due: March (31) Chip Taylor The Cradle Of All Living Things 2CD, Train Wreck. Biz Press On Vinyl, Middlesbrough, announced in January that they've doubled production capacity with two record-pressing machines to 6,000 units a day. ■ Jonathan Scott Into The Groove - The Story Of Sound From Tin Foil To Vinyl book, Bloomsbury, 2 March. ■ Surfside Wax…

Emily Breeze Rapture (Sugar Shack FOD 145 V, LP. 2023) Accurately described by Breeze herself as “a collection of coming-of-(middle-) age stories which celebrate flamboyant failure, excess and acceptance”, this album is full of dark humour, gorgeous synths and flourishes of jangle-pop. The Bristol-based artist worked on the record with Massive Attack collaborator Stew Jackson, with tremendous results, including standout singles Ordinary Life and Confessions Of An Ageing Party Girl'. The vinyl is limited to 500 copies. De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising (Chrysalis RMM 0451, LP, 2023) A long-awaited physical reissue for one of hip-hop's iconic albums. Often sought out (unsuccessfully) by record shoppers down the years, the trio's debut LP is finally re-surfacing on vinyl 34 years to the day since its original 1989 release, also…

Ian Shirley, Editor Emeritus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions EAR ALL ABOUT IT The best thing for me about the vinyl revival is that my kids and grandkids find it easier to buy me presents. So it was very nice to receive a copy of the Third Ear Band's Alchemy for Christmas. It was, of course, a reissue but a nice copy that took me back more than a few decades when I dropped the needle on it. I have an original copy from 1969, too, and dug it out to play by comparison. It saw a lot of action in the 70s and is only in VG condition today. There are plenty of hairlines on both sides although the sleeve is VG+. Just for fun,…

Q&A Label boss: Len Fico Interview: Charles Donovan Where are you based, what do you, do and why? New York and Los Angeles. I've been an independent label owner since 1994, and why? The prosaic answer is I love music. The accurate answer is, I “aged out” of major label employment and craved autonomy. Why the name? Our offices have been on Sunset Blvd for the past 22 years. I equate the modern record business with Sunset Blvd. A million legends were born on this strip. From 9000 Sunset all the way to downtown Los Angeles you can reach out and grab culturally shattering events emanating from “three chords and a guitar”. When did you launch it and how have things changed since? When we launched, file-sharing was just beginning…

Not Forgotten OBITS David Crosby lost count of the number of second chances he was given. Hard drugs and alcohol addiction nearly killed him during the 80s; he did time in a Texan prison, suffered multiple heart attacks, went bankrupt, underwent a lifesaving liver transplant and, later on, became diabetic. Yet none of this seemed to crush his spirit. For many, Crosby was the quintessential rock'n'roll survivor, a shatterproof force as durable as the extraordinary body of music that now serves as his legacy. As befits such a life of high drama, Crosby approached everything at full tilt. The son of Hollywood cinematographer Floyd Crosby, he quit college to follow his musical ambitions, charging between Los Angeles, Chicago and Greenwich Village as an aspiring folkie in the early 60s. His path…

Generation Z pays a visit. It has been a few years. Previously, the young man had told me he liked jazz, so I played him Dexter Gordon's One Flight Up. It's accessible, satisfying, warm, interesting; Gordon, one of the postwar tenor titans, didn't work with modal forms very often, but this is an exception. I bought the album at Ray's Jazz in the 80s, after a brief audition sold it to me. I'd hoped a similar experience might sell it, metaphorically, to the young man. As we listened to it through the big speakers, we sat in the sun's dying embers, and by the end of the album, only the glow of the deck's indicator light and the amp's KT88 valves lit the room. I don't know what the youthman…

DAVID BREWIS Field Music singer on his new solo venture What film could your new set soundtrack? It s slightly jazz and all-acoustic: Planes, Trains And Automobiles, or Frances Ha. Is there anything still unissued? Tons, including our covers band in South Shields’ Turk's Head pub in 1996. Over-enthusiastic classic rock songs! With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Devin & Renata Ocampo. Who'd you like to produce? Donovan. Do you recall when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? The New Tellers’ This Is To Test Your Reaction 7”, in 2001. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? Spin, Newcastle. What record made you want to go pro? Led Zeppelin Remasters cassette, age 10. Was anyone in your family a musician?…

The Hollies Gasoline Alley Bred (Parlophone R 5862, 7” promo, UK, 1970) £15 Although Parsons has reservations about the mix, this country-tinged pop tune is notable as an early marker of his studio work. The Alan Parsons Project Top Airplay From The Alan Parsons Project's ‘I Robot’ & ‘Pyramid’ (Arista SP 28, EP Promo, US, 1978) £20 After being snapped up by Arista, these white-bagged five-track EP promos helped spread the Project's sound across US radio stations. Alan Parsons A Valid Path (Immergent 284111-2, DualDisc US, 2006) £40 Parsons’ EDM direction in DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Stereo with videos, interviews, a track commentary, and live clips from Madrid. Phew! Alan Parsons The Time Machine (Music On Vinyl M0VLP1010, LP, 180g Limited Numbered Edition, Europe, 2014) £70 The science…

DARK SIDE 50th SPECIAL How did you first get interested in photography? “My father was a very good amateur photographer and was an architect, so he took pictures of his work stuff. We had a little dark room in our house in Southern Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]. As a child I remember sitting there, going, ‘Abracadabra!’ and seeing pictures coming out of white paper. I was fascinated.” And where did you get your love of music? “My dad also played guitar as his hobby, so I've kind of embodied his two hobbies in my career, but not intentionally [laughs].” How did you end up with a camera in your hand? “When we moved to [London] I went first to Harrow School of Art and then The Central School of Art, because…

Guy Pratt Floyd bassist and Rockonteur recalls joining the Dark Side “As Christmas and birthday gifts when I was 13-turning-14, my mum and dad bought me my first guitar, a bass, and a copy of The Dark Side Of The Moon. I only remembered this as I was walking up the back stairs of the stage of Wembley Stadium in 1988 [as the new bassist for Floyd on the Momentary Lapse Of Reason tour]! I wasn't a big prog head, I liked rock'n'roll. But what I loved about Dark Side… is it taught me to not be afraid of jazz. Rick Wright's chords turned me onto Miles Davis. And it wasn't until I played it, with the accompanying films, that I got what some of the lyrics meant. When they…

DARK SIDE 50th SPECIAL Pink Floyd are one of the most successful bands these shores have ever produced and most collectable, too. This magazine has documented Pink Floyd's varied and colourful discography in issues #292, #321, #356, #417 and #432, with records from around the world (including countries you couldn't imagine releasing records) regularly commanding four figures. And those values continue to rise, given Pink Floyd's influence and legacy. Released in 1973, The Dark Side Of The Moon went on to become one of the biggest-selling albums in the world. It's music as popular and culturally important as its striking cover. But can such a massive-selling album be collectable? Well, yes. Of course, condition is everything. And it has to be the complete package: in this case the gatefold sleeve,…

Auteur-in-chief Luke Haines talks remastering, Melody Maker and Macca… You wrote on Das Capital’s sleeve notes about “hostility towards the idea of the past”. Do you feel more well-disposed towards it? I'm OK with the past as it stands. I don't want to relive it. I don't want to go and do a tour with those songs or get that band together again, but the stuff exists, so I'm happy having it out there. In the age where digital formats are kind of ephemeral, it's good to keep the artefact preserved. I'm not a big fan of digital files. It's difficult to talk about the 90s without talking about Britpop, even if New Wave preceded it. Did you get a sense that you would be at odds with that prevalent…

Neutral Milk Hotel The Collected Works Of Merge MRG 776 (4LP/2×lO”/3×7”) Never underestimate the allure of silence. In the 24 years since Neutral Milk Hotel released indie-rock landmark In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, their stock has risen considerably while mainman Jeff Mangum has shunned the spotlight. Following a London gig in October 1998, no word was heard from Mangum. Then some tentative steps - a guest slot during the Elephant Six reunion shows of 2008, a solo tour in 2011-13, full-band reunion shows from 2013-15 but save for Little Birds, a late 1998 recording that was released on the self-titled box set released in 2011, there has been no new music from Mangum since Aeroplane. The Collected Works Of… is essentially an update of that box set comprising a…

The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones In Mono ABKCO 7120811 (15CD,16 LP) In 1967, pop music was changing fast and The Rolling Stones weren't sure which way to turn. Their flirtation with psychedelia didn't last and it wouldn't be long before they were proclaiming themselves the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. And for a while they really were. In 1965, it hadn't seemed possible that a bunch of snotty misanthropes so desperately enslaved to the blues, could amount to much at all. But then they were rejuvenated by three glorious self-penned 45s (The Last Time, Satisfaction, Get Off Of My Cloud) which provided the impetus for them to challenge The Beatles. The classic singles kept on coming: Paint It Black, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Have You Seen Your Mother Baby…a…

Teenage Glampage! - Can The Glam 2 Cherry Red Glambox 195 (4CD) Second sparkling set of star-studded shams and steam hammers. You've got to go all in with a Can The Glam! sequel. No half measures. Just as that first collection of “70s glambusters”, released last year, opted for a terrible pun title with an exclamation mark, so does this. We wouldn't want it any other way. Embrace the bacofoil jackets, the highrise boots. Eighty “rockers, shockers and teenyboppers” stomp forth once more on Teenage Glampage!, and if you thought there were no more hidden treasures for the team behind the set to excavate, think again. Actually, don't think, just feel the throb of the tinsel, the force of the faux-rock. Thrill to “deep” cuts from T. Rex, Wizzard, Suzi…

U.S. Girls Bless This Mess 4AD 4AD 0506 (CD, LP) Even by her own shapeshifting standards, U.S. Girls’ Meghan Remy has executed some breathtaking gear-changes since 2020's Heavy Light. Besides a typically withering critique of Father Christmas (seasonal single Santa Stay Home), she has written a memoir (Begin By Telling), sampled Glenn Gould. covered the Birthday Party for a tribute album and more. Along the way, she gave birth to twins and recorded an album, whose title speaks volumes about Remy's ability to transform mighty feats of multi-tasking and politically aware meaning into hallowed art-pop. Recorded piecemeal with a busy troupe of collaborators, including Marker Starling, Basia Bulat and husband Max Turnbull, Bless This Mess navigates chaos with binding cogency, as befits Remy's quick intuition and intellect. Whether she's evoking…

M83's Anthony Gonzalez on his ultimate fantasy and how he approached the new record differently to his last major release. 2016's Junk was full of collaborations, whereas Fantasy is notably free of big name guests. What have you learned in the intervening years? I think what I've learned is that you're never better served than by yourself. The only person that's going to make M83 unique and original is me, so maybe stop relying on other people to try to make it sound good. I loved doing those featured artist collaborations, but maybe there was a time for that, and maybe now is the time to give a little more space for myself. In a way, I need to expose myself more, which can be tricky for me to do.…

Crazy Dreams Paul Brady Merrion Press, £19.99 ISBN 9781785374296. 336 pages Emerald Isle misfit shines in print Paul Brady should go down in music history as a master songwriter, having been covered by Tina Turner, David Crosby. Bonnie Raitt and sundry others. Yet as far as his own music goes, his evolution from Dylan-fixated 60s folkie through 80s polished, radio-friendly singer-songwriter in the Gerry Rafferty mould to fields beyond has been all but overlooked. He found his credibility with folk supergroup Planxty in 1974 after stepping into Christy Moore's shoes, but even then felt a square peg looking for a hole. The alliances he made over a half-century career have often been double-edged ones that have caused him pain as well as pleasure. This memoir, truly selfpenned, will prove a…

NEXT ISSUE: APRIL 2023 (on sale 23 MARCH) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 27 FEBRUARY 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: MAY 2023 (on sale 20 APRIL) Deadline: Monday 27 MARCH…

Spotlighting an upcoming road trip This month: E from EELS How have you prepared for the tour? I keep a list since the last time we toured of songs that I'd like to do, adding to it as they occur to me. Do you have any pre-/ post-show routines? We have a couple of songs that we regularly crank out to get pumped up. Two of our long-time, sure-fire tunes are Prince's Gett Off and the Laverne & Shirley theme, which is very uplifting. Will you be playing any songs that you rarely perform? A few we've either never done, or haven't done in a long time. Will the set-list change much? We work hard to build a show that has momentum and emotional peaks and valleys, like a story…

This month: John Keenan Most communities with a musical life have a local hero, someone who makes a difference. Sometimes — Tony Wilson, say — they have a public profile which helps their projects and the place they are advocating; sometimes they are regionally significant — Roger Eagle, perhaps — and sometimes they make a massive difference locally without becoming a household name elsewhere. Meet John Keenan, without whom the music scene in Leeds since 1976 would have been very different, and much poorer. Born in St Helens, he spent much of his childhood in the wilds of North Wales before his family moved back to Merseyside, where he was awarded a scholarship to study at St Maty's College in Crosby. From there he enrolled at Southport Art College where…

Various For Dancers Only (Kent Records, KENT 001, LP, UK, 1982) £15 To herald the arrival of Ace's new reissue soul label in 1982, Ady Croasdell compiled a 15-track selection of mid-tempo rhythm and blues and northern soul culled from the US Kent and Modern stables. Intended as a one-off, after selling 20,000 copies it became the first of a cherished catalogue overseen by Croasdell that stretches into the hundreds. Introducing a new generation to rare soul and providing a blueprint for every soul reissue label to emulate since, it's winners all the way from Mary Love, Felice Taylor and Danny Monday to Ike and Tina, The Ikettes and Jackie Day. Mary Love You Turn My Bitter Into Sweet (Kent TOWN 501, 7”, green vinyl, UK, 1982) £25 Mary Love's…

There has long been an association in popular culture, for various farfetched and pharmacological reasons, between The Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wizard Of Oz, but in my mind, the stronger connection is between Dark Side and Derek And Clive (Live). Why, you might ask? Well, mainly because I was introduced to the prog classic and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's cussword culmination at exactly the same time, at a party when I had just turned 13, where the soundtrack was provided by the two aforementioned albums on constant rotation. You can see why, today, they hogged turntable space that night: back then, in late 1975, they both - with their respective combative attitude towards straight society and prodigious blasphemy - represented to our early-teenage brains, increasingly attuned…

An 8CD/2BD box of Hawkwind's late-70s recordings, bolstered by 30 bonuses, plus book, poster, is due this month. It takes in Steven Wilson mixes of Quark, Strangeness And Charm 2CD, with three bonuses, and eighttrack The Rockfield Studio Sessions 1977; Hawklords 25 Years On CD, eight and PXR5 CD, eight. There's also the 12-track Live September 1977 Fairfield Hall, Croydon, & The Gaumont, Ipswich CD; 10-track Live September 1977 De Montfort Hall, Leicester CD; seven-track Sonic Assassins Queensway Hall, Barnstaple, 23 December 1977 CD; and 10-track Hawklords Brunel University, Uxbridge, 24 November 1978 CD. The 2BD has Wilson 5.1 mixes of Quark, Strangeness And Charm with TV clip, Hawklords 25 Years On, and PXR5, plus unissued promo footage from Brunel University. Hawkwind Days Of Underground - The Studio And Live Recordings…

Tom Verlaine died 28 January, aged 73 Television's Marquee Moon, their 1977 debut, is often described as the best this and the most important that, but it really does jump a mountain. It was the angel of grace emerging from punk's gobby rubble. Undoubtedly, it's that crystalline yet fluid masterpiece for which singer/guitarist Tom Verlaine, who has died in New York, will be canonised. Yet if that was the toughest of acts to follow, Television's second, Adventure, remains a glory, and his subsequent solo career yielded jewels galore, from the exhilarating two-chord anthem Breakin’ In My Heart to Kingdom Come, which Bowie covered on Scary Monsters. He also famously adorned exgirlfriend Patti Smith's Horses and later albums, produced Jeff Buckley and worked with Sonic Youth alumni. And anyone who saw…

There was a band called The Spotnicks. Record Collector readers will doubtless know more about them than I do — Record Collector readers know more about anything than I do - but they were Swedish and played instrumentals, and weren't bad, but are best known for their unique gimmick of dressing up as spacemen, presumably because dressing up as actual Sputniks would have made it quite difficult to play their instruments. But in doing so, The Spotnicks were one of the, if not actually the, first acts to Dress Up. Dressing Up is one of the great cornerstones of popular music. For years it was very simple: if you were serious, you wore Posh Clothes onstage tuxedos for men, gowns for women — and if you were funny, you wore…

OPINION Francis Rossi is about to embark on an extensive tour of the UK with his one man show, Tunes and Chat. Running from March through to November 2023, well over 100 dates, it follows on from a similar show Rossi toured with in 2019 and 2020, before the global shutdown brought everything to a halt. At 73, Rossi's enthusiasm for the performing side of the business remains undimmed, although he is less enthusiastic about the travel and logistics. Having achieved so much with Status Quo, it turns out that he does harbour one small regret when it comes to looking back on Quo's aborted attempt to crack America: they're huge in every territory bar the States. Did being big in the US never appeal? Well, we never plugged any…

SAM BROWN “It's OK to be broken” are the opening words of Number 8, die first album by Sam Brown for 15 years. In some ways, they capture the essence of the project, one only made possible because die artist was able to reach an acceptance of her particular ‘brokenness’ - the almost-total loss of her singing voice (and primary income stream), in 2007, just as her last album, Of The Moment, came out. Though she'd been an independent artist for over 15 years by that time, her breakout period with A&M ending after two albums in the early 90s, Brown also made an extremely good living on tours with Pink Floyd and Jools Holland. Overnight, it was all snatched away. In the years since, she's been working as a…

The first that the music press heard of The Dark Side Of The Moon was at a playback at the London Planetarium on 27 February 1973. The group felt that the audio equipment was inadequate and, with the exception of Rick Wright, decided to boycott the event, sending cardboard cut-outs instead, which were placed behind a desk in the reception hall. Melody Maker's Roy HoIIingworth had problems with side one, making the rather baffling assertion that, after 10 minutes, “the music became so confused with itself it was virtually impossible to follow” - which would have been during Time — and, after 15 minutes, was “diabolically uninteresting” (The Great Gig In The Sky). He thought side two was a distinct improvement, writing, “The songs, the sounds [and] the rhythms were…

There are more than 1,000 versions available of The Dark Side Of The Moon, from releases with label misprints to bootleg picture discs. The album has been repackaged and reissued countless times in many different formats, including the new 5Oth anniversary box set, reviewed next issue. Here are a number of available options that have been released in the UK and Europe. In 1993 The Dark Side Of The Moon was remastered for CD by Doug Sax and James Guthrie at The Mastering Lab in California. It was released in a cardboard box with a 3D prism and included a booklet of 3D photography and lyrics, and five postcards featuring the original artwork. (EMI, 0777 7 81479 2 3, £10). The album's 30th anniversary in 2003 was marked by the…

DARK SIDE 50th SPECIAL SELECTED THE DARK SIDE OFTHE MOON 45s 1. MONEY/ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE (Angola, 1974, Stateside 8 E 006 05368) £250 EMI Angola licensed this 1973 single from Portugal, of which it was a colony until 1975. Both the single and the sleeve are nearly identical to the Portuguese version but mention Angola as the place of manufacture. Most surprising is the label used: EMI subsidiary Stateside. Misspelling of‘Gilmour’ as ‘Guilmour’ On sleeve and label. 2. MONEY/LEARNING TO FLY (Argentina, 1988, CBS DEP 698,promo) £80 3. US AND THEM/MONEY (Argentina, 1988, CBS DEP 703, promo) £200 Two singles issued in Argentina, with the titles in Spanish on the labels. Live versions from The Delicate Sound Of Thunder, neither got beyond the promotional stage, possibly pressed for airplay.…

The New York saxophonist EDDIE ‘LOCKJAW’ DAVIS is arguably best remembered for the multiple hardblowing albums he made in the early 1960s that captured his intense gladiatorial battles with fellow tenor titan Johnny Griffin. The pair certainly lived up to their billing as one of jazz's most dynamic duos but for this writer, Davis’ several late-50s collaborations with “Queen of the Organ”, SHIRLEY SCOTT, were much more interesting because of the marked incongruity between the latter's elegantly nuanced and almost orchestral approach to the Hammond organ and Davis's intensely earthy blues style. Now, four of the albums they recorded in 1958, which also featured flautist and saxophonist Jerome Richardson, are brought together in a handsome 4LP/CD package called Cookin’ With Jaws And The Queen: The Legendary Prestige Cookbook Albums ( Craft).…

HYPE CITY SOUNDTRACK (Elephant Six Recording Co, no cat no, MC, US, 1993) £100 This highly sought-after cassette was released by Elephant 6, the loose Louisiana collective comprising Mangum along with Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart (both of whom formed Olivia Tremor Control with Mangum), and Robert Schneider (Apples In Stereo). According to legend, two versions of Hype City Soundtrack circulated with slightly different track listings. Everything Is/Snow Song Pt 1 (Cher Doll CHER 002, 7”, US, 1993) £70 Later expanded to the seven-track release included in The Collected Works Of, Everything Is was Neutral Milk Hotel's debut single, first released as a 7” by the Seattle-based indie-pop label Cher Doll. Also released as a limited edition, hand-numbered pressing of 50 with colour xerox sleeves designed by Mangum. IN THE…

The Strokes The Singles Volume 01 RCA 19439955787 (7”×l0) Saviours of rock'n'roll? Or insouciant pretty rich boys in the right place at the right time? With nostalgia over the early 2000s New York indie scene in overdrive - Lizzy Goodman's oral history, Meet Me In The Bathroom, is the subject of a brand new documentary - it seems the debate over The Strokes’ credentials is back in focus. Coincidentally or not, the most hyped band of the 21st century - in the pallid post-Britpop landscape, all it took was a black and white photograph in the NME to start the incessant buzz - give the case for the defence in their first career retrospective. Their opening shot, The Modern Age EP released on Rough Trade in January 2001, was an…

Van Morrison Moving On Skiffle Virgin 4819228 (2CD, 2LP) Van does things his own way and while this is skiffle, it's also not. At least not what you sometimes expect when a major star chooses to cover songs of his youth. Moving On Skiffle is far from simply a lively run through of old favourites. He takes classics from the 50s, things that he was listening to in some case before he was even a teenager, and recreates them as Van Morrison songs. He never loses sight of the originals yet infuses them not only with the soulfulness of his always unmistakeable growl but with an extra something, easy-going but in a focused way. There's always something going on, whether it's his own sax solo on Careless Love, the three-piece…

Meg Remy on movies, motherhood and funk… What was the starting point for Bless This Mess? The true starting point was writing the songs Bless This Mess and Futures Bet with Basia Bulat to fulfil a Hollywood movie brief. These songs were not chosen for said film but they got my brain going in a certain direction. Then, I got pregnant and kind of HAD to make a record. Gotta work, gotta pay the bills, ya know? So the album is a blend of expression and necessity. Double necessity, really, if you think about it. There's a bit of lockdown on the album. How did the pandemic affect your work and life? The pandemic mainly affected work via logistical limitations, a nuts-and-bolts kind of way. No touring, working remotely from…

Sleaford Mods UK GRIM Rough Trade RT 0391 LP (CD, LP) When the nuclear dust settles and our children are looking back from their Amazon space pods at British life in the early 21st century, the music of Sleaford Mods will provide valuable insights. Since their self-titled and self-released CD-R debut in 2007, Jason Williamson (vocals, lyrics) and Andrew Fearn (music, who joined Williamson on the crusade in 2012) have held a mirror to the times with uncompromising, opinionated, intelligent, and often hilarious diatribes set to stark and exciting tunes. Their 12th album, UK GRIM, is no exception, with Williamson raging against the ever-changing government, masculinity, social media, his online shopping habits… you name it, with the laser focus, bleak humour and force-of-nature delivery that has earned them a devoted…

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 hippest 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…

This month: Bath Festival Of Blues, 28 June 1969 It's a couple of months after my 15th birthday, it's early on a Saturday morning in June, and I'm with my girlfriend, Liz, waiting for a coach bound for the Bath Recreation Ground. The reason - I'm about to be introduced to live music. And what an introduction: Led Zeppelin; Fleetwood Mac; John Mayall; Ten Years After; The Nice; Chicken Shack; Blodwyn Pig; Colosseum; Taste; Keef Hartley… The list goes on… Ticket price: 18/6d (92.5p). We never had it so good. Around mid-morning, we arrive at the festival “site” in the heart of Bath, The crowd is growing but we have no problem finding a suitable piece of real estate to claim as our own. The Recreation Ground provides a compact…

“It could've only been made after decades of songwriting and albummaking, says Merchant. “It's taken all these years to learn how to assemble a group of sympathetic musicians and draw out their best performances. Studio work requires a balance of rigour, discipline, spontaneous emotionality and a bit of chaos. It takes confidence to pull it off.” How long did it take? I began writing in February 2021 and mastered it in April 2022. What have you been up to during the hiatus? I gave birth in 2003 and my life and career instantly changed. I stepped away from the vaudevillian reality and became a solid member of society. I embraced parenthood and was devoted to my community. Once my daughter was school age, I became a folk song/handicraft teacher, volunteer…

It's 1967 and my parents have just acquired our first “proper” record player - a Garrard with wired stereo speakers and I am about to buy my first “proper” record. I choose possibly the first psychedelic single, Arnold Layne, by The Pink Hoyd. Yes, I know it's Pink Floyd but for this release they were The Pink Floyd - Columbia really should employ better proof-readers. Anyway, whatever the name on the label the music was superb and, in many respects, ahead of its time. While it was a good choice as an introduction to a new genre of music it wasn't as tar as getting the most out of the Garrard the single was in mono. Regardless, I played and played that three minutes of swirling organ, electrifying guitar, haunting…

Not Forgotten OBITS Often described as “the guitarist's guitarist”, Jeff Beck was a sonic alchemist ahead of his time. Not only did he help develop the blueprint for rock guitar with his innovative use of distortion and feedback but he also played a pivotal role at several key inflection points in pop history: first with The Yardbirds during the mid-60s British blues-rock boom, then later with The Jeff Beck Group, which laid the groundwork for heavy metal; and then in the mid-70s, when as a fully-fledged solo artist, he became a leading light of the jazz-funk fusion movement. Beck brought a new, intensely virtuosic mindset to the electric guitar, redefining the instrument's expressive capabilities by creating an ecosystem composed of various effects pedals and gadgets, which offered him a broad orchestral…

Late last year I walked into a record shop in Oakham, county town of Rutland, called Rocka-Buy. “What are you looking for?” asked the kindly owner. “Ooh, I dunno, bit of everything,” I mumbled. “Well, what's on your bucket list?” he persevered. “Blue Suede Shoes on gold HMV,” I shot back and, 30 seconds later, he emerged from his back room with a copy. Incredible! My stupidly expensive hobby of collecting Elvis’ gold label HMV singles was one step closer to completion! Now, I'm not going to argue that those 45s are anything other than peak Elvis, but I have to say I got almost as much pleasure from finding a stack of early 70s Elvis albums for a fraction of the price on Oxfam a few weeks later. These…

I'm writing this column on a rainy early January afternoon. By the time you read it, it will be rainy February. Now is not the time for introspection: ruminations on catalogue numbers of Racey singles or reflections on rare Marmalade Spanish picture sleeves. It is the time for a gonzo appreciation of Wales’ finest man from Wales: John Cale. I love John Cale. I think I love him more than Lou Reed these days (looks upwards, crosses self, whispers, ‘Sorry, Lou’). Everyone loves Paris 1919, don't they? And that marvellous trio of boozy coked-up Island albums. The paranoid masterpiece that is Fear. The histrionic even-moreparanoid Helen Of Troy (featuring our hero in a straightjacket on the cover) and Slow Dazzle. Cale wearing a ski-mask on the cover looking not unlike…

THE RC INTERVIEW ALAN PARSONS Two minutes into our Zoom call, Alan Parsons has disappeared from his seat. He returns with a stack of books written by his late father, Denys, a scientist, musician, and humourist. “This is just half of them,” he says, holding them up to the screen, smiling. He seems proud of his dad, and the musical family he was born into in 1948. Denys was also a pianist and flautist who developed The Parsons Code, a visual form of musical notation (“He was way ahead of his time,” his son tells RC), and Alan's mother Jane was an actress and harp player who sang traditional folk songs. Parsons became a teenage blues guitarist, then landed a job at Abbey Road studios aged 19, working as an assistant…

IMAGINATION In many respects, when Imagination — Leee John, Ashley Ingram and Errol Kennedy - first appeared on Top Of The Pops in early 1981, their performance was as incendiary in its own way as David Bowie's arm-roundMick-Ronson on the show nine years earlier. Before they had been seen, Body Talk, the ballad they breezed in with, was being taken very seriously, as a next step forward in the burgeoning Britfimk movement. Wearing spandex, togas, harem pants, and — the only phrase for it — prancing around, they were offering something that had rarely been seen in Britain; a new kind of black sexuality. Released on R&B Records (its strapline: “It's got to be about the product”), an offshoot of the rather less glamorous PRT, Body Talk was sultry and…

Medicine Head began life in the late 60s as a duo of guitarist and singer John Fiddler (above) and Peter Hope-Evans on harmonica and jew's harp. They had a surprise hit single in 1971 with (And The) Pictures In The Sky on John Peel's Dandelion label. “John Peel was happy, but we were thought of as an ‘album band’ and a hit single wasn't our goal,” Fiddler explains to RC. This caused Hope-Evans to temporarily quit. But before he returned - to record another hit, 1973's One And One Is One, on Polydor- Medicine Head recorded a heavier, progressive rock long-player, Dark Side Of The Moon, in 1972. “It wasn't a conscious move,” Fiddler insists. “Keith Relf had produced …Pictures In The Sky and he wasn't sure what he was…

Dark Side…'s notable full-album cover versions include releases by psychedelic freewheelers Flaming Lips, folk singersongwriter Mary Fahl, jazz guitarist Nguyên Lê with the NDR Big Band, and prog-metal titans Dream Theater. But one album that's (rock)steadily been popular since its 2003 release is Easy Star All-Stars’ reggae homage, The Dub Side Of The Moon. New York indie label Easy Star was formed in 1996 by Michael Goldwasser, Eric Smith, Lem Oppenheimer and Remy Gerstein to promote new and established dub and reggae artists. In 1997, Easy Star All-Stars’ musical collective was created to back artists such as Sugar Minott and to present tributes to Augustus Pablo and Dennis Brown. One day, label VP Oppenheimer was out with The Dark Side Of The Moon on his headphones when it struck him:…

The Alan Parsons Project Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (Charisma, 1976) Floyd's engineer brought Dark Side conjury to his group's debut release. The Orb Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (Big Life, 1991) A two-hour electronic trip from Alex Paterson, schoolmate of serving Floyd member Guy Pratt. Porcupine Tree Signify (Delerium, 1996) Textural sonic passages ran alongside more immediate compositions as Steven Wilson's band fell progwards. Radiohead OK Computer (Parlophone, 1997) The Oxford quintet's musings on alienation and capitalism became Dark Side… version 2.0. Spiritualized Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (Dedicated, 1997) Plangent, cinematic space rock, augmented by blues and gospel. Nine Inch Nails Still (UMG, 2002) Attached to the And All That Could Have Been live release is this poignant, existentialist outpouring. Coldplay A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Parlophone, 2002) Chris Martin's indie…

The Auteurs People ‘Round Here Don't Like To Talk About It: The Complete EMI Recordings Cherry Red CRCDB0X 141 (6CD) Now a one-man outsider-art cottage industry, Luke Haines has long maintained a self-sufficient refusenik sensibility, unbeholden to trend, time and place. In this six-disc set, his 90s-early 00s albums under the Auteurs/Baader Meinhof banners conjure worlds unto themselves: worlds of glamour soured and silkily judicious cynicism, alluring and biting. Featuring the four Auteurs albums proper, the Baader Meinhof album and orchestral ‘best of’ Das Capital alongside sundry B-sides and acoustic demos, People 'Round Here… is not quite exhaustive. Rare live album No Dialogue With Cunts perhaps merited inclusion. But it does serve pungent evidence of Haines’ resistance to capitulation, an unimpressed worldview that emerged buttressed from the off. Now 30…

On Sunday 20 August 1972, the last day of the annual Watts summer festival, the Wattstax Benefit Concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. With six hours of music performed by the very best of the Stax label's roster - Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Albert King, the Bar-Kays, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and Kim Weston all featured on the bill - it was not only one of soul music's biggest but also greatest live shows. The brainchild of Stax co-owner Al Bell, it cost a mere dollar to get in (Schlitz beer provided sponsorship and Stax underwrote most of the expenses) and while some cultural historians have since dubbed it the “Black Woodstock”, Richard Pryor described it more astutely as “a soulful expression of the…

The power, fervour and soul of TOOTS HIBBERT’s voice, ably demonstrated in a career spanning half a century, justify such overused epithets as “unique” and “legendary”, and make him and his group the ideal artists to launch a new series of deluxe album packages from the equally legendary Trojan Records. THE MAYTALS: The Essential Artists Collection ( Trojan) presents 28 tracks across two coloured-vinyl LPs housed in a gatefold sleeve. Toots and his sidekicks, Raleigh and Jerry, had previously cut admirable ska records, notably for Coxson Dodd and Prince Buster, but hit their musical zenith during their time at Leslie Kong's Beverley's label from 1968 to 1971. There, supported by the everfirm Beverley's All Stars built around guitarist Hux Brown and bassist Jackie Jackson, they created classic records seemingly at will.…

Therapy? Suicide Pact - You First (Ark 21 1539722, CD, 1999) £10 Therapy?'s fifth album separated the wheat from the chaff. It followed the unit-shifting popmetal masterpiece Troublegum, the gothier Infernal Love and final major-label moment Semi-Detached. By this time, Therapy? were through with wanting to be liked. I remember one friend of mine, practically in tears after hearing 1999's Suicide Pact - You First, asking, “Why isn't Andy Cairns singing properly?!” Mary Anne Hobbs was similarly perplexed. She blurted out, live on Radio 1, that it should be incinerated. Further self-sabotaging Suicide's success, no singles from it were released. (Germany excepted, where the savage Hate Kill Destroy didn't trouble Madonna's American Pie at the top of Die Offiziellen Deutschen Chart). Informed by the ugliest extremes of Captain Beefheart, The Stooges,…

Is skiffle the soundtrack to your childhood? Well, I had a skiffle band when I was still at school, The Sputniks. But it's not just memories, it's an ongoing thing, I've been listening to this stuff all the while since then, basically. I've always loved Ken Collyer, Chris Barber, Dickie Bishop, The Vipers. I listen to this on a regular basis. It's a classic thing, I've always been into it. What triggered your love of the music? It all started out for me with Lead Belly, my father had his records. Then I had a book, the American Folk Guitar book, written by Alan Lomax and Peggy Seeger. I was studying Carter Family technique, playing along to records. How did you move into skiffle? Well, Lonnie Donegan came along! I…

M83 Fantasy Other Suns 4863733 (CD, 2LP) What happens when eternal teenagers hit their forties? Making a mature-sounding album is out of the question, so in M83's case we get an extended offering that serves up nostalgic reverie with some characteristic adolescent moodiness. Fantasy is recalcitrant in its refusal to acknowledge our current reality, choosing instead to inhabit a place one has to seek out somewhere in the imagination. It's an album that requires us to make a leap of faith and immerse ourselves in it to truly experience its goodness. It's a safe space where clear blue waters gush from springs eternal, with no fewer than three tracks referencing the ocean in their titles. Back in 2016, Anthony Gonzalez confounded expectations when he followed up the highly regarded double-album…

Jason Williamson on the aftermath of revolution and online clothes shopping. There is a bloody revolution and you are installed as prime minister by a population desperate for urgent change. What do you do in your first week, who is on your cabinet and whose heads are on spikes? I'd immediately employ Corbyn and get Andy Burnham into the office and go from there. I'm not too up on Labour as I lost interest when Corbyn got the boot, but I'm sure I'd learn quickly. Wouldn't hurt having Mick Lynch in for a natter. I'd gather key figures from each district and community who are instrumental in running selfcontained organisations that help the homeless and low paid in order to best find out how we can use money to eradicate…

Tori Amos March (25) Edinburgh Queen's Hall (27) Belfast Ulster Hall (31) Liverpool Philharmonic Hall April (1) Cambridge Corn Exchange (3) London Royal Albert Hall Badly Drawn Boy March (20) Norwich Epic Studios (21) Birmingham Glee Club (23) Nottingham Metronome (24) Birkenhead Future Yard (25) Kendal Brewery Arts Centre (27) Sunderland Fire Station (30) Manchester Stoller Hall April (1) Leeds City Varieties (2) Bath Komedia (4) London Alexandra Palace Ex-Mansun's Paul Draper March (15) Manchester Gorilla (16) Leeds Brudenell (17) Glasgow King Tut's (18) Liverpool Camp & Furnace (22) Nottingham Rescue Rooms (23) Guilford Boiler Room (24) London Islington O2 Academy (25) Bristol Thekla The Dream Syndicate March (6) Oxted Barn Theatre (7) Bristol Fleece (8) Liverpool District (9) Leeds Brudenell (10-11) Glasgow Hug & Pint (12) Newcastle Cluny 2…

London: James Taylor Quartet, Cadogan Hall, 17 March. ■ Morrissey, Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, 19 March. ■ Róisín Murphy, 11 May, The Vamps, 26 May, Gilberto Gil, 11 October, Royal Albert Hall, • Madonna, Greenwich O2, 14-15,17-18 October, 5-6 December. ■ Nickel Creek, Barbican, 1 September. ■ Delta Goodrem, 30 April, Louise, 1 June, Shepherd's Bush O2 Empire. ■ Shakatak, Soho PizzaExpress, 3-8 July. ■ Peter Andre’s orchestral Symphonic Jackson tribute to Michael Jackson, Palladium 13 May. ■ Ex-Yes’ Jon Anderson, Shepherd's Bush O2 Empire, 22 July. ■ Jason Donovan, Greenwich IndigO2, 27 April. Also: Siouxsie, Latitude Festival, Henham Park, 20-23 July. ■ The Courteeners, Manchester Heaton Park, 9 June. ■ Royal Blood, Brighton Beach, 29 July. For more tours/gig news see www.recordcollectormag.com/latestnews.…

This month: Gamble Rogers Even for an artist with songs as great as The Great Maitland Turkey Farm Massacre of 1953 and Habersham County Mephistopheles, mainstream success is, of course, never guaranteed. Yet Gamble Rogers was one of a kind, with a tremendous legacy. Born in Winter Park, Florida in 1937, James Gamble Rogers IV would become known as Florida's Troubadour, though his home state has been the only area to truly acknowledge this fingerpicker's brilliance. Rogers was, however, recognised almost everywhere he went, with one journalist going so far as to claim him to be “worthy of inclusion in the Smithsonian.” When Gamble was 10 and home from school feeling ill, his mother visited the local record shop. The proprietor told Mrs Rogers that her son would really enjoy…

Lonnie Donegan My Old Man's A Dustman (Ballad Of A Refuse Disposal Officer) (Pye Records, 7N 15256,7”, UK, 1960) £2 We lived in a council house on an estate, me, my two brothers, my mother who worked in a cake shop, my father who was a road sweeper and that was just one of many reasons why we liked My Old Man's A Dustman. I remember my father buying Lonnie Donegan records, that one, Puttin’ On The Style etc and it turned our lives around. Decades later I was working with Van Morrison and he invited Lonnie to guest at our Wembley show. We did a bit of rehearsal at Nomis studios in London and Lonnie comes and he's got all the power and then at Wembley his voice is…