Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
Among the issues integral to the final album The Beatles recorded two, though usually low profile, are worth bearing mind. Abbey Road was their first album to be released in stereo only. There was no mono edition. Also, in late 1968, an EMI TG12345 console had been installed in Studio 2 of their label’s Abbey Road studios. Unlike its predecessor, the REDD.51, it was a solid-state piece of equipment. Transistors had replaced valves.The album was recorded in a new world, one where the old – mono and valves – was being ushered out. And likewise, The Beatles were in the studio as they ushered Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last week in central London, the Covent Garden branch of the book and music chain Fopp was selling CD sets branded as “5 Classic Albums” and “Original Album Series”. Each collected five CDs of the same number of albums. Amongst what could be picked up were collections by Kevin Ayers, Fairport Convention, Steve Hackett and Man. The asking price for each was £10. There were no bonus tracks and each set didn’t include a booklet. Nonetheless, this is a very keen price.But it’s hard not to have mixed feelings about what’s represented. Have major labels have thrown their hands up and decided that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Original UK pressings of Slade’s Seventies mega-hit singles like “Coz I Luv You”, “Everyday”, “Gudbuy T’Jane” and “Mama Weer all Crazee Now” sell for between £1 and £5 if they’re in decent shape. If a copy is needed to listen to, there’s little need to fork out more than £2. On seven-inch, the real Slade rarities are their pre-hit singles and what they issued earlier as Ambrose Slade and The 'N Betweens.Slade, though, weren’t all about the UK. They were, for example, popular in the Netherlands where “Coz I Luv You”, “Everyday”, “Gudbuy T’Jane”, “Merry X-mas Everybody” and “Take me Bak ’Ome” Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A ghostly voice pronounces “there’s no need to make the sepulchre white.” Following this declaration, what sounds like an ocarina wails mournfully over spindly guitar, a sonorous bass guitar and circular, heartbeat drumming. Tunnelvision’s “Whitened Sepulchre” isn’t a happy-go-lucky look at life.This sombre outing was recorded on 1 March 1981 at Rochdale’s Cargo Studios and engineered by John Brierley, who had done the same job in the same place in October and November 1979 for Joy Division. “Whitened Sepulchre” and three other tracks were then mixed by former JD and now New Order bassist Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Apparently, Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford’s snare drum broke during the first song of their set at Woodstock Festival. On the new double album Live at Woodstock, it’s impossible to detect this happening. As “Born on the Bayou” progresses, the band’s forward motion is relentless and their dedication to the groove is undiminished during this and the remainder of a blistering, paint-peeling set. This percussion hiccup and an allied perception that it was a sub-standard show prevented the band’s leader John Fogerty from allowing CCR to be included in the subsequent live album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Diamond Head was Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera’s first solo album. Released in May 1975 and recorded the previous December and January during a lull in his parent band’s activities, it hit shops between Roxy’s Country Life and Siren albums. Singer Bryan Ferry had done a short solo tour in December 1974 which culminated with a show at The Royal Albert Hall where he was backed by an orchestra. Manzanera took a different tack.Playing alongside him on Diamond Head were Eddie Jobson, Andy Mackay, Paul Thompson and John Wetton – sans Ferry, Manzanera assembled the whole of the then-current Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The core paradox with powerpop is that most of those who sought to create the perfect guitar driven, hook-laden pop song failed to score hits. Come On Let's Go! – Power Pop Gems From the 70s & 80s is stuffed with the classy and memorable, but under a third of its 24 participants had any sort of chart profile. And, for 20/20 and Wire Train, it was fleeting and ultimately inconspicuous.Focussing on America, Come On Let's Go! covers the period 1972 to 1987 with one outlier from 1995 (The Rooks’ archly titled “Glitter Best”). The earliest track is The Raspberries’ hit “I Wanna be With You”. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Memória das Águas hasn’t figured in lists of great Brazilian albums. Its creator Fernando Falcão isn’t as celebrated as fellow countryman and musical maverick Tom Zé. The reissue of this arresting yet previously obscure album should help change these oversights.Although it was recorded in Paris in 1979, Memória das Águas came out in Brazil two years later on Poitou, a label which may have issued only one other record – a live album by a band called Synco Jazz. Falcão’s album was released to coincide with two shows he played at a São Paulo art gallery in April 1981. It was his first time Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Britain’s musical eruption of 1977 wasn’t just about the now. As the new box set 1977 – The Year Punk Broke amply demonstrates, the flux allowed more than first-timers through the door. Seasoned gig-circuit regulars Stranglers got a leg up. A band called The Rings, featuring former Pink Fairies, Pretty Things and Tomorrow member Twink, issued their one single in 1977. Andy Ellison, Radio Stars’ singer, had a similar pedigree – in the Sixties, he had been in John’s Children, alongside a short-stay Marc Bolan. Radio Stars bassist had been in Sparks, and most of the band were in Seventies almost Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“As much as I love New York City, it’s all too obvious that Cleveland is about to become the musical focal point that the Big Apple has been on and off since the beginning of the century,” wrote Peter Laughner in October 1974. “I want to do what Brian Wilson did for California and Lou Reed did for New York.” To a degree, the new five-album/five-CD set Peter Laughner achieves this, albeit 42 years after his death.Laughner’s full-page article in Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer pointed to the north-east Ohio city’s 15-60-75, Jimmy Ley and Mirrors as the bands who would represent this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although British folk-jazz stylists Pentangle played their first official concert in May 1967, their name is borrowed for the title of Unpentangled, a box set of their guitarist John Renbourn’s work on album which kicks off two years earlier. It’s not the disconnect it might seem from the billing as the set includes his 1966 collaborative album Bert and John, made with Pentangle's other guitarist Bert Jansch. The band’s singer Jacqui McShee is heard on Renbourn’s Another Monday album, issued later that year. Their bassist Danny Thompson appears on early 1967’s Watch the Stars, which Dorris Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last month, this column pondered a vinyl-only R.E.M. reissue. Despite the mystifyingly high sales price of original pressings, reissuing a best-of mostly collecting easily available tracks seemed a tad unnecessary. Moreover, it lacked imagination. If vinyl is an ascendant format, why not do something interesting or say something new? The questions again become apposite with the arrival of two imaginative new vinyl comps which set the (relatively) recognisable in unfamiliar contexts and promote fresh appreciation of what might be repeatedly trodden ground.Jon Savage's 1965–1968 – The High Read more ...