Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
The title comes from a slogan used in a 1920s newspaper ad for Weinberg’s, a gramophone, record and sheet music shop in Brick Lane. Readers saw the words in Yiddish though. Brick Lane was central to London’s Jewish East End and those who lived in the area after the escaping the eastern European pogroms of the late 19th century brought their popular culture with them – a popular culture which, like any other arriving here, evolved and enriched Britain.Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World: Yiddisher Jazz in London's East End 1920s–1950s collects British Jewish-themed jazz and dance Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Without the necessary distance, characterising last year through its pop music is a mug’s game. A gulf of 50 years would bring some perspective. Nonetheless, in spite of that interval there are difficulties in creating a fitting soundtrack to 1968 – especially when using its singles as the emblematic markers.The difference between pop and rock had been codified in 1968, and the album was the chosen means of expression for many musicians. Even so, regardless of the emergence of underground or album-format shows and stations, song-centric pop radio was still the means to reach a wider audience Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Moments into “Maker of me”, it’s evident that The Story of Valerie is special. A circular piano figure accompanies a disembodied female voice singing and speaking of a relationship that’s “greater than myself.” Punctuation from a bass guitar is sprinkled sparingly. The next track, “Golden Boy”, is similarly formidable but employs an electronic keyboard, a drum machine and features an even more intense vocal. The singer – Carola Baer – is striving for a form of ecstasy.The Story of Valerie’s third track “Love me” is doubly impassioned. A keyboard conjuring a pattern evoking Philip Glass meshes Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“…all four [Beatles] worked tirelessly together in the studio, they carved out a sound and a ‘feel’ for each song. On the many tapes that have been carefully preserved from the sessions there is extraordinary inspiration – mixed with plenty of love and laughter. Admittedly, The Beatles incessant work ethic wore down the studio staff. Balance engineer Geoff Emerick left the project after recording nine songs…”Giles Martin’s introduction to the book included with the Super Deluxe Edition box set reissue of The Beatles Anniversary Edition – the untitled double album dubbed ‘The White Album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In April 1973, John Peel wrote that “For my money, Tangerine Dream are the best of the Kosmische Music bands. Whenever any of their extended works are played on the radio there is a heavy mail from listeners. Most of the letter-writers are for it, those that are against it are very against it indeed. A Tangerine Dream track, heard superficially, is little more than a repetitive drone. Closer listening reveals a constantly shifting and evolving pattern – something like Terry Riley’s In C.”Peel began playing Tangerine Dream on his radio show in Autumn 1972 and went on to choose their fourth Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The double album The Sound Gallery was issued in 1995. It collected British easy listening and library music tracks which had been mostly overlooked by reissue compilers as they were beyond a form of musical pale. The 24 cuts were, up to a few years earlier, neither hip or trendy as they were by stuffy old geezers like Joe Loss, aimed at a low-cred easy listening audience, not rare or had been heard by barely anyone as they had appeared on subscription-only music library albums. As a foundational exercise in delineation, The Sound Gallery became as influential a compilation as Nuggets.Side 2 Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After Be-Bop Deluxe finished recording their third album at Abbey Road, their label said they needed something to promote as a single. EMI told band-leader Bill Nelson they wanted a song with commercial appeal. The result was the single “Ships in the Night”, which duly charted during the last week of February 1976. On the back of the hit single, the art-rock outfit’s third album Sunburst Finish became their first to go Top 20. EMI got what it wanted.In the book accompanying the new Deluxe Box Set Sunburst Finish, Nelson candidly says “I never really considered the band to be anything but an Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The famous names on Kreaturen Der Nacht: Deutsche Post-Punk Subkultur 1980–1984 are Christiane F., Die Haut, Malaria! and Mania D. Committed collectors of German post-punk and those who there at the time might be familiar with Ausserhalb, ExKurs or Leben Und Arbeiten. In eschewing DAF, Die Krupps, Der Plan, Einstürzende Neubauten, Liaisons Dangereuses, Holger Hiller, Palais Schaumburg and Die Tödliche Doris, this deep-digging compilation paints a picture of German music from the first half of the 1980s as stimulating as it’s unfamiliar.Kreaturen Der Nacht collects 16 tracks by 16 bands/ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marianne Faithfull’s recent album Negative Capability featured a new version of “As Tears go by”, the Jagger-Richard song which had been her first single. Also heard was an adaptation of Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The A-side of her second single was a cover of his “Blowin’ in the Wind”. While nodding back to 1964 raises the question of whether a circle has been closed, it also suggests Faithfull is saying that the intervening years have brought a fresh perspective on when she first hit the charts at age 17.The new, descriptively titled compilation Come and Stay with Me - The UK Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Jazz on a Summer's Day was first seen in American cinemas in March 1960, it showed that seeing popular music live could be a leisure activity akin to watching high-end sports. Indeed, director Bert Stern intercut the musical performances he captured on film with footage of yachts trying-out for 1958’s America’s Cup. The audience at Rhode Island’s July 1958 Newport Jazz Festival were caught in the congenial surroundings of the Freebody Park over the event’s four days expressing their appreciation in, generally, a reserved and grown-up fashion.Chuck Berry, who played Newport on the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although John & Beverley Martyn and Mott The Hoople were both signed to Island, the connection went further than being with the same label. When Guy Stevens conceived the band he named Mott The Hoople, the producer saw them as uniting the essence of Bob Dylan with that of The Rolling Stones. On their eponymous first album, issued in 1969, Ian Hunter’s vocals are so like Dylan it edges into the preposterous. That same year John & Beverley Martyn made Stormbringer! in Woodstock. Two of its tracks featured The Band’s Levon Helm on drums. Dylan was a couple of steps away.Despite the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Think of Cocteau Twins. Their label 4AD will inevitably be high on the list of markers coming to mind. Whatever they were like as people, mysterious, oblique, shadowy and other similar adjectives were conjured for the band – and label alike. Despite interpretations of them as something other, their 1990 album 4AD Heaven or Las Vegas went Top Ten in the UK, entered the American Top 100 and sold quarter of a million copies.Yet Cocteau Twins’ final two albums came out on Fontana, an adjunct of the major label Phonogram which, in time, was absorbed into the multi-national conglomerate Universal. Read more ...