Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
Fat cigar at hand, Jim Morrison is pondering the future of music. “Maybe it might rely heavily on electronics, tapes,” he says. “I can envision maybe one person with a lot of machines, tapes and electronic set ups, singing or speaking and using machines.” When that prediction was first broadcast in late June 1969, what he described may have seemed outlandish but it came to pass. He can’t be held responsible for Howard Jones, but whole genres of music evolved which revolved around solo artists utilising, indeed, machines, tapes and electronic set ups.However, at that moment, it’s unlikely many Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hoyt Axton’s songs were heard most widely when recorded by others. Steppenwolf recorded his “The Pusher” in 1967. It featured on their early 1968 debut album but was most pervasive in summer 1969 after it was included on the soundtrack of Easy Rider. Axton himself didn’t release a version until 1971, when “The Pusher” appeared on his Joy to the World album. The title track, another of his best-known compositions, had charted earlier that year for Three Dog Night. Back in early 1963 "Greenback Dollar", which Axton had co-written, was a US hit for The Kingston Trio.While his songs could have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As the producer of the early Kinks and Who, Shel Talmy’s status as one of British pop’s most important figures is assured. He is, though, American. Despite being integral to the mid-Sixties boom years when the Limeys took over, he was born in Chicago in 1937.It didn’t stop with his two most successful clients. As the new collection Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production more-than amply demonstrates, his ears were always to the ground and the lesser knowns he worked with were as striking as the Top Ten acts. Pitch The First Gear’s sandpaper-rough version of “A Certain Girl” against The Kinks at Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Electronic music, feedback, imaginative identification with colours and art and unique sounds is our art-from. We feel we are contributing to the new ‘total sound culture.’ This culture will take its place in the world just as the Renaissance and Picasso’s blue period has.”The September 1966 press release accompanying The Creation’s second single “Painter Man” wasn’t shy. Its front page declared “We see our music as colours – it’s purple with red flashes.” If all that weren’t enough, the quote was attributed to Creation 1 v ii, as if the bible was being quoted.Just as the band’s name Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A strong candidate for reissue of the year, World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda is a rarity amongst archive collections as it does what is always hoped for but seldom accomplished. A new story is told, the music is unfamiliar but wonderful, and it has been put together conscientiously.The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda collects tracks – eight on the CD edition, 10 on the vinyl set – recorded between 1987 and 1995 which initially had limited circulation. The original releases drawn from were issued by the Avatar Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Compilations of Sixties girl group or girl-pop sides are innumerable but Honeybeat: Groovy 60s Girl-Pop is promoted on the basis of the rarity of what’s collected. The 19 tracks include The Pussaycats “The Rider”, the A-side of a 1965 single: originals sell for upwards of £100. The track has been reissued before though, on the 1990s grey-area album Girls in the Garage Volume 7. Until now, it’s never been legitimately comped.Honeybeat’s opening cut is The What Four’s essential and wild 1966 pounder “I'm Gonna Destroy That Boy”. A good-shape first-press of the 45 sells for around £150. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the second week of September 1979, Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” entered the Top 40. A month later, it peaked at number 12. The commercial success was belated validation for a song with a history. In May 1978, an earlier version was the B-side of his “Little Hitler” single. Fans with long memories heard another, even earlier, “Cruel to be Kind” when his old band Brinsley Schwarz recorded it for the BBC’s John Peel Show in February 1975. It was co-written by Lowe with fellow bandmember Ian Gomm.Now, the story of “Cruel to be Kind” is pushed back further. The new Brinsley Schwarz release It Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When the Sex Pistols first played live on 6 November 1975 at St. Martin’s School of Art, they were the support act to a Fifties-influenced band called Bazooka Joe whose roadie was John “Eddie” Edwards. Of the first band on that night, he declared “everyone said ‘oh, they’re not much good are they?’ They were a bit untogether.”On 11 March 1976, Edwards made his own live debut as the drummer of another new band, The Vibrators. They opened for the rising Stranglers at Hornsey College of Art. His bandmates were guitarist John Ellis – who, in 1970, co-founded Bazooka Joe – bassist Pat Collier – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As 1967 ended, The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” sat at the top of the British singles chart and Billboard’s Hot 100 in America. Musically trite – “blandly catchy”, declared the writer Ian MacDonald – the single’s banal lyrics pitched opposites against each other: yes, no; stop, go; goodbye, hello. Although Paul McCartney was saying little with the song, he was playing a game with inversion.The new compilation Jon Savage's 1967: The Year Pop Divided meets another of 1967’s schisms head on. One which The Beatles were at the heart of. As Savage puts it, “1967 was the year the ‘60s divided. During Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s been suggested that New Order’s “Blue Monday” borrowed from Gerry & The Holograms’ eponymous 1979 A-side. In July 2015, The Guardian ran an article saying “if ‘Blue Monday’ had a starting point, it was ‘Gerry & The Holograms’ by a group of the same name, an obscure Mancunian slice of electronica, released on Absurd Records.” Although the piece noted that members of New Order acknowledged their 1983 single drew on tracks by Kraftwerk, Ennio Morricone, Donna Summer and Sylvester, nothing was quoted from the band to acknowledge the apparent debt to “Gerry & The Holograms”.Yet, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over 1972 to 1975, Finland staged a small-scale invasion of Britain. A friendly one, it was confined to music. First, the progressive rock band Tasavallan Presidentti came to London in May 1972 and played Ronnie Scott’s. The Sunday Times’ Derek Jewell said they were “frighteningly accomplished” and that readers should “watch them soar”. The next year, they toured and appeared on BBC2’s Old Grey Whistle Test. Their albums Lambertland and Milky Way Moses were issued here.Richard Branson was hip to the Finnish prog tip, picked up their countrymen Wigwam and issued their fifth album Nuclear Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When a skiffle group called The Quarry Men played live in 1959, their repertoire included covers of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The folk-based skiffle was becoming rock. In 1960, when the same band became The Beatles, they added Berry’s “Carol” and “Little Queenie” to their set.For their first radio broadcast, on 8 March 1962, the Fabs played his “Memphis Tennessee”. On 30 July 1963, they taped Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” for what would be their second album, With The Beatles. Their final live show, in San Francisco on 29 August 1966 opened with a scrappy run Read more ...