Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
Two of the four CDs in this set are of a live performance taped on 16 April 1964. The other pair of discs were recorded on 9 July 1975. Each show issued on Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 was captured by the north German regional broadcaster Radio Bremen. There was an audience of 220 at the earlier show, 440 at the later.While each performance runs to just short of two hours, the contrasts between them are not limited to representing different periods in the career of double bassist/pianist Charles Mingus. The compositions played are unique to each show, and there's a different Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An old saw relating to The Doors says their ambition when they formed was to be as big as Los Angeles-based garage-psych sensations The Seeds. After listening to Lost Innocence – Garpax 1960s Punk & Psych, it’s hard not to wonder where the bands heard were aiming. What’s collected is from 1965 to 1969. All these combos operated in California, generally working in and around the LA area. All were produced by music biz maverick Gary S Paxton, whose company was named Garpax. He had been behind the novelty hits “Alley Oop” and “Monster Mash”.The Buddhas, Limey & The Yanks (whose frontman Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2020, one archive release exerted a more forceful presence than any other. Live At Goose Lake August 8th 1970 caught The Stooges as they promoted their second album Fun House. The source was a previously unknown, professionally recorded tape documenting the whole album as it was played live, in its running order. Iggy Pop and the band were hard yet sloppy, tight yet rough, always blazing. Wonderful – and a reminder that musical surprises still crop up.While contemplating what’s been covered in this column over the last year, the feeling that archive releases can shift perceptions rises to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The winter solstice occurs tomorrow, 21 December. Stonehenge, one of this island’s most significant structures, is constructed in alignment with the setting sun on that day. After the solstice, the days lengthen and a new cycle of the year begins.An image of what could be Stonehenge appears inside the back cover of the booklet coming with Sumer Is Icumen In – The Pagan Sound Of British & Irish Folk 1966–1975. Inside its front cover, a similar edifice is seen. Within it, a circle of woman kneel each with arms outstretched. The image is taken from the 1973 film, The Wicker Man and the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It didn’t take long for The Stooges to acquire an afterlife. They played their final show in February 1974. In May 1975, Nick Kent wrote a multi-page feature for NME on the ups and downs of Iggy Pop and Co. In September 1975, Sounds reviewed a new album by the defunct band titled Metallic KO. One side of it was recorded at that final show.“I'm a tasteless little bastard and I really enjoy it,” wrote Giovanni Dadomo of the wreckage captured on the vinyl. “It's no great rock 'n' roll record per se. What I do believe is that it's an astonishing piece of documentary work, revealing as it does the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Scars’s tour de force album Author! Author! has been out of sight for too long. Originally released in 1981, it first reappeared on a swiftly withdrawn CD in 2007. Apparently, there were issues about where the rights for its reissue lay. Now, it has re-emerged.Author! Author! was great. On the surface it was poppy, but a darkness coursed through its ten tracks. “All About You”, the March 1981 single trailing its release, sounds like a hit (its promo video is on YouTube). Driving, melodic and mysterious, it suggested Scars as an artier, more subtle counterpart to the U2 of “I Will Follow”. It Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fifty years after their first album The Garden Of Jane Delawney was issued in April 1970, Trees seem to be better known than when they were active. Despite Françoise Hardy’s cover version of the title track a couple of years after it hit shops, the UK band’s debut album was a poor seller. Original pressings fetch upwards of £200. It’s the same with its follow-up, January 1971’s On The Shore. This one sells for at least £250.The band formed in London in 1969, split in 1972 and even though they recorded seven BBC radio sessions as well as the two albums, it took a while for their reputation to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Manchester’s Slaughter and the Dogs were perfect for 1977. In May, their debut single “Cranked up Really High” sported bee-in-a-jar guitar, a hoarse vocal and an unstoppable forward motion. Its follow-up, September’s impeccable “Where Have All the Boot Boys Gone?”, was more muscular and prefigured the chart-bound terrace-chant punk of Sham 69. Next, in November, the brash “Dame to Blame” revealed a glam-rock undertone.All great and all essential, but not necessarily reviewed positively at the time by the weekly music papers. The first was Melody Maker’s “saddest single of the week.” The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After their final records were released in 1969, that seemed to be it for Apple and Jason Crest. Releases by both psychedelic-leaning British bands had first hit shops the previous year, and neither oufit made any waves commercially. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the story.Just over a decade later, Apple’s dark, mysterious “The Otherside” featured on 1980’s seminal-for-real compilation Chocolate Soup For Diabetics. Gathered alongside it were equally extraordinary but barely known gems such as Tintern Abbey’s “Vacuum Cleaner” and Dantalian's Chariot’s “The Madman Running Through The Fields Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Half-way through the 22 tracks of Showdown – The Complete 1966 RCA Recordings, what’s been increasingly apparent from the opening cut is confirmed: this is an extraordinary archive release, as much so as the live Stooges album looked at by this column in early September.“What’s That on Your Finger” opens Showdown's second half. A mid-tempo, deftly arranged, fully orchestrated uptown soul cut, it has a guitar figure subtly nodding to “Tracks of my Tears”, dexterous backing vocals, a confident, soaring lead voice and an irresistible melody. Yet the recording of the song, co-written by its Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After Florian Schneider left Kraftwerk in 2008, Ralf Hütter was left in the driving seat. The pair had first been heard on record in 1970 as members of Organisation, and their first album as Kraftwerk followed later in the year. Although others were in Kraftwerk and contributed to the ethos to varying degrees, it was always about Schneider and Hütter. In 1973, titling the third Kraftwerk album Ralf und Florian confirmed this.Post-Schneider (he died in 2020), Kraftwerk’s first outputs were, in 2009, a series of 3D live performances and reissues of most of their albums. Really though, Kraftwerk Read more ...