Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
In the liner notes to the new reissue of 2001’s All is Dream, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue says it is “a weird astral album musically, and yes the symbolism lyrically runs many layers down and deep – different coloured layers of rock, soil and ash on an archaeology dig.”More straightforwardly, Mercury Rev’s other mainstay Grasshopper explains “All is Dream was a continuation of ideas we hatched during recording [previous album] Deserter’s Songs – and [its predecessor] See You on the Other Side – but we were bolstered by the excitement that Deserter’s Songs generated.”All is Dream was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If the prices fetched by original pressings are a guide, Mighty Baby are notable. Their eponymous first album, issued by the fittingly named Head label in November 1969, sells for at least £150 and has changed hands for over £500. A Blue Horizon edition of A Jug of Love, their second and last album (October 1971), tops out at £600.Mighty Baby and A Jug of Love are rare, totemic British underground albums. The first is a glistening fusion of psychedelia and John Coltrane-inspired textures with overt nods to American west coast rock. Traffic were on a similar path. For the second album, Mighty Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In a first for this column, what’s cropping up is a cassette reissue. The Clash’s third album is so familiar, going into what it is or was in any depth is redundant but it’s worth considering what’s going on here.London Calling was originally issued on 14 December 1979 and is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Naturally, it’s hitting the shops again. The definitive reissue came out for the 25th anniversary in 2004, when the album was teamed with rehearsal recordings taped on cassette at Vanilla Studios, a DVD of The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling documentary, promo videos, film Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It's Gonna Take a Miracle” just missed out on a mainstream US Top 40 placing after The Royalettes issued it as a single in June 1965. But the song had staying power. In 1971 Laura Nyro covered it, choosing it as the title track for the album she made with LaBelle. Deniece Williams’s version hit big in 1982.The song’s co-writer was Teddy Randazzo. He had arranged and produced The Royalettes’s interpretation, the first time it was issued. Their reading is as he conceived the song: the template for what followed. The other vocal group most associated with Randazzo is Little Anthony and the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Three years after its release, Gene Clark explained where he was heading while creating 1974's No Other. “I was strongly influenced at that time by two other artists. Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and [The Rolling Stones’s] Goat’s Head Soup. When I was writing No Other I concentrated on those albums a lot, and was very inspired by the direction of them...which is ironic, because Innervisions is a very climbing, spiritual thing, while Goat’s Head Soup has connotations of the lower forces as well. But somehow the joining of the two gave me a place to go with No Other, and I wanted it to go in a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Rough Trade’s first album was Stiff Little Fingers’s Inflammable Material. The label followed up its February 1979 release with Swell Maps’s A Trip to Marineville, The Raincoats’s eponymous debut, Cabaret Voltaire’s Mix-Up and Essential Logic’s Beat Rhythm News Waddle Ya Play? Inflammable Material was avowedly punk but though they could not have emerged without the punk upheaval, the others inhabited their own musical continua. There was a further difference: Inflammable Material charted – on the proper charts – while SLF's idiosyncratic labelmates could never have done so.Rough Trade’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire hasn’t had the stratospheric levels of praise as the preceding Kinks album, 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Yet in the band’s narrative, it’s probably more important as it went hand-in-hand with their return to America after an enforced absence and became integral to their subsequent achievements there. Furthermore, as its title attests, Arthur also had wider themes than Village Green: it was avowedly ambitious.In his November 1969 Rolling Stone review, Greil Marcus brought contemporary context. “Less ambitious Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The temptation with the 20th anniversary reissue of Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-Fi (Explosion Picture Score) is to look for traces of what came earlier and pointers towards what would come in Iceland’s music. The album was credited to Dip, a collaboration between former Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson and the on-the-up Jóhann Jóhannsson.The latter soon went on form Apparat Organ Quintet and instigate the arts collective Kitchen Motors. By the time of his 2018 death, he was internationally known for his soundtrack music for Sicario, The Theory of Everything and more, and solo works such as Orphée Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Hollywood Stars were not shy. In 1976, in keeping with their assertive handle, they sang “some last a year, then disappear as if they were magicians, but while I’m here no need to fear at the top I’m a pop musician, they call me the Houdini of rock 'n' roll because I’m number one on the radio...what is the secret they want to know.” The song, a crunchy riff-laden glam-indebted pop-rocker, was titled “Houdini of Rock 'n' Roll”. Instead of getting to number one on the radio, it wasn’t heard.“Houdini of Rock 'n' Roll” is one of ten tracks The Hollywood Stars recorded in 1976 for what’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the lyrics of 1989’s “Doin’ Our Own Dang”, Jungle Brothers’ Mike D noted his combo were “Breaking the beat others wished they broke.” Going further, he acknowledged “Cause you’re trying to feel what’s on my reel to reel.” Jungle Brothers recognised they were not on their own. During the same year, the like-minded De La Soul released their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.Both outfits had links with hip hop collective Native Tongues which, directly or indirectly, also related to or spawned A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and Chi-Ali, and influenced Digital Read more ...
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 ...