Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
Dress each of the band in the same clothes. Stand them in a line outside the EMI headquarters building on Manchester Square. Get the taller ones with glasses to stand at either end of the row. Put the other taller one in the middle. Have the pair of less tall ones – who could be twins – stand between the taller ones. Symmetry and uniformity duly achieved, take the promotional photograph.The picture seen above was used as the cover of the debut EP by Manfred Mann (pictured below right), issued in the wake of their first hit single “5-4-3-2-1”. It was helped into the charts by being chosen as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The most intriguing aspect of the mid-Seventies, Memphis-based band Zuider Zee isn’t that they took their name from a geographic feature of the Netherlands or that they dealt in against-the-grain Anglo-centric pop rock or even that the new compilation Zeenith features top-drawer music which was never released at the time. It’s that their path never crossed that of the similarly minded and perennially lauded local outfit Big Star.In the liner notes to Zeenith, Zuider Zee’s Gary Bertrand says “We had no interaction with Memphis groups, none at all.” His bandmate Richard Orange goes further: “We Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the cover of the 19 May 1979 issue of the music weekly Sounds was dominated by a photo of American rocker Ted Nugent, attention was also grabbed by a trail for a feature on “Heavy Metal…The New British Bands”. The two-page article it related to was headlined If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It. Under that were the words “The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: First in an Occasional Series”. The feature, by Geoff Barton, focussed on The Bandwagon, a heavy metal disco, and a triple-bill show at North London’s Music Machine with Angel Witch, Iron Maiden and Samson.Sounds had been buttering- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Rose Garden didn’t linger in the bright lights but for those inclined towards harmony pop their name resonates due to the quality of their sole album rather than memories of them as a one-hit-wonder. Granted, their debut single and late 1967 US hit “Next Plane To London” was a wonderful example of moody Mamas & the Papas-style pop which will always be a staple of American oldies radio. But there was no follow-up hit and it’s April 1968’s long-player The Rose Garden which seals their reputation.Interest in the album began picking up in the early Eighties after the realisation it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Past My Door” weaves together a series of leitmotifs. Beginning as a downbeat, mid-tempo shuffle, it then shifts into a staccato passage after which the tempo picks up before a more pacey section. Next, the character established at the song’s introduction returns. Over four-minutes 20 seconds, the different approaches are supported by oblique lyrics which include the memorable phrase “too late, cries the melting snowman". At its core, the melancholy “Past My Door” seems to be about missing chances and being left behind.This remarkable portmanteau composition is one of the many highlights of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although a minimalist approach informed John Foxx’s first solo album, the new “Deluxe Edition” reissue of Metamatic expands what was two sides of vinyl to a three-CD, 49-track box set. After leaving Ultravox following their early 1979 American tour, he quickly signed with Virgin Records and began recording with a couple of synthesisers and a rhythm machine. A bass guitar cropped up intermittently. The album’s lead-off single “Underpass” used only six of the recording studio’s available eight tracks. Despite the pared-down sensibility, Metamatic was organic and imbued with a human sensitivity. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In William S, Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, a simopath was “a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army and discharge cures it.” Being in uniform, then, reversed evolution.In October 1967, a British band called Nirvana released their debut album. With its Burroughs-referencing title, The Story of Simon Simopath was a 10-track concept album telling the story of a boy longing for the wings of butterfly. Getting his wish, he flies away from reality, suffers a nervous breakdown and then boards a rocket, meets a centaur and a goddess named Magdelana who Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
African Scream Contest 2 opens with a burst of distorted guitar suggesting a parallel-world response to The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today”. Then, the song beds in and a James Brown groove plays off against spindly lead-guitar lines also evoking California in the psychedelic era: the extemporisation of Jefferson Airplane. At 3.06, the vocalist and percussionist are left to get on with it for 30 seconds. Next, a wheezy organ comes to the fore and injects some “Light my Fire” vamps.The track is “A Min We Vo Nou” by Les Sympathics de Porto-Novo. Recorded in 1973 or 1974 in Lagos, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Crazy Rhythms, the ever-fabulous first album by New Jersey’s Feelies was issued in April 1980 it seemed to have little local context. Although the band’s fidgetiness suggested a kinship with Talking Heads and there were a clear nods to The Velvet Underground, it felt more of a piece with contemporary British post-punk bands Josef K and The Monochrome Set than anything American. Fittingly, Eno's first two solo offerings also fed into the album.And after this landmark album? Nothing until the release of its belated and welcome follow-up The Good Earth in 1986. The line-up had changed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In early March 1980, the weekly music paper Sounds dedicated their front cover to “the new face of punk” with a photograph of Stinky Turner, the singer of The Cockney Rejects. What had, in 1977, been widely interpreted as a challenge to musical orthodoxy and as a new broom which was sweeping clean had, in turn, become a default style for new waves of bands. Punk, as The Exploited put it in 1981 for the title of their debut album, was not dead. And punk itself was now the inspiration, rather than the assorted influences which had fed into Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Damned and the Sex Pistols. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In terms of chart statistics, Julian Cope’s period with Island Records looks pretty good. He issued four albums with the label and all of them charted. Saint Julian (issued in March 1987) peaked at 11, My Nation Underground (October 1988) stalled at 42 but Peggy Suicide (March 1991) and Jehovakill (October 1992) climbed to 23 and 20 respectively. Not bad.Yet Jehovakill became his last album for Island and, in 1994, he signed with the Chrysalis Records subsidiary Echo for whom Autogeddon climbed to a 16 position. The chart statistics tell part of the story.With Island, the release schedule was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Playing Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on 8 September 1974, the New York Dolls opened their first set of the evening with three cover versions. Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” was followed by The Shangri-Las’ “(Give Him a) Great Big Kiss” and Otis Redding’s “Don’t Mess With Cupid”. They were acknowledging that blues, girl group records and soul were integral to who they were. A pretty comprehensive sweep considering they were a prime influence on the purportedly reductive punk rock. Once the building blocks were revealed to the audience, Vancouver witnessed them lurching into their own " Read more ...