Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
According to Pete Frame’s book Rock Family Trees, Fairport Convention had 15 different line-ups between 1968 and 1978, the period covered by the new box set Come All Ye – The First 10 Years. Fairport Convention #7, extant from November 1971 to February 1972, featured no one from the first three iterations of the band, which had taken them up to June 1969. Evidently, the actuality of Fairport Convention is fluid.Despite this, there is an established and (relatively) clearly defined arc. One traced by Come All Ye. Their first album, made with Judy Dyble as their singer, was a response to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Between them, Marylebone Beat Girls and Milk of the Tree cover the years 1964 to 1973. Each collects tracks recorded by female singers: whether credited as solo acts, fronting a band or singer-songwriters performing self-penned material. That the two compilations dovetail is coincidental – they were released by different labels on the same day – but they embrace the period when the singer-songwriter was codified and when, as the liner notes of Milk of the Tree put it, “female voices began to be widely heard in the [music] industry.”As that quote suggests, Milk of the Tree: An Anthology Of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Production gloss and deliberation are not notions immediately springing to mind while pondering the 1976-era Ramones. Even so, this new edition of their second album, the ever-wonderful Leave Home, reveals that careful consideration was given to how they presented themselves on record.Leave Home demonstrated the Ramones more-than had the goods to build on the promise of their era-defining debut, and little needs saying about the album itself. It steps beyond punk and is a rock classic. The meat of this new reissue is unfamiliar though: fifteen never-before-heard in-progress tracks – the whole Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Time Has Come was issued in late 1971. Anne Briggs’ second album and her second to reach shops that year, it followed an eponymous set released that April. That was on the folk label Topic and produced by the pivotal A. L. Lloyd, who had been key to propagating Britain’s traditional music since the late 1930s. The Time Has Come was issued by CBS and produced Colin Caldwell who, at that time, was also working with the rock bands Aynsley Dunbar and Curved Air. The time had come for Anne Briggs to dance with the mainstream.In the liner notes of this new reissue of The Time Has Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In February 1983, New Musical Express ran a cover feature categorising what it termed “positive punk”. Bands co-opted into this ostensibly new trend were Blood & Roses, Brigandage, Danse Society, Rubella Ballet, Sex Gang Children, Southern Death Cult, The Specimen, UK Decay and The Virgin Prunes. Writer Richard North – a member of Brigandage – said the unifying factors were “mystical/metaphysical imagery”, “the sub-world of Crowleyan abyss” and personal style taking in backcombing, blue hair, long black skirts, red trousers and bootlace ties. The Doors were, he said, an influence. So were Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From beginning to end, B-Sides and Rarities plays through like a regular album; as though it collects a series of tracks recorded where a cohesive release with a flow was the goal. Yet this 14-cut collection is a compilation with its earliest selection from 2005, the year Beach House formed. Its most recent tracks are from the sessions which resulted in the two 2015 albums Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars. It doesn’t matter that the 2005 track , “Rain in Numbers”, is skeletal and of demo quality – it is of a piece with its companions.What this says about Beach House – Victoria Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Considering Shelleyan Orphan, Melody Maker said “someone’s been smearing themselves in art…were they artists or did they just wallow in shit?” While the late Eighties’ British music press often made assertions to seek attention, slagging off a band because they sought to follow their own path is, with hindsight, rich given that roughly contemporary cover stars such as Chakk and Set The Tone dealt in music so precisely fixed in the moment they now sound as dated as Sheena Easton’s efforts to get funky and U2’s lunges at the blues.Shelleyan Orphan – the duo Caroline Crawley and Jem Tayle – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In a 1967 headline, The Washington Post pegged Lynn Castle as a “Shapely Blonde in Blue Jeans, Popular Barber in Hollywood”. She had attracted attention as the hairdresser of choice for The Byrds, The Monkees, Del Shannon, Sonny & Cher and Stephen Stills. Known as “The Lady Barber”, she also cut the hair of music business movers and shakers Lee Hazlewood and Monkees’ songwriters Boyce and Hart.The Washington Post had no interest in her other life as a songwriter. Her song “Teeny Tiny Gnome” (originally titled “Kicking Stones”) was recorded by The Monkees but wasn’t issued until 1987. In Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In Summer 1973, Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” peaked at 35 on the American charts. Originally the A-side of a France-only single issued in 1972, the song had been discovered by New York DJ David Mancusso. After Mancusso repeatedly played it, “Soul Makossa” was licensed by Atlantic, charted and became integral to what was bracketed as disco music. The Cameroon-born Dibango had been making records under his own name since 1961 and “Soul Makossa” was his breakout track. So much so, he recorded a reconfigured version to advertise Toyota cars. “Happiness on the African road” was guaranteed.As a Read more ...
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 ...