Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
In 1970, The Who opened their Live at Leeds album with “Young Man Blues”, a hefty version of a song its composer Mose Allison recorded as “Blues” in 1957. Back then, it was the only vocal track on Back Country Suite, an otherwise instrumental blues-jazz album, the Mississippi-born pianist's debut long player. Allison had moved to New York in 1956 and a string of releases followed. The Who weren’t the only British band cocking an ear: in March 1965 The Yardbirds first recorded Allison's “I’m Not Talking”, plucked by them from 1964’s The Word From Mose.Mose Allison’s music was integral to the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1996, the NME ranked Super Furry Animals’ debut album Fuzzy Logic as the year’s fourth best. It sat between Orbital’s In Sides (number three) and DJ Shadow’s Entroducing. Beck’s Odelay took the top spot and Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go was at two. Fuzzy Logic was on Creation Records and the Oasis-bolstered label’s only other album in the run down-was The Boo Radleys’ C’Mon Kids (15). A run through the list suggested Britpop was over (Suede’s Coming Up was in there, but they were hardly Britpop) and grunge was on the shelf (Screaming Trees made the cut though they, like Suede Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Man & Myth, released in September 2013, was Roy Harper’s best album in two decades. The live shows which came on its back were stunning. Amongst this activity – instead of building on the momentum – he was arrested and charged with historic sexual abuse. Police had contacted him about allegations in February 2013. Following an innocent verdict, all other charges were dropped in November 2015.Of the ordeal, Harper said “I have now been acquitted on all the charges that were brought. This case should never have gone as far as this, or taken so long to resolve. I lost my livelihood and I Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the reformed Undertones, with Paul McLoone replacing original singer Feargal Sharkey, have been a popular live draw since 1999, John Peel’s anointing of “Teenage Kicks” from their debut EP as his favourite recording suggests this is what they were about: a single, timeless song.Of course, it was not. The singles or lead EP tracks which followed – “Get Over You”, “Jimmy Jimmy”, “Here Comes Summer” and “You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It)” – were as wonderful. So were their first two albums. The recent publication of the engaging Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone, bassist Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The period between the October 1966 release of his eponymous debut album and its follow-up, August 1967’s baroque masterpiece Goodbye and Hello, saw Tim Buckley and his label Elektra reconsider how best to help him generate an impact. No matter how strong its songs and how unique his voice, the folk-rock styled Tim Buckley hadn’t been a big seller. Label boss Jac Holzman thought a non-album single would be good marketing tool, paving the way for a second album. One side of the shelved release surfaced in 2009 on the Where The Action Is! – Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 box set. Otherwise, no Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Shaggs are real, pure, unaffected by outside influences. Their music is different, it is theirs alone.” So began the liner notes to Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs' sole album. Not many people read the words or heard the music when it was pressed in 1969. Only 100 copies were made. It was meant to be 1000, but a murky business deal meant the balance of 900 never showed up.The Shaggs were Betty, Dorothy and Helen Wiggin, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., was their champion and took them into Revere, Massachusetts’ Fleetwood Recording Studio in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What should a band called Les Panties sound like? Melodic, Ramones-like pop-punk? Dirty garage rock a la early White Stripes? From the name, either surmise seems reasonable. In the event, what reverberates through this incongruously named Brussels band is a love of cold wave, the Gallic take on post-punk. In the early Eighties, Les Panties would have been at home on Les Disques du Crépuscule, the Factory Records-related Belgian label which issued records by Antena, Josef K and Section 25. Fittingly, Cold Science is released by the reanimated Crépuscule.Over 40 minutes, Cold Science collects Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1985, John Foxx released In Mysterious Ways: his fourth solo album since leaving Ultravox in 1979. In 1980, he had charted with “Underpass”, his first solo single. Subsequently, he charted a path where frosty, anomie-filled electropop gave way to the warmth of “Europe After the Rain” and the Beatles-inspired psychedelia of “Endlessly”. The 1983 album The Golden Section was his most straightforwardly poppy to date. Then, the patchy In Mysterious Ways and musical silence.In 1997, he re-emerged with two albums, Cathedral Oceans and Shifting City (made with Louis Gordon). From this point, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chicago’s Chess Records first made waves in the Fifties with a raft of records which included future classics integral to defining the urban slant on blues music. Early in the decade, the label issued singles by John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. They also issued Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”, one of the building blocks of rock ‘n’ roll and brought Bo Diddley to a wide audience. The pioneering label issued different styles of music, but blues defined its early days. It moved with the times though and embraced soul in the Sixties.Little Richard is also easily Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1969, the Australian band Tamam Shud improvised as a film was projected onto the wall of a recording studio. The results were heard on the Evolution album. Playing original music live to accompany a film screening isn’t commonplace these days but eyebrows are no longer raised when it happens. Pere Ubu have played along with Carnival of Souls and It Came From Outer Space. Mogwai have done the same for the documentary Atomic. Of course, this was no surprise in the silent era and in the early Eighties Bill Nelson echoed the past by playing his soundtrack for Das Kabinett as the film Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beach Boys signed with Capitol Records on 24 May 1962. Early the next month, their first single for the label became “409”/”Surfin’ Safari”. It was not their debut release. The “Surfin'”/ “Luau” single had been issued in November 1961 by Candix.Before Capitol, Hite and Dorinda Morgan had brought them into a recording studio. The former was a music publisher known by Murry Wilson, the father of Beach Boys’ Brian, Carl and Dennis. When the Morgans first encountered the band, they were known as The Pendeltones. Without being asked, they were renamed The Beach Boys for the release of "Surfin Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1969, a tranche of American musicians looked back to the country’s past for inspiration. Bob Dylan followed John Wesley Harding with Nashville Skyline. The Band’s eponymous second album hit the shops. The Flying Burrito Brothers debuted with The Gilded Palace of Sin. The rootsy was a default. But choosing to draw on country and Appalachian traditions did not have to mean playing it straight. On the amazing Farewell Aldebaren, Judy Henske and Jerry Yester used banjo and hammered dulcimer. They also employed the Chamberlain, a Mellotron-like instrument where the keyboard triggers tape Read more ...