Innehållsförteckning för Issue 536 från Record Collector

SEND YOUR PRAISE, MISSIVES AND CALLS FOR THE DEIFICATION OF RICHIE UNTERBERGER TO: rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk, or to Record Collector, 7th Floor, Vantage London, Great West Road, TW8 9AG, or via social media rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag ’BERGER: KING Just read Richie’s great and insightful article on The Beatles' 1962 recordings [RC 535]. There was a session which isn't mentioned: for Polydor, on 24 May 1962, at Studio Rahlstedt in Hamburg. John, Paul, George, Pete Best, plus pianist Roy Young, recorded the backing track for Sweet Georgia Brown and a now-lost version of Swanee River. Paul was documented as the arranger of Sweet Georgia Brown. After Tony Sheridan recorded his vocal track on 7 June, the Sweet Georgia Brown was issued on a Tony Sheridan German EP, in…

The former editor of the Rare Record Price Guide, Ian Shirley is now the Production Manager at Ace Records, where he puts out an ear-watering selection of vinyl LPs, 7” singles and CD compilations. His RC swansong is a look at £100 records (p88). As a kid, Bill Kopp bought Monkees (p64) records. He never imagined that someday he'd visit songwriter Bobby Hart to get the full story of their post-split work. Kopp's latest book, Disturbing The Peace, is a history of groundbreaking San Francisco punk/new wave label, 415 Records. Garth Cartwright loves to tell the stories of the lost heroes of rock'n'soul - getting to interview Brian Auger (p74) and William Bell (p80), pioneers from London and Memphis who helped shape the 60s, was a dream come true. Garth's most…

Tell us about the album. There had been thoughts flying about for an orchestral project, but they concerned individual songs, not a whole album. After we recorded Pandora's Lullaby for Salvation, with a big orchestra under Gavin Wright in London, the idea of producing a solid string of songs in the same way never left me. With our label, Edel, we finally found the ideal partner to put it into practice. The Alphaville repertoire contains a huge number of songs that are perfectly suited for symphonic adaptation. We agreed that all the music should be a complete re-recording. How long did it take? We started with the notation of the arrangements in autumn 2021 and recorded the orchestra in three weeks this last January. The mixing was all finished by…

The Rhythms And Resistance: Caribbean Music In Toronto exhibition, including posters, photos, instruments, is at Friar's Music Museum, Shoppers Drug Mart, Younge Street Floor 2, Toronto, Canada, to 31 December. ■ The Meet The Beatles! A Fab Four Memorabilia Collection exhibition of 60s merchandise and records is at Sioux City Public Museum, 4th Street, Sioux City, Iowa, to 27 November. ■ The Yellow Submarine - Bill Morrison's Odyssey Through Pepperland art exhibition, featuring The Beatles comic strip/ graphic novel/film concepts, sketches and work charts, is at Windermere Jetty Museum, Rayrigg Road, Barrow On Windermere, Cumbria, 23 September to 23 January 2023.…

Man Back Into The Future (United Artists UA LA 179 H 2, LP, US, 1973) £15 My introduction to Wales' finest, Man, came when I heard Sospan Fach blaring out of a hall of residence at Bristol Uni, This is the opening track of side 3 and features the Gwalia Male Voice Choir performing with Man at the Roundhouse in June 1973, Then the magic started and quite possibly their best version of C'mon completed side 3, My favourite track from the studio recording (sides 1 and 2) is Don't Go Away, just for the harmonies and Micky Jones at his best. Mountain Twin Peaks (Columbia PG 32818, LP, UK, 1974) £15 Same dorm, this time the opening theme music to the 70s ITV programme Weekend World - yes, that’s…

“I'd always written,” Lamont Dozier told this writer in 2018. “It started with poems at 11, then by the time I was 15 it was songs for The Romeos. When Berry Gordy signed me to Motown in 1962, he made it clear he didn’t want me as a singer. He wanted to take advantage of my songwriting and producing skills.” And take advantage he did. As one third of the genius songwriting team, Holland, Dozier and Holland,, who died 8 August aged 81, wrote timeless classics for The Supremes (You Can’t Hurry Love, Where Did Our Love Go), Four Tops (Reach Out I’ll Be There, I Can’t Help Myself [Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch]), Martha and the Vandellas (Heatwave, Nowhere To Run), Isley Brothers (This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak…

I’m intrigued by Judy Stone. I’m not particularly a fan of this boldly cancersurviving, highly charitable, utterly decent, indeed decorated Australian singer, though 4,003,221 Tears From Now is rather jolly in that Boom Bang A Bang manner, and her cover of Sandy Posey’s Born A Woman is mighty fine. But you know me by now, right? Chirpy polka-pop in the 60s Europop style ain’t my cup of Rosie Lea, and though The Wedding is a decent record, and the demands she makes in her version of Tanya Tucker’s Would You Lay With Me In A Field Of Stone are shockingly contemporary, they’re not quite to my taste. Ms Stone’s records are often country, and for me, the genre doesn’t extend far beyond Hank Williams. But I have a special reason…

PANDA BEAR & SONIC BOOM Electro-psych pair on their latest collaboration Tell us about your new set. Sonic Boom: It's a soul salve for ourselves and others, primarycoloured, fresh and uplifting. We've discussed turning it into a futurist musical with lasers, films, dance styles and hop-scotch. Is there anything still unissued? Panda Bear: Boxes of teen Tascam 488 tapes - electronic music on a Korg 01. “DELIA DERBYSHIRE TAUGHT ME” With whom would you like to make a split 7"? PB: Pete & Dean Blunt, Maria Reis. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? SB: Vicky's Records - bootlegs and imports. What record made you want to go pro? PB: Daft Punk's Around The World video on MTV, when I was 14. Who'd you like to cover one…

Stranglers IV - Rattus Norvegicus (United Artists, 1977) Although brash and vulgar, and still sounding like hobnail boots kicking a door down, Rattus Norvegicus abounded with musicianship and melody. Sneered at by journalists for their senior status, The Stranglers struck a chord with audiences, propelling the album to No 8 in the UK charts and achieving platinum status. Black And White (United Artists, 1978) An album that helped define post-punk; dour, angular, songs like Enough Time pointed toward Beefheartian uneasy listening. To maintain the group’s reputation for smirking misogyny, the free white-vinyl single contained a song called Tits, as well as their masterful cover of Walk On By, honed in the clubs around Guildford in the mid-70s. Nosferatu (United Artists, 1979) Cornwell went one further with his Beefheart fixation on…

With their debut single, Chime, Orbital - brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll - grasped the utopian possibilities of the M25 rave scene. Recorded in their parents’ living room on four-track while Paul’s mates sat on the sofa waiting to go to the pub, it was first released in December 1989 on pirate DJ Jazzy M’s Oh’Zone label. “He was a friend of a friend,” Paul Hartnoll explains from his Hove studio. “And he was the don, so I took the cassette to his record shop. He played it and all the deejays put their hands up to buy it. After he put it out, such was the buzz around it, we were plunged into the middle of a bidding war. We couldn’t believe it.” They soon signed to Pete Tong’s…

Otis Redding was such a down-to-earth guy,” recalls William Bell. “I met him at his first session for Stax in 1962 when he turned up as Johnny Jenkins’ driver and we hit it off immediately. He was from Macon, Georgia, and was really down-home, a country guy. Once I got out of the military, we hung out and toured together and just became really good friends. He loved to hang out and have a beer. He’d go in a bar - what you call a pub - and buy everyone a beer. That was Otis.” Bell is a repository of stories about legendary Memphis musicians. As a teenager he sang on Beale Street when it was the blues Mecca, while at the same time he was part of a radio…

+ HOW MUCH VINYL CAN YOU BUY FOR £100? To trumpet the publication of the latest edition of the Rare Record Price Guide we usually print a list of the 200 rarest records in the UK. One of the problems with that is that most readers will not have 15 grand to buy a copy of, say, Dark Around The Edges or £1750 for the Red Dirt album. Therefore, this year I decided to pull together a list of 100 records worth £100 and spread the love across 20 different genres. The key thing about this is that it not only showcases some fantastic records but also highlights those that are affordable to record collectors old and new. These are also records that you might stumble across at a car…

SOUL COLLECTOR The Jetstar label was initially set up as a vehicle to put out singles by East Dallas singer, songwriter and producer Bobby Patterson, four including his 1966 copper-bottomed classic What's Your Problem, Baby? - appear on Jetstar Records: The Soul Sides (★★★★ Sundazed), a 15-track compilation of just that, John H Abdnor Snr's label's soul 45s. It also features cherry picks from Beamon Young, Abner Haynes and The Mustangs but it's the tracks by Alder Ray Mathis that bring the house down. These are I Want To Get Married, her country soul remake of the song she first sung with girl group The Delicates, here recorded at Fame studios with backing by The Fame Gang it puts her on a par with Candi Staton; Take Me Baby (penned…

After living in exile in Europe for 14 years - the majority of them in Copenhagen - the American bebop tenor saxophonist DEXTER GORDON returned to his homeland in 1976 the conquering hero; his iconic status cemented by a packed-out comeback gig at New York's Village Vanguard which Columbia Records recorded and released as a double album called Homecoming. It began a fertile five-year stint with the major label that served as a satisfying coda to a storied career that had begun in earnest back in 1940. All six albums that Gordon recorded for Columbia can be found on The Complete Columbia Albums Collection (★★★★ Music On CD), a reissue of a superb 7CD retrospective from 2011 that quickly went out of print. Besides The Homecoming, where Gordon is backed…

Martyn Ware Electronically Yours, Volume 1 ★★★★ Constable, £20 ISBN: 9780349135151, 368 pages Assembled as painstakingly and thoroughly as one of his productions, Electronically Yours, Volume 1 is an emotionally intelligent, honest book, that has clearly been written without a ghost. Martyn Ware pulls off that rare feat of cramming in a tremendous amount of detail in a disarmingly readable manner. Electronically Yours serves not only as a history lesson, but also as a textbook for those considering entry to the music industry. Ware is an everyman moving through the uncharted waters of futurism, pop music and superstar collaboration at a time when it wasn't all prescribed and quantified; a product of that period of intense discovery of a 70s teenage with technology, science fiction and glam rock. As his…

READER SERVICES Call on 020 8752 8172 or email stockists@metropolis.co.uk for more information or to sign up today! SOUTH EAST Across the Tracks - ‘On busiest corner of hippest city, open seven days. Thousands of rarities in the shop that aren’t on the net. All genres, including classical and new CD promos, nothing mundane. Collections bought.' 110 Gloucester Road, Brighton BN1 4AF. Tel: 01273 677906. edfrombrighton@tiscali.co.uk www.acrossthetracksrecords.com Alan’s Record & CD Shop - ‘Diggers paradise! Over 18,000 quality used 7"/12" LPs/CDs. Specialising in Reggae, Soul, Jazz, Rock, Hip Hop, Dance. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:30am, Wednesdays by appointment only. Independent and stubbornly individual.’ 218 High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9AY. Tel: 0208 883 0234. alanrecordman@tiscali.co.uk Ben’s Collectors Records - Long standing record shop in the heart of Guildford with…

This month: The Vernons Girls There was a real engine room, the huge hangarlike factory floor of the Vernons Pools company in Liverpool. In the 50s, thousands of women were employed to check the weekly coupons of millions of folk seeking a big win by accurately predicting the score draws in the football matches for the coming week. Many of these workers, along with the wages clerks and typists, joined the 70-strong Vernons Choir, giving concerts around the place and so promoting the company name. Around 1956 the choir reduced in size to about 16 or 17 of the best singers, turned professional, and released an album for Parlophone — the cover shows the girls in beautiful evening gowns, perfectly coiffured and adorned with sequins and jewelry. Their repertoire included…

It was in 1982 that The Valentine Brothers declared Money’s Too Tight (To Mention). Forty years on, those are starting to look like prosperous, expansionist times. You could easily be excused for thinking this an inopportune moment, then, to flaunt a ton of £100 records, cassettes, and CDs before your cash-strapped eyes. The point of this month's cover story, however, is not to highlight your fiscal woes, but to provide some escapist fantasy during a rough period in our lives. Or rather, affordable luxury. These are potential investments, mainly vinyl, across a variety of genres, for you to dream about and wonder which you could realistically possess. They are, as the writer of the article, Ian Shirley, says, the kind of records that “you might stumble across at a car…

The Blasters’ Dave Alvin New Highway book, BMG Books, 20 September. ■ Michael Chapman Live At The New Vic CD/DVD, Bristol New Vic Theatre, 2000, Mooncrest, 28 October. ■ Sea Song Sessions, with Jon Boden (Bellowhead), Seth Lakeman, Topic, 30 September. ■ Jake Bugg Deluxe 2LP, gold 2LP, Super Deluxe 3CD, 16 unissued, London Royal Albert Hall, 2014, Virgin EMI, 14 October. ■ The Live Forever: A Tribute To Billy Joe Shaver CD, LP, turquoise, green LPs, with Willie Nelson, Rodney Crowell, Miranda Lambert, Edie Brickell, George Strait, Amanda Shires, Steve Earle, Margo Price, Allison Russell, Lucinda Williams, Jason Osbell, New West, 11 November. Due: September (23) Khruangbin/Vieux Farka Toure Ali, Dead Oceans October (7) We Are Muffy's Angeline Morrison The Sorrow Songs, Topic (14) Townes Van Zandt Flyin' Shoes, Charly (21) Jim Croce You Don't Mess…

A 12-track Blue Note tribute album dedicated to Leonard Cohen is due on CD in October and LP in November. It features, among others, Norah Jones, Peter Gabriel, Gregory Porter, Sarah McLachlan, Immanuel Wilkins (Bob Dylan), Luciana Souza (Herbie Hancock), James Taylor, Iggy Pop. Mavis Staples, David Gray, Nathaniel Rateliff and Bill Frisell. Here It Is - A Tribute To Leonard Cohen CD, LP, coloured LP are out via Blue Note, 14 October.…

The 15th anniversary of Oscar Peterson's death is marked in Canada by the minting of an official $200 CAD gold coin. The 31 gram, 400-copy run is made from 99.99% gold and retails at $4,099.95 CAD each. The coins bear the Montrealborn jazz pianist's image on the obverse, while the flipside features his standout 1962 song, Hymn To Freedom.…

Preoccupations Arrangements (self-released, LP PRE 001, LP, 2022) The Canadian progressive punk outfit have built up a decent following, with extensive tours on both sides of the Atlantic and a trio of critically acclaimed albums. New collection Arrangements is an expansive, often explosive record, chock-full of dystopian energy. There are a couple of limited-edition pressings to accompany the physical release, available on clear and chartreuse-coloured vinyl. Poster Paints Poster Paints (Ernest Jenning Record Co / Olive Grove, EJRC 194 LP, LP, 2022) The Glasgow-based duo comprise Carla J Easton, who used to be in an excellent band called Futuristic Retro Champions, and Simon Liddell of Frightened Rabbit. Their long-awaited debut offers a kaleidoscope of janglepop and reverb-soaked riffs, providing a glorious backdrop to Easton's vocals. It's available to order now,…

LUCKY STAR Midlands teenager Janice Nicholls was a protoreality star, a break-out attraction from TV’s Thank Your Lucky Stars who managed to include a brief recording career in her 15 minutes. David Pearson remembers British TV in the early 60s provided teenagers with relatively few shows. Chief among them were BBC's Juke Box Jury and ATV's Thank Your Lucky Stars. The latter ran for 250 episodes across eight seasons from 1961 to 1966. They were recorded on Sundays at Birmingham's Aston Studios and then broadcast at teatime the following Saturday, putting them in direct competition with JBJ. Several acts appeared each week, miming to their latest releases. The best remembered compere is probably DJ Brian Matthew. Slap-bang in the middle of the show was a regular feature, Spin-A-Disc, in which…

DAVID BOWIE Postcard £2,295 Sent to BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel. The rear enigmatically declared, “’Seasons’ from David Bowie in ’67 to John Peel in ’68, ‘Nothing Moves – where would it go?’” Bowie wrote songs for the Kemp production of Pierrot In Turquoise or The Looking Glass Murders. The production received mixed reviews. Supplied by Bonhams SEX PISTOLS God Save The Queen (Virgin VS 181) £8,925 A 7” test pressing from, 1977 with Did You No Wrong on the flip. BOB DYLAN Acetate £1,482 A 2021 recording of the song Blowin' in the Wind pressed on a 10” acetate. Limited to one copy and pressed using the patented Ionic Original technology. A lacquer-covered aluminium disc layered with a sapphire and quartz gradient coating. Supplied by Christie’s ABBEY ROAD…

IN VINYL MEMORIAM Olivia Newton-John Totally Hot (EMI EMA 789, UK, LP, 1978) £5 Gone were the double-denim garb and winsome smiles of previous album covers, substituted for all black leather and a sultry stare on the jacket of Olivia Newton-John’s first post-Grease effort. The music followed suit, largely eschewing the country-pop of earlier albums for a slick brand of AOR. Lead single A Little More Love is the obvious highlight - a Bee Gees-esque slice of pop perfection - but the breezy soft rock of Please Don’t Keep Me Waiting, the horn-filled Talk To Me and the funk-fuelled rock of Deeper Than The Night are also stellar selections on an album that’s as tight as those leather trousers. The public took warmly to her new direction, sending the album…

“What’s in a kiss?” asked Gilbert O’Sullivan. “What’s in the fridge?” asked the Cramps. And what’s in a name, asked millions of hopeful bands around the world. Because names are incredibly important. Or are they? The late, great Steven Wells maintained, correctly, that the two greatest bands in the world - The Beatles and the Sex Pistols - had absolutely terrible names, and he was right. Imagine looking at those names now without any knowledge of their history and import: you’d refuse to book them for a student union gig, never mind believe they were going to be brilliant. Band names are apparently very important. Having a cool name is everything, we are told. And there are groups whose names fill the thin oval in the Venn diagram intersection of…

OPINION Thin Lizzy, and their charismatic frontman Phil Lynott, are today held in higher regard than during the original band’s latter days. At the time of Lynott’s death in 1986, scurrilous press coverage focused on the addictions which ended his life, but the intervening decades have seen Lynott, and Lizzy’s legacy, praised by admirers from Van Morrison to Metallica. A new 2DVD/CD set, Phil Lynott: Songs For While I’m Away + Thin Lizzy: The Boys Are Back In Town Live At The Sydney Opera House October 1978, compounds the effect, with a nuanced documentary portrait of Lynott, and newly restored footage of a scorching Gary Moore-era live set. “It’s something I’m really proud of,” admits Gorham. The Sydney Opera House concert has been released before with frustratingly poor sound. Rumours…

30 Something is Orbital’s fifth ‘best of collection. The first is 1994’s Diversions (Full Frequency/lls) which, like 30 Something, comprises remixes of tracks by the group plus musician friends Including CJ Bolland, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia and Underworld. The duo have issued several in-concert albums beginning with Orbital Live At Glastonbury 1994-2004 (ACP Recordings, 2007), The remainder are limited-edition releases available on the night of the respective gigs: Orbital 19th September 2009, Manchester Academy, issued on USB rubber wristband with the Orbital logo on it and containing a MiniSD memory card with the live show as one continuous track in MP3 format; then Live At Eventim Hammersmith Apollo 2.12.17, Live At 02 Apollo Manchester 1.12.17 and Live At Eventim Hammersmith Apollo 15.12.18 available as CD-Rs. Their Peel Session first broadcast…

When Laugh, Laugh hit the US Top 20 in early 1965, many Americans thought they were hearing the latest British Invasion band. The intoxicating blend of major and minor melodies, the bittersweet harmonies, even the Beau Brummels name — all sounded more like Liverpool than California. So did their Top 10 follow-up, Just A Little, spotlighting a haunting mix of electric and acoustic guitars, paced by Sal Valentino’s heart-rending vocals. Although they did have an Irishman in their initial ranks, The Beau Brummels were from San Francisco. While these were their only two big hits, they recorded a boatload more material over the next five years, moving from Merseybeat-inspired sounds to folk-rock, orchestrated psychedelia, and country-rock. They’re the only group that worked closely with both Sly Stone and Randy Newman…

When Record Collector told me they were going to give me £100 to go and buy £100 worth of records I couldn’t believe my luck, I spend too much of my own money on vinyl so the thought of spending someone else’s was the proverbial busman’s holiday. The only stipulation was that I had to write about what I bought and provide a receipt for the accounts department. No problem. I put a lot of thought into how I was going to spend it. Where would I take my custom? Flashback Records in the Angel? The Book and Record Bar in West Norwood? Soul Brother in Putney? I know the owners well and might be able to haggle my way to a sweet discount. Then there was the vinyl market…

In the mid-70s, militant roots styles dominated the dancefloors and sales charts of the UK reggae world. But, as Prince Buster once observed in an album sleeve note, “It's the decade of the 70s and the nation clamours for the music of the 50s”. Young fans, seeking an antidote, yearned for a return to the themes of love and affection of yore, and a talented group of UK musicians responded by creating the phenomenon which became known as Lovers Rock, celebrated here on the double album Lovers Rock (★★★★★ Trojan). Louisa Mark, from Kensal Rise and 14 years old, set the ball rolling in 1975 with I Caught You In A Lie and, as this gatefold-sleeved double album shows, she was soon joined by other young singers, mostly female and…

Various Artists Reading Rock Volume One (Mean Records MNLP 82) Reading Rock Volume One they called it, but as there never was a second volume it's often just referred to as Reading '82 (ironically, the title written on its spine). The NWOBHM was still in full swing, and progressive bands like Marillion were starting to break through so a double live compilation album recorded at 1982's Reading Festival - aside from the tracks that weren't - probably looked like a golden egg-laying goose. And, as ever, the BBC had recorded a lot of the bands and aired the edited sets on The Friday Rock Show, so having a vinyl souvenir was the icing on the cake. Housed in a perfectly adequate although none-too-inspiring gatefold sleeve, and boasting 20 tracks from…

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott N.K-Pop ★★★★ EMI EMIV 204 (CD, LP) Paul Heaton sits comfortably in a roll call of literate pop writers to emerge in the 80s, alongside such articulate wordsmiths as Lloyd Cole, Roddy Frame and Paddy McAloon. What sets him apart from those contemporaries is prolonged commercial success: a remarkable run of 16 albums to make the Top 10, with The Housemartins, The Beautiful South and, since 2014, in tandem with Jacqui Abbott. Yet his approach to writing, on paper at least, is rarely that of someone clocking on at a typical hit factory, and his songs are routinely populated by characters, scenarios and subject matter more in keeping with Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. Pore through his back pages and you'll find yourself in a…

This is the inspiring tale of Forest Vinyl, owned by Steve Helsdown. In 2012, Steve had a major heart attack. Lucky to be alive, helped by his wife Annie, he decided to follow his dream of opening a record shop. He tells Steve Burniston about making this dream a reality. Tell us about Forest Vinyl’s history and the kind of music you sell. Forest Vinyl was founded in 2014 and we opened our first brick'n'mortar store in February 2015. We have always been based in Cinderford in the heart of the Forest of Dean, hence the name. It started as a sort of glorified man-cave in two small rooms above a hi-fi store, but we are now in our fourth (and hopefully last) location, which is now probably the biggest…

Amaranthe RESCHEDULED October (11) Manchester O2 Ritz (12) London Kentish Town O2 Forum Blancmange October (6) Coventry HMV Empire (7) Cambridge Junction (8) Stroud Subscription Rooms (13) Colchester Arts Centre (14) Cardiff Uni Y Plas (15) Frame Cheese & Grain (20) Reading Sub 89 (21) Nottingham Level (22) Gillingham Glassbox (27) Bristol Fleece (28) Guildford Boileroom (29) Wimborne Tivoli November (4) Exeter Theatre (5) Southampton Brook (10) Birmingham Mill (11) Lancaster Kanteena (12) Barrow-inFurness Forum (17) Diss Corn Hall (18) Manchester Gorilla (19) Liverpool Hangar 34 (24) Leeds Wardrobe (25) Sheffield Leadmill (26) Newcastle Riverside December (1) Aberdeen Lemon Tree (2) Edinburgh Liquid Room (3) Glasgow Queen Margaret Union (9) Brighton Concorde 2 (10) London Islington Assembly Hall Coheed & Cambria October (14) Bristol O2 Academy (15) Birmingham O2 Academy…

CODA The Supremes Baby Love (Stateside SS 350, 7”, UK, 1964) £12 The first record I bought. My mum used to listen to Tony Blackburn on the radio, and he was a great champion of Motown. I remember hearing the name The Supremes. A bit later, I was at the cubs’ jumble sale, and I bought it. It opened up a whole new world. From there I started getting the Chartbvsters compilations, [1969’s] No 3, the silver one, with Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine and The Isley Brothers’ This Old Heart Of Mine being the main ones I loved. I was off on this great journey. Various 25 Rockin ’ & Rollin ’ Greats (K-Tel NE493, LP, UK, 1972) £12 My nan taught me the piano by…

This month: Elton John, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 21 May 1976 After a hugely successful period touring around the US, Elton John made very few appearances in the UK around 1974 and '75, However, in 1976, he announced his Louder Than Concorde tour of the UK and I managed to secure tickets for the Edinburgh show on 21 May for the total sum of £3.00! It was my very first music concert, to be held at the Usher Hall, a short walking distance from both railway stations in Edinburgh. The support that night was Murray Head. After a short interval, on came Elton with his new band. Out went two of the original band members, Nigel Olsson on drums and Dee Murray on bass. Instead, we had Roger Pope on drums…

A group of independent band merchandisers, MerchFriends, is staging the debut annual charity-supporting Band Shirt Day on 16 September. Its stated aim is to be a “coalition of independent merchandisers, fulfilment houses, screen-printers, vinyl manufacturers, digital distributors, and more, fostering connections to share ideas, build community, innovation and creativity within our industry on a global scale”. Among the artists lending their support to the effort to “sell merchandise on their official sales channels and donate proceeds to charitable organisations of their choice,” are Blondie, Tori Amos and Mac DeMarco. The effort is also backed by the likes of Rough Trade label/shops, hellomerch.com merchandise suppliers and concert booking website, bandsintown.com. See bandshirtday.com.…

Charles PC Alexander, from Roxbury, Boston in the States, is a producer and engineer who, in the early-to-mid-80s, was a flamboyant artist who recorded three albums under the name Prince Charles, with his City Beat Band. Stone Killers, his 1982 album - the follow-up to 1980's debut, Gang War - is the missing link between Afro-American dance and contemporary funk. It deserves to be held in the same high esteem as the music of his contemporaries such as Rick James, George Clinton and, indeed, Prince. The album is a game of two halves. Side one was recorded at AirSound Recording Studio, Boston, and side two at Intergalactic Recording Studio, NYC. The difference between the two sides mainly lies in the heavy use, on side 1, of synthesizers and the new…

No 46: The Verulam Arms, North Watford The Verulam Arms in North Watford was a public air raid shelter during WWII. Not the world's most attractive venue, it boasted two large bars and a big basement. From 1975, it held a talent show every weekend plus a well-attended Friday disco. It can’t have hurt that Ridge Street Art college was situated just behind the pub or that Watford Junction railway station was close by. Under new management in the early 1980s, it became a popular haunt for lovers of live music. A regular visitor at the time was Watford-born actor/presenter Bradley Walsh who remembers gigs by Southside Johnny and The Ashury Jukes and indie rockers The Late Road Lunatics. In 1982, there were appearances by Watford rock band Sad Lovers…

THE SMITHS The Smiths (Rough Trade ROUGH 61) £5,366 Hong Kong LP issue with orange text and A3/B3 matrix numbers. (eBay item number: 234597296283) Supplied by eBay THE BEATLES Please Please Me (Parlophone PMC 1202) £4,800 Mono LP edition with Dick James, gold label. (eBay item number: 363879755961) Supplied by eBay THE DAMNED Neat Neat Neat (Stiff ILR 20273) £4,750 Japanese 7” import from 1977 plus insert. (eBay item number: 134112738298) Supplied by eBay IRON MAIDEN Twilight Zone (EMI 5145) £4,100 With Wrathchild on the flip of this 7” from 1981. (eBay item number: 144639994707) Supplied by eBay THE CAMARO'S We're Not Too Young (Dar Cha AR 1151) £3,579 A 7” Northern soul rarity with Lover Come Back on the flip. Supplied by Popsike DOC PEABODY Here Without You Part…

Back in the mid-90s, Saint Etienne were asked to perform on a pilot TV show. The concept was that it would run like a Saturday night variety show, but it would take place in someone’s house. The poor, unfortunate family - who saw technicians breaking photo frames and drilling through walls - lived in Ilford. We were theoretically the teenage daughter’s favourite band (at least, our plugger had convinced the producers this was the case). The Gran, on the other hand, had asked if Frankie Vaughan could perform. And he did. TV shows being what they are, there was plenty of sitting around. I remember Frankie sitting on the patio, on his own, always smiling but looking like he should really be indoors with a blanket around him. I wanted…

The Cold War was great, wasn’t it? Pop stars loved the Cold War. Big Dave Bowie moved to Berlin with little Iggy Pop, and they took loads of cool drugs by the Berlin Wall and recorded songs like Warszawa. Kraftwerk made an album called Trans-Europe Express and even mentioned Dave and Ig by name. That was cool. Punk liked the Cold War, too. When it wasn’t shouting about "getting nicked”, for “fighting in the road”, it was telling people off for taking a “cheap holiday in other people’s misery” and looking at the Berlin Wall. I don’t think Johnny Rotten was specifically telling Iggy and Dave off for standing near the Berlin Wall, I think he was just telling Johnny Tourist off. It was all a bit confusing. The New…

North-London born Hugh Cornwell always seemed to bring a degree of intelligence to the punk milieu. Amid all the spitting, Cornwell and The Stranglers smuggled in copious amounts of art rock and archness. This was typified by the strange shift made by the group between 1979-81, when they moved from baleful new wave elders with a penchant for misogyny to explorers of arcane ideas from conspiracy theories to shady governmental intervention and aliens. As a result, the group fell from commercial grace faster than an extra-terrestrial landing into Area 51. By early 1982, however, the band had been revived as a serious chart force with the sinister waltz of Top 3 Golden Brown, which found them in the hit parade alongside Bucks Fizz, Shakin’ Stevens and Haircut 100. There followed…

SELECT DISCOGRAPHY Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart (Capitol, 1976) £3 I Love You (And I'm Glad That I Said lt)/Savin' My Love For You (Capitol, 1976) £3 I Remember The Feeling/You & I (Capitol, 1976) £3 Concert In Japan (Capitol Japan, 1981) £12 Micky Dolenz Huff Puff/The Obvious - Fate (London, 1967) £10 Easy On You/Oh Someone (MGM, 1971) £25 Unattended In The Jungle/ A Lover’s Prayer (MGM, 1972) £15 To Be Or Not To Be/Beverly Hills (Japan All Round, 1982) £10 Davy Jones Dream Girl/Take Me To Paradise (Colpix, 1964) £8 Dream Girl/My Dad (Pye Japan, 1967) £20 Girl/Take My Love (Bell, 1971) £60 Tommy Boyce The Gypsy Song/Give Me A Clue (Dot, 1960) £15 The Way I Used To Do/Come Here To Jo-Anne (RCA…

"One day in 1966 I got a phone call from Chas Chandler who wanted me to come and chat with him and his new business partner, Michael Jeffrey,” Brian Auger tells RC. “Well, there was no way I was going to have anything to do with Jeffrey - he wasn’t to be trusted an inch but I liked Chas so went along to the meeting and he told me how they had this American guitarist coming over and thought he would be brilliant fronting The Trinity. I said, I’ve a guitarist and a singer - what am I expected to do? Leave them on the pavement? No, thanks.’ I’d only had the band together about three months and was really happy with how our sound was developing so wasn’t about…

People Are Cruel Part of a three-song demo acetate from around late 1964, first issued in 2005 on the Magic Hollow box, this hypnotic Ron Elliott original is as strong as most of their early songs that found official release on Autumn Records. It was cut in LA at Gold Star where, as Ron Meagher remembers, “I think a piano was pushed through a wall and left a big hole. When we drove down to do that session, we were very well rehearsed. It didn’t take long; we didn’t have to do very many takes for each song to put them on tape.” Valentino speculates: “People Are Cruel just got discarded or left behind or something, or we all forgot about it. It was a good recording. With Elliott, from…

Reviews From The Vaults REVIEWS Reissues, remasters and compilations Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables - The 2022 Mix ★★★★ Cherry Red BRED 855 (CD, LP) The impact of Dead Kennedys' debut album stretches so far and wide it's barely calculable. If in any doubt, head straight to the “Yakety Yak” chapter towards the end of Alex Ogg's book on the subject. It contains testimonial quotes from crossgenerational musicians, writers, actors, artists, filmmakers, comedians and at least one celebrity hair groomer. Some of these names are as expected as outright lies at a Trump rally, such as Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day fame. Whether you like either record or not, it doesn't take Noam Chomsky to draw a direct line between Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables' grimy provocations and Green…

Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes The Telstar Story ★★★★ Cherry Red TCT 101 (10”) The Heinz Sessions Vol. 1 ★★★ Cherry Red TCT 102 (10") Following the suicide of pioneering producer Joe Meek in 1967, close to 2,000 tapes of demos, early takes and other works-in-progress were discovered. Many were found in the ramshackle flat he called both home and studio in Holloway Road, North London, others in nearby storage facilities, and Cherry Red have spent the best part of two years sifting, cataloguing and digitising the booty. Early press reports suggested the archive included previously unheard recordings by such luminaries as David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Steve Marriott and Gene Vincent, but for the opening salvoes of what we can assume will be on ongoing series the label has opted…

Suede Autofiction ★★★★ BMG 4050538703870 (CD, LP) If Suede took their taste for high-concept grandeur to its logical end-point on 2018's The Blue Hour, a question lingered: how do you top that? The answer lay in the tour, where Suede's primal fervour paid sweat-soaked testimony to the engaged, energised vigour of a band who had nailed this comeback game. If they could bottle that visceral dynamism with Brett Anderson's newly deepened lyrical form, new ways forward would surely beckon. The proof is Autofiction, an album that taps into Suede's galvanic guitar-rock drama without falling prey to that dread declaration of stagnation, the back-to-basics album. Perhaps deceptively, Suede’s approach here is forward-thinking. Elaborating on Anderson's memoirs, Coal Black Mornings and Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn, their ninth album maintains the ambiguous…

Herman Dune The Portable Herman Dune Vol 1 ★★★★ Santa Cruz BBI 0481 (CD, LP) Songs from the kitchen After the rootsier-thanusual grain of 2020's Notes From Vinegar Hill, David Ivar treats selections from his back catalogue to the raw-bones treatment on the delicious first of three Portable sets. Inspired by pandemic performances in his kitchen, the results spotlight the fecundity of his talent and the durability of his lovely, literate songs, matched beautifully to spare backing - just his careworn voice and vintage guitar, with a harrowed harmonica (Two Crows) and simpatico guest (Julie Doiron, Jolie Holland) here or there. If Good For No One evokes a weather-chilled Leonard Cohen, I Wish That I Could See You Soon maintains its charmingly lovesick levity. Of more recent vintage, the allusive Crazy…

The Playn Jayn Cardinal Charlotte’s Memorial School/It’s Not Me Circle CPW S-105 Unissued final recording by a London acid-psych band, unloved since '85. It'll be loved aplenty now. This lot understood it: they were OTT, clanging, and built songs in modules like the later The Yardbirds and Tomorrow apparently did. If you’d told me it was the result of a collision between Jimmy Page, Eddie Phillips and Andy Ellison… I wouldn't have believed it. But it's plausible. It's Not Me is more garage, dripping sweaty organ all over t'independent indie labels of the 60s we all wanna get hold of. There are 375 copies of this. Your mission: track one down. The Chefs 24 Hours; Let’s Make Up/ Someone I Know Optic Nerve ON 411 I feel love, I feel…

NEXT ISSUE: NOVEMBER 2022 (on sale 6 OCTOBER) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 12 SEPTEMBER Please email your advert (word doc/excel file/plain text) to: listings@recordcollectormag.com (Postal address: Record Collector Listings, Diamond Publishing Ltd, 7th Floor Vantage London, Great West Road, London, TW8 9AG) Following issue: DECEMBER 2022 (on sale 3 NOVEMBER) Deadline: Monday 10 OCTOBER…

This month: ASH’S MARK HAMILTON Who suggested a tour including Charlotte (Hatherley, ex-Ash)? Late last year, it came up in conversation if we should do 20th anniversary shows for Free All Angels. How've you gone about arranging it? Call agent, tell him we want to do shows, make sure Charlotte is available and up for them. He makes it happen. How will you prepare? We'll get together for a couple of days' rehearsal in London a few days before. We'll revisit some songs that we've not played in a longtime. Do you have any pre-/post-show routines? Yes, but “the thing” is a very secret thing that only a handful of people outside the three of us and our tour managers have ever seen. Will you be playing anything else that…

This month: Blue Hat Records From 1979 to 1987 Tony Hill’s Blue Hat Records was a British record label with its fair share of myths, legends, and eccentricities. First, let’s assess the myths. Two of the label’s 12 releases (yes, there were just 12 releases over an eight-year period) were by Tony Hill & The Hillmans. Rumour has it that The Hillmans went on to be Jesus Jones. Both Tony Hill (the label owner) and the Joneses are from Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire and initial enquiries suggested that this is where the connection ends. However, this piece of folklore is, in fact, true. Having tracked down Tony Hill he advised RC that, “The Hillmans were session musicians who did include Mike Edwards/ future members of Jesus Jones. We made an appearance…

Tina Charles Makin’ All The Right Moves/ Love Me Now (S CBS 6594, 7”, UK, 1978) £3 Trevor Horn had gor his first taste of success as Tina Charles’ musical arranger in the mid-70s as she recorded a string of hits produced by Biddu. He was paying attention. Biddu and Tina Charles are significant figures in Horn’s story - not least in that the band also included Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. While the A-side is Biddu’s work, the flip, Love Me Now, is produced by “The Gang”, who were Horn and Downes. It’s a fine slice of British pop-disco. Buggies Elstree (Island WIP 6624, 7”, UK, 1980) £2 Buggies’ other elegy for golden-age media, evoking the old Elstree film studios, in Borehamwood. It’s a near-twin to Video Killed The…