Innehållsförteckning för Issue 537 från Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag HORN OF PLENTY In RC 536, I read with interest Peter Mills' mention of some key Trevor Horn productions, to which I would like to add two further absolute classics: 1. Malcolm McLaren - Double Dutch Part of McLaren's Trevor Horn-produced album, Duck Rock, this impossibly addictive slice of bass-driven world music came along a few months after the also great Buffalo Gals. Double Dutch was introduced by the sound of skipping - surely a first! McLaren's biggest hit, this great record reached No 3 in the UK in 1983. 2. Barry Manilow- Could It Be Magic (1993 Dance Mix) One of Trevor's very greatest productions - which is saying something - this inspired reworking takes Barry from the original simple piano…

Bob Stanley's 70 Landmark Singles Of The Last 70 Years (p78) covers almost as much ground as his most recent book, Let's Do It: The Birth Of Pop, which starts in 1900 with the earliest 78s and travels through time to the rock era. Charles Donovan spoke to vocalist Shaun Murphy about her time on Motown with Meat Loaf (p74) and to the friends and family of late singer/songwriter/ backing vocalist, Valerie Carter (p68). Charles is a journalist, copy editor, reissue producer and lifelong vinyl devotee from London. Joe Geesin's first discography for RC was Ian Gillan, in 1993, and he's been a contributor to the Rare Record Price Guide since 1991. He researched more detailed discogs for Nazareth and Cozy Powell as their fanclubs' editor. He also enjoyed some Simple Minds…

Tell us about your new effort It's a long, nocturnal snake, with heads growing in various directions. It's going to be the one, sir. How long did it take? It was written and recorded between March 2020 and February 2022. It's the sound of us processing the social and personal limitations that the pandemic placed on us, and our frustration at being governed by Trump. What were you up to while you were away? I was doing it to a broader audience, as quickly as possible, to avoid a panic attack. I do best in bigger cities in the US and Canada. Getting songs on TV shows has been helpful, too, and i enjoyed playing in Neko Case’s band - beautiful voice, and great to work with and making a…

Australian psychedelicists King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are staging the Gizzverse Record Fair at their show in New York's Forest Hills Stadium, Tennis Place, Forest Hills, New York, 21 October. It's touted as having a novel selection of stalls, including “tons of bootleggers,” as well as “test-pressings, limited-edition variants, warehouse finds and other rarities”. Attendees can purchase an event-exclusive limitededition tote bag, with the fair commencing when the venue opens at 5:30pm. See gizzverse.com. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava, 7 October, Laminated Denim, 12 October, Changes, 28 October, via kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com. Would you like to see your favourite band stage a record fair at their show? Let us know via rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk.…

The Beatles' Revolver is due with new 14-track stereo mix based on the original four-track mastertapes, on CD, 45rpm 180g LP and picture disc LP. In addition, a Dolby Atmos mix is available digitally, while the Deluxe 2CD includes 15-track Sessions and 40-page booklet. The Super Deluxe 4LP/7”/book and 5CD/book boxes have 31-track Sessions I & II, mono album mix, and four-track EP, plus a 100-page hardback book housed in a 12” x 12” slipcase. The Beatles Revolver CD, 180g LP, picture disc LP, 4LP/7"lbook, 5CD/ book are on Apple, 28 October. Also, Bruce Spizer’s The Beatles Rubber Soul To Revolver book is on 498 Productions, 10 October, Dafydd Rees’ The Beatles 1963 book is on Omnibus, 28 October, and Patti Boyd's My Life In Pictures photobook is on Reel…

Queen Sheer Heart Attack (EMI EMC 3061, LP, UK, 1974) £50 This album points the way to the Queen sound that would come to dominate the charts worldwide - it highlights every facet of what made Queen, Queen. Flick Of The Wrist and Killer Queen are my favourites. Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon (Harvest SHVL 804, LP solid light blue triangle label, UK, 1973) £1000 Is there any home without a copy of this game-changing album? Money, Breathe, The Great Gig In The Sky to name just a few of the superb tracks on this record. And that cover! A complete album. Procol Harum Procol Harum (Deram DES 18008. LP, US, 1967) £30 At the time of the album’s release my father was stationed in an American…

Ian Shirley, ex-editor of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions I greatly enjoyed your feature about the antics of Spoon Fazer a while back and actually bought his LP on red vinyl. Better still, as a collector who loves electronica, I made the wonderful discovery in my local charity shop (in Thornton Heath) of a copy of the LP East Of Croydon which was released in 1981 on Nothing Shaking Records. It only cost me a fiver. The record pulled together a number of South London artists and included a track by Spoon Fazer. That's why I bought it. There's even a picture of him inside! Looking online! note that the record is quite rare so it would be good to get a valuation. Also, is there any…

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Poster $3,856 That's Jimmy (far right) leaning, like, on a table, man. Gregg Allman noted this show as the lone highpoint of their otherwise dismal final tour, as the band fractured. Footage of this concert can be seen in the 2020 documentary, Jimmy Carter Rock & Roll President. Supplied by Hake’s Auctions TEA & SYMPHONY Asylum For The Musically Insane (Harvest SHVL 761) £400 Released in the UK during 1969, an acid psychprog-folk combo. This is an early first pressing with a laminated gatefold. Supplied by Industrial Silence LYNYRD SKYNYRD Pendant $576 Bird-shaped pendant fashioned from the wreckage of the 1977 plane crash which claimed the lives of Lynyrd Skynyrd band members, band crew and pilots. Does the below-estimate ($800$1,200) sale price reflect the devastatingly bad…

This summer was the 40th anniversary of my first trip away from home without my family or any schoolteachers in tow. I youth-hostelled around the north of England with my best friend and future bandmate Pete Wiggs, visiting Liverpool and Manchester for the first time, gawping at derelict cotton mills in West Yorkshire, and getting our soundtrack from an Alba transistor radio (an affordable Sony Walkman was still over the horizon). The school holidays had begun with ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love, a brand new album that seemed extraordinarily daring in its glamour, filmic artwork, and fearless romanticism. “Most of the other people were writing about electric pylons,” said Martin Fry (though I wasn’t averse to that personally, or songs about derelict cotton mills). “We wanted to hark back to…

The grey walls, municipal corridors, disinterested workers, and palpable aroma of desperation. No, I’m not talking about Neasden dole office in 1986, of which I was a frequent ‘customer’. I’m talking about a rotten documentary about our beloved Top Of The Pops telly programme which I am dutifully slogging through. Crap though this Channel 5 show may be, it is prompting my own Proustian moment concerning my brief dalliance(s) with this august, defunct institution. It is late 1993 and I’m in The Garden, a recording studio owned by The The’s Matt Johnson. I’m halfway through recording my band The Auteurs’ second LP. No one can get much work done because we’re waiting for the dreaded phone call: the Midweek. The Midweek is the self-explanatory chart position of your single or…

If talent were commensurate with success, Valerie Carter could have ruled the late 20th-century music scene. Her voice - always natural, no overt diva stylings was as suited to folk and country as it was to funk, soul and Americana. It was technically flawless but without the chilliness that can be the downside of virtuoso expertise. It retained its glistening, gleaming qualities for decades. Carter’s breakthrough as a songwriter came in 1973 when Judy Collins took her Cook With Honey into the US Top 40. Collins’ version is light and folksy, almost a children’s song. When Carter cut it a year later, it was slowed down, warmed up and made more sensual. Over the next 10 years, Carter would land songwriting credits on albums by Jackson Browne (Love Needs A…

1952 Mario Lanza Because You’re Mine (His Masters Voice 7R 144, 7”) £5 Nineteen fifty-two was Year Zero for pop in the UK, creating the teenage world as we would understand it for decades to come: the first chart was published, the first New Musical Express was in the shops, the first Dansette record player was produced, and the first 7” 45rpm singles were released. All of them were classical - the first “pop” ones would follow in January ’53 - but Mario Lanza was a true crossover artist (Elvis was a big fan) and he made it into the first hit parade. Everything else on that listing, headed by A1 Martino’s Elere In My Eleart, was only available on a shellac 78. This piece of light opera, then, became…

1967 Pink Floyd Arnold Layne (Columbia DB8156, 7”) £1,500 British psychedelia, in its infancy but rarely bettered. Syd Barrett’s tale of a wrong ’un who pinches ladies’ underwear from washing lines charted in a year when similar tales of everyday England (The Beatles’ Penny Lane, Cat Stevens’ Matthew And Son, The Kinks’ Autumn Almanac) seemed particularly popular. Relatively few UK psych singles charted, though Procol Harum’s lugubrious Whiter Shade Of Pale would spend six weeks at No 1. The ultimate collectors’ issue of Arnold Layne is the small number of demo copies in a picture sleeve. Bubbling under: The Kinks — Waterloo Sunset; The Move I Can Hear The Grass Grow; The Monkees — Pleasant Valley Sunday. 1968 Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich The Legend Of Xanadu (Fontana…

1982 ABC All Of My Heart (Neutron NT 104, 7”) £1 In a year of dayglo New Pop invention, this was a pinnacle. Initially, ABC had seemed like a product of the punk-funk wave beloved by the music press (Funkapolitan, Pigbag, Rip Rig and Panic) in 1981, but Martin Fry’s stage-ready voice, Trevor Horn’s red-blooded production and the stylish, filmic packaging of their singles followed by 1982’s peerless The Lexicon Of Love raised them several levels higher. Fry said he wanted ABC to “soundtrack the 80s” but the public sadly wasn’t ready for 1983’s vicious Beauty Stab and their success was intermittent. Bubbling under: Carly Simon — Why; Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message; Soft Cell - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. IN A YEAR OF DAYGLO MEW…

2012 Lana Del Rey Born To Die (Polydor 2793491, 7” limitedrun picture disc, UK) £60 In a poor year for pop, Lana Del Rey’s breakthrough with Video Games in late 2011 had felt like a real event. There was much discussion about whether she was a record company construct or “for real”, and the presence of co-writes by useless Fame Academy winner David Sneddon on her Born To Die debut album in 2012 raised hackles. But the title track was a beautiful encapsulation of LdR’s strange brand of Americana — there are aural suggestions of golf clubs, strip malls, Spector-esque melodrama and Bobbie Gentry’s Vegas glamour but they always come wrapped in a David Lynch-like unease. Her body of work since has been among the strongest and most singular of…

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 7’712" 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 an ever changing large stock of records cds & cassettes at the most reasonable prices in the South. 5…

Pearl Jam London Hyde Park 8-9/7/22 Covid-delayed, Pearl Jam's two-night-stand featured pleasingly varied set-lists, only Porch and Alive repeated across 44 selections. They opened the first night with ramshackle ballad, Better Man, performed with gusto and grit. Then singer Eddie Vedder pulled random song titles out of a hat, all performed with energy and zest. Highlights were an emotive Light Years, bouncy Daughter, a supercharged, punk Public Image, and soaring Jeremy. Encores featured guests Simon Townshend on I'm The Answer, and Rockin’ In The Free World with John McEnroe on guitar. Vedder engaged 65,000 fans each night and, on the second, Johnny Marr, who'd performed earlier, joined in on Neil Young's Throw Your Hatred Down, with a scorching solo. River Cross, with pumping organ from Vedder, was dedicated to Ukraine,…

Back in 2018 - simpler, happier times, when we still had a Queen, and the pandemic was a blot on the horizon - we ran a cover story on The 70 Landmark Albums Of The Last 70 Years. In it, we imagined which long-playing record we would choose to represent each of the 70 years that the LP had been a format. Not that easy when you alighted upon, say, 1972 (Can’t Buy A Thrill? Close To The Edge? Exile On Main St? Talking Book?) or 1980 (Closer? Get Happy!!? Searching For The Young Soul Rebels?). And now, because it’s the 70th anniversary of the single and the singles chart, we have given ourselves the equally onerous task of picking a single for every year of the last 70 years.…

Tammy Wynette The Ways To Love A Man/Tammy's Touch//My Elusive Dreams/ Inspiration 2CD, Morello, 4 November. Due: Octobe (10) The Carter Family Collection Vol 1 1927-34 2CD, Acrobat (28) The Great Divide Providence, The Great Divide November (25) Mediæval Bæbes MydWynter, Bellissima. Biz/Tech The Numero Group label has a pop-up shop with test-pressings, exclusive clothing, 146, Bethnal Green Road, London, 5-9 October. ■ Record Store Day Black Friday is 25 November. ■ On 17 September. Brother O Brother's Skin Walker was issued as a LP/guitar pedal via romanusrecords.com. Blues Kenny Wayne Shepherd Trouble Is… 25 CD/DVD, with re-recordingtionus, and DVD from Shreveport Strand Theatre, Provogue, 2 December, Due: October (10) Josh White The Early Years Collection 1929-36 2CD, Acrobat November (14) Aynsiey Lister Along For The Ride, Straight Talkin' (18) Angela Strehli Ace Of Blues, Antone May 2023…

Renaissance Azur D'Or Expanded 2CD/DVD, with 17 bonuses, 5.1 mix, DVD with 13 cuts, five-song video of The Mill House & Brewery Studios Promotional Film 1979, is out this month, while Renaissance with bonuses is out 28 October. In addition, Live Fillmore West And Other Adventures 4CD/DVD is due, taking in the eight-track Live At Fillmore west March 1970; nine-track Live in Europe 1969-70, including Helsinki Kulttuuritalo, May 1969, Stockholm Circus, September 1969, Montreux Casino De, April 1970; 11-track Live In Cincinnati & Beat-Club, Germany, with Cincinnati, February 1970, Beat-Club, 1970, London Revolution, 1969; 18-track Live At The BBC & Bonus Tracks, including BBC, October 1969, April 1970, and Rarities & Demos. The DVD takes in a 1969 BBC TV documentary, and live clips from Beat-Club 1970, Paris Operation 666, January…

Big Joanie Back Home (Daydream Library DLS 012 R, LP, 2022) Legends of the UK's live circuit for nearly a decade, this London-based trio have returned with an album which takes their signature punk palette and expands on it with remarkable poise. It's a compelling listen, with Stephanie, Chardine and Estella openly contemplating the fluid concept of “home”. The LP is being pressed on red vinyl to accompany the release, limited to just 2,000 copies. The Waeve The Waeve (Transgressive TRANS 636 X, LP, 2023) Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall announced themselves as The Waeve back in April, said to be influenced by “a shared love of English folk music, storytelling and the associated landscapes of this beleaguered island”. This impressive debut album goes way beyond that initial brief,…

Lyle Lovett sang the praises of cartridge tapes, which had their heyday in the 70s, and the few that have been released in recent years are novelty items. But at one time, they were a contender, especially in the US during the disco era of outsize fashion and cars, when many models had players fitted as standard. After all, magnetic tape had been around for decades and, along with cassettes, cartridges seemed to offer a hip alternative to rock's favoured format, vinyl. So how did the battle of tape versus vinyl come about? Following the use of magnetic wire recording from 1888, magnetic tape was developed in Germany in the late 1920s. It usually comprised a polymer substrate that gives it strength and flexibility, and typically, on one side, there…

BEARING UP THE STARS OF GENTLE BEN AND THE GOOD TIME PEOPLE The Bear Facts (Century City Records CCR 70101, LP US, 1969) £10 Gentle Ben was the heartwarming familyfriendly story of Mark, a young boy, and his bear - not a fuzzy toy teddy bear, but a fullgrown, real-life bear. Mark and Ben were first introduced in a children's novel published in 1965, which was then made into the 1967 feature film Gentle Giant. The film served as a pilot for the Gentle Ben TV series, which was aired on the CBS network in the US from 1967 to 1969. Although the novel was set in Alaska, both the film and the TV series took place in Florida, where producer Ivan Tors had built a studio. Gentle Ben was…

PHIL GRAY AND HIS GO BOYS Bluest Boy in Town (Rhythm RR 45 101) $7,000 Insert your punchline here but glory in this rockabilly rarity first. (eBay item number: 144650833270) Supplied by eBay THE POLICE DE DO DO DO, DE DA DA DA (A&M AMS 7578) £4,112 From 1980 with A Sermon on the flip. (eBay item number: 165590798658) Supplied by eBay THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve V6 5008) £3,767 First edition mono with uncensored “torso” cover. (eBay item number: 155080242440) Supplied by eBay JULY July (Major Minor MMLP 29) £3,412 Features top psych single, My Clown. Vocalist Tom Newman became Mike Oldfield's engineer of choice. (eBay item number: 133853742303) Supplied by eBay THE CAPTIONS Turn Out the Lights (Kayham 45 KRC 8) $1,800…

You can understand the shock for older soul fans. Soul had always been about beautiful voices. Sometimes the dimmest lyrics were permissible because the singing was so beautiful. But hip-hop shrugged about that. It wanted a beat, a rhyme, a sharp lyric, a message, an attitude. Traditional soul fans of a certain vintage reviled this new music in the early 80s, calling it a passing show. That’s what folks said about rock’n’roll, too. Perhaps soul fans had suffered too many humiliations by then. They’d watched their heroes “go disco” to eat. Bunny Sigler, writer, producer, singer, had been a Philly legend; suddenly he was cutting disco at Salsoul. It wasn’t all bad news, however. Archie Bell’s disco records were great, mostly, and only the clotheared could grouch about Betty Wright’s…

JULIAN LAGE Jazz guitarist on his collaboration with Bill Frisell Tell us about your new set. It's built on the sound of the trio Dave King, drums, Jorge Roeder, bass - with the addition of Bill Frisell on guitar. The concept was to flush out in an orchestrated way with Bill, maintaining the interplay and dynamic while having a larger sonic palette. Bill aids that tremendously through guitars and looping. With whom would you like to make a split 7"? I've collaborated in the past, but not so much publicly, with Jeff Tweedy, and I'm such a fan of him and his son, Spencer Tweedy. I've always dreamed of collaborating with them, writing instrumental music that could be a good marriage with lyrical music that they would create together. “A…

HOT CHIP It’s hard to believe that Hot Chip — Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle, and Felix Martin — have been premier exponents of alternative disco for nearly two decades. They have discreetly created a body of work that has delighted the world over, yet still manage to feel underground. Their sincerity remains their greatest asset, and their schtick - posh white boys as weaponised funk gods continues to convince. The August release party for their eighth album, Freakout/Release, at Pryzm in Kingston typified their idiosyncrasy. Their hour-long set was incredible, and the audience were the very definition of a broad church. Hot Chip have found a way to keep working, their line-up intact and their credibility high, though to some they remain a mystery, or, on…

It’s hard to think of a musical that launched more talent than 1967’s countercultural, flesh-baring Hair (music: Galt MacDermot/book and lyrics: Gerome Ragni and James Rado). By the early 70s, it could be seen in concurrent productions throughout the States and abroad. Names passing through its casts include Jennifer Warnes, Jobriath, Elaine Paige, John Waters, Peter Straker, Marsha Hunt, Sonja Kristina, Dobie Gray, Tata Vega, Donna Summer, and Maxine Nightingale. It was graduate training for nascent stars and cult favourites alike. Two performers from the 1970 Detroit cast formed a lifelong friendship and a musical union which, though brief and under-appreciated, is finally having its moment in 2022. Launched by a trade ad featuring the immortal lines “407 pounds of total dynamite — their first new single will carry a…

1957 Lonnie Donegan Gamblin’ Man (Pye Nixa N. 15093 78rpm) £8 Faster yet than Race With The Devil, and threatening to career out of control more than once, this is skiffle’s defining single. It starts off as an acoustic slowie and gradually builds pace with monotone backing vocals and truly wild drums until it turns into a repetitive and fiercely loud garage-rock mantra. Recorded live (though you wouldn’t know until the wild applause at the end), Gamblin’ Man had the nous of engineer Joe Meek to thank for capturing its runaway wildness. It reached No 1 as a double A-side with the peculiar music hall-like Puttin’ On The Style, which pointed to Lonnie’s future and signalled the end of skiffle’s brief but groundbreaking reign. Bubbling under: Sonny James - Young…

1972 T.Rex Children Of The Revolution (EMI MARC 2, 7”) £6 Marc Bolan’s summoning up the spirit of Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry while singing about the people of the Beltane had started a revolution in British pop. Singles were back in fashion, and they would become the perfect medium for the glam explosion. Bolan was also the first bona fide pin-up in an era when magazines like Fabulous had begun to look away from pop to the small screen for its poster material. Here he was in his pomp, knocking out songs as great as Children Of The Revolution in minutes. His success would quickly lead to egomania, great hubris, and wife June giving him a perm that made him look like a dinner lady. Bubbling under:…

1987 Terence Trent D’Arby Wishing Well (CBS 650923 7, 7”) £0.50 An impossibly exotic creature with a voice that was partPrince, part-Sam Cooke, TTD arrived as a fully-formed pop star then — like ABC and Dexys before him - sabotaged his career by following a millionseller with a powerful, personal, misunderstood album (1989’s Neither Fish Nor Flesh). Wishing Well was sensuous, minimal and a new, futurecentred brand of pop R&B, and he was a superstar for about six months. Bubbling under: House Master Boys - House Nation; Heart — Alone; The Smiths I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish. 1988 S’Express Theme from S’Express (Rhythm King LEFT 21, 7”) £1 Terrific fun. In the summer of ’88, when add house’s squelchy Roland 303s and TR-808 beats kicked the Phil Collinspatented gated…

2002 The Libertines Up The Bracket (Rough Trade RTRADES 064, 7”) £50 The guitar band revival had become big enough by 2002 that Rolling Stone magazine had a ‘ROCK IS BACK’ front cover that September. The basic sound of The Strokes and White Stripes rebounded back to the UK and these East London arrivistes were briefly an exciting prospect. From the off, Carl Barat and Pete Doherty looked like frontmen who should probably be in different bands, but that tension made for occasionally great music. This was their second single and the title track of a patchy debut album, just the right side of shambolic with a melancholic edge; soon, an avalanche of lighter rock bands called ‘The’ something (The Twang, The View, The Fratellis) were creating a morass of…

2017 Calvin Harris/Frank Ocean/ Migos Slide (Columbia 88985450771, 12” picture disc) £40 The mercurial Ocean’s only Top 10 hit to date came from this unexpectedly summery, 21st-century disco single. His delivery is beautifully deadpan and distorted, lending Calvin Harris’s high street club sound some grit and melancholy. By contrast, Dumfries-born DJ Calvin Harris had already scored seven No Is and has since cut three more. Slides was the first single from his guest star-packed album Funk Wav Bounces Vol 1. It was released as a 12” in a sleeve that looked more like something Factory Benelux would have released in 1982 than something suitable to a Day-Glo banger. Bubbling under: Zayn Feat. Sia — Dusk Till Dawn; DJ Khaled - Wild Thoughts; Dave Feat. Mostack - No Words. 2018 Ariana…

Blurred Vision Verse, Chorus, Monster! Graham Coxon Faber, £20 ISBN 97805732238, 306 pages For many, Graham Coxon was the most intriguing thing about Blur: the reluctant-looking guitarist with a penchant for daubing abrasive noise all over Damon Albarn's studied indie-leaning pop songs. Verse, Chorus, Monster! finds Coxon looking back on his childhood, Blur days, and beyond through a series of extensive interviews with author Rob Young. As such, it’s a drifting, thoughtful memoir sometimes forsaking forensic autobiographical detail in favour of curious tangents and reflections on the creative process and Coxon's struggles with mental health issues and addiction. Verse, Chorus, Monster! is particularly strong on Coxon's formative years - the army kid forging an identity through art and instinctively using it as therapy, filling sketchbooks with drawings of monsters as…

Vinyl Guru is co-owned by father and son Chris and Rob Larkin, a family outfit employing various relatives. Selling multiple genres, accessories and game music/soundtracks, the shop is thriving. Rob tells Steve Burniston the story. Tell us the history of the shop and the kind of music you sell. We have always loved music and vinyl. Chris started working in music in the 80s at Our Price Records and as a guitarist in a few punk bands. But as the music industry of the 90s and 2000s shifted through CDs, digital and streaming, ideas of starting a vinyl record shop were put on pause. The vinyl revival of the early 2010s was the cue for us to start Vinyl Guru, initially selling accessories online. By 2015 we had earned enough…

Anastacia October (30) Basingstoke Anvil (31) Brighton Dome November (1) Birmingham Symphony Hall (3) Ipswich Regent (4) Manchester Bridgewater Hall (6) Cardiff St David's Hall (8) London Hammersmith Eventim Apollo (9) Bath Forum (10) Oxford New Theatre (12) Stoke Hanley Victoria Hall (13) Newcastle O2 City Hall (15) Glasgow RCH Eliza Carthy & The Restitution November (23) Masham Town Hall (24) Diss Com Hall (25) Leeds Howard Assembly Rooms (26) Ludlow Assembly Rooms (28) Birmingham Glee Club (29) Brighton Komedia (30) Cardiff Glee Club December (1) Southampton Turner Sims Hall (3) Gateshead Sage (4) Manchester Band On The Wall (5) Cambridge Junction Beth Nielsen Chapman RESCHEDULED October (18) Stamford Com Exchange (19) Frame Cheese & Grain (27) Weymouth Pavilion November (2) Bury St Edmunds Apex (3)Exeter Corn Exchange (4) Monmouth…

This month: Beth Nielsen Chapman Beth Nielsen Chapman’s first album, Hearing It First (Capitol, 1980), was a soulful, Barry Beckett-produced collection, made at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, introducing a young woman whose songwriting talent was equalled by a clear, elegant singing voice recalling Linda Ronstadt but with the emotional expressiveness of Jennifer Warnes. The timing of its release, however, left a lot to be desired. Launched as disco was completing its journey from cool, urban, club music to fatuous, overexposed pablum, the album disappeared quickly. “It was released the week that Disco Duck got hold of America,” sighs Nielsen Chapman. “I got great reviews, but the singer/songwriter era was definitely shifting.” Nevertheless, Hearing It First established the basic framework within which Nielsen Chapman would operate for much of her career:…

Walter Trout… on the soundtrack to his life Bob Dylan The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (CBS BPG 62193, LP, UK, 1963) £60 I was into big band jazz when I was a kid and was going to be a trumpet player. My family always nurtured my love of music, and my mom took me to see Duke Ellington when I was 10. I even got to hang out with him — then my brother brought this home! It not only made me aware that music can be much simpler but also showed what could be gained just by playing a guitar and singing. Not long after that I got a guitar and was playing Blowin’ In The Wind at parties. It really changed my focus of what I wanted to be musically.…

This month: Black Sabbath, The Bushnell, Hartford, Connecticut, US 13 October 1992 The first time that I ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight was on 13 October 1992. As a 16-year-old, hard rock and heavy metal made their impression on me thanks to MTV, but I was completely gobsmacked by the grandaddies of them all: Black Sabbath. Highly recommended by a fellow grocery-bagger at my first job, Paranoid was the gateway drug. It was slow, it was stark, it was bleak - so different from what MW was ramming down our throats. Within months, I owned the Black Sabbath CD catalogue, loving the transition from Ozzy to Ronnie James Dio. Immersed in all things Sabbath, I also scored my first guitar, a black Gibson SG Standard, to…

An Elvis Presley That's All Right acetate from his first Sun Records session, 1954, was offered 29 September via weissauctions.com. ■ A charity auction with signed guitars from Paul McCartney, Slash, is via julienslive.com, 11-13 November. ■ Dolly Parton's one-time 4,975 sq ft, four-bedroom, two-bathroom Nashville home with studio, 2.4 acres, sold in August for $849,000. ■ Rihanna's 7,130 sq ft, six-bedroom Los Angeles house with pool, gym, cinema, sold in August via realtor.com for $6.55 million. ■ Miley Cyrus' 6,689 sq ft, five-bedroom, five-bathroom Nashville house with bar, pool in 33.5 acres sold in September for $14.5 million. ■ In August, Beck's 2,056 sq ft, three-bedroom, three-bathroom Los Feliz house with studio, garage, cinema was offered via Rodeo Realty for $2.95 million. ■ A 7 September sothebys.com auction included…

The Fall's 1970s output is collated in a 12CD box set this month. It comprises Live At The Witch Trials, Dragnet, Singles & Sessions, Out-Takes, North West Arts Manchester, Manchester Musicians Collective Band On The Wall 13/11/77, Stretford Civic Theatre Manchester 23/12/77, Mr Pickwick's Liverpool 22/8/78, Carlton Club Warrington 13/11/78, Institute Of Technology Bolton 4/12/78, Prince Of Wales Conference Centre YMCA Building London 15/9/78 and JBs Dudley 31/11/79. The Fall 1970s 12CD is on Cherry Red, 25 November.…

On 16 September, Steve Harley offered 40-plus lots from his collection at a Bury St Edmunds auctioneer. As well as numerous 70s/80s stage costumes, the lots included a drum, his Phantom Of The Opera script, Mike Batt's The Hunting Of The Snark press pack, record/theatre awards, and scores of records by both Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and others. Among them were Harley acetates, demos and white label testpressings, plus The Rolling Stones Some Girls LP with uncensored sleeve, Bob Dylan and T.Rex demos, and first-pressing LPs by The Beatles and Pink Floyd. See Iskauctioncentre.co.uk. Got any news? Send it to tim.jones@metropolis.co.uk…

This month: Karl Bartos The publication of his excellent The Sound Of The Machine autobiography, in which the inner workings of Kraftwerk are finally revealed, has not only led to interest in their albums but also in the musical output of Karl Bartos himself. After leaving Kraftwerk in 1990, his first release was a 3-track EP under the name of Elektric Music, only released in Germany on CD and 10” (SPV 050 110365, £15). This was followed by the excellent album Esperanto (1993), sadly only released on CD. Bartos made a big contribution to Electronic's second album, Raise The Pressure (1996, LP, Parlophone PCS 7382, £100). In the same year, OMD’s Universal LP (Virgin V2807, £80) was released and this is also worth tracking down as Bartos wrote and performed…

Q&A Label boss: Penny Rimbaud Interview: Charles Donovan Where are you based, what do you do and why? Dial House in Essex. We have a long history in music, art, writing, politics and activism. The label now operates in association with One Little Independent in South London, reissuing the entire Crass catalogue. Why the name? Fairly self-explanatory. When did you launch it and how have things changed since then? Our first release as Crass Records was in 1979. We had no intention of making it a label; we did it solely to put out a single, Reality Asylum, which was to be the opening track on our first album, The Feeding Of The 5000, released by Small Wonder Records. Pressing plants deemed Reality Asylum too offensive to press, however, so…

IN VINYL MEMORIAM The Crickets That'll Be The Day (Coral 45-0 72279, UK, 7" . 1957) £15 Co-penned by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison, the Crickets’ breakthrough hit was inspired by a John Wayne quote in John Ford’s Western film The Searchers. Initially recorded with Holly’s backing band The Three Tunes in 1956 as an Elvis-enthralled slice of rockabilly, it was a retooled version put to tape the following year that captured the song in its full glory. Combining catchy melodies with Holly’s nonchalant delivery of bitter lyrics, it reached US No 1 and topped the charts in the UK for three weeks in 1957. It sold over a million copies that year and went on to influence The Beatles and beyond. Paul Bowler Jerry Allison, died 22 August, age…

Teenage Kicks. Teenage Lobotomy. Teenage Dream. Teenage Rampage. Teenage Dirtbag. Teenager. Bored Teenagers. Why Must I Be A Teenager In Love? Whatever Happened To The Teenage Dream? Yes, there certainly are a lot of songs with “teenage” in the title, and this is unsurprising, isn’t it, because popular music has always been rooted in the concept of teenage (apart from a brief period in 1972 when, thanks to The Osmonds and The Jackson Five, there was an attempt to create a genre called “weenybop” which fortunately never caught on). Teenage as a concept preceded rock’n’roll as a concept but only just. British newspapers were talking about teenagers in the 1940s, but — like television, the end of rationing and taking the piss out of authority - teenage was delayed by…

From Iggy to pop: few other groups illustrate the rapid growth and expansion that occurred from punk to post-punk and beyond than Simple Minds. In 1977, Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill were members of a notional parody of a rock band, Johnny & The Self-Abusers, who released just the one single, Saints And Sinners, on the Chiswick label. Smitten by a sense of self-belief however, from their 1979 debut Life In A Day, followed by Real To Real Cacophony through to 1980’s Empires And Dance, they quickly evolved into a formidable, locomotive proposition: Europhile, compact yet grandiose, drawing on everything from Iggy Pop and krautrock to Donna Summer, The Velvet Underground and ABBA to make music that blazed with ambition and potential energy. Their rolling, open-ended rhythm section, coupled with…

Other tasty Hot morsels Aside from their own albums, their 80+ remixes (for artists raging from The Roiling Stones and Donna Summer to N.E.R.D.), curated compilations (DJ Kicks in 2007, Late Night Tales in 2020) and Al Doyle’s membership of LCD Soundsystem, collectively Hot Chip have made around 16 albums either solo or in combinations. “We’ve always enjoyed writing and recording, and there’s been more than could just fit through the Hot Chip lens,” says Taylor. Here is some further listening. ABOUT GROUP START AND COMPLETE (Domino WIGLP271X, LP plus 7”, 2011) £10 About Group is Alexis Taylor’s improvisational offshoot, with sometime Chip drummer Charles Hayward from This Heat and John Coxon from Splrituaiized. This second album was recorded in a day at Abbey Road in 2011, without prior rehearsal.…

“Look at the fuss Kate Bush created” The singles chart has been the central pillar of British pop music for seven decades. It has always seemed to mean more to this country than anywhere else, with the possible exception of America - there was no French chart, for instance, until the 80s. In the UK, it was initially used to revitalise a weekly pop mag. In 1952, Percy Dickins was one of the key players in rebranding the ailing Musical Express as New Musical Express, leaving Melody Maker to help the revived paper (he was the first, but wouldn’t be the last, to switch trains). His jobs there included advertising, layout, and printing, and it was Dickins’ idea to include a chart based on the sales of records rather than…

1977 Donna Summer I Feel Love (GTO 100, 7”) £4 We may never know for sure if Rod Stewart’s First Cut Is The Deepest legitimately prevented the Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen from reaching No 1, but no one has ever questioned the glorious month this spent at No 1. This was the point at which the AngloAmerican story of pop had to acknowledge the growing importance of continental Europe. Munich-based Giorgio Moroder, his Hertfordshire-born sidekick Pete Bellotte and the actresssinger previously known as Donna Gaines created something so stripped back and thoroughly futuristic that any of the multiple remixes that have emerged since are doomed to sound instantly redundant. Even now, it sounds like the future. Bubbling under: Space Magic Fly; Hot Chocolate Put Your Love In Me;…

1992 Shut Up And Dance Raving I’m Raving (Shut Up And Dance SUAD 30, 12”) £12 Totally DIY, Shut Up And Dance - or PJ & Smiley - were an East London hardcore act, and also label bosses, putting out classics by the Ragga Twins and Nicolette. Given that they never paid the likes of Terence Trent D’Arby or Annie Lennox for sample clearance, it was from necessity a car-boot operation. But when they interpolated Marc Cohn’s Walking In Memphis and turned it into a trippy rave anthem (“Do I really feel the way I feel?”) it became too big to ignore. Cohn objected and they had to delete the single after one week. By the time they appeared on Top Of The Pops, with the record at No 2,…

2007 Mark Ronson Feat. Amy Winehouse Valerie (Columbia 88697 186332, CD) £0.50 Back To Black had made Amy Winehouse an international star in 2006, but this cover of The Zutons’ song would become her biggest radio hit. It was such an audacious move The Zutons’ original had been a Top 10 hit just 12 months earlier — that it’s surprising people haven’t copied the idea since and re-fitted more modern classics (I don’t mean in a Nouvelle Vague supperclub style). “Wino” would never get to release another album, and this stands alone as a joyous example of her at her fluent jazz-soul best. It was released as a suitably old-school 10” single. Bubbling under: Shayne Ward - No U Hang Up; Robyn with Kleerup - With Every Heartbeat; Timbaland —…

Kevin Robertson Why/ DCBA-25 Fruits De Mer CRUSTACEAN 96 Kevin Robertson of The Vapour Trails tackles the final song from The Byrds' fourth album, veering at least seven miles higher than their template. This is very British and quite contemporary, despite the strong dose of psychedelia that Robertson cannot wait to unleash at the earliest opportunity after a very straight intro. Whistling Theremin hints at what's to come, which arrives with guitar like the smithereens of a bricked windscreen. You might miss The Byrds' harmonies but you won't miss the guitar lines at the end, because Robertson reproduces them in twisted fashion. DCBA-25, Jefferson Airplane's trippy Surrealistic Pillow anthem, lurks on the flip, and it sounds more Byrdsy than Why. It's more measured psych, with highly accomplished vocals, guitars like bells…

NEXT ISSUE: DECEMBER 2022 (on sale 3 NOVEMBER) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 10 OCTOBER Please email your advert (word doc/excel file/plain text) to: listings@recordcollectormag.com NEW Postal address: Record Collector Listings, Diamond Publishing Ltd, 2nd Floor, Saunders House, 52-53 The Mall, Ealing, London W5 3TA Following issue: CHRISTMAS 2022 (on sale 1 DECEMBER) Deadline: Monday 7 NOVEMBER…

This month: George Underwood As a self-taught artist, George Underwood has, over the past six decades, produced a highly original body of work — including LP artwork for, among many others, T. Rex, Procol Harum and David Bowie - that puts many of his contemporaries in the shade. The son of a greengrocer, Underwood was encouraged by his paternal grandmother to draw, and then his mind was expanded further. “Age about 10,1 went on holiday to Spain where Salvador Dali grabbed my attention,” Underwood tells RC. “I discovered through Dali that a painting can affect your thought processes, make you see things differently.” Meanwhile, Underwood also developed an interest in Americana. “I went to see Buddy Holly and the Crickets when I was 11 and managed to get Buddy’s autograph…