Innehållsförteckning för Issue 538 från Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag CRATE EXPECTORATIONS I’m writing this in the hope that some record dealers might give me their opinion on something that is increasingly annoying. As a music obsessive and vinyl enthusiast who is retired, with plenty of spare cash, and time, I am surely just the sort of customer that you’re after. However, I now find that I’m leaving more record fairs with few or no purchases. And the reason for this is the frustration of finding stalls that have crates that are just so stuffed full that you require two hands just to be able to look at the front cover of albums, easing them apart first, then lifting them out. This means that you have to put your bag on the…

Chris Catchpole has interviewed Paul Weller (p80) at various locations over the years: from the passenger seat of Weller's Mini, in the smoking area of various live venues, at his Woking studio, and the café round the corner from his West London home, to name a few. For this month’s cover story, the pair went record shopping together and discussed – among other things – the dying art of the B-side, and why you shouldn’t hold your breath for a Weller/Cure collaboration any time soon. Chris also co-publishes a thrice weekly music newsletter, The New Cue, if you want to sign up and have a read: https://thenewcue.substack.com Award- winning author Mike Barnes and Prog Associate Editor Jo Kendall found themselves having tea with Robert Fripp (p56) when the Crimson King…

How come you're back now? On my 76th birthday last November, my husband, Bob Brown, pointed out that fans might appreciate hearing from me! It's a departure for me. Ordinarily, I'd write songs inspired by something that happened to me or someone I knew. But Bob countered, “Why don't you record songs by the artists who inspired you?" The only original song here is SRV (Stevie Ray Vaughan), who was important to me, and I to him, in his earliest days, when he moved to Austin as a teenager. Were there any amusing episodes during its creation? Yes. My friend, John Allair, 82, still tours with Van Morrison in the US. He came to play an old-fashioned upright piano on Chuck Berry's Never Can Tell. After one take, he came…

Anti-Flag Lies They Tell Our Children CD, green LP, Spinefarm, 6 January 2023: Campino (Die Toten Hosen), Jesse Leach (Killswitch Engage), Tim McIlrath (Rise Against), Brian Baker (Bad Religion). Ad Infinitum Chapter III - Downfall CD, LP, blue LP, Napalm, 31 January 2023: Chrigel Glanzmann (Eluveitie). Breanna Barbara Nothin' But Time, Fuzz Club, 11 November: Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs), Denny De Borja (Jason Isbell). Band For Sale Sleeping Sun, Waking Moon, bandcamp. com, 18 November: Andrew Burri (Lucius), Matt Musty (Train), Kurtis Keber (Grace Potter). Janice Burns/Jon Doran No More The Green Hills, Janice Burns & Jon Doran, 28 October: Ben Nicholls (Seth Lakeman). The Corrs' Andrea Corr The Christmas Album CD, LP, Atlantic, 2 December: Ronnie Wood. Billy Cobham Drum N Voice Vol 5, Nicolosi, 4 November: Narada Michael…

Your book on the first rock’n'roll record was published in 1992 and is now out in 30th Anniversary revised form, is there much new material? A good bit. We brought all the artists' biographies up to date, made corrections, and we were able to elaborate some details from new sources. Thirty years later, we read it with fresh eyes and did some streamlining to make it a much better book. Jackie Brenston & Ike Turner's Rocket 88 of 1951 is regarded by many as the first rock'n'roll hit record. But you spotlight Jazz At The Philharmonic's Blues 2. It was one of the first commercial live recordings, and has an enthusiastic, racially-mixed audience, and an unrestrained saxophonist, Illinois Jacquet, in 1946. They drive each other to frenzy. He was famous…

Imagination Feat. Leee John have a 17CD box set out next year, taking in Body Talk, In The Heat Of The Night, Night Dubbing, Scandalous, Trilogy, Closer, Like It Is, The Fascination Of The Physical, Feel My Soul, The Voice Of Illusion Vol I, Retropia, Live Trax, 12" Singles Selection CDs, and Closer Revisited and 31-track Unreleased Trax, Mixes And Demos 2CDs. The 189-track stickered box also has a signed print in its initial run. Imagination Feat. Leee John 40 Years 17CD box is on Edsel, 10 February 2023.…

Detroit's Was-people, David and Don, created another genre-skipping gem with this album, which found them taking some fascinating artistic steps along from their equally enjoyable earlier work (notably, their self-titled 1981 debut on ZE). The title track is typical Was (Not Was) at full throttle: driven by a furiously disciplined rhythm, it’s exhilarating. The storyline is characteristic Was-fare: dysfunctional people with eyeballs smoking, breaking earthly laws. Few bands then (or now) could match them when they were this good. The album's vocals, including those by the late Sweet Pea Atkinson, are sensational. Indeed, with the likes of guitarist Randy Jacobs, the entire band is superlative throughout and the excellent production heightens the songs' impact. Typically for a Was album, there's some edginess. But leaping out of the darkness, there's plenty…

We’ve all met someone, a friend of a friend, who everyone else thinks you’ll get on with. “You’ve got so much in common!” they say. And it turns out you do have a lot in common, a lot of the same references and favourite records, but said friend of friend doesn’t seem to get them at all. I was thinking this the other day when I was chatting to a pal about ELO, or the Electric Light Orchestra as Roy Wood correctly named them. They recorded, of course, the greatest record of all time with their Jeff Lynne-penned, Roy Woodproduced debut single 10538 Overture. Just a few years later they recorded one of the very worst. I don’t mean Mr Blue Sky, I mean its evil twin The Diary of…

I wasn’t involved in C86. I was in a band – The Servants – who were on the C86 album, but I wasn’t in the band at that point. I joined the band (The Servants) when their imperial phase was over. Fast forward to the early 2000s and one of my other bands, Black Box Recorder, were on tour and very much in our imperial phase. The band supporting us were gaining a bit of interest; they were pretty good as I remember. They were also called The Servants. They weren’t the C86 Servants whom I wasn’t in. This bunch of Servants were an entirely different entity. A new bunch of Servants for a new millennium, and yet another band called The Servants that I wasn’t in. As you can…

“I'll wave to you from the front doorstep,” Robert Fripp tells us on the phone, calling to see if the “brutal interrogationists”, as he puts it, are on their way. Minutes later we see a bespectacled gent, replete with white shirt, tie, waistcoat, suit trousers and that mohawk gesturing to us cheerfully as we approach his Georgian home in Pershore. RC has an audience with the third-personreferencing RF, best-known as the guitarist with King Crimson, one of the most original and longest-lived groups to emerge from the UK progressive rock scene. To the world plugged into social media, though, this is the 76-year-old chap who, beside his wife Toyah Willcox, gives a bonkers cosplay performance of a popular rock tune every week in their kitchen as part of their Sunday…

Paul Weller is on a mission. He needs to get his hands on a copy of Rudeboy Prayer by Alton Ellis and Zoot Simms. An ultra-rare rocksteady single from the 60s with The Wailers on backing vocals, Weller heard it recently and won’t rest until he’s got it on vinyl. The man behind the counter at Notting Hill’s long-serving reggae specialists, People’s Sound, checks their catalogue as a lover’s rock version of In The Mood by 80s soul/disco smoothies The Whispers tumbles from the speakers. Hmmm, not there. OK, what about Always Together by Stephen Cheng, another rocksteady obscurity from ’67, its desirability for collectors upped by the fact it’s sung entirely in Mandarin. A second scroll through the vaults brings up nothing. Alternative spellings are tried, searching by label,…

ROLAND KIRK was one of jazz's most colourful and controversial figures. A blind genius whose pièce de résistance was morphing into a one-man brass section by playing three horns simultaneously, Kirk could be outrageously anarchic on stage, blending jaw-dropping instrumental virtuosity with searing political invective and a performance element reminiscent of a standup comedy routine. Perhaps that's why he wasn't taken seriously by the jazz establishment, who derided his triple horn “gimmickry” and onstage antics, but there's no denying that he was a phenomenal musician. Live At Ronnie Scott's,1963 ( Gearbox), first issued last year as a limited-edition Record Store Day vinyl exclusive, is now on general release in several other formats and offers a vivid snapshot of Kirk in concert. Though he’s more subdued than on some of his other, later,…

Gary Crowley talks Capital, mayhem and cross-pollination… How did it feel diving back into the 90s? Well, it's funny, I've got a selfish relationship with nostalgia because when it suits me I like it. And I can find it depressing, that reminder that we're getting older. But as far as this compilation goes, it's the obvious follow-up to the punk, new wave and 80s ones. It's the GLR, XFM years, and also The Beat, a music programme I used to do. It's a nice walk down memory lane with some personal memories, and hopefully there's a bit of thought to it. In Moonage Daydream Bowie talks about the late 20th century in terms of “fragmentation” and “chaos”. Does that fit your idea of the 90s? That sounds spot-on. We've got…

If you're not aware of the importance of LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY in the development and history of reggae music, you're probably reading the wrong column. To mark the first anniversary of the diminutive dynamo's passing, Trojan Records release King Scratch (★★★★★ Trojan), and what a jungle lion of a set it is. A stout box, adorned with graffiti in the style of Perry's Black Ark studio walls, disgorges four LPs, four CDs, a profusely illustrated 50-page book by Scratch's biographer David Katz, and a giant poster. In over 100 tracks, the set traces the man's career as an artist and, more importantly, as an innovative and successful producer. Broadly speaking, the hits are on the LPs while the CDs delve deeper into Perry's oeuvre, with each LP and its attendant…

The Weakness In Me: Selected Lyrics Joan Armatrading Faber, £14.99 ISBN 9780571377596, 240 pages Showing some emotion, poetically and articulately The combination of folk and jazz figures in the melodies and chord progressions on Armatrading's formative albums inspired some reviewers to herald the emergence of a British Joni Mitchell. Those parallels come to mind again when reading the words of those songs; a talent for vivid imagery, confessional soulbaring and a rich understanding of the power of language. It's there in the opening line to her breakthrough hit Love And Affection (“I am not in love, but I'm open to persuasion”), striking directly at the crux of an issue with surprising economy; also evident on earlier recordings like Down To Zero, or the romantic dilemmas that inform the song that…

Emily MacNevin backstage with frontman How did Covid affect your tour plans? We had shows booked for 2020, then everything disappeared, so we're very much looking forward to this run of dates. This summer in the US was one of our more challenging tours. Three weeks in, I had a back injury and was laid up in bed for a week. I learned how to sing at the top of my lungs, sitting down, for two weeks. When you're in your mid-40s, you do the show, have a bite to eat, wind down, then go to bed. I drink almost no alcohol on tour - just a spot of tequila onstage to relax my throat. I drink probably four times a year - half a glass of wine! Do you…

This is a particularly Record Collector-y issue of Record Collector that you hold in your hands (or balance on your lap via the iPad edition). Take the cover story, on Paul Weller, which does several Record Collector-y things. First, it finds the Modfather delving deep into his recent back catalogue, discussing with our man Chris Catchpole some of his favourite “lost” remixes, tracks from singles, live songs and B-sides, prompted by his (Weller’s, not Catchpole’s) new box set, Will Of The People. Then the conversation gets broadened out to encompass his favourite B-sides and rarities by other artists, and he even goes record shopping with RC at his most-frequented vinyl emporium in west London, to see which obscurities he can locate. And finally, the cherry on the cake – or…

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE News & views from the collecting world In September, the Isle Of Man Post issued a David Bowie Labyrinth Europa sheetlet and first-day cover stamps, as well as a set of eight Actor stamps in a pack and as a set. Other Actor editions include a sheet set with A-H printer's plates; a card set with nine cards and two cover cards; a stamp booklet pane set; a stamp booklet double-set with mini-book; 75 sheetlet with an exclusive logo; 1,000-copy 75 imperforate sheetlet; a stamp album; and a box with a card set, booklet, slipcase and wallet. In November, Bowie's Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory) 4CD/BD box set is out, followed in February 2023 by a remastered LP. The box has 48 unissued…

Willie Nelson Live At Budokan 2CD/ DVD, 2LP, Tokyo, February 1984, Legacy, 18 November. ■ Daniel O’Donnell I Wish You Well CD, Deluxe CD/DVD/book, with making-of, DMGTV, 4 November. ■ BJ Thomas Christmas Is Coming Home, six bonuses, Real Gone, 11 November. Due: November (11) Gilbert O’Sullivan The Best Of 3CD, BMG, The Carter Family Collection Vol II 6CD, Acrobat December (2) Tim Buckley Greetings From Home, Music On CD January 2023 (13) JD Simo Songs From The House Of Grease, Crows Feet. JAZZ In September, the Archive Of Contemporary Music, New York, received 90 Bill Evans LPs, most “mint and first pressing, some sealed”, donated by Matt Evans. Due: November (4) The Headhunters Speakers In A House, Ropeadope, Yusef Lateef The Prestige & Impulse Collection 4CD, Enlightenment, Red Garland Trio Complete Studio Recordings 5CD, EJC, Miles Davis Round About Midnight…

Among the Marc Almond sets due via Cherry Red are Open All Night, Live At Lokerse Festival, Stranger Things, Heart On Snow, Sin Songs, Stardom Road, Biuegate Fields: Live At Wilton's, Orpheus In Exile, Varieté, Feasting With Panthers, Three Black Nights Of Little Black Bites, The Dancing Marquis, Ten Plagues, The Velvet Trail, Things We Lost, The Velvet Trail Acoustic, Chaos And A Dancing Star, Against Nature, as well as unissued live cuts, 25 fan club recordings, and non-album tracks. Other releases in the offing include Alien Sex Fiend Nocturnal Emissions, Information Overload, Death Trip, Tangerine Dream Electric Meditation, Alpha Centauri, Zeit, Atem, Underwater Sunlight, Tyger, Arthur Kitchener King Of The Jungle, unissued Back Door, Mozart Estate Pop-up!, Kerching! And The Possibilities Of Modern Shopping, Strawbs The Imaginary Wall, and the Miki Dallon Productions catalogue.…

The Buzzcocks Love Bites (United Artists UAG 30197, UK, 1978) £30 Their second album is a feast of power pop-punk angst and love. The sadly departed Pete Shelley tells us to “Sit and bathe in a wave of nostalgia”. Done. The Lathums How Beautiful Life Can Be (Island 3830562, UK 2021) £35 A beautifully emotional album from young guys from Wigan. Think a cheerful version of The Smiths! The title track just makes me want to sing and cuddle everyone. I See Your Ghost is a kind of ska punker while Artificial Screams is a combo of folk/reggae/rock. Nelson Riddle Batman Exclusive Television Soundtrack (Stateside SL 10179, UK, 1966) £50 Who doesn't love the Batman theme? This album has a plethora of POW! And the FAB background groovy tunes are…

Built in the 1890s as a Wesleyan Chapel, this handsome building was repurposed and renamed the Municipal Hall during the first half of the 20th century. In the 1980s it was again converted and renamed as The Muni Arts Centre. Over the following 40 years the Muni played a key role in hosting and nurturing professional arts and music in Pontypridd and the surrounding area. The Muni also provided a venue for amateur performances in all the arts. More recently, it has hosted local acts and, in particular, tribute bands performing music by ABBA, ELO, AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, Journey, and others. I remember with great affection when it was the Municipal Hall, although even then it was better known as the Muni and I was a pupil at the…

JOY DIVISION An Ideal For Living (Enigma PSS 139) £3,300 Original first pressing in a foldout sleeve. (eBay item number: 125497406213) Supplied by eBay QUEEN The Complete Works (EMI QB X1) £2,817 Signed vinyl edition, released in 1985. (eBay item number: 165590746154) Supplied by eBay FREDDIE CHAVEZ They'll Never Know Why (Look 5010) £2,792 Northern soul 7” single from 1968 with Baby I'm Sorry on the flip. (eBay item number: 374245986904) Supplied by eBay OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN So Sad (EMIdisc no cat no) £2,762 Unreleased single with Pat Carrol from 1967 with Beautiful on the flip. (eBay item number: 265836178422) Supplied by eBay AL WILLIAMS I Am Nothing (La Beat 6602 DJ) £3,863 Detroit-sourced Northern soul 7” from 1966 with Brand New Love on the flip. Supplied by Popsike MAGNETICS…

Before they were overwhelmed by Her Majesty, the obituarists had plenty to do memorialising “the rock generation”. I went to work in a black tie when Marvin Gaye was killed. If I did the same today, I’d never take it off. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, the cliché goes. Originally, it read, “An yll wynde that blowth no man to good”, according to John Heywood’s 16th century Book Of Proverbs. I prefer my source to be Ill Wind, the Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler song; particularly the version on Horace Silver’s Further Explorations and Lee Morgan’s rather more reflective take on Cornbread (both Blue Note). Music makes its own obituaries: the death of a star is an opportunity to make a tribute record. Some are sincere, others blowth…

LAURI YLÖNEN The Rasmus frontman on their latest set What movie could your new album soundtrack? Donnie Darko. Creepy but cute. If you could re-visit any of your albums, what'd you change? We've tried recording some songs, but then you get too serious, trying to be perfect. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? I scored the Blackout movie. Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? In The Shadows, at the record company, in 2003. What was your first record? AC/DC The Razors Edge, age 10. What records made you want to go pro? Europe The Final Countdown and Alice Cooper Trash. I started doing makeup because of him.! met him, and he told me has 600 pairs of jeans! What’s…

Robert Fripp Silent Night (Praxis 102579XS, single-sided 7” flexi, US, 1979) £60 The classic carol was afforded an eerie Frippertronics treatment and given away with issue three of Chicago mag, Praxis. David Sylvian and Robert Fripp Redemption Approaching Silence (P3 Art And Environment, cassette, Japan, 1994) £60 Spoken-word by Fripp with effects and editing by Sylvian, from the duo's sound installation at Tokyo’s Tochoji Zen temple. Centipede Septober Energy (RCA NE9, 2LP acetates, UK, 1971) £125 Fripp produced and played with his friend Keith Tippett's jazz-fusion machine, and these white labels come with typed notes and amendments. Charlie Drake You Never Know (Charisma CB 270, 7”, UK, 1975) £40 Led by Peter Gabriel, Fripp joins Sandy Denny and other heavy musos blowing off some steam with a comedy pop song.…

Forty-seven per cent of 1992's End of Year Albums Top 30 were historical anthologies, including… No2onEnd of Year Top 30) No3 No4 No8 No11 No12 No13 No18onEnd of Year Top 30) Queen No19onEnd of Year Top 30) No21 No25 No28 No29 No30 Thirty-three per cent of 1992’s End of Year Singles Top 40 were re-releases or covers, including… IWillAlwaysLoveYou (No 1 on End of Year Top 40) PleaseDont Go (No 5 on End of Year Top 40) EPNo7 BakerStreetNo11) BohemianRhapsodyNo15) MyGirlNo22) ImDoing Fine Now (No 28) BarcelonaNo30 KnockinonHeavens Door (No 34) HeartbeatNo35 SomethingGoodNo36) CouldItBeMagic(No 37) IllBe There (No 40)…

The Beatles - Baby You’re A Rich Man (B-side of All You Need Is Love, 1967) “It’s a tune that was knocked out quickly but is an absolute gem, like Hey Bulldog. Macca's bass-playing is fantastic and John on the Univox keyboard gives it a psychedelic edge." Ten City - One Kiss Will Make It Better (B-side of Suspicious, 1988) “Great lil' soul tune and love the horns on it. Ten City’s early tunes were just great." Leroy Hutson - Cool Out (From Hutson, 1975) “Lifted from the album on Curtom. This is a beautiful bit of music. Leroy was an arranger, too, so that figures. Love the high trumpet note!” Brother To Brother - Every Nigger Is A Star (Single, 1974) “I don't know the vocalist's name in this…

The Skippy White Story: Boston Soul 1961-1967 (★★★★ Yep Roc) pays tribute to the titular White, the record shop owner, radio deejay, label boss and producer born Fred LeBlanc in 1936 in Walton, MA. A 15-track introduction to his Boston imprints Wild, Stop, Bluestown and Silver Cross, it is expertly curated by Eli Reed (with sleeve notes by Peter Guralnick) and bookended by Junior Washington's Skippy White Theme (Part 1) and I Was Standing by Lynn Harmonizers, The self-explanatory first named track featuring Washington’s vocal group the Precisions (the comp features a further four tracks by them under their own name) is an R&B stamper from 1966 and was used by White as his radio show intro; the second named is a take-me-tothe-river heavenly call and response from 1964. Other…

The Beach Boys Sail On Sailor: 1972 Capitol/Ume 4585914 (2CD/6CD, 2LP/5LP)) If, as their 1971 album title had it, surf was up for The Beach Boys in the early 70s, California was soon to become a dead-end, too. While finishing 1972's Carl And The Passions - “So Tough" album, the group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building and then dismantling, shipping to Holland and rebuilding recording equipment with which - after also entirely resettling themselves, their families and their wider entourage - they would record another new album by the end of the year, named after the country in which they seriously considered settling for good. This wholesale relocation outwardly reflected the internal reconfiguration The Beach Boys underwent in the period covered by Sail On Sailor: 1972. With Brian…

Sandy Denny The North Star Grassman And The Ravens Island UMCLP 006 (LP) Sandy Island UMCLP 007 (LP) Like An Old Fashioned Waltz Island UMCLP 008 (LP) Rendezvous Island UMCLP 009 (LP) Sandy Denny began her remarkable career when she was still young, as if she knew she had to get it all in as soon as possible. She was, as every fule know, still in her teens when she wrote Who Knows Where The Times Goes?, a song whose melancholic nostalgia for lost years and passing time could only have been written by a teenager. This, combined with her extraordinary voice - the greatest example of the classic female British folk vocal, both pure in tone and also slightly redolent of elocution lessons - made her a natural choice…

NEXT ISSUE: CHRISTMAS 2022 (on sale 1 DECEMBER) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 7 NOVEMBER 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: JANUARY 2023 (on sale 29 DECEMBER) Deadline: Monday 5 DECEMBER…

Alter Bridge December (5) Nottingham Motorpoint Arena (6) Glasgow SSE Hydro Arena (9) Manchester AO Arena (11) Birmingham Resorts World Arena (12) London Greenwich O2 The Cure December (4) Glasgow Ovo Hydro (6) Leeds First Direct Arena (7) Birmingham Utilita Arena (8) Cardiff Motorpoint Arena (11) London Wembley OVO Arena Ex-The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott November (26) Swansea Arena (27) Llandudno Cymru Arena (28) Blackpool Opera House December (1) Bridlington Spa (2) Glasgow OVO Hydro (3) Stockton Globe (5) Portsmouth Guildhall (6) Nottingham Motorpoint Arena (8) Birmingham Resorts World Arena (9) Sheffield Utilita Arena (10) Manchester AO Arena (17) London Greenwich O2 Kula Shaker December (8) London Shepherd's Bush O2 Empire January 2023 (19) Edinburgh Liquid Room (20) Sheffield Leadmill (21) Liverpool Camp & Furnace (23) Newcastle…

This month: Shelagh McDonald Few cult figures come with better credentials than Shelagh McDonald, a wonderful singer, guitarist and songwriter with an engaging personality. Her two LPs (Album from 1970 and Stargazer from 1971) shared musicians (with the Fairports) and an arranger, Robert Kirby (noted for his work with Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, Ralph McTell and The Strawbs), with her friend, Sandy Denny, and others from the early 70s folk-rock scene. It is, therefore, surprising, given the current appreciation afforded both Drake and Denny, that McDonald doesn’t have greater cult cachet. Though still with us, she had a breakdown brought on by LSD use, opting for the life of a traveller, cutting short a promising career. Despite vanishing from the folk scene, in 2005, after stories circulated about her disappearance…

This month: Douglas MacIntyre Douglas MacIntyre was 18 when his band, Article 58, recorded their Event To Come single at Strathaven’s Emblem Sounds Studio (where Orange Juice made their Falling And Laughing debut 45 for Postcard), with Alan Horne and Malcolm Ross producing. Released in April 1981 on Josef K manager Allan Campbell’s Rational Records, home to the wonderful Delmontes among others, it remains a potent snapshot of the times, all chiming guitars and pulsating bass. The band rubbed Oxfam-suited shoulders with some of the era’s finest, supporting Josef K, Scars and A Certain Ratio. All children of Warhol and McLaren, that early 80s crop of Scottish bands, Glasgow’s Orange Juice and Edinburgh’s Fire Engines foremost among them, were arch and arty, playing about with industry norms around marketing, packaging…

CODA Betty Boo… on the soundtrack to her life Blondie Rapture (Chrysalis CHS 2485, 7”, UK, 1980) £2 I grew up in Shepherds Bush – it was a real melting pot of cultures. Our neighbours across the road were from Jamaica and Grenada. They had this amazing sound system and would play soca and all the fresh sounds from Kingston really loud. At the same time there was disco, new wave, hip hop. I heard Rapture by Blondie and I was mesmerised. Debbie Harry was so cool and beautiful and watching her rap, that was the inspiration for me to rap as an 11-year-old. The lyrics, “You go out at night eatin’ cars/You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns, too/Mercurys and Subaru” – I love how you can incorporate lyrics in hip-hop you…

This month: Jimi Hendrix, The Ram Jam Club, Brixton, December 1966 It's early evening on Saturday 10 December 1966. My mates and I met up earlier. We're going to see a midnight movie in Leicester Square, central London. We need to kill a few hours first. “John Mayall's on at The Ram Jam”. The Ram Jam Club is on Brixton Road in south London. We arrive somewhere after 8pm and pay at the door. The Bluesbreakers are already on when we arrive. After visiting the bar, we move across to the stage and watch. We’ve never seen them before, only heard about them. And, of course, they’re pretty good, playing great R&B. It’s the interval. We drift back to the bar and, while we order more drinks, we hear activity…

The UK trade body representing digital services, and retailers offering music, video and games, ERA (The Digital & Entertainment Retailers' Association), reported on 7 September that new vinyl LPs had outsold all other formats during the year to date, except for Nintendo Switch computer games. According to data from the Official Charts Company/GfK for the first 35 weeks of 2022, vinyl sales were pegged at No 2 overall. They also accounted for the largest percentage rise in revenues, up over 12 per cent, and made more money than new CD album sales. UK BEST-SELLING PHYSICAL ENTERTAINMENT FORMATS TO SEPTEMBER 2022: 1 Nintendo Switch -12.5% (year to September 2021, £101,338,187; 2022, £88,650,439) 2 New vinyl LPs +12.2% (year to September 2021, £72,107,077; 2022, £80,934,220) 3 Playstation 4/5 +6.5% (year to September…

Rainn Byrns New In Town (Futureproof FLP 002 V, LP, 2022) Born in Texas, raised in Swindon and now based in Peckham, Rainn Byrns is a unique character with an unusual perspective. As well as playing all the instruments on this debut LP, he is a natural storyteller. The album is full of alt. country gems and lo-fi indie pop, finding the sweet spot between Badly Drawn Boy, The Bees and I Am Kloot one minute, and the music you might hear playing on a dusty American porch the next. Released to coincide with National Albums Day, there are 500 copies of the record being pressed on translucent turquoise vinyl. Nancy English Leather (Blame Recordings BLAME 11 LP, LP, 2022) A visionary with roots in the northeast of England, Nancy…

RC investigates COLLECTING We've done several Rock'n'Roll Rides around the metropolis, taking in the music heritage of particular locales. This time, we cast our net more broadly, across a variety of the capital's neighbourhoods, to highlight some of the locations featured in a host of big screen music ventures over the years. While there's not enough space to undertake a definitive survey, our A-Z (with DIY itineraries/rail links) lifts the curtain on numerous beloved music flicks, and we hope may spark some more pointers to music film locations from you, the audience. Absolute Beginners (1986) Julien Temple's tale of a 50s entertainment photographer, features Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, Ray Davies, Jess Conrad, Ed Tudor-Pole and Sade. Scenes include: a song and dance at Albert Bridge, Wandsworth SW11 4PH (Sloane Square tube);…

IN VINYL MEMORIAM Loretta Lynn Don't Come Home A’Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) (Decca 32045, US, 7", 1966)£4 Loretta Lynn's first No 1 country hit was a typically straight-talking and feisty take on marital life. Most likely inspired by her tempestuous relationship with her hard-drinking husband Oliver “Doo” Lynn - as was so much of her best material - her lyrics detail a stern rebuke towards a misguided spouse on his return home one night in a drunk and lusty state: “You'd been out with all the boys and you ended up half-tight/Liquor and love, they just don't mix/Leave that bottle or me behind /And don't come home a’drinkin' with lovin' on your mind.” Loretta Lynn, died 4 October, age 91. The US country music singer-songwriter's tales of hardship…

There was, or is, a band called The Pleasers, whose near hit was a great version of The Who’s The Kids Are Alright. They were, I think, the sole exponents of a genre called Thamesbeat. I bought their album, a very enjoyable collection of songs in the Thamesbeat style, for The Kids Are Alright and its equally respected other single A Girl I Know (Precis Of A Friend), and enjoyed it, but was surprised to find a song at the end named after the album’s producer, Tommy Boyce. Readers of Record Collector will know that Boyce was one half of the great pop writing duo Boyce and Hart, and a quarter of a later Monkees incarnation [RC 536]: a much-respected figure in popular music history. Yet, judging from the song…

From Manchester, Mike Joyce started out in punk bands, recording singles with The Hoax and Victim before joining The Smiths in 1982. When they split in 1987, he and Smiths bassist Andy Rourke provided the rhythm section for Sinead O’Connor and then with former Smiths guitarist Craig Gannon for Morrissey on his solo singles The Last Of The Famous International Playboys and Interesting Drug. He’s since drummed with a veritable who’s-who from Julian Cope, PiL, Pete Wylie and Suede to Buzzcocks and PP Arnold. “I like intense singers,” he says. He’s currently the patron for Manchester charity Back On Track and by the time this is printed he will have raffled off his original silver disc of The Smiths’ Strangeways, Here We Come to raise funds for them. Tell me…

A reggae superstar for more than half a century, Jimmy Cliff might have pursued a different path had he been able to parlay the passions of his youth into a career. Encouraged by his father in the St James colony of north-west Jamaica, the teenager born James Chambers entered local talent contests and caught the attention of the country’s famed reggae producer, Leslie Kong. But his heart was set on being a sweet soul crooner. “I was obsessed with Sam Cooke from before I was in long trousers, he was the singer I most aspired to emulate,” he says today. “He was a beautiful man in every sense of the word, he looked like a Hollywood movie star, and he had the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard. Everything about…

NOVEMBER 1969 PAUL MCCARTNEY Jaan Uhelszki: You say Detroit and you think cars, but in 1969 there was much more than 427 cubic inches going on under this city’s hood. Not only the birthplace of heavy metal, loose burgers, and square pizza, but the origin of one of rock’s most infamous conspiracy theories that people still debate today. In fact, if there was ever any doubt that Detroit wasn’t the right place to give birth to this rebel-hearted, attitude-atrocious rock magazine, this early issue of Creem dispels all that with the November 1969 cover story: The Paul Death Hoax and How It Grew, meticulously reporting on how the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy story originated one Sunday night in Detroit — and grew to global proportions — after local DJ Russ…

Reissues, remasters and compilations David Bowie Divine Symmetry Parlophone 190296268250 (4CD/Blu-Ray, LP) David Bowie was a good six years into his career when he recorded Hunky Dory. It had been two years since he'd scored a hit with Space Oddity. He'd released three albums, rocked with the mods, struck poses as a mime, stared wide-eyed from behind locks of curly shoulder-length hair as he pondered the fading hippie dream. The man who sold the world? As 1971 came around, he struggled to shift his own wax discs. Released that December, Hunky Dory initially did little to change Bowie's commercial standing, though critics largely agreed - and are still rightly unanimous in their opinion - that it marked the arrival of a visionary songwriter. Charting that journey, the contemporaneous demos and…

Various Artists Gary Crowley’s Indie 90s Playback: Classics, Curveballs And Bangers Wienerworld / WNRCD5118 After compilations devoted to punk, new wave and 80s deep cuts, the former GLR DJ travels ever-onwards into the next decade. As ever with Gary Crowley, the result mixes curatorial connoisseurship with enthusiastically expansive inclusivity, sequenced to illuminate the era's changes and packaged with a fanzine-ish book featuring affectionate quotes from notable decade veterans. From his home on GLR's Sunday afternoon show, Crowley was well positioned to plot how the 90s unfolded. What he presents across three discs - split into Classics, Curveballs and Bangers - is a picture of a Britcentric indie-rock puritanism becoming hybridised, as contrasting mindsets cross-pollinate. With cheeky timeline licence, The Wonder Stuff’s A Wish Away (1988) kicks things off, beholden to…

Blondie Chaplin on how “the young Africans with good energy” changed things for The Beach Boys. How did you and Ricky go from The Flame to being part of The Beach Boys? We did The Flame’s [self-titled 1970] album with Carl at Brian’s house. And so we knew one another quite a bit. We’d gone from South Africa to England, stayed there for a couple of years, a year and a half, and then came to LA… We were green. It completely opened our eyes… We melted into the music pretty easy, and Carl encouraged us to get going. When the first Flame album came, The Beach Boys were struggling. There wasn't that much going on. Carl took us on the road in a station wagon, and we went to different…

Ezra Collective Where I’m Meant To Be Partisan PTKF 3020-5 (CD, LP) Named after a Biblical prophet who led the Israelites through a social and spiritual renaissance, Ezra Collective began to hit their stride in 2019 with their critically acclaimed debut album You Can't Steal My Joy before cementing their status as rising stars of the UK jazz scene by taking Glastonbury by storm. But in the middle of their world tour early the following year, the pandemic struck and put everything on hold. Suddenly, the momentum they had been building evaporated and they were left, like most gig-stripped musicians, wondering what to do next. That was when the group's leader, drummer Femi Koleoso, decided to use the lockdown period constructively and began working on Where I'm Meant To Be,…

READER SERVICES 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 an ever changing large stock of records cds & cassettes at the most reasonable prices…

This month: Toto’s David Paich Seals And Crofts Diamond Girl (Warner Bros K 46218, LP, UK, 1973) £3 This was what pushed me into the big time. I was 18, my first real major hit record, playing piano on the single and album. It was key to starting my session career: I started getting lots of calls. My father, Marty, had been an arranger and jazz pianist on lots of pop sessions in the 60s like The 5th Dimension and The Mamas And The Papas. I’d go and watch these session guys play, in particular Larry Knechtel who played piano on Bridge Over Troubled Water. I’d set my sights on being a session player and got to do sessions from when I was 16. Glen Campbell Houston (I’m Comin’ To…