Innehållsförteckning för Issue 541 från Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag APOCALYPSE: SEALED Just skimming through the new ish of Record Collector [RC 540] that postie delivered and noticed in the Stooges piece on page 84 mention of “Edgar Broughton’s World War 3”. The band Bowie was keen to impress upon Iggy was actually THIRD WORLD WAR (a retrospective box set with almost every second of music, and chat, Third World War ever committed to tape is due for release at the end of the year, should it be of interest). Pedro Mercedes, Fly Records PARSONS KNOWS A query regarding the “disappearance” of Alan Parsons. In the marvellous December issue of RC, the “Next Month” area on the letters page for January’s edition noted we would be treated to a piece on Alan…

Longstanding RC contributor Lois Wilson pays tribute to 1973’s soul mavens from Curtis Mayfield and The O’Jays to Millie Jackson and The Three Degrees in our cover story this month (p82). She also provides the monthly soul column (p102), interviews The Raincoats’ Gina Birch (p56) and pays her respects to the late, great Thom Bell (p42). As charismatic pop legends go, Fire Engines/Win/Nectarine No 9/Sexual Objects mainman Davy Henderson (p64) is hard to beat. Allan Glen, author of Stuart Adamson - In A Big Country, talks success, regrets and, er, concrete with the superstar-who-never-was. Terry Staunton heard Joan Armatrading’s (p58) third album wafting out of his big sister’s bedroom every day for about five years in his teens. When she moved out, he bought his own copy immediately, because he missed…

In December 2021, Pink Floyd made available a dozen unissued 1970-72 gigs online, before removing them shortly after, apparently having done so to retain copyright in them, with a view to future physical releases. In December 2022, they repeated the trick by posting online the unissued five-track Alternative Tracks 1972 EP, along with 18 unissued live sets. The 1972 concerts offered via streaming sites were Live At Southampton Guildhall, UK, 23 January 1972; Live At Carnegie Hall, New York, 5 February 1972; Live At The Rainbow Theatre, London 17 February 1972; 18 February 1972; 19 February 1972; 20 February 1972; Live At The Taiikukan, Tokyo, Japan, 3 March 1972; Live At Osaka Festival Hall, Japan, 8 March 1972; Live At Nakajima Sports Centre, Sapporo, Japan, 13 March 1972; Live At…

On 25 December, Goldfields Crime Investigation Unit issued a press release seeking information from the public about a house burglary in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, that occurred between 19 and 28 September, in which a music collection valued at A$150,000 was taken. Among the items pilfered were music equipment including amps and speakers, plus some 1,000 albums. Among them were LPs and box sets by AC/DC, Marillion, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake & Palmer and Black Sabbath, while four Metallica sets alone were rated at A$3,000. Police.vic.gov.au/appeal-public-assistance-locate-1000-rare-records-stolen-castlemaine.…

A star-studded soul, blues and comedy event at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in August 1972, along with related shows at Los Angeles Summit Club in September/October 1972, are available in unexpurgated form for the first time this month. Featuring, among others, Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Carla Thomas, The Bar-Kays, Kim Weston, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, Richard Pryor, Little Milton, The Emotions, The Dramatics, William Bell, Tommy Tate and The Ranee Allen Group, a 20-track best-of CD has one unissued cut, while other editions include the 20-track Wattstax: The Living Word and 31-track Wattstax 2 2LPs. The 77-track Wattstax: The Complete Concert 6CD and 10LP box sets have nine unissued cuts each, and the 130-track Super Deluxe 12CD adds shows at Los Angeles Summit Club in…

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Land Of Sleeper (Rocket LAUNCH 293 S, LP, 2023) Described by the band themselves as a series of “new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion,” this is a superb set from Piggx7, who’ve succeeded in transferring their blistering live energy into a powerful 8-song collection. It’s another statement of intent from the Newcastle doom rock outfit, their fourth album in six years. Their vinyl variants have a habit of flying off the shelves - you can currently take your pick from a ‘Lucid Dreaming Orange’ edition, a ‘Black Night ’ version and a Rough Trade exclusive being pressed on ‘Deep Sleep Blue / Black Splatter’ vinyl and limited to 500 copies. Third Lung Gameplay (RYP Recordings RYP 216 V, LP, 2022)…

The Undertones The Undertones (Sire SRK 6071, LP, UK, 1979) £30 I was a bit too young for punk in its earliest incarnation, but boy did I love the next wave. Bought this LP cheaply off a schoolmate. Despite discovering a scratch on Track 1, Side 1, Family Entertainment, the rest of this cracking record fizzed along with youthful energy. Feted single Teenage Kicks wasn’t even on the original release but got mine bouncing along to the band at Malvern Winter Gardens, May 1980. The Sound Jeopardy (Korova KODE 2, LP, UK, 1980) £20 Heard I Can’t Escape Myself on Peel. Stark, brooding, introspective - right up my adolescent alley. Rushed out to get a postal order and bought the album mail order. Adrian Borland and his band served up…

BARGAIN HUNT With the vinyl revival in full swing. I’m rather nonplussed as to why the Marsha Hunt album Woman Child has not been reissued. I bought it on release in 1971, having seen her perform live some time before. It remains a treat, serving up a winning array of cover versions (Bob Dylan, Marc Bolan and even Stevie Winwood). It was wrapped in Tony Visconti production. Is there any reason why it has not been reissued and does that make my Excellent condition copy worth more? Brian Culver via email Marsha Hunt was born in America in 1946 and in 1966 planned a brief visit to London. Upon arrival she made ends meet as a singer and extended her stay in 1967 when she married Mike Ratledge, the keyboard…

SUGAR SHACK Pay The Price/Reason 4 Panik (SUGA 001, 12”, white label, 1991) £100 In the early 90s came a slew of UK white-label releases, many of which, including this excellent single by Sugar Shack from Cheltenham, were treated as demos and used for promotional purposes. In this case, it was partly due to the samples used as well as a device to bring attention to the crew. They certainly got that attention when Soul II Soul played the record at the Afrika Centre and a deal nearly materialised. Although members Sugar Caine, Kid Spice and DJ Melody wouldn’t get signed at the time, it wasn’t the end of their journey, with DJ Melody becoming Long Lastin’. See RC 510 for more on rare white labels. PETE ROCK & CL…

Not Forgotten OBITS The depth of sorrow expressed in the wake of Terry Hall’s death almost rivalled that surrounding David Bowie’s passing in 2016. Though Hall didn’t have Bowie’s global reach or propensity for creative evolution, his impact, over the past 43 years, on UK popular music was still considerable. Hall certainly had a tendency to shapeshift, and, like Bowie, he spent a decade or so running away from what had made him a star in the first place. Although The Specials’ keyboardist Jerry Dammers was indisputably the architect of 2-Tone, Hall - as the group’s lead singer was its first public face. And what a face it was, all blank expression and glassy-eyed menace. His inscrutability allowed audiences project their own feelings and emotions on a performer where absolutely nothing…

Winter of discontent II? Don’t make me laugh. If you want to know how harsh the 70s were, play The Stranglers. Opening act to Ian Dury & The Kilburns; some pub near the River Lea in Cheshunt; the afterthought at the bottom of the bill to the Ramones. Did they play The Target? Maybe; I saw them somewhere west of London after a ludicrous trip in a crumbling Commer van. Wherever you went, they were setting up, crunching out a set, then fucking off to the next shithole. They were road-hardened by the time punk buoyed them upwards; compared to them, the likes of Generation X and Penetration, say, seemed like babes in arms, coddled by immediate label interest. There was hardly a record company in the land which thought…

MICK BOX Stalwart guitarist on Uriah Heep’s 25th studio set Tell us about the new album, and what film it could soundtrack? It’s very varied, so it could soundtrack many movies. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? A few solos on charity songs. Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? It was Very ‘Eavy Very ’Umble, in 1970, in my home. I was over the moon about it. Before Heep, in the late 60s, there was also the What About The Music single, with David Byron singing on it. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? It was one in Walthamstow, east London, where I was born. I found some obscure records there, like my first buy,…

Steppin’ Out (A&M AMLH 64789, LP, UK, 1979) £2 Armatrading’s final collaboration with producer Glyn Johns, recorded in the US, but unreleased there until a CD version in 2006. Two new numbers are premiered, How Cruel and Love Song. All The Way From America (Savoy SLG17445, CD, UK, 2006) £4 A stripped-down show from Saratoga, California, with Armatrading accompanied by just two other musicians. Seif-produced, the singer insisting it be released with no overdubs. Live At The Royal Albert Hall (Hypertension HYP10274, CD/DVD, UK, 2010) £15 Twenty songs spanning Joan’s entire career, but with a generous six from her 2007, Grammy-nominated blues album. Consequently, it’s as much a showcase for her talents as a guitarist as it is for her writing. Me Myself I World Tour (429 Records FTN15168, CD,…

FIRE ENGINES Get Up And Use Me/Everything’s Roses (Codex Communications CdxOl, 7”, 1980) £15 Recorded at Wilf Smarties’ studio in suburban Fife, Get Up And Use Me’s buzzsaw guitar riffs are as frenetic as Henderson’s vocals are relentless. Far from polished 80s pop, but still gloriously original. A blistering slice of energised post-punk anti-funk. Candyskin/Meat Whiplash (Pop:Aural POP 010, 7”, 1981) £5 A string-laden glimpse into the potential of Scottish independent music in the 80s as Candyskin bears witness to Fire Engines moving slightly closer to a conventional post-punk vision. It still sounds like nothing else released in 1981. Big Gold Dream/Sympathetic Anaesthetic (Pop:Aural POP 013, 7”, 1981) £1 Ambition in abundance on BGD as Henderson and co glimpse a future of fun and funk. All jagged edges and clipped…

With no particular place to go, you might walk down Southend’s fabled pleasure pier, the longest in the world, and you might reckon you’ve arrived at the edge of the British Isles, although outer London looms 36 miles away even if the slowie from Fenchurch Street ekes it out to 1 hour 30. The newly found city doesn’t even feel like old Essex but shares with Hull a sense of brooding coastal independence. Mickey Jupp was born in genteel Worthing — “in Sussex, worse luck,” he tells RC from his Cumbria home, “cos my brother [Dave], now gone, was born here in the Lakes when dad was an iron ore miner, but we moved east when I was a kid.” Raised in the sludge of the Thames estuary, with its…

Let’s Get It On (Tamla Motown STMA 8013, LP, g/f, UK) £30 Marvin Gaye uses the insight he applied to the politics of war on What’s Going On and employs them on Let’s Get It On to explore the politics of sex, going beyond the bump and grind to introduce a more spiritual and healing dimension, in the process cementing his status as sex symbol and soul music’s preeminent sensitive lover-man. I Let’s Get It On, the song, was conceived not by Gaye, though, but by the writer/producer and Gaye’s former labelmate Ed Townsend. Initially a hymnal giving praise to God Townsend had not long been treated for alcoholism and was in recovery - the pair then bluesed it up for Gaye’s muse, Janis Hunter. Hunter was the 17-year-old daughter…

“Donny’s musical mind was complex,” wrote Jerry Wexler in his 1993 autobiography. “He studied Les Six, the French modern masters… all of whom adored Eric Satie. Donny could play Satie; he could play anything… He was different from many of his pop composer colleagues. His constructions were never simplistic but were based on complex jazz chords.” Donny Hathaway, born in 1945, was a prodigy. Aged three, he played piano and sang his first solo How Much I Owe Love Divine at his local Chicago Trinity Baptist Church. At four, with his grandmother he performed around the American midwest as Donnie Pitts, the nation’s youngest gospel singer, wearing a sailor suit and accompanying himself on a ukulele. At 18 he studied fine arts at Washington DC’s Howard University where his roommate…

It is impossible to overstate the importance of The Staple Singers in the evolution of soul music. Formed in 1948 by Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples and built upon his then nine-year-old daughter Mavis Staples’ raw, gutsy vocal alongside his own pure tenor and bluesy guitar playing, the quartet’s line-up was completed by Mavis’ siblings, Pervis and Cleotha, before, in 1970, Mavis’ younger sister Yvonne replaced Pervis. In 1956, the group took gospel music to a new audience, giving the genre its first million-seller with their third single, Uncloudy Day, for the Vee Jay label. A young Bob Dylan called it “the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard… [Mavis’s] singing just knocked me out.” In turn, after seeing Dylan perform at the Newport Folk Festival and Dr Martin Luther King preach in…

Marc Almond A Live Treasury Of Song 1992-2008 Cherry Red SFE 01 BOX (10CD) With close to 40 years as a solo artist and 25 postSoft Cell albums on Marc Almond’s CV. shoehorning a truthfully representative selection of his prolific live recordings into a single box set would be quite the task. A Live Treasury Of Song 1992-2008 pulls it off, though, with 16 years of half-released, halfunreleased-on-CD tracks for the Almond obsessive. ‘Obsessive’ is the operative word: there are 147 tracks to get through here, and as even the man himself tells us below, that’s more than enough for anyone. Fortunately, if you were expecting 50 live renditions of Tainted Love, you can rest assured that there’s very little repetition of songs across the 10 discs. In fact, Soft…

Various Artists Intrigue - Steven Wilson Presents: Progressive Sounds In UK Alternative Music 1979-89 Demon DEMRECBOX 78 × (4CD, 2LR 7LP) A helluva title and a helluva collection, this Steven Wilson-curated set is a themed compilation but a world away from a greatest hits or best of. This 58-track set comes in four CDs or seven LPs (hough you can get the 19-track doublealbum, which one supposes is a best of of a non-best of) that chronicles a decade in dark sounds. Wilson has won many awards for his out-on-theedge prog rock, whether as a guitarist, writer, producer or multi-instrumentalist and this comes over as a contemporary version of those cassette tapes of favourite tracks that one used to make as a teenager back in the mists of time. The…

Bob Dylan Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) The Bootleg Series Vol 17 Columbia 19658706722 (5CD, 4LP/2CD) Time Out Of Mind, originally released in May 1997, is rightly held in the highest esteem by Bobcats the world over. Influenced by early blues singers, Bob Dylan’s first collection of original songs since 1989 saw him stepping out of his wilderness, ushering in his third act with some of the strongest writing of his career. At the time, however, it seemed wholly possible that it may have been his final statement; between recording and release, Dylan had contracted the potentially life-threatening condition, histoplasmosis, which saw him hospital bound and tour-cancelling. Some pored the shadowy material of Time Out Of Mind for pointers, despite the fact it was all written and recorded…

Mozart Estate Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! & The Possibilities Of Modern Shopping Cherry Red BRUM 6 (CD, LP) Lawrence (Hayward) has invented a new dance. It’s called the Brickwall Crawl and even comes with instructions. It probably won’t catch on, but you never know. If the former Felt and Denim leader does finally realise his ambition and scores a top 10 hit (he’s been trying long enough) it would feel rather strange. It’s unlikely Wiggle It will provide the breakthrough, either. The opener to Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! (“I’m gonna wiggle from Bow to Stepney/I’m like a fish on a hook with a twitch”) will get your toes tapping more than Doin’ The Brickwall Crawl, but its brutal reproval of his adopted hometown (“London is a dustbin full of human trash”) might prove a…

Alloysius Massaquoi and Kayus Bankole on their music being steeped in humanity, navigating their emotions, and being political without resorting to “finger-wagging” It’s been five years since your last album. What have you been doing? Alloysius Massaquoi: Living life, new experiences and new scenarios, making the best of what we have. We’d been touring for 10 years. It was good to take some time out and find the love again, with music, with each other. What was happening in the world got in the way. We took time out then refocused cur energy and got to work. When things turn to shit, you start again. Did you come out of that first decade feeling tired and burnt-out? AM: That’s essentially what the record is about, for me, the complexity that comes…

The Tastemaker Tony King Faber & Faber, £20 ISBN 9780571371938, 320 pages There is a general misconception that if someone has spent their life in the music business, “They’ve got a good book in them.” Often when these books are written they are either an endless list of details or anecdotes that may be droll around the table but in real life prove somewhat limp. The Tastemaker is not like that. The name Tony King may not be well-known outside the industry, but inside, it carries a tremendous amount of love and respect. From being a staffer at Decca in the 50s, to working with The Beatles, the Stones, George Martin, Dick James, Apple, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts to spending his years before retirement with Elton John…

The Types A Blast From the Past With The Types!! EP Time For Action TFA 59 Hamburg has a famed rock’n’roll heart (though I couldn’t find its pulse when I visited yonks ago) and The Types, a band that’s the definition of taut, should have been part of its legend. They spent five years stalking the planet with moddy, new-wavey pop, cutting four tracks in ‘79 for a deal with RCA which went tits-up. Here they are on a proper 7” EP. The delightfully angular (I’m In Love With My) TV opens like Friday On My Mind: God knows what they’d make of phone addiction. The Cure has a touch of Turning Japanese in its guitar lines; Quite Right layers guitars elegantly and compares good days with bad; Gloomy Monday…

NEXT ISSUE: MARCH 2023 (on sale 23 FEBRUARY) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 30 JANUARY 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: APRIL 2023 (on sale 23 MARCH) Deadline: Monday 27 FEBRUARY…

Dream Theater February (17) Manchester O2 Apollo (18) Birmingham Symphony Hall (19) Glasgow SEC Armadillo (21) London Hammersmith Eventim Apollo Fairport Convention February (1) Tewkesbury Roses Theatre (2) Exeter Corn Exchange (3) Swindon Wyvern (4) Southampton Turner Sims (5) Oxford Playhouse (7) Wavendon Stables (8) Newcastleunder-Lyme New Vic (10) Farnham Makings (11) Canterbury Gulbenkian (12) East Grinstead Chequer Mead (14) Harrogate Royal Hall (15) Solihull Core (16) Bury St Edmunds Apex (17) Harpenden EMC (18) Bath Forum (21) Lincoln Drill Hall (22) Buxton Arts Centre (23) Southport Atkinson (26) Manchester RNCM (28) Hayes Beck Theatre March (2) London Islington Union Chapel (3) Southend Palace Theatre (4) Stratford Playhouse (5) Worthing Connaught Florence + The Machine January (28) London Greenwich O2 (29) Birmingham Utilita Arena (31) Nottingham Motorpoint Arena February (1)…

Spotlighting an upcoming road trip This month: KRIS BARRAS IHow have you been preparing for the tour? As soon as we finished the last tour, in March 2022, we wanted to get straight back out, with twice the dates. Do you have any pre-/postshow routines? Pre-show, I have my vocal warm-up routine: scales, exercises, breathing techniques. We also have Wine O’ Clock, where we each have a glass of red wine exactly an hour before the show. Post-show, a couple of beers and a takeaway. Will you be playing any songs that you rarely perform? A couple from Death Valley Paradise. Will the set-list change much? Occasionally, I‘ll make a few tweaks if something isn’t working. The order’s very important, and we have lots of segues, but we still jam…

This month: Clutch If vocalist Neil Fallon, Zooming in from his home in Silver Spring, Maryland (“from the basement, to be specific”), is anything to go by, it sounds as though Clutch are in a very happy place. The quartet have 30+ years on the clock and so the pandemic starving them of the ability to make and play music hit them - as it did so many artists - pretty hard; but with a US tour in the bag and an exceptional new album, Sunrise On Slaughter Beach, under their belts things are looking up once more. “It was a long time coming and it was a difficult record to make in some ways,” Fallon acknowledges, “but Tom Dalgety [producer] made it easy once we got into the studio.…

This month: Madlib Constantly pushing the boundaries of beat making and sampling, Madlib has been behind some of the most innovative and influential hiphop projects of the last 30 years. His private lifestyle has kept him largely out of the public eye since the mid-90s, but his influence is considerable and his contributions to the creation of abstract hip-hop (on 2004’s MF DOOM collaboration Madvillainy) and strengthening the wider genre’s ties to jazz (particularly on 2003’s Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades Blue Note) are unparalleled. Born in Oxnard, California in 1973 as Otis Jackson Jr, Madlib came from a richly musical family. His father was soul singer Otis Jackson Sr, commended by David Axelrod and bandleader for the likes of Tina Turner and Bobby “Blue” Bland. Additionally, his uncle was…

CODA The Beat Wha’ppen? (Go-Feet Records Beat 3, LP, UK, 1981) £10 Growing up in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, music was about finding worlds beyond that. My first record only took me to Birmingham, but it offered a whole other viewpoint. The Beat had a kind of cultural diversity, a political awareness, which opened up my eyes. At heart, it’s great pop music, with such songwriting craft. I loved how they worked as a band, it felt really collaborative. Key albums in your life are like jumping-off points, because they broaden your horizons. Lou Reed Transformer (RCA LSP-4807, LP, laminated sleeve, orange labels, UK, 1972) £80 In the same period, I had a cassette with The Velvet Underground’s Andy Warhol album on one side and Transformer on the other. A song like…

I was going to start my letter off this month by saying how “vibey” the year so far had been for us (I was even prepared to use the word “vibey” in a serious national publication), certainly if our first two covers - last month’s radiant Iggy Pop and this issue’s celebration of soul music at its most incandescent - were any measure. Then news came in that Jeff Beck had died. In football terms, if Hendrix was Pele, the total performer, and Clapton Maradona, capable of breathtaking runs, then Beck was Cruyff, all virtuosic flash and dazzle. Arguably his best, most inventive work was done by 1975-6, by Blow By Blow/Wired, but you could never rule him out, and he continued to cut an intriguing figure: I interviewed him…

On 12 January, Royal Mail issued a set of 12 Iron Maiden stamps, created in cooperation with the band, and featuring eight live photos of Steve Harris (Vancouver, June 2010), Bruce Dickinson (London Hammersmith, May 1983), Dave Murray, Steve Harris, Adrian Smith (Pamplona, September 1988), Nicko McBrain (Quito, March 2009), Janick Gers, with Murray and Dickinson (Rio De Janeiro, January 2001), Smith and Harris (Helsinki, May 2018), Dickinson with band mascot, Eddie (Birmingham, August 2018), and the whole band (London Twickenham Stadium, July 2008). Eddie features in four standalone stamps in various guises from over the decades, from 1980’s Iron Maiden ghoul, to The Trooper, the Aces High pilot, and the Senjutsu samurai. Bassist Steve Harris commented, “We were all speechless when we saw the stamps for the first time.…

Sam Phillips ran the Memphis Recording Service, cutting blues artists for the Modern Records imprint in Los Angeles and Chess Records in Chicago. That was a success. So, why did he did he begin issuing tracks on his own Sun label? He felt that he wasn’t getting his fair share. At first, he wasn’t interested in the business at all, as he just wanted to record blues music that he felt, to his core, was so great. But he didn’t want to be taken advantage of, either. How influential was Ike Turner on the early blues recordings cut at Sun? He was influential in a commercial sense, and for the sheer excitement of Rocket 88, which was issued as Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats, on Chess, in 1951. It…

A world away from some of 1975’s noisier musical trends, Harry is a thoughtful gem. With its melodic grace and lyrical invention, this album sits deservedly alongside releases by Howe’s singer-songwriter contemporaries such as Lesley Duncan and Brian Protheroe. Harry begins with a nicely crafted version of Tom Jans’ Loving Arms, followed by the jaunty stomp of Hot Night. However, while these two songs are good, it feels like the album’s artistic and emotional core rests in the self-written songs that follow, including the trio of beautiful tracks that complete Side One. The first of these, Sweet Dreams, is a superbly constructed composition, delivered by Howe’s powerful but subtle voice, it prepares the ground for the deeply moving Where Would You Start? This is a remarkable examination of emotion, its…

QUEEN T-Shirt £31,800 Worn by Freddie Mercury during the video for the single, The Miracle, in 1989. It arrives with cut-away slits to either side and hand-altered collar. DON MCLEAN Guitar $156,250 A Martin 00-21 from 1969 used to compose and record the single, Vincent (Starry, Starry Night), plus other songs from the 1971 album, American Pie. Supplied by Julien’s Auctions FRANK ZAPPA Guitar £34,000 Owned, used, and customised in the 60s by the bearded one, this 1952/53 Gibson Les Paul shows what advertising execs like to term “love marks”. Supplied by Omega Auctions THE BEATLES Bag & Programme £36,000 Alongside the original autographed souvenir programme for the Northern Premiere of A Hard Day’s Night (1964) at the Odeon Cinema, Liverpool, 19 July 1964 is a satchel bag. Part of…

Thom Bell 1943-2022 Thom Bell, along with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, created the Sound of Philadelphia. His manicured arrangements and unconventional use of instrumentation drawing on his classical background - French horn, celeste, harpsichord and more brought a symphonic gravitas to soul music, taking it to new levels of sophistication with a series of unimpeachable recordings, among them The Delfonics’ La La Means I Love You, The Spinners’ I’ll Be Around and The Stylistics’ Betcha By Golly Wow. Born Thomas Randolph Bell in Kingston, Jamaica in 1943, but resident in Philadelphia from an early age, he was raised on music his mother played piano and organ, his father the Hawaiian guitar and accordion. He began playing piano himself aged four and, by nine, he had also mastered drums and…

“This is Howlin’ Wolf s New Album. He doesn’t like it. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either.” Thus ran the title of Howlin’ Wolf’s 1969 album, This Is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album. He Doesn’t Like It. He Didn’t Like His Electric Guitar At First Either. Famously, Wolf objected to the title (This Is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album. He Doesn’t Like It. He Didn’t Like His Electric Guitar At First Either), because he did like his electric guitar, being one of the first blues artists to go electric. He did not, however, like this album (although many do, and so on). Not liking one’s new record is one of the great traditions of popular music: from The Beatles who, if history and not Disney is correct, hated Let…

OPINION In 1977, musician, artist and filmmaker Gina Birch co-founded The Raincoats with Ana Da Silva. Inspired by The Slits and Patti Smith, their feminist post-punk in turn inspired Kurt Cobain, Sonic Youth and Riot Grrrl. When the group split in 1984, Birch joined Mayo Thompson in Red Krayola then, in 1988, she formed Dorothy with former Raincoat Vicki Aspinall. In 1994, The Raincoats reunited and still play occasional special events. Since their reformation, Birch has also directed music promos for The Libertines and New Order among others and in 2016 with Helen McCookerybook she put together Stories From The She Punks, a film which documents women in punk. In 2022, she enjoyed her first major solo art exhibition with Gina Birch: In My Fucking Room at Whitechapel Gallery 46.…

If the 60s witnessed the birth of soul, then the early 70s watched it gain independence and positively fly. A shift in market demands helped facilitate this; no longer geared towards the 7” format – where an album was conceived as little more than a means to promote a hit single – the genre shifted towards creating classic long players. In Chicago, the sweet falsettovoiced Curtis Mayfield built upon The Impressions’ songs of peace and unity and introduced a journalistic vernacular to his socio-political soul; at Motown, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder followed suit delivering landmark social commentaries as they exerted their artistic autonomy. In Philadelphia, soul took on a smoother, creamier sound as producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff framed The Three Degrees, The O’Jays and Harold Melvin &…

While their peers went soft and lush and adopted a maximalist approach to production, the brothers Isley bucked the 70s soul trend, creating a raw, heavy funk sound built around new recruit Ernie Isley’s fierce guitar playing and lead singer Ronald Isley’s adroit vocal style, rooted in gospel. The group started out singing in church in Cincinnati, Ohio and in 1954 they toured as a gospel quartet – Ronald, Rudolph, O’Kelly and Vernon – accompanied by their mother on the piano. After Vernon’s death in a cycling crash in 1955, the reconfigured trio took time out then moved to New York and married rock’n’roll with R&B to great effect on 1959’s Shout and 1962’s Twist And Shout, their cover of The Top Notes’ song. In 1964 they invited Jimmy James,…

In 1970, Curtis Mayfield went solo. Behind him was 13 years of peerless work with The Impressions, a group he had led since 1959 after founder Jerry Butler departed the previous year. Defined by his pure falsetto voice and F sharp guitar tunings – touchstones Pops Staples, Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, Muddy Waters – The Impressions’ clear-eyed message songs, rooted in the gospel tradition but using mellifluous R&B as their vehicle, laid much of the groundwork for 70s soul. Mayfield’s songs were a mix of the peace, respect and unity sermons of the church and Dr Martin Luther King and the more proactive methods of Malcolm X. An astute business mind, Mayfield was one of the first black men to own his own publishing company with Curtom and his own…

Marc Almond on putting together his mammoth live box set. Why compile so much live music now, Marc? Because Cherry Red approached me. They’re a great label that love music, and they wanted to curate this collection of otherwise lost or overlooked material. From a fan’s perspective, I think it’s a beautiful collection. My highlight is Twelve Years Of Tears. Playing the Albert Hall is always extraordinarily special, and I have such fond memories of our run of shows there. There are 147 songs here. Is there anything left in the vault? I mean, how much more does anyone want from Marc Almond? I think that’s enough. It’s odd to look back on a body of work of this size. Some of the songs still stand up well, while others,…

How did this come about? It started with Marc Bolan! Demon asked if I wanted to remix the T.Rex catalogue - I said yes! - but after two years they still couldn’t get the tapes. They asked if I’d like to do something else; they’d started doing curated collections - Gary Crowley did one. I didn’t think there was anything left to compile. Then I was out walking, lovely sunny day, listening to Health and Efficiency by This Heat, and thought, so few people know this yet it’s one of the most extraordinary pieces of post-punk art-pop ever made. No one had compiled an alternative history of the 80s as natural successor to the conceptual rock of the 70s. What did you look for? Things where ambition, creativity and experiments…

German natives NECRONOMICON took their name from HP Lovecraft, were smitten with Black Sabbath, and the title of their first album translates as “Tips on how to commit suicide”. So far, so cheerful. The concept of 1972’s Tips Zum Selbstmord Guerssen) was less about the self-destruction of the individual than mankind as a species, through pollution, war and overpopulation. As with Sabbath, the heaviness of the subject matter echoed the heft of the music. Humming riffs. Ocean-deep bass. Expressive solos. Muddy, tumbling drums. Operatic drama. Organ aplenty. Once again, without translating the complete lyric sheet, titles like Requiem Der Natur and In Memoriam provide some impression of their pessimism. Two years after playing their “farewell concert”, STEPPENWOLF reformed for Snow Flux, the first of three albums collected on The Epic Years 1974-1976 Esoteric). They’re…

Lawrence on his pop quest, staying mysterious and re-using old songs Are you still trying to write the perfect pop song, or have you already written it? I’ve already written it. Some of the songs I’ve written with Terry Miles are perfection, really. Relative Poverty isn’t just a great pop song. It’s become a song of the times. We were even in The Big Issue this week. When we started playing it live, it gained a life of its own. The audience responded to it - they were all singing “a tenner a day”. They understand it. So, it began to escape our possession and become something else. The version we played live was better than the one on Mozart Mini-Mart and I knew we had to re-record it, but I…

The Waeve The Waeve Transgressive TRANS636 RT (2CD, 2LP, Cassette) There is always something nourishing about a record that seems to so accurately capture the personal circumstances in which it was made. On the debut album by The Waeve - a duo made up of Blur’s Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall, an adept songwriter once of 60s revivalists The Pipettes - that feeling is particularly pronounced: 10 expansive, genre-flitting songs made in insolation that marry pandemic end-time confusion with the flourish of new love, all its wide-eyed optimism, anxieties and doubts to the fore. It’s a chemistry, equally natural and uneasy, that makes for an arresting listen. The pair had met briefly many years ago, before reconnecting at a London gig in late 2020. Weeks later, mutual music tastes…

Tony King looks back over a illustrious career for his memoir You seem to bring out the sweetness of the people you’ve worked with. We always had a laugh. John [Lennon], for example, was hysterical, the things he would come out with. They all liked me because I had a good sense of humour. And I knew what I was doing, and I knew what they wanted as artists. You went from working with Andrew Loog Oldham, to George Martin, then to be meeting Elton through Dick James. These were big, big figures. Andrew was an inspiration. But he was a bit out there at times and I wanted more of a stable working environment, so I took George Martin’s job at Air London. They didn’t have room for me…

READER SERVICES SOUTH EAST Across the Tracks - ‘On busiest corner of hip pest 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…

London: Glen Matlock, Kensington Nell’s, 17 February. ■ The Fizz, Greenwich IndigO2, 31 March. ■ The Winery Dogs, Shepherd’s Bush O2 Empire, 18 June. ■ Ellie Goulding, Camden Koko, 7 February. ■ The Nova Twins, King’s Cross Lexington, 8 February. ■ Thy Art Is Murder, Tufnell Park Dome, 10 April. ■ Frank Turner, Shepherd’s Bush O2 Empire, 9 February. Also: Robbie Williams, King’s Lynn Sandringham House, 27 August. For more tours/gig news see www.recordcollectormag.com/latestnews.…

Jacques Brel Ces Gens-Là (Barclay 80 323 S, LP, France, 1966) £15 Jacques Brel was at the peak of his powers in 1965. A year later he attempted to bid adieu to his recording career to spend more time sailing around French Polynesia, intermittently interrupting his idyll to make cameos in films that are now mostly forgotten. He was a giant of chanson, and Ces Gem-Lá is a bravura collection that captures the remarkable energy of his stirring stage performances and alludes to the ferocious drive that saw him conquer neighbouring France. Wallace Collection Laughing Cavalier (Parlophone PCS 7076, LP, UK, 1969) £15 Wallace Collection started out as 16th Century, and realising their name wasn’t up to scratch, literally found inspiration under their noses — takine their new moniker from…

This month: Stryper, Mohegan Sun Wolf Den, Uncasville, CT, 1 February 2019 One year before worldwide Armageddon [aka the pandemic], I had a game-changing concert experience. Stryper, those religious [see pic of Stryper bible] metal purveyors, were in town, supporting their newly released God Damn Evil opus. The show was free, but at only a 350-person capacity, one had to be in the queue at least two to three hours prior to get a seat. Game on! The Wolf Den at Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut is a small venue that hosts free acts of all genres as an enticement to both high-rollers and small-time gamblers. Although there is a disconcertingly limited inside capacity, minimal barriers leave the Wolf Den open to the surrounding portion of the casino, providing a…

Skillet Dominion: Day Of Destiny Deluxe, five bonuses, Atlantic, 17 February. ■ Seven Ten Love And War 20th Anniversary 2CD/DVD, with unissued cuts, DVD live footage, Still Cursed, 3 March. ■ Nightwish’s Floor Jansen Paragon CD, LP, red, clear, coloured LPs, Deluxe box with cream 180g LP, digipak CD, tote bag, badge, hardback book, slipmat, signed print, floorjansen.merchstore. nl, 24 March. ■ HammerFall Crimson Thunder Platinum Edition, with bonuses, then new studio set, are due on Nuclear Blast. ■ Children Of Bodom’s last show, Helsinki Black Box, December 2019, CD/DVD, [TBC]. ■ Warfare The Lem my Sessions 3CD, including Metal Anarchy, eight bonuses, unissued nine-track The Lemmy Mix, HNE, 24 March. ■ Venom’s To Hell And Back eight-cassette box set, with Welcome To Hell, Black Metal, At War With Satan, Possessed, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Sons…

In December, the official Deep Purple YouTube channel posted online 50 tracks from eight bootleg albums recorded during 1971-72. The Live Archive Vol 1 is the first in a series of such postings and comprises the fivetrack Live In Dagenham 19/02/1972; twotrack Live At The Royal Albert Hall 04/10/1971; eight-track Live in Wolverhampton 20/02/1972; six-track Live In San Bernardino 28/01/1972; eight-track Live In New York 31/08/1972; six-track Live In Florida, 14/07/1972, from West Palm Beach; eight-track Live In Leeds 29/09/1972; and seven-song Live In Quebec 06/04/1972, from Quebec City. See YouTube.com.…

This month: Susan Maughan - Bobby’s Girl I had just received an early Christmas present from my Auntie Iris in America, a one-dollar bill - about seven shillings in those days - and I had decided to invest it in my first record from the hit parade. Having negotiated a favourable exchange rate with my mother I set off for our local Woolworth. I wasn’t sure which record to buy, but on my way to the store I managed to narrow it down to a choice between Susan Maughan’s Bobby’s Girl and Mark Wynter’s Venus In Blue Jeans. The deciding factor would be their respective chart position - the highest would emerge victorious. The Top 20 was displayed on the wall behind the counter: Susan was in the Top 10,…

“When I came up with the concept of Wax On Water’s name, I wanted it to suggest both movement and stillness. That was very much influenced by The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. From the first time that I put the needle on it, I was mesmerised, absorbed by its musical language, familiarly British, yet wide-reaching in engaging emotions in me. The lyrics to Play For Today, A Forest, Seventeen Seconds and In Your House are brilliantly understated, conversational, dripping with pathos, and matched by the relentless beats, basslines and lyrical guitar.” Wax On Water The Drip is on Howling Tempest.…

MARIANNE FAITHFULL Kissin Time (BMG BMGCAT 446 LP) £10,999.99 Only a few vinyl copies of this 2002 synthpop outing were pressed. (eBay item number: 295197952030) Supplied by eBay THE MISFITS Cough/Cool (Blank 101) £7,433 US punk 7” single in 1977, with She on the flip. (eBay item number: 295336621714) Supplied by eBay NICHOLAS GREENWOOD Cold Cuts (Kingdom KVL 9002) £5,701 This prog outing was released in 1972, three years after it was recorded. (eBay item number: 334624648347) Suppiied by eBay SEVENTEEN Sector 17 (Pledis no cat no) £148 Korean hip-hop/K-pop from 2022, a repackaged version of the band’s fourth LP release, (eBay item number: 284882866025) Supplied by eBay DEPECHE MODE People Are People (BBC Radioplay TAIR 86032) £1,354 UK vinyl 10-track compilation from 1986. Supplied by Discogs THE WHO Who's…

I’ve recently heard people talking about the heyday of the NME, Melody Maker, Sounds and Record Mirror in quite negative terms. The gist of this is that it was gatekeeping at its worst, the music press comprising a bunch of (mostly) men who abused their power, building up and knocking down acts for fun. I’m aware it wasn’t all a golden haze of Wodehouse-ian wit and Hobsbawm-Iike historical thoroughness but, heck, I can still quote reviews of Blondie, and Felt, and Dick And Dee Dee off the top of my head. Then as now, the best writing led you to explore new music. Dave McCullough’s five-star review of Felt’s Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty in Sounds made me go out and buy it immediately, even though I’d never heard a note…

It is the winter of 1974. We are staring down the barrel of mediocre historian Dominic Sandbrook’s grim winter of discontent. The totemic bin-bags are piling up in the street, Slade’s career is on the downfall, Lord Lucan has gone missing and Midge Ure has entered the national conversation for the first time. Sort of… Now is the winter of Slik. No one cares about Slik anymore, do they? Even though they had a No 1 single in 1976. No one remembers what Slik sounded like. The best things about Slik were: they were on Bell Records briefly, and the band members took the name Slik as a surname, kinda like the Ramones but less memorably. Oil Slik, Lord Slik, Jim Slik and… Midge Ure. There it is: the first…

Here’s an observation that might surprise some readers: Joan Armatrading laughs - a lot. The architect of such serious, contemplative odes as Down To Zero, Willow, The Weakness In Me and the evergreen Love And Affection routinely punctuates her conversation with cheeky giggles, hearty guffaws, and a healthy dose of self-mockery. By her own admission, the soundtrack to her formative years was less music (she claims to have few, if any, influences) than it was the BBC’s output of radio and TV comedy, favouring the likes of Tony Hancock, Kenneth Horne and Jimmy Clitheroe over the handwringing folkish hues of lone troubadours brandishing acoustic guitars. “I never go a day without listening to or watching comedy, I find laughter incredibly therapeutic,” she says, following an interview with Dutch TV at…

As experiments go, it was nothing if not ambitious. Bored and frustrated with the established model of disseminating and marketing music in the 21st century, arch conceptualist Henderson decided that Marshmallow - the follow-up to debut album Cucumber by The Sexual Objects - would be “sent out” into the world in what could only be called unusual circumstances, with a solitary vinyl edition of the album put up for auction on eBay. With the highest bidder also winning the rights to the recordings, allowing them to hoard the tapes away in an attic or subsequently release as many or as few copies of Marshmallow as they like in whatever format they fancy, it was clearly a statement - and a gamble. “We just wanted to try something different,” says Henderson…

The Payback (Polydor PD 2 3007, 2LP, US) £40 Nineteen-seventy-three was a bumper year for James Brown, seeing rhe release of three albums: Black Caesar, Slaughter’s Big Rip Off and The Payback. Brown, though, was up against it. His endorsement of Richard Nixon was cataclysmic: record sales were down, and there were pickets by the black community outside shows. Added to that the IRS were on his back – he owed them $4.5 million in back taxes. When he was commissioned to write the score to Larry Cohen’s gangster flick Black Caesar, he threw himself into it although the conception of his first soundtrack was fraught – Brown wanted to use old songs like Damn Right I Am Somebody and Tell Me That You Love Me. The producer, of course,…

Where were you in 1973? The Chi-Lites were in our hometown of Chicago. We’d started out in high school in Hyde Park in 1959. It was me, Squirrel Lester, Creadel Jones and Eugene Record - we were the Hi-Lites, and we then added a ‘C’ for Chicago. We had two [LP] records in 1973 — A Letter To Myself and The Chi-Lites - and some of our biggest hit singles with Stoned Out Of My Mind and Homely Girl. Eugene Record wrote most of our songs, he was a great songwriter, but everyone involved in The Chi-Lites was special. We had the best arrangers in Tom Tom Washington, Willie Henderson and William Sanders, the best musicians in Gene Barge and Quinton Joseph, and we had the harmonies. We’d been raised…

(Tamla Motown STMA 8012, LP, UK) £15 Bob Dylan never really called him, “America’s greatest living poet”, but it’s a label that fits Smokey Robinson perfectly. One of the most prolific and imaginative songwriters in music’s history, as well as penning tracks for his own group The Miracles and himself as a solo artist, he wrote copiously for other acts including Mary Wells, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and The Marvelettes. He also has a beauteous gossamer tenor voice and is a producer of subtle and stunning ability. When these talents combined in the early 60s, they helped to create The Motown Sound. Alongside Berry Gordy, Robinson was intrinsic to the label’s development – he even provided the company with its first hit, the million-selling Shop Around in 1960, which he…

A disciple of the great blind piano magus Art Tatum, whose dazzling pyrotechnics influenced his ornate style, OSCAR PETERSON is arguably Canada’s greatest jazz musician. Dubbed the “Maharaja of the keyboard” by Duke Ellington, Montreal-born Peterson was renowned for a unique style defined by power, precision, a refined sense of rhythmic elan, and a propensity to swing. Fifteen years after his death, a previously unissued live recording has been unveiled in the shape of On A Clear Day - Live In Zurich 1971 Mack Avenue/ Two Lions), a 2CD/2LP set released via the Two Lions label established by the pianist’s wife Kelly. It captures a 46-year-old Peterson supported by the revered Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and American drummer Louis Hayes, who together achieve a heightened sense of musical simpatico as they breeze…

WILLIE WRIGHT ’s Telling The Truth Numero Group) was recorded live in eight hours in New York’s Variety Recording Studio in 1977. There were only 1,000 copies pressed on the Hotel label at the time but it’s clear Wright was one to watch for the Bayland, Mississippi singer, guided by Terry Callier and Jon Lucien, penned transcendental soul with deep spirituality. Writing and producing all the songs himself, he also contributed acoustic folk-ish guitar and flute. This month also sees a slew of vinyl re-releases from the Numero Group spotlighting artists hailing from Ohio. SHIRLEY ANN LEE’s Songs Of Light Numero Group) features the Toledo church singer’s lo fi recordings for Revival Records owner Felton Williams, put down in his Ecorse, Michigan basement, with Lee backed by guitar or piano and percussion on raw,…

New Order Low-Life (Definitive Edition) Rhino 0825646253012 (2CD/2D/D/LP) Welcome to Low-Life by New Order! You join us as the band have left the despond of their early years far behind them: no longer just the wreckage of Joy Division, New Order have escaped the dungeon of their past and are now hip, cool and popular again. After Blue Monday reinvented the group as an imaginative, commercial, but still enigmatic act for the 80s, follow-ups like Confusion and Temptation saw them build on that base: their second album, Power, Corruption And Lies, was still something of a mixed bag stylistically but it showed New Order had regained their confidence. On 13 May 1985, they released their new album and new single on the same day: The Perfect Kiss was an epic…

Young Fathers Heavy Heavy Ninja Tune ZEN 285 (CD, LP, Cassette) Listening to I Saw, one of the singles which preceded 2014 Mercury Prize winners Young Fathers’ fourth album Heavy Heavy. rerillics one of hearing Stones songs of the magnitude of Jumpin’ Jack Flash or Gimme Shelter. It’s urgent, insistent, a call to action or even arms; and yet it hammers its colours to no political mast and makes no specific demands of its listener. It’s the best kind of protest music, not falling into the easy trap of what the band call political “finger-wagging”, but instead inviting in the listener’s imagination as an active participant in their revolution. The Edinburgh-based trio - Alloysius ‘Ally’ Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham ‘G’ Hastings - released two EP mixtapes and three albums…

Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall on taking risks and doing the unexpected How was the process of going from meeting in 2020 to writing an album together? Rose Elinor Dougall: Within a couple of weeks of working together it sort of became really obvious that this thing had its own life. The songs started to open out into these territories that were unexpected for both of us, and it became clear that there was an identity that that was its own thing. The writing process sounded very intimate - how did that play into the songs? Graham Coxon: I’ve never done that with one other person. I’ve done it in a band process. But it felt safe immediately, like a safe place to open up about all sorts of…

This Is Sparklehorse Bo-Ho Films (Vimeo On Demand) In memory of the magical Mark Linkous Hunched over a piano, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue compares Mark Linkous to a radio out of range, whose signals occasionally manifest on an earthly plane. Filmmakers Alex Crowton and Bobby Dass tune into the Sparklehorse leader’s fragile frequencies to poetic, sensitive effect in an affectionate and affecting documentary: even if the late singer remains a mystery, This Is Sparklehorse honours his rare talent warmly. Drawing on home-video footage and on-point interviews, Crowton and Dass dig deep into Linkous’ “dramatic” upbringing and early bands; his brother Matt pitches in, openly. Scratchy footage of “Freddie” Mark Linkous in punk bands raises tingles, before the chapter on Vivadixiesubmarinetransmission plot reveals his talent for texture and tender songs of…