Innehållsförteckning för Issue 567 från Record Collector

SEND YOUR PRAISE, MISSIVES AND CALLS FOR THE DEIFICATION OF RICHIE UNTERBERGER TO: rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk, or to Record Collector, 4th Floor, Harmsworth House, 13-15 Bouverie Street, London EC4Y 8DP, or via social media rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag HAPPENINGS DECADES TIME AGO Many thanks for your incredible Yardbirds feature [RC 566]. I would imagine Tony Blackburn playing For Your Love but not Happenings Ten Years Time Ago. Maybe Mark Radcliffe would. He'd also play more psych, reggae and punk… As a lover of 60s and 70s music I would like to know your readers’ opinions of Radio 2's current Sounds Of The 60s and Sounds Of The 70s shows. After the recent sad loss of Johnnie Walker, his replacement, Bob Harris, seemed to have the right credentials. However,…

Dave Lewis first heard the music of Led Zeppelin (p76) aged 13 – the effect has been a lasting one. He has been writing about them for nearly 50 years, including many an RC article. Dave considers Physical Graffiti a creative highpoint for Zep and unravels the story of its making in this issue. Terry Staunton only ever saw XTC (p52) live once, at the Birmingham Odeon in 1981. Since then, however, he has interviewed Andy Partridge for numerous publications going back 37 years and speaks to Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory for the first time in this issue. Before he embarked on a writing career, John Coleman spent his teenage years gazing at a copy of XTC‘s (p52) Science Friction 7” picture sleeve on the counter of a record…

How come you're back with a new project now? We started it a million years ago, and it's finally come to fruition. The origins of the album go back 10-plus years, and a chance meeting with an old friend in Birmingham, who said, “you should do some more Very Things stuff.” I soon had a handful of songs, but it's taken a long time and hundreds of hours since then, finding scraps of time when people, gear and studios were available. It was conceived as a vinyl album, with the dynamic of the tracks running to an interval and then turning the disc over. I love that ritual. Where does it fit into your canon? A two-album career always felt odd. This album makes good on the original TVT remit,…

In January, the BPI announced its official data for the music year 2024, with the headline being the 18th consecutive year of growth for new vinyl album sales in the UK. Overall, 17.4 million physical units were sold, with vinyl up 6.7 per cent year-on-year to 6.7 million units, CDs’ gradual decline slowing down, with a sales drop of 2.9 per cent to 10.5 million units, while cassettes and other formats accounted for 182,000 units, down 4.1 per cent. Top 10 UK album sales on all physical/digital formats in 2024 1. Taylor Swift The Tortured Poets Department 2. The Weeknd The Highlights 3. Sabrina Carpenter Short N’ Sweet 4. Noah Kahan Stick Season 5. Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard And Soft 6. Chappell Roan The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess 7. Fleetwood Mac 50 Years…

HEAVENLY BARGAIN I recently bought an album at a boot sale by a band called The Fallen Angels. The cover looked suitably psychedelic and the lovely lady who was selling it only wanted £5. I got home and played it and quite enjoyed the songs. It is what I might describe as restrained psychedelic rock. Looking the band up there is not much information out there. A valuation would be great. Mine is a stereo copy on the London label with the catalogue number SH-Z 8359. Excellent condition with a couple of corner bumps on the outer sleeve. Harry Green via email The Fallen Angels hailed from Baltimore, Maryland and the Washington DC area. Some of the band had been in The Disciples and The Uncalled before establishing The Fallen…

In these increasingly di? use times, it's hard to? nd much in the way of consensus among end-of-year “best of” albums lists. However, one that did crop up with great frequency in the 2024 critics’ polls, be it in pop or avant-garde publications, was Charli XCX's Brat. One could glibly argue that 2024 was the Year Of The Brat, a phenomenon that made deeper inroads even than the onerous ubiquity and dominance of Taylor Swift (“brat” was even, according to the Collins Dictionary, the word of the year). It even touched Kamala Harris's US election campaign as she opportunistically rebranded herself “brat” (though Harris's woeful failure was a rueful indicator of the lack of heft of pop culture, even at its most huge). Harris's adoption of Brat might bolster suspicions…

What sort of movie could your new set soundtrack? It's a hybrid of prog, rock and metal – a film with human drama, social awareness, sci-fi, fantasy, tragedy and comedy. If you could revisit any of your albums, what'd you change? I'd redo everything, except Tarot's Suffer Our Pleasures. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Tony Iommi. Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? In my rented flat in Kuopio, Finland, in 1986. I got a vinyl test-pressing of our first Tarot single, Wings Of Darkness. I was giddy as hell, put the single on, and it sounded muddy and weird – way shittier than in the mixing room. I got a call from the record company that due to…

Asking Andy Partridge about the 21st-century ultra-high-fidelity overhauls of XTC's back catalogue makes for a short conversation. “I'm barely stereo, so it's all Martian to me,” he says of the 2024 Dolby Atmos version of Skylarking, a deeper sonic dive companion to the album's 5.1 surround sound mix eight years earlier. Like Partridge, neither Colin Moulding nor Dave Gregory have the requisite hardware in their home entertainment systems to play them, but – fortuitously – the band can leave the technology to a man who undoubtedly knows his aural onions. Musician and studio whiz, Steven Wilson, has been tasked with makeover duties from the get-go, and thus far has also worked his magic on Drums And Wires, Black Sea, The Big Express, Oranges & Lemons, and Nonsuch. It's an ongoing…

Master reel – ¼” tape used for local record manufacturing in Germany, and also passed to Yugoslavia for local record manufacturing, as evidenced by the ‘Suzy Records’ tape on the boxes. Germany, 1975 £1,500+ Additional memorabilia images supplied by Mark McFall. zepfan.com The Old Grey Whistle Test. “We thought, we can't keep it in the can anymore so let's put it out.” In the early spring of 1974, Page booked into Olympic Studios and, with assistance from the late engineer Keith Harwood, began mixing and overdubbing seven recordings dating back to 1970. There was Bron-Yr-Aur, a short, winsome acoustic instrumental Page solo in the style of Bert Jansch, named after a South Snowdonia cottage they had rehearsed at in the spring of 1970 during the preparation for Led Zeppelin III.…

Ian Gillan on working his way back to the top, live albums and Elvis… Although Gillan only represents a very small part of your lengthy professional career, it was a particularly productive time. How do you look back on it now? Fantastic. Absolutely amazing. I was rebuilding my life, in all aspects, and went through an awful lot of changes with the early experimental days with the Ian Gillan Band where we leaned towards an experimental type of music which some people called jazz but which was a bit cerebral, let's put it that way. That evolved into the Gillan band which went through quite a few musicians until we reached a line-up that was settled for a couple of years, and then had a change when Janick [Gers] came…

Wilco A Ghost Is Born Nonesuch 0075597899009 (4CD, 9LP) When Wilco released A Ghost Is Born in 2004, the band also put out The Wilco Book as a 160-page accompaniment. It featured an additional CD of experimental music, with the pages mostly containing photographs, as well as essays from the late Henry Miller and poems by Bern Porter, who died around the time of the release. These together acted as a kind of arty moodboard to throw some light on what A Ghost Is Born was all about. Two decades later, Wilco and Nonesuch present a deluxe box set featuring nine LPs and four CDs with a more modest 42-page hardback book featuring liner notes from music critic Bob Mehr. With the benefit of hindsight, it feels like the group…

PP Arnold on a career of highs, lows and missed opportunities. Your career begins by living your life backwards, in a way – from being a married mother of two to running away with Ike & Tina Turner for the world of rock'n'roll. But you see, I never planned to be a professional singer. I was an honour roll student on my way to being a legal secretary. In those days, for a black girl, that was a big deal. That's what my family wanted for me. I got that gig with Ike & Tina after saying a prayer one Sunday morning. I was in an abusive marriage, and working two jobs, and I asked God to show me a way out. Sunday used to be about getting up, going to…

The Television Personalities Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: Radio Sessions 1980-1993 Fire FIRELP 769 (2LP) The Television Personalities will forever be associated with the shambling amateurishness of the C86 scene, but by then they were old hands, having formed in London at the height of punk. The opening track of their second release, Part-Time Punks (from 45 EP Where's Bill Grundy Now?), suggested a somewhat broader canvas, and their embryonic DIY sound accommodated mod and psychedelic influences alongside the twee-ish twist on pop for which they would become renowned. It's all here on this twin vinyl set, which comprises four of the band's fabled radio sessions, recorded on both sides of the Atlantic at various points between 1980 and 1993. The John Peel session from 1980 features four tracks…

Ringo Starr Look Up Lost Highway 752 0112 (CD, LP) It's impossible to listen to Ringo Starr's new album Look Up without feeling a huge surge of joy. Every album The Beatles’ drummer has released since 2010's Y Not has offered glimpses of what he is capable of, and the five EPs he's issued since 2021 demonstrate just how game he is for the next stage of his career. From the moment he mournfully walked along that Thames path in 1964 in ‘character’ in A Hard Day's Night, everyone knew there was an innate sadness behind Ringo's capers; a sorrow intensified by his unique singing voice. Make no mistake, there is something tremendously reassuring about hearing it. Although clean and sober for well over 40 years, Ringo still sounds like…

The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974-80 Allan Kozinn & Adrian Sinclair Dey Street, £30 ISBN 9780063000759, 768 pages Diligent chronicle of crucial, changing times The Beatles’ music is no stranger to heavyweight academic study, but there haven't been many tomes as forensically detailed as this delve into Paul McCartney's post-Fabs back pages. Added to the first volume published in 2022, the ongoing labour of love now runs to 1,500 pages, with another 40-odd years yet to be covered. Kozinn, a New York Times culture correspondent, and award-winning Brit documentary-maker Sinclair, pick up the timeline with Wings being taken seriously by the press for perhaps the first time, following the triumph of Band On The Run in late ‘73, the group's first album to (eventually) outsell a Beatles LP. Macca's previous…

Sell Vinyl/CDs direct to RC readers, call us on 0208 752 8172 or email listings@recordcollectormag.com. Rates: recordcollectormag.com/advertise NEXT ISSUE: MARCH 2025 (on sale 20 FEBRUARY) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 27 JANUARY Please email your advert (Word doc/Excel file/plain text) to: listings@recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Listings, Diamond Publishing Limited, 4th Floor, Harmsworth House, 13-15 Bouverie Street, London EC4Y 8DP Following issue: APRIL 2025 (on sale 20 MARCH) Deadline: Monday 24 FEBRUARY…

This month: Vic Flick In 1999, I interviewed legendary former John Barry Seven guitarist, Vic Flick, over the phone from his adopted home of Santa Monica for a brief article. He was doing publicity for a new album called Bond – Back in Action, to which he had contributed a new version of the main title theme that he had originally played in 1962 for the first James Bond film, Dr. No. We covered a lot of ground - hardly surprising given the sheer quantity of hit records, classic TV theme tunes and film soundtracks on which he appeared. When you hear I Only Want To Be With You by Dusty Springfield, What's New Pussycat? by Tom Jones, Big Spender by Shirley Bassey or Downtown by Petula Clark, it's Flick…

We have two cover stars this month. Basically, we couldn't decide who to put on the front so in the end we put them both on there! You'd be hard pressed to find a pair of more dissimilar bands who formed barely four years apart: Led Zeppelin and XTC. They're seemingly from not just different eras but entirely opposing aesthetic schools of consciousness, in the florid words of RC‘s Chris Roberts. In terms of sonics, lyrical intent, fashion, hair, they're like chalk and cheese – or rather, black iron and Day-Glo plastic – although you could probably contrive a rhythmically idiosyncratic dance manoeuvre that would work with both Trampled Underfoot and Statue Of Liberty. The Zep feature looks at Physical Graffiti, rock's greatest double (give or take Electric Ladyland and…

Acoustic El Coco, with Brazil, Mondo Disco, Let's Get It Together, Cocomotion 2CD, three bonuses, Robinsongs, 21 February. ■ VinylHumor had a kickstarter.com campaign to 21 January for a Tom Lehrer Sings By 10” LP, CD, including unissued bonuses. ■ The Last Poets Africanism 2CD, with 30 bonuses, Norman, 31 January. Due: February (28) Foster & Allen 50 At 50 2CD, Demon July (11) Maria Muldaur‘s latest, Nola Blue. Biz The 150-capacity Deptford Piehouse venue is due to open this month. ■ Sheffield Hope Works venue closes on 22 February. ■ On 16 December, United Record Pressing of Nashville announced a 75th anniversary upgrade of its vinyl manufacturing, with 24 new cellular presses and 40 revamped vintage ones, affording speedier production of fully recyclable bio-vinyl records. ■ The US Sam Goody record shop…

On 12 December, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Gregg Musgrove of California had purchased a storage unit in Van Nuys, San Fernando Valley, which once belonged to music producer/singer Bryan Loren. Among the items that Musgrove found in it were 16 cassette “production tapes” and “master” copies containing 15 unissued Michael Jackson songs recorded between 1989 and 1991, including an apparent duet with LL Cool J. Copyright resides with the Jackson Estate, and Musgrove retains them until any possible future transfer of ownership is agreed. See hollywoodreporter.com.…

Now includes Whole Love Of Lots CONTACTS DISCOGS: www.discogs.com EBAY: www.ebay.co.uk FLASHBACK: Tel 0207 354 9356; flashback.co.uk GWS AUCTIONS: Tel 001 760 610 4175; www.gwsauctions.com HAKE'S AUCTIONS: Tel 001 866 404 9800; www.hakes.com HERITAGE AUCTIONS: Tel 001 214 528 3500; www.ha.com JULIEN'S AUCTIONS: Tel 001 310 836 1818; juliensauctions.com POPSIKE: www.popsike.com Send your Most Wanted suggestions to paulrigby@theaudiophileman.com…

WILLY VLAUTIN Ex-Richmond Fontaine man on The Delines’ new collaboration project What movie could your next set soundtrack? It's a drifter's record, about couples on the run, so Wanda or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Is there anything still unissued? I began writing songs at 11 – story-driven folk, punk, ballads. Every box of tapes that I made to 25, I threw in landfill. Jesus, that was a great day! Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? Where I lived in Portland, age 28. Richmond Fontaine Trailways. I had a two-day party for that. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? Mirabelli's, Reno, Nevada, age 12. What was your first record? The Who The Kids Are Alright. What's the last album…

What film could your new set soundtrack? It's my first album in 12 years and it's a road map to life for my kids: Gladiator. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Phoebe Bridgers, my favourite new artist. What was your first record? Stevie Wonder's Superstition, on Old Gold. What's the last album that you bought? Tyler, The Creator Igor. What record made you want to go pro? The Beatles. Have you ever collected anyone? Prince. The greatest ever. What's your most prized music item? John Lennon's piano. Who'd you like to cover one of your songs? Adele, LOUD! Which of your songs is the most personally meaningful? The Meaning Of This, about a beautiful girl, Kiki, who was very close to my family and took her…

Hailing from Nottingham, Stuart Staples has been the voice of Tindersticks for 33 years, steering the band through 14 albums. Their work also includes several soundtracks for director Claire Denis, while Staples has released three solo records and co-curated (with bandmate David Boulter) an album of children's songs. Following Tindersticks’ 30th anniversary concerts, he tells us about moving forwards with a new Tindersticks record, Soft Tissue, and tour. After the retrospective shows, you're preparing a lot of new songs for the new tour. Does that feel freeing or precarious? Both. It's important we challenge ourselves, even if that sounds false because we've been together for so long. But we need to push the envelope of who we are. I think that's been fed into by the film shows of music…

A psychedelic side hustle meant just for fun became a beloved part of the XTC story when their alter egos took on lives of their own. In the guise of The Dukes Of Stratosphear, their embracing of bygone trippy tropes struck a chord with listeners, to the point where they were posing serious competition to the real band. The Dukes’ short lifespan ran to just two albums in the mid-80s, but Andy Partridge's initial idea of “a pretend pop group built on weirdness” dates further back. “For most of ‘78 I was rediscovering my love of The Beatles’ Revolver on regular rotation in the tour van, and I was thinking about psych a lot,” he says. “Then, at a party to play Go 2 to a bunch of mates, I…

Mantovani Mantovani‘s Golden Hits (Decca LK 4818, UK, mono, 1967) £5 Here, the light orchestra maestro reworks classics including Mancini's Moon River and Some Enchanted Evening with his trademark string arrangements. Tyrannosaurus Rex Unicorn (Regal Zonophone LRZ 1007, UK, mono, 1969) £120 Otherworldly. The most celebrated of the band's psych-folk era, Unicorn is the very essence of melodic pastoral whimsy with Bolan's songwriting approaching its best. It's also his last album with Steve Took, who was given the boot shortly after release. The Velvet Underground & Nico The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, SVLP 9184, UK, 1967) £200 The apotheosis of avant-garde, experimental, groundbreaking, melodic pop distortion. Marvin Gaye What's Going On (Tamla Motown STML 11190, UK, 1971) £40 Seminal soul-Gaye's songwriting, vocal performance and political invective make this a…

In October 1974, I had just turned 18 and had started working at the WH Smith record department in my hometown of Bedford. This would set me on the path to a 35-year career in music retail. By then, I had been an obsessive Led Zeppelin fan for five years. The prospect of the forthcoming release of their new double album, Physical Graffiti, was therefore a very exciting one. Added to that, I was now, in my own small way, on the inside of the record industry. One of the consequences of this was that the record department was visited by all the major record company reps. The reps would provide advance details and take the pre-orders on the next month's releases. In early November, the rep for WEA (Warner…

Physical Graffiti, released in February 1975, isn't an album ahead of its time, nor is it of its time. It didn't point to the future, wasn't rendered obsolete by punk. It exists, then and forever, outside of rock time. A giant, orbiting, black obelisk. It's an album that embodies Zeppelin's virtues, but they were not a virtuous band. They generated heat but not warmth, composed blazing, mystical fantasias but were without spiritual grace. Like The Rolling Stones, they were of the devil's party, or at least inclined to Satanic majesty, but their work physically embodies a mass of vices, the sickness of the blues writ electric and large. They were indecent, steeped in sinfulness and debauchery as testified by [lurid biography] Hammer Of The Gods. They thrived in the shadows…

A child tap dancer who appeared in a Hollywood movie, CAL TJADER rose to fame as an adult playing drums for Dave Brubeck before switching to the vibraphone. For someone with Scandinavian ancestral roots, Tjader became an unlikely Latin jazz god in the 1950s when he made his name playing mambo music. Latin Kick Craft Recordings), the second of three Tjader albums released by Fantasy Records in 1957, is now reissued in Craft's Original Jazz Classics. Tjader leads a top-tier band, including the Duran brothers (Manuel and Carlos, on piano and bass respectively), percussionists Luis Miranda and Bayardo Velarde, with saxophonist Brew Moore. Blending glistening ballads with busy up-tempo numbers, Tjader and his cohorts craft an exquisite fusion of jazz improv and Latin rhythmic elan. Reissued in the same series is…

Wilco (Sire PRO-C-7517, 1995) £40 Uncle Tupelo was barely cold when this promo cassette featuring three songs - Box Full Of Letters, Casino Queen and Pick Up The Change - started doing the rounds. The new band, stealing members from the old, is very much cut in Tupelo's image, with ne'er a hint of the more expansive terrain the group was about to embark on. All Over The Place (Reprise PRO-A-9094, 1997) £50 A coloured vinyl 10” promo from Warner/Reprise Soil X Samples series that ran throughout the 90s, this is a throwback to the label's Loss Leaders series that brought out rare and unreleased ephemera throughout the 1970s. The title here, All Over The Place, gives some indication of what's on offer, namely two live songs, a couple of previously unreleased…

Cheat And Lie: The Miki Dallon Story Grapefruit CRSEG 153 D (2CD) Delving into the career of maverick polymath Initially a protege of Joe Meek, Miki Dallon created a galaxy of its own. This compilation tracks a trajectory from the prodigious songwriting to the formation of Dallon's Young Blood label. The first disc presents some better-known and more niche versions of hits penned by Dallon such as Take A Heart, initially written for The Sorrows, and later covered by Brumbeat outfit The Renegades, who were a success in Finland. Featuring Dallon on vocals, the compilation's intense R&B title track reached Top Ten on pirate Radio London station. Following the demise of Millwick Publishing and Strike/ Go Records accommodating Dallon's work, the producer attracted unconventional talents recording them independently. Appearing on…

Doves Constellations For The Lonely EMI North EMINV 2 (CD, LP) Nothing ever seems to come easy for Doves. The veteran Mancunian trio have enjoyed plenty of success across 25 years as premier purveyors of soulful, deceptively euphoric yet downhearted dance-tinged indie rock – three of their five albums have reached No 1, including 2020's comeback album The Universal Want. But they seem resolutely dogged by a certain misfortune. Their very existence is due in part to a studio fire that ended their first band, Haçienda-era dance group Sub Sub; since then, there have been record label collapses, managerial death, losing out on a No 1 by just four sales, and in 2010 a (very amicable) onstage break-up. Sixth album Constellations For The Lonely comes amid what might be the…

Soul survivor's triumphant second act continues apace, and this time it's personal. Eddie Chacon Lay Low Stones Throw STH 2498 LP (CD, LP) Eddie Chacon's last album, 2023's Sundown, was dedicated to his late mother, but she's a more powerful presence on this new set of songs, as is former chart-topping partner Charles Pettigrew, who died in 2001, aged just 37. On his third long-player in less than four years, Chacon displays a newfound ease with the impact fallen friends and family members have had on his music. While not a wholesale retread of the neo-soul concerns of Charles & Eddie's high watermark Duophonic, their 1992 breakthrough graced by the million-selling UK chart-topper Would I Like To You? single, Lay Low dips deep into familiar wells, finding inspiration in the…

Two views Suzi Quatro York Barbican 15/11/24 Suzi Q, 74, and her eight-piece, provided a 150-minute, West End-style tour de force of superb musicianship, including a three-piece horn section and two backing singers. The energetic masterclass featured a second half in her trademark black leather jumpsuit, and she served up all the favourites, including Can The Can, Devil Gate Drive, 48 Crash, Daytona Demon, If You Can't Give Me Love and She's In Love With You. Among choice covers were Slow Down and Rockin’ In The Free World, while the closer was a bar stool-seated Suzie Q, plus her keyboard, for a poignant, emotionally-charged, pin drop moment, Desperado (c/o Eagles). A stunning bass solo, plus plenty of anecdotes, ensured an evening packed with love and laughter. Pure class. Steve Hexter…

This month: Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band, Reading Majestic Ballroom, 16 January 1967 In truth, this was not the first Geno gig that we attended. At the start of 1966 my brother and I, Scottish kids from an Edinburgh council estate and pupils at a boys’ grammar school in Reading, entered a social circle denied to us by circumstance. Early in 1966, my brother came home from school with priceless information. The Reading Top Rank ballroom, the Majestic, was allocating Monday nights to the youth of the town by holding live music events of mod music to which all the “cool” kids went. I was 16, my brother 15. So, we turned up on a Monday night, early 1966, and joined the queue to see Geno. In those…

At RC Towers, we reckon on new music making its way into the ether c/o Paul McCartney, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Stereophonics, Rival Sons, Nevermore, Agnostic Front, Megadeth, Drake, Seth Lakeman, Savatage, Epica, Alter Bridge, Down, Ed Sheeran, Chickenfoot, SZA, Steel Panther, Mariah Carey, Machine Head, Lily Allen, In This Moment, Lords Of Acid, Nova Twins, Korn, Låpsley, Pallas, Black Label Society, Rick Wakeman, Chevelle, Clutch, Slipknot's Jay Weinberg, ex-ACCEPT's Peter Baltes, Nightwish's Floor Jansen, ex-Little Mix's Jade Thirlwall, Jane's Addiction's Eric Avery, Dave Navarro & Stephen Perkins, Killswitch Engage's Howard Jones, Amorphis, Cancer Bats, Five Finger Death Punch, Blake Shelton, Volbeat, Eric Church, Dorothy, Violet Grohl (Foo Fighters), Close Enemies (with Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton, on TLG/ROCK), Masterplan (Frontiers), Omar (BBE), Mortiis (Prophecy), Pulp (Rough Trade), Mob Rules (ROAR); Dolly Parton‘s…

In December, Stone Sour's Josh Rand offered 25 guitars, including some signed by Munky (Korn), John Petrucci (Dream Theater), Paul Stanley (KISS), Sting, via reverb.com. ■ A 13 December sale via Juliens Auctions included an Olivia Newton-John Grease jacket that made $476,000, another $76,200, and a piano, $158,750. ■ The Billy Albert The Smiths collection, including many rarities, promo posters, proof sleeves, is offered on 18 February via omegaauctions.co.uk. ■ A 22 January Pop Culture sale via bonhams.com included Santana guitar (estimate, £100,000), Prince shirt, Spencer Davis guitars, letters. ■ On 28 December, Don Dokken sold a Harley Davidson FXR motorbike via eBay for $14,200. ■ Rush's Neil Peart‘s BMW R1200GS motorbike is offered via mecum.com, 1 February.…

Prog/Avant Camel Moonmadness 2CD/BD, four bonuses, remix, 5.1 mix, six-track Live At Hammersmith Odeon 14 April 1976 video, Mirage 2CD/BD, five bonuses, remix, 5.1 mix with bonus, 28 February, Pressure Points 2CD/BD, with The Concert Film, Nude 2CD/BD, with 5.1 mix, Van Der Graaf Generator World Record LP, 2CD/BD adding 5.1 mix, video clip, 28 March, Esoteric. ■ Mario Giammetti Genesis: 1975 To 2025 book, Kingmaker, 17 April. ■ Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks Live Perpetual Change 3LP, 2CD/DVD with video from St Charles Arcada Theater, Illinois, August 2023, Frontiers, 14 March. ■ Brian Auger I Speak Music documentary film has a crowdfunder.co.uk campaign to 27 February, with subscribers offered meet-and-greet, screening, behind-the-scenes footage. ■ John Lennon & Yoko Ono One To One unedited, from New York Madison Square Garden, August 1972, is due…

Jess Harding is a devoted blues, rock and metal fan. Her extensive knowledge of music and record collecting came from managing Harwood Records for 10 years and presenting Rockademia on the student-led Scratch Radio in Birmingham. Her programme debuted shortly after her 21st birthday and continued on Stafford FM with a clear focus on classic, new and underground rock. Her record collection was recently featured on the Vinyl Hunters’ YouTube channel and includes many rare Japanese imports. She currently administrates the “Japanese Vinyl Records” Facebook page dedicated to obi fans worldwide and is writing a series of books about this specialist field. What do you collect, and why? Music was an integral part of my childhood and my dad was a seminal influence on my tastes. Our home was always…

Richard Perry, died 24 December, age 82. The US record producer worked on the Carly Simon hit, You're So Vain, also recording with Barbra Streisand, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart and more. He began his career as a performer, recording a number of singles with doo wop group, The Escorts. Shifting focus to production in the late 60s, his early projects included Captain Beefheart's debut, Safe As Milk (1967) and Tiny Tim's God Bless Tiny Tim (1968). The early 70s saw him become a major player, updating Barbra Streisand's sound to contemporary pop/rock on the 1971 albums, Stoney End and Barbra Joan Streisand. After producing Carly Simon's 1972 LP No Secrets, he oversaw Ringo Starr's 1973 album Ringo, on which he worked with all four Beatles. In 1978, he founded his…

Venamoris is you and your wife, Paula. Yes. It's been an amazing, unexpected journey. We've been together since 2010, but I didn't know that she was a singer, though she'd done backing vocals for Wayne Newton in Las Vegas for a decade. I engineered and produced the album, played some guitar and bass, and it's the complete opposite of intense, heavy music. Did you ever collect anyone? I was a DJ for a mobile disco, A Touch Of Class, and I had milk crates full of records. I loved vinyl. What was your first record? KISS Alive, age 13. What was your favourite record shop when you started out? One down the street from my house in South Gate, California. And then Middle Earth, Downey, California, where I went with…

What film could your new set soundtrack? It could've been used in Thelma And Louise. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? We've just released one in Finland, Hey Baby It's Christmas (Live), with Eddie & The Hot Rods (It Feels Like Christmas), because the Finnish record company asked us to! Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? BBC Radio One were playing Turning Japanese when my radio alarm woke me up in January 1980. What were your favourite record shops when you started out? Rhythms in Redhill and Reigate. What were your first records? Jimi Hendrix All Along The Watchtower on 7” and With The Beatles on LP. What made you want to go pro? My first gig – The…

Born in Saint Peter, Barbados in 1953 but living in London from the age of 12, Dennis Bovell helmed the Jah Sufferer Sound System at 1,5 then at 18 debuted his seven-piece funk reggae band, Matumbi, on their 1971 cover of Hot Chocolate's Brother Louie. By the mid-70s he was pioneering lovers rock, working on what is widely acknowledged as the genre's first release, Louisa Mark's Caught You In A Lie, and he enjoyed huge success with Janet Kay's Silly Games in 1979. At the same time, he brought musical militancy to Linton Kwesi Johnson's polemical dub poetry on such classic albums as Forces Of Victory and Bass Culture, and explored dub under a number of pseudonyms including Black Beard (Strictly Dub Wize and I Was Dub, both seminal releases)…

Sheffield might have been overshadowed by its nearneighbour Manchester as a musical hub over the years, but it has been no less innovative. The Steel City's musical story is inextricably entwined with industrial music, a sonic mimicking of its fuliginous environment, in much the same way the three-fingered sheet metal worker Tony Iommi helped to birth heavy metal with Black Sabbath in Birmingham. In the late 70s and early 80s especially, Sheffield led the world in the sonically severe and synthetic, with artists like Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League and Heaven 17, and Clock DVA, I'm So Hollow and They Must Be Russians coming up the rear. (Throbbing Gristle, too, though they were really from Hull). It's ironic that Sheffield became so synonymous with punishing, deconstructed instrumental music given its…

A Led Zep Playlist The songs and albums that Page and co took influence from in the creation of Physical Graffiti Custard Pie Drop Down Mama (1935) – Sleepy John Estes – The Legend Of Sleepy John Estes (Delmar, 1963) Shake ‘Em On Down (1937) – Bukka White - Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 (Takoma, 1964) New Shake ‘Em On Down (1938) – Big Bill Broonzy – Big Bill's Blues (CBS, 1968) I Want Some Of Your Pie (1939) – Blind Boy Fuller – Country Blues 1935-1940 (Philips, 1962) Custard Pie Blues (1947) – Sonny Terry - City Blues (Elektra, 1954) You Really Got Me (1964) – The Kinks - The Kinks (Pye, 1964) In My Time Of Dying Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed (1928) – Blind Willie Johnson – Blind…

Gillan 1978 – 1982 Edsel EDSL 0211 (7CD) After three not overly successful studio LPs and a live album only available in the Far East, Ian Gillan called time on his more jazzy left-of-centre Ian Gillan Band in 1978 and started afresh with a new rock band, cunningly named Gillan. The only surviving member of IGB was keyboard player and songwriter extraordinaire Colin Towns, and between them they wrote an album and recruited a band – guitarist Steve Byrd, bassist John McCoy and session drummer Liam Genockey – to record it. As with IGB's Live At The Budokan though, Gillan (aka The Japanese Album) didn't find favour among European labels and was only released in the Far East. Undeterred, the band slogged around the UK clubs, replaced Byrd and then-permanent…

Parliament had Parlet; Funkadelic had THE BRIDES OF FUNKENSTEIN. Both were terrific she-funk offshoots of George Clinton's respective outfi ts and this month sees the latter's stunning 1978 debut LP for Atlantic, Funk Or Walk ( BGP) reissued for the first time on vinyl. The Brides were formed around the dual vocal talents of ex-Sly And The Family Stone backing singers Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva. Dressed in silk body stockings, silver capes, emerald green and gold Ostrich feathers, black leather rhinestone chains and $50,000 white mink tails, they sung songs that wrapped gender and race politics in sci-fi fantasies about aliens and booty over grooves created by a top-of-their-game P Funk team - George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Fred Wesley et al. Signed to Atlantic, their first single Disco To Go,…

PP Arnold Soul Survivor – A Life In Music Demon EDSL 0142/DEMREC 1165 (3CD, 2LP) Viewed through the zoomed-out lens of Soul Survivor, a life-spanning box set, the shape of PP Arnold's career is uniquely bizarre. Instead of the clean and classic story arc enjoyed by most veteran acts, hers is episodic and peripatetic, encompassing at least half a dozen genres and numerous false starts, unfinished forays and blind avenues. The solitary unifying thread is a voice that could thaw the icecaps. Patricia Ann Cole was born in Watts, Los Angeles to a family of gospel singers. She fell pregnant at 15, and by 17 was already a mother of two in an abusive marriage. Her escape route came via a chance phone call from a friend, inviting her to…

Lord knows what the pandemic experience was like for the members of ELECTRIC WIZARD. Locked down in the West Country, dropping tab after tab of mind-obliterating acid, sacrificing innocent lives to Lucifer, and engaging in a string of decreasingly fulfilling and blank-eyed blood orgies. Could just be their image. Unsure whether “the new normal” would prevent them from ever playing to people again, the doomheads retreated to their “crypt-like” jamming room and recorded a live album with no audience. Negativity, as usual, fed into the recital. Black Magic Rituals And Perversions Vol. 1 (Spinefarm] is a fierce and furious recording which draws on some of the nastiest moments of their bleak discography. It's an instant must-buy for all card-carrying members of the “witchcult”. MAGICK POTION take their cues from similar sources…

Andy Williams on the past, present and future for Doves How have you coped with Jimi's struggles and his decision not to tour? It's taken some adjustment for us, but I think we've done it in a sensitive way that feels natural to us. I think we very much stepped up to it. No one's fallen out. You know, he's not been well for a while, but we've been supportive in him getting better. He's just not ready to play live, and me and Jez have desperately missed it. We have to respect his decision that he just doesn't want to play live at the moment, and he has to, and he does, respect that we don't want to wait anymore. Cancelling the tour was devastating, really. We were so desperate…

Eddie Chacon on healing, happiness and how to make a “potent” record. What would you say are the chief differences between Sundown and the new album? I think the subject matter of the last record was about things any number of people could relate to. This time it's more to do with my own grief; the loss of my mother and how I learned to deal with that loss. She died before even [Sundown's 2020 predecessor) Pleasure, Joy And Happiness came out, but it wasn't until now that I felt comfortable bringing it into my art. Was that always your intention, or did it evolve during the making of the record? Well, mom was still at the forefront of my mind, but in a different way. It had gone from sadness…

Tavare Ghosts (Version M. Pielourde) Champion Version CV 240401 (7”) Tavare is a Berlin-based trio featuring Aidan Baker of long-running drone metallers Nadja, who is joined by fellow Canadian expat Tristen Bakker and the Spanish-born Angela Muñoz. An album is set for Spring on the God Unknown label. Ghosts is a slowcore affair. It recalls the hauntingly melodic early work of Low, who are much missed since the untimely death of Mimi Parker in 2022. That comparison is surely the case regarding the sparse version that's going to be on Tavare's LP and is currently available digitally. The rendition subtitled “Version M. Pielourde”, on this lathe cut, lasts a little longer and is furnished with thicker distortion, which Baker's fans will recognise from his heavier output. This, accompanied by the…

Dreadzone February (7) Guildford Boileroom (8) Exeter Phoenix (14) Newcastle Cluny (15) Wolverhampton Newhampton Arts Centre (21) Worthing Factory Live March (7) Bournemouth Old Fire Station (14) Oxford Bullingdon (15) Dover Booking Hall (21) Holmfirth Picturedrome (29) Southend Chinnery's Dropkick Murphys February (4) Birmingham O2 Academy (5) Glasgow O2 Academy (6) Manchester Academy (7) Cardiff Utilita Arena (8) London Alexandra Palace Kehlani January (29) London Greenwich O2 (31) Manchester Victoria O2 Warehouse Laibach February (22) London Islington Assembly Hall (23) Manchester Ritz (24) Southampton 1865 (25) Bristol Trinity Centre LS Dunes February (6) London Brixton O2 Academy (8) Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse (9) Birmingham O2 Academy Andy Fairweather Low February (6) Pocklington Arts Centre (7-8) Lowdham Civic (13) Isle Of Wight Shanklin Theatre (14) Neath Gwyn Hall (15) Monmouth Savoy…

This month: Felice Rosser Back in the mid-70s, when female guitarists were a rare commodity, and black female guitarists even rarer, Detroit bassist and songwriter Felice Rosser put herself in the heart of the New York underground, invested with a sense of egalitarianism and unsurpassable musical heritage. However, despite moving in the most inventive circles of the time and helming her band, FaithNYC, for almost 40 years, Rosser's name remains frustratingly unfamiliar. In the wake of Faith's new release, Love Is A Wish Away, Record Collector decided to find out more. “When I was coming up, Motown was exploding,” explains Rosser during our Zoom chat. “It was also very local. The Supreme house was in our neighbourhood, and we used to go there for Halloween… everybody knew somebody, or your…

Fleetwood Mac Oh Well (Reprise RS 27000, 7”, UK, 1969) £10 I was obsessed with this song when I was 14 or 15, when my best friend Andrew Conway and I both learned to play guitar. I was massively into The Beatles and he was massively into Fleetwood Mac. I'd never really heard anything like Oh Well before: the structure was so bizarre. It's blues but there's nothing conventionally blues about it, and it's weird in its subject matter, its structure and its melodic content. Nikos Xylouris / Yannis Markopoulos Rizitika (Columbia SCXG 69, 7”, UK, 1971) £40 Yannis Markopoulos died very recently - he was a major composer of Cretan heritage and he made wildly diverse music. I remember listening to a lot of Greek music growing up, and…

Clive Langer, of 70s art school new wave band Deaf School, became one of Britain's leading producers with partner Alan Winstanley. As he re-emerges with his own Clang Group, he selects his production milestones. The Teardrop Explodes Reward (Mercury TEAR 2, 7”, UK, 1981) £5 After producing Madness’ first album I was asked to see what I could do with The Teardrop Explodes. We went into a studio where Alan was working and recorded Treason – I used the outro as the chorus, which upset Dave Balfe. It wasn't a hit, but we went in to do another track; Reward was the B-side, but it jumped out of the speakers, and we made it a hit. Then Treason was a hit and suddenly we were considered producers. Madness Our House…