Innehållsförteckning för Issue 568 från Record Collector

A lot of people, when I tell them I'm a music journalist, get very excited by the idea that I might get free tickets to gigs. They're less impressed that I get to spend one-on-one time with musicians in their actual homes. “What,” they say, awed into reverent silence, “you saw Brian Wilson's 2002 Pet Sounds gig at the Royal Festival Hall?” “Yes, I did,” I reply, adding hopefully, expectant of a powerful reaction: “But did you also know that I once spent the whole afternoon at Brian's house in Beverly Hills, where he sat down at the piano in his lounge and regaled me with extracts from his aborted collaboration with the late Andy Paley and Sean O'Hagan of The High Llamas?” Cue expressions of near-catatonic indifference. “Yes,” they…

Writing his new memoir, It's More Than Rock 'n' Roll: Surviving Seven Decades Walking the Wilder Sides of Life & Music, Kris Needs will revisit becoming a lifelong Tim Buckley (p66) fan in 1967. He's still pinching himself that Buckley's guitarist Lee Underwood assisted with this month's feature. As founder of the Birmingham Music Archive, Jez Collins has been immersing myself in his home city's music history, heritage and culture for much of his life. It is, he says, a privilege to share some hometown artists and songs with Record Collector readers (p54). Rich Cundill has been obsessed with music since he heard Slade's Gudbuy T' Jane in 1972, aged 10. As their official biographer and discographer, he distils the history of the prolific yet underrated Martin Stephenson, with and without…

At RC Towers, we foresee new music bubbling up from Electric Wizard, Erasure, Enter Shikari, Cher Lloyd, Withering Scorn, Drake, Vader, Beck, Justin Bieber, Black Swan, Rihanna, Puscifer, Carly Rae Jepsen, Lord Of The Lost, Frank Ocean, ex-Femme Fatale's Lorraine Lewis, The 1975, Harry Styles, Gary Numan, Zara Larsson, Little Mix's Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards, The Bangles' Vicki Peterson/John Cowsill, Cyhra (on Reigning Phoenix), Charlie Musselwhite (Forty Below), Newton Faulkner (Cooking Vinyl), Blackpink's Jisoo (Warners), Erasure's Andy Bell (Crown); Popol Vuh reissues (Esoteric); and Callie Khouri & Neko Case's Thelma & Louise musical. CELLULOID HEROES Projects due include Callie Khouri's The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion film, with Reba McEntire; Christopher Landon's Drop film, soundtracked by Bear McCreary, in cinemas, 11 April; Aidan Zamiri's The Moment film, with Charli XCX;…

No 17: The Tape Revolution, Clarence Street, Kingston Upon Thames There were plenty of record buying options around Kingston in the 70s. While stalwarts such as Tolworth's The Record Shop (see RC 544) were available, as the decade progressed Kingston's branch of The Tape Revolution came into its own. Part of a chain that opened around 1971, The Tape Revolution felt like a proper record shop. Packed with stock, including tapes and vinyl, it was somewhere a musically ambitious teenager could acquire a bit of cultural esteem. Some of the blokes working there had long hair, something I aspired to but hadn't conducted the necessary domestic negotiations. The shop was quite dark which added to its allure. I'm also pretty certain the counter was in the middle of the shop,…

“It was with Broken English that she managed to resurrect her career” The 60s It girl found fame as a pop star before surviving addiction and homelessness to forge a vital second career as a singer-songwriter. Discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, she found immediate success, reaching the Top 10 with her first single, 1964's As Tears Go By, a song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Now a star at the age of 17, the following year saw her score major hits with Come And Stay With Me, This Little Bird and Summer Nights, each of which also charted high in the US. That year she married the artist John Dunbar and gave birth to their son, Nicholas. She branched out into acting, appearing in stage…

WAR guitarist on their new live album What movie could your new set soundtrack? A movie that explores different parts of Japan. Is there anything unreleased in the archive? Our producer, Jerry Goldstein, captured just about everything that we did, so there's a lot of unreleased studio music and live shows. They could be released someday. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? Collaborations with Perry Farrell, Marc Bolan, and with Los Lobos on a Mavis Staples record. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Bruno Mars. What was your first record? Jimmy Smith The Sermon. What records most influenced your style? Jimmy Smith, Ray Charles, James Brown. Which of your songs are the most personally meaningful? Deliver The Word, Baby It's Cold Outside.…

Robert Jon & The Wreck frontman on their latest offering Tell us about the new album. Ashes In The Snow is the first track released off it, and we can't wait for the whole thing to come out! Is there anything still unissued? Multiple unreleased tapes. What was the first record of yours that you heard on vinyl? The Glory Bound test-pressing. What's your favourite record shop? Creme Tangerine, Costa Mesa, CA. What was your first record? Led Zeppelin IV. What's the last LP that you bought? A Jimmy Smith one. What LPs made you want to go pro? Amos Lee, Ray LaMontagne Till The Sun Turns Black. What records most influenced your style? Allman Brothers Eat A Peach, The Black Crowes Croweology. Did you ever write songs 'under the…

Born Elaine Bookbinder in Salford in 1945, Elkie Brooks came to prominence aged 15, winning a talent contest judged by Don Arden. At 19, she supported The Beatles, then at 20 went to the States with The Animals. She also sang in Humphrey Lyttelton's band before joining Dada and Vinegar Joe. On going solo again, she enjoyed huge success in the 70s and 80s with six Top 20 singles including 1977's Pearl's A Singer and 1986's No More The Fool, along with five Top 20 albums including 1981's Pearls which hit No 2. This year marks 65 years in the business and she's marking it with her Long Farewell Tour. Is it really goodbye? Well, it is a very, very long tour so there's no need for tears just yet…

It's a wet autumn evening and Martin Stephenson & The Daintees are playing a gig at the Wrecking Ball venue in Hull. They're approaching the end of an excellent set and have launched into the speedy country rock song, Running Water. As it builds to a climax, the singer-guitarist and lead guitarist (both in their early sixties) are somewhat taken aback by the 23-year-old drummer's sudden, manic increases in tempo. “Fucking hell, Gary,” exclaims the sexagenarian frontman, struggling to keep pace, “he's trying to kill us!” Cue much laughter from a small but perfectly formed audience who have been smiling pretty much all night. About which, more later… RC caught up with Stephenson on the phone from his cottage near the Cromarty Firth to chat about the highs and lows of…

During his seven years with Tim Buckley, after “teaching myself how to play countermelodies to his singing”, Lee Underwood embraced Buckley “moving further out with each album” to the extent that, “I became more and more innovative in my guitar playing”. So much so that, when Buckley unveiled his sex-funk final phase, Underwood hung up his guitar and pursued a career in jazz journalism, “because I didn't feel comfortable playing rock music, which was out of my world. “I had always wanted to write, and this was my opportunity,” he adds. “I wrote record reviews for DownBeat and many other publications. Then, as West Coast editor of DownBeat between 1975-1981, I interviewed dozens of major jazz artists, including John McLaughlin, McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea. I gradually moved from jazz…

1956 Born John Joseph Lydon on 31 January in Finsbury Park, London to the No 1 sound of Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford. 1969 Aged 13, purchases his first record: Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town by Kenny Rogers And The First Edition – almost a Christmas No 1 (kept off by Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys). 1972 Aged 16, now a member of the Alice Cooper Fan Club and “serious music collector”. 1975 Aged 19, successfully auditions for the Sex Pistols by singing along to Alice Cooper's Eighteen on the jukebox inside McLaren and Westwood's SEX boutique, 430 King's Road, London. 1976 Releases his first record, the Pistols' debut single Anarchy In The UK on EMI. 1977 Scores his first unofficial/“banned” No 1 single with God Save…

Alto saxophone virtuoso ART PEPPER was the comeback king. Just when his career seemed to have reached its lowest ebb, he surprised everyone by miraculously bouncing back. Even four stints in prison for drug offences between 1954 and 1965 — the last two in the notorious San Quentin correctional institution — didn't break him. One of his greatest albums, Gettin' Together Craft Recordings) was made in 1960, during a short hiatus between bouts of incarceration, for Lester Koenig's Contemporary Records. Like 1957's Meets The Rhythm Section, Pepper collaborated with members of Miles Davis's band: pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer, Jimmy Cobb. The session, which also features the blazing horn lines of West Coast trumpeter Conte Candoli, is characterised by sensational musical alchemy. Among the standouts is an electrifying…

Dead Or Alive Youthquake Demon EDSL 0230 (4CD) Pete Burns was the last of the freaks. The last of the glorious 80s eccentrics, lunatics and weirdos permitted through the gates of pop stardom before the portcullis came crashing down, and the forces of Reaganite/Thatcherite conformity gained a chokehold on the decade's latter half. Youthquake, Dead Or Alive's Stock/Aitken/Waterman-produced second album, was the ticket that took him through that gate. And he hated it. (But we'll come to that.) Pete Burns was, also, the first of the freaks. He was there before anyone, a born outsider: a Wirral-reared child who spoke only German for his first five years, and whose obsession with dressing in Native American costume followed him into adulthood. In John Robb's Goth history The Art Of Darkness, Nina…

Bob Mould on putting pay to pessimism and his “Peter Pan” period 2019's Sunshine Rock felt relatively cheerful. Then there was Blue Hearts (2020) which was much more angry. Here We Go Crazy has less of a sense of anger and, in its place, greater exasperation and uncertainty. Is that fair? I think that certainly is a very fair thing. That's a lot of what the record talks about. I like to look at the record as three different bursts of songs. The first group is setting the stage and walking through a number of different fight-or-flight retreats, trying to reconnect, and not being able to reconnect. Then you get to “Act Two” which contains a lot of darker images. Songs six, seven and eight are where it really starts…

Butler, Blake and Grant Butler, Blake & Grant 355 Records 355 REC 002 (CD, 2LP) The biggest compliment to this debut album by an unlikely trio of experienced and very different songwriters is that it sounds very little like the music they respectively make elsewhere. Their combination of talents has transmuted into something new and fresh, a homespun but thoughtfully energetic package which recreates the intimacy of its creation. Incubated by early gigs at the Frets music night curated by Creeping Bent label boss Douglas MacIntyre in the South Lanarkshire town of Strathaven, then at the Celtic Connections winter music festival in Glasgow, two-thirds of the collective are Scots. Norman Blake is well-known from Teenage Fanclub, while James Grant's career stretches from Glaswegian guitar-pop in the 80s with Friends Again…

The Rolling Stones Welcome To Shepherds Bush Mercury Studio (BD) Blazing 1999 Wembley warm-up The Stones' latest multiple format live double album revisits when the band liked to play stripped down intimate warm-up shows before the stadium extravaganzas. Their June 1999 appearance at Shepherds Bush Empire before two nights at Wembley Stadium, ostensibly promoting the live No Security LP on a European tour mainly fulfilling shows cancelled on the Bridges To Babylon jaunt, has long been a bootleg fave. Now spruced up, it captures the Stones expanding on their small second stage concept without needing a bridge to reach it, rising to the loose setting by replacing many set stalwarts with obscure LP tracks, particularly from Voodoo Lounge. In pre-woke times they could still play Brown Sugar, even Some Girls,…

SEND YOUR PRAISE, MISSIVES AND CALLS FOR THE DEIFICATION OF DAVE LEWIS 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 DOUBLE TROUBLE Thoroughly enjoyed reading Dave Lewis' piece on Led Zep's Physical Graffiti, and supporting pieces [RC 567]. A great LP, that's for sure, but the front cover assertion that it's “rock's greatest double LP”? Nah. Not for me. That accolade has to go to the four geezers from Shepherds Bush and their majestic double from '73: Quadrophenia. Paul Clarke, Swavesey. We did say “rock's greatest double LP”. Not the greatest 2LP of etiolated raunch – that'd be Exile On Main St. Not the best Beatles miscellany – 'The White…

On 22 January, 128 lots from Jeff Beck's personal guitar collection, along with related equipment, sold via Christies of London for eight times their pre-sale estimate. They made £8,727,284, care of bidders from 40-plus countries who partook in the seven-hour sale. Four lots' proceeds went to the Folly Wildlife Reserve charity, and three world records were achieved for Gibson Les Paul and Jackson guitars, and a set of effects pedals. Among the star guitar lots on the block were a Carlos acoustic guitar that raked in £75,600, and electric models including a 1955 Gretsch that took £100,800; a Fender from 1990 for £113,400; Gretsch 1956, £115,920; Gibson 2008, £126,000; Jackson 1984, £176,400; Fender 1959, £201,600; two Fender 2017s, £226,800, £232,000; Gibson 1959, £403,200; Fender 1960, £441,000; Jackson 1983, £441,000; Fender…

How come you're back with a new album now? I'm a producer, so I haven't had a break between North and Shells. I didn't plan to make an Everon album. I made a humourous remark to Ed Van Zijl of Mascot Records that, technically, there was still an option for another album in our old record contract. Instead of laughing, he thought that it was a great idea! I wouldn't expect anybody to be interested, as we were never really big. But Ed encouraged me, and Everon's been the mothership of all my musical endeavours. It felt great to take it out for a ride again and see if still sails. Tell us about the album. It's a continuation of my musical path. I've learnt a lot in 17 years…

The Secret 7” exhibition of seven 100-copy singles with unique sleeves is at London Greenwich NOW Gallery, 11 April-1 June. Thereafter, the singles are auctioned for the Warchild charity, and they feature cuts by The Cure, Scissor Sisters, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Frank Turner, Keane, Gregory Porter, Jessie Ware. See secret-7.co.uk. ■ The Outlaws: Fashion renegades of 80s London photo exhibition, including Boy George, is at the Fashion & Textile Museum, Bermondsey Street, London, to 9 March. ■ The free Techno: the rise of Detroit's machine music exhibition, including instruments and sound installations, is at Michigan State University Museum, Abbot, East Lansing, Michigan, to 30 April. ■ Jack Bruce's bass is on display for four weeks from 20 February at London Gibson Guitar Studio, and the charity Jam For Jack is held…

Prefab Sprout Steve McQueen (1985) I had a cassette of this permanently installed in my Walkman, all the years that I cycled the journey to and from school. Even today, I catch something new every time I hear it. I have a wide taste in music, but my weakness for all things literate and sophisticated (though not unearned sophistication) started here. The House Of Love Spy In The House Of Love (1990) I love nearly everything they've put out, but this encapsulates that particular wiry yet huge-sounding brand of alt-rock they found together. I think drummer Pete Evans is an unsung hero of alt-rock. He is so himself and his playing style so perfect, yet angsty with it. I love Guy Chadwick's guitar playing just as much as that of…

Ian Shirley, esteemed alumnus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions I buy Record Collector every month and am an avid reader of your (VAF) column. I'd like to get a valuation on an album I bought second-hand around 1974: Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle. I seem to recall picking it up for a pound or something like that in a record shop in London's East End. Hard to recall all these years later but it was very cheap. I used to pick up quite a lot of records from them at cheap prices. I greatly enjoyed playing the album and have returned to it many times over the years. Due to that, and a rather careless storage system, it's far from pristine; I don't rate the vinyl…

Q&A Where are you based, what do you do and why? I'm Alice Whittington, based in London and for the last eight years I've been Soundway Records' General Manager/Label Manager. I'm also a record collector, DJ (under the name Norsicaa) and passionate cook. I'm fascinated by music history, anthropology, cultural connections, languages and intersectionality. I guess that's why working for a record label with such diverse artists and mission to document lesser-known scenes was so appealing to me. Why the name? It's inspired by the track Sound Way by the short-lived Nigerian/Cameroonian band Wrinkar Experience, which was originally released on a 45 single by His Master's Voice in 1972. When was the label launched and how have things changed since? The label was launched in the early 2000s by Miles…

I'd been meaning to write about Mott The Hoople for a while. I couldn't work them into my latest book, because my latest book is called Freaks Out, not Blokes Out, and Mott were blokes; a band of blokes for blokes. Anyway, as I was thinking about Mott, I received an email, from Scott McCaughey (Minus 5, Peter Buck), who I was mixing an album with. “I've got Morgan Fisher to play piano on the last track,” he wrote. Cool, I thought, it's Morgan Fisher out of Mott The Hoople, and he's on our album. This is what happens in the modern context of making records over the internet: people turn up on your album who you've never met. Ah, I thought, the stars are aligning and instructing me to…

Dr John guitarist on his latest solo collection What film could your new set soundtrack? One that captures that old-fashioned piano trio sound. Which question do you wish people would stop asking? How did someone from England become a musician in New Orleans? If you could re-visit any of your albums, what'd you change? I'd change all of them. Who'd you like to produce? Nigel Hall, here in New Orleans. He's a bad motherfucker, and we can both play all the instruments. What were your favourite record shops when you started out? In the village where I grew up, Banghams, which sold appliances and had a corner spot with some records. Then, in 70s London, Daddy Kool, on Hanway Street – Jamaican imports. What was your first record? The Beatles'…

Bitter:Sweet's singer on the US trip hoppers' latest effort What film could your new set soundtrack? A James Bond. Is there anything still unissued? Cassettes pre-Bitter:Sweet. Brandy meets TLC R&B in high school, an album of sad piano girl with Tori Amos producer, Eric Rosse, and my Alanis phase with producer Dave Darling. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? I sang on ads as a little girl: the Monchhichi doll, Barbie, including the dolls' voices, My Little Pony, the Casper The Friendly Ghost theme. After high school, jingles including a Spicy Crispy Chicken Chick for Jack In The Box, and the “orgasm girl” for Herbal Essence Shampoo. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Beth Gibbons, Zero 7, Massive Attack. Where were you…

Boat To Bolivia (Kitchenware KWLP5, LP, 1986) £10 More songs about bereavement (a grandmother and an unborn child), alcoholism and the simple pleasure of listening to the rain fall, set to a timeless, semiacoustic soundscape. Gladsome, Humour & Blue (Kitchenware KWLP8, LP, 1988) £5 The sophomore album that somehow improved on the debut, helped considerably by the empathetic production of former Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith, enhancing the sound with strings, piano and sax. Beyond The Leap Beyond The Law (Demon FIENDCD 938, CD, 1997) £5 The high point of Stephenson's three-album solo deal with Demon, recorded in a tiny studio in Leap, Cork. Think Music From Big Pink, Geordie/Irish style. Western Eagle (Barbaraville BVCD014, CD, 2008) £20 The reformed Daintees' comeback album. The quality of the songwriting is undimmed. The unlisted…

Prior to Hotlegs (above), and before 10cc, Godley & Creme were involved in a variety of single releases, all of them a little derivative, yet all nascent with pop promise. As Yellow Bellow Room Boom, Godley & Creme released Seeing Things Green in 1967, its Beach Boys-influenced harmonies and vocals embodying the sanguine quintessence of the year. In 1969, with Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon, a group also featuring future 10cc-ers Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, they recorded I'm Beside Myself. Its jew's harp, hazy lyrics and rolling acoustic chords were a peripheral upshot of the ecstasy of the day, all the country, psychedelia and static and frazzle in the air, much of it wafted in from across the Atlantic – with big bursts of harmonica, an instrument revisited on their…

Motörhead Motörhead Ace/Chiswick Records XXQLP2 149 (2LP) Battered, bruised and broke, by early 1977 bassist/vocalist Lemmy, guitarist 'Fast' Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil 'Animal' Taylor had reached the end of their tether. Motörhead had precious few gigs in the diary and, saddled with the reputation of being “the worst band in the world” by one music paper following their support slot to Blue Öyster Cult in October 1975, the writing appeared to be on the wall. The band already had one LP in the can, recorded by the earlier Lemmy / Larry Wallis / Lucas Fox line-up and shelved by United Artists, and a single released abroad but inexplicably picked up by Stiff Records in the UK and then held back for the label's 7” box set. About to split,…

Born in Pegram, Tennessee and raised in Nashville, GENE ALLISON had a background in gospel, singing with the Fairfield Four and the Skylarks while still at school before making the transition to secular music at the instigation of producer and record label owner Ted Jarrett. The pair hit big with 1957's Jarrett-written You Can Make It If You Try, Allison's first of several singles issued on Vee Jay which provided a blueprint for soul, his raw delivery bridging gospel and blues – it was also covered by the Rolling Stones on their 1963 debut album. If You Try – Complete Recordings 1956-1962 ( Jasmine) also includes his 1958 follow-up R&B hits Everything Will Be Alright and Have Faith. As an aside, Allison used the proceeds from You Can Make It If…

Winston Foster had a difficult upbringing. Raised in children's homes, he was often looked down upon because of his “Dundas” (albino) colouring. But rather than shrinking under his disadvantage he flaunted it, adopting the stage name YELLOWMAN. In the late 70s, he rose to prominence as a DJ on the Aces sound system and a recording debut soon followed. His talent enabled him to become a firm favourite in Jamaica and by 1983 he was king of the hill when, accompanied by Vernon Rainford aka Fathead, he recorded Divorced! (For Your Eyes Only) ( Burning Sounds). The 10 tracks are delivered in dynamic style, with our man rarely missing the opportunity to remind listeners that he's the king between the sheets as well as on the microphone. Burning Sounds have risen…

My Morning Jacket is ATO Records ATO0688LP (CD, LP) After uncertainties about their future, My Morning Jacket sounded close to revivified on 2021's pointedly eponymous comeback record. Four years on, that sense of renewal is tethered to newly concentrated strategies on their 10th album. Though such a career milestone might have come freighted with pressure, Kentucky's classic-rock transcendentalists lightened the load, trusted their instincts and welcomed an outside producer's input, all to fertile and focusing ends. Its cosmic ambitions channelled through concise melodies and emotive intimacies, is sharpens MMJ's songcraft to tangibly refreshed effect. In need of new methodologies, the band scrapped some early jams, feeling that they were trying to force their hand. The tracks that made the record were often built around frontman Jim James's bare-bones home recordings…

Bernard Butler, one of rock's serial collaborators, introduces us to his latest team-up. How did you get to know Norman Blake and James Grant? I've known Norman since about '92 or '93. I actually guested with Teenage Fanclub, they were one of my favourite bands, a mutual friend put us together. They were playing the Town and Country Club [the London venue now known as the Forum], so I jumped up with them and did a song. We did Everything Flows and Take The Skinheads Bowling by Camper Van Beethoven. I didn't know that song so I remember trying to look at Raymond [McGinley]'s hands to see what the hell he was playing. I met them plenty of times over that period, but I didn't know James until recently. How…

Chris Layhe Caught The Spirit No cat details (7”) It's become noticeable how many singles are released with songs that deal with pop music's past. Last month this column included Mal-One, for instance, singing about the significance of Johnny Rotten. There was also Clutter's song about Jesus Christ, who has been touted as the original rock star on account of his long hair, large entourage and demands for groupies to scrub his feet. On the soft rocking Caught The Spirit, Chris Layhe from The Icicle Works describes a trip to The Cavern Club in 1962. Performing down there are none other than four lovely lads called The Beatles. The narrator is inspired to pick up a guitar himself and thus the excitement of rock'n'roll can be passed down from generation…

This month: David John & The Mood The 60s bequeathed many fine groups and vocalists who were overlooked almost totally, if not by the record companies, then by the record-buying public. David John & The Mood fit firmly into that category. Although David John and the group's total recorded output consisted of a mere three singles, those three singles have become extremely collectible, and now rank among the most expensive 45s of the era. I tracked down David John in his hometown of Preston a few years ago and spoke to him about his career. He was one of the more distinctive 60s stage performers. As a vocalist his style was influenced by the black American R&B artists, and he and the band followed the same path trodden on these…

Little Richard Long Tall Sally (London American Recordings HL-O.8366, 10”, 78rpm, UK, 1957) £15 The first rock'n'roll I ever saw, in the film Don't Knock The Rock. A taste of what was to come. My voice was breaking, and I knew I could hold a tune. My mother played piano and me, my brother and two sisters used to sing around it. My sister Val had a great voice but got pregnant, married a GI and moved to America. My first 'performance' was the Downbeat Club in the Manor House pub in Finsbury Park. I was only about 15. Bloke said, “Hello, son, do you want to sing a song?” I did Buddy Holly's Think It Over. Elvis Presley All Shook Up (His Masters Voice POP 359, 10”, 78rpm, UK,…

This month: Blind Faith, free show, 7 June 1969, Hyde Park, London It was 56 years ago: Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, Steve Winwood from Traffic and Ric Grech from Family - a band of the best. Their very first gig. I had been to other free concerts here: Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Danny Kirwan (another highlight), but this would be special. I bought a music magazine before the gig with a colour photo of Blind Faith on the cover and was reading it under a tree when I saw the gorgeous Julie Driscoll (Wheels On Fire) walking around with a camera crew. She was filming background shots for an upcoming episode of The Wednesday Play: Season 9, Episode 13, Season Of The Witch. It was considered…

In January, analogr.com offered a Greg Lake guitar, Grateful Dead Ampex reel-to-reel tape-recorder, and Elvis Presley 1976 Harley Davidson FLH 1200 Electra Glide motorbike (estimate, $1 million). ■ In January, apr57.com offered record award discs from Great White, Dave Lee Roth, Kenny G, Journey, GTR, Van Halen, Edgar Winter, Pat Benatar, Bob Marley. ■ An Autographs & Memorabilia sale is held 25 May via chiswickauctions.co.uk. ■ Rock & Pop auctions are held via gottahaverockandroll.com, 7 March, 4-5 April. ■ March auctions via ha.com include (1) Music memorabilia & concert posters (6) vinyl. ■ On 5 March, a music memorabilia auction is held via hansonsauctioneers.co.uk. ■ An 11 January auction via iconicauctions.com included guitars from George Harrison, KISS, Nirvana, John Lennon sunglasses. ■ On 17 January, a signed The Beatles Australian…

Acoustic+ The Men They Couldn't Hang Live At The Craufurd Arms CD/DVD, Milton Keynes, 2024, Secret, 25 March. ■ Paul Grady The Archive 63-track 4CD, with 70-page 12” book, unissued cuts, The Last Music Co, 28 March. ■ Nina Nesbitt Mountain Music (The Summit) DL, with four new cuts, Apple Tree, 21 February. Due: TBC Morgan Wallen I'm The Problem, Big Loud. Biz The Leeds Old Red Bus Station venue closed on 19 January. ■ Rough Trade Below record shop opens in New York Rockefeller Center by June. Blues Due: March (28) Erja Lyytinen Smell The Roses (Tuohi) April (25) Samantha Fish Paper Dolls (Rounder) June (6) Joanne Shaw Taylor Black & Gold (Journeyman) (13) Larry McCray Heartbreak City (KTBA) July (18) Joe Bonamassa's latest (J&R Adventures). Hip-Hop/Dance Soon Actions Made Audible CD, blue LP, with Adi Newton (Clock…

The chances are that, as a paid-up record collector, you own vinyl discs that play at 33.3rpm or 45rpm, as is the case with most Micro Groove 12” (and 10”) long-players, as well as 7” singles, while most EPs are pressed to play at one speed or the other. In addition, many of us will be familiar with and/or own vintage shellac discs that commonly spin at 78rpm, while some specialist record-players have a 16rpm setting for discs pressed at that speed. But there are plenty of record formats that play at other speeds, too. Discs in the late 19th century range anywhere from 60rpm to 130rpm, though the mechanics of hand-wound record-players made 70rpm-80rpm the easiest models to build, which led brands like Edison Disc to produce recordings that…

CONTACTS: DISCOGS: www.discogs.com EBAY: www.ebay.co.uk FLASHBACK: Tel 0207 354 9356; flashback.co.uk HAKE'S AUCTIONS: Tel 001 866 404 9800; www.hakes.com HERITAGE AUCTIONS: Tel 001 214 528 3500; www.ha.com INDUSTRIAL SILENCE: marc@industrial-silence.com; www.industrial-silence.com JULIEN'S AUCTIONS: Tel 001 310 836 1818; juliensauctions.com POPSIKE: www.popsike.com Send your Most Wanted suggestions to paulrigby@theaudiophileman.com…

JANINE RAINFORTH Ex-Maximum Joy singer on her debut solo effort What movie could your new set soundtrack? One of with a happy ending – about redemption, and rising again. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Nick Cave. Maximum Joy played with The Birthday Party a couple of times when we were starting out. His latest album, Joy, is about the meaning of complex joy and finding beauty in a broken world. That really resonated, and we'd be completing a circle. Who'd you like to produce? Celeste, Cleo Sol, Tyson, Coby Sey. Was anyone in your family a musician? I recently discovered that my great-grandad wrote songs and poems. Which of your songs is the most personally meaningful? Phoenix Is Risen, based on a poem/song that I…

The Cat Empire singer on the Australians' 10th studio set What film could your new platter soundtrack? It was essentially tracked live with flamenco musicians, then we added strings, percussion and horns. It's somewhere between Vengo, Mad Max and Black Orpheus. If you could re-visit any of your albums, what'd you change? So much. We're getting better at recording and letting it be what it is. What was your first record? Rage Against The Machine. What's the last album that you bought? Emma Donovan & The Putbacks Dawn. What records most influenced your style? Manu Chao Clandestino, The Pogues Rum, Sodomy And The Lash, Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced?, Bruce Springsteen Thunder Road, Afro Cuban All Stars A Toda Le Gusta. What's the oddest circumstance that inspired a song? Dreams.…

Edge Of Paradise singer on their latest metallic excursion What films could your new set soundtrack? Transcendence and Interstellar. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Hans Zimmer or Clint Mansell. When did you first hear one of your songs on vinyl? We bought a record-player to hear Universe in 2019. Is anyone in your family a musician? My mum plays piano, and dad plays guitar. My cousin was an opera singer at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow. Have you kept studio notebooks? Yes, handwritten lyrics from early stages of songs. What's the oddest circumstance that's inspired a song? Dreams. I dreamed that I was on a towering stone wall overlooking a jagged landscape under a crimson sky. A spacecraft hovered in the distance, and I was trying…

Amen Corner Round Amen Corner (Deram DML 1021, LP, UK, 1968) £30 Their first of two studio albums capturing their soul revue live in the studio with covers of Our Love Is In The Pocket, Expressway To Your Heart, Let The Good Times Roll et al plus hit singles Bend Me Shape Me and Gin House. Amen Corner Farewell To The Real Magnificent Seven (Immediate IMSP 028, LP, UK, 1969) £30 Their UK No 1, (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice, sets the bar high but covers of Proud Mary and The Weight are great, too, and Fairweather Low's own Things Ain't What They Used To Be, Mr Nonchalant and Welcome To The Club introduce a talented songsmith. Fair Weather Beginning From An End (RCA Victor SF 8165, LP, UK,…

Birmingham and its surrounding urban sprawl makes for a super-diverse, vibrant and creative metropolis whose musical output reflects its community's. However, its music heritage remains relatively uncelebrated. Certainly, bands and musicians such as Black Sabbath and Duran Duran, to name just two, have an international profile but aren't as readily associated with the city that spawned them as, say, The Beatles are with Liverpool or Happy Mondays are with Manchester. We are often told about the sound of cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, but it is rare to hear or read about Birmingham and its music defined in this way. Why is that? Maybe it's because, as these 45 singles, 12”s and EPs show, there is not one defining sound but many: from metal to bhangra to acid house, West…

Tim Buckley Sweet Surrender (from the LP Greetings From LA, 1972) The Creation Life Is Just Beginning (single, 1967) David Bowie Rebel Rebel (single version, 1974) Unknown Drowsy Maggie (Trad. Irish jig) Augustus Pablo King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (single, 1975) Gary Glitter Doing Alright With The Boys (single, 1975) Fred Locks Walls (from the album Black Star Liner, 1976) Vivian Jackson & The Prophets Fire In A Kingston (single, 1976) Culture I'm Not Ashamed (single, 1977) Dr Alimantado Born For A Purpose (single, 1977) Bobby Byrd Back From The Dead (single, 1974) Neil Young Revolution Blues (from the album On The Beach, 1974) Lou Reed Men Of Good Fortune (from the album Berlin, 1973) Kevin Coyne Eastbourne Ladies (from the album Marjory Razorblade, 1973) Peter Hammill The Institute Of…

How did you first come across Motörhead? I'd known Lemmy since about 1971 when I opened my little Rock On Records stall on Portobello Road. He was a regular customer and we used to chat about 60s groups and things like that and I got to know him really well. One day he rang me and said, “We've had enough, we're breaking up” and said they had a gig in about two or three weeks at The Marquee and that as it was going to be their final gig they wanted to record it. He said, “Doug [Smith] has agreed to put up £200 for the Rolling Stones mobile; would you be prepared to put in some money?” I said, “Of course I would, come up and see me,” and…

Steve Reich Collected Works Nonesuch 0075597904185 (26CD+DVD) “It was like the world had gone from black and white into Technicolor,” Steve Reich told The Guardian in 2011, recalling the epiphany that changed his life. He was 14 and had heard Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's ballet music The Rite Of Spring for the first time. “That was the moment I decided that I had to be a composer,” he revealed. The startling modernist concept behind The Rite Of Spring – with its dissonant harmonies and jagged rhythms – had famously resulted in the audience rioting at its Paris premiere in 1913. That was a situation that Reich would later relate to as a young composer: as his friend, the eminent US conductor Michael Tilson Thomas recalls in the liner notes to…

Bob Mould Here We Go Crazy BMG 964140211 (CD, LP) In 2019, Bob Mould released Sunshine Rock, a relatively cheerful record which was purposefully at odds with the moodier and mortality-focused furrow his songwriting had been ploughing in the years prior. It was followed by a far angrier album, completed when Mould had moved back to the United States after a period residing in Berlin. 2020's Blue Hearts was a protest record of sorts. It was based around Mould's concept of “the American Crisis”, with echoes plentiful of the musician's beginnings, as a member of Hüsker Dü, in the hardcore punk scene of the Reagan era. His latest collection suggests Sunshine Rock was, in fact, an anomaly. At the very least, its optimism has returned to the backburner for the…

Jim James on coaches, cosmic guidance and Kermit What was the band's mood like going into this record? The last record was made in 2019 and finished over the beginning of the pandemic, and that was a crazy time. Since then we've done a lot of work on ourselves to be better communicators. I've been doing a lot of work on myself to try and be a peaceful person and love myself more. I feel like there's been this renewed beginners' mindset where we're in a place that's sweet and new. The lyrics feel intimate and loved-up… I feel like the universe is speaking through us, like a cat playing with a ball of yarn. I tried on this record in a way I've never done before to remove myself…

John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs Ian Leslie Faber, £25 ISBN 9780571376117, 432 pages They're playing our song… Fifty-plus years after The Beatles' demise fresh angles from which to tell their story are increasingly difficult to find, but this is a doozy. Business and technology writer Leslie (also an avid Fabologist) maps out the changing relationship between the band's twin creative dynamos under the umbrellas of 43 specific pieces of music, each given its own chapter. Although mostly centred on Lennon and/or McCartney compositions, a handful of significant others feature, notably The Del Vikings' 1957 doo wop hit Come Go With Me. As the author recounts, in vivid prose, it's the number John was performing with The Quarrymen at a Woolton church fete when Paul first set eyes…

Sell Vinyl/CDs direct to RC readers, call us on 0208 752 8172 or email listings@recordcollectormag.com. Rates: recordcollectormag.com/advertise NEXT ISSUE: APRIL 2025 (on sale 20 MARCH) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 24 FEBRUARY 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: MAY 2025 (on sale 17 APRIL) Deadline: Monday 24 MARCH…

This month: Bruce Woolley You'd think that co-writing Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star and Grace Jones' Slave To The Rhythm, plus having Thomas Dolby in a band, would be enough of a CV as it is, but no. Bruce Woolley has, in recent years, been involved with the Radio Science Orchestra, an ensemble of musicians specialising in the retro-futuristic sounds of space. Armed with theremins and Ondes Martenot, they've performed at Blue Dot, Royal Festival Hall and The British Library, celebrating the romance of the galaxies. But at the moment, Woolley has gone back to the (almost) beginning, as his work as frontman with the new wave-adjacent power pop act Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club is being celebrated with a new Cherry Red anthology, collecting together their 1979…

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Safe As Milk (Pye International NPL 28110, LP, mono, flipback sleeve, UK, 1968) £150 Brooklyn-born Perry, who died in December aged 82, leaves a sumptuous musical legacy. While his peak era was exemplified by his lush 70s soft rock sound, he was active from the mid-60s; he worked with Fats Domino and Ella Fitzgerald. He also co-produced (with Bob Krasnow) Beefheart's debut album. A blues-heavy work, with Ry Cooder on guitar and arrangements, and lyrics like “abba zabba go-zoom Babette baboon, run run monsoon”, the record failed to chart despite John Lennon and John Peel becoming fans. Decades later, Jon Savage called it “a towering avant-garde pop masterpiece”. Tiny Tim God Bless Tiny Tim (Reprise RSLP 6292, LP, UK, 1968) £20 Tiptoe Through The…