Innehållsförteckning för Issue 570 från Record Collector

SEND YOUR PRAISE, MISSIVES AND CALLS FOR THE DEIFICATION OF TERRY STAUNTON 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 NEITHER MOODY NOR BLUE I was delighted to receive my special edition of Record Collector Presents The Moody Blues. I have been a fan since the 60s and I thought it was an excellent publication. I was curious to know why little mention was made of the Time Traveller box set, just a brief hint on page 103, and no listing at all in the discography section. I would be interested in the value of the set. Not that I am going to sell it, but for my children to…

Mark McStea, who wrote our Pub Rock story (p76), ducked out of school to get Dr Feelgood’s Stupidity the day it came out, to make sure he got the limited edition free single. A record collector was born! A lifelong Smokey Robinson fan (p48), Rob Hughes was thrilled to interview the Motown legend for this month’s RC. His monthly Parallel Universe podcast (available on Patreon) finds him and DJ Marc Riley leafing through copies of vintage music weeklies from the 70s and 80s. Joel McIver (Opeth, p60) urges you to read RC Presents Deep Purple, the new bookazine that he’s edited for us: it’s a treasure-trove of Purple info and rare records and features a foreword by Opeth’s singer Mikael Åkerfeldt. Daryl Easlea began selling records in Southend-on-Sea in 1979…

Acoustic Martha Wainwright 2CD, with 14 bonuses (seven unissued), PIAS, 23 May. ■ BEATrio CD, LP, with Bela Fleck, Thirty Tigers, 16 May. ■ The A Complete Unknown Bob Dylan biopic, DVD, BD, with The Making Of, 4k BD with Dolby Atmos mix, Elevation Sales, 25 April. Due: April (18) Lucy Railton (Patti Smith) Blue Veil, Ideological Organ May Gordon Giltrap Out Of The Silent Sky, [TBC] June (13) The Swell Season Forward, Plateau. Biz The Les Paul Recording Studio opened in March at United Records, Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles. It includes the 60s mixing console that he built, along with the first ever 8-Track recorder, his Ampex 5258 Sel-Sync. See les-paul.com. ■ Renae record shop/venue opened on Thomas Street, Manchester, 28 March. ■ In March, the solar/wind energy-run Seabass Vinyl pressing…

Marking the centenary of his birth on 27 June 1925, a 6CD box set of 170-plus demo acetate recordings of songs written by Jerome ‘Doc’ Pomus is due. The package also incorporates interviews, and four of his original jump blues releases. Born Jerome Solon Felder in Brooklyn, New York, after contracting polio as child he walked with crutches. He loved the blues singing of Big Joe Turner and decided to follow in his musical footsteps. He recorded a number of early jump blues numbers for Savoy, Chess, Coral and Apollo during the 40s and early 50s, though they didn’t make him much money. Hence, he turned his attention to songwriting and scored his first hit with Young Blood, by The Coasters, in 1957, assisted by established scribes, Leiber & Stoller.…

The superbly named Buffet Lunch are returning with their second album in less than a year, having put out For Display Purposes Only last summer. Once again, they've crafted an engaging work of thoughtful, ramshackle brilliance, the majority of which was recorded in a productive week near Ben Nevis. The physical edition of the record is being pressed on 180g yellow vinyl, limited to just 500 copies. After a run of well-received singles and EPs since they first emerged in the late 2010s, Prima Queen release this fantastic debut LP. The songwriting of long-time friends Louise Macphail and Kristin McFadden veers beautifully from anthemic to reflective. The title track, alongside deeper cuts like Flying Ant Day and Meryl Streep, exudes a wonderful charm. There's an orange vinyl version of the…

Ian Shirley, esteemed alumnus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions STATESIDE CLASH I’m a big Clash fan and have all their LPs – proudly bought when they were released. In fact, I’ve got two copies of their second LP, Give ’Em Enough Rope, one of which I bought on holiday in America way back in 1979. While I have your excellent Rare Record Price Guide and know that a Mint UK copy is worth £40, can you let me know what my US copy is worth? It’s on Epic with the catalogue number of JE 35543. Andrew Fuller via email While the Sex Pistols split up in January 1978 at the end of their fi rst tour of America, it took some time for The Clash to…

Fiestas Of Peru – Music Of The High Andes (Nonesuch Records Explorer Series H 72045, LP, US, 1972) £10 An extraordinary example of cultural anthropology, this album is a compelling collection of music from the High Andes, recorded in three Peruvian locations by David Lewiston during 1968. Be clear, this is no sanitised travelogue – the 12 tracks are variously sad, intriguing, joyous and unsettling, featuring a variety of instruments, including notched flutes, harp and guitar. With its passion and intense precision, the opening track, Marcha Akuchimay, sets the tone; the sleeve-notes tell us that this march is a song, not a dance. The rolling waves of sound include hypnotic mandolin and guitars. Such is the power of the album’s performances that an empathic listener will be quickly drawn in, with…

FRANK REGAN Raging Speedhorn co-vocalist on the metallers’ latest outing What film could your new set soundtrack? Sexy Beast. Blood and guts. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? We did an ad for Bodyform live at London Camden Underworld. It was played in our local cinema in Corby, among others. With whom would you like to make a split 7”? Kyuss. What were your favourite record shops early on? On tours, our original guitarist, Gareth [Smith], had a competition to see who could find the first Grand Funk Railroad and Mountain records on vinyl. I found Grand Funk in Glasgow, and he found Mountain in Hull. What was your first record? Jackie Wilson, Reet Petite, 1986. What’s the last album that you bought? Thunder Cat Drunk.…

Chuck Berry Princess Theatre Club, Chorlton 17 February 1967 Originally the Princess Ballroom, and now a McDonalds, in the 60s the venue was home to everything from bands to dances to stag nights (on 5 November 1964 it advertised “Eye Opening Scenes With 15 Naughty Exotics”). Chuck Berry spent the second half of February touring the UK, with this show being the opening night. On this tour he was backed by The Canadians, who were indeed Canadian but who’d relocated to London the previous year. Buddy Guy Twisted Wheel, Manchester 6 May 1965 For this show, The Soul Agents were supposed to be Buddy Guy’s backing band, but the story goes that they got lost on the way so Cops ’N’ Robbers took to the stage with no rehearsal and…

Gmurder of MP David Amess in 2019, Southend-on-Sea, no matter what it calls itself, is a town, and a big one at that. Whatever it is, it -and its close neighbours, Basildon and Canvey Island – has always been a hub of entertainment and its influence has been felt on psych (Procol Harum), punk (Dr Feelgood), synthpop (Depeche Mode) and 21st-century acoustic troubadours such as Ed Sheeran (Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.) Its proximity to London is both a blessing and a curse – it often keeps huge names away, as it’s too close to the capital, but by the same token, groups have long come and warmed up down on the Delta. Both Blur and Paul McCartney have played low-key shows at the area’s largest hall, the Cliffs Pavilion,…

Roger McGough and Mike McCartney on the rhyme and reason of Scaffold’s success. How did you get together? Roger McGough: We were part of a group of arty people but we didn’t know we were poets, or writers, or comedians. We were in the Liverpool One Fat Lady All Electric Show, who were auditioned by the BBC, but they only chose us three. Would we have chosen each other? Maybe! Mike McCartney: We were going to be a theatre group – then I wrote Thank U Very Much and we were in the music world! RM: We just found ourselves professional entertainers. I always knew I’d be a poet but didn’t think of it as a profession. Satirical humour seemed to be central to what you did… MM: That was…

John McKay Sixes And Sevens Tiny Global Productions PICI 0069 (CD, LP) John McKay was the first recording guitarist with Siouxsie & The Banshees, and the one whose innovative style – eschewing conventional riffing and soloing in favour of solid, sheet-metal textures – cast a long shadow over all who followed, including the great John McGeoch. McKay was with the band from Hong Kong Garden through The Scream, on which he was primary composer, and the hugely influential Join Hands, until the fateful night in Aberdeen when he and drummer Kenny Morris walked out mid-tour, opening up a vacancy for Robert Smith (in his first of two stints as a Banshee) and permanent fixture Budgie. Sixes And Sevens, an album recorded around the time of McKay’s departure but unreleased until…

Dear Mr Fantasy - A Celebration for Jim Capaldi Cherry Red ECLEC 32905 (2CD/BD) Elegy for one of rock’s nice guys This all-star 2007 concert at London’s Roundhouse commemorating Traffic singer/lyricist Capaldi will already be in most fans’ collections as a DVD. Now the soundtrack of the evening, on two compact discs, is accompanied by a Blu-ray of the visual content. What’s new, you ask? Some extra backstage material is hardly a reason for re-purchase. But the cast list is top-notch, the presence of the now-deceased Gary Moore and Jon Lord reminding us this is nearly two decades old. And of the 20 tracks, it’s good that performances by Stevie Lange (Let Me Make Something In Your Life) and Jim’s brother Phil Capaldi (Gifts Of Unknown Things) rival bigger names…

Hawkwind There Is No Space For Us Cherry Red CDBRED 924 (CD, 2LP) Hawkwind are highly respected these days. It’s easy to forget this wasn’t always the case. The space-rockers’ reputation began to be reappraised properly around the turn of the millennium, three decades after they’d formed. With Y2K paranoia in the air, wars in Kosovo and elsewhere, and a lying sleazeball in the White House (Democrat, in those days), there was the feeling that, as Hawkwind had cautioned in 1971, We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago. It helped, too, that indie nonconformists Super Furry Animals and cutting-edge dance acts alike acknowledged Hawkwind’s magnitude. So when The Guardian’s Dave Simpson, in September 1999, wrote that Hawkwind had received “more ridicule than perhaps any other band in rock history”, he…

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke Tall Tales Warp WARP 323 (CD, LP) A Thom Yorke album released on Warp Records feels like it’s been a long time coming. In his university days, Yorke would DJ early-era Warp acts in-between bands at the Lemon Grove in Exeter; at the end of the 90s when Radiohead were engulfed in post-OK Computer success crisis, he listened to little other than the label’s stars like Autechre and Aphex Twin to battle creative stasis, as heard on Kid A’s dislocated experimentalism. His solo albums, from 2006’s The Eraser to 2019’s Anima, have been full of esoteric electronica that wouldn’t have felt out of place on Warp’s roster. With his latest project, Yorke’s is finally a Warp artist. Tall Tales, his fourth record in three years…

John Lodge Love Conquers All EP Keeping The Faith / HSKTF 115 (CD/12”) The Moody Blues’ John Lodge has had a tough time of late with health problems including the stroke he suffered in 2023. He remains resilient and optimistic in the face of such challenges, however. At least that’s the main impression given by this EP. First up is a woozy and wordless composition called Sunset Over Cocohatchee Bay on which Lodge lets the acoustic pattern and electric lead do the talking. Track 2 is Love Will Conquer All, his Christmas single from late last year. Snow was falling. Darkness was closing in. Hark! The light shone through in the end. When love conquers all, “It doesn’t only have to be this time of year,” Lodge reminds us, so…

Sophie Ellis-Bextor May (24) Glasgow Armadillo (25) Newcastle O2 City Hall (26) York Barbican (28) Nottingham RCH (29) Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (31) Manchester Apollo June (1) Cardiff Millenium Centre (2) Birmingham Symphony Hall (4) Brighton Dome (5) Bournemouth BIC (7) Oxford New Theatre (8) Bristol Beacon (9) Plymouth Theatre Royal (11) Sheffield City Hall (12) London Royal Albert Hall Eric Clapton May (is) Nottingham Motorpoint Arena (21,23-24) London Royal Albert Hall Das Koolies May (3) Newport Corn Exchange (6) Nottingham Rescue Rooms (7) London ICA (8) Manchester YES Pink Room Newton Faulkner April (23) Ilkley King’s Hall (24) Whitley Bay Playhouse (26) New Brighton Floral Pavilion (27) Stoke Sugarmill (29) Lytham St Anne’s Lowther Pavilion (30) Coventry Warwick Arts Centre May (1) Stamford Corn Exchange (3) Barnsley Birdwell Venue (4)…

"No matter how obscure your tastes,” writes Daryl Easlea of Record Collector’s new edition of the Rare Record Price Guide, “you’ll find the most sought-after items here, whether your passion is MOR, freakbeat, post-punk, disco, house, lovers rock, psychedelia, hip-hop, reggae, NWOBHM, Northern soul, British jazz, folk, shoegaze, prog or indie. If it’s collectable, and it was released in the UK, then you’ll find it in [the RRPG].” As though to confirm how broad our remit ishere at RC, we've managed to devote a 14-page cover story this month to a music genre not on the inestimable Mr Easlea’s lengthy list: pub rock. Pub rock is one of the harder genres to define. In the name of the song by Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers – Goodbye Nashville,…

Music memorabilia collector, Joseph Robert O’Donnell, of Tynemouth, Newcastle, uncovered in January a significant piece of Led Zeppelin original album artwork that was sold in a job lot at a London auction via Reeman Dansie. Among the mixed artworks sold on 12 January, he identified some original sketches drawn by renowned Led Zeppelin sleeve artist, Richard Drew, who’s better known to fans by his pen name of Zacron. His sketches were used to develop the sleeve for Led Zeppelin III and popped up in a sale of the artist’s estate. Among them was a framed drawing described as a working draft for the album sleeve that sold for nearly £2,500. But O’Donnell also noticed that there were a series of numbers in the corner of this draft sheet and, on…

This month, the 450-track Grateful Dead Enjoy The Ride 60CD box set is due, comprising mainly unissued cuts, along with a companion highlights set. The main course comprises Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA (4/5/69); Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA (6/5/69), (6/7/69), (6/8/69); Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY (2/24/71), (2/20/71); Fillmore East, New York, NY (4/25/71), (4/27/71); Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA (9/15/72), (9/16/72); Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY (3/16/73); Winterland, San Francisco, CA (3/20/77); Philadelphia Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (5/13/78); Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO (8/12/79); Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI (8/23/80), (7/11/81); Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT (3/14/81); Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA (5/1/81); Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (8/20/83); Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA (7/13/84); Henry J Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA (11/21/85), (11/22/85); Madison…

At RC Towers, we prognosticate more music from Bon Jovi, Evanescence, Paloma Faith, Yngwie Malmsteen, Ella Henderson, The Acacia Strain, Erykah Badu, Wet Leg, The Almighty, The xx, Animals As Leaders, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Old Man’s Child, Mae Muller, The Casualties, Blink-182's Travis Barker, Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Frank Ocean, Lizzo, Paradise Lost, One Direction's Niall Horan, Adema, Exodus (two albums), ex-Eagles' Don Felder, Lynyrd Skynyrd (on Frontiers), Noah Cyrus (Columbia), Tortoise (Nonesuch), Leaves' Eyes (Reigning Phoenix), Danko Jones (Perception), Kissing The Pink (Cherry Red), Louise (Absolute), Megadeth (BLKIIBLK), HAIM (Columbia); Deep Purple's Don Airey's autobiography, a book by Halestorm's Lzzy Hale; and a James Taylor Fire And Rain musical. CELLULOID HEROES Steven Knight’s Oasis Live ’25 documentary film, via Sony; Andrew Hyatt’s Forever And Ever, Amen biopic of Randy Travis; Gerard…

In mid-May, the Royal Mint issues a series of Music Legends coins marking the musical legacy of John Lennon. They include a £5 coin, 10,000-copy £5 colour coin, 5,000-copy 1oz silver proof coin, 1,250-copy 1/40oz gold proof coin, 750-copy 0.25oz gold proof coin, 500-copy 2oz silver proof coin, 400-copy 1oz gold proof coin, 250-copy 5oz silver proof coin, 150-copy 10oz silver proof coin, 64-copy 1kg silver proof coin, and the highest-priced item, a 90-copy 2oz gold proof coin, for £6,420. See royalmint.com.…

What a time it is to breathe in the Estuary air and watch the sun set over Canvey Island. After Southend-On-Sea’s successful City Day on 1 March, which saw thousands dance to bands and DJs under a mirrorball in the high street (at least one member of the RC crew’s tunes closed the show, fact fans), to accompany your enjoyment of our pub rock cover feature and Thames Delta 45 45s, we now have more details about The Scene By The Sea. As mentioned in last month’s News, a colourful double-sided fold-out guide pays tribute to the musical history of Southend and its environs. It highlights 58 key locations, where magical, musical stuff happened in the now-city, such as where David Bowie played a free festival and where Snoop Dogg…

Worlds Within Worlds (Columbia SCX 6463, LP, UK, 1971) £500 Certain albums always pop up second-hand in grave condition. Case in point: The Beatles’ Revolver. With hundreds of thousands sold, you’d expect at least some copies to survive in a decent state, but let’s face it, they’re all crap. Basil Kirchin’s Worlds Within Worlds, however, inverts that rule. Even though only a few hundred copies were sold at the stores that, primarily by accident, stocked the album, second-hand copies always turn up in Mint condition. And, as a very fulfi lling bonus, musically the album beats Revolver hands dowN. Worlds Within Worlds is one of those, “I cannot believe they actually released this” phenomena. Basil Kirchin, born Kirchinsky, debuted in the 40s playing drums in his father’s big band orchestra at…

Brian James, died 6 March, age 70. The guitarist was a founding member and principal early songwriter for The Damned. Born in Hammersmith, London, he was part of proto-punk band London SS alongside future Clash member Mick Jones and Tony James, later of Generation X. It was during this period that he met vocalist Dave Vanian, bassist Captain Sensible, and drummer Rat Scabies with whom he formed The Damned in early 1976. In July of that year the group played their first show, supporting the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club and in October they became the first UK punk band to release a single, the James-penned New Rose. Setting a pattern, in February the following year they released British punk’s first studio album, Damned Damned Damned, a blistering record…

Born in Puerto Rico in 1951, Carlos Alomar has been playing guitar professionally since the age of 16. Even if he hadn’t begun working with David Bowie in 1974, his eputation would have been secure if not as widely accepted. By the turn of the 70s, he’d played in the Apollo Theater Harlem’s house band and toured with ames Brown, and formed Listen My rother with his neighbourhood pals uther Vandross, Fonzi Thornton and his wife-to-be Robin Clark [Thornton, Clark and Alomar are all talking heads in the recent Vandross documentary]. ession work and bandleading for The Main Ingredient followed. Initially asked by Bowie to play on his Can You Hear Me? with Lulu, Alomar brought his pals along to Young Americans, beginning a relationship with Bowie that would last…

DR FEELGOOD Down By The Jetty (United Artists UAS 29727, UK 1975) The undisputed heavyweight champs. The Feelgoods’ first three albums are all essential, with Stupidity, their No 1 live album from 1976, perhaps coming closest to capturing the fervour of the sweaty pub experience, but Jetty gets the nod for the minimalist aesthetic of the music and even the sleeve, which neatly points the way to punk. BRINSLEY SCHWARZ Nervous On The Road (United Artists UAS 29374, UK 1972) The Brinsleys released a handful of great albums, which stand up today. Their goodtime, gently rocking vibes, allied to killer songs, made for an irresistible formula – one that took its template from The Band. Anyone who loves Nick Lowe’s solo work or the best of Rockpile will be right…

Indianapolis-born FREDDIE HUBBARD was one of the greatest trumpeters who ever lived. Deemed by this writer as one of the “Big Three” alongside Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, he played with a swashbuckling sense of bravado reflecting the supreme confidence his extraordinary technical ability gave him. His playing reaches an incendiary level on the aptly titled On Fire: Live From The Blue Morocco (★★★★★ Resonance), an outstanding, previously unheard concert from 1967 unearthed by producer Zev Feldman. Supported by a stellar band – tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Herbie Lewis, and drummer Freddie Waits – Hubbard dazzles on seven numbers, including a stupendous rendition of Crisis, one of his signature tunes. Furnished with copious liner notes packed with insightful reminiscences, the album is available on exclusive RSD…

John McKay on being a Banshee and digging up buried treasure… Did it help, weirdly, that the Banshees famously took so long to get signed? In the meantime, other bands established the cliché of the punk sound, which allowed you the freedom to move down a non-clichéd path… In a way. They had a previous guitarist who wrote the songs, and that was much more barre-chord, 1-2-3-4 type music. But they weren’t exactly the same as everybody else already. They had something about them, when I saw them live. A little bit more, in the punk genre, than the expected process of doing things. Then I came along. I didn’t come out of the same background in music. I had other ideas. So I had to learn their set to start…

Reggae Gone International could well be the slogan of Harlem Shuffle, who run their business jointly from London and Malaysia. Hot Sauce Volume 5 (★★★★ Harlem Shuffle) is, as usual with this series, just as piquant as its title suggests. The album opens with a trio of rocksteady numbers, kicking off appropriately with the suggestive Pour On The Sauce by The Soul Leaders, which has the heavy rhythmic undertow typical of JJ_ Johnson productions. After a Lynn Taitt instrumental which spends two minutes and 50 seconds going nowhere, that JJ sound returns in fine style with The Kilowatts’ Real Cool Operator. We then move on to the boss reggae which makes up the bulk of the album, starting with Sir Collins’ rare, and these days expensive, Black Diamonds, with Clancy…

Hawkwind’s Dave Brock, Doug MacKinnon and Richard Chadwick on recent inspirations and lost civilisations… This album is not particularly generous in its view of humans, is it? DB: Well, you know what humans are like! The idea was to look beyond the tiny creatures that humans are and at the universe, everything else, which is gigantic. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be strange if all these galaxies we see are living entities that swallow each other up like the black holes?” We’ve no idea what happens when things go into them. Where do they go? So, everything we see is alive. And we are insignificant. DM: Exactly. We’re not masters of the universe. We all want to be masters of the universe. Do you want to be a master of the…

Mark Pritchard on teaming up with Thom Yorke, vintage gear and dealing with a high-profile project What was it like making this album with Thom in lockdown? I’d actually been thinking for a while about writing some stuff specifi cally with him in mind. I didn’t know at the time but he was working on The Smile, so after I sent him the stuff I didn’t hear from him for a while. But he’d get in touch to say, “Look, I haven’t forgotten about it. I’m hectic but I’m working on it.” Then one day he emailed me saying, “Next week, I’m going to send you two or three demos each day.” I don’t deliver albums quickly, but it went from there. But you can’t do email feedback. I was…

Sell Vinyl/CDs direct to RC readers, call us on 0208 752 8172 or email listings@recordcollectormag.com. Rates: recordcollectormag.com/advertise NEXT ISSUE: JUNE 2025 (on sale 15 MAY) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 28 APRIL 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: JULY 2025 (on sale 12 JUNE) Deadline: Monday 26 MAY…

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland (Track 612 008/009, 2LP, UK, 1968) £800 We were a working-class family: my dad was an electrician, and I passed the 11+ and got a free place to a posh English public school [Sevenoaks School]. Andy Gill [Gang Of Four guitarist] also went. The school had a well-resourced art department which had a record player. The older boys played Hendrix and Dylan which is how I was exposed to them. We didn’t have music at home, there wasn’t pop radio, and I didn’t have much money. I had a fruit-picking job and saved up and saved up and got Electric Ladyland. I still listen to the album in awe. Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited (CBS BPG 62572, LP, UK, 1965) £80 Highway 61 Revisited…

This month: Oasis, 18 December 1994, Manchester Academy 1, Manchester. I had seen their TV debut on The Word with Supersonic and was blown away. As a Mancunian, then the ripe old age of 34, and still thinking I had a finger to place on the pulse of rock’n’roll, I and a friend, Erica, bought tickets and travelled in from my new home in Warrington. My links to Oasis were spurious to say the least. I used to live in Denton in Manchester, four miles from Burnage, and as a 14-year-old I had played football against a Burnage team. Also, way back in June 1976, I had missed the Sex Pistols Lesser Free Trade Hall gig, as I didn’t know the telephone number of a mate who attended both of…

How come you’re back now? I was writing songs that felt like Rialto, but with a current perspective. It’s about skating on thin ice and trying to pirouette. We were getting enquiries from promoters, then Fierce Panda popped up. I was a bit squeamish, but realised how great it was that people were interested in hearing us. We slipped a couple of new songs into the live set, and they went down brilliantly. It’s easily the best Rialto record yet, with a broader mix of influences: 80s Leonard Cohen, Little Anthony & The Imperials, ABBA, Barry White, Grace Jones. Were there any amusing episodes during its creation? Via my ingenuity, fashioning a hotel wardrobe into a vocal booth! How long did the album take? Writing, three years, plus a couple…

Australian collector Brant Inderberg says he was surrounded by music from birth as his dad regularly played records at home. He and his brother Karl “got the bug” and took up lessons on drums and guitar. He has been to hundreds of concerts; one of the first his parents took him and his brother to was The Shadows in his hometown of Geelong. They also took them to a gig featuring Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, The Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis. “There are not many I haven’t seen,” he says, adding that he’d “love to see David Gilmour play but he hasn’t toured here since his Floyd days.” He regrets that he will never get to watch Gary Moore live. What do you collect, and why? I started collecting…

No 19: Rock On, 3 Kentish Town Road, Camden, London Ted Carroll started Rock On as a market stall on London’s Golborne Road in August 1971, selling records from his own collection and from stock of 1,850 Mint London American 45s including Phil Spector productions, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, plus a small number of rarities by the likes of Smiley Lewis that he’d discovered in a distributor’s attic in Dublin. The stall eventually attracted a regular clientele including Lemmy, Twink from Pretty Things plus bus-loads of Welsh teddy boys. The shop also attracted passing customers by playing records at top volume. A second stall was opened in Soho Market, managed by Roger Armstrong. In 1975, Carroll (who had managed Irish bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy)…

Take two music documentaries: Becoming Led Zeppelin and Sly Lives! Both highlight groups who became huge in the late 60s, defining their age, and contemplate them over half a century on. And yet both contrast starkly in the way they frame and tell the story of their subjects. Bernard McMahon and Allison McGourty’s acclaimed and wildly successful Becoming Led Zeppelin was seven years in the making, involved over 175 interviews, including one with Jimmy Page’s old skiffle partner and the “hip priest” so influential on the young John Paul Jones, still alive in his nineties. Yet none of these are featured in the film - they were for research, corroboration. The only narrative voices we hear are those of Page, Jones, Robert Plant and - thanks to the miraculous discovery…

If Berry Gordy was the architect of Motown, then Smokey Robinson was its soul. He didn’t just write, sing and produce – he created pop landmarks that both defined and transcended an era, blessed with a rare melodic touch, lyrical acuity and the kind of sweet, high vocal delivery that placed him in the lineage of formative heroes Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke [yet found him ascending to a whole new, ethereal plane – Ed]. He was just 15 when he formed The Five Chimes in his native Detroit. By the time they’d evolved into The Miracles in 1958, Robinson had been talent-scouted by Gordy, then looking to set up his own label. The following year’s Bad Girl duly became Motown’s first single, while 1960’s Shop Around gave the company…

My Arms, Your Hearse (1998) Our worst sleeve, probably, but we wanted to do our take on the classic cover of the first Black Sabbath record. So, if you look closely there, there’s a woman standing in the centre. Peter [Lindgren, bass/guitar], who also took the photograph, brought along his girlfriend at the time. Tina. We put a wig of long black hair on her head and painted her face white. She’s barely visible, but she’s there. The colours didn’t come out right. We wanted that grainy infra-red effect of the first Sabbath album, that many of Marcus Keef’s famous covers had. It didn’t work out. But it looks fairly spooky, much like the record sounds. At least in parts. Watershed (2008) Our first cover where we started to fool…

Art Objects Bagpipe Music (Heartbeat HB5, LP, 1981) £15 Langley’s first project. Originally released on Heartbeat Records in 1981, it was reissued on Cherry Red Records in 2007 and includes the magnificently titled Showing Off (To Impress The Girls), one side of a 7” single to accompany Magical Realism (the other side is I Will Love You, a previously unreleased track) The Blue Aeroplanes Bop Art (Abstract Sounds ABT 009, LP, UK, 1983) £15 The debut Aeroplanes album made its way to Michael Stipe and helped to jumpstart their career. Stipe remains a fan, while his take on Langley’s sprechgesang can be heard specifically on R.E.M. hits E-bow The Letter and Oh My Heart. Swagger (Ensign CHEN 13, LP, UK, 1990) £12 There have been many members of The Blue…

Scaffold A Box Of Scaffold Esoteric ECLEC 62893 (5CD/DVD) Yes, there’s more to Scaffold than Lily The Pink, much more, thank u very much! Sixty years since the playful trio came together, here’s the sum of their recorded output: 105 tracks across five CDs plus a concert DVD. What isn’t generally recognised is just how successful Scaffold were, not just an act that was unbolted after a couple of hits but one that stood firm against the elements for almost a decade with A huge live pull at home, massive TV coverage and even European and transatlantic concerts. Mike (McCartney) McGear, Roger McGough and John Gorman -- a good-looking singer, bespectacled poet and oddball comedian -- together emerged from the 60s satirical theatre scene as something akin to a psychedelic…

IRMA THOMAS’s Take A Look (★★★★ Music On Vinyl) is the New Orleans singer’s second album and follow-up to 1964’s Wish Someone Would Care. Originally issued on Imperial, it captures her expressive vocal: churchy and defiant on Van McCoy’s Times Have Changed; pure girl group on Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand), co-written by Randy Newman and Jeannie Seely; and magisterial on You Don’t Miss A Good Thing (Until It’s Gone), her co-pen with Jerry Ragovoy. THE SPINNERS’ Ain’t No Price On Happiness: The Thom Bell Studio Recordings (★★★★ Cherry Red) gets a much welcome re-press. A seven-CD box-set, it brings together expanded versions of the group’s eight Thom Bell produced albums for Atlantic – 1973’s Spinners; 1974’s Mighty Love; the same year’s New And Improved; 1975’s Pick…

Tangerine Dream Phaedra: 50th Anniversary Edition UMG 6581320 (5CD/BD) Coming out of Berlin’s arts lab underground, guitarist-organist Edgar Froese’s first Tangerine Dream line-up was never going to last. With future synth titan Klaus Schultze on runaway drums and pre-Cluster wild card Conrad Schnitzler wielding violin, 1970’s Electronic Meditation was as psyched-out as anything erupting out of krautrock’s turbulent birth period at that time. Joined by Peter Baumann and Chris Franke, Froese could set the controls for the heart of the sun on 1971’s Floyd-with-flutes Alpha Centauri before the following year’s four-track double album Zeit appearing as Tangerine Dream’s awesome deep space masterpiece. With Froese manipulating sound generator and guitar, Franke and Baumann were on keyboards and VCS3 (bolstered by Cologne Cello Quartet and synth from Popol Vuh’s Florian Fricke), creating…

Pete Townshend The Studio Albums UMC 5583476 (8CD) As the primary provider of material for The Who, therefore by and large writing songs for another voice, it could be argued that Pete Townshend put all thoughts of a parallel solo career on temporary hold. His priorities were clearly borne out by the title of the first album in this collection, Who Came First. Yet still, that 1972 effort is inextricably linked to the day job, as much of its contents were initially earmarked for the band’s follow-up to Tommy, the ultimately abandoned science fiction concept album Lifehouse. The guitarist revisited his embryonic demos once the more traditionally “rock” Who’s Next was released, giving his solo debut the feel of a patchwork collection of loose ends. For all the potential big-screen…

Bon Iver SABLE, fABLE Jagjaguwar JAG 450 (CD, 2LP, Cassette) Since his debut album as Bon Iver, 2007’s spare and cathartic breakup album For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon has revelled in defying expectations. His Bon Iver albums kicked against perceptions of him as a backwoods troubadour, becoming more daring and idiosyncratic; collages of twitchy, sampler-heavy fragments and swells of ambient sound with Vernon’s keening vocals heavily machine-manipulated. Meanwhile, collaborations with Kanye West (around his …Dark Twisted Fantasy/Yeezus peak), The Roots and The National’s Aaron Dessner (as Big Red Machine) spoke further of his determination to push boundaries. Point proven – most emphatically on his oblique masterpiece, 2017’s 22, A Million – the last few years have seen a renewed willingness for direct communication with a clutch of benefi t…

The Yardbirds: The Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound Peter Stanfield Reaktion, £25 ISBN 9781836390770, 432 pages A captivating take on a fascinating act As music history is so often rewritten, the story of The Yardbirds now seems to be reduced to little more than prequel status, usually a few lines before launching into the full Led Zeppelin saga. Even the significance of previous group guitarists Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck (no dab hands) has waned in the shadow of the group’s fourth and final lead guitarist, Jimmy Page. As Paul Samwell-Smith said in Richie Unterberger’s compelling cover feature on the group in RC 566, “I think The Yardbirds’ legacy is still being discovered, whatever it is.” The ‘whatever it is’ is explored in great detail in Peter Stanfield’s…