Brief reflections on random records from my collection.
Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to…
Songs like ' Suddenly ', from her 2013 album One Breath had piqued my interest about Anna Calvi. When I heard the title track from her covers EP 'Strange Weather' the following year, the desire to acquire kicked in, and I ordered a vinyl copy of it (I can't recall why I didn't save myself a few pounds and get it on CD). In any event, I did not regret my purchase: it's an intriguing selection of…
Little Axe is a stage name used by guitarist Skip McDonald (itself an alias for the man born Bernard Alexander). It's also the name of one of his collaborations with producer Adrian Sherwood, aided by long-term musical associates Doug Wimbish on bass and Keith LeBlanc on drums, and also in this instance by percussionist Talvin Singh. Whereas Sherwood is best-known for his Jamaican-inspired dub,…
"Warmduscher" is, I gather, a mild German insult meaning "hot-showerer": that is, a person unwilling to undergo the bracing rigours of a cold shower, or otherwise rough it; a bit of a wimp. In this case it refers to a London-based band fronted by U.S. ex-pat Craig Louis Higgins Jr., aka Clams Baker. Their second album Whale City was one of my favourite records in 2018. I have it on CD. Whale City…
Having acquired the soubriquet "the walrus of love", Barry White thereafter became something of a figure of fun, something that misled me (and presumably others) into disregarding his music. Only within the last few years have I begun to pay it more attention. After picking up a copy of his '74 album Can't Get Enough last summer, which I loved, I sought out some of the music by his protegés Love…
I can't pinpoint my initial encounter with Neko Case's voice with any precision. It would have been between '02 and '05. Perhaps I'd heard her on The New Pornographers' song 'Mass Romantic'. Or maybe one of the tracks from Blacklisted ('02) was included on a promotional CD affixed to a music magazine. In any event, Blacklisted was certainly the first of her albums I bought. And it's turned out to…
Among the several strands of '60s revivalism in the '80s there was a re-exploration (and re-exploitation) of the classics in the Tamla Motown songbook. A new generation grew to appreciate the musicianship of "The Funk Brothers" and the vocal talents (and songwriting skills) of the likes of Smokey Robinson. Not that his music had exactly faded into oblivion: songs like 'The Tears of a Clown' (a UK…
As the Britpop wave crested in 1995, my albums of the year in that vein weren't by front-runners Blur or Oasis (though I did buy (What's the Story) Morning Glory? ) but those by dark horses Pulp and Supergrass, with the latter's debut full-length release I Should Coco issued that May. My head had been turned late the previous year by their first single 'Caught by the Fuzz', and I'd been keeping my…
My introduction to TV on the Radio was via the TV, not the Radio. In 2004 I caught the video for 'Staring at the Sun' on MTV2 and realised at once it was something well out of the ordinary. I didn't love it at first acquaintance, but after seeing and hearing it a few more times, I'd changed my mind and was inclined to pay some money for it, ordering a CD copy of the 'Young Liars' EP from Amazon.…
While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4. An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in…
If I have an album by a particular artist on vinyl, I'll generally try to get any others of theirs I want on vinyl too; or if I have one CD of someone's music, I'll typically aim to get more CDs when I choose to explore their work further. But not always. Having been given a vinyl copy of Curtis , Mr. Mayfield's excellent debut solo album, last Christmas, and having much enjoyed playing it,…
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has attracted a great deal of fervent praise and no small measure of derision in its time. As is to be expected, given that I own a copy, I count myself among its admirers. It was already five years old before I'd even heard of it. Come 2003, intrigued by laudatory reviews I'd found on-line like this one , I downloaded an mp3 copy via LimeWire. A first cursory listen…
Benny Green, one time jazz critic of The Observer , begins his sleevenotes for this UK pressing of The Oscar Peterson Trio's Night Train with a heavy-duty literary reference: "'The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of the intellect,' wrote Proust, 'in some material object we do not suspect'". Green is thereby setting up his contention that "it is a brave man indeed who…
Among my favourite songs of 1981 was The Teardrop Explodes' breakthrough single 'Reward', a UK No, 6 hit in March of that year. I was thinking it was as good a song as Julian Cope ever wrote, so was surprised to see on the label that it's credited to "Gill and Balfe", the band's guitarist and keyboardist at the time it was recorded. While Alan Gill reportedly came up with the memorable bassline…
I distinctly recall seeing Jeffrey Daniel's famous 1982 appearance on Top of the Pops promoting 'A Night to Remember': which introduced "body-popping" to a fascinated British public. The song, and the three other hit singles that followed it ('I Can Make You Feel Good', 'There It Is' and 'Friends') were very often on the radio and TV that year - and I found them pleasant enough, but my musical…
About twenty years ago I aquired a wonderful and educational 3-CD box set called OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music . Among its tracks was an excerpt from Karlheinz Stockhausen's piece 'Kontakte'. As with much of Stockhausen's output, it's not the most immediately-accessible music, but I did acquire a fondness for it, and became curious to hear all 35 minutes of the piece. I suspect I would…
For a few years I was haunted by a song I could not identify. On the infrequent occasions I listened to the radio during my time in Rome, whichever station it was I'd settled upon as the least objectionable might play a jazzy-sounding number in which a deep male voice sang in Italian, but with some words of English in the chorus: "It's wonderful... good luck my baby...I dream of you... chips,…
The Id is an album which gives the impression of having had a great deal of talent, time and money thrown at it in a way that by no means guaranteed a successful outcome. Recorded in the wake of the runaway success of her first record On How Life Is , Macy Gray's second features a large cast-list; seems to have been recorded all over the place; runs to nearly an hour long; and includes many…
Thanks to my newfound enthusiasm for Pixies' Surfer Rosa in 1988, I soon afterwards became aware of Throwing Muses, the two labelmates often being mentioned together in the music press. The next year I bought the latter band's third album Hunkpapa , only to find it easier to admire than enjoy. It wasn't until '91, and The Real Ramona (album #4), that I properly became a fan. The opening track…
Early in 2017, a correspondent asked if I knew of any contemporary Brazilian instrumental music. I did not, but on searching in YouTube I found a goldmine of such material in the form the channel of "Programa Instrumental SESC Brasil". It contained many dozens of 50-55 minute shows, each one devoted to a performance by a specific musician or group. Not only were practically all of the featured…
The clumsily-titled Stay Awhile / I Only Want to be With You was Dusty Springfield's debut US album release. As often seemed to happen, the track-listing differed from that on her first UK 12" A Girl Called Dusty , issued a couple of months beforehand. Gone are the tracks 'Do Re Mi', 'My Colouring Book', 'Nothing' and 'Don't You Know'. In their places are - as the album title suggests - her first…
The Supersuckers took a sharp turn off the rock'n'roll highway in 1997 with their fourth album Must've Been High , which saw them travel for the first time "down that old dirt road to the country". I'd previously heard 'Born With a Tail' (from The Sacrilicious Sounds Of The Supersuckers : album #3) so had an inkling of where they'd driven from to get there, but this was my first proper…
Travelin' Light is the fourth and last album jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn recorded in the '60s, before taking time away from the limelight to devote to family life. Thereafter she performed only occasionally in and around her home city of Washington D.C., until the first stirrings of a career revival in the late '70s. Her early records had been well-reviewed and earned admiration from her…
Domenico Scarlatti is thought to have composed five hundred and fifty five keyboard sonatas in his time (1685-1757). None quite reach seven minutes' duration, so they're brief pieces - but there are so many. How best to approach this body of work? Some intrepid harpsichordists and pianists have recorded them all, with Scott Ross's complete set the first to be released, in 1988. Wonderful as they…
My copy of 'Nutbush City Limits' is clearly marked "Promotional / NOT FOR SALE" yet I paid a pound for it about three years ago. So far, I have escaped any adverse consequences for contravening that 49-year-old interdiction; as, to the best of my knowledge, has the charity shop that sold it to me. It has a stereo mix of the song on one side and a mono one on the other. On the label is a helpful…