Every Record Tells A Story
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Records to buy on Record Store Day (that aren’t RSD releases)
April 23rd 2022 marks the UK’s fifteenth Record Store Day, a day set aside to celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store, and to hopefully keep them in business. It is still the busiest day of the year for your local shop, despite the frustrations that are associated with the event, which for…
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The Search for Kraftwerk’s Ralf and Florian
It’s 1971, and Kraftwerk are playing on German TV show The Beatclub following the release of their debut album, Kraftwerk 1. The trio feature the hirsute rock god Michael Rother on gold Les Paul guitar, Klaus Dinger in white, angel-winged shirt flailing away on his drum kit, and a dungaree-clad Florian Schneider on jazz flute…
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A Hendrix Discogswhack
Ever buy an album variant that wasn’t already on Discogs?
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A Farewell to Genesis
Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks – Genesis to you and me – played their last ever concerts at The O2 Arena this weekend. I last saw Genesis play live in 1987, at Wembley Stadium on the Invisible Touch tour. Collins was a dynamo, walking up to the stage like a boxer, every bit…
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WH Lung: Live at the Scala
With everyone having been stuck indoors for a year and a half, might WH Lung just be the band we need right now as we emerge, blinking, into civilisation once again…? Naming your band after a Chinese supermarket; Featuring a lead singer who dances like the guy from Future Islands crossed with Bez, only more…
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World Records: A New Book about Record Collectors
In 2008 New York photographer Eilon Paz was shown a photo of a man, Frank Goessner, a German, who lived around the corner from Paz in Brooklyn. Goessner was wearing combat gear, holding an AK-47, surrounded by a mass of records. As a music fan, Paz was intrigued and (perhaps bravely) met Goessner to ask…
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Recalled And Censored: The Story of The MC5’s Kick Out The Jams
The Grande Ballroom in Detroit. The home of the MC5. In front of a rabid sell-out crowd lead singer Rob Tyner is bringing the show to a close when from the wings a man leaps onstage and shoots Tyner at close range. Blood everywhere. Pandemonium. Tyner collapses and is dragged offstage. Both the singer and,…
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The Beach Boys Vinyl Challenge: Finale – How To Build Your Own Beach Boys Record Collection
The challenge: The Beach Boys have a legion of fans, but I had precisely two of their albums. What had I overlooked? And was it still possible to build up a concise collection from The Beach Boys twenty-nine studio albums that a) didn’t cost the Earth and b) that were good enough to get regular…
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The Beach Boys Challenge: Part 4: Which Early Beach Boys Records Are Worth Buying?
The challenge: After a chat with a friend revealed neither of us had any Beach Boys albums outside of Pet Sounds and Surf’s Up, could I convince myself and my friend there were other gems in The Beach Boys’ back catalogue? A good local record shop is the gift that keeps on giving. That is,…
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The Beach Boys Vinyl Challenge – Part 2: Holland.
The challenge: To find lesser known moments from The Beach Boys catalogue and build up a concise collection of Beach Boys records that a) don’t cost the Earth and b) that are good enough to get regular plays on the turntable. I popped into Wow and Flutter in Hastings while taking a couple of days…
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The Beach Boys Vinyl Challenge Part 3: After Pet Sounds
The challenge: The Beach Boys are best known for their Californian surfing-and-cars image. But fans who have dug a little deeper have found many gems in the back catalogue. When a band has produced 29 studio albums and nearly double that number of compilation LPs, it’s hard to know where to begin. My challenge was…
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The Beach Boys Vinyl Challenge
Can you still unearth great vinyl records without breaking the bank? Finding cheap vinyl records has become harder since Covid turned the world into online shoppers. But maybe it isn’t impossible… In this series we examine the vinyl legacy of that most Californian of bands, The Beach Boys. We were having a beer. It had…
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Record Collector’s 100 Ways Vinyl Can Make You Money In 2021
In its latest issue, Record Collector has sought to identify a hundred records that show “investment potential”. The cover boasts “The 100 Best Music Investments” and “How Your Vinyl Can Make You Money In 2021”. This is no bad thing. After all, we could all do with a few extra quid, if only to spend…
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2020 May You Rot And Burn In Hell! A Year In Review
Plus: The ERTAS 2020 Albums of the Year In case you hadn’t noticed, 2020 was a terrible, terrible year for pretty much everyone and everything. Even Coronavirus, which had a better 2020 than most, received bad news in the shape of vaccines that threaten to eliminate it. That’s how bad 2020 was – even a…
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The Story of The Kinks’ “Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround”
The Kinks’ “Lola versus Powermen and The Moneygoround, Part One” was their eighth and least-snappily-titled album, released fifty years ago, in 1970. It is best known for the hit single “Lola”, a now much-loved song Ray Davies famously had to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to re-record after the BBC refused to play it. This…
Every record tells a story 