For a variety of reasons, it’s been far longer than intended since I last posted anything here. So this is now the first of my weekly updates, which will mostly, I hope, be posted every Friday. It’s been a funny summer; a house move,…
Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (Vertigo/Mercury, 1970; Bronze shortly thereafter) This year (2016), BMG begins an extensive reissue campaign of releases by one of the original Spinal Tap-influencing ‘rock dinosaur’ bands, the mighty Uriah Heep. Along with an anthology, the first of these releases is, logically…
Any kind of masochism is (to non-masochists/collaborators) peculiar and difficult to understand; no less so when it is related to music; but I’m going to try to understand it anyway. I have isolated three main areas which can be loosely classified under the ‘masochistic’…
Towards the end of his all-too-short life, the great Jimi Hendrix ‘enjoyed’ two parallel careers; as the innovative, genre-defying guitar god of Electric Ladyland and Band of Gypsies – and, somewhat less prestigiously, as the obviously talented but non-extrovert guitarist on a range of cash-in albums….
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Abi Bailey has an impressive list of credits to her name; as a session musician she has worked with Emilíana Torrini, Sylver Tongue, Brian Eno & Karl Hyde, among many others, but her work as a solo artist is even more impressive. Her…
Tea-table* books is an occasional series devoted to the best books for casually enjoying while relaxing with a hot beverage. Usually large format and illustrated (yes, just like ‘coffee table books’), the best tea-table books are of course just as good when read from cover-to-cover, but…
Something of an experiment; reviewing an album while actually listening to it. As will be seen, the downside of this approach is that there isn’t much time for fact-checking and so forth and it leads to a lot of description rather than actual criticism, but…
By this point, 2016 has started to develop its true character, mainly based on famous people dying and political and religious extremism: halcyon days! Ah well, never mind, I’ve listened to, looked at and read lots of things which passed the time pleasantly and helped…
Firstly, let’s acknowledge that there are a few reasons that bands who have long since split up should reform, but they are mostly reasons relevant to the band itself and not their fans; unfinished business (various kinds) reaping the rewards (personal, financial) that they didn’t get…
A short month, but full of things, not least my own birthday! So plenty of stuff to discuss… Unfortunately, David Bowie is still dead and in fact has been more productive than ever as a commercial entity, as music, magazines, TV shows, pop stars…