Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 532 i Record Collector

rc.editorial@metropolis.co.uk www.recordcollectormag.com Record Collector Magazine @RecCollmag RecordCollectormag @recordcollectormag GLAM SANDWICH Thank you for your cover feature on David Bowie and Roxy Music [RC 531], which brought back many happy memories. In 1971, when I was Music Editor for Gollum, the student newspaper of Blackpool Tech (Blackpool College Of Technology & Art), I was approached by a local St Joseph's Catholic high school student called Larry Cassidy (he of Section 25 Factory Records fame) with questions about how to print multiple copies of an “underground” newspaper called Forbidden Fruit that he and a few friends had put together with articles critiquing the school and teachers/priests. I told him that I could run off 30 or so copies on our office mimeograph machine at no cost. Unfortunately, before Larry was able to…

Johnny Sharp interviews John Lydon (p82) and his former Sex Pistol bandmates (p88). But he is staying neutral in the row over using the band's music in the upcoming TV series, Pistol. “I can see both sides of the argument,” he says. “That's not very punk rock, is it?” John Tucker came across Dream Theater (p68) and their Majesty demos in tape-trading days and was intrigued, but it was the Images And Words album and ensuing gig at Bristol's Bierkeller (RIP) that hooked him completely. Fanboy fawning has been edited out of his interview with Jordan Rudess and John Myung. Garth Cartwright has loved the Four Tops (p62) ever since he first heard Reach Out, I'll Be There in his early teens – thus interviewing Duke Fakir for RC was a…

Cave In How come you're back with a new set now? Stephen Brodsky: The mission statement for our last creative venture with Caleb Scofield was always intended to be documented this way as part of his vision. Despite the hardship of losing him, we were able to fulfil his wishes. Adam McGrath: It's our first record with Nate Newton playing bass and collaborating on writing. His contributions cannot be understated. Was there anything unusual about the album's creation? SB: We did some fun stuff in the studio. There's a part in New Reality where we simulated the sound of a talkbox by crafting a ridiculous set-up, and a section in another song with me and Nate singing into my guitar pick-up. How long did it take? AM: We did it…

This month: Westside Gunn In the upcoming 2024 edition of the Rare Record Price Guide a new artist has a whole page of entries. Quite an achievement considering that their first UK release did not hit the shops until 2015. American rapper, musician and producer Westside Gunn released his first mixtape Stateside in 2005 but his career was interrupted by a spell in prison. In 2012 he co-founded Griselda records with his brother (and collaborator) Conway the Machine. The first release was the EP Hitler Wears Hermes, a digital mixtape and CD-R Stateside. He began releasing here on the boutique hip hop label Daupe!, set up in 2012 by Lawrence Lord aka The Purist whose mantra is “Quality Not Quantity.” The first Westside Gunn release came in 2016 when Daupe!…

BROTHERS OF THE PRIDE THE BROTHERS BUTCH Kay, Why?/I'm Not Going Camping This Winter (Thrust Records TS 69, 7”, UK, 1967) £20 £50 w/picture sleeve With the passing of the Sexual Offences Act and the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, 1967 was a watershed year for Britain's LGBT community. That same year, a disc sold by mail-order and dripping in double entendres and gay innuendo crept onto the market. Since they were credited on the picture sleeve (correctly) as The Brothers Butch, but on the disc as The Butch Brothers, the true identities of the people behind camp classic Kay, Why? have remained unknown for the last 55 years. Until now. Titled after the leading brand of water-based lubricant, Kay, Why? was not the first queer pop record, but it was one of…

HANS ZIMMER Soundtrack (Mondo MOND 239) £1,000 Dune (Dune Sketchbook) triple-disc, limited collector's edition release. (eBay item number: 334322474189) Supplied by eBay GATECREEPER Sonoran Depravation (Relapse RR7362) £10,001 Death metal LP outing from Arizona with doom overtones. (eBay item number: 293562333360) Supplied by eBay U2 The Joshua Tree (Island U26) £5,621 Mispress. Side B features tracks from the LP The Unforgettable Fire. (eBay item number: 293562333360) Supplied by eBay FRANK OCEAN Endless (Boys Don't Cry 602557139785) £266 A CD/DVD combo of electro hiphop and funk. (eBay item number: 282813040620) Supplied by eBay ARTHUR WILLIS & SOULFUL DYNAMICS The Hurting is Over (Mars La Tour MLT 2051A) £6,816 Northern soul 7” with I've Got To Find A Way on the flip. Supplied by Popsike CHUCK COCKERHAM Have I Got a Right (Mal…

We need to talk about James Brown. Look, I know his singles were wicked, while a lot of his albums could be dodgy, but that wasn't always the case, and it wasn't entirely his fault. Much of his career was spent on King, a label he realised was too unadventurous for him as early as 1962, but he couldn't escape its clutches, despite a short contract-breaking diversion to Smash two years later. King, like many companies, saw R&B and soul as singles music. If your 45 made the charts, you issued an album, comprising the hit, lesser 45s, and filler. Shockingly, King even rejected the idea of Brown's 1962 Live At The Apollo, one of soul's greatest albums, until he agreed to finance it. The LP haunted the US charts…

SIMON MCBRIDE Deep Purple live guitarist on his latest set What film could your album soundtrack? Con Air. How did you get the Deep Purple European tour gig? I'd recorded with Don Airey and Ian Gillan, and played with Roger Glover and Ian Paice. If you could re-visit any of your albums, what'd you change? I'd redo them all. Is there anything still unissued? Various that I can't talk about, an instrumental album, and live stuff from my band and others. Have you done anything that fans may not know about? Lots of sessions, TV documentaries, films and, recently, Liverpool FC. Where were you when you first heard one of your songs on vinyl? My house - Don Airey One Of A Kind. What was your favourite record shop when…

Joe Cocker The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress from I Can Stand A Little Rain (Cube HIFLY 18, LP, UK, 1974) £8 Webb laid down a wonderful version of this on 1977's El Mirage, but it was three years earlier that Cocker delivered a recording that now resonates even more than Campbell's or Linda Ronstadt's. A soaring work that benefits from Webb's own piano flourish and a vocal commitment up there with the best of Cocker's output. Nanci Griffith If These Walls Could Speak from Ruby's Torch (Rounder 11661 3265 2, CD, Europe, 2006) £12 A second recording of this for Griffith, and the fragile lament seemed made for her. As she climbs into the line “They would tell you that I'm sorry” it would be a hard heart that didn't cave.…

Six degrees of inner trivia Along with 15 studio albums, the band also have nine live releases, 14 fanclub CDs and 22 official bootlegs to their name. And one EP. That EP is the 23-minute, seven-part A Change Of Seasons, which was originally written during the Images And Words sessions. Augmented by a collection of covers recorded at Ronnie Scott's on 31 January 1995 it was released in September 1995 and although it's not generally included in the band's album tally, it clocks in at 57:30 and hit No 88 in the UK Album Chart. Live Scenes From New York was recorded on 30 Aug 2000 at New York's Roseland Ballroom and features the whole Scenes From A Memory album plus other material on a 3CD set. With unfortunate timing…

What made The Associates different from other 80s bands? I would say that we were less careerist and didn't fit. An awful lot of our songg were about not belonging. That New Romantic shit? We didn't fit into that and we certainly didn't fit into a highly polished ABC thing. You once described the sessions for Sulk as madness. It was a febrile level of intensity from beginning to end. We block-booked the studio and gave them a cheque for £30,000, and said, look, if we think we need a few days off, you can sublet it to Bauhaus, Siouxsie & The Banshees or whoever. Legend has it that Sulk was fuelled by lots of cocaine. [Our co-producer] Mike Hedges and I once did a line that was the length…

Neil Young OBS 3: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 1971 ★★★★ Shakey Pictures 0093624885115 (CD, LP) OBS 4: Royce Hall, 1971 ★★★★ Shakey Pictures 0093624885085 (CD, LP) OBS 5: Citizen Kane Jr Blues –The Bottom Line, 1974 ★★★★★ Shakey Pictures 0093624885092 (CD, LP) First, some housekeeping. You didn't miss the second volume of Neil Young's Official Bootleg Series, that's High Flyir' – a 1977 set backed by The Ducks – coming soon. And yes, this second round of releases in the series following last year's Carnegie Hall, 1970, are numbered out of chronological order. Young's stated intention was to improve on the sound of the original bootlegs, he didn't say anything about the release schedule making any sense. And yet, the untidy roll-out works when you consider that it's Neil Young we're…

Some artists are dismissive of their early recordings. How do you feel about Come Away With Me 20 years on? I don't feel like it's the best thing I've done – I think I keep getting better – but it changed my life and I'm proud of it. It's a real slice of time for me, which is special to look back on. I'm not someone who looks back on things a ton, so when the label wanted to do an anniversary thing, I said only if it makes sense. It turned out we had so many unreleased recordings from that record, so it felt really special to release them because they sound really good. They're not just a bunch of crappy demos. The 20th anniversary box set includes the…

It says here you've been “struggling to reconcile the lo-fi Dana of the Brighton scene with bona fide indie star Dana”. I didn't write that! I thought it was funny. But I didn't object. There are a few songs on the album that touch on this idea of being in a band and everything that entails. When we were supposed to release the last album and go on this huge tour, I didn't really know how to do it or what I wanted. Now I feel a lot more ready. When we released that album, we'd been a band for about five years, but we hadn't had to do anything in this high-pressure way. Suddenly a lot of people were saying, “Okay. This is your moment. Off you go!” The…

Why did you decide to experiment with Al on Raw Data Feel? Jonathan is interested in those cutting-edge technologies anyway, and the blurring of the lines between the human and the robotic is an area that he's explored before. He'd drawn on the same sources for the first five albums and wanted a different way to approach things. It ended up a lot like a collaboration, with him taking cues from juxtapositions that a human mind maybe wouldn't have. Strangely, it turns out to be your most human album. Ironically, yes. It's funny, it reminds me of the Kraftwerk thing of steadily becoming more and more robotic and machine-like, striving for this kind of mechanised perfection, that is ironically really human. I think the new emotion has come through because…

Sell Vinyl/CDs direct to RC readers, call us on 0208 752 8172 or Email listings@recordcollectormag.com NEXT ISSUE: JULY 2022 (on sale 16 JUNE) Deadline for submitting adverts (Listings & Classified): Monday 23 MAY Please email your advert (word doc/excel file/plain text) to: listings@recordcollectormag.com (Postal address: Record Collector Listings, Diamond Publishing Ltd, 7th Floor Vantage London, Great West Road, London, TW8 9AG) Following issue: AUGUST 2022 (on sale 14 JULY) Deadline: Monday 20 JUNE…

Spotlighting an upcoming road trip This month: EMBRACE'S DANNY MCNAMARA How have you prepared for the tour? Pretty much all the songs on the new album were played live as a band in the studio, so rehearsing won't be too difficult. Do you have any pre-/post-show routines? Some of us like a couple of beers or Red Bulls. Quite often your legs can be shaking before going onstage, but it never gets old. Will the set-list change much? It depends on how well the first night goes. We tweak it until we get it right. Are there any venues that you're particularly looking forward to? Brixton Academy - first time in 17 years - and Manchester Apollo, Nottingham Rock City, Norwich UEA. Will you check out your tour support? I…

This month: The Chemistry Set The Chemistry Set emerged in the late 80s, indie's peak period, but they never stared at their footwear or chased a buck in the indiedance scene: their guitars pulsed with psychedelia. Now operating as a multi-instrumentalist duo of Dave McLean and Paul Lake, they are modern psych stalwarts whose inventiveness, craft and wit are adored by a tight-knit fanbase, and their swelling discography is packed with collector-tempting treasures. Their heavyweight, strikingly packaged Pink Felt Trip arrives in June. Perhaps they'll be less of a niche attraction this time. If anybody's earned recognition, it's The Chemistry Set, with around 60 releases behind them. Their excitement about the album is palpable. McLean says: “Lockdown found me and Paul jamming for months. Several songs came together. Pink Felt…

Pioneering songwriter and prime mover, Sharon Sheeley, was only 16 when she befriended Elvis Presley and attempted to date Tommy Sands, who was then riding high in the charts with Teenage Crush (1957). At the show where Sheeley first met Sands, she also met Gene Vincent who offered her a drop of the hard stuff, though an underage Sheeley had the good sense to decline. Realising she had the nerve to charm her way into the orbits of rising stars, Sheeley next set her sights on Ricky Nelson; the all-American clean-cut kid soon fell under her spell. As her confidence increased, she began setting her poems to music and, with the aid of a former schoolfriend, recorded a demo of one: a composition entitled Poor Little Fool. Rock'n' roll then…

Now, of all times, you could probably do with some good news. How about this: we report, in these pages, the “continued growth of new physical music sales”, with vinyl (and CD) revenues up and BPI research revealing that, in 2021, non-reissue albums increased their share of the UK vinyl LP market by 43%. There's more: rock albums provided 60% of all new physical album sales while a survey of 1,000-plus people concluded that 20% of UK adults who'd bought music in the last year did so by purchasing vinyl. It's nice to be on the right side of history. Our cover stars this month, probably more than any other band, forced music lovers and record collectors to take sides and make choices. I remember listening to Capital Radio and…

No 44: The Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Australia Located in Melbourne's beachside suburb of St Kilda, The Palais Theatre is one of Australia's largest seated venues with a capacity of just under 3,000, spread over two levels. Designed by New Zealand- born architect Henry E White, with architecture featuring Baroque and art deco elements, it opened its doors in 1927 as Palais Pictures, a very popular cinema until the advent of television in the 50s, when it suffered a decline in attendances. In order to remain in business, the Palais reinvented itself as a live entertainment venue. It hosted performances from Abbott & Costello, Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong, and others of similar ilk. With live performances proving popular, the venue began hosting rock concerts soon after, with the likes of Trie…

Pop will eat itself, I once wrote, and a group named themselves after what I wrote. But the fact is pop has done more than eat itself, it's eaten itself and thrown itself up and then eaten that up and been sick again and so on, like the dog after it's been at some very tasty margarine. In the year 2022, every single aspect of popular music has been recycled, upcycled, uploaded, downloaded, downed and dissected. Every record sounds like another record and all the ones that don't sound like another record are actually made of that other record. And in among all that, just to make things confusing, are the artists who, in a peculiarly specific form of navel-gazing, have been influence by themselves. How? I hear you ask.…

OPINION Multi-instrumentalist Edgar Winter crossed musical borders from rock to pop in the 70s, hard-hitting albums alongside singles success with Frankenstein and Free Ride. He's been off the radar for a while but returns leading an all-star cast - Joe Walsh, Ringo Starr, Joe Bonamassa, Michael McDonald, Billy Gibbons and many more — on Brother Johnny. The album is a tribute to his blues-rocking sibling, who died in 2014, shortly before the brothers, with their famed albino looks, were due to tour together. It's eight years since Johnny died. Why this album now? It did take a long time for me to decide — I've gone years not making this record! Right after Johnny's passing, I was approached by a lot of people to do a tribute album and it…

In late January of this year, The Horse Hospital, near London's Russell Square, hosted an exhibition tided From The Port To The Bridge. It featured the work and legacy of Thomas Leer and the late Robert Rental, two of the earliest practitioners of post-punk electronic music, who never received their pop due. Daniel Miller, now head of Mute, who are reissuing Leer and Rental's 1979 album The Bridge, did a Q&A and there was a short film featuring Throbbing Gristle's Chris and Cosey and Leer himself, unable to attend in person due to Covid concerns. Leer, Rental and The Normal (aka Daniel Miller) understood that electronic instruments weren't the expensive, remote preserve of prog but were key instruments in the democratising, minimalist, anti-rock aesthetic of punk — even if fans…

Inspired by NYC-based Ork Records – the label that put out Television's 1975 debut single, Little Johnny Jewel – Chris Stamey launched an independent record label of his own. Founded in 1977 and lasting a short time, Car Records only released an EP and a handful of singles, but all are significant in the world of indie rock and (whether one likes the term or not) power pop. Sneakers In The Red EP (CRR3, US, 1977) £15 Recorded in 1977, the nine-song Sneakers EP was the most commercial in a long succession of home recordings made by lifelong friends Chris Stamey and Mitch Easter. Guitarist Easter wasn't officially a member of Sneakers when the basic tracks were cut, though he's all over the final recordings. Will Rigby (later of The…

Back in 1977, this notorious A&M 7” was supposed to be a hit record. Sex Pistols were dropped by EMI in December 1976 following their notorious appearance on the Today show but their sole EMI single, Anarchy In The UK/I Wanna Be Me, got to No 38 in the charts. By early 1977, manager Malcolm McLaren honed the list of new suitors down to CBS and A&M. Derek Green of A&M sealed the deal in February with a two-year contract with an annual advance of £75,000. Green gambled that the Pistols would sell as strongly as his biggest artist, Peter Frampton. The Pistols were photographed signing their contract outside Buckingham Palace on Thursday 10 March 1977 (they officially signed the day before at A&M's publishing company Rondor Music). Planning to…

WILLIAM BELL prototyped country soul, invented the Stax Records sound and wrote a stone cold blues classic to boot when, in 1961, he entered Memphis' Stax Recording Studios at 926 E McLemore and backed by the Triumphs – pianist Marvell Thomas, organist Booker T Jones, bassist Lewis Steinberg and drummer Ron Capone – recorded his debut solo single. It was titled You Don't Miss Your Water, a secular spiritual he'd written in a New York hotel room while on tour with the jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Sr and his orchestra. Produced by Chips Moman, it was delivered by Bell's yearning tenor, a fine balance between vulnerability, knowing and control and pinned to churchy organ and countryish guitar. It guaranteed Bell's legacy and became one of Stax's first major hits, marking…

Following his international success with Nicky Thomas, chronicled in our last column, producer JOE GIBBS was able to open his own studio. The year 1971 would be a hectic and prolific one for him, as shown by the double CD Freedom To The People (★★★★ Doctor Bird). Its 54 tracks give an ultra vivid picture of his activities with stars like U-Roy and Max Romeo, artists who would trouble the scorers but briefly before disappearing into history, such as Uriel Aldridge and Bunny Flip, and the real stars of the collection, The Heptones. The trio's nine inclusions, virtually their entire output for Gibbs, ably demonstrate their polished, apparently effortless harmonies, on US songs like Ruby & The Romantics' Our Day Will Come and original compositions such as I've Got A…

Sonic Youth NYC Ghosts & Flowers (Geffen 00602547413857 2016) For many years, Sonic Youth could've done little more than trip over their own amplifier cables and still drawn glowing reviews. With unusual tunings, alternating vocalists, and feedback aplenty, their whole run up to 1988's Daydream Nation marked a muso-friendly milestone in art-rock. Thereafter, with ties to grunge, riot grrrl and other vibrant scenes, Sonic Youth were cooler than Captain Oates' pinkies. Around the turn of the millennium, however, they found themselves pilloried like never before. Headlining ATP in April 2000, Sonic Youth were booed for playing a 25-minute improvisation followed by material from NYC Ghosts & Flowers, which wasn't out yet. When the album was released the following month, critics' gloves were off. Its “minimalist noodling” was rated 0.0 out…

New Albums Arcade Fire WE ★★★ Columbia 19439971221 (CD, LP) These are interesting times for Arcade Fire. With 2017's Everything Now, Montreal's 00s alt-figureheads suffered their steepest dip of critical momentum since 2004's ecstatic Funeral. Latterly, live show-stealer Will Butler's departure –however amicable – can't help but present further challenges. Continuing a policy seemingly set with 2013's Reflektor – Scary Monsters via Achtung Baby – the band's response seems to be to “do a U2”. In the early 00s, Bono's boys followed their postmodern 90s grandstanding with smaller-than-usual gigs, featuring their frontman speechifying about “reapplying for the job” of the world's best band. Likewise, Arcade Fire's sixth album arrives with the lofty pre-release campaigns of Reflektor/Everything Now replaced by intimate, pay-what-you-can benefit gigs in New York and none-rnore-00s single The…

Bowie Odyssey 72 Simon Goddard ★★★★ Omnibus Press, £17 ISBN 9781913172480, 152 pages In which Ziggy touches down and Bowie takes off… Last time we saw David Bowie he was in a Kensington nightclub, surveying the queer scene he'd both taken so much from and become a figurehead for. Hunky Dory was out, Bowie not yet so, but his headline-grabbing statement in Melody Maker –“I'm gay and always have been, even when I was David Jones” – rings in the new year of 1972 and kick-starts the third instalment in Simon Goddard's wonderful Bowie Odyssey series. Where its predecessor found Bowie flush with bold ideas and playfully embracing gender fluidity, Bowie Odyssey 72 captures glam-rock curdling at his feet, even as the Ziggy Stardust album embodied glam's short-lived flights of…

READER SERVICES Call on 020 8752 8172 or email stockists@metropolis.co.uk for more information or to sign up today! SOUTH EAST Across the Tracks - ‘On busiest corner of hip pest city, open seven days. Thousands of rarities in the shop that aren't on the net. All genres, including classical and new CD promos, nothing mundane. Collections bought.' 110 Gloucester Road, Brighton BN1 4AF. Tel: 01273 677906. edfrombrighton@tiscali.co.uk www.acrossthetracksrecords.com Alan's Record & CD Shop - ‘Diggers paradise! Over 18,000 quality used 7”/12” LPs/CDs. Specialising in Reggae, Soul, Jazz, Rock, Hip Hop, Dance. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:30am, Wednesdays by appointment only. Independent and stubbornly individual.' 218 High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9AY. Tel: 0208 883 0234. alanrecordman@tiscali.co.uk Ben's Collectors Records - Long standing record shop in the heart of…

Return To Forever Light As A Feather (Polydor PD5525, LP, US, 1973) £15 Arriving in the US in 1967, Rio-born Purim worked with saxophonist Stan Getz before entering the orbit of Chick Corea when her husband, percussionist Airto Moreira, played with him in Miles Davis' band. When Corea founded Return To Forever in 1972, he recruited Purim and Airto. The best album they appear on is Light As A Feather, where the singer's unique otherworldly vocals sounded like a lysergic amalgam of Sarah Vaughan and Astrud Gilberto. It duly anointed her the “First Lady of Fusion”. Butterfly Dreams (Milestone M-9052, LP, USA, 1974) £15 After her scene-stealing stint in Return To Forever made the jazz world take notice, in late 1973 Purim signed with the Milestone label run by producer…

This month: Bath Festival of Blues, 28 June 1969 It's a couple of months after my 15th birthday, it's early on a Saturday morning in June, and I'm with my girlfriend Liz and our friend Valda, waiting for a coach bound for the Bath Recreation Ground. The reason: I'm about to be introduced to live music. And what an introduction: Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall, Ten Years After, The Nice, Chicken Shack, Blodwyn Pig, Colosseum, Taste, Keef Hartley… the list goes on. Ticket price: 18/6d (92.5p). We never had it so good. Around mid-morning, we arrive at the festival “site” in the heart of Bath. The crowd is growing but we have no problem finding a suitable piece of real estate to claim as our own. The Recreation Ground…

Clay Walker/If I Could Make A Living/Hypnotise The Moon/Rumor Has It 2CD, Morello, 10 June. ■ Margo Price Maybe We'll Make It book, University Of Texas Press, 4 October. ■ Martin Simpson has exclusive cuts/footage via patreon.com. Due: May (27) Boo Hewerdine Understudy, Reveal June (17) Brett Eldredge Songs About You, store.bretteldredge.com November (4) Nina Nastasia Riderless Horse, Temporary Residence. Blues Tedeschi Trucks Band I Am The Moon I – Crescent film is out 31 May, with CD, 180g LP, 3 June, II – Ascension, film, 28 June, CD, 180g LP, 1 July, III – The Fall, film, 26 July, CD, 180g LP, 29 July, IV – Farewell film, 23 August, CD, 180g LP, 2,000-copy box, with 180g 4LP, four prints, photobook, slipmat., calendar, 26 August, Universal. ■ Joanne Shaw Taylor Blues From The Heart Live…

I remember the 80s — who could forget them! – and those top new wave stars like The Fixx. Come on, you remember! Well, if you're from North America you absolutely will, because the Londoners' One Thing Leads To Another got to No 4 in the US and topped the Canadian chart in 1984. Pretty good going for the band formerly known as The Fix, and they had three other US Top 20 hits. They still tour in the States, but over here their profile has steadily remained somewhere between that of The Headboys and Cava Cava. One-sided stories like this are less intriguing than acts who are well-known on either side of the Atlantic (it isn't a pond) for completely different songs. Often this was down to a time-lag…

A month or so ago, I took part in a Vice magazine interview about the 90s. One of those revisionist pieces that came to the conclusion that - quelle surprise! - the 90s and Oasis and Blur and all the gang were perhaps not all they were cracked up to be. “Would you get The Auteurs back together?” asked the man with the questions. “Nope,” said I, the man with answers. “Besides, I'm in a band with Peter Buck now. Why on earth would I get The Auteurs back together?” And so it has come to pass, that “postpandemic” - I write those two words while narrowing my eyes and peering over my glasses at this text as if I've just told myself a lie — myself and Peter Buck…

Sitting in the living room of his home in Oyster Bay, a North Shore/Long Island residence with views across the bay to Connecticut, the great American songwriter Jimmy Webb is in contemplative mood. Not only is he geographically distanced from his native Oklahoma past, he's at a remove from the mythic “town” songs that his vocal muse, Glen Campbell, made famous, putting Galveston, Phoenix, and Wichita on the map like a musical equivalent of an Edward Hopper landscape. Webb talks like he walks - slowly and precisely, sentences as considered as notes on a stave. “Now I'm 75, I get to sit around and listen to great singers from the past,” he tells RC at the start of our two hours together. “Our generation is moving into the wings and…

For someone who not so long ago spoke of facing “financial ruin”, John Lydon is in remarkably good spirits. We meet the one-time enfant terrible of punk across a transatlantic Zoom link, where we find him sat at his breakfast table at home in Los Angeles, looking in fine shape for 66, glugging cans of San Pellegrino mineral water (sparkling, we presume, judging by the number of belches that punctuate his answers) and puffing on a succession of cigarettes (“Marlboro - more expensive than marijuana!”). He seems in ebullient, effusive mood, even when venting considerable spleen against his former Sex Pistols bandmates, against whom he lost a court case last September, failing to prevent them using the band's music in the upcoming Danny Boyle TV series, Pistol. That may have…

Reviews 98 From The Vaults 108 New Albums 114 Books 116 Singles 128 Lives Reissues, remasters and compilations The Associates Sulk (40th Anniversary Edition) ★★★★★ BMG 4050538713893 (3CD, LP) In my mind's eye, I can still see Billy Mackenzie's face looking down from the stage with an impish grin. It was October 1980 and The Associates were performing at the Fan Club, a squalid dive bar in Leeds. There were only about 10 people watching (a few earnest student types plus a couple of lairy skinheads) but it seemed criminally unfair that a band which sounded like Siouxsie & The Banshees fronted by a vocal contortionist – equal parts crooner, cabaret performer and operatic tenor – should attract such a minuscule audience. You can get a good idea of how…

It's a thought too hideous to contemplate, perhaps, because it might be true; that JOHN COLTRANE could be the musical father of Kenny G. After all, if it wasn't for Coltrane, who almost single-handedly popularised the soprano saxophone with his jazzedup version of Rodgers & Hart's My Favorite Things in 1961, we might not have had one Kenny Gorelick, the Seattle-born pied piper of fuzak, whose slick but soulless soprano saxophone-led single Songbird was a big US chart hit 25 years later. But fast forward to 2022 and no one's listening to Kenny G while Trane's audience and legend is still growing thanks to reissues that are keeping his name alive and introducing his music to new generations. The latest is My Favorite Things: 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (★★★★★ Rhino),…

Norah Jones Come Away With Me ★★★★ Blue Note/UMe 3884249 (3CD, 4LP) Soft as a sigh, holier than a prayer, it was a voice that came out of nowhere, like a gift from heaven. It was new and fresh, youthful and innocent and yet also wise, sophisticated, grown-up and timeless; and it belonged to 22-year-old Norah Jones, whose debut album Come Away With Me combined country, folk, blues, soul and jazz elements into a gorgeously unclassifiable melange that quickly seduced the world. It was an album whose whispered declarations of love and uniquely low key, intimate style – epitomised by the Jesse Harris-penned debut single I Don't Know Why – went refreshingly against the “look at me” gain of early noughties female power pop; and it succeeded in transforming a…

Porridge Radio Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky ★★★★ Secretly Canadian SC 450 (CD, LP) Porridge Radio's debut album, 2016's Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers, was recorded partly in their drummer's shed. That was out of necessity, rather than DIY puritanism, and the band haven't hidden their ambitions. “I wanna be Coldplay, obviously,” singer and principal songwriter Dana Margolin deadpanned to NME when promoting 2020's Every Bad. There would be no tour to promote that record, for obvious reasons, which didn't prevent it from earning glowing reviews and a Mercury nomination. With gigging out of the question, Porridge Radio simply knuckled down and worked on their follow-up. Another refreshing triumph in a climate dominated by vanilla postpunk chest-thumpers, it's likely to lift Porridge Radio, if not yet to stadium…

Everything Everything Raw Data Feel ★★★★ Infinity Industnes EVEV 2 LPI (CD, LP) The meeting of man and machine has increasingly been a theme of Everything Everything's eccentric, danceable artrock. The societal effects of multimedia overload, and its potential dystopian consequences, has often added a serious tone to the Manchester-based quartet's surreal sense of adventure. Their sixth album, Raw Data Feel, takes it further. Singer and lyricist Jonathan Higgs, hoping to jolt his writing process somewhere new, teamed up with a professor University of York to work with an Al machine band named Kevin, a “digital George Martin” who is namechecked across several tracks. The pair fed the machine with text from Beowulf, Confucius, the 4chan comment section and Linkedln's terms and conditions – the beauty, wisdom, horror and banality…

The Suede Crocodiles Stop The Rain/Pleasant Dreamer Optic Nerve ON 402 The Suede Crocodiles' career was the pop ideal personified: say what you're saying, then get out. No albums of unreleased shit, no tussle with major labels who'd misunderstood them, no tiresome reformation rumours. Produced by folky type Rab Noakes, this 1983 single is pure Glaswegian indie; cheerful, clean, crisp and dry like Spry, its hooks rattle in your head. They had fantastic days touring with the Dark Overlord of Indie, Nick Heyward, and fell apart before their second single arrived, leaving Kevin McDermott to carry on the good works. I could tell you about the poster, postcard, super packaging etc, but it's Optic Nerve, so you're expecting that. The Disney song is wrong: smile at these crocodiles. Hodges, James…

Ashanti May (29) London Wembley OVO Arena (31) Leeds First Direct Arena June (1) Birmingham Utilita Arena (2) Manchester AO Arena Black Label Society June (7-8) London Camden Electric Ballroom (9) Liverpool O2 Academy (11) Donington Download Festival (13) Folkstone Leas Cliff Hall Blood Red Shoes June (9) Leeds Brudenell (11) Newcastle Think Tank (12) Glasgow King Tut's (15) Brighton Chalk (16) Birmingham O2 Institute No-Man's Tim Bowness June (10) Liverpool Prohibition (11) London Brentford Musical Museum (18) London Rough Trade East Phoebe Bridgers June (22) Glasgow Barrowlands (24-25) Glastonbury Festival (26) Birmingham O2 Academy July (22) Henham Park Latitude Festival (23) Manchester O2 Apollo (26) London Brixton O2 Academy Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! June (3) Liverpool District (4) Manchester Yes (5) Leeds Brudenell (7) Cambridge Portland Arms (8)…

Rugby's Just For The Record is the result of music-loving owner Sally Wolanski taking the plunge into the world of record retailing six years ago. The plunge worked - with plenty of regulars, this multi-genre shop is booming and stocks around 25,000 records. Sally tells Steve Burniston the inspiring story. How did the shop come about and what kind of music do you sell? I've always been an avid vinyl collector: music is my passion. Over 40 years my collection grew to over 6,500 records and I started to run out of house to store them in! Eventually I wanted to reclaim my home, so six years ago I decided to take the plunge and open up a record shop, and the rest as they say is history! I stock…

Adam And The Ants Antmusic (CBS 9352, 7”, UK, 1980) £2 My first awareness of the band was Dog Eat Dog on Top Of The Pops. People who saw Bowie had the same experience: “I want to do that.” My older brother had a lot of records that influenced me. He came home with this, and I remember begging for it. I cried, I wanted it so badly. It was the first significant record I owned. I still go back to the album it's on, Kings Of The Wild Frontier. The native American vocals — a song on our new album, Tommy Hawk, is a nod to that. That's where my stage make-up comes from, something I can hide behind. The Jam Down In The Tube Station At Midnight (Polydor…