Boney M - Night Flight To Venus

The same mixtapes that got me into Cardiacs also contained Night Flight To Venus/Rasputin nestled alongside The Fall, Zappa, Beefheart. It worked. Even though I was obviously very familiar with Rasputin, it made me hear it differently and enjoy it, rather than dismissing it as pop shite.

I was just thinking about those tapes today. I wish I still had them. The covers were hand drawn works of art, and the person who did them is now quite a collectible artist.

It meant I picked this up in a chazza for ten bob when I saw it.

Hard to fault the production on this, even though most of the album's not up my straße.

The gate-fold sleeve is a joy to behold.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#BoneyM
#NightFlightToVenus

Los De Abajo - LDA V The Lunatics

It's 2005, in the early hours of the morning, I'm fast asleep, The World Service is playing on the radio next to the bed. Charlie Gillett's world music show is on. Gillett plays Los Lunáticos (El Manicomio Está En Manos De Los Locos) and it cuts right though my sleep and wakes me up. Boom! What a tune. I bought this CD the next day, unfortunately, I reckon, from Am***n, which didn't seem so evil in those days (honest.)

The track in question is a cover of The Fun Boy Three's The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum) and features Specials and FB3 member Neville Staple. It's done in a very Cumbia-Ska crossover style and is very, very good. Unfortunately, on the sleeve, they mis-spell Neville's name, adding an 's' to make his name the verb, 'Staples'.

The rest of the album is a Mexican melting pot of cumbia, reggaeton, mariachi, ska, punk, reggae, and other Latin American genres which are well beyond my naming abilities.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#LosDeAbajo
#NevilleStaple
#FunBoyThree

The Dead Maggies - Well Hanged

In 2015, we took ourselves off to Hobart for a few days.

Some friends took us to The Brisbane Hotel where The Dead Maggies happened to be playing. They were great. Proper folk-punk, with a suitably raucous live act, songs with lots of Tasmanian references.

I picked up this CD, which had just been released.

It looks like their website has not been updated since COVID. It’s a shame because I always feel that folk-punk bands should just go on forever.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#TheDeadMaggies
#WellHanged
#FolkPunk

Subhumans - From The Cradle To The Grave

Turns out I have this on both CD and vinyl.

When I read the recent book on Subhumans, I was delighted to find out they had been massive Rush fans. Once you know that, you can't not hear the influence. Musically, rather than lyrically - no Ayn Rand tributes here, thankfully.

This is a great album. The title track is one of my favourite 17 minute-long pieces of music.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#Subhumans
#FromTheCradleToTheGrave
#Punk
#Rush

David Bowie - Space Oddity

I can recall seeing the video for Space Oddity on the TV as a child (four, I reckon) and being so viscerally affected by the plight of old mate Major Tom that I can still feel it in my gut today when I hear the title song from this album.

I bought this album early in my record buying career. I was 13, I reckon. It was the first or second proper record I’d bought (from Downtown Records, Romford).

You will never get to know a record so intimately as one you have owned through your teenage years and it still has all the feels for me, even though an objective listen shows it as really mostly a pretty unremarkable pop-rock-folk album.

Bowie looks so fucking cool on the sleeve (and on the enclosed poster, which was on my bedroom wall for years).

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#DavidBowie
#SpaceOddity

eX-Girl - Endangered Species

J-Pronk? Is that a thing? (My online search leads me to a Dutch politician, so no.)

Elements of Zappa, Cardiacs, Melt Banana, Mr Bungle...on Alternative Tentacles.

It's fucking great.

#NowPlaying
#eX-Girl
#Vinyl

The Ex - If Your Mirror Breaks

It's been quite a wait for the new Ex album. It arrived in the post whilst I've been laid low with a(nother!) shitty virus, so I wasn't feeling 100% when it got its first listen.

I'm glad to say it sounds very much like The Ex. I like their unique sound and perspective very much and look forward to giving this more of a listen when I'm more in the mood.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#TheEx
#IfYourMirrorBreaks

Bjork - Debut

A CD I must've listened to a thousand times. When we were young it was always there when we were chilling out after a night of pills or whatever. Also nice to listen to if you were feeling a bit erm, stressed.

The jewel case of this CD is the shabbiest I've ever seen, showing evidence of use for purposes other than storage.

This is such a massive 10 of an album. Every note, word, beat is absolutely perfect. The bit recorded in the bogs of The Milk Bar is so good - so evocative and so clever.

After I had ripped all my CDs to WAV files, I mostly stopped listening to albums as complete works. This is one of those albums that , much as I like the individual songs, is even better listened to as a whole.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#Bjork
#Debut

Shannon - Let The Music Play

Last night we watched the Milli Vanilli biopic. It wasn't too bad to be honest.

The Milli Vanillis were at a party and this was playing. Honestly, what a fucking tune.

For years I made do with the dub mix on a Street Sounds Electro album, but bought this Australasian issue of the 12" a few years ago, with its nasty sleeve artwork.

I've come to appreciate 'Freestyle' synth-dance more as I've got older than I remember doing at the time, being a bit more of a soul-boy then. Shannon's vocal walks the line between futuristic robot and disco diva perfectly.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Shannon
#LetTheMusicPlay
#Freestyle
#MilliVanilli

Tom Waits - Small Change

This is my first post on my new/old lappy with Linux Mint. Very nice it is too.

My mate Dave (RIP) was wise. Amongst other things he was the first to spot that Morrissey was becoming a wrong-un and would have this discussion with Smiths loyalists over the football, and there were a lot of them in the mid-80's over the Orient. He also liked Tom Waits and would tell me I was underestimating his music by dismissing it. Interestingly, the song that had put me off him was off this album ( [i]The Piano Has Been Drinking[ (Not Me)/i]. They used to show a video of it on the telly a lot, and it just got on my tits.

Waits had popped up in a little cameo on a Richie Cole album I'd bought, and I really liked that, and I suppose my taste for him grew from there. i must say though, I think I got into his later, noisier stuff before I got into this earlier, sing-y stuff.

I like it now, though. I haven't played this for years. It's really good.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#TomWaits
#SmallChange

John Shuttleworth - The Yamaha Years

I had How To Be Happy In A Sad Sad World as an earworm this week. I went down the shed to pull out a random selection of CDs and there was this album.

I've been trying to install Linux Mint on an old lappy, which is a task that has its frustrations, but I've found myself singing along with Shuttleworth whilst I do it, rather than throwing the fucking thing in the bin and going off to JB HiFi to buy a new one.

Graham Fellows is a comedy genius and John Shuttleworth is just such a believable, likeable and funny character.

We saw 'John Shuttleworth's Guide To Stardom' show in, I reckon 1992, at the MAC in Brum and he told Charlotte that she could be a bubbly barmaid in Emmerdale. That's a claim to fame if ever I heard one.

His films are now on YouTube and well worth watching.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#JohnShuttleworth
#TheYamahaYears
#LinuxMint
#MidlandsArtsCentre
#Birmingham
#GrahamFellows

Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight

One of my favourite bands of the 00's. Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett were on creative fire for a few years and they never really got the appreciation they deserved, I don't think, probably because they drifted between genres a bit, and people like to like what they like, you know?

This album was their swansong, released just before the split. I remember HATING The Moneymaker at the time, but it doesn't sound so bad now.

We saw them live in Birmingham when they were promoting this album, and they were really good.

I see they've recently reunited and are touring again.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#RiloKiley
#UnderTheBlacklight

Eastfield Derailed - Songs From The Scrapyard

I love Eastfield.

Every time I see one of South Australia's big trains, I think, "Ooh, Jessi'd like that."

This was their slightly more acoustic side-project, CD. Although it's really not very acoustic at all.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#EastfieldDerailed

Culture Shock - Go Wild + All The Time

In between Subhumans and Citizen Fish was Culture Shock.

Two mid-eighties UK ska-punk classics on one CD - some of Dick Lucas' best lyrical work. I know every word and note of Go Wild; All The Time less-so.

I listened to this whilst eating a Linda McCartney sausage sandwich this morning. Which is a bit of synchronicity for ya.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#CultureShock
#GoWild
#AllTheTime

Goldfrapp -Supernature

It's amazing how often Ooh La La pops up as incidental music on television programmes or adverts or whatever. It must've generated a fair few quid for them over the years. I think that speaks to the fact that this album still sounds pretty un-ravaged by time. Or has its sound just come back into fashion? Or was it super way ahead of its time? I dunno.

There's tunes on here that I'd forgotten that I really love, like Fly Me Away for example.

#NowPlaying
#CD
#Goldfrapp
#Supernature

Frank Zappa - Broadway The Hard Way

I took a bit of a lucky dip into the record shelves and this came out. I think someone left this behind in a room in our house when they fucked off owing rent and leaving us with all their junk and a dog with a septic paw.

This album is made up of live recordings from the 1988 tour. A lot of the references and the humour have dated a bit.

There's some of Zappa's work that I really like. There's a lot that leaves me cold and makes me think I should like it more. I think it's the more theatrical-sounding stuff that I like the least, and that's what this album is, basically.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#FrankZappa
#BroadwayTheHardWay

Sean Khan presents The Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble - Volume 1

I received this LP for my birthday last year from a mate who knows I like jazz and knows I like folk.

There's nothing wrong with this album. It just leaves me a little cold and I find it hard to articulate why. I mean, what's not to like? Lovely songs given a jazz glow-up.

Perhaps it all sounds a bit JazzFM? I like it most when Khan stretches out the most (like in the soprano sax solo of Who Knows Where The Time Goes.) Perhaps it's aimed at people who don't dig so deeply into the folk ditch? I dunno.

The fact it's called Volume 1 leads you to think there's going to be a Volume 2. What'll be on there, I wonder? Moondance? Come On Eileen? I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester?

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Jazz
#Folk
#AcidJazz

Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic

"Alright lads, I've got a new song."
"Great! What's the chords?"
"All of them...all the chords. Don't worry too much about learning them though."
"Oh, I've been meaning to ask, who's that bloke with the drum kit over there?
"Ah, don't worry yourself about him."

*

Another of yesterday's purchases.

Recorded in the middle of Becker and Fagen's hostile takeover of the band, just before they gave the rest of the band the elbow, it's a primarily soft-rock affair, but still with all the chords.

Rikki Don't Lose That Number is a genius piece of soft-rock-pop, which robs the intro riff from Horace Siliver's Song For My Father, and has a slightly gaslight-y lyric. I love it. If I was a jazz musician, I'd cover the fuck out of it.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#SteelyDan
#PretzelLogic

McCoy Tyner - The Real McCoy

One of the things I like most about John Coltrane's music is McCoy Tyner's piano playing (Have a listen to My Favourite Things, as an example): he's got such a taught but unfettered style.

This album was his first after leaving the Coltrane fold, and his Blue Note debut. Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones and (of course) Ron Carter keep him company and match his intensity. This must've sounded fucking wild in 1967.

Alfred Lion, the bloke who started and ran Blue Note, said the album made "...absolutely no concession to commercialism..." - which initially seems like a complement, but - from the label boss - might have been the opposite.

I'd recently promised myself I was going to pick up a few more of those superb quality Blue Note reissues and this is one of them.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#McCoyTyner
#Jazz
#BlueNote

Steely Dan - Countdown To Ecstasy

One of my favourite podcasts is We Buy Records. Each episode, some bloke comes on and reviews loads of new releases, including an in-depth critique of pressing quality etc. For a couple of years, I've listened to him go on about GZ pressings and how good they are. I bought this LP today, it's a GZ pressing, and bloody hell, it's good quality.

I've been on a bit of a Steely Dan tip lately, so had decided to fill a couple of holes in my collection. I'd had Bodhisattva (a spelling challenge) on a compilation tape years ago and liked it.

The jazzy influence is emerging on this album, even though it's still got its feet firmly in the rock-pop ballpark.

This album came out long before ecstasy the drug was widely available, and - in hindsight - the title would make you think it was a compilation of early rave classics.

Also, ecstasy is the hardest word in the world to spell. I get it wrong every time.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#SteelyDan
#CountdownToEcstasy

One Leg One Eye - .... And Take The Black Worm With Me

Front view of LP sleeve of One Leg One Eye's ....And Take The Black Worm With Me.

This is Ian Lynch from Lankum's 2022 side-project, where he combines lo-fi drone (and being a piper, he gets drone better than most, I think) with more trad-folk elements. You'll either love the sound of that or you won't.

Full disclosure, I own the vinyl version of this, but I'm playing it on headphones from the Bandcamp app. Partly, this is because the telly's on, the washing machine's on and I'm cooking the tea. Partly, this is because it works well on headphones. Mainly, this is because the LP is pressed with recycled vinyl chips, all very eco-friendly of course, but absolute cat shit as far as pressing quality goes. If you've ever bought Jamaican pressings, it's a bit like that.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Drone
#Folk
#Lankum
#OneLegOneEye

Steely Dan - Aja

LP sleeve of Aja by Steely Dan, propped up behind a turntable playing the album.

Despite me and my mate Tim having a shared (was it just us?) obsession with Donald Fagen's solo album, New Frontier in the early 80's I was only ever marginally aware of Steely Dan until a mate at work in 89/90 put Peg (and a few other bits) on a compilation tape for me, and I realised that it was the sample from Eye Know from De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising which I had been rinsing.

I spent a couple of days in bed with a bit of a virus this week, and spent a febrile night playing this album in my head, convinced that I had to write a meaningful critique of it. Next day I re-watched the 'making of' docco on YouTube. Fucking hell, it's good. You don't come out of it thinking Becker or Fagen are particularly blessed in the people-skills department, but, oh my, the craft!

This is the perfect album. Special mentions, though, go out to Michael McDonald's BVs on Peg and Wayne Shorter's solo on Aja.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#SteelyDan
#Aja
#Jazz-Rock

Alice Coltrane - Huntington Ashram Monastery

The LP Huntington Ashram Monastery by Alice Coltrane, playing on a turntable with the sleeve propped up behind.

Just a lovely album to start the day with. Or finish the day with.

Since I've been documenting my listening, it's dawned on me how often Ron Carter pops up as bass player.

#NowPlaying
#Jazz
#Vinyl
#AliceColtrane
#RonCarter

Harvey Mason - Funk In A Mason Jar

Harvey

Mason is a drummer who never overplays his hand, which - on an album like this, where the cream of the jazz-funk players of 1977 came out to play - must be hard.

Till You Take My Love has become a bit of a rare groove standard for good reason, and I hadn't realised until today, that it's Merry Clayton on vocals, although it's obvious once you know.

I picked this up for $15 in Sydney a couple of years ago.

One side of the inner sleeve is a torso shot of Mason, from the rear of the sleeve, so you can add your own head to it, like I have below.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#HarveyMason
#FunkInAMasonJar

Protoje Ft. Chronx - Who Knows

7

A few years ago, I was round the house of a mate who is a big reggae fan. He put this on. I really liked it and went to buy it on discogs. I already had it.

I live an exciting life.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Reggae

Neil Young - Comes A Time

In any sensible world, a fair measure of a person would be whether they like Neil Young or not. Unfortunately, it's like we did opposites day when the wind changed direction and we got stuck in the current shitshow. Turns out T***p is a massive Neil Young fan. How am I supposed to assimilate this information? You'd think it would be like a Labrador listening to Beethoven (I nicked that simile off Stuart Lee.)

At least Neil Young thinks T***p's a cunt.

This album has Young returning to his country-folk stylings. It's supposed to be one of his favourites of his own records.

Comes A Time, the song, is so good.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#NeilYoung
#ComesATime

McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty

A bloke I worked with in the Post Office, was mad into McCarthy, Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present and the tapes he did for me became the soundtrack to my time trudging round my walk as a postie or flying round on my bike like a maniac.

McCarthy had the best political lyrics. Red Sleeping Beauty is one of the three best Thatch songs (along with Shipbuilding and Tramp The Dirt Down). I still wonder that they remain so relatively unknown.

When I was putting the record back in its sleeve, I noticed it had a stamp on the inside. My extensive research tells me that 376 Pitt St, Sydney is no longer the home of Ashwoods record store, but of Silver Fox massage parlour ($100 for 30 mins, apparently.)

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#McCarthy
#RedSleepingBeauty

Joe Gibbs & the Professionals - African Dub All-Mighty, Chapter 3

Despite the line-up of reggae royalty playing on this album, POTM goes to engineer, Errol Thompson, who, basically, goes fucking bananas and dubs it past the defence, through the legs of a hapless goalkeeper and into the back of the fucking net. Ten times.

This is an album so full of joy, it's hard to describe. My favourite dub album by a country mile.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Dub

John McLaughlin - Electric Guitarist

I believe that this was the first proper jazz-fusion LP I bought. I remember picking it up in JiFS Records, Chadwell Heath in about 1984. (Man, I'd fucking love to go back and have a dig in that shop again!) I was an avid reader of guitarist magazines at the time and kept reading about McLaughlin and his Gatling gun playing-style, and just had to hear it. There was no way of hearing it before buying in those days, so it was a bit of a gamble, although to be fair, I knew I was going to love it.

All the big guns are wheeled out in support of McLaughlin on this album and they all get a fair shake of the sauce bottle.

The second track, Friendship, is a frequent spinner on my earworm jukebox, and has been for some 40 years now.

url=https://friendica.world/photos/johnspithead/image/120244070867c7bc835c083569008833][/url]

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Jazz-Fusion
#JohnMcLaughlin

The Incredible Bongo Band - Bongo Rock

I listened to the Apache episode of Andrew Hickey's podcast The History of Rock Music In 500 Songs the other night and, being as meticulous as he is, he included the version from this album. And rightly so.

I first became aware of the Apache sample when it was used in Double Dee & Steniski's Lesson 3, being played by Jonathan More at Caister Soul Weekender in the 80's.

To be honest, there's very little else of any value on this album, and it's a bit of a chore to play all the way through. Especially on my barely adequate Italian pressing.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl

The Revolutionaries - Kunta Kinte (Kentaro Remixes)

Tokyo's DJ Kentaro is one hell of a turntablist and, on this 12" from 2009, he throws the Kunta Kinte riddim around like a fucking blindfolded juggler on a unicycle...on a tightrope...over a tank of piranhas. It's all very fancy.

There's nothing at all wrong with that, in my book, but then I'm a complete sucker for the Kunta Kinte riddim however it arrives to me, although this does seem like a lot of hard work at times.

I'm also partial to a lock groove. Saves you having to get up to turn the record over.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#DJKentaro
#KuntaKinte

Chick Corea and Return to Forever - Light As A Feather

The second RTF album, with Flora Purim on vocals, her husband Airto Moreira on percussion, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Joe Farrell on flute and saxophone, has them gliding through really complex Brazilian-jazz-fusion flavours, without compromising on complexity or losing the groove - a very hard balance to achieve.

It's one hell of an album, even on my rather shitty Australian pressing.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#ChickCorea
#ReturnToForever
#Jazz

Robin Eubanks - Different Perspectives

In 1988, when this album came out, I had a mate who was a rep for a record company, and I would leave his flat with my pick of whatever records/CDs he was promoting at the time. That's how I got this.

This was Eubanks' debut album and it holds up well, despite being festooned with slightly jagged eighties rhythms.

Eubanks is a player of some aplomb and is one of FOUR trombonists on this album. That's a lot of trombone.

There's a fucking awesome version of Stevie Wonder's Overjoyed, where Eubanks and his guitarist brother, Kevin, interact beautifully, and which I frequently experience as an earworm.

You can't beat free tunes, man.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Jazz
#RobinEubanks
#JMT
#StevieWonder
#Trombone

Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly

I thought I'd play a bit of Roberta Flack to mark her death earlier this week and discovered this LP, released in 1973, which I'd picked up somewhere and forgotten about.

For an album with an all-star cast of jazz players and arrangers, and dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, it's a remarkably low-key, MOR affair. There's nothing here that'll frighten the horses. Which is a shame, because she was at her best (IMHO) when she was in a less languorous mood.

The title track is still so much better than its better-known cover version, and her version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne really works.

My copy has a slightly pointless die cut sleeve where a piano is overlayed on the cover in two flaps. I have one flap missing.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#RobertaFlackRIP
#RobertaFlack

Squarepusher - Feed Me Weird Things

It's an indication of how many of my musical boxes Squarepusher ticks that I can clearly remember the first time someone played his music to me and how it felt so exciting and new.

This is the 25th anniversary edition - double LP and a 10", with a booklet containing more information than you would ever care to read.

Twenty-five fucking years, man! (More now). Still sounds fucking great.

#Vinyl
#Squarepusher
#NowPlaying