Sparks - Kimono My House

I can still clearly recall the impact of seeing Sparks on Top Of The Pops for the first time in 1974, performing the lead single from this album, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us, Ron’s Hitler moustache creating quite the stir, even in a pop world occupied by the frocked-up Bowie and Robbie from Mud, and Steve Priest from The Sweet dressed like a big gay fash on the Christmas Day TOTP episode.

This is the album in which Sparks set out their stall with the wares they will hawk, albeit in variations, until today. Wares that will be blatantly shoplifted by some of their contemporaries (looking at you, Queen.)

The front of the sleeve has to be one of the best album covers ever.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Music
#Sparks
#KimonoMyHouse

Dead: Alive!

Whilst I was buying the latest Dead album, I picked this one up, as I'd neglected to buy it when it came out.

I've seen Dead live quite a few times, and they're always very good. This album captures them well. It recorded around the time The Laughing Shadow came out, and that album was one of my favourites.

#Dead
#Dead:Alive!
#Vinyl

Dead - Memory Jar

I always look forward to a new Dead album.

I've enjoyed how the past three studio albums in particular have gone down new musical avenues and on this one they have pared everything back to pure, raw sounds, often unaccompanied, beautifully produced. Kind of avant-garde, experimental, musique concrète, dark ambient...I don't know enough about the naming conventions of that sort of stuff, to be honest, but there's elements of all of that here.

The perfect album to sit and have a good, hard chin-stroke to.

#Dead
#MemoryJar
#Vinyl
#Experimental
#Avante-garde
#Musiqueconcrète
#Darkambient

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way

In Australia, it's election day. Because of my work, I don't have my name and address on the register of electors. I am what is known as a 'silent voter'. Whenever I attend a polling station, this always freaks them the fuck out, and they send me off into the darkest corner of the building, while they run around shouting, "Trevor, we've got a silent voter over here! Trevor...has anyone seen Trevor? We've got a SILENT VOTER....This chap, over here."

Oh, it makes me smile.

This was the last of yesterday's purchases. I'd not heard it before.

This was Davis' first 'electric' album. The supporting cast (Hancock, Corea, Shorter, Holland, Zawinul, McLaughlin and Williams) would lead you to expect a more raucous affair, but it's a superbly chilled album, although it contains all the fusion-y goodness you'd expect. I suppose it pre-dates jazz-fusion raucousness, as Weather Report didn't get together until the year after this was released.

On white vinyl, if that's your thing.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#MilesDavis
#InASilentWay
#JazzFusion

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady

The third of yesterday's purchases. A record I know well from my digital copy, but that I haven't heard for ages, because I rarely listen to digital music files any more.

Just an amazing piece of music. Recorded in 1963. Nineteen. Sixty. Three!

Also, the photo on the cover is just wonderful.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#CharlesMingus
#TheBlackSaintAndTheSinnerLady
#Jazz

Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal

I had the opportunity to go to two record shops today. I spent more than I should.

One of the things I hated when I was young was old cunts dismissing modern music as derivative and not as good as the old days, or whatever. I'd always promised myself that i would never do it. The problem is, you then get old yourself and all the young people's music starts to sound shit and derivative and not as good as the old days. Every now and then, though, something comes along which makes you wish you were able to hear it with the fresh ears of your sallow youth. This is one such thing.

Doechii's performance on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts is extraordinary and I've wanted this since seeing it, but was waiting for the re-press, due to the expensive cost of the original pressings.

I think this will be one of the defining recordings of the current epoch. It's really good. Doechii is quite something. But you probably knew that.

To be completely honest though, I prefer the NPR Tiny Desk Concert versions.

#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Doechii
#AlligatorBitesNeverHeal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planxty - Cold Blow and the Rainy Night

In case you're not already aware: all Planxty albums are great.

Things I love about this, their third LP, recorded in 1974:
- It was recorded in Whitechapel, a place close to my heart. (Although Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded in the same studio and I think that's wank.)
- The cover has a cartoon portrait of the band, which is...unflattering.
- It has a killer version of one of my favourite folk songs - the title track. What a timeless tale of humanity's flaws and mistakes that is?

#Planxty
#Nowplaying
#Vinyl

The Fall -Yarbles

Most live recordings are taken to a studio and overdubbed to shit. This one is warts-and-all, and it's great.

We had a bit of a dance around the kitchen with our granddaughter to this today.

#TheFall
#Yarbles
#Vinyl

The Ex & Brass Unbound – Enormous Door

The Ex should be better known than they are.

Part of me is glad they aren’t.

#Vinyl
#TheEx
#EnormousDoor

The Jam – The Gift

I’m still sad that The Jam split up.

It’s been 23 years, since this, The Jam’s final album, came out. It’s full of signposts pointing at the exit Weller was heading towards. And whilst some of his subsequent work has been good (a lot has been shite, to be fair), I can’t help thinking that there isn’t a solitary tune in his oeuvre that wouldn’t have sounded better recorded by The Fucking Jam.

Steve Nichol, who played trumpet on this album was later one of Loose Ends, trivia fans.

#TheJam
#TheGift
#Vinyl