“Little who?” I hear you ask…Little Steven, aka Miami Steve, aka Steve Van Zandt – old friend of Bruce Springsteen, member of the E Street Band, sometime writer and producer for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and for some of you Silvio Dante from The Sopranos – or maybe Frank from Lilyhammer. And the man who wrote Sun City. His solo career has been a bit hit and miss/stop-start – his first album came Continue Reading
rock
My Download Problem
My name is Simon and I have a download problem.More specifically, I have a Bruce Springsteen download problem. One of the joys of being a Springsteen fan is that no two shows of his are ever the same – he really does change the setlist every night, and even then rarely keeps exactly to what he wrote down before the show. When he does multi-night stands in one place, it changes even more.So there’s always Continue Reading
Live Review: Tubular Bells for Two. St George’s, Bristol 30 April 2019
When I saw something called “Tubular Bells For Two” in the listings for St George’s, I thought it had to be worth investigating. Mike Oldfield’s album is one of my absolute favourites and will always feature in my all-time top 10 albums – I usually have it on my phone and do listen to it fairly frequently. It turns out that TB For Two is a performance by two Australian multi-instrumentalists (Aiden Roberts and Tom Continue Reading
Buying Vinyl – Toyah
The car boot sale this morning had thin pickings, apart from one stall with masses of pretty good looking vinyl – as long as you like 50s rock n roll. Which doesn’t really do it for me. The only thing of real interest I found was a 10″ Django Reinhardt record, with Stephane Grapelli – it’s actually a Hot Club de France record, and they are very listenable. The best buy of recent days came Continue Reading
Reading List
As this blog is supposed to about more than just records and gigs, I thought I would start its new iteration with a reading list – some of the music books that I’ve read and some I plan to read. Joe Boyd “White Bicycles” – I read this on the back of his work with Fairport Convention – someone who seemed to be there at every key event in the 60s Glyn Johns “Sound Man” Continue Reading
An Evening’s Listening
And we’re back – I’ve been digging through my dad’s vinyl today and cataloguing, so we’re listening to some of it to see if we want to keep it. First up this evening, Peter Paul and Mary. Yeah, not great. Anything with a song called “I dig rock and roll music” is trying too hard to be down with the trendy hepcats. We’re hanging on for Puff the Magic Dragon… Not a keeper. Average of Continue Reading
Focus
A charity shop purchase from today. Hocus Pocus is just genius! We recognised House of the King and found it was the theme to a 70s children’s TV programme “Don’t Ask Me”. I don’t remember the programme but I remember the theme.
Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire (1973, CBS 32280)
Ah, one of the non-classical albums in my dad’s collection. Most of the non-classical stuff is folk (and most of that is already in boxes for disposal), but there are occasional ones you might not expect. The Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix for example – but at least they’re renowned and classic albums. Then we have this – John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, 70s noodling at it’s worst. I didn’t have high hopes for this – Continue Reading
Rick Parfitt
In terms of *my* vinyl, the first LP I ever bought was Status Quo in 1981. The death of Rick Parfitt makes me very sad. Rick Parfitt doing what he did best – thrashing the hell out of a Fender Telecaster – Status Quo, Hammersmith Odeon March 2014.
Sgt Pepper
We’ve listened to some music too – this may actually be the first time I’ve listened to the whole album. I have no idea why my dad had a 1978 coloured vinyl copy of Sgt Pepper, but it was very much “disque en couleur”