Some Saturday Night Listening

After listening to Crowded House’s Woodface earlier, we got through a bit of vinyl on Saturday night, so here’s brief rundown of what we played. I think this came from an Amazon.fr purchase a year or two back, and I assume we’ve listened to it before but can’t say for sure. Nice early 60s jazz from a pretty impressive trio. Not a great fan of some of the bass, but overall very nice. I picked Continue Reading

Crowded House: Woodface (1991)

I ordered this from HMV last weekend as they were having a sale – I couldn’t turn down this classic album (on vinyl) for the bargain price of £8.99.I also picked up another favourite, which will be along later. Side 1 is jam-packed with favourites – Chocolate Cake, Fall At Your Feet, Weather With You and Four Seasons On One Day. Side 2 has There Goes God and How Will You Go.But the others are Continue Reading

Easter Saturday Night Listening

After quite a gap, we went back to playing a couple of records while we had dinner on Saturday – and I picked out a couple from the various charity shop purchases earlier the year, which we’d not listened to yet. First up was this one – picked out at the charity shop’s jazz section. I think it must have been £1, especially given the torn sleeve, but the disc was in good condition. Jackie Continue Reading

Ravel: Bolero; Mussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures at an Exhbition

Deutsche Grammophon 139010Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan This a keeper – two pieces of music that I know, one of which I really like (Bolero).And yes, I probably know Pictures at an Exhibition more from Emerson Lake & Palmer that I do from classical versions. If you haven’t seen the ballet of Bolero, look it up. I recommend the Sylvie Guillem version.

The Best of Aaron Copland

CBS Classics 614311970 This is a little unexpected – you don’t see many “Best Of” albums in the classical world. It opens, of course, with Fanfare For The Common Man. I can’t hear the start of it without expecting it to burst into the bass-driven Emerson Lake and Palmer version. Which is probably heresy, but that’s my rock background for you. The rest of it (El Salon Mexico, Celebration from “Billy The Kid”, Hoe Down Continue Reading

Cantate Domino

Oscars Moteekor; Torsten Nilsson; Alf Linder; Marianne MellnasPROP 77621980 Next random selection and it’s organ music, which was unexpected. There was a specific section in my dad’s collection for organ music, and all of that has (rightfully) been stashed away in the garage while work out what on earth to do with it. Because the one thing we don’t want to do with it is listen to it.But the rules say that if you pick Continue Reading

Everything You Always Wanted to Hear On The Moog *

* but were afraid to ask forKazdin/ShepherdCBS 73146 I’m having a bit of a blogging day – I’m also blogging some of my photos over at http://www.shendy.co.uk/blog/ – and needed something on in the background, so I’m delving into the random depths of my dad’s vinyl. Dear god, this is as bad as you would think it might be. This is not a keeper!

An Evening of Music – 5th October 2019

Over the last few months, we’ve not listened to many records – Saturday evening is our usual time for it, but we’ve been listening to classical (the Proms) or some jazz on mp3. I had also been increasingly aware that I’ve been buying a fair few rock and pop LPs over the last 2-3 years, but hadn’t actually listened to a lot of them. On Saturday we spent the afternoon cooking a couple of batches Continue Reading

The Modern Jazz Quartet – LPJT56

I found this in my dad’s collection a couple of weeks ago, and I’d bought one of their LPs earlier in the year – fortunately not the same one. This is rather pleasant listenable jazz, recorded in the mid 1950s. The main difference is that while it has your regular piano, upright bass and drums, they also have a virtuoso vibraphobe player. Vibes have a unique sound – warmer and fuller than a glockenspiel or Continue Reading

Charity Shop Pickings

Aretha Franklin: I picked this up at a charity shop today and it’s just as good as you’d hope – the disc is in tip-top condition too, not a pop or click on it. A definite keeper. I also took a punt on this – I’m not a huge fan of big band/swing stuff but I’d heard of Gene Krupa and an album by two drummers sounded interesting. And it’s great, unchallenging listening, drums to Continue Reading