Recent recordings and ramblings

I've suddenly come across a rash of new music that I want to get. Or in a couple of cases I did until I listened to them...

Renaissance - Novella A reissue with 2 added discs of a Royal Albert Hall concert from 1977. Their best album, slowly drifting towards actual songs and away from the excessive noodling and "poetic" lyrics. The live cd sounds like it should be good as well. They are even less improvisational than Yes, if that is possible so live CDs are about song selection. I got the download as it avoided an interminable bass solo version Ashes Are Burning of which I already have about three. No idea why this is missing from the download version.


Miles Davis - Rubberband Stitched together from Miles' pop sessions in 1985 that Warners binned in favour of him working with Marcus Miller on Tutu. There is a rather self serving documentary by the "producers", which just screams "fast buck" at me. There are a couple of moments. Mike Stern's solo on This Is It, but by and large I'm glad he was steered away from this. The vocal songs would have been better with Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau rather than the second string people here. If you think you have heard Give It Up before you have, it was used to complete a track on Doo Bop. Politely this could be called inessential. Watch the documentary here.

Sons Of Apollo - Live With The Plovdiv Psychotic Symphony The man in Action Records scoffed at the title, perhaps he should look at some of the rest of his stock.. Anyway a super group that actually lives up to the title. Good heavy/progressive rock with an interesting choice of covers. The showing off solo spots are as duff as everyone else's though.

Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls Heard in Action Records Preston on Saturday and bought shortly afterwards. Very eighties, a trick tried before by others, notably Ladyhawke. This has better songs though and in a world where music still mattered would be a huge hit.

Gene Clark - No Other: Not out until November, so ask Santa for the super extra box set or (my choice) the 2cd version. It's a shame that to get all the cd material you have to shell out for vinyl that I for one don't care about. This is one of the great albums and is where the Byrds could have gone. Psychedelic rock, folk, country and soul. Gene Clark is an interesting character and his biography is well worth a read. With the vogue for rock biopics someone should do a Byrds movie, although to do all the stories justice it would need to be a Netflix series probably.

 One of my favourite record shops, Missing in Glasgow has moved to a bigger shop round the corner from it's previous compact and bijou home. The atmosphere that made the shop something great is not there yet. Some artwork on the walls and a way of stopping the music echoing round the space will help. I doubt some of the more colourful characters who used to find their way in from Argyll Street will appear anymore. But more records to browse!

You will notice that I'm starting to link to places other than Amazon wherever I can. Support your independent retailer/record company.

In a holding pattern

Once again life has taken over and time to write here is at a premium. (Ab)normal service will resume in April, if the world keeps gets any madder I may have nothing else left to do by then. In the meantime here is the news.

Blog favourite Bill Nelson has been interviewed to destruction in the wake of Be-Bop Deluxe reissues. Vintage Rock.com talked to him HERE and Record Collector HERE. You can safely ignore Classic Rock, Prog etc as they think he stopped recording in 1977.


Another favourite Over The Rhine have issued a new album Love And Revelation , and it's their best since Ohio. I'll be back with a review of this soon. In the meantime buy it HERE.


A gig I went to in February was reviewed at Americana UK. Laura Gibson has been bubbling around on my radar for a while without ever getting the attention she deserved. I was initially drawn by the Jolie Holland comparison that comes up regularly. However there are elements of Mazzy Star and similar that are closer reference points. Her album "Goners" is fighting with the OTR disc for space on the iPod at the moment.

The failure and resurrection of HMV, closure of more independent shops and the general expectation that the vinyl revival will save the world were news for a moment recently. Vinyl won't save the world, CD still outsells it. What will save the world is a well run large chain pushing music in all formats that gives the record companies confidence to produce music in all genres, because there is someone who will take in enough stock to let them make money. The closure of Fopp in Bristol is a loss to me, but if it wasn't making money then it had to go.

And finally

I went back for some more of the lucky dips at Missing Records I talked about previously. My daughter was delighted with her Abba & Taylor Swift discs, and I got Dylan at Budokan and Sylvian/Fripp's "The First Day" along with a pile of stuff I have yet to listen to. Why am I telling you about this you will only go and buy discs I could have had...

Real Record Shops...

It started with reading "Going For A Song: A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop" by Garth Cartwright. Yet another purchase prompted by listening to the Word In Your Ear podcast. This started me thinking about Bristol's record shops and Richard King's book Original Rockers about Revolver Records, the coolest record shop in a city stuffed with cool record shops.

I've just written a long paragraph about local bands & the live music scene, but have put that to one side for a separate article so I can stick to the point...

Which was record shops. The British Record Shop Archive lists lots, some I remember, some I don't. Living in the wilds of Hanham off to the east of Bristol, record buying was mostly about a record shop in Kingswod High Street, which I can't remember the name of, or trips to HMV in Broadmead to spend my paper round pay on whatever John Peel had played that week. My best ever record buying experience was when a boutique (clothes shop) on Hanham High Street which had tried to sell records as well for a few years gave up and sold boxes of singles for 10p and LPs for £1.50. I bought dozens, lots of punk and post punk including some that are real rarities now... I also discovered Plastic Wax Records happily still going and the world of second hand records. I can still remember buying an import Stranglers E.P. because I hadn't heard of it and literally running to buy The Ramones Rockaway Beach after it was on Radio 1.

Record shops are on the up with the "vinyl boom", and that's a good thing, even though I suspect that a good number of the discs bought are for display rather than playing. The new shops that pop up (and down again) are nothing like a "real" record buying experience though. Have you read High Fidelity? The book describes a real record shop, and that is what I loved, and indeed still do. Grubby, probably fairly disorganised, and don't bother talking to the staff who will either ignore or ridicule you. Nick Hornby and Giles Smith both had that right. The aforementioned Revolver Records was the archetype in Bristol, I went in once, and was too intimidated to go back for ages. But when I realised it was the only place to get some of the stuff I wanted I was hooked. Rival Records in Park Street with it's racks of cheap discs to flick through. Music Market in Bath a shop so small 3 people had to leave if you took a record off the rack. There was Record Fayre above a camping equipment shop which sold imports at £1.99 that were so rubbish half of them didn't have grooves deep enough for a stylus to find. 

All this may sound like I'm a vinyl fan. I'm not, it was rubbish. I don't doubt that the new 180gram collectors discs are better, but seeing people in their twenties rooting through boxes of vinyl in a charity shop recently getting all misty eyed about them reminded me of using Mark's sister's Nolans singles for airgun targets. The vinyl was useless and the music was crap. When I worked for my Dad selling 78rpm records and gramophones in the eighties the question of collectability came up all the time. How to make a Bing Crosby record collectable? Throw it away. White Christmas sold 100 million copies on 78 alone so to make it rare we'd have to fill up a lot of landfill. Same applies to vinyl,. In 1977 there were 15 million LP's & singles sold in the U.K, so questions about rarity and value are to say the least spurious. 

Does the real record shop still exist. Yes it does and here are my recommendations. 

Plastic Wax: Cheltenham Road Bristol BS6 5QU - Lots of vinyl and cds. the hours I have spent scanning the shelves since I was 14 are beyond counting. Always something new, always a bargain.

Missing Records: 247 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8DL - Under the railway bridge hidden away. A recent discovery and one I'm still digging into. Another small shop, and there is always a Glasgow "character" on hand to liven things up. 

Musical Box: 457 W Derby Rd, Liverpool L6 4BL - Friendly owners, I made his day when I asked for Jazz cds, went out with armfuls. 

Record Collector: 233 Fulwood Rd, Sheffield S10 3BA - Closed Wednesdays as I found out. Separate cd & vinyl shops so I don't have to walk past any of that nasty black plastic. second best record shop in the world. Totally impossible to find anything, just browse and have fun.

My tip for collecting by the way is buy cds. They will come back. The special editions and longer playing times will attract people. When downloads start to die away over the next few years, and they will, cds with their currently low prices and superior digital reproduction will be the new vinyl.