Tiggerlion on The Beatles released Revolver 5th August 1966

A mere week after England won The World Cup, Revolver was released.

Revolver is an album full of curiosity and wonder. Even though the cover is black & white and the mono mix is best, its sound collage explodes with colour. It is a fourteen track kaleidoscope of musical treasures that still sounds thrilling fifty years on. There are five different personalities (the fifth being the studio team led by George Martin) delivering a wide variety of different musical styles, each exploring their own areas of interest. Yet, somehow, it gives the impression of being performed by a single, tight unit. Few of the songs breech the three minute limit but, otherwise, the pop rule book is cast aside.

Most of those rules are broken by the studio boffins. The Beatles explored the possibility of recording in America, like The Rolling Stones, but the owners of those state-of-the-art studios tried to charge extortionate prices. They decided to stay at Abbey Road and rely on good old Heath Robinson British ingenuity; tape loops, backward recordings, varispeeding, distortions, close miking.

An EMI technician, Ken Townsend, invented ADT, automatic double tracking, in » Continue Reading.

Colin H on John McLaughlin

Back in February Christopher Hjort very kindly got in touch with me, as a John McLaughlin biographer, to share a photo of something remarkable that he had stumbled upon while doing research on unrelated matters at the British Library.

There, in the Wandsworth Advertiser edition of 22 March 1963, writer uncredited, was what is almost certainly the world’s first interview with John McLaughlin – along with what are (outside of a few in Georgie Fame’s own collection, uncirculated) the only known photos of John during his time with the Blues Flames. The full text of that piece appears below, but first some scene-setting…

Photos of McLaughlin in the 50s/60s are incredibly rare. There is one publicity shot with Big Pete Deuchar’s Professors of Ragtime (circa 1958/59), reproduced in Walter Kolosky’s ‘Power, Passion and Beauty: The Story of the Legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra’ (http://www.walterkolosky.com/); there is a stunning set of live shots with the Graham Bond Quartet from his April-September 1963 tenure with them, taken by future psychedelic scenester John Hopkins (but sadly priced out of the market for license at the time I wrote ‘Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond’, » Continue Reading.

Raymond on age-ism, blame and shame.

Given the amount of propaganda spewed out in the EU referendum campaign, it is hardly surprising that some folk reacted to the result in a way that would more appropriate to, say, an invasion of the earth by hostile aliens. Within our increasingly large over-reaction community, it would appear that losing an election is not something that is considered to be a legitimate part of the democratic process.

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Raymond on Everything reminds me of music

The Move had a hit in 1971 with a song called ‘Chinatown’.

The track started with a gong, followed by some gentle wind chimes, before Bev Bevan’s thunderous drum roll kicked in. Every time I use the pedal bin in my kitchen, I am reminded of this song.

Let me explain how this happens.

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Colin H on Tubby Hayes

‘A Man In A Hurry’ is a terrific documentary about British jazz great Tubby Hayes (tenor sax/flute/vibes), a short fat man (1935-73) from London who was full of energy, had world-class talent, and was incredibly prolific on record, on stage and on screen, particularly in the period from the mid-50s to the mid-60s.

When you scour 1960s Melody Makers at the British Library, as I have done periodically, for information on other fragments of culture, your eye is often drawn to things outside your remit, and for me, Tubby Hayes is one of those. It’s clear he was a big deal at the time. Somehow, he faded away toward the end of the decade and, like fellow British modern jazz greats Joe Harriott and Phil Seamen (one might add Graham Bond to that list), would die prematurely in the early 70s – all of them having to a fair extent become yesterday’s men, and at least partly through substance abuse.

I’m fascinated by 1960s British jazz, of all types, but had little knowledge of Tubby Hayes. It turns out that Mark Baxter and Lee Cogswell, producer/writer and director/editor, respectively, of this wonderful film, could say » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Quintessence

It had always surprised me that, with two instrumental live excerpts on 1970 LP ‘Quintessence’ and a live ‘Jesus, Buddha’ on the 1971 Island records sampler ‘Bumpers’, apparently no one in the music reissuing world had asked Universal (keepers of the Island archive) if the rest of that concert was available for license. Around 2007, at my suggestion, Brian O’Reilly, the singularly affable, laid-back and open-to-ideas MD of Hux Records, did so.

It transpired that, in addition to their three studio albums ‘In Blissful Company’, ‘Quintessence’ and ‘Dive Deep’, there had been at least three official concert recordings during Quintessence’s 1969-71 tenure at Island: St Pancras Town Hall in March 1970 (source of the three live fragments mentioned above); and two recorded in one day at Queen Elizabeth Hall in May 1971. Recent research shows that there was a fourth Island live recording made at the LSE in November 1970, but this was blighted by technical gremlins, referred to in press interviews at the time, and has not survived.

At that time, we had access to a Universal-supplied mix (seemingly a mix created in 1971) of the QE Hall concerts in full and 36 » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Brian Houston

No Brian Houston gigs in several years and then two come along a week apart – first, a solo troubadour show to 40 people in the quaint and, frankly, bugger-to-find Brontë Heritage Centre in the wilder regions of County Down, near the Land of the Rathfris (Rathfriland) and then a packed Empire Music Hall show with full band and guests in Belfast. The cumulative verdict in one line: Brian Houston is an extraordinary performer with a mastery of musical styles and so at ease onstage that he can run a show like a gentle observational comedy when he wishes or get down on his knees and rock like it’s 1973 with such apparent naturalness that one never considers at the time whether any irony is involved.

The Brontë show was fun for all sorts of non-musical reasons: for a start, finding the place on a dark Saturday night, down backroads, up dirt tracks, and eventually there it is, an 18th Century church with attached cottage (museum) which has some connection to the Brontë sisters’ grandfather. Poor old Andy Peters – a tireless, easy-going promoter of roots music who runs an Americana club there every Saturday » Continue Reading.

moseleymoles on The Last of Us – let’s post more gaming reviews

Not being either 17 or a professional games reviewer, it takes rather longer for us middle-aged gamers to post our thoughts on today’s consoles/pc games than on the latest Steven Wilson album. Not so much a Night In as six months of snatched half-hours in my case. Yet games importance in modern culture – easily the equal of Hollywood and perhaps more important than music if you are under forty – should see them feature on The Afterword more. I guess I am saying that those of us who do game should try and post our reviews more regularly, even if we are only now catching up with GTA V. Admins – any chance of a separate category in Nights In. Happy to suggest what the categories should be.

If it took Bingo Little some time to play Bloodborne, it’s taken me far longer to play through what was universally agreed to be 2014’s Game of the Year – The Last of Us.

This is not a game based on a franchise or a sequel. I think that there’s less wider interest in posting a review of » Continue Reading.

Raymond on Thinking about how we ought to talk about a difficult topic

Such is the degraded nature of our national discourse on the topic of immigration that I feel obliged to start this piece with a statement, or -in modern parlance- a trigger warning.

I am a free-marketeer. I believe that capitalism, while far from perfect, provides the greatest good for the greatest number. I believe this because all of the available evidence leads me to that conclusion. Further, that belief in the free market comes with a belief in the free movement of people, which means that I am in favour of immigration, including economic migration.

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Raymond on How not to write a song for Shania Twain

A few years ago, I was asked to provide some material for an up-and-coming young female country singer. A friend in the business who was familiar with my writing style (I was going to use the phrase ‘writing prowess’ there, but that would have been a bit of an exaggeration) thought that I might have some songs which -given the right treatment- could have worked for this particular vocalist. My name was passed to the singer’s manager, who also happened to be her mother. After a perfunctory phone call (“I’ve been told you write songs. We’re looking for songs”), an appointment was made for us to meet. I packed my guitar and notebook and drove out to a big house in the country, about a mile and half from the middle of nowhere.

(the rest of this article will hopefully follow below)

Raymond on Some advice on how to curate your tragic music collection

A few weeks ago, I got involved in a conversation with some friends about what to do with our old vinyl and CD collections, the assumption being that -in the digital age- nobody really wanted to keep hard copies of anything anymore. I begged to differ, because I’m one of those sad folk who does want to keep hard copies. I like having products to hold, look at, read, smell and –most of all- file. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a sizable music collection will have to devise an efficient filing system. CDs, for instance, should always be displayed in alphabetical order, preferably in the room in which you do your listening. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury for my own collection, which resides in the living room, wherein other members my family are to be found, usually watching something they call ‘the television’. Due to some legal mumbo-jumbo that I don’t understand, I am not allowed into this room without giving written notice, but at least I know that when I fancy listening to an old CD, my meticulously-curated display » Continue Reading.

moseleymoles on A brief note about the liner note

If the mp3 sounded the death knell for the Liner Note, the era of streaming has well and truly nailed the coffin down and shovelled the earth over. The idea that there might be some writing alongside the track(s) seems a positively antediluvian notion. So, before its gravestone mosses over, let’s offer a brief thought for the humble Liner Note.

The first records had no truck with writing either. Instead the record sleeve was valuable billboard real estate that could be used to shift other catalogue items, the record player to play your new disc on, or other stuff entirely. This notion lived on into the early eighties in the ‘Nice Price’ range, when the inner sleeve showed you how you could add most of the Alan Parsons Project back catalogue to your collection at a speical low price.

The liner note started as an extension of advertising copy – written by the admen at the label to persuade you to take it home as you stood there staring at the back of the album in the record shop. Here’s the note for the first Bob Dylan album:

Columbia records is » Continue Reading.