I have used Richer Sounds on and off since the 80s when I first discovered their London Bridge shop. As a customer I always found them helpful and obliging, and enjoyed the slightly quirky approach. They seemed to move from the bargain basement approach to embrace listening rooms and decent mid-range gear and the shops gradually smartened up over the years.

It appears that Mr. Richer is indeed something of a model employer and is giving his employees a stake in the business as he retires, instead of selling up and riding off into the sunset. Good for him I say!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/14/richer-sounds-staff-julian-richer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This month’s MOJO has a big article on the Rolling Thunder Revue and a casual mention of a 14 CD box set and a new Martin Scorsese documentary…has this slipped past the Afterword hive mind while we were arguing about Game Of Thrones?

I heard this from the kitchen on the 6o’clock news, and got all excited….then I rewound the item and couldn’t believe it. People are getting all in a lather about 11 seconds of film of someone’s tv in 1966 showing the Beatles only ‘live’ appearance on TOTP, playing Paperback Writer. The original BBC video recording was, of course, wiped, but this was discovered in, of all places, Mexico.

Now, I’m as big a Beatles nut as anyone, but to describe this as ‘the holy grail’ seems a bit rich. There was a long piece on the later News as well, with an interview with someone eulogising about it in Liverpool at the Beatles Story exhibition (by the way, that’s a bit crap anyway).

Is it me…? There is loads of great quality footage of the Fabs, so I really can’t see the significance of this besides a faintly interesting story about how this was made and survived, but it adds close to zero about what we know.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47854806

Endorsed by his widow, so that’s OK then. They’ve dug poor Buddy up now with the excuse that it is 60 years since his last recordings and it will realise ‘what Buddy woulda wanted done’, according to his older brother Larry. The irony that Buddy died in that plane crash because he coudn’t get hold of royalties is probably lost on these grave robbers.

Pretty pissed off about this – paid £99 per ticket last year, booked accomodation etc. and they’ve just announced that the charity that runs it has gone into administration. The Term and Conditions state that there will be no refunds in the event of cancellation, so that’s nearly £200 down the swanny and a long weekend in Looe with no music!

Just popped into my inbox – Steely Dan and Steve Winwood are doing 4 dates next February. You can register for a pre-sale on 6th Sept and on general sale on 7th.

Wednesday Feb 20th – Glasgow Thursday Feb 21st – Manchester Saturday Feb 23rd – Birmingham Monday Feb 25th – London – The SSE Arena

https://www.livenation.co.uk/show/1204541/steely-dan/london/2019-02-25/en

The bastards have been at it again. First they came for Elvis, then poor old Roy Orbison…..and now the Beach Boys have the honour of being slathered in string arrangements. I love the Beach Boys, so much so that this has made me mad as hell. What next? The Kinks? The Small Faces?? I guess anyone who feels they need to wring just a bit more out of their recorded legacy will go for this treatment.

Oh, and the snippet of Fun, Fun, Fun you can here via the link sounds just awful…

https://ume.lnk.to/BeachBoysOrchestralEm?utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_medium=email&utm_content=https%3a%2f%2fUMe.lnk.to%2fBeachBoysOrchestralEm&utm_campaign=22143509&utm_umg_et=313042290

Last night I witnessed this for the first time. I guess this is because I don’t usually go anywhere near the sort of band that attracts this sort of audience, but we were at a gig last night headlined by Ferocious Dog as we like and support Sam Green, who was supporting. We had seen FD at a festival and really like their stuff – fiddle led, sort of like the Pogues, quite political, with a dash of punk and reggae. I actually had a word with the lead singer at a festival, and he is the nicest bloke you can imagine. They even had people bring donations last night for the local food bank, so they are pretty right on.

But…thank the Lord we were in the balcony seats as the smallish standing area at the Exeter Phoenix became a seething mass of blokes with their shirts off throwing themselves at each other. Clearly this was expected behaviour and was all part of their evening’s entertainment, but from above it was just about the most frightening thing I’ve ever witnessed, with guys frequently disappearing to the floor under a mass of bodies.

I’ve obviously led a very sheltered gig » Continue Reading.

After what must be one of the longest ‘lives’ of any band, the Searchers are finally packing it in after 55 years (at least). I suspect many of you won’t care very much, but for me they are a very special group as they were one of the first loves of mine after The Beatles grabbed my attention in 1963. I never really took to Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Billy J. Kramer et al – not enough to invest in their records anyway – but this lot were different. Their early records smacked of energy and urgency – Sweets For My Sweet, Sugar & Spice, Needles and Pins, Don’t Throw Your Love Away were the first four singles and they were number 1,2,1,1 respectively. Astonishingly, in a year spanning mid 1963 to mid 1964 they released those 4 singles plus 3 hit LPs – they were second only to the Beatles at this point. Unfortunately for them, in retrospect it is easy to see that the reasons that this couldn’t last – most significantly, they didn’t have strong songwriters and relied largely on Chris Curtis to identify material. They did have a decent producer in Tony » Continue Reading.

Reports around this evening that Lyndsey Buckingham is no longer in Fleetwood Mac – some say he has quit and some say he was fired.

This would seem to be a fairly fatal blow to the ticket sales for that projected farewell tour! Like them or not, he is pretty indispensable I would say.

Well, well, well….Brian Wilson at a folk festival!

Cropredy 2018

So….me and Mrs. T are sat in bed this morning enjoying a first cuppa, and she is reading a Facebook post with a picture of CSN&Y saying that they may reform because they are united in their hatred…’Are they talking about Trump?’…’Yes’, I reply, ‘I saw that the other day’. ‘Oh, right…..is that Colin Bluntstone?’…..’Er….no, that is Neil Young….there’s a clue in the name’……*thwack*! I suppose I deserved that for the sarcasm.

It led me to think….any other cases of daft mistaken identifications out there?

Some help and advice required! I was wondering how you lovely people play your high quality audio files? I have a high quality traditional hi-fi setup (turntable, CD player, pre and power amps) to which I added a Cambridge streaming device a few years ago which I now mostly use to stream Spotify and internet radio, but I have my huge iTunes library on a NAS hard drive and I had the original intention of streaming this as well, but I found that Spotify is much more usable and there is now no real need to stream ‘regular’ stuff of my own, so I really only need to stream the stuff that isn’t on Spotify or CD. Also, iTunes uses mp3s rather than high quality FLAC files, so I find myself in a quandary – how do I stream the FLAC files? Do I create a new, much smaller, database of the FLAC files somehow? How do you people play your files?

Just a bit of a heads up – I have found that it is worth having a moan about delivery from Amazon. Over the past few months there have been a few occasions when I have ordered something offering Prime next day delivery and the delivery takes longer or, as yesterday, is projected to take three days. I have either spoken to someone or chatted online to them and they nearly always offer to extend your Prime membership by a month as compensation. My Prime was due to run out at the end of October….it now runs to 26th February! That’s four free months worth around £26 at annual rates.

The following was posted on Facebook the other day and I responded as I saw Dylan at the Isle Of Wight. I’m going to be in the book apparently! Neil Cossar has done a similar book on Bowie which was quite well received.

Did you see Bob Dylan in the 60s or 70s? We are working on our new book Bob Dylan – I Was There. We would love to include your memory in the book, if you did please email neil@thisdayinmusic.com

Bob Dylan request!

I have three great tickets for the Bootleg Beatles in Brighton just before Christmas – row B – which I am now unable to use. Offering here first before I go the stubhub route. Face value to an Afterworder!

It seems that, at last, we going get some archive stuff from the 60s. It has always irked me that the Stones have been unwilling or unable to release BBC recordings and so on, so maybe this is the first of such releases. These have all been available before on good quality bootlegs (that is an assumption at the moment as I haven’t been through the track list with a fine tooth comb yet), but these have been picked apart at Abbey Road and remastered, so should sound great.

60s outtakes and alternative versions next….??

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/the-rolling-stones-on-air/

Beatles Sgt. Pepper big box at £79.99, Fresh Cream 4 disc set at £29.99 and the George Harrison vinly box about £100 cheaper, amongst other deals..! I’ve ordered the Cream, although currently out of stock they say they will be getting more….

http://bit.ly/2jUaBzN

It means having to watch the One Show, but footage shot by Leo Mckern in Austria during the filming of Help! is being screened and discussed this evening by Eleanor Bron, Abigail McKern and Paul McCartney’s stunt double (I just hope he’s called Billy Shears).

Actor Neil Pearson wants to sell this for £35k!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/12/unseen-footage-of-the-beatles-during-filming-of-help-emerges-after-50-years?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

My patience with Doctor Who has been stretched to breaking point in the last couple of years with far too much clever-clever plotting and story arcs that make absolutely no sense to me, and I’m far from a casual viewer. I felt Capaldi was desperately under served by the Moff, and wondered why no one had actually realised this who had anything to do with the production.

So much was my disillusionment that I actually put off watching the Christmas special until quite recently – it was better than I feared, but stiil approached the new series with some trepidation.

But…what’s this..? An episode that actually made sense, with genuine humour, mild jeopardy, some scarey stuff and a sense of a new beginning. The word ‘reboot’ came immediately to my mind, and the title of the episode (The Pilot) may be quite clever. You could start anyone here as it required no knowledge of previous Who, and was all the better for that.

Final thoughts – Capaldi finally had a script worthy of the name, the new companions are fun, and the trailers for the series at the end look genuinely exciting.

Anyone else bothering to watch..?