What does it sound like?:

George Harrison was liberated when The Beatles finally split up in 1970. It was a moment he’d prepared for. In 1968, disillusioned with the acrimonious recording of The White Album, he travelled to America and recharged his batteries with The Band and Bob Dylan, where he enjoyed a musical respect and equality lacking in his relationships with Lennon & McCartney. He collaborated with Eric Clapton, co-writing Badge for Cream, and accompanied him on a tour with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, learning how to play slide guitar in the process. He also completed an apprenticeship as a producer, working with Billy Preston, Doris Troy, Leon Russell, Jack Bruce and enjoyed two hit singles with the Rhada Krishna Temple. The final ingredient was Harrison’s recruitment of Phil Spector to produce The Plastic Ono Band’s Instant Karma!

He had a bag full of songs rejected for Beatles records dating back years. Isn’t It A Pity and Art Of Dying date back to 1966 and Revolver. In early 1969, The Beatles chose For You Blue over All Things Must Pass, Hear Me Lord and Let It Down and spent time recording Dig It instead. After becoming a » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

This is something of an odd product, described as a companion to last year’s Metrobolist. It consists of two CDs, housed in a DVD shaped book, with 104 pages of text, collecting all the material David Bowie recorded in 1970 other than The Man Who Sold The World album. The only other available physical product is a vinyl EP of four 2020 remixes of the singles.

Bowie began the year brimming with confidence. He’d just enjoyed the triumph of a number one single and had snared an Ivor Novello for Space Oddity. You can hear that self-assurance in disc one, a live recording from early February for The Sunday Show Introduced By John Peel, the first time he was treated as a star at the top of the bill for the BBC. Peel’s dulcet tones introduce each song in turn, engage in some exchanges with Bowie and throw in the occasional obtuse anecdote, anchoring the recording in time and place. You can smell the joss sticks and feel the Persian rug with your toes. Bowie plays twelve string (remember those?) and is accompanied by The Hype, a band with Mick Ronson on guitar, » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

The Afterword has been to the gigs and enjoyed Spike Lee’s movie but how about completing the set and buying the soundtrack? The musicians on the American Utopia were untethered, all wore matching grey suits with bare feet and every move across the stage was carefully choreographed, their ebbs and flows emphasised and exaggerated by simple but effective lighting, the backdrop being a curtain of chains. Can a soundtrack capture a show whose essence is so visual?

There are twelve musicians: guitar, bass, keyboards, six percussionists, two backing vocalists and David Byrne himself, contributing guitar to some songs. The bassist, Bobby Wooten III, revels in the limelight and the percussionists, who more than substitute for a drum kit, are well organised and disciplined. They add power and intricacy to songs that rely heavily on complex rhythmical patterns.

They play twenty-two songs in all: ten Talking Heads: one from ’77, one Fear Of Music, three Remain In Light, three Speaking in Tongues, one Little Creatures and one Naked: six ‘solo’ Byrne, four of which were collaborations, and five from the American Utopia album itself, plus a cover. The song choices are mostly the obvious » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

In 1970, you’d have thought David Bowie would be doing everything he could to impress his new employer, Mercury. He’d been in danger of becoming a one-hit wonder with Space Oddity. His follow up singles were flops. His audition for the label was whimsical and folky, in keeping with much of the other music on his 1969 album. He’d won the contract by the skin of his teeth but allowed himself to become embroiled in the complexities of changing his manager. Ken Pitt had stood by him when most others looked away but Bowie was smitten by fast-talking American, Tony Defries. The transfer was protracted and distracting and one he would rue for decades. He was smitten in another way, newly married to Angie, who was keen to spend most of her day in bed or in antique shops. Bowie enthusiastically indulged her. He had two trusted lieutenants to look after the music, one longer standing, Tony Visconti, and one new, Mick Ronson. If Visconti is to be believed, Bowie was either absent or spent most of the recording time lounging about. The album he delivered is an album of extremes with no singles » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Pretty Things are a ‘cult’ band, meaning they enjoyed little commercial success but attracted a loyal and fervent fan base. This year, their lead singer and lyric writer, Phil May, the only constant member through the decades, sadly lost his life, effectively ending the band as a going concern. This 50th anniversary edition of Parachute, their fifth album, serves as a fitting tribute.

Pretty Things began by playing ugly, unkempt rhythm and blues. Their debut is more than a match for The Rolling Stones’ for raw excitement, except for the fact it came out the following year. Early singles bothered the UK charts. They missed the wave of The British Invasion in America, spending much of 1965 touring the Southern Hemisphere, their drummer, Viv Prince, wreaking havoc wherever he went. They flirted a little with Soul (they even signed to a subsidiary of Tamla Motown) but the drugs Phil May started taking made him see himself as a sweet, sensitive poet, aspiring to be T.S. Eliot. Their sound became more psychedelic and they created the first Rock Opera, S.F. Sorrow, in 1968. Parachute, produced by Norman Smith in Abbey Road, is the follow up, » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Joni Mitchell spent a lot of her career bristling against the label “Folk Singer” but here she is in 1963, at the age of nineteen, recording for her small town radio station in Canada, undeniably a Folk Singer. She is singing House Of The Rising Sun, a year before The Animals transformed it, with a confident yet tremulous voice, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. Everything Joni Mitchell is about is there. The brave yet vulnerable demeanour, the purity of her mezzo-soprano and a strong right hand, her left, weakened by polio at the age of nine, protected by unusual guitar tunings. She has a core inner strength enabling her to stand alone, away from the crowd, her whole life exposed under a spotlight. There is also an innocence soon to be lost.

The recordings on this box are mostly live with some demos, single takes almost without a flaw, documenting a period of personal turmoil up to her first album. They are presented in chronological order and the sound quality is almost uniformally excellent. It starts in her home town radio station, CFQC AM, moves to The Half Beat, Toronto, for two sets, » Continue Reading.