Every Record Tells A Story
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B.B. King, Hells Angels and the Naked Hippie Girl
In a used record shop in Nottingham in January I find a 1970 B.B. King LP with a picture of a guitar made from a watermelon on the cover. It’s £8, and called “Indianola Mississippi Seeds”. Inside the beautiful gatefold cover is a photo of the birth certificate of Riley King, and amongst the musicians…
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It’s…the Every Record Tells A Story Albums of 2022 Blogpost
An album of the year write up in early January feels wrong somehow. I feel slightly guilty sharing this list of 2022’s antiques when we are already a dozen days into a fresh new 2023, shinier and brighter than the year that preceded it. A year that promises much, including the outside possibility of having…
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Paul McCartney, Wings and The Making of Band on the Run
Introduction I have a friend who has never heard any of Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings LPs, except for, as he put it, the Frog Chorus, the one about no man’s land at Christmas, and Ebony and Ivory. His view of McCartney is tainted. As he puts it, “my whole opinion on him is based…
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McCartney in 1972/3: Red Rose Speedway
Introduction: I have a friend, Steve, who has never heard any of Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings LPs, except for, as he put it, the Frog Chorus, the one about no man’s land at Christmas, and Ebony and Ivory. He’s not much of a fan of (who some might describe with justification as) England’s greatest…
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Paul McCartney in 1971: Wings – Wild Life
What’s this all about? I have a friend, Steve, who has never heard any of Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings LPs, except for, as he put it, the Frog Chorus, the one about no man’s land at Christmas, and Ebony and Ivory. My job is therefore to share with him some of McCartney’s best songs,…
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Beck Pays Warm Tribute To Taylor Hawkins At Intimate London Acoustic Show
Beck paid a warm tribute to Taylor Hawkins at an intimate London show last night, while delivering a masterclass, digging out deep cuts from his three-decade-long career. In the U.K. to watch the Taylor Hawkins tribute show at Wembley, Beck appeared relaxed having decided to play a last minute acoustic show. Playing on rented guitars…
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The Story of Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram:
Are Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings albums worth buying? Was Wings really “the band the Beatles could have been”? This is the third in a series of McCartney articles, but you can read each one independently should you prefer. The first part is here I have a friend, Steve, who has never heard any of…
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McCartney
Part two of a series. To recap, I have a friend who has never heard any of Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings LPs, except for, as he put it, the Frog Song, the one about no man’s land at Christmas, and Ebony and Ivory. My job is therefore to share with him some of McCartney’s…
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Sir Paul McCartney at Eighty: Were Wings Really The Band The Beatles Could Have Been?
“It is hard to understand quite how it happened, but there are millions of teenagers running around now who don’t know who U2 are.” I was talking to my friend Steve the other day after reading this comment online where someone with enough music knowledge to share opinions about Arcade Fire and Coldplay had nevertheless…
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The Story of Pulp’s Different Class
Pulp’s defining album, “Different Class” reached the top of the charts in 1995 nearly thirty years ago, in a move designed solely to make us all feel rather old. In a year when the rest of Britain was deciding whether Blur’s “Country House” or Oasis’ “Roll With It” should be number one, Pulp slipped out…
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ABBA – Voyage – “Live” Review from a London’s ABBA Arena
You only had to be at the Genesis farewell concerts earlier this year to wonder about the future of rock music. The O2 Arena looked on as Phil Collins, stymied by age and illness, gamely sung their greatest hits sitting in a chair and moving to the stage with the aid of a walking stick,…
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The Long and Winding Road: How Cher Found Her Mojo On Jackson Highway
How Cher found success despite a disastrous performance in front of Princess Margaret, going to school with rubber bands on her shoes and working for Phil Spector…
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The Story Of Clube da Esquina – One of Brazil’s Greatest Treasures
Clube da Esquina by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges was one of only five Brazilian albums to be featured in the book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”. If you have yet to hear this fusion of Brazilian music and Beatles-inflected pop, this may whet your appetite…
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Should You Buy Nineties Vinyl?
…and a discussion of Record Collector’s Logic. Also: The Great R.E.M. CD / Vinyl Hunt… Have we reached peak vinyl? Should we all pile in to CDs now the price is a tiny fraction of the cost of vinyl? Is nineties vinyl going to be a great investment? Or would we all be better off…
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Format Wars: CDs Versus Vinyl – Which Is The Least Rubbish?
The Great R.E.M. CD Hunt (Part 2) In the last article we asked some of the fundamental questions of the universe. For example: With the re-release of Paul Weller’s Stanley Road for no less than £32.99, have we reached Peak Vinyl? Are we doing the right thing selling our CD collections twenty years after we…
Every record tells a story 