The Album Considered
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STEVE HILLAGE. RAINBOW DOME MUSICK, CONSIDERED (1979): Tune in, turn off and . . .
17 Feb 2023 | 2 min read | 1
When long-haired prog-rock guitarist Steve Hillage – who had played with Soft Machine and in Gong, appeared in the first live performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and had interesting solo albums behind him – released Rainbow Dome Musick it ran counter to the prevailing trends. The punk wave had broken and edgy post-punk bands and artists were everywhere. Hardly the... > Read more
ACKER BILK. HITS, BLUES AND CLASSICS, CONSIDERED (1989): In my client's defense, m'lord . . .
1 Feb 2023 | 2 min read
The only time I saw Acker Bilk he was drunk. Then again, when I saw Georgie Best he was too so . . . The difference being that Best was in a bar and Bilk was on a stage playing to the paying public who had every right to expect something better than his shambling show. I can't remember who else was on the double bill, but I suspect it was Kenny Ball who... > Read more
HAROLD BUDD, BRIAN ENO: AMBIENT 2; THE PLATEAUX OF MIRROR (1980)
23 Jan 2023 | 2 min read
Following his wonderful Music for Films and After the Heat (with Moebius and Roedelius of Cluster), this collaboration with pianist Harold Budd continued Eno's exploration of ambient music after the first volume Music for Airports and his work with Budd on The Pavilion of Dreams two years previous. Pulled from the shelves at random for this on-going column, my copy is in excellent condition... > Read more
RETURN TO FOREVER. ROMANTIC WARRIOR, CONSIDERED (1976): It's fusion Jim, but you'll be safe
13 Jan 2023 | 2 min read
Guitarist John Scofield – who was there at the time – laughs about “the old fusion curse” of the Seventies when light-speed fretboard work was the order of the day. There were a few guitarists who could pull off jazz-fusion – Scofield, John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola among them – but that period where jazz crossed into rock culture post-Hendrix/post-Bitches... > Read more
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NANCY SINATRA. BOOTS, CONSIDERED (1966): Daddy's little girl all grown up
29 Dec 2022 | 2 min read
There were three different instructions producer Lee Hazlewood gave to Nancy Sinatra when she went to sing his freshly written song These Boots Are Made For Walking. Each was as good as the others. First he told her to sing it “like a 14-year old girl in love with a 40-year old man”. Sinatra didn't quite know what that meant so after the first take he suggested she... > Read more
HEART: DREAMBOAT ANNIE, CONSIDERED (1975): Figuring their way through pop-folk and prog to rock
19 Dec 2022 | 2 min read
In 1997 when Rolling Stone had a substantial Women of Rock issue, they paid scant attention to Heart, just half a dozen sentences. Admittedly their best days seemed to be behind them, but with six multi-platinum albums to that point they certainly deserved more space than Yoko Ono whose contribution to “rock” was marginal. Yet she scored twice as much space as the Wilson sisters... > Read more
VARIOUS ARTISTS. BRING FLOWERS TO U.S., CONSIDERED (2001): It's psychedelic baby, but not really
12 Dec 2022 | 3 min read
Lenny Kaye's Nuggets collection didn't just inspire musicians but also sequels and, of course, record company entrepreneurs . . . like Massimo del Pozzo in Italy. Bari-born del Pozzo was the mainman in the long-running garageband The Others (and other bands like the Tyme Society) as well as running his own Misty Lane Records which published books and had its own store in Rome. It was... > Read more
JEFF BECK. TRUTH, CONSIDERED (1968): Only the band Led Zepp became
5 Dec 2022 | 4 min read | 1
Strange to consider in this age where so many singles have “ft.” and then a guest artist's name that until the late Sixties musicians rarely played on each others songs, or if they did it was anonymously. Back then "the band" was sacrosanct. So when Eric Clapton played on George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps (on The White Album) he went... > Read more
RAY MANZAREK. THE GOLDEN SCARAB, CONSIDERED (1974): The world according to Ray
31 Oct 2022 | 2 min read
It's very odd, but I would have put money on the fact that I once interviewed the Doors' keyboard player Ray Manzarek. But I can find no evidence to support that and – although this can be true of many among the thousand or musicians I have interviewed – can drag up no details from the memory. I certainly interviewed the band's very amusing drummer John Densmore but never... > Read more
SPLIT ENZ: CONFLICTING EMOTIONS, CONSIDERED (1983): The start of the short goodbye
20 Oct 2022 | 3 min read
For some reason Elsewhere has two copies of this past-their-best Split Enz album on its shelves, which doubled its chances of it appearing at random for the purposes of this on-going column. Conflicting Emotions followed their enormously successful True Colours which came in vibrant cover art, the somewhat lesser and darker Waiata (the designer said Noel Crombie's cover art “was the... > Read more
RINGO STARR: BEAUCOUPS OF BLUES, CONSIDERED (1970): From Abbey Road to Music Row
3 Oct 2022 | 4 min read | 1
An amusing irony after the Beatles broke up in 1970 was that the one who didn't write any songs (two in more than seven years hardly counts) and was the fourth best singer in the band should, for a time, have the most commercial – and sometimes critical – success. Ringo Starr's string of singles in the early Seventies – It Don't Come Easy, Back Off Boogaloo, Photograph and... > Read more
LOWELL GEORGE: THANKS I'LL EAT IT HERE, CONSIDERED (1979): The long hello and a sudden goodbye
28 Sep 2022 | 4 min read | 2
The solo debut album by Lowell George of Little Feat was a long time coming. So long in fact that in the time he saw the unsigned Rickie Lee Jones perform her song Easy Money in an LA club and, with her permission, recorded it for his album she – with his help – got signed to his label Warners, recorded and released her massive-selling debut album. Her version of Easy... > Read more
SHAWN PHILLIPS: FACES, CONSIDERED (1972)
18 Sep 2022 | 2 min read | 2
As with albums by The Amazing Blondel, Ram John Holder and Mireille Mathieu, I have no idea how the Faces album by Shawn Phillips came my way in the early Seventies. But I'm very glad they did. Back in that time the American folk-rocker Phillips was known for two things: the astonishing length of his hair, and a soaring falsetto. And although he was moderately successful at... > Read more
Landscape
CHROME. RED EXPOSURE, CONSIDERED (1980): Dance animal-machine, dance
9 Sep 2022 | 2 min read
The British press didn't really get Red Exposure – or even Chrome – when this album came out, which is surprising because in that exciting post-punk period they'd already had Pere Ubu, The Pop Group, Rip Rig and Panic, This Heat, The Slits and others out of left-field. But Chrome from San Francisco – founded by Damon Edge and here with Helios Creed on their fifth album and... > Read more
BOB DYLAN: DESIRE, CONSIDERED (1976): To the valley below . . . and beyond
28 Aug 2022 | 5 min read
In the collective memory, Bob Dylan's Desire album of '76 comes between the exceptional Blood on the Tracks and is sandwiched between the two legs of his Rolling Thunder Review of late '75 and early '76. Desire came out before that second (and less happy) part of the Thunder tour but he'd already taken the songs – notably Hurricane about the boxer Rubin Carter, One More Cup of Coffee... > Read more
CINDY LEE BERRYHILL. NAKED MOVIE STAR, CONSIDERED (1989): Neo-folk boho Downtown urbanists
14 Aug 2022 | 2 min read
Some advice to young artists, a couple of things to avoid. First, never join a movement which has a manifesto because within a very short time people will fall out over how to interpret it. And next thing you know the movement has broken up and counter-manifestos have been published and are being argued over. Second, never get involved with anything which styles itself as... > Read more
12 Dollar Motel
JOHN COLTRANE/JOHNNY HARTMAN: THE MASTER SESSIONS, CONSIDERED (1963): The gifted at their ease
8 Aug 2022 | 2 min read
When the famous “lost” album Both Directions At Once by saxophonist John Coltrane was discovered and issued in 2018, what was only mentioned in passing – as it was in Elsewhere's piece – was why Coltrane's group was even in Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio on that day in May '63 anyway. It was because the group – Coltrane... > Read more
JOHN CALE, FRAGMENTS OF A RAINY SEASON, CONSIDERED (1982/2016): The new society still ain't pretty
1 Aug 2022 | 3 min read | 3
Most musicians in rock culture establish their sound and reputation over a few early albums and consolidate both if their careers are of any length. The late Lemmy and Lou Reed for example released albums which became their hallmarks, and their personae – wildman Lemmy and pugnacious Reed – became our enduring image of them. That said, in each case there were frequently... > Read more
Library of Force (from M:FANS)
DINAH LEE: INTRODUCING DINAH LEE, CONSIDERED (1964): Pop, ska and whatever else is available
24 Jul 2022 | 2 min read
The problem which popular artists had in the mid Sixties was that after the hit singles they were expected to release an album. For r'n'b artists like the Rolling Stones, Pretty Things and Downliners Sect that wasn't such a stretch: all they needed to do was pull out of their grab-bag of blues and r'n'b covers a selection to go alongside their singles and the album would sound coherent.... > Read more
THE STAIRS: MEXICAN R'N'B, CONSIDERED (1992): Through the past, smartly
4 Jul 2022 | 3 min read
And suddenly, they they were, all The Definite Article bands. After years of single-name grunge outfits (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad etc) the post-Britpop groups appeared with “the” in front of their names. This wasn't new, of course, but in that Brit-pride world which had musically looked back to the Sixties for reference points (the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, the... > Read more