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KOOPER'S TRILOGY

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  A school friend sold me his copy of Super Session sometime late in 1970….for one dollar. I’m almost certain that this wasn’t my first encounter with Al Kooper but it became my first Kooper-related acquisition. I also have a vague memory of The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper blaring, somewhat earlier in that year, from the students’ common room amidst cigarette smoke and satanic recess activities….but let’s not loiter. My explanation is that it was a catholic boys’ high school and Vatican 2 was well and truly dusted. Enough said. Up until the end of the swinging sixties, my only awareness of Al Kooper was his association with Blood, Sweat and Tears and that he had scampered into Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited sessions some years earlier. That was about it apart from occasionally eyeing off Norman Rockwell’s fabulous cover image on the live double in Nicholson’s city store. However, Kooper had been much busier than my meagre knowledge suggested. ...
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CONFESSIONS OF A BOOMER- MY TEN FAVOURITE ALBUMS

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  INTRODUCTION Lists are bloody lists and about as useful as a retired teacher with nothing much to do. But I’m sufficiently compulsive enough to peg a few albums that I’ve really liked over the decades in anticipation of someone asserting that I’m a clown so that an argument will break out and a few more minutes will be gainfully occupied here in the departure lounge. As you’ll soon see, I’ve cheated in limiting ‘the ten’ to ten but I hope you’ll understand. Any sort of plagiarism has either been carefully concealed or is unintentional. I’ve also been thoroughly destroyed in the process of articulating my ten. Upon completion of the task, I asked my wife if she could nominate any of my picks, sight unseen. After she successfully tagged six of my first seven choices, I immediately called a halt to the proceedings, went to the bathroom, looked at my image in the mirror and came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I wasn’t the brooding, opaque and complex perso...
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TEN ESSENTIAL OZ ALBUMS

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ORIENTATION A couple of disclosures/ disclaimers are necessary when explaining the following list of albums. The first is that I reside firmly in the boomer town postcodes and that may assist when reflecting on the titles that I’ve chosen. The second has to do with the here and now. If you ask me tomorrow, I might generate a different list. Ayers Rock or a Midnight Oil early album could make the run-on squad. I might even sniff out The jaws of life . Who knows?   THE ESSENTIAL TEN   Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs- Live at the Melbourne Town Hall (1971) The rebadged Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs (Mark 2) really made their name in the town hall 'dances' that occurred in Sydney and Melbourne during 1970 and 1971. Draconian licensing laws meant that hotels, in those times, were not allowed to stage live music events of the sort that Thorpie and other hippie-type bands offered. I had the chance to see The Aztecs at Ashfield Town Hall in late 1971 but pa...
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