Music

Santa provided me with the readies to finally secure this boxed set yesterday in Sin City. Released earlier in the year, Hocus Pocus contains all of Focus’ albums with a couple of impressive extras. The box totals 13 CDs and is accompanied by a pretty good information booklet........ but I'm sure that TJ Lammers didn’t activate spell-check when the recount was being composed. For me, there are two distinct parts to Focus’ career, namely, their initial albums up to- and including- Mother Focus (1975) and then the stuff that follows right up to 2012. Their heyday lies quite firmly in the early to mid-seventies. I saw them in 1974 at the pavlova and they were pretty near untouchable in ‘live’ mode. But it’s the gear from the other part of their history that’s the real attraction of this box. Focus Con Proby (1978) has occupied a ‘Holy Grail’-like position in my crate and sound lounge searching for decades and, you guessed it, it’s bloody here. One would think that the depa...

Released in late 1971, Spectrum's 'Milesago' was one of those albums I always wanted but never quite got around to buying. I had heard parts of it just after its release and I recall there being a lot of hype surrounding it at the time. 'Milesago' was, arguably, the first Oz rock double album but its real punch came from the musical territory it explored and the adventurous departure it took from Spectrum's initial album. Revisionism is something I abhor but a small amount of context is needed with 'Milesago'. There were two bands operating at the time of this recording; Spectrum (obviously!) and the more commercially-pointed Indelible Murtceps. Both bands had the same line-ups. My reason for alluding to this duality is that both bands left watermarks on the album and these added to its sprawling and diverse character. Strange titles, weird lyrics and off-beat themes litter the fifteen songs but the highlight is the interplay between Mike R...

The recent stoush here on VHU re 'talk' about LP editions etc etc immediately took my mind back to when I started collecting albums in the late sixties/ early seventies.   Many of my choices in those 'sound awakening' days were informed by Room to move radio sessions, friends and family. In fact, I'd regularly traipse into town, via 438 bus on a Thursday night or Saturday morning, to Nicholsons, Palings or Anthem Records with a list of titles in priority order to be procured, once spotted.   One thing I vividly remember was often seeing long-haired types (men and women) in small groups thumbing through the shelves and deep in conversation about what they were after, where a record might have emanated from or hassling the person behind the counter about a release they couldn't locate. To me, all of this was bloody great and, to some extent, just as important as the music. It was like a rite of passage.   Fast forward almost fifty years to NOW...

A very sad day indeed. The news of Gregg Allman's death overnight marks the end of one of rock music's greatest groups. To try to label the Allman Brothers Band in any musical category, I believe, misses the point and seriously undervalues what their legacy might be.   On first hearing 'Fillmore East' too many decades ago, I was stunned by its precision.....and I still am. For a band that, in numerous ways, built its reputation on live performance, the attention to detail on that double is truly remarkable. To my untrained ears, there's not a damn note out of place.   The other great thing about this band lay in its influences. The lazy 'Southern Rock' tag never sat well with Gregg Allman and you don't have to be a musical scholar to recognise rock, jazz and blues infusions in all their work, whether live or from the studio. Even in 'jam' mode, the Allmans mined rich and diverse sources.   Of course Gregg Allman, through circu...

It's almost Winter.   Billy Thorpe's premature passing on the last day of Summer eight years ago affected me pretty much like it seemed to affect everyone over fifty years of age............... badly. It's not so much that an 'icon' (an overused and lazy label) had left us but, rather, a large chunk of Oz pop culture had broken away from the firmament and disappeared into a hole. What was left would never look and never feel the same.   Listening to talk-back radio at the time of his death, I remember that everyone had a story about Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs. I guess that's a measure of Thorpie's power, influence and infiltration. He was a master communicator and a master entertainer.   My Thorpe stories, I'd wager, would mirror tens of thousands of others. I'm an avid collector of rock music and have been listening to good vibes since about 14 years of age. Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs' 'Live At The Melbourne Town Hall...

    Have recently taken possession of this boxed set and it's very good. Basically, the package includes both of Taste's studio albums with added alternate versions and mixes as well as a series of live recordings spanning the years 1968 to 1970.   From all accounts, Taste were at their most potent in the live setting but it's the two discs related to the studio albums which are, for me, the most intriguing.   Both 'Taste' and 'On The Boards' show the huge development in a band over a period of less than a year. And Taste were fast forging an identity themselves as much as being a vehicle for the star guitarist and his impending world domination! Sure, Gallagher's blues' influences are scattered everywhere but the often unexpected jazz and folk infusions certainly pointed to a sound that was becoming adventurous and complex. Wilson and McCracken played key roles in this development.   Taste's demise is attributed to ba...

    Have acquired this 2014 compilation just recently and it’s a bottler. Comprising three CDs and a DVD, ‘Michael Bloomfield: From His Head To His Heart To His Hands’ navigates through sixteen years of his recordings and it comes pretty close to ‘definitive’ in terms of both his better known and not-so-known works.   Bloomfield was a prodigy on the electric guitar but, just as importantly, he was in the vanguard regarding the revival of the blues in the early sixties and this placed him in an almost unique position within American mainstream music at that time. Certainly, revisionists genuflect at the British altar of the blues revival but Bloomfield was every bit as crucial to its resurgence.    This compilation was put together and produced by Al Kooper so an entire CD is devoted to material related to ‘Supersession’, ‘Live Adventures…..’ and the ‘Fillmore East Lost Concert Tapes’. But Bloomfield’s initial recording audition tapes from 1964, hi...