Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”A couple of years on, Detroit’s MC5 released their version of “Motor City is Burning” (no “The”) on their debut album, the live set Kick Out The Jams. Now, the title is borrowed for the three-CD clamshell box Motor City Is Burning - A Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by what was credited as the “Sun Shine Music Shop,” an enterprise which seems to have left no additional imprint. No further “Sun Shine Music Shop” albums are known.In contrast, Ibex Band, the outfit which recorded Stereo Instrumental Music, had a lineage outstripping that of the label which released the album. In 1975, they had issued an album and four related singles where they backed established vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed. They also backed Aster Aweke on one of her early albums Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy collects 10 tracks which were not originally released (a bonus seven-inch with early copies of the LP takes it to 12 tracks). The first band heard are Birmingham’s Heavyboots. They are followed by Band Of Mental Breakdown (also known as B.O.M.B.), Macbeth Periscope, Agatha’s Moment, Jessica’s Theme, Greenfly, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The Syndicats, it attracted next-to no attention when it came out. The top side of the flop 45 was “On the Horizon,” a version of a Ben E. King B-side. After this, The Syndicats’ time seemed to have passed.Then, in 1982, a compilation album titled The Demention Of Sound turned up in shops. “Crawdaddy Simone” was on it, alongside tracks from singles by relatively well-known UK Sixties mod/R&B bands The Bo Street Runners (members of whom went on to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (1939–2019) seemed to melt away. Three follow-up 45s weren’t hits. Her album wasn’t a strong seller. Latterly, though, one of its tracks, “You're Dead,” has been heard as the theme of the TV and cinema versions of What We Do In The Shadows.There was, despite the lack of subsequent commercial success, a second album. I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile was recorded in the UK and issued in 1971. Sales were low and it ostensibly attracted Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart success, peaked in 1963 – the question is addressed by Liverpool Sunset: The City After Merseybeat 1964–1969. The city’s musicians carried on, despite record labels looking elsewhere for the next big thing, and despite the Liverpool tag no longer ensuring an automatic interest.The final (identifiably) Merseybeat bands to debut on the charts were The Escorts, with “The One to Cry” in July 1964, The Undertakers, with “Just a Little Bit" in April 1964, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode attractive in the US.” That, in full, in its 1 March 1975 issue, was US music business paper Billboard’s review of the single of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn.”Three weeks later, with the single at 75 on its charts, Billboard went into it a little more. “With all the German avant-garde groups knocking vainly at US doors for the past five years, Kraftwerk is the first to make it. The extra ingredient appears to be the hypnotic prettiness of its synthesizer Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the Swinging Ballades, Sverre Faaberg and the Young Ones, The Jokers, Rune Larsen and Teen Beats, The Quartermasters, Helge Nilsen and the Stringers and Tornado bore a bold stamp recognising each band’s origin in the country’s second city.As a marketing tool, “Bergen Beat” made sense. A Norwegian counterpart to Merseybeat might catch on (irrespective of some of the bands dubbed thus being in the mould of Cliff Richard & The Shadows or Swedish instro Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sharks were formed in 1972 by bassist Andy Fraser after he left Free. There were two albums, line-up changes and ripples which resonated after the band spilt in 1974. A 2017 reunion album featured former Sex Pistol Paul Cook on drums. “Sophistication,” from Sharks' 1974 second album Jab It In Yore Eye, had an insistent riff Mick Jones repurposed for The Clash's “Should I Stay or Should I go.”There is more to Sharks’ aftermath, but the dovetailing with what would become British punk rock is, on the face of it, unlikely. Sharks were a band born from the aftershocks of the late sixties Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of bracingly straight-ahead Brit-punk with a headstrong freshness undiminished by time. But whatever the impact, The Lurkers were never a main-agenda band, and the Peel session was an adjunct to their discography.The Peel session has resurfaced on a 12-inch, clear-vinyl EP as part of the Beggars Arkive series of releases: an archive exercise digging into Beggars Banquet, the label The Lurkers were on. Available as a stand-alone release, the record is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After co-fronting Vinegar Joe with Robert Palmer, Elkie Brooks first charted as a solo artist in 1977 with “Pearl’s a Singer.” Yet there was more to her musical past than the 1971 to 1974 spell in the blues-rock outfit. Her contributions to You Got Me Hooked! - More Marylebone Beat Girls are “He's Gotta Love me” and “Stop the Music” – both released a decade before “Pearl’s a Singer.”“He's Gotta Love me” was the June 1965 A-side of her fourth single. “Stop the Music” was the B-side of her February 1966 sixth single. Each is a top-drawer uptown soul-pop nugget with a strong tune, driving rhythm Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“A band you’re gonna like, whether you like it or not.” The proclamation in the press ads for the New York Dolls’ debut album acknowledged they were a hard sell.At this point, in July 1973, the band was a New York phenomenon. There had been an anti-climactic brush with the UK in October and November 1972, some Boston shows and one-off dates in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but otherwise they had played only to audiences in the city and the nearby boroughs in which they had formed.If wider audiences were “gonna like” proto-punk glam outfit the New York Dolls, it needed more than what they had done so Read more ...