I did not know what to expect from this album. I’m a huge jazz fan but Ibrahim is not someone whose music I’m familiar with. He’s a pianist, but this is very much an ensemble effort. And it covers so much ground. It opens with Mandela, which really swings, and it never sits still. There are steamy, edgy tunes that reek if New York (Song For Sathima, Tuang Gura). Long, slow pieces (the title track & The Mountain). The Wedding is a beautiful tune in march time. I thought Mannenberg Revisited sounded very 60’s. Turns out it is a re-interpretation of a song he originally recorded in the early 70’s. A song which is often remembered as an unofficial national anthem. And the album ends a bit like it started, with the band really stretching out, on Sameeda. A terrific record.

My favourite Roxy albums by far are the first four. This was the 4th, the 2nd without Eno. It’s not full of great songs but it does well enough. The Thrill Of It All, Three And Nine & All I Want Is You are the standouts for me. As are Ferry’s lyrics throughout the album. He’d already released his 2nd solo album a few months before this, complete with dress suit & bowtie on the cover, and that would be the Ferry we’ve watched for almost 50 years now. No surprise then that, except for Cole Porter (who was always in a dinner suit), he’s the only songwriter I’ve come across to use the phrase “that old ennui” (If It Takes All Night). Favourite lyric though is from Casanova : Now you’re nothing/ But second hand/In glove. Great to hear Ferry attack the harmonica a couple of times on Side 1. The band are all fabulous. Not their best album, but in the running.

What a great record. I’ve always liked Pharrell, but knew nothing about his part in this outfit. This is not a hip-hop album. It’s high-quality pop. Full of great hooks and totally interesting music. Particularly love the opening track, Don’t Worry About It, Backseat Love, She wants To Move & the epic Wonderful Place (with hidden track Waiting For You) - so personal & unlike anything else on the album. And special mention to Maybe, which features Lenny Kravitz & Questlove - a quality ballad. No duds here. They even get away with the repetitive refrain of the name Mildred in the final track. That’s good going.

The Young Rascals were essentially a singles band. The first album of theirs that I owned was a greatest hits called Timepeace (1968) - not a dud track on it. The Groovin lp however does have some filler. In fact I would rate five of these eleven tracks as such. But the other half dozen songs still make this a mighty listen. They were great pop songwriters and great artists clamoured to record their songs. Dusty Springfield did a great version of How Can I Be Sure & Aretha almost owned Groovin in the end. I think The Young Rascals were the first white boys to be signed by Atlantic & this album must have made Ertegun & Co. very happy indeed. The song Groovin became an immediate classic - from the instrumental opening you are immediately lazin on a Sunday afternoon. The flute on It’s Love turns what could have been an ordinary rocker into something much better. But they could certainly rock - A Girl Like You & You Better Run are up there with their best recordings. The only cover version on the album is their take on A Place In The Sun which, while interesting, pales next to the version Stevie Wonder had recorded the year before. Anyway, I always wait to hear the concertina in How Can I Be Sure & it always knocks me out. So, despite the filler, there’s enough greatness on this album to give it 4 stars.

I like Matt Johnson’s politics - it’s partly what makes Heartland the highlight of this album for me. Sweet Bird Of Truth is less interesting musically but the lyrics are cut from the same cloth. Problem for me is that The The sound like so many other English bands of the 80’s. I kept thinking : he sounds like Lloyd Cole. But then I discover that Lloyd had been influenced by the first The The album, Soul Mining. So, I’ll never play this album again. I can hear the merit in it, but it’s not my taste.

I’ve always loved Ms.Jackson. It’s the only track on this disc that I was familiar with. Happy to say I loved the rest of it. Outkast have a lot to say. They can be funny (Gangsta Shit). They can be political (B.O.B.). But it’s mainly the sounds I enjoyed. The musical soundscape is so interesting. And subsequently the album is rarely boring. Highlights for me are I’ll Call Before I Come, Bombs Over Baghdad (loved the guitar solo), Xplosion & Gangsta Shit.

Foolishly, I’ve avoided this band because of their name. Recently a friend sent me a bunch of their video clips, which i discovered are well worth a look. Having finally listened, I find that I’ve fallen in love with this album. There are so many highlights. Juxtaposed With U sounds like a great Burt Bacharach composition. I love No Sympathy. The instrumentation & harmonies in it remind me of Crosby, Stills & Nash. In fact, the harmonies are generally wonderful and they combine with the full-on psychedelic approach of the band to create a great sound. There’s something schizophrenic about Sidewalk Surfer Girl. It wants to be soft & sweet and loud & noisy at the same time. Beachboys go metal. And a big mention to Run! Christian! Run! and my favourite lyric - on the midnight train to Jordan. This album was recorded at the legendary Rockfield Studios. I can recommend a doco doing the rounds about that Great Welsh institution. So glad I’ve discoveed this album.

Once again the only track on this LP I was familiar with was the hit single - Cult of Personality. Although I do own the 7 inch single of the Clash cover, Should I Stay Or Should I Go, which appears on the CD reissue, and which I’m quite fond of. Anyway, I really enjoyed the album. At the time it was released it was pretty unusual to find a guitar-based rock band membered by a bunch of black guys. But I have to say that these guys do the memory of Jimi Hendrix proud. Side 2 is terrific. It begins with Funny Vibe, a great track with a false ending featuring the dudes from Public Enemy, and an excellent cover of the Talking Heads’ Memories Can’t Wait. Mick Jagger’s harmonica opens and closes the album’s only ballad, the beautiful Broken Hearts. I love What’s Your Favourite Colour? and cannot understand why it was edited to less than 2 minutes on the vinyl. The side ends with Which Way To America?- which opens like an INXS song but then goes guitar-crazy. Loved it. Realy enjoyable.

I saw Al Green at a free concert in the Sydney Domain in January 2010. After being told the place was full & being turned away, I crawled under a rope partition & ran into the crowd. I was not gonna miss Reverand Al. And he delivered. I reckon the majority of the crowd had been introduced to Al Green by the inclusion of this album’s title track in Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction. In the wake of that I saw him perform the song on Letterman in early 1995. He was outstanding - so relaxed, laid back & in the groove that he & producer Willie Mitchell had created decades earlier. His sound is unique. This album is not full of hit singles but it flows. It immerses the listener. The oddity on the record is his cover of The Bee Gees’ How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (the only time I saw them was not far from the Domain, also outdoors in the old Showground in January 1972). This song had toppedgthe American charts in 1970. What Green does with the track on this album is remarkable. He totally slows it down and he makes it his own. I really liked the original, but Al gives it soul & takes it to a whole new emotional level. My copy of this LP is on Motown, who distributed Hi Records back-catalogue in the 80’s. Hardly surprising. It’s a great listen.

I’d never heard any of the tracks on this album before. I really enjoyed the opening track - it had what sounded like a Cure riff happening in the background and the lyric content was interesting. But, for me it was downhill after that. Except for This Is Yesterday, which slowed the tempo down somewhat, the band were going hell for leather and I got bored. They might be good at what they do. The sounds & samples used were often interesting (hear The Intense Humming Of Evil). But I found the majority of the tracks to be repetitive & very samey. A bit boring, really.

I loved the first two Police albums. But by the time this (their fifth & last) album was released, I’d moved on. Except for the stalker’s theme song (Every Breath etc.) & King Of Pain ( I actually would be more likely to play Weird Al’s piss-take - King Of Suede), I was unfamiliar with the rest of this record. I found the Andy Summers- penned Mother pretty interesting, but the rest was a tad boring. Still, the 2 afore-mentioned singles are strong. Two stars from me.

I was only familiar with the opening track, Time To Pretend. If you were alive in 2008, you could not have escaped it. Extra catchy tune. As for the rest of the album, I liked Weekend Wars & Pieces Of What & the drums in 4th Dimensional Transition, but found the rest of it lacklustre.

I just don’t understand this disc. I find it dead boring. There’s the odd instrumental flourish, but I really can’t stand the lead vocalist’s voice. Can’t really find anything positive to say about it.

I was totally unfamiliar with this album. Ash were obviously a tight outfit. It seemed to be all about the guitars. I really liked I’d Give You Anything - the guitars on this track were outstanding. But I found the rest of it samey & it really didn’t hold my interest.

Here we have around 30 minutes of the wackiest sounds you’re likely to hear. And I find it pretty compelling. I saw these dudes at the Burland Community Hall in Newtown in 1991. I wasn’t sure what to make of their set, but I loved the images being thrown onto the big screen behind the band. It was definitely part of the package. I loved Kuntz, partly because it reminded me of an American baseball card I have for a player by the name of Rusty Kuntz. Only in America. The production is great. Well worth a listen.

Not really my bag. But they do what they do do well. I do like the sound of the bass-playing.

This was The Cars’ debut album, released in June ‘78. The month before, Cheap Trick released their break-out album, Heaven Tonight. I put them on either side of a cassette & for the next 12 months I flogged that tape to death driving around Sydney in my girlfriend Julie’s Holden station-wagon. So I know this album well. And it gives me just as much listening pleasure as it did back then. Side 1 is flawless. And the flipside is almost as good. Ocasek could write a terrific pop song. The Cars were one in a long line of American bands that may never have existed if The Beatles had not taken America by storm. My favourite moment is the Beatles guitar line in My Best Friend’s Girl - total homage to the Fab4. The song even ends with a Yeah Yeah Yeah in the fadeout. I love this record.

For most of my adult life, my reply to the query “What’s your fave Beatles album?” was Revolver. When It was released, I’d just turned 16. The same day it was released, the new Beatles’ single was released - in Australia, the A-side was, unbelievably, Yellow Submarine. The B-side was Eleanor Rigby, one of McCartney’s greatest compositions. None of the Fab4 play on it. George Martin claimed his score for the strings was inspired by Hitchcock’s favourite composer, Bernard Herrman. It’s exceptional. McCartney was also responsible for Got To Get You Into My Life & Good Day Sunshine, both up-tempo belters, and two beautiful ballads, For No One (just Paul & Ringo) and Here, There And Everywhere (with beautiful vocal harmonies which Paul claimed was inspired by Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows). George got 3 songs on the album, more than ever before, including the opening track, Taxman, on which Paul played lead; Love You To, with George on sitar, Anil Bhagwat on tabla & no other Beatle taking part; and I Want To Tell You. Ringo got to sing Yellow Submarine, which was actually a #1 single. And Lennon featured on I’m Only Sleeping; She Said She Said (inspired by an acid experience with Peter Fonda); the wonderfully poppy And Your Bird Can Sing; Dr Robert (re a NY dealer who supplied hallucinogens); and Tomorrow Never Knows, a track which single-handedly changed the course of popular music. We’d never heard anything like it before. But then, we’d never heard anything like The Beatles before. This is a great record.

This album was released in October 1977. The title track was impossible to dislike and has over time become one of Bowie’s most popular songs. It’s one of 4 tracks on the album co-written with Eno & features Fripp on guitar. Six tracks feature vocals and four (most of Side 2) are instrumentals. For me, “Heroes”, Beauty And The Beast and Blackout are the standouts. These 3 & Sense of Doubt are the 4 tracks from this album included on the live double album Stage, which was released in September 1978 to coincide with Bowie’s 9 month world tour. I saw his first Sydney concert at the old Showground in November. He was in great voice. It was the music event of the year & felt a bit like the gathering of the tribes. This isn’t an album I’ve ever played a lot and having given it several spins in the last few days, I don’t know why. The production (Bowie & Visconti) is terrific. And it ‘s never boring - even the 4 consecutive instrumentals are full of surprises. I loved it.

I’m afraid their aim was off. Played it once. Life’s too short. Not at all interesting to me. Enjoyed hearing the famous backbeat from David Essex’s 1973 hit, Rock On, on Some Kind of Kink. And Karime Kendra’s voice on The Rough And The Quick was effective. Other than that, I found it difficult to stay awake. Not one for me.

I saw Wu Tang Clan at the Enmore Theatre in August 2011. I was really there to see the support act, Daily Meds. The audience was so excited. It was a great night. This album was 15 years old at the time but 3 of the tracks were featured that night - Liquid Swords, Duel Of The Iron Mic & 4th Chamber. Two of them feature the hypnotic hammond organ sample from Willie Mitchell’s version of The Rascals’ Groovin. And the other uses the repetitive piano piece from a David Porter(as in Isaac Hayes/David Porter) track. I’d never heard this album before. I spent a lot of time listening to the many tracks sampled here & marvelling at how the samples were used. I enjoyed the film dialogue used. The album has an edge-of the-seat atmosphere that is maintained throughout. It sounds great. Shadowboxin, with the Ann Peebles sample was a standout for me. At times it was just a bit too repetitive. And in a post-ISIS world, I doubt if you’d open your album with a track in which a kid talks about his dad being a decapitator.

I guess it’s an age thing. In the 1970’s I lived in a lot of share-households. I saw & heard a lot of record collections. This wasn’t in any of them. My brother, 8 years younger than me, was the first person I knew with a Sabbath lp, but that was their 2nd album, the one with Paranoid on it. It’s the only track of theirs I could name in a line-up and I’ve always liked it. This album is totally new to me & I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything in the intervening half-century. Derivative & boring.

I’ve owned & loved the single Tennessee/People Everyday for years. When I owned a jukebox, it was often on it. But I’d never heard the rest of this album before. It’s such a great listen. There’s a positivity about it that is missing from a lot of hip-hop released in the 30 years since this came out. There’s not a dud track on it. And so much of it is made to dance to - Mama’s Always On Stage, Give A Man A Fish, Mr Wendal. And the flow of the tracks is terrific. I loved it.

I only own 2 Jimmy Smith albums & this is one of them. Recorded in 1960 for Blue Note, it really swings and is very much an ensemble album. The great guitarist Kenny Burrell features on half the 4 tracks. But I reckon it’s as much Stanley Turrentine’s album. His tenor playing embellishes the whole record. By contrast, the other album I have is a 1967 album he did for Verve, titled Respect, and the difference in Smith’s approach is marked. It’s very funky. Four of the five tracks are covers of soul/funk standards of the day, and it’s very much a Jimmy Smith album. And there are no horns. It’s all about the organ. This reflects the development of his taste through the 60’s. But it doesn’t detract from the greatness of Back At The Chicken Shack - a wonderful listen.

I’m a big fan of Polly’s, but I obviously did not give this much of a listen when I bought it. I was taken aback by the high-pitched voice and I think it got filed away pretty quickly. What a big mistake. I now can’t stop playing it. It ticks a lot of boxes - particularly the length of most of the trax - 5 are 3 minutes or under & only 2 only 2 are longer than 4 minutes. Takes me back to the late 70’s. The stories in the songs are heartfelt and the music is as original as you’d expect from her - possibly a bit to do with Mick Harvey’s involvement. Special mention to the native American drums & cavalry charge bugle in The Glorious Land and the nod to Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues in The Words That Maketh Murder. I saw her at the Horden earlier this century - so good live. And rarely fails on disc. Loved this.

This sounds great. If anything, the tracks are a bit samey, but there’s no doubt the band know what they’re doing. Not particularly my cup of tea, but definitely a polished effort.

I have never listened to a whole Rufus Wainwright album before, just the odd track. I’ve always liked his voice. But, for me, this is a masterpiece. The range of music on this cd is astounding. As is the quality of his lyrics. As a one-time altar boy myself, I was knocked out by the opening track, Agnus Dei, and every track that followed was a winner. I loved The Art Teacher, which made me recall Meg Christian’s Ode To A Gym Teacher; Gay Messiah, which brought to mind his father’s Talking the New Bob Dylan; and Memphis (not Nashville)Skyline, his heartfelt tribute to Jeff Buckley, is outstanding - Then came hallelujah sounding like Ophelia - referencing a Cohen song they both covered. He surrounded himself with such talent - a lot of family, the great Van Dyke Parks’ string arrangements, Levon Helm drumming on The One You Love. The album is so full of surprises. I loved it.

I liked Rocket. i liked Flawless. Take or leave the rest. She’s a talent, but this stuff does nothing for me.

For me, The Cure were a great singles band, but the only albums of theirs I’ve ever been able to listen to are the hits compilations and a live album I own. I checked the hits cds I own, Standing On A Beach : The Singles & The Cure : Greatest Hits, and nothing from Pornography appears on either. This doesn’t surprise me, because I can’t hear any toe-tappers here. I find it just a little boring, except for The Hanging Garden, which was the only single release off this album.

I always loved the single Crucify, which I found on a terrific 5-track EP that featured covers of Nirvana, Led Zeppelin & the Stones. Pleased to find some other gems on this album, particularly Leather & Me And A Gun. It’s impossible to hear her voice without Kate Bush being brought to mind, but she’s not alone in that regard. She can write a tune, and this disc doesn’t get boring. A good listen.

I had never heard of this band before. And when I started listening to the album, I thought - can I actually put up with this guy’s drone of a voice? Well I could, because he’s such an interesting lyricist. There are so many wonderful lines. From the track Tennessee : writing sad songs and paid by the tear & Punk rock died when the first kid said punk’s not dead. From Horselike Swastikas : … And I wanna be like water if I can cause water doesn't give a damn. Not surprising to learn that David Berman was first & foremost a poet. The music is fine, but it’s Berman’s words which steal the show. It’s been a real discovery for me.

I’m a massive Dan fan. After waiting over 30 years for them to tour Australia, I saw them in Sydney and in Canberra in 2007 and was not disappointed. I love this, their 2nd album. I love the photo of the band in the studio. Becker looking cool with the sunnies, Fagen looking like a rabbit in the headlights, having finally been lumbered with lead vocals on all 8 tracks, and Skunk Baxter with his feet all over the mixing desk, looking like he has no doubts about his own ability on the guitar. The opening two songs on each side of this lp are outstanding. The album’s opener, Bodhisattva, is unique in their catalogue - breakneck rock’n’roll, with Baxter & Denny Dias ripping it up with some dual guitar harmonies. It’s followed by Razor Boy, once described as based on a bruised bossa nova groove, featuring the vibraphone of Victor Feldman & Baxter’s pedal steel. Side two begins with the funky Show Biz Kids, featuring the outstanding slide of Rick Derringer’ and the very soulful My Old School, with 4 saxes & a terrific Baxter guitar solo. There are no dull spots on this album and, as usual, the lyrics are often a mystery, but compelling nonetheless. Not my favourite Steely Dan album but easily 5 stars here.

There are ten songs here. For me, six of them are worth 5-stars, so I rate the album similarly. I love his poetry and there’s plenty to enjoy here. Opening with Bird On The Wire sets a pretty high bar. On the surface, it’s addressed to a lover that he’s not treating well, but it’s so much more than that. As is the other great love song - You Know Who I Am. He loves using the word naked, as he does here and also in the more light-hearted Tonight Will Be Fine. Then there are the songs addressing war and the youth. I assume he wrote a lot of these songs in 1968, when the anti-war movement in the U.S. was at it’s peak. The biblical Story Of Isaac and The Butcher fit in here. The Partisan, which he didn’t write, was an unofficial anthem of the Free French in WW2. I only saw him once, in early 1980, at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney. It was his first tour to Australia. And the only other concert I’ve attended where emotions were so high was the first Brian Wilson concert at the State Theatre early this century. The love for the performer was palpable. I remember that people were constantly screaming requests, and I remember that a lot of them were for Nancy. For me it is one of his greatest compositions. Love this album.

What a great record. From Marr’s aggressive guitar in the opening track, the band never lets up. Morrissey provides some great lyrics (although I can’t get Frankly, Mr Shankly out of my head). And the hits just keep coming. Cemetry Gates has always been a favourite, and from that point in the album, it’s just one great track after another. No filler on this. Can’t believe I don’t listen to The Smiths more often.

Comes from a time in my life when Reg released one memorable album after another, in this case a double album. A superb opening side - the instrumental Funeral For A Friend segues into 3 great tracks, ending with Bennie And The Jets, a hugely successful singles & John’s first song to make the R&B charts in the U.S. There’s some great stuff on Sides 2&3, notably the title track, Jamaica Jerk-Off,Sweet Painted Lady, etc. and he brings it home with Side 4, beginning with 2 absolute belters then easing out with the beautiful Roy Rogers, the country-inspired Social Disease & the mellow Harmony. Still does it for me.

I wasn’t familiar with any of this album. Three or four tracks in I was finding it a little boring, and then was really taken with We Fight We Love, featuring Raphael Saadiq. From that point on, I found it to be most engaging. The 2 standouts for me were Move (featuring a Jackson 5 sample) and Manwomanboogie, featuring Amanda Diva. Great production. Enjoyed it.

I knew nothing about the band or the album. And when listening to the opening track, The Humpty Dance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear much more. Then the Hendrix sample on The Way We Swing got me totally interested & I have to say I loved this album. The title track is terrific, as is Rhymin On The Funk, both with Parliament samples, and I was also taken by Underwater Rimes, which felt like a hip-hop version of The B-52’s Rock Lobster. The impersonation of Edward G. Robinson’s gangster persona is a scream. And I loved the final track, Doowutchyalike. It said a lot about the band’s approach to music, as well as life. This is one of the most soulful hip-hop albums I’ve ever heard. A great listen.

Shoegazing? Perfect description. I found the first few tracks dead boring. However when the band got really noisy, particularly on Feed Me With Your Kisses, it took me back to early Jesus & Mary Chain. Sometimes there’s a point to pure noise. These guys were obviously good at it. Will probably never listen to it again.

I was a big fan of their debut album, Psychocandy (1985). I loved their use of feedback. I remember a friend visiting me while I was playing that album on a portable cassette player and advising me “why don’t you tune that radio properly?” For a while they could do no wrong. Darklands was what would have in 1987 been called their very difficult second album. Never easy to follow a classic release. It never thrilled me like Psychocandy did. Not sure how much that had to do with the replacement of their drummer with a drum machine (one of the 80’s notable scourges), but it probably didn’t help. It’s still a good listen. I always liked April Skies.

Five Stars. I hadn’t played it for a while. It still sounds like a million, and that’s probably a lot to do with Alan Parsons’ production. And these days I probably play Syd Barrett’s Floyd recordings and his solo records more than I play seventies’ Floyd. But there’s no denying the greatness of this album. It’s one for the ages. This lunatic is still on the grass.

Not for me. Have never listened to this, or indeed any other Radiohead album, before. I thought Creep was a great song but that’s about where it ends.Not keen on Yorke’s voice. Instrumentation was often interesting but overall I found the songs to be boring. Didn’t mind Go To Sleep, but I almost did.

I was never a fan of New Order. I always found it difficult to get past Bernard Sumner’s weak vocals. His best vocal on this is on Sunrise, where he sounds like he’s channelling Robert Smith. No surprise, therefore, that the track I enjoyed most was the instrumental, Elegia. A lot of British bands either sounded like New Order, or were desperately trying to at the time. But this sound never grabbed me.

Hadn’t played this for a while, but I was brought up attending the Church of Sinatra on a regular basis, so am totally familiar with the album. Great thing about the opening track is that he not only feels so young but he sounds so young, even though he was 40 when these songs were recorded. He was in great voice. The period he was with Capitol Records produced his best work, as far as I was concerned. And there’s no doubt Nelson Riddle had a lot to do with it. The arrangements are sensational. Most of the 14 tracks rate highly in the so-called great American songbook. Worth it just for I’ve Got You Under My Skin - one of Cole Porter’s finest & one of the great vocals of all time. A classic.

I’ve never seen the movie Shaft, but I do remember watching the Academy Awards the night that Isaac Hayes won 2 Oscars - one for the now legendary theme song & one for the best dramatic score. Hayes was a mainstay of Stax Records during the 60’s - a great musician & composer and he had started a solo career in 1968. Four solo albums preceded Shaft but there’s no doubt that his career peaked with the soundtrack. Hardly surprising. A double album, it is thoroughly engaging, whether you’ve seen the film or not. It is soulful, funky and jazzy. Hayes enlisted the great Stax band The Bar-Kays to provide the instrumentation. I listened to the album from go to whoa & loved it. Here was a man who was only the 3rd Black American to win an Oscar, with a style of music that the Academy had never celebrated before. And 25 years before Salty Balls.

You have to admire someone who would record Margaret On The Guillotine while Thatcher was still the Prime Minister. Problem is, it’s not that memorable a tune when compared to, say, Stand Down Margaret by The Beat (1980). And herein lies the problem for me with Morrissey’s solo output - there’s no Johnny Marr. Morrissey’s words are still interesting but it ain’t The Smiths. Still, Morrissey’s lyrics are worth listening to. And the epic 8-minute Late Night, Maudlin Street stands out for me, although claims that the music is based on the work of Joni Mitchell are totally deluded.

I think I came across Last Nite on a compilation CD that came free with a magazine, and was so taken with it that I got a copy of this album & have always loved it. It still sounds fresh to me. The title track is one of the great openings to any album. I love the way the song opens, and, in fact, so many of these songs have great openings, that inevitably suck you in. No point selecting favourites here, I love them all.

I owned the original vinyl of this back in the day. I was a fan of Emerson’s previous band, The Nice. I was always a sucker for any band that did strange cover versions & they certainly did quite a few - wacky covers of Dylan, Bernstein, Brubeck, Tim Hardin, etc. so when Emerson broke up the band & formed ELP, I went along for the ride. I don’t remember ever hearing the term Prog Rock at the time. I hadn’t heard this for decades. I decide to listen to it on my phone while I went for a walk. As it turned out, The weather was overcast, windy & rainy & this seemed the perfect setting for the frenetic Side One. Side Two’s more straight-forward songs are less compelling, especially where vocals are involved. But, overall, It was an interesting listen.

Another album I bought back in the day (through the Australian Record Club), but have since offloaded. Just played it through and it’s better than I remember, but Robert Plant he ain’t. I think they peaked in the late 80’s.

I think this is the only Elliott Smith cd I don’t have. All the others I’ve picked up in op-shops over the years. Really enjoyed it. Particularly love his guitar playing. Nearly every song has an acoustic guitar intro and none of them are the same. Some of these intros remind me of Beatles songs (I was expecting him to break into Rocky Racoon at one point); the folky intro to the beautiful Angeles brought Paul Simon’s playing to mind; and I was chuffed to read that he used an open tuning for No Name #5, because that’s the intro that immediately made me think of Joni Mitchell, & open-tuning is her middle name. The lyrics are always interesting, and the melodies are never repetitive. And I love the fact that the album’s title comes from the writing of the philosopher Kierkegaard, because that name immediately transports me to the Piranha Brothers sketch by Monty Python - a man they called Kierkegaard, who just sat there biting the heads off whippets . A great listen.

There’s a lot of this I loved - the opening (title) track is great & sets the tone, although I found some of the rest just a bit repetitive. I liked Turn It On & Words & Guitar, but my favourites were the very poppy Little Babies and Dance Song 97, which I thought was outstanding. A good listen.

It was hard to avoid hearing Lovefool back in the day & I have to say I never wanted to hear it again. There are a few tunes here I didn’t mind - Happy Meal II; Never Recover, which sounded like 60’s pop; and particularly Great Divide. The band were obviously talented but I really find the lead singer’s voice irritating. Blondie, they ain’t.

I did not know what to expect from this album. I’m a huge jazz fan but Ibrahim is not someone whose music I’m familiar with. He’s a pianist, but this is very much an ensemble effort. And it covers so much ground. It opens with Mandela, which really swings, and it never sits still. There are steamy, edgy tunes that reek if New York (Song For Sathima, Tuang Gura). Long, slow pieces (the title track & The Mountain). The Wedding is a beautiful tune in march time. I thought Mannenberg Revisited sounded very 60’s. Turns out it is a re-interpretation of a song he originally recorded in the early 70’s. A song which is often remembered as an unofficial national anthem. And the album ends a bit like it started, with the band really stretching out, on Sameeda. A terrific record.

My favourite Roxy albums by far are the first four. This was the 4th, the 2nd without Eno. It’s not full of great songs but it does well enough. The Thrill Of It All, Three And Nine & All I Want Is You are the standouts for me. As are Ferry’s lyrics throughout the album. He’d already released his 2nd solo album a few months before this, complete with dress suit & bowtie on the cover, and that would be the Ferry we’ve watched for almost 50 years now. No surprise then that, except for Cole Porter (who was always in a dinner suit), he’s the only songwriter I’ve come across to use the phrase “that old ennui” (If It Takes All Night). Favourite lyric though is from Casanova : Now you’re nothing/ But second hand/In glove. Great to hear Ferry attack the harmonica a couple of times on Side 1. The band are all fabulous. Not their best album, but in the running.

I remember hearing Bob Hudson play Sultans Of Swing on 2JJ one afternoon in 1978 & thinking that it would be big. The album was even better. Not sure how much the production of Muff Winwood (Stevie’s bro) had to do with it but the flow from track to track is terrific. There are the moody songs (In The Gallery),the rocky tunes (Setting Me Up is pure rockabilly) and, let’s face it, the ones that sound so much like J.J.Cale, it ain’t funny (Southbound Again). It’s all about Mark Knopfler’s laid-back vocals & distinctive guitar sound. From then on you could always identify his sound. Within a year Dylan employed him to play lead on the Slow Train Coming album. I hadn’t played this for quite a while, but thoroughly enjoyed it. A great album.

I never liked this album &, even though I’ve owned it for decades, I haven’t played it for that long either. Released in October 1973, it was bookended by the only 2 Lou Reed albums I was ever passionate about - Transformer(released November’72), the album that made him famous & Rock’n’Roll Animal (recorded live December’73 & released February ‘74). These are great records. Not sure what Berlin is. There’s nothing wrong with the band and a lot of Lou’s music is beautiful, but I can’t stand the vocal delivery. And the same was true when I saw him live - first at the Hordern Pavlova in July1975 and ten years later at the Civic Theatre in Newcastle. His bands on both occasions were great, but he just wasn’t engaging. At both concerts, the opening bands stole the shows for me - in ‘75 it was a Kiwi band I’d never heard of - Split Enz - and ten years later it was a band I was very fond of - the Hoodoo Gurus. Anyway, I’ve given Berlin another listen and discovered that there are a couple of songs on it that I do enjoy - How Do You Think It Feels & Sad Song. Apart from that, it leaves me cold, although, as I said, the music is often terrific.

When I bought the first 2 Springsteen albums through the Australian Record Club, he was virtually unknown in this country. After the success of his 3rd album, Born To Run, he truly was the next big thing. Unfortunately, due to a dispute with his ex-manager, the much awaited follow-up album - this one - took 3 years to surface. When you’re a big fan, that’s a long time between drinks. I remember that it wasn’t what I expected. It’s moodier than it’s predecessor (the title track says a mouthful) with songs about fathers & labour(Adam Raised A Cain; Factory) & basically the American dream (The Promised Land). Thankfully there were no shortage of songs involving cars (I think cars/driving get mentioned in 7 of the 10 tracks) or girls. I’ve always loved Candy’s Room - the speed of it & Springsteen’s guitar tribute to The Yardbirds. He was in his prime. The 70’s were his real glory days.

The only track I was familiar with here was 1979, which I used to include on compilation tapes quite a bit after finding it on a cd single. Great track. Happy to find many great tracks on this album. Bullet With Butterfly Wings is terrific. I listened to the remastered 2012 double cd version. I thought the 2nd cd was outstanding. The music was so diverse and the musicianship of the highest order. I am not big on Corgan’s voice, but despite that, I found the album really engaging. Great listening.

I’ve never heard this album before, but, being a big Costello fan, I picked up the 12” single of Tomorrow’s Just Another Day at the time, because it included a version with Elvis on lead vocals. Great track, as were the other tracks on that record - Blue Beast and Madness(Is All In The Mind). As was the single Our House. But having now listened to the other nine tracks, I have to say they sound a bit samey. They were a good band but they weren’t The Specials.

What a pleasure to hear this album again. When I want to hear the Buzzies I usually just throw on Singles Going Steady. I guess I always thought of them as being a singles band. But this, their debut album, proves that theory wrong. I listened to the original vinyl eleven tracks and 36 minutes of joy. Fast Cars is a brilliant, breakneck opening track. No Reply ( the title of a Fab4 classic)opens with a repeating ring-tone that Blondie would copy later in 1978 on Hanging On The Telephone. Pete Shelley almost yodels his way through Get On Our Own. Sixteen ends Side One with the conclusion that only older folk could possibly enjoy disco - No disco / No being twenty wo wo wo one. Every track on Side 2 is great, particularly Fiction Romance & Autonomy. Even the almost 6-minute long closer, Moving Away From The Pulsebeat, is terrific. Essentially an instrumental (only 2 sung verses), it gives the band a chance to go for it, and the guitarists & drummer John Maher don’t disappoint. I did eventually see the band at The Marquee Club in Sydney in early 1990. They were terrific. My clear memory of that night is that the support act, Falling Joys, were so much louder than Buzzcocks. I don’t think volume was necessary. They were a pop band. But they were a great pop band.

I did not know this record at all. I did not find it as interesting as Melon Collie etc. I liked Cherub Rock, Disarm & Mayonaise. And I really enjoyed Silverfuck - definitely could have been a late 60’s drug-induced marathon. They were good, but I find this album to be a bit samey.

I fell in love with Tracey & Ben via their debut EBTG album, Eden. Idlewild is their 4th album and one of their best. My original vinyl has 11 tracks, all penned by the couple. My cd of the album, however, contains an extra track, which opens the record. It’s their cover of the Crazy Horse classic, I Don’t Want To Talk About It, which had charted for Rod Stewart in 1977. The EBTG version is to die for. Tracey Thorn has a voice made to sing about broken hearts. The album hangs together so well. Sophisticated, to say the least, it’s a great listen.

I wasn’t familiar with this but quite enjoyed it. I thought that musically it was good. Loved the drummer. Once again the vocals I thought were quite generic & uninteresting. And some of the lyrics were a tad embarrassing - You’re a water sign & I’m an air sign - Really?????? But I liked Animal Nitrate, She’s Not Dead & Pantomime Horse & really enjoyed The Drowners & Metal Mickey. Solid.

Was there a better single released in the 90’s than Brimful Of Asha? I fell in love with it on the very first listen. And I feel the same way about this album. From the opening moments (Sleep On The Left Side) when you hear something that sounds like a piano accordion but probably isn’t, the soundscape here is intriguing. As with the instrumental Butter The Soul, which sounds like somebody whistling while trying to tune a radio. Great to hear Ginsberg on When The Light Appears Boy (he died 6 months before this album was released). His life was greatly influenced by Indian culture. Really enjoyed the duet with Paula Fraser (Good To Be On The Road Back) & the rapping by Justin Warfield on Candyman. And for me the great thing about the version of Norwegian Wood is that it reminds me of the cheesy cover of that song by The Folkswingers (sitar & all). I love this album.

I loved the vocals on this - so much of it reminds me of The Beachboys (Inferno, for instance).The guest singers do well - Pharrell can sing the phone book as far as I’m concerned. Kenny Loggins can still hit the high notes. There’s a jazzy feel, overall and the bass-playing is often sublime (Them Changes). I loved the title track - in fact I loved the whole album. I own Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, but had no idea this cat was involved in that. He’s definitely got great form.

At my age, life’s too short for this. I did enjoy all 1:25 of the Jetaime cover & Negativ Nain was amusing. Other than that, it’s all I could do to ward off a headache. I think the nearest we ever had to a band like this in Sydney was SPK. Mind you, I did enjoy that one of the tracks was titled Schmerzen.

I have no memory of ever listening to this cd, but I realised quickly that I was familiar with a good 80% of the tracks. I had never taken much notice of the lyrics - I think I wrongly assumed that this was a musical version of a rom-com. Couldn’t be more wrong. And musically, the only issue I had was with the singer’s harmonica playing. A little dodgy. But, overall, I really enjoyed this. A standout.

In July 1978 I was working for the Migrant Services Section of the Social Security Department, in Clarence St Sydney. One morning I received a phone-call from a mate who was a student at Sydney University, telling me to get my arse up to the Union Theatre (now The Footbridge) on campus, because John Martyn was playing a free concert at 1.00pm. As it turns out, this was part of a world tour to promote the album One World. I got there in time. John Martyn was late, and extremely hung-over, carrying what appeared to be an acoustic guitar with a plethora of wires coming off it (and no doubt a bunch of effects pedals). It was one of the great concerts I’ve ever attended. At the time I was only familiar with the 1970 album Road To Ruin, which he recorded with his wife, Beverley, & which is an all-time favourite of mine, so most of what I saw him play that day was unfamiliar to me, but he was in blistering form. And I imagine a lot of what he played came from this album. How lucky I was, because this is a great record. I can’t think of anything else that sounds like it. About 30 years later, a different mate gave me a dvd titled The Transatlantic Sessions, which features many great artists & includes an enthralling version of Big Muff with Martyn on guitar & Danny Thompson on double bass. Do yourself a favour & google it. This is the song he co-wrote in Jamaica with Lee Scratch Perry the year before he made the album. You also hear the great reggae trombonist Rico Rodriguez on Certain Surprise. I love the fact that Chris Blackwell set up mikes in the middle of a lake on his property(where the lp was recorded) to catch whatever noises nature was providing at the time. This was way ahead of its time. Love it.

I have this album but I really only know the singles, most of which were really good. Most of Side 2 I find to be a little average. Never know Annie Leibovitz shot the cover.

You know how you remember some albums from the party you were at where that was the only album that got a spin all night. I remember the Abbey Road party in Sefton when I was 19 & a local thug named Harold Smith did a job on my mate Geoff & we ended up in Emergency at Fairfield Hospital. I remember the Hot August Night party at Ultimo when I was 23. And in-between those two, I remember the Every Picture Tells A Story party at Dulwich Hill when I was 21 & the party’s host, Glenn, was sniffing around my girlfriend. I think I was totally familiar with this album by night’s end. I have to say it still sounds great. And I have to agree with Robert Christgau that “ it's the mandolin and pedal steel that come through sharpest.\" So true. Ronnie Wood and “the mandolin player in Lindisfarne” are terrific. Stewart was always great at choosing material & it’s no different here, but I reckon the best 3 tracks are the 3 originals. This is Rod at his peak. A winner.

This was an album I’d stopped listening to until I heard Edwyn Collins’s version of Pale Blue Eyes (1984) & was reminded what a great song it was. This was post-Cale VU and it sounds so different to the first 2 albums. Except for The Murder Mystery, which harks back to their avant-garde ethic, the music is restrained and melodic. And Reed’s lyrics are more reflective than on the first two albums. I love Jesus and What Goes On (Side One is a real winner). Side Two begins well but is less compelling. Still, a terrific listen.

I really did not discover this record until the late 70’s, when punk exploded on the scene. It was then I fell in love with the first 3 Stooges albums, particularly this one. Read Danny Sugarman’s Wonderland Avenue to find out what a crazy bastard Iggy was in the late 60’s/early 70’s. No doubt Bowie’s remixing and James Williamson’s addition to the band played a big part in the beauty of this record. The Vietnam war was still raging & Search & Destroy is as good an opening track as you would hear in 1973. And, except for the more subdued pace of I Need Somebody, it’s full steam ahead for the rest of the record. Gimme Danger, Search & Destroy & the title track are highlights for me. My favourite Stooges.

My introduction to Todd was the purchase of the Nazz single of Hello It’s Me from the discount bin at Grace Bros record bar on Broadway in 1969. I think I prefer the version on this album. Never heard this record before and was only familiar with I Saw The Light, which still gets played on retro radio. Thoroughly enjoyed it - very poppy but so well done, because he’s such a good producer. I think Side 4, which involved using other musicians, is the weakest side. He didn’t need them. Love his vocals & guitar and his ability to create 2 or 3-minute pop masterpieces.

Predictably raucous and great. I’ve heard him do the same stuff (except for Money) a million times & he never fails to entertain. The audience chanting his name was pretty cute. A legend only just taken from us.

Like I said the last time, I always thought The Cure were a great singles band but I never paid any attention to their albums. So, except for The Forest, which I always loved, I was not familiar with this album. Having given it a listen, I can honestly say I’ll never listen to it again, but it’s not without merit.

Apart from Babylon, the material on this album was unfamiliar to me. Now I have to try to erase it from my memory. Very forgettable, I hope.

I was familiar with a fair bit of this album, but I’d never appreciated how good it is. It’s first-rate. The cd I have includes lots of extras. As well as the classics, Look Of Love & Poison Arrow, I was really impressed by 4ever 2gether, Alphabet Soup, Tears Are Not Enough & Valentines Day. In fact, there’s nothing here that I didn’t feel like singing along with. Great record.

After the great 1999 album, the release of each new Prince LP was keenly awaited. This was the follow-up and it didn’t disappoint. The sheer pomp of When Doves Cry & Purple Rain & the rock & roll chops of Let’s Go Crazy was more than enough, but the other 2 singles gleaned from this, Take Me With U & I Would Die 4 U, were also classics. There was something a little embarrassing about the movie clips that were used for some of these, but, really, he could do no wrong at the time. This is the album that made him the icon that we still sorely miss.

I was totally unfamiliar with Firehose’s material. I think I was expecting grunge but this is nothing like that. Very listenable, at times poppy, sometimes a bit ordinary. The rhythm section is awesome. They actually let the drummer have some (one whole track). The bass is prominent. Vastopol is a beautiful, if brief, instrumental. A pleasant surprise

Let’s get one thing straight - Innervisions is definitely Stevie’s finest album. It’s been decades since I’ve played Songs In The Key Of Life from go to whoa ( I remember one review at the time of its release with the headline Songs In The Key Of Money, referring to the record deal he’d just signed with Motown). The thing about Stevie was that as far back as the late 60’s, he could write songs that my parents generation would love (people born in the 1920’s) - think My Cherie Amour, Yester-Me etc. This side of his huge talent peaked with For Once In My Life. Between 1973 & 1975 I worked weekends in an RSL club to support myself through Uni. I could not count the number of 3rd-rate tenors I saw sing that song in the club auditorium. I’ve always thought that there was too much of that material on this album - Sir Duke, Isn’t She Lovely (glad I’d moved on from the RSL in time to avoid endless interpretations of that), If It’s Magic etc. I was wrong. Unlike a lot of bloated double albums, there’s gold on this one. I’d forgotten how good Joy Inside My Tears, Black Man, I Wish, If It’s Magic & Pastime Paradise were. There’s funk here that I’d forgotten about. The only filler is the 4-track 7” EP included in the package - it didn’t need one. A great record.

There were a couple of times while listening to this album yesterday that I thought : that sounds a lot like The Beatles or like a Beatles song. Now I just read the Elvis got Geoff Emerick, the man who engineered Sgt Pepper, to work on this album. And of course Elvis, like the Fab4, was a Liverpudlian. I’m a huge Costello fan & this album is worth it just to hear him sing Almost Blue ( the Chet Baker cover of that song is also worth a listen). The 3 singles released from the album are also highlights - Man Out Of Time, Town Cryer & You Little Fool. And I always loved Shabby Doll, which he was still playing in concert many years later. He did do some ordinary stuff in the mid-80’s but this isn’t that. Well worth a listen.

Until last year , the only Shuggie material I was familiar with was a 1969 album he did with Al Kooper (very bluesy) that I’ve had for years, an album called Giants of Rhythm & Blues, a 70’s album featuring greats like Louis Jordan, Shuggie’s father Johnny Otis, Big Joe Turner, etc, on which Shuggie plays guitar, bass & some piano, and his guitar on Peaches En Regalia from Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats lp. I knew he’d written Strawberry Letter 23, but had never heard it until last year, when I acquired a copy of the cd reissue of Inspiration Information, which include 4 tracks not on the original album, of which this was one. It’s a very laid-back listen, very 70’s, jazzy at times, funky at others, quite a few instrumentals, on which he plays just about everything. A talent who shunned the bigtime to do it his way. Really enjoy this album.

I really knew little of The Roots until Elvis Costello did an album with them in 2013. Around the same time I was able to enjoy seeing them nightly as the houseband on The Jimmy Fallon Show, when it was on free-ro-air. I have a copy of this cd & find a real diversity among the tracks. My favourites are Thought And Work & The Seed, both produced by ?uestlove, who is a wonderful musician. The music on this album is so interesting. And my copy came with a great 5-track DVD. A winner.

I’m a big boss fan, but I never liked this album. I just played it for the first time in years & it hasn’t improved. There isn’t a track on it that I ever got off on. I loved his 70’s output but there are a bunch of his lp’s since then that just didn’t do it for me. This is one of them.

I love the fact that Nico hated this album, especially the use of flutes on so many tracks. Let’s face it, she was as much a singer as Marlene Dietrich, but it really didn’t matter. Her part in the VU/Warhol album was great, partly because she only appeared on a few tracks. This album is a different kettle of fish however. Where she got lucky was the material she was given to sing. Three Jackson Brownes, a Dylan, a Tim Hardin & the rest written by her VU bandmates. Highlights : I’ll Keep It With Mine & These Days (one of Browne’s greatest lyrics) & It Was A Pleasure Then, which reminds me so much of her live version of The End. I had not played this for years but so glad to hear it again.

The Beau Brummels reached #20 on the 2UE Top 40 in 1965 with their single Just A Little. I remember it well - I was 15 at the time & I loved it. I never heard another thing from them, so reading their wiki entry & listening to this album is all news to me. It’s not a world-beater, but it is quite listenable - some of it is poppy, some country & some is very 1967 psychedelic, The Wolf Of Velvet Fortune in particular. But it seems to me that the best 2 tracks on the lp are the cover versions - Nine Pound Hammer (Merle Travis) & Old Kentucky Home (Randy Newman). They jump out at you. The rest of the album has its moments, and there’s no rubbish on it. But I find it amusing that their previous album had been an album of covers, which they resented Warners forcing them to record. Oh well.

I would not have known a Soundgarden song if I’d tripped over one. Can’t say that I was a big fan of grunge. So this was a big surprise. There were only a couple of tracks I found just noisy & boring. The highlights for me were the Nirvana-like Fell On Black Days - loved the guitar in the second half of this; Black Hole Sun - can’t hear The Beatles influence in this or Head Down, as Wiki claims, but loved the melody of this song; Kickstand - a track that actually sounded like an old rock’n’roll song; and Like Suicide, particularly for the drumming & the pace of the tune. And the production was great. It sounded like a million.

The thing I was most surprised about here was the humour. Right from the directive “Don’t do drugs”in the opening Public Service Announcement, there’s some funny stuff here. My favourites : “This is Paul Rosenberg, your faithful attorney at law Listen, I listened to the rough copy of your album And uh... you know I've just got to be honest with you Can you tone it down a little bit?”( Paul-Skit); “Look at the store clerk, she’s older than George Burns” (Guilty Conscience). Unfortunately there’s also a lot of misogyny (My Name Is ; 97 Bonnie & Clyde; As The World Turns)and a lot of violence (Role Model ; & particularly 97 Bonnie & Clyde). Musically I find it a bit repetitive. I liked the 3 tracks produced by Dre, especially Role Model. And I loved the sampling of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s version of Summertime at the beginning of Rock Bottom. I guess he had a hard life. I guess it paid off for him later on.

God bless Bowie. He took Iggy to Berlin, got him off smack & helped him record the best post-Stooges album of his career. It still amazes me that Jim has outlived Davy. Love this record. Side One is a killer. Is there a better opening track than the title track here? The drums are a wonder. The rhythms on The Passenger are equally infectious. Bowie has his prints all over the album - co-producer, vocalist & pianist. I saw Iggy at The Capitol in Sydney in the early 80’s, and it wasn’t that thrilling, but saw him again at The Hordern in Sydney in 2013 & he was sensational, limping around, wearing nothing but jeans, and sounding as great as he ever did. You have to wonder what course his career would have taken without the friendship of Bowie & then later the use of the title track of this album in Trainspotting? My fave Iggy story - his dad was a high school English teacher. His students used to call him Iggy’s Pop.

Sometimes there’s no explaining why you like an album so much. For me, Cut is a total one-off. Of it’s time, it contains The Slits debut single, Typical Girls, released at the same time as the album, and one of the defining tracks of the punk/post-punk era. The flip-side of Typical Girls is one of the greatest cover versions of all time - their crack at Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine. But the album is not an easy listen - it depends on dub & reggae but it’s weird, it’s shambolic, to say the least (like so much post-punk music). But it’s never boring and, hey, Side 2 opens with a track called Newtown. I saw the reformed band at the Gaelic Club in 2007, and there’s no denying they were all over the shop, but they were bloody entertaining. See if you can find the episode of Spicks & Specks that Ari Up appeared on during that tour & you’ll have some idea how crazy she could be on stage. I walked out of the Gaelic that night, jumped straight into a cab out the front & looked at the driver - it was Blackie from the Hard-Ons. Top night.

Last thing I felt like today was some epic hardcore hip-hop cd, so I wasn’t really looking forward to this. But whaddya know - this is a classic. I don’t know how he pulls that off, but he does. It’s in the music, the beats, the samples but most of all his words. What a storyteller. The first 3 trax knocked me out - Intro, Things Done Changed & Gimme The Loot. Much to my surprise, it never gets boring. Absolute highlight for me is Diana King’s vocals on the reggae-influenced Respect. You do get a bit sick of “bitches” & “motherfuckers”, over & over, but this is the context for it, I suppose. I love Randy Newman’s summary - one of the best records ever made…the first cut says “Let’s stop killing each other”- and then the rest of the record is all about people killing each other! It’s the damnedest thing.”

The audience are the real stars here. It’s worth listening to just for the intro, and I swear that the intro was exactly the same the night I saw him at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion in February 1988. The tracks are the usual suspects, and the whole concert just flows. Wonder if any of the band got fined that night?

I’ve never bought this bullshit about how great comeback-Elvis was. Sun sessions Elvis was great. Leiber & Stoller Elvis was great. Religious Elvis was great. But this album is the prelude to Vegas Elvis, which generally leaves me cold. Big voice, big ballads and some terribly ordinary material. And when he does cover good songs that had already been hits for others, he crucifies them. Hank Snow’s I’m Movin On is a classic (listen to the version by Matt Lucas) and John Hartford’s Gentle On My Mind was a big hit for Glen Campbell, & even Aretha recorded it. But Elvis does nothing for these songs. I love In The Ghetto, and I have no idea how Suspicious Minds & Kentucky Rain missed the cut from the original album. This record just doesn’t do it for me.

I love the psychedelic. Eight Miles High says it better than anything else. The rest of this albums is a bit all over the shop. Mr Spaceman delivers. The two extremely folkie tracks are folk classics : John Riley & Wild Mountain Thyme, which Dylan would perform at the Isle Of Wight Festival 3 years later. They both sound great here. The cover of Hey Joe is unnecessary, just like every other version apart from Jimi’s. Could have been a better slbum if Clark hadn’t left the band. But Eight Miles High was his departing gift. The Byrds never came to Australia, but I saw McGuinn, Hillman & Clark at the Regent in Sydney in 1978, & was not disappointed.

I’d not heard this cd before. I own a greatest hits cd which contains 5 of these 11 songs - I think all 5 were singles & I liked them at the time, without feeling rapturous about Crow. But I found some stuff I quite liked among the other 6 tracks. I really liked the latin feel of Solidify. I loved the wacky Na Na Song (which sounds like a demented Subterranean Homesick Blues). The bass in No One Said It Would Be Easy is totally reminiscent of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, from around the same time. And she could be channeling Dian Kraal on the very jazzy We Do What We Can. Some of the stuff here is straight out of the Seventies Singer- Songwriter text-book. But she generally does okay with it.

I bought the cassette of this album from a bargain bin back in the day. Then promptly loaned it to my dear friend, & future NDP senator, Bob Wood, and that was the last I ever saw or heard of it. Until today. What a terrific listen, although, like a lot of double albums, it was probably an album overweight. Stills is in top form on this, & a lot of it has to do with the band, particularly the great Chris Hillman. Many styles are traversed - bluegrass (Fallen Eagle); country(Jesus Gave Love Away For Free); acoustic blues (Blues Man)and great rock & roll (It Doesn’t Matter still slays me. There are also a lot of obvious influences, to my ear, anyway : Rock & Roll Crazies is reminiscent of Stills’s own Love The One You’re With; Both Of Us reminds me of Neil Young’s The Loser; So Begins The Task could be C,S& N ; Hide It So Deep harks back to Hank Williams; Right Now opens just like a Stones’ song. I can also hear Jimmy Buffet & Lynyrd Skynyrd, but it was them being influenced by Manassas. The second album is not as strong as the first, but hey, I’m not quibbling. It was so good to hear this again.

Except for Creep, Radiohead have never done anything for me. I listened closely to this & I have to say I would not cross the road to hear any of it again. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just bores me.

I was 15 years old & in 5th Form at Parramatta Marist Brothers when the double-A-sided single Nowhere Man & Norwegian Wood was released in Australia in March 1966. I can still remember how I was so taken by the sophistication of those songs. This was the Fab4 at another level. By the end of that year I was familiar with most of Rubber Soul, because AM radio had woken up to the fact that, when it came to The Beatles, they did not just have to play singles. There was gold to be mined from the latest Beatles album. I remember Girl & Michelle getting so much airplay even though they had not been released as singles in Australia (they were released as a double-A-sided single in Europe). This was some album. One of the best opening tracks of all time. George Harrison’s coming of age as a songwriter. The sitar would soon be everywhere. In My Life would become one of the great contemplative pop songs. One of my sisters sang it as my brother was signing the marriage certificate. The joy this album has brought me over almost 6 decades - well, that’s what The Beatles could do.

This has the makings of a great single album, but there’s not enough quality to make a great double album. Take out Sweet Virginia, Tumbling Dice, Loving Cup, Happy (Keith on vocals), Rip This Joint & All Down The Line. What are you left with? Reasonable, but not classic Stones material. The idea that this album is superior to any of the 3 studio albums (or even the live Get Yer Ya-Yas Out) that preceded it, I find ludicrous. Still, a good listen & the good stuff is still really good.

I was pursuing tertiary education in Newcastle but travelling to Sydney by train every Friday afternoon on the so-called Flyer. I still remember rushing from Central to the nearest record shop to buy Transformer, all because I’d heard Walk On The Wildside & just had to have it. I’d heard nothing else on the album & was thrilled when I first played it & realised it was so good. Vicious is one of the great opening tracks. Perfect Day & Satellite Of Love are among Lou’s best. There are only 2 of his albums that I ever play regularly - this and the live album that followed it - Rock & Roll Animal. And further proof of Bowie’s greatness that he brought out the best in Reed. A truly great record.

Don’t get me wrong - I love Tom Waits. The concert I saw him give at the State Theatre, Sydney, in 1979, was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever attended. But that was 70’s Tom. From Frank’s Wild Years onward, I’ve had to deal with a different Tom. The problem for me was that he just stopped writing tunes. I own Rain Dogs, but I don’t think I’d played it for a couple of decades. It hasn’t improved with age. There are only a couple of throwbacks to what I consider his golden period - Walking Spanish is the best thing here by a mile & ranks among his best talking songs; 9th & Hennepin is also terrific, but very short; while Downtown Train was always a good song & was covered by quite a few. The rest are just okay. There’s little else here that really grabs me.

Not my bag at all, but I guess they’re good at what they do. There’s some tasty guitar & the production’s good. I quite enjoyed Peace Sells & I Ain’t Superstitious. Otherwise, all a bit generic.

I love the idea that around the time Joni recorded this album, she spotted a 15-year-old Prince in the front row of a concert she was giving in Minnesota. He sent her fan-mail that her office thought was possibly coming from the “lunatic fringe”. Like Prince, I was so passionate about her that I hand-delivered a letter to her when she was staying at the Sebel Townhouse in the Cross during her only Australian tour in 1983. As for this album, I’d heard the single Raised On Robbery on the radio before the album was released & really liked it. But it was the single Help Me /Just Like This Train (20 cents in a bargain bin somewhere in Newcastle) that made me go out & find the album. Side One of the album is outstanding. The title track is her storytelling at it’s finest. Free Man In Paris (about David Geffen) & People’s Parties reflect her life at the time in such a poetic way. Side Two is also quality-plus & concludes with one of the few cover versions she’d ever released at that point, the Annie Ross classic Twisted, which Bette Midler had also covered the year before. This began a love for Lambert, Hendricks & Ross which continues to this day. Joni was at the peak of her powers here. What a songwriter.

I discovered The Cramps in 1982, courtesy of dear friend & inner-city raconteur Stephen Niblett. It was when I first heard the term “psychobilly”. The Cramps were a lot about attitude. They were a blessed relief in the 80’s from the serious young insect bands. The concert I saw them give at Selinas at the Coogee Bay Hotel in 1986 was extraordinary. It was the only time I’ve ever been caught in a crowd surge where I had absolutely no control over what was happening. I think Lux ended up in his jocks, climbing a speaker stack. There are some classics on this record, produced by the legendary Alex Chilton - I Was A Teenage Werewolf is great and all of the covers - Strychnine, Tear It Up, Fever & Sunglasses After Dark - are really terrific. Nobody sounded like them.

Did not expect to, but loved this. A real variety of music, from the pomp of the long opening track, to the softer cuts on Side Two. A real surprise.

In the late 60’s I picked up a Columbia compilation from the 50c bin at Ashwoods In Pitt St, Sydney. Called Aquarius Revisited, it featured John Kay (pre-Steppenwolf), The Great Society, featuring Grace Slick (pre-Airplane), The Rising Sons (Ry Cooder & Taj Mahal, pre-solo careers), Tim Rose (with the version of Hey Joe that Hendrix covered soon after), etc. Track One on Side Two was The American Metaphysical Circus by this band. Until today that was the only track I remember hearing from this band. I really enjoyed this. Especially I Won’t Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar & Hard Coming Love. It covers many styles but does it well. I still have that album, water-damaged & all, from the xmas break from uni when I was living in my parents’ laundry & mum let the sink overflow. A lot of good covers came to grief that day.

A band I was never fond of. I didn’t mind Enola Gay but I found none of their output after that at all inspiring. I didn’t mind Souvenir on this album. But the band sound the same as so many British bands from that period sounded - boring.

Brilliantly conceived by one of rock’s greatest innovators, who died as a convicted murderer. I remember some of these tracks being played at xmas in the early 60’s. And there’s been a tv commercial running for at least the last month that uses a large chunk of The Ronettes doing Sleigh Ride. Much credit must go to arranger Jack Nitzsche. Darlene Love steals the show - she’s listed as performing 4 tracks but you can bet Spector used her on more than that. The way he thwarted her career is one of his earlier crimes. She’s terrific here, as usual. Ronnie Spector’s unique vocals also shine on the three Ronette’s tracks. I’ve had the vinyl for over 40 years and spin it every December, religiously. It used to make us all piss ourselves when we got to the last track to hear Phil’s whiney voice as he pretended to be normal. Now it’s just creepy.

Has it’s moments & the best couple are great - Clint Eastwood, which was the only track I was familiar with, and Rock The House. Makes sense, because I’m a fan of Del & he embellishes both tracks, which I was not aware of. Found the first half a bit ho-hum, but the backend is a lot more interesting. , although I don’t like what they do to Roadrunner - can’t see the point. Glad I finally heard it, though.

I reckon I owned this vinyl for 40 years until somebody made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Thankfully I burned a copy onto disc before I sold it. It wasn’t an album I was mad about but when I played it today it actually sounded better than I remember. I always loved Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine. It sure sounds like the period that it came from. And a nice time it was.

Big fan but somehow missed their first album altogether. Always assumed it wouldn’t be as good as Second Helping, which was the first Skynyrd lp I picked up, & which contained Sweet Home Alabama. But I did have one single featured here, the iconic Free Bird, perhaps their finest tune ever. Almost as good are Simple Man & Gimme Three Steps, and there’s no filler here. Al Kooper does a great production job. Not sure they ever sounded any better.

A lot of the Captain’s work is difficult to deal with. However this, their debut album, is user-friendly. Musically, it takes no prisoners. Lyrically, it’s not always easy to decipher, but it’s far easier than what was to come on future lp’s. Ry Cooder has a lot to do with the quality of this recording. Both his playing & arranging. The album kicks arse from the opening tracks, Sure ‘Nuff ‘N Yes I Do & Zig Zag Wanderer, which is one of Beefheart’s most covered songs. It’s very blues-influenced but, like most Beefheart, manages to maintain it’s very own flavour.

I skimmed it. I really can’t take that guttural Lucifer bullshit. Painful.

Really, until the early 2000’s, the only Gainsbourg track I would have recognised was the infamous Je T’aime Moi Non Plus, a worldwide chart-topper in 1969. Then I received a visit one night from friends Liam & Lauren of Sydney indie band, Belles Will Ring. They had just returned from an American trip & wanted to regale me with the goodies they had picked up there, including a Gainsbourg cd. I thought this was strange until we played the disc. Belles played quite a psychedelic brand of rock & that night I realised that Serge also didn’t mind a bit of that., which surprised me. From then on, I collected quite a few of his old records, including Histoire De Melody Nelson. It’s brief, more like an ep, but it’s a knockout. When I first listened to it, I was amazed at the music & not all that interested in what the French-language lyrics were about. I now realise the story he was telling was, not surprisingly, quite controversial. Nevertheless, this is a terrific listen.

I enjoyed this, but not enough to ever want to hear it again. Still, any band with a member named Roger Rogerson fills you with confidence.

The first half dozen tracks, which were very much about drugs, didn’t thrill me greatly. Then the extremely funny skit Called Heart Street Directions made me laugh so much (as did the Bad Mouth Kid skit a bit later) & it seemed that the music just got better from then on. I particularly liked RAGU, with it’s Look Of Love sample, Whip You With A Strap, Jellyfish, Momma, with cool vocals by Megan Rochell, & Three Bricks, with its Biggie samples. A really great listen.

You can always tell if you’re listening to Public Enemy, but sometimes I wonder if that’s a good thing. Still, I love Chuck D & I love the band’s politics, which are on full display here. And any band who can name a song Get The Fuck Outta Dodge deserves huge credit in my book. Not their best album, but worth the trouble, all the same.

I found this record compelling. Never heard of the band before. I loved the pace/speed of the music. The lyrics were irrelevant but the singer’s voice was as important as the instruments. The band rushed headlong & took you with them. I particularly enjoyed the 4 lengthy trax, on which the band really stretches out. A wonderful surprise.

This album was recorded at concerts in 1976/77 & released in June 1978. In October 1978, I was one of 100,000 people who saw Thin Lizzy at the free 2SM Rocktober concert, in the forecourt of Sydney Opera House. I have to say I was more interested in the support bands Sports, from Melbourne, & American band Wha-Koo, whose lead singer, David Palmer, had sung lead on the Steely Dan classic, Dirty Work. Wha-Koo were dreadful. It was Thin Lizzy’s concert for the taking. I imagine the set-list would not have been too different to this album. The line up, however had changed - Brian Robertson had quit the band when this album was released, replaced by Gary Moore. The twin-guitar thing was a killer. Unsurprisingly, the album sounds great - it was produced by Tony Visconti. I never thought Lizzy wrote great songs, except for The Boys Are Back In Town, but they make up for it with their gung-ho approach here. As live double-albums go, this one’s a real winner.

I bought the Jesus Built My Hotrod CD maxi single sometime in the early 90’s & have never stopped loving it. It contains the Redline/Whiteline version of the song, which, at 8:11, is considerably longer than the album version. The guest vocal by Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes is to die for. The CD single also contains a version of TV Song, but, until today, I had never heard the rest of the album. I love the frenetic approach of the music. The devil voice that recurs is somewhat annoying, but, in the end, doesn’t really detract from the impetus created by the music. The title track is a winner. In fact, I really enjoyed the whole disc. And I love the fact that Paul Barker’s nom-de-plume as co-producer was Hermes Pan - the genius who choreographed 17 of Fred Astaire’s films.

I had never heard of Mike Ladd. This is quite unlike any other hip-hop album aI’ve heard. The soundscape is unique - sometimes the backing is orchestral, often strings dominate. The beats sometimes dominate (5000 Miles West Of The Future). It can be funky (The Animist). Drums can dominate (Wipe Out On The Wave Of Armageddon). Sometimes the track is frenetic (Red Eye To Jupiter) & sometimes slow (Takes More Than 41). Sometimes you just focus on the words (For All Those Killed By Cops). My favourite line is from the title track : “I got swallowed by a record label In the tower of Babel”. Really enjoyed this.

Easy listening in such a beautiful language. Sounded fine to me but not thrilling.

Must have been all about the hair, because the music is bog ordinary. How did this sell millions? I got as far as Track 8, then pulled the plug. Lange’s production is predictably polished, straight from doing 3 AC/DC albums in a row. But the music does nothing for me. It was good to find out that Offspring got their intro to Pretty Fly from Rock Of Ages. Who knew? I guess all the dudes who shelled out for this mediocre album.

The first 4 tracks sound just a bit samey, but from there the album really gets interesting. The 2 big singles, The One I Love & It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, still shine after all these tears. And Lightnin’ Hopkins & King Of Birds both embellish Side 2, as do the horns on Fireplace. Not their best, but pretty good, nonetheless.

I first heard Everyday People on the radio in late 1968 & copied it onto my reel-to-reel tape recorder. It had been released as a single 6 months before this album was released. In the meantime, the band were the highlight at Woodstock. But I did not get this album until after I bought the Woodstock 3-lp set & then saw the Woodstock film, which was released in 1970. When I look at Sly’s Woodstock set-list, 5 of the 8 songs they performed were from this album. No wonder. This is a truly amazing album. And to think that Sing A Simple Song was the flipside of the Everyday People single & I Want To Take You Higher was the flipside of the Stand single. What value. The band closed their Woodstock set with Stand. What shocked me when I finally got the album was the title of Track 2 - you just didn’t hear the n-word in those days. What thrills me when I hear the album now is Sex Machine - I’m lost for words (& the band didn’t need any). Stand is one of the great 60’s albums.

Great album. I’ve always admired her work. I own & really like the cd that followed this, but I’d never heard this album before. It’s an absolute knock-out. There are so many styles here & she masters them all. The beautiful lyrics of Oh Maker & 57821, the rip-it-up approach of Come Alive, the gorgeous piano ending to Say You’ll Go, with the nod to my fave Claire de’Lune. Love her voice. Love the disc.

It’s tolerable. But only just.

Really enjoyed this. Never boring. A variety of musical approaches. Not stale after all these years.

Really enjoyed this. Knew some tracks already, but a lot of it was new to me. Loaded is probably my favourite Primal Scream track. I really liked I’m Comin’ Down, although it reeks of Jesus & Mary Chain. And also loved Don’t Forget It Feel It - especially the female vocals. Enjoyed the dub approach on Come Together & Jah Wobble’s part in Higher than The Sun. In fact, the laid-back feel of the last 4 tracks was really easy to listen to. Did they ever make a better album?

I tried but I could not sit through an hour of this.

Well this definitely lived up to the hype. After a slow start, it really kicked into gear with Who’s Gonna Take The Weight?, and just got better and better ( Just To Get A Rep, for instance), peaking with the sublime As I Read My S-A, one of the finest hip-hop tracks I’ve ever heard. The disc finished with Precisely The Right Rhymes & The Meaning Of the Name, which also knocked me out. I was totally unfamiliar with this album. What a find.

The song Sweet Dreams was one of the 80’s great dance tracks. Hard to believe it was the 4th single released from this album, because it’s far & away the best track on it. Only the opening cut, Love Is A Stranger, is in the same ball-park. For me, The Eurythmics were a terrific singles band, but their albums often missed the mark, as does this. Their cover of the Sam & Dave classic, Wrap It Up, written by Isaac Hayes & David Porter, & supposedly featuring vocals ( I can’t hear them) from an old favourite of mine, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, is less than thrilling. A couple of years later The Fabulous Thunderbirds, featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan’s brother, Jimmy, did a much grittier version on their album Tuff Enuff. Any way, nothing else on the album really excited me, but, as I said, the title track is exceptional.

I gave each track a score out of five & it averaged at 3, exactly. The band was generally terrific. Some great guitar licks. Highlight for me was definitely TV Party. Rollins killed it on that, as he did on Room 13, Six Pack & Damaged I - “My name’s Henry…” - an ominous intro to an illustrious career. I never saw him live with his band but I did get talked into a spoken word concert at the Enmore Theatre in 2010 - the Frequent Flyer Tour. It was okay, but I prefer his tv show, which was really good. And, above all, the night he hosted Rage & really gave it to Morrissey - do yourself a favour & catch that on youtube. As for this album, it’s really not my cuppa but I can see the point.

This was the first Queen LP I bought (courtesy of the Australian Record Club) in early 1975. It did not grab me. The following year I bought A Night At The Opera, & the rest is history. That album was full of poppy singles, tunes you could hum and Bohemian Rhapsody, which my housemate/fellow teacher & I would sing at the top of our voices every morning, as we drove the expressway from Lurnea to Campbelltown. I have to say I’ve rarely played Queen II since then. Having just given it a few spins, I don’t think my opinion has changed. But it is fascinating to hear so much in the sound that indicates where they were heading - May’s guitar sound particularly. There are just no killer tunes on it.

This is like easy-listening hip-hop. There’s not one aurally offensive track here. The opening cut is a real winner. In fact the first 4 , from Connected to Sketch, reel the listener right in. Problem for me was that it just starts to feel a bit samey. I loved some of the samples, though - the Stones piano bit in Playing With Fire & the repetitive riff from Carole King’s It’s Too Late, in The End. Overall, a pretty good listen.

I have 3 of the singles from this album - the 2 biggies ( Shout & Everybody Wants To Rule The World) & I Believe. Apart from these, I was unfamiliar with the trax on this album. I quite enjoyed the whole record. I thought the music was interesting, and the vocals are fine but they suffer from that 80’s English thing where, for some reason, so many male lead vocalists sound the same. Anyway, I thought it was a good listen.

Love a tango & love Piazzolla. Also keen on the vibes (since I first heard Lionel Hampton)& on Gary Burton, ever since I found the vinyl of his 1973 album, Norwegian Wood. The tunes are all composed by Piazzolla, but the jazz treatment that Burton & the combo offer cannot be denied. All six cuts are standouts for me, but particularly Little Italy 1930, a beautiful autobiographical piece. Such a unique sound from 2 great artists.

The best tracks on this are the opening 2 tracks, both killer singles in their day & still holding up very well, track 3 (Hang On To Your Love) & the last track, a cover of a song by American r’n’b singer Timmy Thomas, Why Can’t We Live Together. The other 5 tracks are not quite as good, but, put them all together & the album flows quite well. I was really only familiar with the first 3 tracks, but thought the LP was a pretty good listen.

Maceo Parker was the favourite musician of an old mate of mine, who passed away in 2021. And Fred Wesley probably ran a close second. So it was great to hear how their horns were so strong on this album, right from the get-go on the opening track & still there, ripping it up on the final cut. Every track is a winner, especially Give Up The Funk, which was really the only track I was familiar with. A perfect track. Clinton can be so funny - the humour highlight for me was his reference to blue-eyed soul: Then I was down South and I heard some funk With some main ingredients like Doobie Brothers, Blue Magic, David Bowie It was cool, but can you imagine Doobie-in' your funk? [From P-Funk(Wants to Get Funked Up)] I loved every moment of this record.

Back in 2007, I went to the Chauvel at Paddington to see a brand new print of The Last Waltz, Scorsese’s concert film celebrating The Band. I went with my great mate Ian. Two weeks later Ian dropped dead one Saturday arvo while playing oztag footy at Milperra. I was a pallbearer, and I organised the music for the service in a church at Revesby. We carried his body out of that church to the strains of the version of The Weight on this album. Probably The Band’s greatest song. Levon Helm’s vocal on this is sublime. Almost as impressive is Chest Fever - another of their out-and-out classics which highlights the amazing keyboard skills of Garth Hudson. The album starts and finishes with a bunch of Dylan tracks from the period that threw up his Basement Tapes album - most notably the first released version of This Wheel’s On Fire, which decades later was the theme song for Absolutely Fabulous - the Julie Driscoll version. There’s a great version of the country/folk standard, Long Black Veil. I love the record. But really, The Weight is enough by itself.

Sometime early this century, Jurassic 5 toured Australia. I knew very little about hip-hop at the time, but both my kids had been infected by it. Anyway, one afternoon, I remember them racing downstairs & out the door. Had no idea why, but half an hour later, when they returned, discovered that a radio station had announced that Jurassic5 were at the BP Station on Erskineville Road, & the kids were proudly waving their autographs at me. They’ve always been loved by the dynamic duo & I can see why after listening to this. And I’d say J5 definitely influenced the kids’ brand of hip-hop. This was an easy listen. I loved the flute in If You Only Knew. And some of the samples are so tasty - don’t know where the Love in Them There Hills steal comes from ( not the Pointer Sisters version) but it’s so effective in I Am Somebody. And the sample from Ray Manzarek’s Golden Scarab is a real winner in the final track, Acetate Prophets. A band at the top of their game.

Saw them on their first tour here, at Sydney’s beautiful State Theatre. Went with my Girlfriend Julie & my gay friend, Fish. I was already in love with the band - I think Life During Wartime had just been released. I went home convinced I had just seen the next big thing. Fish went home having fallen in love with the dreadful support band, Mi-Sex. This album sounds as fresh today as it did then. Talking Heads were unique. Thank You For Sending Me An Angel is as good an opening track as you would want. It literally gallops - as does I’m Not In Love. In fact, as do so many cuts here. The flow between tracks is great - 1 runs into 2, 3 runs into 4. You’re breathless after Side 1, but Side 2 keeps at it. There’s a sidetrack with the band’s cover of the Al Green classic, Take Me To The River, one of the great covers of all time, but by the album’s end with The Big Country, you just knew David Byrne & genius producer Brian Eno were onto something great. And the great rhythm section should not be overlooked. I was lucky enough to see Byrne’s American Utopia tour in 2018. A genius still.

This was like being kidnapped & tied to an early-80’s game machine, with no way out. I can’t believe I lasted over 40 minutes with this - I just kept expecting something to happen - BUT IT DIDN’T!!! This is where we really need a MINUS option. Horrible & needless.

I was only familiar with Epic / The Morning After because that single was regularly on my jukebox. The band is extremely tight. Patton is a terrific frontman. The whole album stands up well after 35 years. It certainly rocks.

My parents were huge Al Jolson fans &, subsequently, so was I. In 1961, when Columbia was trying to turn Aretha into a lounge singer, they released a single of her covering the Jolson classic Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody. It was the first song I ever heard her sing. reached #20 on the 2UE Top 40 & at age ten, I bought that single & still have it. She could sing the phonebook, which is why Rolling Stone voted her the Greatest Singer Of All Time in 2008. There’s a clip you can catch on Youtube of Aretha on Shindig in 1964, performing The Shoop Shoop Song, which wasn’t a song she ever recorded. This was when she was still signed to Columbia, before Atlantic stole her away & gave her the chance at true greatness. And as she absolutely tears the song up, Darlene Love, performing backing vocals with the house girl-group, The Blossoms, starts waving & shouting encouragement at Aretha, because she can see just how good she was. It’s one of my absolute favourite pieces of live 60’s TV. What a voice. This is a truly great record. And it’s not just her doing - the material is outstanding - the cream of American songwriters from that period - Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Don Covay, Goffin & King, The Rascals & Aretha herself. The producer, Jerry Wexler & the engineer, the great Tom Dowd. And, as well as the cream of Memphis’s Muscle Shoals musicians, there’s Clapton, The Sweet Inspirations, Cissy Houston, & the great King Curtis. And Aretha was never in better voice. A true classic.

I auite enjoyed early U2, but I’d pretty much given up on them by the time this album was released. The only 2 tracks zi knew from this album before today were One(hard to avoid) & Mysterious Ways, which I quite liked. I just listened to the whole album & there’s nothing there that I’ll ever listen to again. I’m bewildered as to it’s high rating with the critics. It did give me a real laugh though - Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? Were they serious? Prince could get away with that sort of lyric, but not Bono. Disappointing listen for me.

Look, this album’s okay, but hardly earth-shattering. I liked the opening track, which featured Peter Buck, & the final track, Answering Machine, which I thought was the most interesting track on the album. I also enjoyed Seen Your Video, which is almost an instrumental. But that was about it. I don’t think the rest of the album was bad - it just seems overrated. Black Diamond, the Kiss cover, was disappointing.

This is an important record - it was her debut effort & she was such an influential South African performer, who strutted the world stage with great dignity & to great success. But it’s not her best work. Still, it introduced The Click Song, which was so famous when I was ten years old. With Mbube (on which she used the Chad Mitchell Trio, who would soon launch John Denver’s career) she showed a different take on the song westerners knew as Wimoweh or The Lion Sleeps Tonight. She recorded House Of The Rising Sun the year before Dylan got his hands on it. It’s of it’s time & well worth a listen.

I was never a fan of Pet Shop Boys. I’d never listened to any of their albums before. And I never expected to enjoy listening to this. But, somehow, it wormed its way into my consciousness while I was desperately trying to ignore it. Johnny Marr’s guitar on tracks 2 & 6 was a welcome surprise, as was the part Angelo Badalamenti played on tracks 2 & 5 - amazing that he was working on this album at the same time that he was creating the soundtrack for Twin Peaks. So by the time they got to So Hard, I was almost singing along. Almost. Somehow I enjoyed this album.

Lemmy died less than a fortnight before Bowie. The only reason I know that is that I was in Canberra that January & the January 20th edition of BMA Magazine, the local free music mag, had a cover with 2 words on it : BOWIE / LEMMY. Such was the fondness for Motorhead’s main man. To have been a roadie for Hendrix & an early member of Hawkwind might have been sufficient to retire on, but he went on to form Motorhead, a noisy trio if there ever was one. This is a totally noisy record, in fact, but it does tick a lot of live album boxes, mainly the fact that it’s a bit like actually being there, without actually being there. I’d never heard it before & probably won’t again, but I enjoyed it.

I think the thing with Elliott Smith is that you had to be there. He was probably great at some intimate gig, playing for a small crowd who were sure he was the next big thing. But in the ranks of American singer-songwriters, I find it hard to rate him that highly. Mind you, the album we previously rated, Either/Or, was a much better record than this. I really didn’t find a standout track here.

Look, I just listened to this. An hour I’ll never get back. Though I did enjoy some of the guitar & actually didn’t mind the last track, Love & Affection. But, really, not my style.

I saw Tom Waits at Sydney’s State Theatre in May 1979, the year before this album was released. I went with my dear friend, Jackie. Waits was supported by local legend Mark Gillespie, whose gear was delayed by a vehicle breakdown, delaying Tom’s set by around 90 minutes, giving Jackie & I the opportunity to retreat to Hyde Park & get even more stoned than we already were. Subsequently, this was one of the most memorable concerts I ever attended. Waits was great, with just his piano, a double bass, drums & a horn player. It’s always been a romantic notion of mine that this album was born on that world tour.I can find no confirmation on the net, but I’m sure I heard back then that he wrote On The Nickel in Glebe. The album opens with the title track - pure 70’s Waits, when he still wrote tunes. There’s In Shades, a rare & wonderful instrumental from this period & Mr Siegal, which features terrific New Orleans piano. And each side of the record ends with great Waits ballads - Jersey Girl & Ruby’s Arms. For me, this is the last truly great album by Tom Waits. After that, experiments took over from melodies.

Was there any more prolific post-punk band than The Fall? Between 1979 & 1990, including live albums & compilations, they released close to 30 albums. This was one of their most user-friendly, partly due to the introduction of new member, & Mark E. Smith’s new missus, Brix. I found many of their album’s difficult to listen to, but this one certainly had its moments. I have the single L.A./ Cruiser’s Creek, which is a ripper. Side 2 of the original L.P. is some of the best work the band ever did.

I had never heard this album before today (only admired the cover over the years). It is truly great. The opening track is outstanding - Eddie Hazel gives one of the all-time great performances on electric guitar. And the band just launches from there & no prisoners are taken. I’m gob-smacked at how good this record is & how I’ve spent the last 50 years not listening to it.

Let’s face it - no British Invasion - no regional garage bands all over the U.S. & definitely no Sonics. They may have existed before the Beatles & the Stones got to America, but without the invaders, we wouldn’t be reading about them now. I enjoyed this. There’s not one cover version here that’s as good as the originals by The Contours (Do You Love Me), Chuck Berry (Roll Over Beethoven), Richard Berry (Have Love will Travel), Money (Barrett Strong), Walking The Dog (Rufus Thomas), Night Time Is The Right Time (Nappy Brown & Ray Charles) & Good Golly Miss Molly (Little Richard). Or the British covers that preceded this album, by Brian Poole & The Tremeloes, The Beatles, The Stones & The Swinging Blue Jeans. But it doesn’t matter. The greatness of garage music was in the garage. And this is as good as that shit got. What’s more, it includes 2 absolute classics, written by the band - Psycho & Strychnine, which were just as covered by future garage & punk outfits. Loved it.

Don’t know Travis from a bar of soap. This album sounds a lot like Coldplay at their most boring. Didn’t mind Why Does It Always Rain On Me? but I had to wonder if the answer was obvious. I noticed that some bonus cd had a bunch of cover versions, so I gave them a listen. They included ordinary versions of The Ronettes’ Be My Baby, The Band’s The Weight, and Joni Mitchell’s River, but a really good version of Joni’s Urge For Going, & a cracking live version of Britney’s Baby One More Time.

Listening to an early Fats Domino album is like attending a history lecture. Fats was steeped in music that was so influential to the growth of rock’n’roll, &, indeed, popular music. This album features two classics - Blueberry Hill & Blue Monday (puts Geldof’s Monday tune in the shade). It’s a great listen, if a little samey, but the beauty is in the brevity - a dozen songs clocking in at around 27 minutes - you don’t have time to get bored.

I remember hearing Love Like Anthrax on the original Doublejay & deciding I had to have it, so went out & bought this album. The other standout track was At Home He’s A Tourist. In 2019, I bought tickets to see them in March at the Manning Bar, but Andy Gill took ill & the tour was postponed, but they eventually came in November, just before Covid. They really were terrific & trax off this record featured heavily. Gill sadley passed away the following year. This record was very influential & somehow still sounds fresh.

Worth it for Cloud Nine & Run Away Child, Running Wild, the latter of which I was only familiar with the edited single version. This 10 minute version is fantastic. In between the two is not the greatest version of Grapevine - give me Marvin Gaye , Creedence, The Slits or even Gladys Knight ( the first version released but not the best) any day. But their voices are so good they almost get away with it. And it’s their voices that make Side 2 of the album worth listening to, not the songs as such. They were a great vocal group.

I had a great mate at my last workplace (where I worked for 20 years) named Dermot. A music nut, he was always burning cd’s & leaving them on my desk to surprise me. One day I lobbed at work to find a cd with the title : The Godlike Genius That Is…..BRIAN WILSON. If the house I live in ever catches alight & I only have time to grab one cd, that’s the one I’m grasping for. For years I thought it was some rare compilation, but turns out it was a collection put together by a friend of Dermot’s. It is a joy, and it celebrates the eloquence of Wilson’s lyrics, music, production,etc. Not a bunch of hit singles. There were 5 tracks from Pet Sounds & 4 tracks from the Today album & I knew none of those 4 tracks - the glorious I’m So Young ( a cover version of a 1958 release by The Students); Please Let Me Wonder; She Knows Me Too Well; & Kiss Me Baby. These are the first 4 tracks on Side 2, & are widely regarded as a precursor to the majesty of Pet Sounds, although, for me, I don’t think The Beachboys ever sounded any better than this. As for Side 1, it opens with a cover of Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance that’s pretty good, if unnecessary, and closes with the great Dance, Dance, Dance. In between is a version of Help Me R(h)onda that is not as good as the single version they subsequently recorded. But if you are not familiar with this album, it’s a revelation. Godlike.

Dear friend Simon & I saw Pixies at the Opera House in 2014 as part of the Livid Festival. According to a set-list I found on the net, they played 9 of the 15 songs on Doolittle, &, even without Kim Deal, did a great job. And when I mentioned to Simon that my vinyl of the album had gone with my ex, he also gifted me a spare copy that he had. Now this is a mate. I therefore have many reasons to love this album. Here Comes Your Man is one of the great, great singles. Debaser & Monkey Gone To Heaven are also among the band’s greatest songs. Gouge Away & La La Love You - there’s so much to love here. Thanks so much, Simon.

There was a time in the mid-80’s when Scratches Records in Newtown would always have a colourful handbill on the wall, hand-delivered by a very long-haired teenager named Hugh. They advertised the upcoming happening organised by The Syd Barrett Appreciation Society. Really, up to that point, all I knew of Syd were the 2 fantastic Floyd singles that preceded this debut album - See Emily Play & Arnold Layne. For me, Floyd started with Dark Side Of The Moon. But pretty soon I was becoming all too familiar with Syd’s solo output as well as the early Floyd albums, including this masterpiece. It reeks of late- sixties London. The mixture of Barrett’s whacky, childish songs with the experimental work of the rest of the band works so well. The opening track, Astronomy Domine, has those two strands colliding in a totally unique way. And Side 1 just takes off from there - Lucifer Sam, Matilda Mother, the jazzy Pow R Toc H. Side 2 opens with the ten-minute instrumental, Interstellar Overdrive - a psychedelic landmark & then moves between Syd craziness & more experimentation by the rest of the band. The album, recorded at Abbey Road at the same time that the Fab 4 were recording Sgt Peppers, even concludes with a track of repetitive noises, not unlike the way The Beatles concluded their album. This album sounds better to me now than when I first heard it. A keeper.

I can see how an eccy or two might improve this. It begins well - I enjoyed the opening 3 tracks - they are loud & quirky & well-produced, but once the Fat (or should I say “enormous”) Lady starts wrestling, it really is downhill - except for Wrote For Lunch, probably the standout track here. Side 2 is a real disappointment - I think somebody left the drugs at home.

I really only knew the band from the album Bowie produced for them in 1972. To think he gave them All The Young Dudes, which they really nailed, is amazing enough but to think he offered them Suffragette City, which they rejected, is incredible. I don’t think this album is as good as the Bowie-produced effort ( though there’s a bit of a Bowie hangover here - listen to WhizzKid) but it has its moments, not the least of which is the opener, All The Way From Memphis (Ian Hunter at his best), one of 2 cuts on Side 1 that features Roxy’s Andy Mackay on sax. The other standout for me is I’m A Cadillac/El Camino Dolo Roso, totally a Mick Ralphs effort, the second part of which is a terrific instrumental. I have to say that I became a bigger fan of both Hunter & Ralphs after they left the band. I was a big Bad Company fan - probably Ralphs at his best & a big fan of Hunter’s solo work, a lot of which involved collaborating with Mick Ronson, after Bowie decided he no longer needed him. Inevitably Hunter will be most remembered for his 1979 hit, Cleveland Rocks, which was recorded by Presidents of the USA and used as the theme song for The Drew Carey Show.

From the moment I first saw Elastica on Rage, I was a big fan. And I had a huge crush on Justine Frischmann. The song was Stutter - still one of my Top 5 favourite Britpop songs from the 90’s. The look of the band - like who gives a fuck - the low-slung guitars,the thrift-shop clothes & the fabulous, breakneck tune, clocking in at about 2:20. This was well before the album was released & the great singles just kept coming - Line Up, Car Song & the amazing Connection. The album is a great listen - 16 tracks at an average 2&1/2 minutes long per track. It never gets boring, right to the great closer, Vaseline. Yes, they were sued by both Wire &The Stranglers for “borrowing” from their work. But, hey, how many times did The Beatles get sued for the same thing? This is a classic album.

Sorry, just does not grab me. I persevered with it, waiting for the penny to drop. Still waiting.

It’s early 1992. The relationship is wobbling ( Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner). The record shop is about to turn ten but is also under the pump. Keating’s Recession We Had To Have is wreaking havoc (don’t ask what interest rates were). I start a clerical job at the Social Security Office in Campsie & leave the shop in Simon’s capable hands, because we really need the money. I miss it (Take me to the place I love). This album is the soundtrack to this part of my life. The song is Under The Bridge. Give It Away is on the jukebox at home ( with a cover of The Stooges’ Search & Destroy on the flip). For over a year this album leaks great singles. I purhase tix to see the band at the Hordern in May. The tour gets postponed. I finally see them there in October, by which time I’ve resigned from Social Security but am also resigned to closing the shop. They’re terrific live. Very fond of this record. Can take or leave most of their others, but love this.

Never heard this lot before. There’s a photo on their wiki page in which they appear to have copied The Hives’ dress-code. I loved The Hives. This band’s sound is not as frenetic as The Hives but it’s very classy, all the same. Blown away when I read that this was recorded at Gold Star Studios, where Spector’s wall-of-sound was built. The production is great, and there’s not a song here that I don’t enjoy. It seems to be classified as punk, but it just sounds like great rock’n’roll to me.

Have never gotten over the fact that I was out of the shop chasing stock when Thurston Moore came into Scratches during Sonic Youth’s 1989 tour. Look, I was never a huge fan, but I enjoyed some of their stuff - I have the Starpower single, but I actually prefer the flipside, the Kim Fowley cover, Bubblegum. They were still a bit too noisy for my liking at this point in their development. I finally got to see them at the Enmore in 2008, when they were doing their Daydream Nation tour. Now that was an album.

Well, whadya know? This is a terrific listen. All over the shop, as usual. When I now listen to the great opening track, Teen Age Riot, it sounds like they’re trying to channel The Go-Betweens. They follow it with Silver Rocket, which feels a lot like Kool Thing Part2. I love Kim Gordon & it’s hard to believe her vocals on tracks like this didn’t influence PJ Harvey. I love Gordon’s Kissability, which precedes The Trilogy - three tracks that end the album with what’s been described as “convulsive beauty”. About right. Hadn’t heard the album for a very long time, but it still stands up.

Look, I know that Pavement are regarded as important & influential & all that other stuff. But they’re not a band I’ve ever listened to. I just gave this album a couple of listens & quite enjoyed it, but the first thing I noticed was that Malkmus’s voice reminded me of John McCrea, the lead singer of Cake. Now there are a few big differences between these 2 bands - one is that Cake are not at all regarded as important or influential. The other is that Cake had Number 1 singles & platinum albums, which Pavement were never going to do. So does it make me a bad person that I’d rather listen to Cake? Gee, I don’t know. I know that they were one of the few bands that my 10-year-old son & I were able to bond over at the time that Fashion Nugget was all over the radio & just before he was infected with the hip-hop virus. Anyway, I still enjoyed this Pavement album. Summer Babe’s a great opener. I love the dialogue in the background of Conduit For Sale! And I really enjoyed it when they got rocky in Two States. Three stars.

I had never heard any of this album before. I thought the opening couple of tracks were okay, but it lost me for a while from I Think I’m In Love onwards & I was pretty much gonna write it off as background music - quality, but background music nonetheless. Then I was woken up by The Individual - Sometimes noisy shit just works so well. No God Only Religion had a similar effect on me, but the final track, Cop Shoot Cop, clinched the deal. Where’s this mother been hiding for 25 years? Beginning with the most famous lines John Prine ever wrote, featuring the great Dr. John on piano & backing vocals (nice that he could be involved in something this epic 30 years after recording Walk On Gilded Splinters) this is an amazing piece of music. Background music indeed!

I always thought The Banshees were a good singles band, but I never paid much attention to their albums. Spellbound is a terrific track. But I really found the bulk of this album to be just a bit repetitive. That is, until you get to the closer, Voodoo Dolly a 7-minute epic that highlights just how good the band members were. You get that throughout the album - each musician is outstanding - but the actual songs are less than stellar. Still, worth it for the opening & closing tracks.

“I gave you seven children / And now you wanna give ‘em back” - one of the great lyrics in popular music. I love B.B., but I never think of him as down & dirty blues - that’s Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters. King is more like cabaret blues & this album is the ultimate example of that. He doesn’t miss a beat & you can feel the audience eating out of his hands. The music is predictable until you get to Help The Poor, which has a totally different rhythm. But it’s all great. Just not the greatest blues album ever, as has been spruiked for quite a while now. Give me “This is Howlin’ Wolf’s new album. He doesn’t like it. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either.”

The Zombies reached #7 on the 2UE Top 40 in Late 1964, at the height of the so-called British Invasion. The following year they had a Top 10 American hit with the great Tell Her No. Then I don’t remember hearing them at all on the radio until Time Of The Season topped the U.S. charts in early 1969. And on the basis of falling in love with that track, I borrowed this album from Chester Hill Library (and I do mean borrowed, not stole - you were able to do that in those days). Pretty sure you could borrow 2 albums at a time, & the other one I borrowed was Grateful Dead’s American Beauty. But I really enjoyed The Zombies’ album & still do. They sound so like an English band, and this is extremely classy pop music, sadly overlooked at the time. The harmonies are sometimes so much borrowed from the Brian Wilson songbook - the opening track, Care Of Cell 44 is a classic example of this. Time Of The Season sounds unlike anything else on the album - so moody & atmospheric & has a jazzy ending that would have been worthy of Georgie Fame. This Will Be Our Year is a fabulous track that’s worn well, and that I remember embellishing an episode of Marvellous Mrs Maisel a few years ago. And Butcher’s Tale(Western Front 1914)is a great anti-war song that features great organ by Rod Argent. There’s not a dud on this record. Sounds as good as it ever did.

Look, it’s dated. It hasn’t weathered the last 30 years all that well. The fact that the track I enjoyed most was Body Count - the name of his band & not as good as Cop Killer - speaks mouthfuls really. Still, there are tracks here where the message gets through - Home Of The Bodybag, Escape From The Killing Fields & Straight Up Nigga all have important things to say. There are also some really funny moments - First Impression & Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year (touching & funny). A lot of the rest I find a tad boring, but I only gave it one listen & that was the first time I’d heard it.

There aren’t that many original British punk albums that I can throw on & listen to from go to whoa these days, but this is definitely one of them. The ex has the vinyl but I have the 1991 Caroline cd, which changed the track listing and added 4 bonus tracks, including the iconic Oh Bondage Up Yours! and the wonderful I Am A Cliche. From the original album, the highlights for me are Identity & especially the title track, which shows how they could be be equally compelling when they slowed things down. Poly was a stunningly great front-person, but even though Lora Logic had been sacked from the band before the album was recorded, they used the sax charts she had drawn up for those songs, so she’s all over it & that horn sound was so influential in the post-punk years. I love this record. It still sounds fresh to me.

I was always a fan but I have no memory of this record. Really enjoyed it - nothing like hearing a lass celebrating her Irish roots. And what help she had. From the moment you hear Davy Spillane’s (Afro Celt Sound System) uilleann pipes & Donal Luny’s (the great Planxty) bouzouki on the opening track, the sound of this album is a joy. The Fog is a knockout - the legendary Alan Stivell on celtic harp & Nigel Kennedy (legend in his own lunchtime ) on violin, and Kate’s old man getting a spoken piece. Reaching Out features a terrific string quartet arrangement by Michael Nyman, but really, it’s Kate’s vocals & backing vocals that soar here. As they do throughout. It was great to hear Trio Bulgarka on Side 2. For some reason I thought they were a bit low-rent compared to the music on the classic 4AD albums of the 80’s that went by the name Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. I couldn’t be more wrong. They are outstanding on Rocket’s Tail, as is David Gilmour’s brief but blistering guitar solo there. A great listen.

Look, I liked this. Could take or leave the spoken bits, but musically I thought it was good. Her voice is great. The tunes are good. Highlight for me was the one featuring Ari Lennox, “On It”.

I loved Enter Sandman. Do not know the rest of this album & what with Easter & all, & having once watched that doco where this lot took themselves so seriously it made me double-upwith laughter, I have no time or desire to listen to it now. Two stars.

I have the follow-up album he did 6 years after this - The Lady Killer - and I love it, but this leaves me a bit cold. I couldn’t find a stand-out track here. I love Pharrell, but his involvement doesn’t help. There’s a Funkadelic reference in Glockapella that I enjoyed. A bit samey & uninspiring for me.

I remember where I was when I heard the news of Bon Scott’s death. It was early in a February morning in 1980 & I was driving along George’s River Road on my way to see a mate at Punchbowl. It was shocking news really. He was a one-off. Irreplaceable in that band, so we all thought. Anyway, in March I met the woman who I’d spend the next 25 years with & in December we headed down the Hume to Melbourne to spend a month with her family. On xmas day, her brother was gifted Back In Black & it became the soundtrack of our summer. The 4 killer singles from the album had already been released by xmas. So I’m totally biassed about this record. I’ve never tired of listening to it. I knew all of AC/DC’s singles as they happened but this is the only AC/DC album that I know intimately. Brian Johnson is no Bon Scott but they did bloody well finding him as a replacement. That was the big question waiting to be answered leading up to the album’s release. Fortunately the material was so strong, & he managed to pull it off. Love this record.

I bought this vinyl at Ashwoods in the early 70’s for $1. I’d never heard of Fela Kuti but I was a big Cream fan so Ginger Baker’s name sealed the deal. About 20 years later I mentioned the fact that I had it to a punter at a record fair & he made me an offer for it that I couldn’t refuse. Big pity, because having listened to it this morning for the first time in 30 years, I’m reminded of what a wonderful live album it is. And it’s a lot more to do with Fela Kuti than it is to do with Ginger. The music is joyous, to say the least. Do yourself a favour & watch the doco Finding Fela (2015) - it’s on youtube. And this album is one of the great live discs.

I find her voice quite irritating at times & her lyrics juvenile at other times. But not all the time. Sometimes she nails it. And I really like the music. It’s a big, full sound. And it never feels repetitive or boring. She’s obviously a talent.

I remember when I first heard Nina Simone. It was her version of Ain’t Got No/ I Got Life from the Broadway musical of the moment, Hair. It was 1968 & it was the first of a long list of songs from Hair that were hits. And the reason I remember well hearing it for the first time on radio is that when the dee-jay back-announced it as being by a woman, my jaw dropped, because to me it had sounded like a man’s voice. I also remember when I first heard the song Wild Is The Wind - it was in the early 80’s when I first saw the black & white clip of Bowie miming his 1976 recording of the song. I then heard the Johnny Mathis version & eventually Nina Simone’s cover. I love all three versions but Simone’s is particularly emotional, & longer than the other 2 versions combined. The other well-known cover on the album is the beautiful Lilac Wine, written for a Broadway musical in 1949, first recorded by the great Eartha Kitt in 1952 but now best remembered as a track on Jeff Buckley’s album, Grace. Simone’s version is a as good as any. There are 2 songs on the album written by black ongwriter Horace Ott, who had written the classic Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood for Simone in 1964, and 2 songs written by Van McCoy, who had alreadyvwritten Baby I’m Yours for Barbara Lewis & Getting Mighty Crowded for Betty Everett & would go on to have a huge disco hit with The Hustle in the mid-70’s. When you add the 2 songs written by Bennie Benjamin, including the opener, the wonderful I Love Your Lovin’ Ways, and Simone’s own extraordinary composition, Four Women, it means that 7 of the 11 songs here were written by black American composers - no coincidence, because Simone was an important figure in the civil rights movement & she no doubt fostered black talent when she had the opportunity. This is not the greatest collection of songs she ever gathered on one disc, but the highlights shine.

I tend to agree with the exquisitely-named reviewer for Q magazine, Charlie Dick, who, at the time, wrote : The all-mouth-and-trousers content is backed up by likable drum machine twittering, minimal instrumentation and duffish production. Still this regressive nonsense will be passed off as social commentary by thrill-seekers all across the free world. And it was. Straight Outta Compton, as an opening track, is a very clever scene-setter. Then Fuck tha Police was just iconic at the time. It’s with the next track, Gangsta Gangsta that the sexist, mysoginistic shit just gets a bit too hard to listen to - and there’s too much of it from then on, for my liking. The one exception is what they do with the Charles Wright classic, Express Yourself - I hope he got a healthy cheque for their using it. And I think they did pretty well with it.

I enjoyed this. It could have been recorded 40 years earlier, when bossa nova was first a world-wide phenomenon. Sure, some aspects of the instrumentation might be more contemporary, but essentially this is a bossa nova record. Take So Nice - it was one of the biggest-selling bossa tunes of the 60’s (under the title Summer Samba) - the English lyrics were supplied by Norman Gimbel, who also did the translation for The Girl From Ipanema & would later write the lyrics of Killing Me Softly. To me, Gilberto’s version sounds like it comes straight out of the 60’s, like so much of this record. And that’s fine, although the tunes I enjoy most are the handful that stylistically veer elsewhere - the beats in August Day Song are infectious; the pace of Sem Contencao ; on Alguem, she reminds me of Sade at her best. I was not familiar with her work at all, but I thought this was a great listen.

I’m a big Costello fan. I’ve rarely missed seeing him when he tours here, going back to the 1978 Regent concert. He’s always terrific live, whether solo or with a band. But his recorded work over that 45 year period hasn’t always done it for me. This has not been an album I’ve revisited much since it’s release, But after a couple of plays I have found a few diamonds. 13 Steps Lead Down is the only song here that I remember staying in his live repertoire for quite a while. It’s like several tracks on this album that are reminiscent of earlier Costello songs. My Science Fiction Twin begins a lot like Pump It Up. Just About Glad is very much like an early song of his that I just can’t nail. And as usual, he borrows from the classics - he claimed London’s Brilliant Parade was a Kinks tribute, but the opening line is straight from Cream’s World Of Pain. I do like the ballads, Still To Soon To Know, All The Rage & the epic concluding track, Favourite Hour, which spawns the album’s title, & is reminiscent of the mid-80’s singles he put out as The Imposter. So in the end, this album grew on me after all these years.

Fascist Groove Thang is one of the very great dance trax of the 1980’s. And the title track of this album, which follows it, isn’t far behind it in quality. The rest of the album is good dancey stuff. I think the lyrics reach a bit of a nadir with The Height Of The Fighting & the repeated refrain “He-la-hu”. Really? But I have to give this album a high rating just for the opening 2 trax - they’re so good.

I love listening to French speakers. No language rivals that sound. And there are plenty of great French singers that float my boat - Piaf, Charles Trenet, Francoise Hardy. But when it comes to rock & roll & all its hybrids, the French language doesn’t often cut the mustard. The exceptions tend to be novelty acts - Nouvelle Vague doing punk classics or Plastic Bertrand - or some of Gainsbourg, or one-offs like Les Rita Mitsouko. So does the French/hip-hop combo work for me? Not really. But it’s not horrible. And the music/ beats are fine. I love the jazzy Armand est mort - the saxophone rules here. I love the slow tempo of Caroline. I find the deep Barry White vocal bits in English in La musique adoucit les mœurs pretty amusing. But he does get me with his lightning-fast staccato rapping in the 2 improvised tracks towards the end of the disc, particularly Ragga Jam. If I played this album a few times, maybe I’d learn to love it.

Hey, I gave this a listen. Sounds great. Production must have been. Really good. But it’s just not my bag. I missed Rush totally. Probably the main reason was that I read an article about them early on & as soon as I read that they were Ayn Rand fans, I scrubbed them.But I can see why they were popular.

I have Neil’s first 2 solo albums on vinyl. This is the second of them. I just played them both & found them to be equally entertaining. One thing that really struck me was just how much Tim Buckley’s voice was like Neil’s. Buckley may have used it slightly differently & his music was certainly funkier than Neil’s folk-influenced tunes, but their voices are very similar. On the previous album John Sebastian featured heavily on harmonica, but on this album it’s Canned Heat’s Al (Blind Owl)Wilson with those duties & he’s great, particularly on That’s The Bag I’m In, Sweet Cocaine & particularly on the last track with the crazy name, an 8-minute instrumental described as a piece of raga rock. It’s unlike anything else on the album. Neil’s signature tune, Everybody’s Talkin’ opens Side 2, marginally slower than the version by Harry Nilsson, who had the big hit with it after it was used in the film Midnight Cowboy. The album has no duds on it. Still a great listen.

For me, this album was another victory for share-houses. I think a dude named Tony owned the vinyl & I fell in love with it. It was the title track that I fell in love with first - the strange sound he gets with his voice. It’s an eerie song. From the man who wrote one of the 60’s greatest - Eight Miles High - & then left The Byrds because of a fear of flying. Go figure. Anyway, I’ve been listening to it for nearly 50 years & it still does it for me. Strength Of Strings stands out for me these days. Clark’s slide guitar is straight out of early 70’s Stones albums. And the song itself is very reminiscent of Neil Young’s Words(Between the Lines Of Age) from the Harvest album. But it is so beautiful. In fact, the whole of Side 1 is outstanding. Side 2 might not have standout tracks but it does the job. I got to see Clark when he toured here in 1979 with McGuinn, Hillman & Clark (basically a Byrds’ greatest hits tour). They played at The Regent in Sydney & were great. But I was hoping he might play No Other or some track from this album, but, alas, no.

It’s not The Sun Sessions, although 4 of the 12 tracks here were recorded at Sun Studios before Sam Phillips sold The King’s contract to RCA. And it’s worth it to hear Elvis’s version of Blue Moon - this is the most ethereal version of Rodgers & Hart’s most covered song. Always been a highlight for me. The cover of Carl Perkins Blue Suede Shoes is musically no better than the original, except for Elvis’s superior vocals. However the 3 covers of songs made famous by black artists - Ray Charles’ I Got A Woman, Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti & The Drifters’ Money Honey are all inferior to the originals. The highlight on the album is Trying To Get To You. The band & Elvis really rock on this. Not his greatest record & that’s understandable, because it was thrown together just to get product out. But what a voice.

Never been a big fan, but didn’t mind this. Really loved Month Of May, which is the only track here that gallops at a clip & could have belonged to a punk outfit. A lot of this has a dreamlike feel about it. The tracks do reflect the subject matter in a way I can’t really explain. But I have lived there.

I knew they were big, but I never paid The National much attention. Just listened to this album & really enjoyed Sorrow, Bloodbuzz Ohio & Conversation 16. Nothing’s offensive here, but nothing is too thrilling, either.

In Sydney in 1968 there was only one radio show where you were likely to hear this album - Thompson Underground, hosted by John Thompson on 2UW, very late on Friday night & early Saturday morning. It’s where I first heard bootleg trax, Zappa, Paul Butterfield, & definitely where I first heard Blue Cheer. I was in love with Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues when I first heard his original single ten years earlier. What Blue Cheer did with it on this album became a template for the way metal bands would interpret rock’n’roll classics or, indeed any music - I think it reached a crazy nadir/peak when Nazareth decided to do Joni Mitchell’s This Flight Tonight. They give B.B.King’s Rock Me Baby more of a blues treatment & the late, great Mose Allison’s Parchment Farm cops a bit of both approaches. I remember hearing this album back in the day very fondly. And it still sounds good to me. Even the drum solo.

The only Wilco stuff I own are the 2 Woody Guthrie cd’s they did with Billy Bragg. But I do have the dvd about the making of this album - I Am Trying To Break Your Heart - so I dragged it out last night & had a look at it. It’s so interesting looking at the bare bones of some of these songs before the musical effects are added. And there is a lot of weird music here - War On War. Sometimes quite psychedelic - Pot, Kettle Black. Often with outstanding guitar - I’m The Man Who Loves You. And always with some of the best rock drumming I’ve ever heard (or seen) - Glenn Kotche, who, amazingly had just joined the band. These were his first recordings with Wilco. When you add all the 9/11 references, it just makes it all the more interesting. And, of course, there’s Heavy Metal Drummer. A real winner.

Well listening to this album certainly set me straight on one thing. For over 40 years I’ve owned & listened to a 1980 Robert Wyatt single with Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit on one side and a song called At Last I Am Free on the flipside - always assuming this was a Robert Wyatt tune. No siree Bob!!! It’s the longest track on this album & one of the best. And it couldn’t be more different than the other album highlight - the iconic Le Freak. The rest of the album is fine, but not compelling for me.

I’ve always liked him & some of my favourite hip-hop is stuff he’s done. But I’d never heard most of this album before. It was an easy listen. The title track is a real winner. I also really loved Eat ‘Em Up L Chill, & The Power Of God. The musical setting for his words rarely get boring. A big plus in this genre.

The only Aerosmith album I’ve ever owned was their 4th album, Rocks (1976), via the Australian Record Club, which I never liked & have since disposed of. But I have collected some of their singles over the years, including the 2 killer tunes off this album - Love In An Elevator & Janie’s Got A Gun. The latter is particularly listenable. The rest of the album is inoffensive & I do enjoy the didge on Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. And nice to see that Holland-Dozier-Holland successfully sued them for ripping off Standing In The Shadows Of Love in the track The Other Side.

I have never listened to a Guns’n’Roses album before. Pity. This was a real surprise. I don’t know quite what I expected, but above all, this is just really good rock’n’roll. I have a couple of their singles, including Sweet Child O’ Mine, which I always liked. And like anyone who was alive at the time, I was familiar with Paradise City, which I also liked. But there’s so much here that I really enjoy - the opening 2 tracks set a fierce pace &, really, it just rocks all the way. Slash is terrific. The music never gets boring. Who knew? Not me.

What a great record. I’ve always liked Pharrell, but knew nothing about his part in this outfit. This is not a hip-hop album. It’s high-quality pop. Full of great hooks and totally interesting music. Particularly love the opening track, Don’t Worry About It, Backseat Love, She wants To Move & the epic Wonderful Place (with hidden track Waiting For You) - so personal & unlike anything else on the album. And special mention to Maybe, which features Lenny Kravitz & Questlove - a quality ballad. No duds here. They even get away with the repetitive refrain of the name Mildred in the final track. That’s good going.

The orchestra was terrific.

His 3rd album & one of his best. Produced by one of Britain’s great pop producers, Nick Lowe, it jumps out at you from the opening bars of Accidents Will Happen, & like the rest of Costello’s early albums, it just moves at speed. He’s always been a wordy songwriter & these tracks are certainly choc-full of lyrics. And he can write a great lyric - I love some of his rhymes - this is a particular fave verse from Sunday’s Best : Don't look now under the bed An arm, a leg and a severed head Read about the private lives The songs of praise, the readers' wives Listen to the decent people Though you treat them just like sheep Put them all in boots and khaki Blame it all upon the darkies There’s theft all over the album - the one I like most is the repeated riff from The Beatles’ I Want You(She’s So Heavy) on Party Girl, but there’s the Abba-style piano Steve Nieve plays on Oliver’s Army, and the music- hall feel of Sunday’s Best, written for & in the style of Ian Dury. I think reviewer David Quantick summarised it best : Armed Forces has all the piss and vinegar and spleen of its predecessor, This Year’s Model, but disguised as fizzy pop and cartoons. I love the record.

In January 1964 I bought I Want To Hold Your Hand and life was never the same again. By June I had a plastic Beatle wig, a growing collection of their singles and Fabulous magazines with poster-sized pages. On June 6th, I got up at 6.00 a.m., and settled in front of the tv to watch The Beatles arrive at Sydney Airport at 6.30. My memory is that there initially were no studio announcers, just images of the rain pissing down, with this album playing over the top. Why was I hearing Little Child and It Won’t Be Long for the first time? Even though this album was released over 6 months before, on November 22nd - the day Kennedy was shot. Because, at that time, radio ruled, and singles were the thing. Shit. I didn’t even know this record existed. They wrote 8 songs, 6 were covers. Nobody covered Motown better : the trifecta of You Really Got A Hold On Me, Please Mr Postman & Money is outstanding. Look, this is not my favourite Beatles album by any stretch. I’m more likely to play Help! or Rubber Soul these days. But this was the third and last album I’d buy at Chester Hill, where I grew up. Everything about playing it in my room was so exciting. By next Christmas I owned a tape recorder and just taped all my music from radio & tv. It was way cheaper for a budding addict. I would not actually buy another album for 4 years. But I wore this one out.

Never heard this band before. Enjoyed it

Loved this. Fortunately the mention of (John) Casavetes, an actor & film director I admire, in the title of track 3 inspired me to check out the lyrics of that track - “Misogynist? Genius?…Alcoholic? Messiah?” Subsequently I read the lyrics of all 12 tracks. I don’t usually do that. But I was interested to see how the band approached the “girl power” movement of that time. They do it in an often lighthearted way from the get-go. The opening track, Deceptacon, which sounds a bit like X-Ray Spex & a lot like the B-52’s, revolves around the lyrics of the Barry Mann 1961 novelty hit, Who Put The Bomp, in an attempt to equate riot grrrl with The Spice Girls, who were huge at the time. Hot Topic is a name-dropathon of feminist icons, many musicians. I love the opening line of Slideshow At a Free University - “ We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.” And that’s what they do on this album. Loved it.

There are more great tunes on this album than most bands manage in a career. But albums in Australia at the time of this release cost £2/12/6, an amount I was never likely to accumulate. So until I was given a reel-to-reel tape recorder for xmas 1964, I just knew these tracks from the radio. I clearly remember getting dressed to go to school & listening to Can’t Buy Me Love the morning radio stations here were able to play it. I remember thinking it wasn’t quite up to their earlier singles although I loved the flipside, You Can’t Do That. Soon the Ella Fitzgerald swing cover version of Can’t Buy Me Love was a Top 40 hit. It was 4 months before the A Hard Day’s Night single & album were released in July, by which time they’d shot the film & toured Australia. The flipside of that single was Things We Said Today - the value you got from their singles & E.P.’s was amazing. That was followed by I Should Have Known Better, backed with If I Fell, & by that time radio stations were all over the album trax like a cheap suit. Particularly the glorious And I Love Her, which was a single release in the U.S., but not here. But also I’ll Cry Instead & the beautiful closing cut, I’ll Be Back. I had most of it on tape by January 1965, off the radio. Just thinking how lucky I was makes me smile. Like all their early albums, the remastered cd gets a regular flogging around here.

Another Girl, Another Planet is one of the great songs of the late 70’s. The rest of this album is more interesting than outstanding. I like the slower tunes, The Whole Of The Law & Breaking Down & I do like City Of Fun. With a few more listens, I may learn to love it.

This was the first Dan album I ever purchased, from Ashwoods, while on leave from Newcastle Uni in 1974. I was already in love with the band’s biggest ever hit single, Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number. My knowledge of jazz was not great and it would be at least 20 years before I discovered that the piano intro to the song ( and, for that matter, the album) was totally lifted from the Horace Silver track, Song For My Father. This was the album that showed just how strong Becker & Fagen’s love of & influence by jazz was. The Duke Ellington composition, East St. Louis Toodle-oo is the only cover Steely Dan ever recorded. To get the sound of a muted trumpet on the original, Becker sang through a Talkbox, while Jeff Baxter used a pedal-steel for the trombone part. It may be an instrumental, but it never feels out-of-place here & has always been a highlight for me. Parker’s Band is inspired by Bird. They might have recorded this album on the west-coast, but Steely Dan are definitely from the Big Apple. Not that they didn’t use some of the west coast’s finest on this album. Jeff Porcaro was only 19 when called in to play on Parker’s Band & Night By Night, the latter which featured Jeff Baxter’s fiercest solo on the album. The flipside of Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number was Any Major Dude Will Tell You - one of the best tracks on the album & the reason behind the conspiracy theory that the Coen Bothers’ film The Big Lebowski is a coded tribute to Steely Dan, & this album in particular ( you know - The Dude). The whole of Side 1 is particularly strong. Side 2 has highlights but is not as immediately engaging. I know this album backwards but I still loved playing it 3 times in a row while I pondered it’s greatness. It’s not my favourite Steely Dan, but still great.

I cannot see the title of this album without being reminded of the classic Morrison Hostel, from TISM’s Great Truckin’ Songs of the Renaissance (1988), in which they crucify Morrison, as the representative of & reason behind every serious young insect that followed him & considered themself a poet (Cave, Morrissey, Robert Smith, etc). I love that track. Does it stop me loving this album? No way. This is one of The Doors’ finest. Roadhouse Blues is one of the great album openers of all time. Not until now did I realise that the great guitarist Lonnie Mack played bass on this track (The Doors never had a bass player in the band) and John Sebastian played harmonica. It sets a cracking pace, but there are a bunch of wonderful slow tracks interspersed - Waiting For The Sun, Blue Sunday, The Spy (what a great track) & Indian Summer, often embellished by Robbie Kreiger’s guitar. One of the highlights is Peace Frog - a real blood in the streets anthem, obviously partly inspired by the 1968 riots at the Democrats’ Convention in Chicago. There’s no filler on Side 1 - You Make Me Real & Ship Of Fools both rock, & Side 2 opens just as powerfully with Land Ho!, although that side is not quite as strong. All in all, a terrific record. A great band.

Between November ‘68 and March ‘69 I had to find work while I waited to start my illustrious public service career. I did a week digging ditches at the Shell Oil Refinery. They sacked me. Before that I worked in a factory operating a machine that wound Scotch sticky tape onto spools until the work ran out. But it was the first of my jobs that I remember fondly - working on the process line at the Victa Mower Factory in Milperra. And what a factory - it was the size of a football field. The idea was that the line was constantly moving. I was part of that line, standing in front of a huge vat of paint (usually green), inside a rectangular room. The line came in a window at one end carrying mower parts, dipped down into the vat then rose up and out the window at the other end. My job? To stop the parts from catching on the sides of the vat. Because if that happened, the line might have to stop moving, which just wasn’t on. I reckon at least half the workers there were European migrants, many with not much English. Not that it mattered in that factory, because the noise was almost deafening. So loud, in fact that I spent my time singing at the top of my voice, because no-one was ever gonna hear me. And for some reason my 2 favourite songs to crucify were both Stones songs - No Expectations, off their 1968 l.p. Beggars Banquet and You Got the Silver, off Let It Bleed. I still cannot play either song without joining in. The rare thing about You Got The Silver is that Keith Richards makes his debut as lead singer. The album was recorded between February & October 1969. In that year, the band sacked Brian Jones, who drowned in his swimming pool a month later; they held a free concert in Hyde Park for between 1/4 & 1/2 million people to commemorate Brian and introduce Mick Taylor; they missed Woodstock but went on a hugely successful American tour; and ended the tour with the disastrous free concert at Altamont in front of 300,000. In the wider world, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jnr were assassinated, the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive and the Russians marched into Prague. Some year. Just as on Beggars Banquet, Keith had to play lead guitar because Brian was incapable and Keith laid down most of the tracks before Mick taylor joined. He does a great job. Jagger is in great voice. He shares the lead vocals on the opening track, the raucous Gimme Shelter, with Merry Clayton, who recounts the experience in the film “20 Feet From Stardom” - how she was pregnant, asleep, it was midnight & she got a call to go to the studio to do that song. She knew nothing about the band. She sang the famous “Rape, Murder” lines. She did it in 3 takes, left the studio & had a miscarriage. The film released in 1970 about the tour & Altamont was called “Gimme Shelter”. Mick and Keith wrote all the songs except for Love In Vain, which was written by the legendary Robert Johnson. Honky Tonk Women had already been released earlier in the year as a single so on this album they did a countrified version of the song & called it Country Honk. The first side ends with the title song, another country-flavoured song and featuring a great Jagger vocal. Side 2 opens and closes with the longest tracks on the album. It opens with Midnight Rambler, a 7-minute blues belter that features some great harmonica by Jagger. The juxtaposition with the slow country blues of You Got The Silver, which follows, is so clever. The album ends with the 7 & 1/2 minute-long You Can’t Always Get What You Want. The original sounds as good today as it did 50 years ago. The song opens with the London Bach Choir, and then a french horn intro is played by Al Kooper - remember Al? - the guy who played the organ intro on Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. Charlie gave the drums over to producer Jimmy Miller because he coudn’t “get the groove”. And Jagger’s vocal is terrific. As Steve Van Zandt has claimed, the greatest ever 4-consecutive-album run is The Rolling Stones on Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers & Exile On Main Street. Might be something to that.

I totally missed ISB back in the 60’s. I just don’t think I ever heard them. I picked up Mike Heron’s first solo album (1971) in a bargain bin in a Charlestown record bar in 1975, but it did nothing for me & I offloaded it. But I was lucky enough to see a Q&A at The Basement in Sydney in 2011, with Joe Boyd, who signed the band to Elektra, produced this album & was their manager for a while. He was accompanied by Robyn Hitchcock, who would alternate with Joe’s reminiscences by playing a tune, and did take a crack at an ISB song. Boyd only spoke lovingly of the band, but I have to say I was more interested that night with his memories of Dylan & Hendrix. Look, I find this to be totally weird shit. At first listen, it started sounding like music for kiddies. But by Waltz Of the New Moon & Three Is A Green Crown, I was starting to embrace the whacky instrumentation & vocals. I’ve always been a sucker for a sitar. I can certainly see how drugs would have helped. Weirdsville.

The only track by Muse that I’m at all familiar with is their cover of the Tony Newley/ Leslie Bricusse classic, Feelin’ Good. Apart from that, Im unfamiliar with their catalogue. I enjoyed this album. I guess they were really popular by this stage because they sound like a band who know they’re big & are gonna take full advantage of it. There’s stuff here that verges on the pompous (Tracks 1, 4, 6 & 10) but it’s musically so good, I have to give it the benefit of the doubt. I really liked the slower Soldier’s Poem & the Prince impersonation in Supermassive Black Hole. A good listen.

I didn’t hear this album till the very late 60’s. For me, The Byrds were a singles outfit in that decade. And I hadn’t heard Dylan’s original version of Mr Tambourine Man when The Byrds released their version. The sound of McGuinn’s 12-string was totally new to my ears. They do well with the other 3 Dylan covers, but the highlight of the album is Gene Clark’s I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, one of five songs on the album that he either wrote or co-wrote with McGuinn. Clark was a great songwriter. The band’s harmonies really shine on the Pete Seeger classic, The Bells Of Rhymney. But why they bothered to record a version of Vera Lynn’s WWII anthem, We’ll Meet Again is still a mystery.