Their 1974 riposte to criticism, which Steve Sutherland finds a mixture of downright goodies with a sprinkling of duds is remastered on 180g vinyl from pure analogue
The Rolling Stones have just released their first original track for eight years. 'Living In A Ghost Town', started some time ago when the band could convene together in a swanky recording studio and hastily rounded off with isolated overdubs. It's getting a bit of a pasting from the online community who are having a lot of fun mocking Mick Jagger and Co for moaning about being stuck at home when they live in mansions with acres of land, hot tubs and snooker rooms, etc.
Take one pale Texan and a band of top talent and you have an LP ready to rock the charts. Steve Sutherland assesses a 1972 album destined for reissue on 180g vinyl
Say what you like about Quentin Tarantino, but one thing's for sure: the man's got great taste in movies. Listed among his favourites are the obvious (Apocalypse Now, Fight Club), the not so well known but fantastic (Takashi Miike's Audition, Bong Joon-ho's The Host) and one that especially concerns us here, Richard Linklater's Dazed And Confused.
Steve Sutherland relives the fateful night when four of The Bar-Kays flew with Otis Redding in 1967, the plane diving into icy Lake Monona. The album is on 180g vinyl
The next thing he knew he was floating. Freezing cold and floating. His head hurt. There was blood. He heard a noise. Then another. Cries in the distance. Cries for help. He began to go under and he splashed around, found a seat cushion and desperately clutched it to his chest to help stay afloat – he'd never learned to swim.
Steve Sutherland savours the thrillingly nutty flavours of this ripe 11-track offering from the multimonikered Aussie musician, as the album is reissued on 180g vinyl
Back in the 1950s, that perpetual scamp and eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell (then well into his 80s) created an analogy to deal with the concept of faith in the existence of God. He said that if he were to assert, without offering any evidence whatsoever, that a teapot – too small to be seen by telescopes – orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because it could not be proven wrong. 'I think,' he concluded, 'the Christian God just as unlikely'.
Digging into the darker, tragic side of America's history, Steve Sutherland sets the context for this live recording, now reissued as a 50-year celebratory LP on 180g vinyl
Once upon a time there was a country which called itself the United States Of America – a gross misnomer because it couldn't have been more disunited if it tried. It was first largely populated by white people who had landed in ships and stolen the land from its original inhabitants. They then kidnapped and imported boatloads of people from Africa and the like to do all their heavy lifting. These slaves had no wages and no rights.
A song with a kick, but for all the wrong reasons, as Steve Sutherland reassesses a ska album from 1970, which has recently been re-released on 180g vinyl
We could begin with Plato, or even Aristotle, but Oscar Wilde it is. In his 1889 essay, The Decay Of Lying, the great man took umbrage with the Greeks' philosophy of mimesis which said that all true art mimics nature. On the contrary, quoth Oscar, 'Life imitates art' and that is roughly how it felt – very roughly as it happens – one sunny Saturday lunchtime in April, 1972, when I got my head kicked in.
Pinball wizard Steve Sutherland looks back on meeting Her Madge in the early '80s and her career-altering controversial third album, now released on 180g vinyl
She looks a bit lost, standing alone backstage leaning against the wall, watching all the celebrities mingle, clink glasses, air kiss and gossip. Lost and a little bored. Same as me, to be honest. So I cross the room and say 'hi'. She says 'hi' back. To break the ice, I point to the pinball machine, unoccupied, just over there, and ask if she fancies a game. She smiles again. 'Sure.' And away we go at it. As I remember, I won, although I'm sure – if she recalled it at all – she'd disagree.
It was a release that had all the pundits scratching their heads for how best to describe it. Steve Sutherland sits transfixed like Alice in Wonderland by this 180g reissue
Let's get this party started with the tree surgeon. Yup, the tree surgeon. To be strictly accurate, $250's worth of tree surgeon because that's how much Don Van Vliet charged Straight, his record company, for the services of an arboriculturalist's services during the recording of the album we're here to celebrate.
He just couldn't cope, says Steve Sutherland as he counts out the 'aha's and listens to the recent 180g reissue of the Liverpool band's post-punk debut LP
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha aha…'
The sad story of Donny Hathaway's demise is told by Steve Sutherland as he listens to the acclaimed 1972 Atlantic album, recently reissued on 180g vinyl
Did he jump? Did he fall by accident? This we will never know. What's for sure is that late in the evening of the 13th of January 1979 Donny Hathaway's body was found on the sidewalk outside the 44-storey art deco Essex House Hotel at 160 Central Park South in Manhattan, NYC. He had plunged there from his room on the 15th floor. His death was ruled as suicide.
A blend of beauty and violence... Steve Sutherland sets out the claims for this late British folk singer/songwriter's 1973 LP as he hears the album afresh on 180g vinyl
Two men walk into a bar… Ouch! No, not that one. Start again. OK, two men walk into a pub and head straight to the bar. The taller of the two smiles and says to the barmaid, 'We'd like to see the landlord'. She calls her boss over and he looks the pair up and down. They're dishevelled, a bit rough-looking, like they haven't slept or washed in a while, but hey, he's seen worse.
There's not a dud among all nine tracks here, declares Steve Sutherland as he listens to the recent 180g reissue of Jonathan Richman's proto-punk debut LP
According to that top old egghead Brain Eno, 'The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band'. One of those is a weird young man from a place called Natick, some 17 miles West of Boston, Massachusetts. The little guy's name is Jonathan Michael Richman and he was once so obsessed with The Velvet Underground that he quit school and skipped off to New York to seek them out.
Stax meets rocksteady in this rousing reggae set, which has been described as one of the most uplifting LPs ever. Steve Sutherland listens to the recent 180g reissue
Sometimes things go wrong. Like when I was flown to San Francisco to interview Australian psychedelic popsters The Church and they wouldn't talk to me, over a grudge which to this day remains a mystery to me. Then there was the time I interviewed the brilliant and now sadly deceased Prince Far I and such was the depth of his gutteral growl and the deep slur of his diction that, on playing back the tape recording, neither myself nor anyone else I cared to play it to could decipher a single word he uttered...
Wearing his film critic's hat, Steve Sutherland recalls seeing Oliver Stone's movie in the early 1990s and reviews the soundtrack album that's now on 180g vinyl
She hits me from behind so I don't see it coming. I go down and she piles on top of me. People scatter. A couple of glasses smash, dislodged from a nearby table in the melee. She's pummelling me now, and wrestling. And she's laughing. So am I. I think she must be drunk – I know I am…
This band of talented '60s musicians were one of those rare breeds – a British folk supergroup. Steve Sutherland revisits their hit LP from 1969, reissued on 180g vinyl
Way back in the mists of time, before every rapper and R&B star worth his, or her, ice degraded it all by cottoning on to the commercial boost of cramming all their releases with famous guests, there was this strange and rare phenomenon called The Supergroup.