Next to the Hawkwind album (previous review) in the charity shop in Stamford was this weird looking CD with a very Gong like sleeve. Possibly from the same donor who had tired of Space Rock? Ozric Tentacles make their debut on this blog, and in my ears, despite them long being on the 'ought to give them a listen' list. Link to full album

Stamford in Lincolnshire on a sunny Friday afternoon is a pleasant place. Plenty of unpretentious eateries, a decent and varied market, and a plethora of charity shops with CDs for sale cheap. Only the British Heart Foundation had a decent haul, with the next five for six quid, kicking off with this album. I'm always going to pick up a cheap Hawkwind CD, even if, as I suspect it's a cash-in compilation of dubious provenance. Thus was this purchase, with many well known songs,

I grew up in the 1960s where space travel and the moon landings were as exciting a real life adventure as a young boy could imagine. We really thought that it was a first step to conquering the whole solar system, little imagining it would be nearly 50 years after Apollo 17 before Artemis would return to the moon (and not even bother landing!) And as a young prog enthusiast, what could tickle me more than a concept album based on the 1960s space race? PSB's first album tested

I went through a right old Primal Scream phase at the start of the 2000s, and I've no idea why. Possibly having hit 40 and wanting to still convince myself I was cool. When I saw them in 2013 I was a bit more halfhearted, but strong drink had been taken, and I was ejected from Liverpool's Echo Arena (in the politest possible way) after climbing over a barrier to get to the main floor rather than going the long way round. This is their debut album from 1987, and my first thoug

The debut album from Witton Gilbert's finest has long been something I've been fond of. I heard it at about the same time as it's follow up, the altogether more slickly produced and successful Steve McQueen and on the whole felt more drawn to its naivety and verbosity. I haven't listened to it for years, so let's find out. It's an enjoyable listen, with reservations. I'm finding the wordplay simultaneously engaging, annoying and impenetrable. None more so than the disjointed

There aren't many albums that I remember being moved by hearing something genuinely new, but Portishead's debut album, Dummy, was one. Inexplicably, and unexpectedly, I don't actually own that album, so our first visit to Portishead is their second album, the eponymous Portishead. As you'd expect, the notes I made on listening to this are full of words like brooding, sinister, haunting, dark, and it's certainly an album which offers 45 minutes of atmosphere, experience, rathe

The Pogues' first two albums contained a combination of folk classics / traditional songs, with most original songs written by Shane MacGowan. By this fourth album, MacGowan's drinking and drug taking had taken its toll, and only 6 of the 14 songs here are MacGowan compositions, with several of the rest having seemingly no input from MacGowan. It's clear that the band were getting used to the idea that their front man might not be a reliable basis on which to build a career,

Another Ebay trawl delivered this CD - originally a single track destined for the Down The Upstair album, which took on a life of its own, was released as two 12" singles in 1992 and 1993, with four phases of the voyage. These were gathered together in one package in 2000, while this is a slightly later CD issue. So technically, you could argue that it's a CD single most discographies describe it as a compilation, albeit a compilation of just two singles, weighing in at over

I've persevered longer than I should have with some bands, and this is probably the last chance for Jethro Tull. They weren't a thing among my peers at school, and my only exposure to them was a cassette of the Living In The Past compilation borrowed from Liverpool record library, which clearly didn't resonate with me. I recently picked up a 5 CD 'album reissue' series for less than a pound per disc, and wasn't expecting much, since it was the late70s to 80s albums. What I'v

I do tend to avoid buying compilations, but on seeing this for 99p in a charity shop, it was always coming home with me. It's a selection of Bowie's UK singles (an incomplete selection) from 1969 - 1985, his most commercially successful period for hit singles. It was released in 1990, as a replacement for the long deleted compilations ChangesOneBowie and ChangesTwoBowie, as a double LP, and this CD version is that double, with three tracks left off to fit it to a CD. There ar

A few weeks ago I picked up a Jethro Tull album series, for under a fiver, and having listened to one, I'm not relishing the rest. It was with similar misgivings that I bought a Steeleye Span series, from the same set, for a similar price, although perhaps a little more hopefully, since this does seem to contain albums from the most successful part of their career. While I'm partial to a bit of folk-rock on occasion, it's generally those where the rock side dominates the soun

More charity shop purchases continue for the next few, and this one continues my gradual acceptance that the Beatles might have had some impact on modern popular music. This album wasn't officially released at the time in UK, the soundtrack to the Magical Mystery Tour being released in UK as a double 45 rpm EP. In the USA, however, it was released as an album, with one side being the Magical Mystery Tour , and the second collecting together the 1967 Beatles' singles. This is

A trip to the local Oxfam this weekend yielded a few results, and for some reason I was in the mood for a punt, so parted with a quid for this, knowing little about the band. Fountains Of Wayne founded in New York City in 1995, and this, their third album was, apparently their breakthrough in commercial terms. After one listen, it seems to consist of mercifully short pop songs, which are perfectly OK, but display little which sets them apart from thousands of bands doing simi

Latest Porcupine Tree exploration is their 1996 album, Signify, the fourth album released under this banner, but the first with a settled band, rather than just Steven Wilson and guest musicians. I must admit this has been the most difficult of their albums so far, for me, but it's grown on me with each playing, and I now think I get it. So, what's going on here? We open with a piece of ambience over American spoken word, before the first longer piece, Signify , a powerful g

You might have heard of these lads from Liverpool; they were quite big in the 1960s, unlike me, who was quite small in Liverpool in the 1960s. My nana and grandad lived just around the corner from the McCartney house in Forthlin Road, and my dad once claimed to have been round there in the very early 60s when an excited young Paul rushed across to my lovely Auntie Val, his sister, yelling "Val, Val, we're gonna be on the telly!" Like in every 1960s family in south Liverpool,

I'm always interested to hear a Courtney Pine album, especially when it's cheap in a charity shop. Hence my purchase of this one a week ago. This one was recorded with Delfeayo Marsalis producing as a tight quartet with Pine's saxes supplemented by Julian Joseph (piano), Paul Hunt (bass) and Mark Mondesir (drums), as tight a jazz quartet as you could hope for. This is an album which could have come out 25-30 years earlier and fitted right into the Davis / Coltrane / Coleman e

Last of the Stamford haul is this 1993 solo album from Lloyd Cole, someone whose talents completely passed me by at the time. Here he is, in his third outing without his Commotions. After three or four listenings, this one is really growing on me. Initial impact was unimpressive, and the repeat listening was to see if it could get to three stars . I'm happy to report that it's comfortably there, and it's given the four star reference criteria a look in. It's a collection of l

We reach the 700th album review here, with the second of last week's haul from Stamford. I very nearly didn't buy this, so sure was I that I already had it, but on checking I didn't. Coincidentally, Martyn had been mentioned in two music autobiographies I recently read. Richard Thompson, a man who never seems to have a bad word about anyone, was kind and generous about his contemporary, from the same management and record company, while Chris Frantz did not pull his punches i

A trip to Stamford, and a visit to a charity shop delivered the next three CDs, and change from a fiver. If I was trying to do this with vinyl, I'd be lucky to get change from a fifty, so I'm still happy with my decision a couple of decades ago to embrace this medium. Ry Cooder is a name which conjures sufficient respect to ensure a purchase, so here's his 1979 release, an album of mostly covers. This album is, apparently, the first ever recorded digitally by a major record c

Mick Harvey is best known as being Nick Cave's right hand man for three decades, and as mainly responsible for the Bad Seeds sound. This album, a couple of quid in Oxfam, is his first solo album, a collection of English translations and fresh arrangements of Serge Gainsbourg songs. Very much like Gainsbourg's own work, I'm finding this interesting and enjoyable in small doses. No song is awful, Harvey's musical skills in arranging see to that, but very few leap out as great.