I've no idea, where or when I bought this, and even less of an idea why. Most of the rap stuff I'd heard, I'd found thoroughly unlistenable, with a few exceptions. Grandmaster Flash's The Message resonated as social commentary, but the glorification of crime, drugs and the casual misogyny of most of the genre rendered it unlistenable to me. So, I'm a little conflicted by this album, since most of the music is wonderfully laidback and smooth, while some of the lyrical content

This 2006 solo album by Blur guitarist Coxon (he's the nerdy speccy one, not the drumming Labour councillor or the cheesemonging David Cameron lackey), was picked up in a charity shop out of curiosity. I actually thought I had two Coxon albums, but one seems to be missing. There's a series there - Albums I Was Sure I Had But Can't Find. I've reviewed at lest three of them! This was one I approached half-heartedly, but this is the point of this blog, to give a listen beyond th

As featured in the smash film The Blues Brothers apparently, there's no information about when the tracks on this low budget, out of copyright, not a penny to Calloway or his family, compilation. Picked up for a quid in a charity show, no doubt, I'm not sure it's seen the inside of a CD player until now. So, taking it for what it is, a low budget, poorly recorded mono compilation of 1930s and 1940s big band music, it's actually far more engaging than I'd expected. Highlights

I picked this up on EBay many moons ago, but was well aware of the original source of these pieces. It's a compilation of the Go+ 12" single which was given away with the first 15,000 of XTC's Go 2 album, and Take Away/ The Lure Of Salvage, released between Drums And Wires and Black Sea, under the name "Mr Partridge". Virgin refused to release it under the XTC name, as it would have counted as one of the albums in their restrictive contract. The first five tracks are all d

A quick pop into the local charity shop last week saw an addition to the Neil Young shelf (now at 21 albums - as said before, more due to his longevity, prolific output, and the frequency his CDs are given to charity shops, than any devotion to the great Canadian). This one is a real, no nonsense rock album. No histrionics, no profound masterworks, just rocker after rocker, with Young's love of a good jam with Crazy Horse (Frank Sampedro, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina) indulg

I was very surprised when, a few months ago, actually sitting down and checking what CDs I actually own, that I didn't have a copy of this. Fortunately, this week the second hand CD guy at Harborough Market had a copy, and I had a couple of quid, so we swapped. Now my Steely Dan studio album collection is complete. Pretzel Logic is the band's third album, and possibly the album in which the jazz influences start to become more obvious than the earlier country feel of some of

You know you're old when not only are you looking at a 25th anniversary release of an album, but find that it was released in this format nearly 30 years ago. While I never owned this album, Deep Purple were one of my earliest musical tastes, before the discovery of prog, Canterbury and punk, possibly the first thing I took notice of beyond the top 40 pop charts. The title track, Fireball, was one of the first singles I ever bought, the last of the band's three top ten single

My other purchase from Reckless Records in Berwick St, Soho, last week was this 1972 album from Gil Scott-Heron. On the original vinyl release side one was songs, and side two poetry - this 2014 re-release as a Flying Dutchman Jazz classic doesn't make this differentiation, although preserves the original running order, as well as eleven bous tracks, pretty much repeating the album with alternate versions. First song is the lively and interesting Free Will, with a hypnotic ba

I picked this up from Soho's Reckless Records on a trip to London to meet old friends, last week. Coincidentally I've just started reading David Stubbs history of Krautrock, Future Days. The whole German experimental scene of the 1970s passed me by, with me not even following up my purchase of Camembert Electrique by buying The Faust Tapes , even though both were Virgin's "an album for the price of a single". This is an album I've heard many times, so was delighted to find it

It's always interesting to hear a collaboration between two artists that you've enjoyed in completely different contexts. Peter Blegvad is an Anglo-American songwriter whom I first encountered with Slapp Happy, in their way-out collaboration with Henry Cow, Desperate Straights, one of my favourite albums when at school. Andy Partridge was, of course, one of the driving forces behind XTC, and their main songwriter, and I've written much of my love for XTC during university yea

The final Manics' purchase from last month's Cornwall holiday is this 2021 release. I ran out of vaguely interesting things to say about the Manic Street Preachers long ago, so let's crack on. It's what you'd expect - a series of upbeat, politically charged songs, if anything brighter and more accessible than earlier releases. Not-a-hit single Orwellian is the most interesting of the early songs here, and The Secret He Had Missed with guest vocalist Julia Cumming is catchy,

Last one of the Newquay haul is this 1982 album. Mostly repetitive themes with spoken words over the top, it's a puzzle why New York City based conceptual artist Laurie Anderson decided to copy what Mark E Smith and The Fall were doing back in England, but it did provide her with a massive hit single in UK (and a minor hit in parts of Europe). I've come into this knowing only the hit single, so let's have a quick scoot through the works (I don't think conceptual artists have

On my bike ride round the reservoir this morning, I listened to a podcast with XTC's Andy Partridge, in which this album featured heavily, having recently been given the Steven Wilson treatment, in Atmos and 5.1 mixes (typed as if I know what that means) and re-released. I was given this as a Christmas present on vinyl on release by my brother (who I suspect also wanted to hear it himself) so it's a very familiar listen. Beginning with the clanky chords of Colin Moulding's Wa

I picked this up in HMV sale, not realising it was a compilation. I tend to avoid compilations on the basis that I generally plan on picking up all the original albums at some point, although some compilations quickly disabuse me of that idea. This is annotated with an introduction to the more accessible side of Steven Wilson", which seems a reasonable suggestion. This contains 14 tracks, all relatively short (4-6 minutes is short for prog) from the five albums released betwe

Another day, another Manics' album, this time their 2018 release, bought as a job lot in Falmouth last month. And initial impressions are that it certainly has the Manics' sound, and that while there's nothing awful, there's nothing outstanding either. But let's take a deeper dive. It opens with a couple of rock bangers, People Give In  and International Blue, the former stronger, but to me the strings intrude rather than enhance. Distant Colours and  Vivian, share a similar

A recent charity shop purchase (aren't they all) was this the final album from Pink Floyd (I assume they're now in the past tense), put together by Dave Gilmour and friends from unreleased keyboard pieces by the late (died in 2008) Richard Wright. So, as you might expect, this is mostly instrumental, nominally 18 tracks, but in reality four pieces of mostly gentle, ambient music. The first opens with an Enoesque soundscape which melds into a piece very reminiscent of the seco

Penultimate selection from the Newquay charity shop raid is this 1975 release by Welsh maestro and ' fifty years later still a living legend ', John Cale. Opening with Mr Wilson, a gentle and lovely tribute to Brian Wilson, followed b y Talking It All Away, a listenable, but nondescript song. Dirty-Ass Rock'n'Roll is exactly what it says, and Darling I Need You is a pleasant easy to listen to song. Rollaroll flies by without exciting this listener, before Cale's bizarre and

I picked this up recently in a sale in HMV, nearly completing my Tom Waits section. It's a collection of songs and music Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan wrote for the play The Black Rider, itself based on the William S Burroughs book. The thing with soundtrack music is that it is intended to enhance and complement a visual performance, so doesn't have to stand up on its own. As such, this doesn't feel as strong as the studio albums that precede and follow it. There's lots

I was sad to hear this week, that musician Bob Andrews died earlier this year. Probably best known as keyboard player with 1970s pub rock outfit Brinsley Schwarz, with Nick Lowe, he later formed The Rumour, with bandmate Schwartz. While the band had little success on their own, they had three top ten album hits with Graham Parker, before Andrew went into production, with hit hits including Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry, The BlueBells' Young At Heart and the Las' There She Goe

Next one up is another from the Newquay 'CDs for a pound' haul, The Raincoats' eponymous debut album from 1979. I knew nothing of this other than having heard the name of the band at time of release, and it was apparently a favourite album of Kurt Cobain. Now, 46 years, what might have sounded cute and lo-fi, now, to me sounds ham fisted and amateurish, and while comparisons might be trite (I don't know why, the sound isn't dissimilar) there's nothing here that The Slits hadn