Category Records

BROTHERS IN AMPS: The Clean’s Kilgours of Kiwi (In Memory of Hamish Kilgour, 1957-2022)
Apologies if the original post of this piece contained text and/or formatting glitches that made it difficult/impossible to read, er, cleanly. Here is the (hopefully) corrected version. Aside from a title tweak, I’ve decided to forego replacing or replicating the video bells and whistles of the original post and present the text straight-up as a companion to the faulty original. I invite you to give it another go with my thanks. Again, sorry the HAL 3000 has decided to get drunk and insubordinate. Now, where the hell is the plug and outlet to that bleary red eye of his?

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Sno-Cone Songs, Sherbert Pants, and other Fashion Faux Pas of the ’80s Stones
Funny how back at the dawn of the ’80s, the punks, goth kids, and New Wavers thought the Stones were dinosaurs lumbering from a prehistoric age, lumbering toward the conclusion of their two-decade run after having outlasted everyone else from the black-and-white TV generation. Little did any of us know that unlike the T. Rex — they even outlasted him — the beasts of burden weren’t even at the halfway mark.

PHAIR WEATHER FRIEND: Hanging Out In Guyville 25+ Years Later
It’s been a life-altering twenty five-plus years since we were all twenty five (or thereabouts), an age when most of us don’t have much of a clue about how life-altering the next twenty five years are going to be.

Welcome To The Breakfast Show: 50 Years of Living With Let It Bleed
Talk about setting a high bar. How do you match an album (1968’s “Beggars Banquet”) that has “Sympathy For The Devil” as its opener? Simple. Make “Gimme Shelter” the opening salvo on your follow-up record. Some of us didn’t need a big box set (out now) marking the golden anniversary of “Let It Bleed” to […]

CHRIS BELL’S PURE POP COSMOS: Big Star’s Other Bright Light
News that a biography and at least three vinyl compilations of the work of Big Star co-founder Chris Bell are coming out this year — including “The Complete Chris Bell,” a massive six-LP (!) retrospective due July 7 by Omnivore Recordings (the same folks who’ve issued some tasty Big Star releases in recent years, including […]

BROKEN BISCUITS & A STROKE OF LUCK: How Corin Ashley Picked Up The Pieces To Assemble The Most Challenging Music Of His Life, and Made Himself Whole Again
“Then, on January 6, 2016, an awful thing most 40-somethings like Ashley don’t ever think about happening – because it would be too awful to ponder – happened. Corin suffered a stroke that paralyzed the playing fingers of his left hand and all but wiped out his vocal cords in one felling swoop. Suddenly, just like that, from a hospital bed far away from the stages he had stood on since he was a teenager in cover bands, Ashley didn’t know if he’d ever speak again, much less sing or play. “

FROM STARMAN TO STARDUST: The Singular Sound, Voice & Vision Of David Bowie (1947-2016)
Originally posted on RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog:
Reblogged on WordPress.com Source: FROM STARMAN TO STARDUST: The Singular Sound, Voice & Vision Of David Bowie (1947-2016)

Jack Flash Stash
Diamonds from the Mines: In the service of being a little less “Blue & Lonesome” (even though we’re quite enjoying the state of mind the new LP brings, so thanks boys), we’ve rolled away the stones and cracked open our hermetically sealed, climate-controlled “RPM” vaults to peruse a handful of sparkling jewels and (thankfully) non-scuffed […]

TRUE BLUES: The Stones Get Back To The Bedrock
Ultimately, despite (or perhaps because of) being bashed-about and knocked-out off-the-cuff, “Blue & Lonesome” firmly and expansively situates itself in time and place. Like most good albums, it captures and distills a mood and a feeling, a frame of mind, a state of being, and it’s a welcome, if relatively brief (at 42 minutes), escape.

A HIT OF SYMPHONIC BLOTTER ACID: Forever Changes But Love’s Masterpiece Endures
The “Summer of Love” it may have been, but much of the music on those iconic records of 1967 contained a far more complicated series of emotions and refracted a darker reality shot through with chaos and doubt, turmoil and altered perceptions. Unlike some of its contemporaries, the music on Love’s ‘Forever Changes’ – not to mention the mystique that continues to surround the work — seems only to have deepened with time.