Sure, “Electric Warrior” is fantastic. “The Slider” often better than “Warrior” which it followed. But 1973’s “Tanx”, T-Rex’s eighth LP and follow up to “The Slider” didn’t fare as well, both commercially and critically. And TVD readers – that’s a damn shame and something we’re going to dispel here and now. “Tanx” is hookier, catchier and yes, punkier than anything T-Rex released prior. (And that’s saying something.) I’m struggling to pull JUST five from this today. So, is it just us or has that double-shot gone right to our heads this morning?
This week TVD looks back at a few LPs from the Classic Rock era which, in our humble opinion, don’t get the respect they’re due.
First up is the 1971 debut by that little Irish combo Thin Lizzy. Long before their patented twin-guitar-attack and comic book heroism, Lizzy was a tight three piece and far more introspective and reflective than their later work would have you think. Plus, they rocked (albeit with just one guitarist.)
“The best advice I can give for anyone interested in investing in vinyl is to befriend the dealer at your local second-hand record store.”
Vintage records are shooting up the investment charts – if you know which ones to buy. Via The Telegraph
Vinyl can provide record returns for investors willing to take a musical spin with their money. The Holy Grail is That’ll be the Day, a seven-inch single recorded exactly 50 years ago by the Quarrymen – the group that later became the Beatles. On paper it is worth £100,000, but experts believe it might fetch more than double this at auction, if the only known disc could be wrestled from its owner, Sir Paul McCartney. “The Beatles are the giants for collectors as they hold universal appeal, but there are still plenty more which can prove to be great investments,” says Stephen Maycock, a rock and roll memorabilia consultant for Bonhams, the auction house.
Other British blue-chip bands that command thousands of pounds for rare and earliest pressings include the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who and The Smiths. David Bowie and Marc Bolan also have a huge fan base. Across the water, Elvis is among the most sought-after rock and roll innovators. As a 19-year-old truck driver he walked into Sun studio and sang That’s All Right in 1954. The single shook up rock and roll forever and an early pressing with a £3,500 book price can now hit five figures at auction. Read the full article here.
The one drop drum pattern is the backbone of the reggae rhythm. The backbeat is characterized by the dominant snare drum stroke and bass drum kick both sounding on the third beat of every measure in 4/4 time, while beat one is left empty. Said beat is also the convenient theme for your punky-irie Weekend Shots.
On a side note, ‘Shuffle Bored’ is implicitly an homage to the other fine bloggers out there, their tireless work, and whose efforts end up in rotation on all of our playlists and iPods. Today in particular, TVD tips its hat to Spinster’s Rock for the wonderful unearthing of this early Chameleons single. Cheers!
That’s right – not expecting to exceed any bandwidth today, yet when “Million Miles Away” gets played for the zillionth time – I’m STILL nodding my head right along.
Friday night I’d just got back/I had my eyes shut/Was dreaming about the past/I thought about you while the radio played/I should have got moving/For some reason I stayed/I started drifting to a different place/I realized I was falling off the face of your world/And there was nothing left to bring me back/I’m a million miles away/A million miles away/A million miles away/And there’s nothing left to bring me back today/I took a ride, I went downtown/Streets were empty/There was no one around/All the faces that we used to know/Gone from the places that we used to go/I’m at the wrong end of the looking glass/Trying to hold on to the hands of the past and you/And there’s nothing left to bring me back/I’m a million miles away/A million miles away/A million miles away/And there’s nothing left to bring me back today……
Washington DC’s own Shudder To Think return with another fine soundtrack with 1997’s “First Love, Last Rites”, the movie adaptation of a collection of short stories by Ian McEwan.
“There’s a diner on Second Avenue that serves the best soup in New York City. The radio is always tuned to an oldies station that does not exist outside of its kitchen. Every song is perfect, utterly transporting; simultaneously fresh and timeless, fleeting yet somehow permanent. The feeling is not unlike self-discovery, where what is revealed is something you feel you’ve known all along, a million-dollar word forever on the tip of your tongue. It is the feeling of springtime, and of limitless possibility; of flesh, and of love. That is the feeling we wanted to evoke with this recording. It embodies the frozen-in-(summer)time love story of Sissel and Joey, the film’s two main characters. The songs comprise Sissel’s singles collection, which she plays throughout the movie on her plastic turntable, in the couple’s stilted, one-room house on the bayou. They are seventeen, and this is their music. It is also our music, to which some friends lent their voices, and so it is their music as well. Hopefully it’ll be yours soon, too.”
…but don’t these USB turntables give you the impression that you just plug into your USB port and you’re off and listening to your vinyl? No, really — was it just us? No one ELSE thought the USB friendly ION (or another USB model) would be that user-friendly — like baby’s first turntable?
Here’s a handy tip to burnish that learning curve — it ain’t so. The software is WED to the output as a whole. It’s not like plugging in your flash drive and boom – there it is on your desktop and you’re rolling.
Like TVD thought.
So, time was spent deep in the nooks and crannies of the Mac’s preferences. Needle down, hearing stuff, but it’s not through the speakers. It’s all done through the software program, and that’d be Audacity for ION owners. But ONLY after configuring the Preferences just right. Click to “play track while recording” (yes, we’re idiots) and voila! You don’t even need to be in archiving mode just to listen, if that’s what you’re after.
So, there. A whole evening back to you that we lost. But there ARE rewards to come…
This week, TVD revels in a few movie soundtracks that don’t come immediately to mind when thinking of “best soundtracks” but ever so rightly should.
First up, the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’ 1998 film, “Velvet Goldmine” — an utterly forgettable movie with a thoroughly rewarding soundtrack featuring DC’s own Shudder To Think AND Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, David Gray, Suede’s Bernard Butler, Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay, The Stooges’ Ron Asheton, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley, Minutemen’s Mike Watt, Gumball’s Don Fleming, and Mark Arm of Mudhoney. From ye olde Wikipedia: The soundtrack features new songs written for the film by Pulp, Shudder To Think and Grant Lee Buffalo, as well as many early glam rock compositions, both covers and original versions. The Venus in Furs covers several Roxy Music songs with Thom Yorke channeling Bryan Ferry on vocals, Placebo covers T.Rex’s “20th Century Boy,” Wylde Ratttz and Ewan McGregor cover The Stooges’ “T.V. Eye”, and Teenage Fanclub and Donna Matthews cover The New York Dolls’ “Personality Crisis.” Lou Reed, Brian Eno, T.Rex, and Steve Harley songs from the period are also included. The album is rounded out by a piece of Carter Burwell’s film score.
Sure, “Electric Warrior” is fantastic. “The Slider” often better than “Warrior” which it followed. But 1973’s “Tanx”, T-Rex’s eighth LP and follow up to “The Slider” didn’t fare as well, both commercially and critically. And TVD readers – that’s a damn shame and something we’re going to dispel here and now. “Tanx” is hookier, catchier and yes, punkier than anything T-Rex released prior. (And that’s saying something.) I’m struggling to pull JUST five from this today. So, is it just us or has that double-shot gone right to our heads this morning? 
