Chris Squire - Fish Out Of Water (1975, Atlantic K50203)

In tribute to the late, great Chris Squire. The level of appreciation and sorrow felt at the loss of the Yes bass player by fans and musicians from all music circles has been profound in the extreme.

His first and only solo album was released in November 1975 as part of the bands hiatus between Relayer and Going For The One. Squire's was the second to be released after Steve Howe's which I think was out just a month prior. A superb set of songs with a superb cast of musicians including his old rhythm buddy Bill Bruford, Mel Collins on saxes, the great Jimmy Hastings on flute and then Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz on organ. This is no indulgent bass fest, as Squire lets the others and the orchestra shine, with the bass taking the lead when necessary.

Great sleeve too, with manager Brian Lanes polaroid adorning the front. Yes were huge at this point and Atlantic records even gave the man his own label design for this release as shown on the back of the sleeve. It is a shame he didn't record another solo album, though he did think about it. Whatever, he did more than enough with Yes and his legacy will live with us forever.

 

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Gentle Giant - Playing the Fool (1977, Chrysalis CTY 1133)

 

 

This is simply one of the best live albums ever. Gentle Giants studio albums were cerebral, complex, tricksy affairs. Live, they pulled out all the stops and were flamboyant, fun and exuberant. The double live album was de regueur in the 70's. This glossy gatefold was bought for a paltry £3.99 at my then local record shop Walkers in Irvine, which was bargain even then! It came with a nice booklet, with photos and an essay by Sounds writer and Gentle Giant enthusiast Phil Sutcliffe. This is Gentle Giant mixing things up into medleys, improvising and swapping instruments with aplomb. They should have been premier league players in the UK, but seemed to be bigger in the US and the rest of Europe where this was recorded. After this live album, things took a change. The next studio album was The Missing Piece. Great though that is, change was in the air and GG tried to change with the tide. Shame, as they never recovered from the punk gamut. This live album shows the band at their prime and also what wonderfully original and exciting music they could play, with all those instruments too!

 

 

 

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Brian Eno - My Squelchy Life (2015 Opal, ENORSD2015)

Here is my first piece of new vinyl for many a year (apart from what are included in deluxe box sets, but that doesn't count)!

Brian Eno's My Squelchy Life has been the holy grail of Eno devotees ever since he withdrew it because of Warners delaying tactics. He replaced it with Nerve Net. Some tracks did appear on the Vocal box set, but it eventually saw the light of day as part of the recent Nerve Net 2 CD reissue. Bad move! Nerve Net is a great album and deserved a 2 CD reissue. But the second disc should have been made up of b-sides and remixes making it a complete edition, not with My Squelchy Life tacked on as a poor relation. It annoyed me that there was no track credit information produced in the notes, basically nothing was added apart from track listing. It really should have been given a release on its own. So, for this special Record Store Day vinyl release we have the album, plus bonus track presented in a 2 disc gatefold edition. It's a beauty too. All the credit info is reproduced on the inner sleeves. The bonus track is a nice slice of typical Eno funk and I wonder why it was left off the CD edition? So for the present this vinyl edition is the best way to own My Squelchy Life. Maybe there will be a proper, separate CD edition somewhere down the line!

 

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Hawkwind - Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974, United Artists UAG 29672)

This was the second vinyl LP I owned. The first was Rick Wakeman's King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I was given this as a 15th birthday present from my parents. I remember my Mum having great difficulty in ordering this from our local record shop. They had never heard of "Hotwind". No Mother, Hawkwind!! Anyway, it is still my favourite by the band. For me it is a perfect synthesis of space rock, prog rock and sci-fi aesthetics. Everything just clicked completely. It also boasts an extraordinary sleeve by Barney Bubbles. The follow up album, Warriors on the Edge of Time is almost as good and that was the last by that lineup of the band and also to be released on United Artists. The end of an era!

 

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Gong - Gazeuse! (1976, Virgin V2074)

I missed the original Gong and all of Daevid Allen's Flying Teapot stuff. I sort of caught up with all that via Steve Hillage, but I did get Gazeuse when it was released. A completely different beast as by then drummer Pierre Moerlen had taken over the reigns and turned the band into an instrumental, percussion based jazz-rock outfit. It really shouldn't have worked but on this album it spectacularly did. Aided by the superb guitarist Allan Holdsworth and ex-Magma bassist Francis Moze, this was a joyful set of compositions, everything pushed along by Moerlens exceptional drumming and the percussion work of Mireille Bauer, Benoit Moerlen and Mino Cinelu. Also, not forgetting Didier Malherbe's flute and sax playing, which had never been so expressive or lyrical as on this album.

It's a great sounding album, with Dennis Mackays production so smooth and lightly textured. The sleeve is completely bonkers, an explosion of colour and shapes which sort of reflected the music within and can be fully "appreciated" in the foldout poster that came with the vinyl and which also included all the credits. It has been released on CD many years ago, but visually and sonically it has never done the album justice compared to its vinyl counterpart.

As with all things, this lineup didn't last and the exuberance on display here was sadly never to be repeated. But everything came together perfectly for this one off piece of brilliance that transcended their roots in such a spectacular fashion.

 

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Unboxing and being philosophical

 

So, it came to pass that I eventually after 12 years, boxed in this house and 2 years in the previous that my vinyl has been unboxed and shelved. While going through them, they all brought memories flooding back of my innocent youth when all this music was fresh and important. Maybe that's why I have now gone through all this unboxing, listening and writing this blog. It's just a nostalgia thing. To be honest if I want to actually listen in earnest to music I will go to CD, SACD, DVD or blu-ray as I don't want to go through all that clicking, popping, scratching again. But, it is fun to take the record out of its sleeve, put it on the deck, place the tone arm onto the run-in groove, hear that initial click and watch the record turn as the music emanates from the speakers. It takes me right back! But digital for me is still the way to go, especially now with high resolution and better mastering. I may still buy the odd record and I do have a few new pressings which come as part of box sets.

I am still a but bruised at losing a lot of records through the years. I still think about a record and realise I had that, but it could have been a lot worse. When we all went to CD and replaced our record collection, many got rid of theirs lock, stock and barrel. That I still have many dating back to 1975 is a miracle I suppose and I am sure there are many people rueing ditching their whole collections, being caught up in the fervour of the promise of digital perfection.

It's heartening that vinyl is taking off again. Of course it will never reach the giddy heights of popularity that it did in the 70's. But it's good that people are collecting again and appreciate vinyl for what it is, something that you can physically appreciate and become attached too. It's amazing to think that there are now factories pressing vinyl, printing sleeves and even making record bags the same as before! This all goes against the trend for downloading music, which is supposed to be the future. But the Japanese have never taken to that philosophy, preferring the CD and even SACD. They are always at the forefront of technology, so they have seen that for a true, serious music listener and collector, downloading is not the way forward. For me music is not something that can be downloaded as a computer file and played back on a little black box. It's an experience that takes in the sleeve artwork, the tactile feel of the sleeve, even the smell and the physical process of putting a record or disc on or in a machine. There is and always has been something intrinsically physical about the connection between the recorded disc and the listener. They are inseperable!

 

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King Crimson - A Young Persons Guide to King Crimson (1975, Editions EG EGKC 10)

Simply, King Crimson are my favourite band and so I collect what I can of theirs, when I can. This 2 disc compilation was released in 1975 soon after Robert Fripp disbanded the band after Red. The album was initially released on Island Records, but this copy I picked up in Ottawa, Canada sometime around the early 80's hence the Edition EG, Collectors Edition moniker on the label. The main selling point for the album is the terrific artwork by Scottish artist Fergus Hall. Fripp used two of his paintings for the album and somehow seem to fit in perfectly with the surreal, weird and otherworldly music of early King Crimson. The scrapbook included was also a superb document of their history to that point. It set the template for all previous booklets that Fripp would do for Crimson box sets. But it all started here!

 

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Missing in Action

It's great fun going through all my old albums. Even though I haven't looked at them in many a year, they are so familiar, like old friends. I am transported straight back to the 70's and 80's when I first bought them. I have actually now wired up our old ion deck which we bought a few years ago to transfer my wife's old records on to CD. But now it is connected to the stereo. I actually forgot we had that deck as it was boxed away with so much other stuff. So now I can give all my disks a spin.

One drawback in all this vinyl nostalgia is I have realised they are lots of records missing! I haven't got a clue where they are or how they are not around. There may be boxes somewhere, but for the life of me I cannot remember any going missing in my various moves. Some of the records missing I am sad to lose if they are gone. Like Before and After Science by Brian Eno. That had the original prints by Peter Schmidt and a press pack too. As did Exposure by Robert Fripp, with photos and bio. There are lots more and I need to list them to see what the damage is. But I suppose it's all part of life's changes. Anyway, I can at least enjoy what I have got and there are some crackers!

 

 

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National Health - Of Queues and Cures (1978, Charly CRL 5010)

Another favourite album from bygone days. This is from the last days of the golden period of progressive rock and is a belter! The second album from National Health, but this saw a much more streamlined band with Dave Stewart, Phil Miller, John Greaves and Pip Pyle playing as tight as anything. Certainly a key part of the Canterbury Sound, but this is less noodling and more in yer face.

I remember purchasing this album back in 1978 when it was released from Listen Records in Paisley. Listen had a Branch in the High Street, off Storie Street which was just a few minutes walk from Paisley College of Technology. Handy for us students with our student grants to spend! It was a different time then. No loans!

Listen Records in the 70's was the in place to buy records. You were cool at school if walked around with records in a white Listen Records plastic bag under your arm. However, the shop in Glasgow, just outside Glasgow Central Station up Renfield Street, if memory serves me right was a mecca for all aspiring record collectors. It was an intimidating establishments for a naive 15 year old, not used to the big city. The staff were surly and intimidating. The shop was like a dark dungeon. They had a basement, where you entered at your peril never to return. Long gone now of course and I think Listen suffered when the megastores took over in the early 80's. There is a story to be told about these old record haunts!

 

 

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Last Exit - Last Exit (1986, Enemy EMY 101)

It's not all prog rock here. Last Exit were a sort of avant jazz/noise super group, with Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brotzmann, Bill Laswell and Ronald Shannon Jackson. They all had credentials of producing genre busting avant jazz based music and here they teamed up for the first time to produce this live document from 1986. During the 80's Laswell was a bit of a polymath, playing bass, producing, composing across a broad range of projects including Brian Eno, Material, Massacre, John Zorn and various stuff for his Axiom label.

He is an excellent bass player, mixing dub, jazz, funk and rock. Here he lets the other whoop up a noise of a storm, especially from Brotzmann and the late, great Sharrock. It was all improvised and they produced other albums, again mostly live apart from Iron Path, which was recorded for the Virgin Venture label and was quite restrained compared to their live albums. They were of their time and now that both Sharrock and Shannon Jackson are gone, never to be repeated.

 

 

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Premiata Forneria Marconi - Per Un Amico (1972, Numero Uno, DZSLN 55155)

This record brings back lots of memories. PFM were one of the best Italian progressive rock bands of the 70's and helped define a genre, Rock Progressivo Italiano (RPI) that is still producing significant new bands today. For me Per Un Amico is their best, mixing all the best elements of symphonic prog from that time and something particularly Italian. I actually bought this album in Italy itself, while on holiday in Pesaro with my parents. I think that was in 1975 as I also purchased the Chocolate Kings single which was then just released. So it's pleasing that I have this classic album, which was actually obtained from its country of origin.

 

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