The first pressing of the glam metallers’ debut was limited to a mere 900 copies, as Glen Bushell explains… Several bands can lay claim to be the inventors of glam metal, but if you were to put a pin in one of the early cornerstones of the genre it would have to be Mötley Crüe’s 1981 debut, Too Fast for Love. It was raw, unabashed … Continue reading Mötley Crüe – Too Fast For Love
A first issue of Can’s experimental debut album is a rare beast… Revolutionary is a word that gets thrown around a lot in music, but there really is no other way to describe Germany’s finest psychedelic export, Can. Fusing elements of traditional rock music with avant-garde funk, jazz and way beyond, Can were at the forefront of the krautrock movement. While the band’s roots date … Continue reading The Can – Monster Movie
The Smiths were one of the great UK singles bands – now Johnny Marr boxes up his first 10 solo single releases in a 7″ box. The synchronicity of which isn’t lost on John Earls… One of the three art prints included in Johnny Marr’s solo singles boxset is a close-up of a tattoo on his forearm, proclaiming ‘45 R.P.M.’ in Parlophone’s font. Marr had … Continue reading Johnny Marr – Single Life
By Bruce’s standards, the 1990s were lean, ending with a clear-out, 18 Tracks, all but three songs drawn from 1998’s Tracks boxset. Since one was a 1990 version of The Promise, a fragile outtake from 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town, and another the slow-burning The Fever, it at least proved a useful reminder of his talent. The new millennium, though, began with the … Continue reading Bruce Springsteen – 18 Tracks and more…
Beloved of John Peel, who inspired their 1978 formation and then helped fund their first single, Teenage Kicks, which he soon made his legendary anthem – The Undertones rose from nowhere, or what at least, to its inhabitants, felt at the time like nowhere: Derry, Northern Ireland. Articulating adolescent frustrations with the Buzzcocks’ ferocity and the Ramones’ unruly, juvenile wit – both are audible in … Continue reading The Undertones – West Bank Songs
Shaun Ryder is nobody’s fool. He spent a large part of his imperial years pretending to be an oaf. Unlike many other drug casualties of the punk wars and ecstasy years, he’s matured into a sanguine and avuncular figure. But has the music survived quite so intact? Most people’s entry point to the band came with Kinky Afro and Step On, both of which appear … Continue reading Happy Mondays – Squirrel and G-Man and more…
Hippy relic created by four warring egos or a timeless Americana classic? Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s second album sold by the bucketload, yet 50 years on it still continues to divide opinion. Ben Wardle gets Déjà Vu… “When we did our first CSN record, we were very much in love with each other and each other’s music. By the time of Déjà Vu that … Continue reading Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu
Previously released on heavyweight vinyl in 2015, Rhino’s new pressing is oddly timed: Electronic turns 30 next year. It also downgrades the album to regular vinyl, though at £17 it’s at least much cheaper, too – including for a limited white vinyl pressing. The other difference is, for some reason, substituting the sleeve’s original (and definitive, if you ask me! — Ed.) orange landscape for … Continue reading Electronic – Electronic
On their fifth album, The Doors abandoned experimental dalliances for the raw, sonic crunch of electric blues that had defined them in the first place. Fifty years on from its release, Neil Crossley assesses the merits of the album that returned them to the attention of the hip counterculture… Few albums have started life quite so inauspiciously as Morrison Hotel, the fifth long player by … Continue reading The Doors – Morrison Hotel
Robert Smith’s guitar gently weeps over a lonely piano. Welcome to Seventeen Seconds. This unsettling instrumental sets the mood for the next 35 minutes, 40 seconds. Deliberately disjointed, the fear factor is heightened towards the end by a harrowing, almost indecipherable, moan… Whatever it is, or is intended to be, the sound will chill you to the bone. Continue reading The Cure – Seventeen Seconds
