News, Views and Music Issue 167 (Intro)

Hello friends! We’re here, you’re there and the world turns all around us. Like a ginormous groove inside a mammoth record player on top of a giant gramophone on the back of a terrapin. Sorry, I think my brain must be clouding over, an occupational hazard in a job that’s seen me watch Magical Mystery Tour twice in the past week (once for work, once for fun) and a review of an album that must be one of our strangest (if sweetest) yet. It’s been one of those type weeks where my mind aches (and my day breaks) and the only thing that makes any sense is this site and the music I listen to. Even if this introduction makes no sense whatsoever. We’ve now past 29,000 hits by the way {pause for a quick cheer} and reckon we’ll easily have past 30,000 by year’s end (and possibly world’s end; I haven’t forgotten the Mayans yet and nor should you, especially with our troubles in the East as I write). Talking of which I saw the headline ‘Cameron really cross with Serbia’ printed on a paper last week so I’d just like to add the headline ‘Serbia absolutely livid with David Cameron’ to keep things fair. Honestly, what is he doing apart from ‘playing’ at being prime minister?!
As normal we’re directing you to our mock newspaper for this week’s news stories (Please click on the link)...:

http://paper.li/f-1347835090

♫ Beatles News: ...But in the meantime look out for yet more interesting radio programmes about the fab four. Friday, October 26th sees the broadcast of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, a sister programme to the disappointing TV Arena one about the making of the Beatles’ TV special (45 years old this Boxing Day) at 10pm. Even more interesting is what follows: ‘Paul McCartney at the BBC’, an archive special featuring Macca talking from his Beatles years to date and featuring some audio footage un-broadcast since the 1970s! This programme follows at 11pm. In the meantime BBC6 repeated their ‘Seven Days That Shook The Rock World’ programme on the Beatles break-up last week (Friday, October 19th if you want to find it on I-player) as well as the new ‘John Lennon In New York’ two-parter we mentioned last week that was broadcast at 4am last Tuesday and Wednesday.
♫ Pink Floyd News: Pink Floyd also shocked us all by obtaining the rights to Pink Floyd’s Wembley show, only recently made available on the deluxe box set version of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’. The concert features a complete performance of that very album which was enjoying its last performance in full that very day (until the ‘Division Bell’ tour in the 1990s at least!) This will be on Saturday, October 27th at 2AM in the ‘Classic Concert’ slot.


ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday cheer this time of year goes to those AAA persons born between October 24th and 30th: Bill Wyman (bassist with the Rolling Stones 1962-89) who turns 75 on October 24th and Denny Laine (guitarist with The Moody Blues 1964-66 and Wings 1972-79) who turns 68 on October 29th. Anniversaries of events include: Paul McCartney is given a special ‘rhodium’ disc by the Guinness Book Of World Records in honour of his long list of achievements with the Beatles, Wings and solo (October 24th 1980 – the first idea of metal is rejected when someone points out how poisonous it is!), Dire Straits release their second album ‘Makin’ Movies’ (October 25th 1980); The Beatles sell out by accepting MBEs from the German-ancestor Queen Elizabeth II (October 26th 1964); A young record buyer named Raymond Jones (who may or may not be our own columnist Nelson sent back in time from the future – see this year’s April fool’s day special) asks Brian Epstein for a record by The Beatles – My Bonnie – alerting the NEMS Liverpool store manager to his future career (October 28th 1961); The Who release their break-through single ‘My Generation’ a year after being rejected by EMI (October 28th 1965); John Lennon and wife Cynthia officially divorce (October 28th 1968); ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ breaks the record for longest stay on the album top 200 when it charts for a staggering 491st week! (October 29th 1983) and finally, Hotlegs – soon to become 10cc by adding Graham Gouldmann to the line-up the following year – make their live debut supporting The Moody Blues (October 30th 1970).

News, Views and Music Issue 165 (Intro)

October 17th:


Dear all, it’s a tiring task running a website, as I’m sure you’ll imagine what with cfs lapses and everything, and one thing I’ve been neglecting recently is trawling through the search engines to see what people are saying/proclaiming/praising/debating my site. I haven’t done it for a few months what with one thing or another and I’m surprised by a lot of what I’ve found; there’s several entries for individual reviews on my ‘blogspot’ site (www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk) I wasn’t expecting for starters. My main discovery, though, is a page about my moonfruit site (www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com) on ‘Web Stats Domain’ (you can visit yourself here at http://www.webstatsdomain.com/domains/www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com/) According to this site, we are now worth $57,814USD though I’m not quite sure how they arrived at that figure (it must be by the word because I’m not seeing any of that money!) To be honest I haven’t got a clue what the rest of it means (I’m no computer genius, as no doubt you’ll have realised by now), but I am intrigued by the statistics of whose been visiting the site, something I haven’t found out before at this first site. 30% UK and 22% US hits aren’t that far removed from the Blogspot site statistics although the rest is pretty amazing: 11% India, 3% China and 2% each Spain and Pakistan. I hadn’t realised our site had become so multinational! Anyway a big hello to you wherever you read this and whatever music you have access to – apologies if some of the local cultural references are a bit confusing to you (they are to me, in truth) but we’re glad to have you aboard, wherever in the world you are.

Unless, of course, you’re David Cameron or George Osbourne. Despite the fact that several hundred people die every month from the Government’s insane welfare cuts the Coalition have just announced more – and have abandoned plans to add a mansion tax on the rich to boot. What kind of insane, backward, nasty, ludicrous, moronic, outrageously dispassionate idiot could think that such a scheme could be acceptable? Most of the cabinet, apparently, who still think that paying ATOS and G4S millions of pounds instead of spending it on people or jobs is the way to go. This is despite the fact that there is now proof that both the unemployed and the poorly are suffering from targeted sanctions – not because they’ve done anything wrong, but simply because each job centre has to hit specific targets each week or lose their licenses. George Orwell wasn’t that many years out in his view of ‘1984’ now was he?! Honestly, make sure you use our twitter hashtag #CoalitionOutByXmas and let your feelings be known because we cannot tolerate this despicable betrayal of our British citizens, simply because the Government want to waste more money on their friends at a time of recession.

As per the last two issues we’re transporting to you to the golden world of our paper.li web address for the majority of this week’s news stories (you can access it by clicking this button):

http://paper.li/f-1347835090

Although there’s one heck of a lot of TV and radio news for you this week...

♫ Beatles News: A whole plethora of Beatle-related TV and radio goodies to tell you about, either linked with the new ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ DVD release or the – gulp – 50th anniversary of ‘Love Me Do’ on October 10th. First up ‘A Year In The Life: The Beatles 1962’ was broadcast this Wednesday, October 3rd on Radio 2 at 10pm, with Roger McGough following the Beatles’ story from their failed Decca audition on January 1st to their triumphant tour of Scotland with Helen Shapiro at the year’s end. Second is/was ‘The Blagger’s Guide To The Beatles’ again on Radio 2 at 9.30pm Thursday, October 4th. David Quantick offers a ‘beginner’s guide’ to the band – and given that he’s only got a half hour to fit all that history in its likely to be a whirlwind ride. Third up is the special one – the Arena documentary on the making of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ taken direct from next week’s DVD re-release. The programme is being broadcast on BBC2 at 10.45pm on Saturday, October 6th and should be available on I-player for a week or after. Stuart Marconie then presents ‘Love Me Do – The Beatles in 62’ on BBC4 this Sunday, October 7th at 10pm and looks back at the band’s ‘legacy’ (let’s hope that means sites like this one and not more godawful interviews with modern so-called celebrities).Then there’s ‘Beatleland’ on Radio 2 Wednesday, October 10th at 10pm finds Red Dwarf star Craig Charles (why?!) tracing the fab four’s legacy in their home town (err, that’ll be one statue and a Cavern Club on the wrong side of the road then!) Finally, BBC6 have their own two part documentary about John Lennon’s time in New York City – which has been well served these past few years already what with the ‘Lennonyc’ and ‘US Vs Lennon’ films. It’s on next Tuesday and Wednesday, October 16th and 17th at 4AM in their ‘documentary’ slot.

Since writing the above paragraph, we’ve seen the Arena documentary on MMTour and here are our thoughts:
‘I’m an erudite and sophisticated documentary here to tell you why the Beatles’ much maligned 1967 Boxing Day special charted new waters and had the pulse on the nation’s real thoughts and feelings’ said the documentary’s pr team. ‘Oh no you’re not’ said little Nicola – and half the audience left scratching their heads. There was a great documentary to be had here and the glimpses of unseen footage was wonderful: more of Ringo arguing with his Aunt Jessie, hundreds of extras being herded into place and – in a special minute added over the restoration credits on the new screening of the TV special itself – a fascinating fly-on-the-wall feel of what it really must have felt like to be on the Beatle bus in September 1967. The new interviews with Paul and Ringo were fascinating too, Paul still proud and defensive of the Beatles moment he was most in charge of and loving the chance to fig out what little remains of his mid-60s home movies and even Ringo added a few jokes and seemed less, well, arrogantly grumpy than he has of late. But whole great chunks of the documentary were given over to ‘explaining’ the TV special and the influence its had over the decades – so much so that it took a good half hour before the cast had even got on the bus, so to speak. There was very little about the actual nuts and bolts of the filming, with even the famous stories about the coach not being ready on time for the first day’s filming (because the psychedelic paint was still drying) or the Beatles having to re-work their original planned journey at the last minute when the coach became lodged under a bridge. Worst of all there was hardly anything about the music – no mention of how ‘MMTour’ was recorded as early as the Spring in the ‘Sgt Peppers’ period to give the band ‘something in the can’, Macca’s conviction that he’d just met the new messiah while out walking his dog (a thought that led to the creation of ‘Fool On The Hill’) or the wonderful mix of bile and sarcastic taunting of Lennon’s old English teachers that is ‘I Am The Walrus’. There wasn’t even a mention of the long running Beatle myth #38: who was in the walrus costume during the shooting? (Both the MMTour EP booklet and the White Album track ‘Glass Onion’ claim it was Paul). A frustratingly lost opportunity, then, which – like the special – tries so hard to be hip that it rather gets in the way of all the real magic that’s there.

The ‘Love Me Do’ special on the year 1962 was so much better in every way that it’s a shame it was shunted to BBC4. Longterm fans know the gist of the story backwards, but giving a whole hour over to the crucial moptop year of 1962 meant that we got much more detail than given in the Anthology documentary and the programme makers dug out several intriguing interviewees who have rarely spoken about their Beatles connection before. These included Rory Storm’s sister Iris Caldwell, who also happened to be one of Paul’s many short-term girlfriends before Jane Asher came along (although she bravely disputes the long-term claim that ‘Love Me Do’ was written for her) and session drummer Andy White (who played on the original UK single of ‘Love Me Do’ as heard on the ‘Past Masters’ set). Sacked drummer Pete Best also notches up another moving and informative interview, although sadly the documentary doesn’t have the space to tell what happens next (Pete ends up working for the Liverpool job centre helping clients recently made redundant and empathising about their loss). Add in some top quality audio and video footage (almost a complete print of the 1962 Beatles playing ‘Some Other Guy’ at the Cavern, lots of choice cuts from the Decca audition and Starclub Hamburg tapes) and you had probably the best AAA documentary of the year so far (although the hilarious ‘Blagger’s Guide To The Beatles’ on radio cut it close, simply for its sheer verve and audacity!)


ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday greetings to you if you’re born between October 10th and 16th. So are this lot from AAA bands - Paul Simon who turns 71 on October 13th, Justin Hayward (guitarist with The Moody Blues 1967-present) who turns 66 on October 14th and Bob Weir (guitarist with The Grateful Dead 1965-95) who turns 65 on October 16th. Anniversaries of events include: The Beatles receive their first ever gold disc, for ‘She Loves You’ a year and a week after their first ‘proper’ release (October 11th 1963); The Beatles’ prestigious TV gig on ‘Saturday Night At The London Palladium’ (October 13th 1963); The Who release their milestone single ‘I Can See For Miles’ (October 13th 1967); Janis Joplin’s ashes are scattered off the coast of California after nearly a year of legal hold-ups (October 13th 1971); Grace Slick, then still with her first band The Great Society, makes her first on-stage appearance with the Jefferson Airplane after their singer Signe Anderson leaves to have a baby (October 14th 1966); Pink Floyd play their first major gig at the launch party for underground newspaper International Times (October 15th 1966) and finally, The Kinks release their all important follow-up to ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ (October 16th 1964).

News, Views and Music Issue 162 (Intro)

September 28th:
Dear all, under protest my ATOS form is done and all I have to do is wait for what fun and games my latest application for the esa benefit will inspire (remember, I still haven’t heard if I passed my second application yet despite only sending that in May, four months ago not six – what the hell are they playing at?!) However its becoming clear that doing all the different strands of this website (the news, the review and the top 10) plus living a chronic fatigue-induced life of pain that something has to give. I’ve been trying to give this a lot of thought and I’ve decided that as I love writing the reviews and I’ve been having too much fun with the top tens that it’s the news section that has to go (you may have noted its been getting a bit thinner on the ground as of late!) However, I might have just found the solution, thanks to ‘paper.li’, a website that’s allowed me to create a mock newspaper full of the news stories published on various official music websites in the past 24 hours from a total of 25 different news sources (so I’ve chosen either official website rss feeds or the official twitter feeds of every AAA artist I could think of). Now clearly this won’t cover everything (there wasn’t space to add entries from some of the lesser covered groups on this list, for instance),is rather biased towards which artists tweet/update their websites the most and it won’t add the odd TV/Radio repeat or DVD review that we’ve been offering elsewhere. However, it will cover the basics of what you readers might want to read and I can always to add to it with my own news items afterwards. Please note that, in time, you’ll be able to view ‘past issues’ by clicking on the calendar icon – I wouldn’t bother doing it now, though, because this is the first edition! – and if you want to bypass this site you can subscribe direct to the ‘paper.li’ feed and keep an eye on news stories in between issues (in fact someone seems to have done that already, which is a bit alarming seeing as the site is less than an hour old and I havenb’t advertised it yet!) Anyway, let’s give it a try and see how it works: you can read the first ever ‘paper.li’ version of our newsletter here (or alternatively have a look for it down the bottom of our home page on www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com or the right hand side of the home page of www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk ):

http://paper.li/f-1347835090

I’ve actually been a busy bee this week and have also re-posted all of my own compositions on Soundcloud, with a link on our ‘links’ page on the blogspot site (readers of our moonfruit site can still hear the tracks via their own page) so you can all listen to some music while you read. There’s a handful of explanations I’ve cut and pasted from my old notes for the songs back in 2008 when they were first posted, but if anyone wants any more info on any tracks just let me know. Alas there isn’t enough space to post all of them but most of the best ones are there – and the bonus is you can download them to your computer’s download directory to keep or transfer to your I-pod (in fact two people have done just that – though quite what my Russian visitor makes of ‘Rain On My Window’ I dread to think; perhaps I ought to change the title to ‘snow’?!) While I’m on the subject, if you’ve got some recordings you want me to hear/comment on/plug remorselessly on this site and you’re already on Soundcloud (I always discover these great sites a year after everybody else!) then add me as a friend and drop me a note. The site is here (and my username is ‘Alan Pattinson’ if you want to add me/have a listen!)

http://soundcloud.com/dashboard

Finally, and best of all, Martin Kitcher’s wonderful ‘ATOS Song’ (‘You’re Not Fit To Live) is being issued this week as a fully fledged download in aid of charity. The song only costs 89p to download and, as we told you last week, is well worth it, seeing as it sums up perfectly the casual way this Coalition Government are treating the disabled and vulnerable in the UK. Please buy a copy from all online music websites (and from Amazon.com if you want a hard copy) and help take a stance against this tyrannical period in our troubled Government’s history. The Itunes page for it is here if anyone wants to buy a copy http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/not-fit-to-live-aka-atos-song/id562910152
And that really is that (finally!) It’s off to our smaller-than-usualnews column for our latest radio news...



♫ Beatles News: As said above, we’re going to use this space more for radio/Tv repeats and non-CD reviews that won’t make the ‘main’ list (ie films, documentaries and DVD releases) and, as ever, its a BBC6 repeat we havwe to tell you about. This week saw a repeat of the two part BBC6 ‘Beatles at the Beeb’ series, broadcast in the station’s 3am documentary slot last Sunday and Monday. It should be available on I-player for a while and is well worth a listen if you missed it last year, being the only official place where fans can hear a good hour or so’s material of the fab four at their rawest and most powerful.

♫ Dire Straits: Another unexpected BBC6 radio repeat was a longer version of the band’s 1978 session, back when the band were plugging second album ‘Communique’. Some 15 minutes of the show was repeated back in the Spring – hence the fact we didn’t bother telling you about it – but there was one extra track at the end, a sprightly version of ‘Lady Writer’, which was cut from that repeat. It was broadcast last Thursday in the 4AM ‘in session’ slot and should be available on I-player until this Thursday.

♫ Oasis News: In a busy week on BBC6, Oasis’ show at Clapham Grand Theatre (which if I remember rightly was around the time of ‘Shoulders Of Giants’ in 2000) is being repeated this Saturday, September 22nd at 2AM in the channel’s ‘Classic Concert’ spot.



ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday boys this week (September 19th-25th) include Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who would have been 78 on September 19th and Linda McCartney Linda McCartney (Wings and various McCartney solo projects 1970-97) who would have been 71 on September 24th. Anniversaries of events include: short-flighted Byrd Gram Parsons died in the Joshua Desert in still unexplained circumstances at the age of just 27 (September 19th 1973), Simon and Garfunkel re-united on stage for the first time at New York’s Central Park (September 19th 1981), Paul McCartney is arrested for drug possession for the second time in his career after a passing sniffer dog uncovers cannabis plants in his Mull Of Kintyre greenhouse (September 20th 1972), the Rolling Stones score their last non-compilation number one with AAA review no 58 ‘Goats Head Soup’ (September 21st 1973), the Stones also become one of the first rock and roll groups ever to play at the Albert Hall (September 22nd 1966), John Lennon signs an ill-fated contract with new label Geffen Records just three months before his death (September 22nd 1980 – his ‘replacement’ Neil Young has a horrid time trying to live up to being Geffen’s ‘big star name’ and ends up being sued by his former manager David Geffen), Paul McCartney is dead – or so a writer for the Illinois University declares for the first time on September 23rd 1969 (the rumours continue to this day - you can see a three-hour documentary about it on Youtube!), 10cc chart for the first time (under that name, anyway) with the release of debut single ‘Donna’ (September 23rd 1972), ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ finally makes number one 29 years after its original release, giving The Hollies the then-record of biggest gap between number one UK records (September 24th 1988; their only other #1 is ‘I’m Alive’ in 1965) and finally, Wings get the European leg of their world tour off to a good start by playing a forgotten charity gig for the restoration of water-damaged art treasures in Venice, raising $50,000 along the way (September 25th 1976).

News, Views and Music Issue 161 (Intro)

September 14th:

Dear all, it’s that dreaded time of year when the ATOS medical questionnaire falls to the floor of the hall from the letterbox again and under medical orders I know that I have to slow things down in order to get my dratted 37 page form filled in again (yep, I know its only meant to be 20, but given the word lengths of most of these reviews, are you surprised how many extra sheets I need ?!) You know the drill by now – sorry if there’s a delay in the next few issues blah blah blah it still won’t mean the end of the site blah blah blah they can try to shut us down and break us but this site means too much to me to give it up even if I don’t pass blah blah blah. Naturally I’m moaning my head off about it inwardly again like I did the last twice, because it’s pointless being asked to fill in a third form within a 10 month period for a long-term illness that’s not likely to change for years or decades (not to mention breaking news that those found too poorly to work might still have to undertake unpaid work experience or receive a life-changing £71 reduction in benefit sanctions –what century are we living in again?!)– but fear not, dear readers, I won’t put you through the same complaints as the last twice because salvation might still be at hand.

It’s often been said on these pages that the Coalition need a good kicking for their disgraceful treatment of those who need help the most and if a good band didn’t come along and start putting that thought into a musical format I might be forced to come out of retirement and do the job myself, chronic fatigue or not. This week I might have discovered the very track to save my short and no doubt pilloried revived career. Now I know 99% of the music on Alan’s Album Archives is recorded by someone in the 60s (or in some cases people in their 60s whose most famous work was done in their 20s), but a new composition called ‘The ATOS song’ by Martin Kitcher of MKM Digital caught my ear on Twitter this week and I’ve been playing it a lot, partly because it’s simply a great song - melodic and catchy - and partly because it really does tell the truth about what’s happening under our very noses in the UK. We are at a real tipping point in the UK’s social history right now and if the old line about measuring societies by how they treat their most neglected and vulnerable is true then we are currently back living back in the barbaric times of the Victorian workhouse, our heritage of social reform ripped up and thrown away by a Government that should know better (Cameron, after all, knows what it’s like to bring up a disabled child – with that in mind, how does he sleep at night knowing what other disabled children and adults are facing every day of the week thanks to his policies?!)

We like a good protest song here at the AAA (hence the amount of CSN albums on the list!) and a song protesting against the Coalition is frankly long overdue and too good not to report to you. The song is poignant and heartfelt, like all good music should be, and I add the link to Martin’s ‘soundcloud’ file here (which you can listen to for free) in case any of you, like me, feel we deserve better from a Government that has repeatedly ignored and defiled us when all we asked for was the chance to recover from our illnesses and adjust to our disabilities in peace. We at the AAA have often asked you to keep your eyes open to the truth of what’s going on out there (the real truth, not the spin they give you on TV and in the papers) and now here’s a chance to open your ears too. If nothing else, at least it gave me something rebellious to play while filling in my latest £$&()_IU*R%£”$(__&%$””£^(*)_)*&^ ATOs form in! (Take that, Cameron!):

http://soundcloud.com/martinkitcher

In other news, we couldn’t help but giggle at a recent Guardian poll that sought an answer to that age old question ‘Is David Cameron a man or a mouse?’ A fantastic 87% voted for the latter, although personally I feel the poll wasn’t wide enough and should have been expanded to include all types of animals, vermin and creepy-crawlies (don’t know about you but my money’s on David Cameron as a ‘leech’!)

In other other news we’ve now passed the magic marker of 25,000 hits combined from our two websites! Yippee! Latest statistics show that you adore ‘Kinda Kinks’ over all other albums we’ve reviewed, have a soft spot for our April Fool’s Day spoof editions and that you, like us, are missing Davy Jones terribly and want to keep reading his tribute piece. Whose winning the clicks-per-artist ratio awards you ask? Err, Yoko Ono – must confess I didn’t see that one coming! (The Kinks are in a close second place though). Thankyou for all the reading/blogging/twittering/ facebooking/youtubing/besteveralbumsing you’ve been doing to spread the word about this site and see you next issue, whenever that might be! I still haven't got a clue what's up with the graphics though: it was all working fine until about a month agao but every time we post we lose the different fonts and colours we used to have. Hmm, could it be we've written so much we've broken yet another site?! (The internet doesn't seem to have been builkt for 15,000 odd words a week!) Right gotta go, I’ve still got that form to fill in (Why yes, I can carry an empty cardboard box. That makes me employable does it?! What job can I get then – cardboard box manufacturer?!? Honestly, I despair...)

♫ Beatles News: Us Beatles nuts have wondered for years what Ringo might have sounded like with his former group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who were actually more popular than the fab four in local Merseyside polls but who, alas, never had the time (or the money) to commit recordings to tape. We at the AAA are delighted, then, to hear that a tape of the band from March 1960 (over two years before Ringo split for the Beatles) has been discovered by Rory (real name Alan Caldwell)’s sister Iris. The bulk of the tape was recorded at ‘Stormsville’, local slang for Rory’s house, with a few tracks added at Liverpool’s long forgotten ‘Jive Hive’ club. Barring a few scratchy Beatles demos recorded at the McCartney family house this would make the tape the earliest audio evidence yet of one of the fab four at work. Iris discovered the tape lying unlabelled in the basement of her flat and most likely inherited the tape when her brother died in 1972 and she took control of a lot of his possessions. Alas there’s no interest yet from a record company so we don’t know if the tape will ever be released to the public – but watch this space!

ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday greetings to our AAA stars with birthdays between this week’s impressively busy dates of September 12th and 18th: Bernie Calvert (bassist with The Hollies 1966-80) turns 68 on September 16th; Kenny Jones (drummer with The Small Faces 1965-68 and with The Who 1979-82) turns 64 on September 16th; Lol Creme (guitarist, pianist and just about everything with 10cc 1972-76) turns 65 on September 17th and Joanne Catherall (singer with The Human League 1981-date) turns 50 on September 18th. Anniversaries of events include: The Beatles release the most recorded song in the world, ‘Yesterday’, as a single – but only in America where it becomes one of the band’s biggest sellers (September 12th 1965);The Monkees’ TV series debuts on American television (UK viewers get it six weeks or so later; September 12th 1966), after three girls, Paul and Linda have a son, James Lewis McCartney, born on September 12th 1977, John Lennon’s Plastic Ono band make their live debut at the Toronto Peace Festival 40 years ago this week, just days after the release of final Beatles album ‘Abbey Road’ – the gig is issued on LP later in the year (September 13th 1969); David Knopfler is forced to leave Dire Straits, the band he helped form, after one too many rows with elder brother Mark (September 13th 1980); Pete Townshend mentions plan for an unnamed rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy for the first time – it will become the legendary ‘Tommy’ a year later (September 14th 1968); The Grateful Dead become the first Western group ever to play at the site of the pyramids in Cairo (September 16th 1978); The album or long-playing record turns 78 on September 17th – the date when the first player able to play records at 33 and 1/3rd speed goes on sale and finally, Pink Floyd become the first rock band to play at Montreux’s Classical Music Festival (September 18th 1971).

Keep reading down the page for our review of Art Garfunkel's 'Everything Waits To Be Noticed' and our top 10 of silliest AAA album titles...

News, Views and Music Issue 160 (Intro)

September 7: Hello friends! Here we are again with another slice of music-related paraphernalia for you! We’ve finally got some news stories to relate again (at last!) and I see the word count is a trifle longer than its been of late, so I won’t keep you too long. The only thing to mention is that our blogspot site now has a ‘links’ page featuring the six other sites that have been the most helpful/the most informative for me while making Alan’s Album Archives. If anyone wants to add their site to the list then drop me a line at pattin82@yahoo.co.uk with the words ‘links page’ as the title or leave a comment in our forums or on one of the articles and I’ll see what I can do. Right, that over, it’s on with the news... ♫ Beatles News: Exciting news! Following last week’s revelation that The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ is due out on DVD officially for the first time, we’ve since heard that the specially commissioned documentary will be shown on BBC1 in October as part of the ‘Arena’ series. Even better, the documentary will have access to nine hours of unseen outtakes – where have those been hiding all these years?! And how many of those hours will make it onto the DVD (also released in October) as extra features?! Watch this space! ♫ Rolling Stones News: The Stones are set to play four shows in November as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations this year, ending nine whole months of speculation that included new films, new albums, new worldwide tours and Olympics appearances. In the end it seems a bit disappointing that the band have announced just four gigs (two in New York, two in London) after playing to record-breaking crowds on their last ‘Bigger Bang’ tour. At least Jagger and Richards seem to have come to some sort of agreement after revelations of their sometimes strained relationship in Keith Richards’ autobiography ‘Life’ rather stung Jagger. In other news, footage of rehearsals of the tour and new interviews (over 50 hours’ worth, reportedly) are being compiled into a new feature film ‘Crossfire Hurricane’. The film is being premiered in America by HBO on November 15th and no doubt will appear on DVD in the near future. ♫ Neil Young News: American fans were devastated to hear a new anchor accidentally mistake moon astronaut and pioneer Neil Armstrong with their idol live on air, announcing that ‘Neil Young has died’, before correcting her mistake and giving an apology. After several scares in the past decade (a brain aneurysm included) fans could be forgiven for thinking that the 67 year old’s time had come – though thankfully Neil is fine and in fact busier than he has been in years what with two albums with Crazy Horse (one album of covers out now, one of new songs out shortly) to promote. Music writers have been having a field day comparing the celebrities from another age who pioneered new ground before becoming semi-reclusive in later life, but we at the AAA wouldn’t stoop so low (erm, honest. It’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Crazy Horse, ‘Everybody knows the moon is nowhere’, Heart of Cheese...) ANNIVERSARIES: You say its your birthday? And you’re gonna have a good time? If so then you share birthday with those AAA artists (born between September 5th and 11th: Roger Waters (bassist and so much more with Pink Floyd 1967-85) who turns 68 on September 6th, Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan (singer and keyboardist with the Grateful Dead 1965-72) who would have been 66 on September 8th and Otis Redding who would have been 71 on September 9th. Anniversaries of events include: The Stones begin their second American tour on September 5th 1965 and record several of their best known songs in America around this time, starting with ‘Get Off My Cloud’ and finally, John and Yoko attend a screening of five of their short films at the London Art Spectrum, including such gems as the promo video for the harrowing ‘Cold Turkey’ and the pairs film of naked buttocks titled ‘Up Your Legs Forever’ (September 5th 1971); the sad untimely death of record producer Tom Wilson, who gave Simon and Garfunkel their big break by overdubbing electric instruments on their flop single ‘The Sound Of Silence’ (September 6th 1978); the sad untimely death of the drummer we all thought was indestructible – The Who’s Keith Moon (September 7th 1978); the advert calling for ‘four insane boys’ for a new TV series about musicians, The Monkees, appears in Los Angeles’ Daily Variety magazine. Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones have already been cast, but Micky Dolenz auditions after seeing the advert and AAA member Stephen Stills applies, recommending his friend Peter Tork when he is rejected (September 8th 1965); The Moody Blues play to an almost-record 300, 000 fans in Paris, a city not traditionally all that excited about rock and roll (even The Beatles were booed on their first tour, September 8th 1968); John Lennon releases his biggest selling solo LP ‘Imagine’ (September 9th 1971); the first ever edition of 1970s programme ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ takes place, the source of much AAA archive material (September 9th 1972); The Rolling Stones, meanwhile, are making their famous TV appearance on a special edition of Ready Steady Go!, including a mimed version of Sonny and Cher’s hit ‘I Got You Babe’ (September 10th 1965); Barely a year after that first advert The Monkees release their first single ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ – a big hit two days before the TV series come along to plug it (September 10th 1966) and finally, A magical mystery tour coach leaves for location filming of a Beatles TV project (see if you can guess which one! September 11th 1967).

News, Views and Music Issue 159 (Intro)

Dear all, I know these newsletters are coming thick and fast now but due to circumstances I feel as if I’m running out of time a bit to tell you about all the albums that really need to be heard and re-assessed. The jobcentre are on my back and want me to either stop or earn more money from this site – neither of which is likely to happen. Not co-oincidentally all the stress means my body is suffering chronic fatigue symptoms like never before. Frankly if I was a dog they’d have put me down by now to prevent further suffering but as the hideous laws against assisted suicide continue to rumble in the press (RIP Tony Nicklinson) it looks like I;m here for the seeing future, struggling to walk, struggling to think, struggling to cope. Luckily my ears are still working fine and I can just about cope with the pain in my fingers so here is another newsletter for you all, one on the theme of ‘balance’ – ironic, really, given how many times I’ve fallen over this week. A review of the Moodies’ fifth album, I can’t help think of another Moodies track ’22,000 Days’ (the average life expectancy when the song was released in 1981): our first site at www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com passed 22,000 hits this week, which means one hit for every day I’m likely to live. We leapt up 100 hits in a day last week – which is odd because I’ve actually been spending most of my time on the evolution of our second site at www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk – which has actually fallen in hit rates to about 20 a day from about 40. Hmm, let’s see if we can get those statistics up a bit this week... ♫ Beatles News: Hot on the heels of last month’s DVD/Blu-Ray release of Yellow Submarine (and its blu meanies!) comes the news that TV special ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ will be available in October. News is sketchy as yet, with no ideas as to whether there will be any bonus material (there was quite a lot on the ‘Submarine’ disc), but the set will be in better quality than the ‘semi-official’ European release that was doing the rounds about six or seven years ago. This release will mean that, apart from ‘Let It Be’, every Beatles film will be available in the UK rather than simply being in import – for the first time ever! (And long overdue!) ♫ Kinks News: Ray Davies recently announced a competition to kover a Kinks Klassik. Any Kinks song is up for grabs, including the big hits and the b-sides that few people outside the AAA know! Videos or audio recordings are both being accepted and the winner gets to spend the day with ray in the Kinks’ famous Konk studios in North London where their cover version will be ‘professionally’ produced! (Two nights accommodation in a nearby hotel is also part of the deal!) Original Kinks drummer Mick Avory (with the band from 1964 to 1985) will also be on hand to help out. Two runners up will receive the Kinks at the BBC sessions box set and some Kinks vinyl signed by Ray. The Kompetition came about when Ray was looking for a ‘new’ way to publicise this month’s ‘Kinks at the BBC’ box set. Ray said: “This is a great opportunity for musicians to display their talent by re-interpreting some classic Kinks songs. Good luck, enjoy, be creative… be outrageous!" You can enter or vote for entries in the competition here: http://www.talenthouse.com/collaborate-with-the-kinks#description ANNIVERSARIES: Presents galore for AAA birthday boys (born between August 29th and September 4th: Al Jardine (guitarist with The Beach Boys 1961-1989) who turns 70 on September 3rd and Gene Parsons (drummer with The Byrds 1968-72) who turns 67 on September 4th, not to mention Alan’s Album Archives which officially first came online at www.alansarchives.t35.com on September 2nd 2008 and is now four years old (don’t bother looking for the site though – it doesn’t exist anymore!) Anniversaries of events include: 15-year-old George Harrison plays with The Quarrymen for the very first time (August 29th 1958); The Beatles play their last ever concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park (August 29th 1966); John and Yoko’s ‘One To One’ benefit concert takes place for disabled children and is pretty much the last Lennon concert we get (barring a TV performance of ‘Imagine’ and a guest spot with Elton John) (August 30th 1972); Drummer Denny Seiwell becomes the second member to quit Wings as the band are all packed for Lagos and ‘Band On The Run’ (August 30th 1973); Paul Simon releases AAA classic no 78, ‘One Trick Pony’ (August 30th 1980); the completely ridiculous court ruling that George Harrison stole the hook from ‘My Sweet Lord’ from the Chiffons’ ‘He’s So Fine’ is passed (George clearly got it from the Hawkins’ Singers’ ‘Oh Happy Day’; August 31st 1976, a full five years after the single came out!); The Rolling Stones join their old pals The Beatles in suing manager Allan Klein for ‘falsely representing’ them with ‘intent to deceive’ (September 1st 1972); 10cc’s eponymous debut album hits the UK chart for the first time (September 1st 1973); Keith Richards’ house ‘Redlands’ suffers its second devastating fire in 10 years (September 2nd 1982); The Hollies finally score their American breakthrough surprisingly late, with Graham Gouldmann’s ‘Bus Stop’ (September 3rd 1966); The Beatles attend their first official recording session at Abbey Road, recording 17 takes of first single ‘Love Me Do’ (September 4th 1962); The Who, already deep in debt, have £5000 worth of equipment stolen from their touring van which is – wait for it – parked outside Battersea Dog’s Home whilst the band’s managers enquired about buying a guard dog. You can’t make these stories up can you?... (September 4th 1965) and finally, The Rolling Stones release ‘Street Fighting Man’, the second Stones single to be banned in a year (for ‘inciting riots’ – don’t the censors actually listen to these songs?! September 4th 1968).

News, Views and Music Issue 157 (Intro)

My dear AAA brethren, my apologies if this issue isn’t quite up to scratch. You see, Mondays are my sacred writing days and always have been since starting this project. They could drop the atom bomb at midnight Sunday and you’d still find me sitting in my chair come Monday Afternoon struggling to condense all of my thoughts onto the page. It makes me feel as if I’ve actually got something done with my week, even if I have a chronic fatigue relapse and can’t write again till the following Monday and I do everything in my power to make sure I’m well enough to hit my laptop and write on that day. Only this week the jobcentre, who have no reason to see my anyway, have insisted on seeing me on a Monday – preventing me from doing my ‘proper’ work in other words in order to make me nod, go ‘hmm’ every so often and then remind them for the umpteempth time that as I’ve been found ‘fit for work’ I don’t actually have to do anything they tell me (I still have to turn up, though, or else apparently. Yeah because threats are great for people recovering from illness). So, to cut a long story semi-short, I’ve had to write two reviews this week – and boy am I feeling it now. Never mind, though, because it looks like I have a whole new bunch of AAA followers out there to talk to. I think I’ve mentioned before in these pages (certainly the links page of our www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com site) how great the ‘Kinda Kinks’ site at www.kindakinks.net is, full of every snippet and factual nugget about what the various members of the band are up to (its proved invaluable when our AAA groups are having a slow news week). I sent the link for our review of ‘Kinda Kinks’ off to the site last week and I’ve never seen such a hive of activity! We actually peaked at 350 views in 48 hours, a record for us, and it looks as if readers have been hanging around to view our other reviews (including several Kinks ones, naturally). A big welcome to you all! Please keep visiting us whenever you can – I can already feel another Kinks review coming on! Finally, whether you’re a new reader or an old faithful one whose followed us from the start (way back in 2008, how young we all were!), if you have enjoyed my writing then please please please will you nominate me for inclusion for a new book that’s coming out? ‘Best Music Writing’ has been published every year for 12 years and has always featured the best of the ‘official’ music magazines and websites out there. A new switch to independent publishers means they can now include submissions from fan sites like mine. You can nominate up to five articles by any music writer you enjoy reading (it doesn’t have t be me, though obviously I’d be thrilled to be included) and can do so here: http://www.feedbackpress.org/best-music-writing-ballot/ We desperately need the publicity that being featured in a ‘proper’ tome would give us, so please if we’ve done anything to help you navigate your way through your record collection then please help us out now! Thankyou! Now on with the news... ♫ Beatles/Beady Eye/The Kinks/Pink Floyd/The Who News: The London Olympics closing ceremony was a good mixture of the talent and incompetence we’ve seen throughout the rest of the Olympics. If the opening ceremony was a frustratingly missed opportunity (full of confusing hard-to-follow bits about the industrial revolution that seemed to hop around the centuries like a natterjack toad and some awful shtick about the Queen parachuting in with James Bond – with her ma the only actress around wooden enough to compete with Daniel Craig – thunderbirds puppets would have been more entertaining!), the ending promised much for the closing ceremony (a huge cauldron on fire, the sensible concept of skipping the celebs to give some promising teenagers a chance to light the flame and Paul McCartney to finish!) Which it half delivered on. Officially the closing ceremony was meant to represent ‘every era’ – something which must have disappointed every 50s, 70s and oos fan as hardly anyone from those eras turned up (Bowie on a screen, Kate Bush on a radio and two members of Queen hardly compensated). But us 60s (and even us 90s) kids were well catered for, centring around the great old battle between the Kinks and The Who for supremacy as London’s best (sadly the Stones were a no-show – I’m surprised we had no one covering ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ anywhere, but perhaps that’s just the message I wanted to sum up the olympics!) Ray Davies arrived by taxi and looked a little frail but considering he had just a guitar and (at the end) a booming choir for accompaniment his ‘Waterloo Sunset’ was goosepimplingly intimate. Rumours of a Pink Floyd reunion were, sadly, unfounded but we did get to see drummer Nick Mason performing ‘Wish You Were Here’ as part of a supergroup featuring various members of Genesis and the Stranglers plus new kid Ed Sheeran. It was a great performance, actually, though I got a bit lost what the tightrope walking was all about (non-Floyd fans must have been even more confused as to why the dummy at the end of the tightrope caught fire – its the front cover for Floyd album ‘Wish You Were Here’, folks, although I’d still rather have had a flying pig. The Beatles had already been covered by Macca’s fine (if acoustically flawed) performance of ‘Hey Jude’ in the opening ceremony, but there was a neat on-screen tribute to John Lennon, accompanied by a signing choir from Liverpool performing ‘Imagine’ which was far more moving than the song usually is (Lennon would surely have hated it though!) Hopes were high for an Oasis reunion after a ‘Beady Eye’ drum kit was spotted in the arena but alas Noel Gallagher was a no-show and we got a rather subdued Liam and co instead. That said I think most of the crowd probably missed the significance: after ‘resting’ the song during the last couple of Oasis tours and the band going their own ways this meant that last weeks’ performance of ‘Wonderwall’ was the first in a decade. Best of all, though, were the ‘Orrible ‘Oo, who followed up a pretty decent cover of ‘Pinball Wizard’ by the Kaiser Chiefs with a storming closing set that had more passion and energy within 10 minutes than the past rather dragging three hours. Great performances of ‘Baba O’Riley’ ‘Listening To You’ and an emphatic ‘ My Generation’ almost made up for having to sit through an interminable 10 minute set from the Spice Girls who performed on top of five taxis (presumably so when the crowd started throwing things they could make a quick getaway. Joke of the night: ‘I know why the Spice Girls were on late. Posh got mistaken for a javelin and locked away in a cupboard by accident’! ‘Wannabe’ is a song that really hasn’t gotten better with age and the crowd looked sick to be honest, as the commentators tried to explain how ‘girl power’ among teenagers was all the rage in the 1990s and still powerful and significant, despite the fact the song was written by a 50 year old male for money. At least the girls (or should that be OAPS?) didn’t kung-fu kick anyone this time around! So then, pretty mixed, with some highlights but nothing as great as the highlight of the whole Olympics: Boris Johnson getting stuck on a zip-wire a week into the games for a full quarter of an hour! ♫ Monkees News: Shock announcement this week is that the band are reuniting for a series of shows in the States. This is a shock a) because sadly Davy Jones died in February and all previous reunions were at least partly at his suggestion and b) because this means Mike Nesmith will be back in the band for the first time since 1997. The news was announced on Mike’s ever entertaining facebook page where, in typical Nesmith style, he announced ‘Amazing News!...I’ve made a gazpacho!...Oh and Micky and Peter and I are going to be doing 12 concerts here in the States!’ News reports say that the band will be playing their own instruments on stage, just as they did in 1967 on tour, and that Davy will be represented by multimedia of him singing and playing with the band in true Monkees style, backed by the others playing live. The other exciting news is that much of the set will be derived from our classic AAA Monkees album ‘Headquarters’, an album never played much on tour (see review no 10). The tour is due to start in November. Hopefully the tour will extend to other cities and countries but that’s all the news we have right now. ANNIVERSARIES: The only birthday boy this week (August 15th-21st) is Carl Wayne (vocalist with The Hollies from 1999 to his death in 2003) who would have been 68 on August 18th. Anniversaries of events include: The Beatles play their record-breaking show at New York’s Shea Stadium, with 56,000 screaming fans –an attendance record that won’t be beaten until CSNY in 1974 (August 15th 1965); the first day of Woodstock, an anniversary we covered in detail a year ago in these very pages (August 15th 1969); George Harrison publishes the closest we’ve yet had to a Beatle autobiography, the frustratingly short and originally expensive ‘I Me Mine’ (August 15th 1980); Paul Simon plays to his biggest crowd for his ‘Concert In Central Park’ (August 15th 1991); The Beatles’ still mysterious sacking of their most popular member Pete Best and replacing him with...Ringo (think about that for a minute) who plays his first gig with the band two days later (August 16th 1962); The Beatles’ first performance in Hamburg at the Indra Club (August 17th 1960); The second of two records featuring Jagger, Richards, Lennon and McCartney from the summer of love is released – the Stones’ best single (as far as my tastes are concerned) ‘We Love You’ (August 18th 1967 – the other record is the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’); Mick Jagger accidentally hurts his hand in a pistol fight staged for the seemingly cursed movie ‘Ned Kelly’ (August 18th 1969); The Moody Blues begin their highest grossing UK tour, some nine years after their original split (August 18th 1981); The Beatles begin their first American tour, playing to much bigger crowds than they are used to in England (August 19th 1964); American radio station KNOW ban all Beatles tracks from the air after hearing that the ‘Sgt Peppers’ LP may contain drugs references – thankfully most of the other stations simply ban that LP (August 19th 1967); The Rolling Stones release one of their most famous songs ‘Satisfaction’ (August 20th 1965); Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham creates Immediate Records with The Small Faces, lured from Decca, one of their first signings (August 20th 1965) and finally, The Rolling Stones and 10cc co-headline a prestigious gig at London’s Knebworth (August 21st 1976).

News, Views and Music Issue 155 (Intro)

August 10th: Dear all, it was this time during the last Olympics that I’d just finished writing about the ‘core’ 101 reviews for this site and had some rare time off to watch the Beijing Olympics, long before the News, Views and Music newsletters existed. Personally I’ve always found the summer Olympics really boring compared to the winter ones and so it was that year, but I still tuned in to see some of the excellent events I don’t get to see very often (badminton, hockey). This year Olympic madness is everywhere simply because its down the road and every time I see some smug look on David Cameron’s face or The Queen pouting in her Royal box I feel sick. The opening ceremony, while confusing, wasn’t the snoozefest I expected it to be (well, the alphabeticised team entries did get boring round about ‘B’) and the caulfrons lit at the end were genuinely impressive. What worried me was: Cameron’s smug face even though the Olympics were brought to London on Labour’s watch, the criticism of Paul McCartney ending the ceremony (where a subdued performance really wasn’t his fault - a dodgy monitor ended up echoing his performance round the hall after every word, just like on ‘Live Aid’ although Macca the trooper carried on; after all the only thing Britain has managed to give to the world since the last London olympics in 1948 is music) and the fact that we were praising the NHS and our wonderful cyclists at the same time when, in the real outside the stadium, the NHS is being destroyed and innocent cyclists are being kettled for mistakenly using Olympic lanes. Remember all the fuss four years ago about China’s human rights record and whether athletes were going to stay away in droves in protest? They should have waited four years for the Coalition to ban all types of protest and force one group of taxi driver protestors to risk his life diving from the Jubilee Bridge to get his point on the news. However many medals we come away with, however much we rescue our damaged world reputation by putting on a vaguely cohesive games, we should not get smug because we still have so much more to learn, our leaders especially. By the way the Olympic coverage is the perfect timing for the Government’s friends in the BBC to put on two specials about how awful and unfair the medical benefit system is, on Monday at 8.30 and 9pm. Be sure to tune in if you can, even if there is trampolining on the other side, because this the real state of Britain in 2012 that’s being kept from the world. I Just wonder how many more mistakes like showing the wrong flag for North Korea will happen by the time the games are over.. In happier news, if you’re a reader of our blogspot site (www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk) you may have noticed that we’ve added a whacking great list of links to all our reviews and top fives. In theory this means that you will be able to look for a particular article if you’re in a hurry and to ease things we’ve had a go at listing the albums by artist in chronological order. Unfortunately our hit rate on this site has tailed off remarkably (we’d hit a peak of 135 views last Monday, mainly because of a mention on the excellent Kinks site KindaKinksNet) – typical really because our first site (at www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com) is getting more hits than ever (an average of 60 this past week!) Alas I’ll have to give it a breather because working on this and coping with the job centre has worn my cfs-attacked body out to a frazzle – but I’ll be able to do the same with the first site some time soon. We now stand at a high of 20598 on Moonfruit and 1345 on Blogspot, which isn’t bad for just over 7 weeks online! Oh and finally, most of Britain was surprised to learn that we’d kept our economic AAA rating this week. We weren’t surprised, though, were we AAA readers?! Perhaps they’ll get us to do the Coalition’s finances for them (we can’t do a worse mess than George Osbourne...) ♫ Beatles News: Dhani Harrison, son of George, has just released his second album under the pseudonym ‘The New 02’, with album ‘Thefearofmissingout’ (all one word) hot on the heels of well received debut ‘You Are Here’. The album got a right old drubbing in Mojo this month, but the references to psychedelia soft rock in the article have still whetted my appetite. More news if and when... Oh, yeah, and Paul McCartney played ‘Hey Jude’ at an Olympics ceremony best remembered for the bizarre juxtaposition of James Bond and the Queen (I always thought Dabiel Craig was the most wooden faced actor around – I was wrong) and the kettling of innocent bikers outside the stadium by police that night. What an absolute mess. At least Macca didn’t sing ‘Ob la di, Ob La Da’ at this one... ♫ Jefferson Airplane News: In one of those eerie coincidences that seems to keep happening with this site, Radio 4 are broadcasting a new dramatisation of John Wyndham’s ‘The Chrysalids’ in their Afternoon play spot the next couple of Wednesdays at 3pm. We mentioned this book last issue because Paul Kantner based the title track of the album ‘Crown Of Creation’ on one of the chapters – now you can hear for yourselves how similar the two are! ♫ Rolling Stones News: A low quality bootleg of Mick, Keith and Ronnie meeting up with their idol Muddy Waters in 1981 has been doing the rounds on bootleg for years. However now all fans have the chance to see it as its now out officially on DVD under the title ‘Live At The Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago’. Mick predictably takes over and Keith predictably stands at the back whilst taking all the camera time, but most interesting for long term fans is the chance to see ‘sixth stone’ Ian Stewart in his element, boogie woogie-ing away on a piano like he’d been a member of Muddy’s band his life long through (filmed four years before his death, during a period when the Stones rarely toured, its one of the last chances to see him at all). Muddy, of course, famously gave the band their name (see below!) so its fitting to see two legends come together, even if it isn’t a release you’ll play that many times. A soundtrack CD is available too, although that must have an even more limited shelf life you’d have thought. ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday cakes with lots of candles are in order for the following AAA stars born between August 1st and 7th: Jerry Garcia (guitarist with the Grateful Dead) who would have turned the big 70 on August 1st. Anniversaries of events include: The Beach Boys spend their first week of many on the British charts with ‘Surfin’ USA’ (August 1st 1963) and finally, George Harrison’s first concert for Bangladesh (also starring Ringo and Badfinger) takes place at Madison Square Garden (August 1st 1971); The Beatles headline their first gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club (August 2nd 1961); The Who rescue the film premises Shepperton Studios from demolition, buying the venue for use in their ‘Kids Are Alright’ documentary and ‘Quadrophenia’ film (they still own it too; August 2nd 1977); Just two years, one day and 293 appearances after their first headlining gig, the Beatles play their last show at The Cavern Club (August 3rd 1963); Beatles record are banned in South Africa following John Lennon’s statements about the band being ‘bigger than Jesus’ (August 3rd 1966) – a day later six South American states follow suit; Wings are officially formed on August 3rd 1971, with Dennys Laine and Seiwell as well as Paul and Linda McCartney; The Small Faces release perhaps their most famous single ‘Itchycoo Park’ (August 4th 1967); Pink Floyd stage The Wall for the first time at London’s Earl’s Court (due to costs they only ever stage the show four times – August 4th 1980); Two 1960s milestones are released on August 5th: The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ in 1966 and Pink Floyd’s debut ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ in 1967; The Small Faces release their debut single, the wonderfully ungrammatical ‘What’cha Gonna Do ‘Bout It?’ (August 6th 1965); Pink Floyd’s film version of ‘The Wall’ premieres in America (August 6th 1982); Time Magazine becomes the first magazine to review the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ released the previous month and – you’ve guessed it, they absolutely hate it, with a headline ‘avoid at all costs’! (August 7th 1964).

News, Views and Music 154 (Intro)

Dear all, its been another trying week here at the AAA. You know that I’ve been waiting to hear whether I passed my last application for esa (causing agonising stress on top of cfs problems like muscle pain and no sleep whatsoever?) Well apparently I passed 7 weeks ago but those incompetent corrupt imebeclies at ATOS couldn’t be arsed to tell me. Instead I had to hear it from the job centre who are now threatening me with all sorts of unpleasant things if my business (ie what you’re reading) doesn’t ‘take off’ in the next 6 months. Well, sorry, I don’t know about you but I think we’ve been a big success – 20,000 hits in a little under two years of ‘proper’ business making and no budget whatsoever (because the job centre couldn’t be arsed to help me there much either to be honest) is a lot better than I was expecting and our hit rate is growing each and every week, suggesting that many of you are coming back. Frankly I don’t care about making money at the moment: that’s secondary to the sheer enjoyment of writing these reviews and the sheer pleasure I get from spreading the word about something in life that actually matters more than making some fat cat in a suit get so fat he has to buy a shiny new one. I’m far too ill to work any more than my 8-9 hours a week on this anyway (mainly thanks to all the stress the jobcentre keep causing me) and have no chance of it any time soon with such a long term illness (that’s already killed 37 people this year) so frankly I don’t want this site to take off too quickly, I simply wouldn’t be able to cope with the pressure. What this site does mean is that there is an interest for when hopefully I will be well (for instance when the Coalition falls and I won’t be harassed every five minutes) when I will have gained the experience, learnt from the mistakes and shown the capabilities and determination of running this site for so long ie invaluable experience that’s good for me and my future career. Too many projects have been ruined by rash promises of money making (just look at the Olympic security team) and I bloody well refuse to compromise over the work and dedication this site takes to be run properly. Don’t worry readers, this site will still be run whatever condition they leave me in and whatever they try and make me do because at the end of the day keeping up the monster of capitalism is a lot lower on my list of proprieties than getting to grips with the music and messages that really matter. Rant over, we return you to your regularly schedules newsletter...(Just to rub it in we’ve been hugely successful this week!)

                                                

♫ Beatles/Rolling Stones News: ‘Bobby Keyes’ is an album that’s been out of print ever since it’s limited release in 1972. American Keyes is probably best known for his saxophone work with the Rolling Stones on most of their 1970s albums and is particularly close to Keith Richards (the two happened to have been born only an hour – and a continent – apart). No Stones appear on the re-issue of his album but two Beatles do, with George and Ringo both performing on some of the instrumental cuts on the record in return for his work on ‘My Sweet Lord’ and the ‘Ringo’ LP (almost the only time the pair work together outside The Beatles or their own solo albums). Alas Lennon doesn’t appear to make it a three-way reunion, despite the fact the two were friends (that’s Bobby you can hear on Lennon’s 1974 single ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’). Ringo even ended up releasing the follow-up album ‘Gimme The Key’ on his own short-lived label Ring o’ Records in 1975 although that album still hasn’t been issued on CD yet.

♫ Monkees News: There have been lots of Monkees docuemtaries in the past, but ‘We Love The Monkees’, showing this Monday, July 30^th on ITV1 at 9pm will be the first since the sad loss of Davy Jones earlier this year. His family friends and the other three surviving Monkees all take part in the hour-long programme which tells the tale of the band from auditions to reunions.

ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday boys and girls come out to play, that is if you belong to the AAA: Happy birthday to those born between July 25^th and 31^st: Mick Jagger (singer with The Rolling Stones 1962-present) turns 69 on July 26^th and Rick Wright (keyboardist with Pink Floyd 1967-80 and 1987-94) would have been 67 on July 28^th. Anniversaries of events include: Brian Jones’ last ever Stones concert – and the last any of the band did for three years – takes place in San Francisco (July 25^th 1966); A year later The Beatles publish their infamous advert in The Times calling for the legalisation of marijuana (how the band ever got Brian Epstein to sign too I’ll never know...) (July 25^th 1967); Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin release their second, last and best loved album ‘Cheap Thrills’ (July 25^th 1968); Neil Young’s first performance with CSN, barely a week after the trio’s debut album came out (July 25^th 1969) and finally, The Beach Boys return to their old hit making ways – briefly – with well received LP ‘Surf’s Up’ (July 25^th 1971); The Rolling Stones’ ‘Beggars Banquet’ becomes the first AAA album to be cancelled because of a cover dispute – Decca object to the band’s idea, a toilet wall with the album tracks scrawled on as graffiti (July 26^th 1968); George Harrison holds the press conference that heralds the ‘Bangladesh’ benefit concerts (July 27^th 1971); meanwhile his sometime colleague John Lennon finally gets his ‘green card’ allowing him to stay in the States after four years of fighting (July 27^th 1976); The film Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger receives its premiere (and weirdly I only bought my copy of it the day before writing this!) (July 28^th 1970); the world record for concert attendance – 600,000 – takes place at a little heralded concert at New York’s Watkins Glen arena, starring the Grateful Dead (July 28^th 1973); The Beatles’ film ‘Help!’ receives its premiere at the London Pavilion (July 29^th 1965); The Beatles close their ‘Apple Boutique’ shop, giving away their stock to delighted customers for free (July 30^th 1968) and finally, The Rolling Stones play their shortest ever concert (12 minutes) after the stage gets invaded by rioters in Belfast (July 31^st 1964).

News, Views and Music Issue 153 (Intro)

July 27^th:

Dear all, well the Olympics will soon be upon us again. A chance to see people running rings around the audience, wrestling people to the ground and thumping them and throwing missiles at a specific target. But what will happen in the events themselves once the heavyhanded UK security have done their work? Even with Paul McCartney confirmed as the closing act, things aren’t looking good – laughable in fact, what with the weapons parked on people’s roofs in the London area, the public transport systems that people are only thinking about now two weeks before the big event and the buffoons in Government claiming all the credit for themselves (they deserve something, but it isn’t a medal). Also, I don’t know what’s worse – seeing genuine sporting events sponsored by the likes of McDonalds, Walkers and Kelloggs or seeing the Paralympics sponsored by ATOS, the Government lap dogs who don’t seem to believe anyone has ever been disabled in the history of time.

Meantime, here’s our latest piece of insanity in the middle of this vacuum of darkness, wrapped around a review of the first record of Neil Young’s ‘doom’ trilogy re-assessed (shame no one else seems to own a copy given that it’s been officially out of print for 40 years!) What’s that? We haven’t discussed our website stats yet you say? You read my mind! Our ‘moonfruit’ original site now stands at 20,300 hits and our blogspot second site at 800! Why that’s almost as many people as applied for the beach volleyball this year!

                                            

♫ Beach Boys News: Of all the news stories we’ve had in these newsletters, this must be one of the weirdest: The Beach Boys’ family and offspring have formed their own band named ‘California Saga’. The band includes music veterans Carnie and Wendy (Brian’s daughters and once two-thirds of Wilson Phillips), Justyn Wilson (Carl’s son), Christian and Ambha Love (Mike’s son and daughter), Carl Wilson (Dennis’ son named for his brother) and Matt and Adam Jardine (Al’s two sons). Billy Hinsche – brother of Carl’s wife and extra Beach Boy guitarist for many years – is also involved.

♫ Beatles News: Paul McCartney has just announced he’s teamed up with Bungie, the game developers who are most famous for the computer game ‘Halo’. Alas that won’t be what Macca’s working on - which is a shame given that his music would have fitted a new franchise pretty well – and the pair have been quite on what exactly Paul will be working on. If it seems like an odd project then, well, yes it is, but Macca has been saying for a while in interviews now that games are selling better than CDs (the success of the Beatles Rock Band game won’t have passed him by either).So what could the new project be? An aeroplane simulator named ‘Wings’ perhaps?! More news if and when...

In other news, Macca was prevented from finishing his set list at a concert in Hyde Park this week when Bruce Springsteen’s set over-ran. In fact The Boss was up on stage for a storming live version of ‘Twist and Shout’ when the London Council decided that the show had already gone 10 minutes over its allotted time and pulled the plug mid-song. The audience and Bruce were understandably livid: ‘I’ve been trying to arrange this for 30 years’ he’s meant to have said. Apparently last year saw a rise in the number of local complaints. Next up on Sunday night was Paul Simon, who thankfully escaped the wrath of the council.  

♫ CSN News: Sad news, I’m afraid: according to Stephen Stills in an interview for ‘Uncut’ magazine there will never be another new CSN album (despite some solo and archive releases in the works and a new joint live DVD out). The band were hit badly when Rick Rubin effectively cancelled their planned album of ‘covers’ a few years ago and the band have been without a long-term recording contract since releasing ‘Looking Forward’ with Neil Young in 1999.  He said: ‘There’s a DVd set that’s finished, it’s ready to go. But an album? We won’t make another one, we won’t finish one’. Sniff!

♫ Monkees News: Mike Nesmith is returning to the UK for his first series of solo concerts in about 30 years and his first performances at all since the Monkees reunions of 1997. Dates haven’t been finalised yet but it’s worth keeping an eye on and it seems likely that Nesmith will be playing acoustically without a band. More news if and when!

♫ The Who News: Honestly, one minute we’re reporting The Who have a tour lined up, then that they’ve split, then that they’ll never work together again – and now that they’re back together again, for now. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will be hitting the road in Europe and America later this year touring with ‘Quadrophenia’, presumably the same show they had on their 1996 tour, because in Pete’s words ‘we want to do it before we get too old!’ This completely contradicts the comments made in Quadrophenia doc ‘Can You See The Real Me?’ broadcast on BBC4 less than a month ago, but never mind! Sweetly, the band will be returning to Cincinatti for the first time since 11 fans died in a stampede there in 1979 (the venue was working on a ‘priority seating’ premise and record numbers of fans turned up early to get the good seats, overwhelming staff) and have promised to honour anyone who still has a ticket from their no-show there 33 years ago! More news if and when (they’ll probably break up again somewhere around the final gig!)

ANNIVERSARIES: It’s a busy week this week, with birthday greetings in order for the following AAA members born between July 18^th and 24^th: Clarence White (guitarist with The Byrds 1968-72) who would have been 68 on July 19^th and Keith Godchaux (keyboardist with The Grateful Dead 1973-79) who would have been 64 on the same day; also John Lodge (bassist with The Moody Blues 1967-present) who turns 69 on July 20^th and Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam who turns 65 on July 21^st. Anniversaries of events include: CSN release their prestigious and much loved eponymous debut album (July 18^th 1969); One of Otis Reddings’ last projects, with Carla Thomas, ‘Tramp’ reaches the charts (July 19^th 1967); Simon and Garfunkel begin their first reunion tour, which will break down in recriminations a few months later (July 19^th 1983); Jane Asher shocks the music press by announcing her six-month long engagement to Paul McCartney is off, after the couple have spent nearly five years together (July 20^th 1968); 4000 fans unable to get tickets to a Beatles show in Blackpool rush the arena and the Beatles have to get flown in by helicopter (July 21^st 1963); The Beatles’ first American album ‘Introducing...’ is released on the small label Vee Jay Records. It becomes the only Beatles LP ever to miss the charts in America! (July 22^nd 1963); The Dire Straits’ first eponymously titled record hits the LP charts (July 22^nd 1978); Four days after his 31^st birthday Grateful Dead keyboardist dies in a car crash (July 23^rd 1979) and finally, Jefferson Airplane receive their only gold disc for ridiculously high sales of their second album ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ (July 24^th 1967).