News, Views and Music Issue 140 (Intro)

April 15^th:

Dear all, I’m not quite sure when you’ll be getting this newsletter as we’ve got a busy few weeks ahead: a trip away, loads of forms to fill in, tax returns, you name it we’ve got it; you may have noticed that the dates on our last few websites have been a bit further ahead of ourselves than normal, that’s to cover ourselves while we’re away although we might well end up being an issue down all the same by the time I’ve rested. It looks like we’ll definitely be missing one issue while I fill in my next dreaded incapacity form and my next tax returns and a few other Jobcentre forms (how kind to send them all at once and expect immediate replies to them all!) but we will be back with a post by the 29^th of April assuming nothing else happens between then and now. Either way here’s another issue to be published, umm, sometime, and by my adding up that makes it article no 249 for this site – expect there to be a big party when I do eventually have the time to write the next issue! There’s also a heap of news stories we’ve missed and aren’t even on I-player anymore sadly, like Roger Waters on the BBC6 music hour. On the plus side I’ve got a bundle of new CDs including the new McCartney ‘crooning’ CD and the deluxe Quadrophenia set at last so expect review of those sometime soon. Anyway you’ll need a couple of weeks to research this week’s top 20, which just so happens to be our third competition (not that anyone actually entered our first two...)

♫ Grateful Dead News: The mother of all Dead DVDs is here as a – blimey – 14 disc set featuring almost all previously released Dead concerts, biographies and documentaries is released. ‘All The Years Combine’ features the concert-with-extras ‘Grateful Dead Movie’ from 1974, the documentary ‘So Far’ from 1987 and some live material from 1989-91. That’s a staggering 38 hours of Grateful Dead shenanigans, although the set is already causing some fury in Dead circles for only featuring material from the Dead’s ‘comeback’ in 1974 and none of their earlier shows (OK, so there isn’t that much material around from the sixties except for the ‘Playboy After Dark’ set but there’s lots from the band’s tour of Europe in 1972). Annoyingly, there’ no sign opf the set on Amazon yet so I can’t give you a release date or fill in what the other discs contain, but the review of the set have started appearing in magazines and papers so it must be due out fairly soon. STOP PRESS: The set is released on April 17^th and features the above listed sets and ‘The Closing Of The Winterland’ (a concert from 1978) ‘Dead Ahead’ (a concert from 1980, featuring skits from ‘Saturday Night Live’) ‘Truckin’ Up To Buffalo’ (a show from July 4^th 1989)‘Ticket To New Year’s (a pioneering pay-per-view show from New Year’s Day 1987) ‘All Downhill From Here’ (a complete show from one day in 1989) ‘Backstage Pass’ (the 1992 documentary directed by Justin Kreutzmann, drummer Bill’s brother) and ‘View From The Vault Volumes 1-4’ (concerts from 1990 and 1991, including the Dylan tour), plus an exclusive bonus disc of extras.

♫ Small Faces News: A bit more info on those four deluxe Faces re-issues we told you about a few issues back. Here’s the list of extras album by album: ‘Small Faces’ (1966): The full album in mono, EP tracks and B-sides ‘’I’ve Got Mine’ ‘Whatsa Matter Baby?’ ‘Grow Your Own’ and ‘Patterns’, plus alternate versions of nine of the album and EP songs and alternate mixes of another five; ‘From The Beginning’ (1967): the full album in mono, classic B-sides ‘I Can’t Dance With You’ and ‘Understanding’, the ‘Decca’ version of ‘Just Passing’, session tapes for ‘I Can’t Make It’, the unreleased ‘Almost Grown’, the backing track for the unfinished ‘Picaniny’, alternate takes of five album songs, alternate mixes of six album songs and backing tracks to a further four; ‘The Small Faces’ (1967 and AAA classic album 12): The full album in mono and stereo, five period A and B sides including the band’s best moment ‘Tin Soldier’, period PP Arnold duet ‘If You Think You’re Groovy’ and the outtake ‘Don’t Burst My Bubble’ as re-issued often during the 1980s, alternate takes of ‘Green Circles’ and ‘Things Are Going To Get Better’, plus session tapes for ‘I Can’t Make It’, a backing track for ‘Groovy’ and alternate mixes of three album songs; finally ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’ (1968 – see news and views 69): the album in mono and stereo, with extended versions of ‘Mad John’ on the former and ‘Happydaystoytown’ on the latter, an early take of the title track and ‘Mad John’, an alternate take of the title track, a backing track for ‘Happiness Stan’, the outtakes ‘Bun In The Oven’ and ‘Kamikaze’, the backing track for ‘The Fly’ and alternate mixes of seven album tracks plus popular outtake ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’. Alas there’s no deluxe re-issue of AAA classic album 28 ‘The Autumn Stone’ planned, which still leaves a handful of songs missing from this re-issue series. Ah well, at least that little lot should keep fans going for a while! All these four CDs will be available on May 7^th.

ANNIVERSARIES: It’s that birthday time of year for the following AAA members (born between March 28^th and April 3^rd): Graeme Edge (drummer with The Moody Blues 1965-present) turns 70 on March 30^th; Ronnie Lane (bassist with The Small Faces 1965-68) would have been 66 on April 1^st and Simon Cowe (guitarist with Lindisfarne 1970-94) turns 65 on April 1^st. Anniversaries of events include: Pink Floyd’s debut single ‘Arnold Layne’ charts (March 30^th 1967); the same band’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ also starts its ridiculous two decade run on the charts (March 31^st 1973); Brian Wilson won’t want to be reminded now he’s back with them, but April 1^st 1969 was the date The Beach Boys sued Capitol Records for $2 million in unpaid royalties, putting and end to one of the most prolific runs of the 1960s; The Who set a record by selling out all 80,000 seats at Madison Square Gardens (April 1^st 1974); There’s so much demand for tickets to the 1976 Rolling Stones tour that, for the first time, attendance is decided by ballot (April 1^st 1976); Things get even more complicated for The Beach Boys and record company after signing for Caribou Records on April 1^st 1977 despite still owing second company Reprise another album; The two most famous Beatles compilations (officially named ‘1963-66 and 1967-70’ but better known as the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ sets) are released (April 3^rd 1973) and finally, Beatlemania is in full swing in the States where The Beatles are at no 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 44, 49, 69, 79, 84 and 88 in the singles charts in a single week! (that’s every Beatles single released by April 3rd 1964 including ‘My Bonnie’ backing Tony Sheridan!) 

   

News, Views and Music Issue 116 (Intro)

October 14^th:

Dear friends, good news! (at long last, some good news!) I now have broadband – just in time to see our stats counter move perilously near the magical 10,000 hits mark. Be sure to receive a ‘thankyou’ not when it does if you’re one of our regular members and have written into us or sent me your email address/twitter feed/facebook link etc– I can’t promise anything more than a clipart cake but, well, thankyou for your support all the same. Having the internet at home means no more trips to the library only to find the computer’s not working, furiously writing in order to make a deadline before they close and hopefully more time to sort out our ongoing technical problems. The site t35.com is back by the way – I’m in the process of transferring all my files across which hopefully means I won’t have to post all the links again (which took me flipping hours the last time they went wrong at Easter). I may have to revert back to making these newsletters fortnightly when my hideously long form comes but still, I’m a newsletter ahead of myself at the moment so that shouldn’t be so bad. They can’t keep us down, eh, no matter what they throw at us! Good music will always endure (heard any Spice Girls on the radio recently? Me neither!) And we’ll do our best to make sure that we endure, even if we have to go through as many variations and line-up changes as our featured band The Jefferson Airplane. First, though, the news...

                                                        

♫ Grateful Dead News: The Grateful Dead Movie is coming to DVD! Well, eventually, apparently the DVD set has been delayed until 2012 already, but the blu-ray version of this concert film is hitting shops this week apparently. The film, which is largely made up of the Dead’s ‘farewell’ shows from 1974 (before their 18 month hiatus) has been out of print for years, ever since a video copy in the early 1990s, and also features footage of favourite band haunts and other fan friendly footage (such as the ‘Mars Hotel’ as featured on the ‘Mars Hotel’ cover getting knocked down!) The set also features five hours of extras! More news if and when...

♫ Pink Floyd News: Poor BBC6, they always arrive late to the party, even if they do often arrive with the greatest presents. Following on from a fortnight ago’s BBC4 Floyd Night (and to tie-in with the latest re-issues – and please have a look at some older issues if you want to know more because I’m sick of writing about them!) there’s a full 10 hours or so devoted to the band. The programmes start in the early hours of Friday, October 7^th, skip a few hours till the evening and continue to the early hours of the following Saturday. They’re a mixture of the usual BBC repeats we see often on BBC6 (the Syd Barrett doc was only on again this Summer), some very old repeats we haven’t heard in ages (the ‘Record Producers’ doc) and some exciting looking news ones (A whole hour of Pink Floyd at the BBC, all of which is unavailable on CD (even though bits and pieces have been repeated)? Fantastic!) For the record here’s the full list of programmes:

12am and 3am ‘Wish You’d Been Here – The Story Of Pink Floyd’ (in two parts, first broadcast 2005 or there abouts)

7pm ‘Now Playing – A Pink Floyd Special’ (various Floyd records)

9pm ‘Record Producers – Pink Floyd’ (I never quite understood how the Floyd were ‘producers’, perhaps they’d been better off looking at Hurricane Smith, producer of the first album? Still an excellent series – I hope they repeat the 10cc one sometime soon too because that was fabulous!, circa 2007)

10.30pm ‘The Producer’s Playlist’ – yet more Floyd records, though with a more unusual slant: the producer’s favourite Floyd record is apparently ‘Fearless’ from 1972’s ‘Meddle’ LP, not a track you ever hear too often!

11pm ‘Floyd At The BBC’ – I can’t wait: Peel Sessions, In Concert recordings, all unreleased on CD and all unrepeated since first broadcast, barring two 15 min sessions that have been on BBC6 before

1am ‘Desert Island Discs – Roger Waters’ – the bassist’s surprisingly humble and chatty interview-with-music-choices programme from last year. Well worth hearing iof you haven’t already

3.30-5.30am ‘The Thing About Syd’ (in 2 parts, 2006): Another repeat for this bitty but entertaining doc broadcast soon after the madcap’s death. A fitting tribute, but not a patch on the TV version broadcast a couple of years before his death

Radio 2 are always late to every party and have a mixed record with documentaries: their new documentary ‘Days In The Life Of Pink Floyd’ is a diary-based version of the usual story and is broadcast on Monday, October 10^th at 10pm.

ANNIVERSARIES: Happy birthday greetings to AAA members born between October 11^th and 17^th: Paul Simon who turns 70 on October 13^th, Justin Hayward (guitarist with The Moody Blues 1967-present) who turns 65 on October 14^th and Bob Weir (guitarist with The Grateful Dead 1965-95) who turns 64 on October 16^th. 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 11^th 1963); The Beatles’ prestigious TV gig on ‘Saturday Night At The London Palladium’ (October 13^th 1963); The Who release their milestone single ‘I Can See For Miles’ (October 13^th 1967); Janis Joplin’s ashes are scattered off the coast of California after nearly a year of legal hold-ups (October 13^th 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 14^th 1966); Pink Floyd play their first major gig at the launch party for underground newspaper International Times (October 15^th 1966); The Kinks release their all important follow-up to ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ (October 16^th 1964) and finally, The Beatles make their first TV appearance, singing ‘Some Other Guy’ at the Cavern Club for TV show ‘People And Places’ (October 17^th 1962) . 

News, Views and Music Issue 42 (Intro)

August 28:

♫ Well, here we are again for our 42^nd issue and the first of our second year. You may have noticed (and let’s be honest, it’s something you will most likely notice as you’ve found this article) that we now have a new homepage (it’s www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com if you’ve still come across us from one of the links to our old site – we’ll wait for you here if you want to go and give it a look). We’ve been trawling through website templates and web hosts for months now, trying to find a site that will allow us to give full access to our work without costing the earth. We haven’t yet found a site that will allow us to add all our work on in full with nice graphics (we do go on a bit most weeks, it’s safe to say), so for the moment we’re still linking our new site back to our old home at www.alansarchives.t35.com. Thanks to all those who’ve given us some positive feedback already – I shall get back to adding the new link to search engines soon and see if we can get some more readers interested. The best thing about our new home is the search engine which will allow you to search for articles or news items on all your favourite artists in both our reviews and newsletter sections – the worst is that we still can’t get our music section to work, so apologies if you’ve been trying to download our groovy tunes and are still finding problems. Anyway, there’s lots of sections for you to give us your input (although our old guestbook continues to run at **** ) so please, let us know what you think about our new look (or our old one) and what records you want to see reviewed (and ha ha ha to the friend of mine who suggested Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the Spice Girls’ Greatest Hits. She was joking, I think). In the meantime, after a quick chorus of ‘happy birthday to us’, let’s move on to the news – and what a busy week it’s been...

                                                 

♫ Beatles News: As the latest Beatles ‘B-Day’ on 09/09/09 gets ever nearer, Apple have released more news about their ‘Rock Band’ game and CD re-masters to excited fans across the globe. The first issue and remastering of the Beatles catalogue in 22 years contains some nice-looking packaging and, if you buy the complete ‘mono’ or ‘stereo’ boxes’, a limited edition DVD containing lots of unreleased Beatles song chatter recorded at Abbey Road between 1962 and 1969, plus old interviews rehashed from the Antghology series for the most part. Let’s hope they do it properly this time – fans won’t take much more sloppily-prepared material like the overblown ‘Anthology’ and the pointless ‘Love’. The chatter will also be heard in the game, depending on whether you manage to complete a song or fall apart somewhere before the end (we expect to hear lots of messages of ‘keep it together Ringo’ and ‘Paul’s broken a string’ before we might, possibly, get the Lennon admission ‘on behalf of the group and myself I hope we passed the audition!’) The game passes through 45 Beatle songs and several real-life Beatles surroundings (including the Shea Stadium and Ed Sullivan appearances) before passing through Abbey Road and lots of surreal pyschedelic landscapes (involving Sgt Peppers, Walruses and a Yellow Submarine, inevitably). Talking of submarines, the fab four’s fab film is to be re-made as a live-action by Disney and the director of the ‘Back To the Future’ series. We kid you not – without meaning to be mistaken for blue meanies, how exactly is that going to work without the Beatles there to play themselves?

♫ Buffalo Springfield News: Two rare versions of an early Stephen Stills song get an airing this week. ‘Sit Down, I Think I Love You’ – which was released on the band’s first album ‘Buffalo Springfield’ – also spawned a hit version by the Mojos in 1966 and was out of print for a long time till re-appearing on one of the many Nuggets Various Artists sets a decade or so back. The Liverpool band, who sadly just missed the craze for all things Mersey, have a long-needed best of out – ‘Everything’s Alright’  - which includes the track. Meanwhile Stills and Richie Furay’s early demo for the song (which would, I think, be recorded in 1965) is out on the latest Nuggets 4CD spin-off set, ‘Where The Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-68’

♫ Dire Straits News: We’ve made a few jokes on this website about Mark Knopfler’s slow rate of work (five years between Dire Straits records was the norm, even at the same age where others like Cat Stevens and Brian Wilson were churning out records every six months). But Knopfler has been writing faster than ever this decade – the forth-coming ‘Get Lucky’ is his third set since we started making this website! Word has it that it’s just as patchy as the rest of his solo work, although if it has as many highlights as ‘Sailing To Philadelphia’ we’ll be quite happy.

♫ Grateful Dead News/Jefferson Airplane News: Billy Graham’s peculiar farewell film to the Fillmore East venue – the site that made legends out of The Doors, the Airplane and the Dead among others – ‘The Fillmore; The Last Days’ makes its long-awaited appearance on DVD. I haven’t seen my copy in a long time (its not the kind of film you watch too often if you can help it) but there’s something compelling about all the hippie chatter and the well-loved concert promoter’s obvious distaste for a lot of the actions taken by the fans in the name of hippiedom.For the record, both the Dead and the Airplane put in appearances to say goodbye, but neither the Dead’s ‘Casey Jones’ or the Airplane’s rare live reading of the swear-worthy ‘We Should Be Together’ are among either band’s best work. 

♫ Jefferson Airplane News: It’s a busy month for those who buy their Airplane tickets fan-class, as the band are getting in on the current Woodstock nostalgia craze and re-issuing their set in full (the news came just too late to be included in last weeks’ ‘Woodstock special’, sadly). We discussed then how great this ‘dawn breakfast’ set was so it’s nice to hear it all together – just to reiterate, ‘Volunteers’ (a new song back then) rattles along nicely and is spot-on for the Woodtsock vibe, ‘Somebody To Love’ sounds very different to normal but still very good, ‘White Rabbit’ is more or less the same with Grace Slick on good form, ‘3/5s Of A Mile In 10 Seconds’ is screechy, scary and scatterbrainedly impressive, ‘Uncle Sam’s Blues’ is a rare once-in-a-lifetime-appearance Jorma Kaukanen song and ‘Won’t You Try?/Saturday Afternoon’ is the icing on a lovely love-in cake.  

♫ Janis Joplin News: Janis, too, gets the Woodstock treatment with the whole of her set exhumed and polished for shining CD in the festival’s 40^th anniversary year. We can only tell you about the tracks we’ve heard before but ‘Piece Of My Heart’ is faster and more energetic than usual, a horn drenched ‘Ball And Chain’ isn’t one of the best versions Janis ever did but still hits the spot, ‘Try’ is a brave stab at a difficult soul-rocker and ‘Work Me Lord’ (as seen in the director’s cut of the film) is stunning, one of the best live recordings of Miss Joplin around. 

♫ Yoko Ono News: Yoko’s 70^th decade seems to have been not only her busiest but her most successful. Hot on the heels (well, by Yoko’s standards) of ‘Rising’, ‘Blueprint For A Sunrise’ and the remixes/guest stars project ‘I’m A Witch’ comers the first record credited to the Plastic Band since 1973. ‘Between My Head AndThe Sky’ features son Sean Lennon and members of the ‘modern’ bands (ie we haven’t heard of them either) Ciba Matto and Cornelius. It’s meant to be one of Yoko’s angriest, least compromising sets yet – bet Lennon’s dead proud.

♫ Simon and Garfunkel News: Larry Knechtel, the session musician who invented and played the distinctive opening to ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ has died at his home age 69 from a suspected heart attack. Simon and Garfunkel were reportedly so enamoured with his intro to the song that the duo considered giving him a co-writing credit for his part in creating the song, which Knechtel also played with them during the pair’s last concerts together 1969-70.  

                          

♫ Anniversaries (August 28^th-September 3rd): Happy Birthday to us, of course, as we turned a year old on August 25^th and also to Al Jardine (guitarist with the Beach Boys 1962-3/65-92) who turns 67 on September 3^rd. Anniversaries of events even older than our website include: the Rolling Stones signing with Allen Klein – an event that will have almost as many repercussions for the band as when he signs with three of the Beatles in 1969 (August 28^th 1965 – they end up suing him for misrepresentation on September 1^st 1972); Cat Stevens scores his biggest hit in four years with the release of his single ‘Moonshadow’ (August 28^th 1971); George Harrison officially joins his school-friend Paul McCartney and a loudmouth rebel named John Lennon in a band then known as The Quarrymen 51 years ago this week (August 29^th 1958); Eight years later to the day the Beatles play their last ever live show (barring the Rooftop Concert) at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park; John and Yoko play practically their only full show together on stage at a ‘One To One’ charity for New York’s Willowbrook Hospital (August 30^th 1972 – when’s this well-regarded video coming out on DVD?); Denny Seiwell becomes the second member to quit Wings (in just a month, too) (August 30^th 1973); George Harrison is found guilty of plagiarising The Chiffons’ ‘He’s So Fine’ in his #1 hit ‘My Sweet Lord’ during a, quite frankly, stupid waste of time in a court-room (August 31^st 1976 – if George borrowed anything surely it was the song that inspired it: ‘Oh Happy Day’ by the Hawkins Singers); 10cc release their first album titled, err, 10cc (September 1^st 1973); Keith Richards’ home, known as ‘Redlands’, is badly destroyed by a fire – but luckily the singer isn’t home at the time (September 2^nd 1982) and finally, The Hollies finally score their big American breakthrough after three years of trying with a cover of Graham Gouldmann’s ‘Bus Stop’ (September 3^rd 1966).