News, Views and Music Issue 144 (Intro)

May 19^th:

Dear all, this week has been beyond my wildest dreams! At last we collectors have a fine set of BBC recordings to go alongside the classic sets by The Beatles, Kinks, Who and Animals, it seems only a matter of time before David Cameron is kicked out of the UK’s coalition (conservative MPs are busy drawing up signatures for a ‘crisis in confidence’ poll as we speak) and I have a bona fide fan. Well, some one made some nice comments on a Lindisfarne forum anyway – many thanks for the plug Derek if you’re still reading these newsletters and I’m just sorry I didn’t find the comment earlier! By the way, now that the Shorty Awards are over for another year (see news and views 129 – we got three votes, all in different categories sadly so we didn’t win anything!) we’ve replaced that box on our site with a ‘press releasers’ one. We’re having a bit of teething trouble with it at the moment, but in theory if our site is mentioned on another site it should appear on the list – please notify us at the usual email address (pattin82@yahoo.co.uk) if you’ve heard about us on a site that we might have missed! I’m sure this run of luck can’t last – I’m still waiting for the next dreaded ATOS form which seems to be overdue and there’s another pointless job centre appointment and hospital appointment next week where the last lot tell me to work less and the first lot tell me to work harder – but that’s another week. For the moment the sun is shining, the Byrds are singing and our site is roaring past 17,000 views (17414 at the last count!) See you next issue!

                                                    

♫ Lindisfarne News: Alan Hull played at Newcastle City Hall an impressive 120 times during his short life, both with Lindisfarne and with any number of solo and off-shoot bands. As Newcastle’s favourite musical sons, the City Hall has votes to have a plaque to commemorate the life of this great songwriter on July 19^th, when a street concert will be held featuring friends, family and bandmates. The event will mark 17 years since the singer’s tragic death at the age of 50 and is long overdue!

♫Lulu News: The singer will be the next guest on Pier’s Morgan’s ‘Life Show’ on ITV this Friday, May 18^th. Some TV listings (eg mine) had her down as guest last week where she was mysteriously replaced by Dennis Waterman – not the most fitting substitute for Lulu, even if they both do a lot of ‘shouting’! I have new respect for Morgan since his surprisingly supportive and heartfelt programme on Davy Jones’ death where he got the most out of a visibly upset Micky Dolenz and actually stopped talking for once – let’s hop the same is true for this series after some pretty lame interviewing techniques in his first series!

♫ Paul Simon News: Sweden doesn’t give out many music awards – in fact it’s main honour, The Polar Prize, is only awarded twice a year – once to a pop and once to a classical performer. This year Paul Simon’s been chosen to receive the prize, worth a cool £91,000, in a ceremony on August 28^th this year. Interestingly Yo Yo Ma is the recipient of the ‘classical’ award this year – never have the lines between pop and classical music been more thinly drawn (I can’t wait for the year Paul McCartney wins both!)

ANNIVERSARIES: Birthdays this week are for those AAA stars born between May 16^th and 22^nd: Pete Townshend (guitarist with The Who 1965-82 and various reunions) turns 67 on May 19^th. Anniversaries of events include: Pete Townshend will have bad memories of a who gig at the Fillmore East – tired of seeing fans climbing onto the stage, Pete kicks one off during the middle of the set only to find out it is a policeman! He spends a night in prison on assault charges (May 16^th 1969); The Beatles headline their first ever concert in the exotic location of Slough following the success of ‘Please Please Me’ during a Helen Shapiro tour (May 18^th 1963); Dire Straits release their debut single ‘Sultans Of Swing’ (May 19^th 1979); Three Beatles get back together for an impromptu jam session to celebrate Eric Clapton’s wedding to George Harrison’s ex Patti Boyd, the first time more than two moptops have been seen in public since 1970 (May 19^th 1979); The BBC bans a Beatles track for the first time – no, not the drugs-referenced ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ or the subversive ‘Revolution’ but ‘A Day In The Life’ (and its not even the ‘love to turn you on’ postscript but the line about ‘4000 holes’ relating to drug injections) (May 20^th 1967), Our AAA classic no 50 – the first Stephen Stills/Manassas album – is released (May 20^th 1972), two important dates for The Who on May 21^st : 1965 sees the release of second single ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’ and the band’s first appearance on Ready Steady Go, the TV show that will become synonymous with the group (1965) while Pete Townshend marries first wife Karen Astley in 1968 and finally, the first – of many – posthumous CSNY releases, the live record ‘4 Way Street’ is released (May 22^nd 1971).

News, Views and Music Issue 92 (Intro)

Hello and welcome to a very special occasion for us at Alan’s Album Archives. David Cameron’s got the sack!!! Err, no sorry, we got a bit carried away there but it can only be a matter of time given his dodgy views about cuts, multi-culturalism and Egypt’s democracy this week – no we mean it’s our 200^th article! Well, OK, I know what you’re thinking, it says ‘news and views no 92’ up there – but bear with us because we’ve had 101 reviews, five ‘specials’ reviewing new releases and two April Fool’s Day articles which by my reckoning makes this article 200! As a result, we’re looking back to both the distant past (as far as this site’s concerned anyway) and the future this week. 200 Issues eh? Who’d’ve thought it?! Well, us, actually, after all we really wanted to get as far with this project as we could – but I must admit the road ahead looks rocky and short rather than long and winding like we’d hoped. We only have two weeks’ worth of test trading now and we’ve not made anything like the amount of money we wanted to keep us afloat as a fully functioning viable business (please keep helping us out by buying from our Amazon links if you’re in a shopping mood!), but on the plus side we have a much bigger following now than before and hope to keep plugging away at this site for the foreseeable future. In the meantime we’re on 4700 odd hits, with Rolling Stones albums and Who albums still our most popular searches and have had around 200 hits for our YouTube videos. Oh and we’ve now lost our Sims disc, just as The Beatles were getting on quite well (we never did quite turn John Lennon into a five-star star but, never mind, did I ever tell you how well we’re doing on TV Tycoon with our Beatles and Monkees re-runs?!) It must be those CD pixies stealing my things again, only they’re branching out into CD-roms (weirdly enough, I’ve been reading a lot recently about invisible goblins who live only in my current home country of Lancashire and follow people around to steal things from them – if so, hoi! Stop it and give me my disc back! Well, you never know, there must be some reason why my things keep disappearing...) Alright, enough plugs for the ‘Haunted Liverpool’ books, on with the proper news now...

                                                                   

♫ Beatles News: Last issue we went to press a day too soon to tell you about the ITV programme ‘I Was There...When The Beatles Played The Cavern’ (broadcast last Wednesday, but probably available on some technological monstrosity out there somewhere on the internet for another month). It was the usual kind of thing but well put together, with contributions from Pete Best and the great merseybeat group Undertakers  as well as some nice bits from the archives featuring those sadly no longer with us such as Alaistar Taylor, Bob Wooler and the Cavern doorman. The production team used more of the famous Beatles Cavern performance of ‘Some Other Guy’ from 1962 than we’ve seen in some years (though the superlative 1980s doc ‘The Early Beatles’ is still the only place where you can see the footage complete) as well as some great footage of Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Kinks playing their own sets at the Cavern. Well worth looking out for.

♫ Lindisfarne News: I’ve finally seen a copy of the Lindisfarne set ‘The Charisma Years’ which came out at the tail end of last year. It’s a four CD set containing the first three Studio Lindisfarne albums (before the 1972 break-up), the ‘Lindisfarne Live’ album and ‘Roll On Ruby’, the first album by Lindisfarne Mark II (although strangely the follow-up, the superior ‘Happy Daze’, is missing). Apart from the bonus of getting these albums – all of them quite rare nowadays, barring ‘Nicely Out Of Tune’ and ‘Fog On The Tyne’ – collectors get the bonus of a few extra bonus tracks on each album, including the 1970 outtake ‘My Window’ and a few alternate mixes of the ‘Ruby’ tracks, as well as the usual bonus tracks from the 1990s CD re-issues. All in all, a nice set if you don’t own these albums already (and if you have any interest in any of the artists on our site you should own it, the first three albums at least!)

ANNIVERSARIES: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear the-following-list-names, happy birthday to you all (February 16^th-22^nd): Yoko Ono who turns 78 on February 18^th and Alan Hull (singer-songwriter with Lindisfarne 1970-74 and 1978-95) who would have been 66 on February 20^th. Anniversaries of events include: The Beatles leave the cold winter weather of Britain to fly out to India to study transcendental meditation under the Maharishi (albeit only John, Cynthia, George and Patti fly out on this day, February 16^th 1968); The Beatles release their first recordings after an unprecedented six-month gap, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ (February 17^th 1967); Pink Floyd premiere their new live show ‘Eclipse: Songs for Assorted Lunatics’ which, after a few changes, becomes the album ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ (February 17^th 1972); The Beach Boys release their last album for four years ‘Holland’ (February 17^th 1972); John Lennon releases his last album before his four-year sabbatical, the covers album ‘Rock and Roll’ (February 17^th 1975); The Who release their first single (under that name at least) ‘I Can’t Explain’ (February 18^th 1965); David Gilmour officially joins Pink Floyd, appearing alongside an ailing Syd Barrett for a few shows before taking over the role completely (February 18^th 1968); Lulu marries Bee Gee Maurice Gibb in a Buckinghamshire Church at the age of just 20! (February 18^th 1969); Otis Redding releases his best-selling album ‘Otis Blue’ (AAA album no 4, remember!; February 19^th 1966); Paul McCartney and Wings have their single ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ banned by the BBC (February 19^th 1972); George Harrison is found guilty of plagiarising The Chiffons’ ‘He’s So Fine’ on ‘My Sweet Lord’ in one of the silliest court cases that has ever been held (February 19^th 1976); The Hollies release their ‘breakthrough’ hit ‘Just One Look’ (February 21^st 1963); Simon and Garfunkel release their last album as a duo ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (February 21^st 1964); The Beatles start filming their second movie ‘Help!’ in London (February 22^nd 1965); 10cc sign to their second label ‘Mercury’ after a two-album deal with the UK label (February 22^nd 1975) and finally, John Lennon scores his last hit record for six years with ‘No 9 Dream’ (February 22^nd 1975).

News, Views and Music Issue 26 (Intro)

March 23:

♫ Hello and welcome to all our friends, fiends and family members old and new out there in the happy worlds of hyperspace (can spaces really get hyper? Sorry I digress…) There’s a whole bunch of news to deliver this week so let’s update you quicker than a Neil Young discography needs to be updated and get on with things. First up, welcome to all of you who are joining us after seeing our advert in the April 2009 edition of ‘Record Collector’ magazine (on page 127 to be exact). Have a good look around, make yourself feel at home and give us all the feedback you like (where would rock and roll be without feedback, eh?!?) I’ve been an avid reader of Record Collector magazine since before I was born (no hang on, that sounds wrong …I’ve been reading it as long as I can remember and own back issues that date back to years before I was born, there that sounds better) and I’ve always wanted to advertise something in it without having to sell half my collection for the privilege. And before anyone starts asking, no we don’t have any connections at all with the ‘Alan’s Record Shop’ who are listed in the classifieds above us, that’s just a sweet coincidence, so please don’t start e-mailing in and asking us to sell you records (we’ll only have to point you in their direction if you do).

Secondly, there’s a temporal anomaly stasis flow in the air which can only mean one thing – our long awaited April fools’ day edition is here! (See ‘news, views and music’ no 1255, which should be listed somewhere below this current one). Seeing as I’m away next week and won’t be able to add another ‘proper’ issue to the site for a fortnight, my future self in 2034 contacted me via a hyperspatial tele-tranpsorter link and sent me the missing newsletter by time machine. So here as an exclusive: a unique chance to peek at the future and see what all your favourite AAA artists (and some new ones) will be up to in 25 years’ time. I can’t understand much of it myself – there seems to be something about ‘clandusprods’ which means nothing to me - but it obviously means something in the year 2034 so read on and hope all will be revealed when the time comes! Meanwhile, back in 2009, here is our latest round-up of all newsworthy AAA-things this week… 

♫ Beatles news: More on that edition of ‘Beatles – Rock Band’ game we spoke about a couple of newsletters back. Dhani Harrison, George’s son, has delivered a press release about the game and promises that it will include UNRELEASED BEATLES RECORDINGS!!! Naturally enough, Apple don’t want him to say anything more until things are finalised so we don’t yet know if this means something dreary like alternate mixes a la the “Love” album, alternate versions of previously issued recordings a la the better parts of ‘Anthology’ or completely unknown songs (not that there are many of those still unreleased in the Beatles’ archives, but hey we can dream…and if all this hoo-hah means the band are finally releasing Macca’s apparently weird tape-loop filled ‘Carnival Of Light’ which has been much-talked about in recent months then how the hell are we gamers meant to play along with that?!?) The game is still due for release in September and will include ‘at least’ 100 Beatles tracks to play along with, according to the European Gamer site. For those who don’t know, ‘Rock Band’ is a game for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii (though I have it on good authority that you really really really won’t want to buy the last-named console as its the Spice Girls of the gaming world, without substance overblown and hyped…) where you try to follow a coloured-note sequence for either a guitar, bass, drum or microphone part. How the makers of the game are going to include the orchestra-based ‘Yesterday’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and the middle section of ‘A Day In the Life’ is anybody’s guess – but, suffice to say, the makers of this site are all very excited by the prospect of becoming ‘the fifth Beatle’ and playing along to some old friends!

Secondly, a DVD entitled ‘Composing The Beatles Songbook: Lennon and McCartney 1966-70’ is out this month featuring interviews with Beatles associates Klaus Voorman (the band’s ‘Hamburg’ friend and bassist on many Beatles solo records), Barry Miles (Macca biographer and manager of Apple Record spin-off ‘Zapple’), Peter Doggett (ex-Record Collector editor and one of the best music journalists around), Johnny Rogan (Beatles and CSNY biographer), Paul Gambacini (1960s expert whose had a hand in pretty much everything) and Maureen Cleave (friend of Lennon’s and the journalist whose interview with Lennon led to the ‘bigger than Jesus’ misquote). Expect detailed analysis of several Beatles tracks!      

Thirdly, there’s yet another Beatles book out in April – and its one of the largest yet! Barry Miles’ ‘The Beatles Phenomenon: A Celebration in Words, Pictures and Music’ just about gets away with the title via the ingenious device of including sheet music of several Beatles songs alongside copious words and pictures (many of them new, so I hear). Extensive appendixes include such common ground as a list of every Beatles and Quarryman gig, recording sessions at Abbey Road and TV appearances, although an interview with a cleaning lady at the Hamburg club where the pre-fame Beatles played is a new one on me! Whether all this is enough for the collector to put up with the price-tag remains to be seen – perhaps it would make a decent birthday present for some of you instead?

Also, I’m not entirely sure where to put this piece of news, but The Beat Goes On are issuing the first two Denny Laine 1970s solo LPs on a single CD for the first time and both of them include contributions from his then-current writing partner Paul McCartney. Both 1973’s ‘Aah…Laine’ and 1977’s ‘Hollydays’ are routinely re-issued and quickly deleted again, passing nearly all of his possible fans by. Well, this time Beat Goes On are sticking the two albums out together, a trick first tried in 2007. Both albums include large cameos for various members of Wings; the former with the early Henry Mccullough-era band and the latter album – recorded at the end of Wings’ ‘London Town’ sessions - is a particular rarity; it’s the only record barring the classic ‘Band On The Run’ that includes Paul, Linda and Denny playing everything between them! The first album features several Denny Laine originals including Wings out-takes and the second features several covers selected from Buddy Holly’s back catalogue (the publishing rights of which had just been bought by Paul McCartney, not co-incidentally)  Both albums are flawed masterpieces which sold fairly poorly at the time despite the presence of an ex-Beatles but, to these ears at least, Denny Laine is a deeply under-rated writer and vocalist and the re-issue of these two albums for the first time in decades is highly welcome.

♫ Belle and Sebastian News:  The good news is that main-man Stuart Murdoch has broken the rather uncharacteristically long gap between Belle and Sebastian records by announcing that he is busy recording a new album, due for release in June. The bad news is that it’s a solo record not recorded with the band (who have gone very quiet since Isobel Campbell left in 2006). The album will feature three guest vocalists (all unknowns chosen after an online singing competition; very Belle and Sebastian that) and has a working title of ‘God help The Girl’. More news if and when we hear it!

♫ Byrds News: Under-rated latter-day member Gene Parsons’ under-rated early 70s solo album ‘Kindling’ was re-issued on CD on March 10^th. Tracks include Gene’s re-recording of a Little Feat cover (‘Willin’) heard on the expanded CD re-issue of the Byrds’ ‘Untitled’ CD and 10 Gene Parsons originals, but no bonus tracks by the looks of things!  

♫ Jefferson Airplane News: Guitarist Jorma Kaukanen has released his first solo album in a while, ‘River Of Time’, which includes 13 new songs. Ok, so that was as brief a bit of news as I’ve ever written for this site but hardly anybody takes any notice of Airplane/ Starship releases these days, never mind spin-off solo CDs so I haven’t ot any more to tell you, sorry!

♫ Lindisfarne News: Typical – you write a review of the top five AAA-related BBC session albums and then EMI go and release another promising-looking set which might force me to re-write the list! Yes, as that sentence implies, EMI are at long last re-releasing ‘Lindisfarne: At The BBC, The Charisma Years 1971-73’ on April 6^th (An earlier CD release covering the years 1971-75 came out in 2000 and disappeared so quickly I didn’t even get to see what the cover looked like!) There are a massive 36 tracks on the double-CD including all the usual suspects (4 versions of ‘Lady Eleanor’, 3 versions of ‘Fog On The Tyne’) plus some unusual songs (a version of obscure early B-side ‘Knacker’s Yard Blues’, plus a lot of tracks from Alan Hull’s first solo ‘Pipedream’ as played by the mark 2 line-up of the band).While you’re digesting that piece of news, here is a final reminder, too, for the long awaited CD re-issue of Jack The Lad’s fourth album ‘Jackpot’ on Monday! 

♫ Otis Redding News: Otis is having a rather busy month considering that he died 41 years ago – with a live CD and live DVD both due for release in March/the beginning of April. The former, ‘Live in London and Paris’ features 19 tracks from two separate concerts and has been available in Australia since February. Many of the songs are taken from our own AAA classic album ‘Otis Blue’ (see review no 4), along with Otis’ explosive cover of The Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’.  The latter release, a live DVD entitled ‘Respect! Otis Live’ contains archive footage from 1966-1967 including the Monterey Pop Festival and Otis’ ‘Stax Volt Tour’.  

♫ Small Faces News: A new Steve Marriott DVD, ‘All Or Nothing - Live From London’, recorded in 1985, is due in the shops on March 30th. If my copies of the 1980s ‘pub tours’ are anything to go by Steve really wasn’t in good form by this period but, heck, this is a rare example of Marriott on film in his post-Small Faces/ Humble Pie days and worth a quick re-issue for that alone. The concert was recorded live in London’s Camden Palace Theatre and features an hour of Marriott material from all stages of his career (including my favourite Small Faces song ‘Tin Soldier’ I’m pleased to say!)

Also, there’s been yet another DVD release (I make this the 4^th  to date, plus at least 3 VHS versions) of the Bo Diddley tribute concert of 1985. Several AAA artists are involved in the set, including Beach Boy Carl Wilson, Moody Blue John Lodge and the Small Faces’ Ronnie Lane in one of the bassist’s last concert appearances before his MS-related death in 1991. On the positive side, this set is dirt cheap – but be warned, you don’t actually get much of a chance to see anyone in great detail apart from Bo Diddley!  

♫ 10cc News: Eric Stewart’s pre-10cc band ‘Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders’ finally get a decent CD-sized best-of – the first in 13 years! Quite alarming when you consider how many hits they had (and how many infuriatingly poor Hollies and Searchers best-ofs are on the market!) Despite the billing, the set includes several post-Fontana Stewart-sung recordings (including the band’s biggest hits ‘A Groovy Kind Of Love’ and ‘The Letter’) so is compelling hearing for all curious 10cc fans. Most interesting of all to the 10cc collector, however, is an Eric Stewart-led cover of Graham Gouldmann’s classic cheeky psychedelia song ‘Schoolgirl’, a song well known to Hollies collectors after their cover appeared on ‘Abbey Road Volume Two’. This is, as far as I know, the first time the Mockingbird and the Mindbender worked together and pre-dates 10cc by quite a long time.

♫ The Who News: At last, the band’s best ever DVD ’30 Years Of Maximum R and B’ gets a re-issue – it comes out today in fact! – and now includes a full second disc’s worth of extras, running to an impressive 7 hours 50 minutes! For those who don’t know, ‘R and B’ is one of the best career retrospectives of any AAA artist out there, covering the band from 1964 right up to their dissolution in 1982 with plenty of famous career landmarks from Woodstock and The Isle of Wight plus rare TV appearances and filmed-from-the-audience footage. The extras added to this disc include a full concert – alas one dating from 1981 without Moony when The Who were slightly past their peak.     

♫ Neil Young News: Those Neil Young CDs just keep on coming! Just in the six months this site has been up and running we’ve already had a live CSNY CD, a Young-directed CSNY documentary, an archive concert from 1968, an abandoned archive box-set and now a new album. ‘Fork In The Road’ is yet another of those modern quirky Young albums with a concept – all about a car. A bit like the last album, 2007’s ‘Chrome Dreams II’ only the car is one of Neil’s own-designed electronically powered vehicles and inspires several ecologically-based pleas (a bit like ‘Greendale’ then possibly. Oh no). The CD is released on April 6^th and a limited edition contains a bonus DVD though I’m not too sure what that will contain as yet. More news when we have it!

♫ Anniversaries: Happy Birthday To You if your name happens to be Susanne Sulley (vocalist with The Human League 1981-present). Anniversaries of events this week include: that momentous day in the Beatles’ professional life – the day they first wore gray collarless suits! (at a gig in Barnston, March 23^rd 1962), the publication of ‘In His Own Write’, Lennon’s surreal mix of childlike drawings and adult humour which became a best-seller in 1964 (March 23^rd), the release of Pink Floyd’s mega-selling ‘Dark Side Of the Moon’ (March 24^th 1973), the premiere of Who film ‘Tommy’ (March 26^th 1975) and the opening of the Royal Albert Hall by Queen Victoria, site of many a classic AAA live album and features on the cover of Pentangle LP ‘Basket Of Light’ (March 29^th 1871).

And for next week (while we’re away): the Birthday Bumps go to Graeme Edge (drummer with The Moody Blues 1965-present) who turns 67 on March 30^th, Ronnie Lane (bassist with the Small Faces 1965-68) who would have been 63 on April 1^st, Simon Cowe (guitarist with Lindisfarne 1969-93) who turns 61 on the same day and Jeff Barry (Monkees producer/ composer) who turns 70 on April 3^rd. Anniversaries of events include: the ‘first’ Mods vs Rockers clash which took place at Clacton on March 30^th 1964 (that’s ‘first’ as in the first one big enough to make the local papers!), Pink Floyd release their first single ‘Arnold Layne’ (March 30^th 1967), The Who break the record for concert sales at Madison Square Gardens -  all 80,000 seats are sold out in just 60 hours (April 1 1974), the two seminal Beatles compilations ‘red’ (1962-66) and ‘blue’ (1967-70) are released in the UK on April 3^rd 1973 and finally the Beatles occupy all five places on the top five American singles chart, a feat never equalled before or since (April 4^th 1964: Can’t Buy Me Love/ Twist and Shout/ She Loves You/ I Want To Hold Your Hand/ Please Please Me – a further seven Beatles singles are also registered in the top 100 for that week!)    

News, Views and Music Issue 24 (Intro)

March 9:

♫ Hellloooooo to you all and welcome to another slice of your favourite weird and wonderful weekly newsletter devoted to AAA artistes. As you might have noticed, we’ve added a ‘puzzle page’ to the website and hope to bring you lots of quizzes and things in the months to come. For those of you who are already giving us ‘cross words’, we have included the solutions in print form along with each puzzle – though for some reason the links don’t seem to work on all computers so apologies if your computer happens to be one of those that takes one look at the links and has a nervous breakdown. Feel free to submit your own, although alas we can’t offer any prizes – unless of course you count being named in these pages as an AAA clever clogs. We’ll notify you in these newsletters every time we add a puzzle. We forgot to mention last week that we had also added a new section of short stories. These aren’t related to music, but we’ve got nowhere else to put them and thought you might like them – and even if you don’t, they’re there all the same! A trhird and final piece of website news this week – we’ve added our link to up-and-coming website fanpop. Basically the idea is that anyone can write anything they like about any group of any era and make quizzes and swap photographs and videos and stuff. It’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already (or, indeed, if you haven’t already visited us from that link – hello to you all!) – be sure to give us a rating of five stars on your way out!

♫ Beach Boys News: Alas I haven’t bought it yet so I’m not eligible, but those of you who own Brian Wilson’s latest DVD ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ are invited to take part in a great competition at www.brianwilson.com.  Brian’s official website are offering a goody bag full of Brian-related and Brian-signed prizes to the person who can answer the most questions about the DVD correctly. If you happen to win, remember where you read this news and send us in a t-shirt or a surfboard or two! (Only kidding, have them framed instead and send us a picture!)

♫ Beatles News: Paul and Ringo are getting back together! Well, sort of – the two are playing the same charity gig in New York on April 6^th and rumour has it the two former moptops might play a few songs together. This would be the first time the two Beatles have worked together since the George Harrison memorial concert in 2002 – and would, amazingly, be only the second time the two Beatles have played together on stage (they’ve met up lots of times in the studio though!) More news if and when we hear it!

♫ Lindisfarne News: It’s getting nearer to J-day! Just in case you haven’t read the last couple of newsletters, Lindisfarne spin-off Jack the Lad’s fourth and final album ‘Jackpot’ will be securing its first CD release on March 23^rd. A review should be coming your way sometime in April!

♫ Monkees News: Sad news I’m afraid. Peter Tork announced on his official website on Tuesday that he was suffering from a rare form of cancer of the head and neck. He’s been suffering for a while apparently but has only just released the news. Luckily the prognosis is good – Peter underwent surgery this week in New York which seems to have been a success and prevented the cancer from spreading. After a short rest he is due to start radiation treatment for it – more news to follow if and when we hear it. It goes without saying that all of us at the AAA wish Peter a happy and speedy recovery and hope he’ll up to more monkee business soon.

♫ Who News: The Who look like they will sell out of copies of ‘The Who Sell Out’ on release day, given the amount of fuss the album seems to be causing in several music papers. The release day is March 16^th by the way so you’ve just got time to start queuing outside HMV and ensure you get a copy! Alas, there are no free tins of beans, John Mason Cars or even rotosound strings to go with the CD!

♫ Anniversaries: Hippo Birthdays this week go to Phil Lesh (bass player with the Grateful Dead 1965-95) who turns 69 on March 15^th, Mike Love (singer with the Beach Boys 1961-present day) who turns 68 on the same day and AAA reader Lizzie Carnogan who turns 27 on the same day yet again. Many happy returns and CD-shaped presents to all. Anniversaries of events this week include: The Blue Jays (Justin Hayward and John Lodge) attend the playback of their spin-off album of the same name with nearly 3000 fans in a rather prestigious setting - Carnegie Hall! (March 10^th 1975), Neil Young enjoys having a #1 album in both the US and UK (‘Harvest’, March 11^th 1971) and Paul and Linda McCartney got married at Marleybone Registry Office 40 years ago this week (March 12^th  1969).

News, Views and Music Issue 22 (Intro)

February 20:

♫ Welcome to our slightly delayed issue of the AAA this week. You’re getting this ‘double bill’ edition slightly out of order this week, partly because there’s just so much going on we haven’t had time to write anything and partly because we’ve been engrossed in the new Graham Nash box set. Although we missed our valentine’s special last week (and very, err, ‘lovely’ it was too), we’re helping you get prepared for next year with our handy guide to the five best AAA songs about love you might not already know about! (no obvious choices for us because we’re assuming that if you’re reading our site you’ll already know about ‘Yesterday’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Nights IN White satin’ etc !) No, we’re not talking about the spice girls and their bank balances, not even George Bush and oil, but love in all its forms.  So while the love birds circling round your head appear to be singing, why not get them to hum along with our latest top five. So even if everyone else seems to have forgotten you and your postman has delivered you yet more bills instead of valentines, remember this site loves you, dear readers! Now where are my cards and chocolates? (Heck, when did this date get so commercialised?)

Now, where was I? Oh yes, the website. We’re well past the 100 mark in terms of ‘hits’ to our site now (we’re probably not far off 100 hits in other senses as well in terms of what spice girls fanatics want to do to us…) and alphabet-wise I’m right up to the ‘rolling stones’ in my adding-our-site-to-every-possible-AAA-related-website-that-has-links efforts. ‘Hello’ to all our new members, ‘How are you?’ to all our old members and ‘Where have you been all my life?!’ to those who haven’t discovered us yet! That’s all for this week/ fortnight/ whatever it is – now onto the news…

♫ Johnny Cash news: Not much news to report this week, so imagine my excitement when I opened my latest non-AAA purchase – the first proper DVD dedicated to the early days of the fantastic children’s series of Sesame Street – and discovered a rare Johnny Trash, err, sorry, Johnny Cash duet with Oscar the Grouch. For the Johnny Cash completists out there (and the under-fives) (or, quite possibly both) you might be interested to know that Johnny sings the rare folk song about the rotten and sneaky ‘Nasty Dan’ who falls in life with ‘Nasty Pearl’ and has a family of nasty children. Not quite sure what the moral of the song is (and, let’s face it, there’s a moral in every Sesame Street segment somewhere – although its usually along the lines of ‘don’t hit Big Bird with a spade’ or ‘stop annoying Bert, Ernie!’) – but so relaxed and consequence-free is this version that the man in black even gets to wish Oscar the Grouch a ‘very rotten day’. As for the performance, the song isn’t ‘trash’ at all and features the man in black only slightly past his top form (it was shown as part of the 1974 season and can be found on the ‘bonus features’ part of disc three of ‘Sesame Street – The Old School, Part One’).

♫ Lindisfarne News:  The fourth and final Jack The Lad album ‘Jackpot’ will be back on catalogue in mid-March this year. Missing on CD for years and years, this last album by the Lindisfarne spin-off group dates from 1975 and is set to include several unreleased tracks. Although by this stage only Ray Laidlaw remains from the original Lindisfarne band, the band retain more of the group’s old sound than the ‘Lindisfarne Mark Two’ line-up, as anyone who has read our review of the first Jack The Lad album (see review no 61) will know. The full track listing is as follows: Eight Ton Crazy (Fairweather-Low)/ Amsterdam (Mitchell)/ Steamboat Whistle Blues (Hartford)/ Walter’s Drop (Jack The Lad)/ We’ll Give You The Roll (Mitchell)/ Trinidad (Mitchell)/ You, You, You (Mitchell)/ Let It Be Me (Mitchell)/ The Tender (Trad)/ Take Some Time (Mitchell)/ Trinidad (alternate version)/ See How They Run (Cowe)/ Eight Ton Crazy (alternate version)/ Amsterdam (alternate version)/ Buy Broom Buzzems > The Tender > The Marquis Of Tullybardine (live medley)/ Will You Miss Me? (Guthrie)/ Hungry For Love (Mills).

Anniversaries #1: Many happy returns of the day to  Yoko Ono, who turns 76 on February 18^th and Alan Hull (Lindisfarne 1969-95) who would have been 64 on February 20^th. Anniversaries of events this week include: the live premier of the seminal Pink Floyd epic ‘Dark Side Of the Moon’ (February 17^th 1972), the release of The Who’s debut single ‘I Can’t Explain’ (February 18^th 1965), Lulu gets married to Bee Gee Maurice Gibb (February 18^th 1969), Wings’ ‘protest’ single ‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ is banned by the BBC (February 19^th 1972) and Simon and Garfunkel finally release their last and much-talked about LP ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (February 21^st 1970). 

As for the following week, many hippy hippy happy birthday shakes to George Harrison who would have been 66 on February 25^th, Johnny Cash who would have been 79 on February 26^th, Brian Jones (Rolling Stones 1962-69) who would have been 67 on February 28^th and Roger Daltrey (The Who 1965-83 plus several re-unions) who turns 65 on March 1^st. Anniversaries of events this week include: the Byrds fly away after a farewell performance in New Jersey on February 24^th 1973, the first Beatles single is released in America by Vee Jay Records (‘Please Please Me’ on February 25^th 1963, with the band mis-spelled ‘The Beattles’ on the sleeve), the original Cavern Club in Matthew Street, Liverpool closes on February 28^th 1966 with debts of £70,000 and The Moody Blues release their first album with the ‘classic’ line-up – ‘Days Of Future Passed’ (March 1^st 1967).

News, Views and Music Issue 7 (Intro)

October 6th:

♫ New releases this week: a very weird Jefferson Thingy album (ie another curious  Airplane/ Starship hybrid), with Paul Kantner hosting a CD on which various friends and associates record cover versions of songs that inspired the making of ‘his’ band (there’s something odd there—Marty Balin, the real founder of Jefferson Airplane and its early driving force, features here simply as a ‘guest’, just as he has on all recent Kantner-founded Jefferson CDs. Actually Marty hired Paul not the other way around!) I’m also deeply confused as to why David LeFlamme, founder and mainstay of unfairly neglected San Francisco band ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’ appears on this album—as far as I know his group had nothing in common with the Airplane except the time period and playing the odd show at the same venues! Some good news however—after getting her out of retirement to write some hilarious sleeve-notes for the last few Jefferson-related releases, Kantner has finally got Grace Slick back into the studio for the first time since the Airplane reunion of 1989, albeit you won’t know that from the sleeve as Grace only sings on a ’hidden’ song unlisted on the packaging.

♫ One other new release this week: the first-time-on-CD release by the forgotten second line-up of Lindisfarne, ‘Happy Daze’ (first released in 1974). For those of you who’ve read my review of ’It’s Jack The Lad’ on the site already (review number 61), this is what the other two founder members of Lindisfarne were up to during the mid-70s. After the band’s big split in 1972, Alan Hull and Ray Jackson carried on with the old band name for two poorly received albums, ’Roll On Ruby’ (1973, released on CD in 2005) - a quite dull and uninspiring album, sadly rather deserving of its unloved status among most fans—and this little gem, which sold terribly badly but really show this second line-up of Lindisfarne beginning to click together (the poor sales meant there never was a third album by this line-up, despite reaching as far as the writing and rehearsal stage—anooyingly, most of the people who worked on that project say it was the best out the three). Jacaka’s lead vocals on this album are some of his best, veering from blues to pop with ease, while new members Thomas Duffy (gravel-throated bassist) and Kenny Craddock (falsetto and keyboards) all but steal the show. Alan Hull is, unusually, relegated to novelty songs about drinking too heavily. Best of all, though, is the presence of a very early acoustic Alan Hull song, ’River’, which was inventively recorded in the open air when the band got bored of the studio and features a prime Hully vocal tinged with bird-song. How this understated lovely composition, the twin sister to Hully’s popular ’Winter Song’, got left off the first three Lindisfarne records I have no idea! Worth buying the CD for alone, now that its out at budget price.

♫ New Oasis album ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ is also out this week, but it needs to becomne a bit cheaper before I can afford to buy it! The latest batch of national reviews/previews for it  have taken me quite by surprise, being as negative about the album and the band as they used to be back in the bad old days of ’Be Here Now’ (nice ideas dragged out for much longer than they needed to be) and ’Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants (a patchy but generally under-rated little gem).I’ve read about six times now what a bizarre thing it is for the band to be aping psychedelia in this day and age —not so, I say! (most of my favourite Oasis tracks are cod-psychedelia, from ’Champagne Supernove’ to ’Who Feels Love?’, so perhaps its monkeynbuts AAA fans rather than mainstream critics who are going to like this album?! Hope so!) 

♫ Anniversaries This Week: Kevin Godley (10cc, 1972-75) turns 63 on October 7th, while October 9th would have seen both the 68th birthday of John Lennon and the 64th birthday of John Entwistle. Events this week: The Beatles reject a record $1 million offer to return to touring after the owners of Shea Stadium collect the record amount(1967; October 7); 15 years later, The Who kick off their 1982 ’farewell tour’ at that very stadium (they reformed in 2000; so strictly speaking it’s a first ’farewell tour’ in the Frank Sinatra sense of the word; October 12) and John Lennon (nearly) celebrates his 35th birthday by finally getting his ’green card’ , a decision which allows him to become a US citizen despite the drugs record that nearly had him deported from the US several times during the 70s (October 7).