Music
Record Collector
Jukebox Heroes
Continuing our ongoing survey of unusual formats, Simon Wright looks at the rise and fall of jukebox EPs and 'Little LPs'
4 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
THE WHO, WHAT, WHERE AND HOW OF 'WHY'
The song Why has a significant place in music history because it was one of the tracks the fledgling Beatles recorded with Tony Sheridan in 1961 before making a recording debut in their own right. But few people know of an earlier, 1958 recording of the song made by Sheridan, which recently surfaced on a 10\" acetate. Beatles scholar Hans Olof Gottfridsson tells the story of a song that would later attain immortality by association.
10+ min |
January 2023
Record Collector
33 1/3 minutes with...Jake Bugg
A prodigious talent, Jake Bugg burst out of Nottingham aged 18 with his self-titled debut album in 2012. Featuring timeless rock’n’roll hits Lightning Bolt and Two Fingers, it saw Bugg championed by Noel Gallagher and starting a fascinating career that has led to albums produced by Rick Rubin and The Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach. After 2021’s poppier Saturday Night Sunday Morning returned Bugg to the Top 3, his debut has recently been reissued as a deluxe set adding demos and a London Royal Albert Hall show. Bugg tells RC of rediscovering teenage demos, hanging out in Rick Rubin’s garden, and getting walloped with indie stars at football.
4 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
auteur to author
Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock'n'roll It's all about the 'tude
3 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
david quantick likes
...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remake/Remodel - or re-record?
3 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
mac on black
Fan or obsessive? Ian McCann long since crossed the divide
4 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
music to visit
Bob Stanley carries pop's baggage everywhere Ark of the lost Raiders
4 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
Not Forgotten
Keith Levene 1957-2022 - Keith Levene was, in a literal sense, hugely instrumental in the formation of punk and post-punk. As a teenage member of The Clash, he persuaded Joy Strummer to join the band. He taught Viv Albertine of The Slits to play guitar, and alongside Jah Wobble and John Lydon, he was responsible for some of the pinnacles of the post-punk era, defining achievements such as 1979's Metal Box, a jagged, silver monument which still stands, Shardlike, casting its long shadow.
10+ min |
January 2023
Record Collector
Christine McVie 1943-2022
In the soft-rock soap opera of Fleetwood Mac at the height of their global fame, Christine McVie was a calming presence. While no stranger to the relationships freefall and wild substance abuse that unwittingly became shorthand for the making of Rumours, there was something steady and reassuring about her ice-cool voice on You Make Loving Fun, Oh Daddy and possibly the finest 200 seconds of her entire career, Songbird.
5 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
Diggin' For GOLD
Our regular look at the more arcane corners of record collecting. Includes Label Of Love and Sound And Vision
10+ min |
January 2023
Record Collector
VALUE ADDED FACTS
Ian Shirley, Editor Emeritus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions
10 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
The Collector
This month: Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys
6 min |
January 2023
Record Collector
All in the family
The inspiration for David Cassidy et al, The Cowsills are the pop family that stayed together: 57 years after their recorded debut, they are making some of the best music of their lives their first new album in 30 years, Rhythm Of The World, was released last month. Bill Kopp talks to Bob, Paul and Susan Cowsill about the rain, the park, the fun, the horror - including an abusive father - and other things.
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
Skid Row – The Crazy Gang
New Jersey’s Skid Row have 36 years on the clock and a clutch of platinum records on the wall, but far from resting on the laurels of their peak successes back in the early 90s, they’re now back on ebullient form with their first album in 16 years, The Gang’s All Here. With a new frontman and a bright future, the band feel they’ve got a new lease of life. “How lucky are we?” founder member Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo and vocalist Erik Grönwall ask John Tucker.
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
ABBA – The History Book on the Shelf
For years, music fans have debated about which are the finest songs ever by the likes of The Beatles, the Stones, Bowie, Springsteen, and Kate Bush - those artists widely regarded as all-time greats. But how about ABBA? Surely, postMamma Mia! the movie and musical and decades of mainstream adoration, they have earned their place in the pantheon and their catalogue merits serious evaluation. Pete Paphides believes so and, in this ABBA Special, picks their 40 (plus one) Best Songs. Then, on page 100, RC enjoy a rare encounter with one half of the group's peerless songwriting partnership...
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
Johnnie Taylor – Smooth Operator
Although his biggest hit came after he left the label, Johnnie Taylor was one of the bestselling - and most consistently brilliant artists to record for the legendary Stax. He remains a sorely underrated soul artist, a "seducer-showman" suffused with polish and grit, regarded by some as the missing link between Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye. Jack Watkins sings his praises.
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
Benny Andersson – "We learned from The Beatles"
And now to meet the man behind those 40 (plus one) amazing songs... Along with Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA's chief melodist, Benny Andersson, comprises what is finally - after years of being dismissed as pop lightweights - regarded as one of the great songwriting partnerships, up there with Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Wilson-Love. And with the Voyage album, their first for 39 years, and the ABBA Voyage concert spectacular featuring virtual avatars going on 'til well into 2023, ABBA are poised at last to be hailed as true immortals. But what was it like to make their first ABBA music since 1982? How have they managed to pick up after so lon-----g? "It was like it had been three weeks, not 40 years," Andersson tells Pete Paphides in this rare interview.
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
Magic Man
As guitarist in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band when they made career-defining albums such as Trout Mask Replica, Jeff Cotton, aka Antennae Jimmy Semens, had a first-hand view of the bizarre and often terrifying and traumatising working methods of the artist formerly known as Don Van Vliet. He lived to tell the tale just and went on to create more heady psychedelia with Mu. He then dropped off the rock'n'roll radar... until now, as Cotton returns with a solo album that draws on many of the ideas and unfinished songs he began work on back in the early 70s. \"I love the guy,\" he tells Mike Barnes about Beefheart. \"But it took years of hindsight to be able to process it.\"
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
THE RIGHT STUFF
Clothes-swapping with Ian Curtis? Teaching songs to Bob Dylan?? Miming with David Bowie? Getting punched by Mick Jagger? There’s a lot you don’t know about the pre-fame career of Right Said Fred, contends Joel McIver of their “avant-garde” years…
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
33% minutes with...Don Was
Bassist, producer, and filmmaker Don Was was born Don Edward Fagenson in Detroit in 1952. With school friend David Weiss he enjoyed his first success in Was (Not Was) when they hit the UK Top 10 with 1987’s Walk The Dinosaur.
5 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
auteurtoauthor
Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock’n’roll Prolific, moi?
3 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
davidquanticklikes
...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remembering when 60s went 80s
4 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
maconblack
Ian McCann considers soul brothers and sisters, and blues siblings
4 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
musictovisit
Bob Stanley carries pop’s baggage everywhere Staring down the Middle Of The Road
4 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
Jerry Lee Lewis 1935-2022
The title of the 2006 duets project that gave Jerry Lee Lewis his biggest-selling album in a career stretching over half a century was both a reverential nod to fallen comrades, and the typically showman-like brag of a rock’n’roll bad boy nicknamed The Killer.
5 min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
CORPS AND EFFECTS
Brixton synthpop group, Hard Corps, split prematurely in the 80s, with much of their work coming out posthumously. They tell Ian Shirley how they made their best-loved single, Je Suis Passée
10+ min |
Christmas 2022
Record Collector
William Bell – Ace Venturer
You may not know William Bell, but you'll know his co-writes - You Don't Miss Your Water, Born Under A Bad Sign, his hit duet with Judy Clay, Private Number - his samples (hello, Kanye), or his covers: his songs have been performed by everyone from The Byrds to Billy Idol. Garth Cartwright meets the Stax legend, now in the seventh decade of his career
10+ min |
October 2022
Record Collector
Ian Shirley is 007 "The man with the Golden Ton"
So, now you know which £100 records to buy. But what if you want more than one disc for your dosh? Ian Shirley, licensed to chill and a secret agent when it comes to tracking down rarities, shows how to spend the whopping £100 he got given as his leaving gift from RC as he heads off to work as Production Manager for Ace Records.
10 min |
October 2022
Record Collector
The Beatles – It was 60 years ago today...
On the very first day of 1962, The Beatles failed their audition with one of the biggest record companies in the UK. On the final day of 1962, WITH they had a No 1 single in the can and played their last gig on the Hamburg club circuit – on the verge of conquering Britain in 1963, and the world in 1964. How could just one year change their fortunes so vastly? As the 60th anniversary of Love Me Do approaches, we offer a full appraisal of their 1962 recordings, and the myths and mysteries that continue to surround them. Richie Unterberger delves into the archives.
10+ min |
September 2022
Record Collector
Take a Beau
At the height of Beatlemania, San Francisco quintet The Beau Brummels crashed the British invasion party with a chart-busting sound that shifted from beat pop to embryonic country rock and psychedelia. But as their creativity grew, sales and label backing fell away. Richie Unterberger recounts their story with help from some of the original California dreamers.
10+ min |