Not Forgotten
Not Forgotten: Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart
Ah, Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart. Oh how music fans far and wide chuckled at the idea of one of the 20th Century’s song writing icons deciding that it would be a shrewd career move to release an album of traditional Christmas Carols and festive favourites. Down the decades Christmas albums in general have …
Not Forgotten: The Beatles – The Magical Mystery Tour
A Not Forgotten article on The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour? I must have flipped my lid right? How can any album release by the biggest act in popular music be forgotten? Okay, so maybe it hasn’t been forgotten, but it has been massively under appreciated, especially when you compare the avalanche of sycophantic praise heaped …
Not Forgotten: Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner
Sometimes it is impressive what can be achieved with proverbial smoke and mirrors. Promotions, relationships, business deals. Sometimes the appearance that you are something can get you further than actually being that thing. Smoke and mirrors work in the music industry too. From the doing quite well on the surface pop act whose managers are …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Stand Up
For many fans 1969’s Stand Up is where the Jethro Tull’s story really starts. That’s not to say that their debut, This Was, wasn’t any good, but Stand Up is where Jethro Tull started to sound like no one other act than Jethro Tull. In the few months that split the release of This Was …
Not Forgotten: Levellers – Levelling the Land
There was a time in my late teens when Levellers were a genuinely important band to me. They were a genuinely rocking folk band with a good ear for melody, a memorable riff and, in Mark Chadwick, a reasonable vocalist. 1991’s Levelling The Land is by far and away the best Levellers album. It was …
Not Forgotten: Ben Folds – Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP
An odds and sods release which lifts the majority of its material from a trio of previously released EPs, rather than a full album in its own right, Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP, is nevertheless one of the most out and out enjoyable releases that Ben Folds has ever put his name to. Those of us who …
Not Forgotten: They Might Be Giants – They Might Be Giants (a.k.a. Pink Album. a.k.a. First Album)
Released into a musical landscape over-populated by purveyors of synth-pop, stadium rock, post punk, underground alternative, heartland rockers, disposable pop and The Smiths (the band that pretty much defined what the mainstream thought indie / alternative music was in the mid 80s, at least here in the UK), the eponymous debut of They Might Be …
Not Forgotten: Super Furry Animals – Fuzzy Logic
Released at a time when seemingly every reasonably new(ish) band within the UK and Northern Ireland who featured at least one guitar player was pigeonholed as Britpop, Super Furry Animals’ Fuzzy Logic is an album that could have been mistakenly dismissed as landfill indie by those who found the whole scene devoid of inspiration. I …
Reissue: Terry Allen – Lubbock (On Everything)
I’m not a huge fan of ‘country’ music. Sure, I can appreciate its narrative qualities, I have a well chosen Johnny Cash compilation in my album collection, I love the output of Dr Hook before they took the full-on cheese-ballad route, I have a healthy respect for the music of Frankie Laine and Marty Robbins, …
Not Forgotten: XTC – Skylarking
To the casual observer, by the time Skylarking was released in the mid-80s XTC looked washed up. Having had to stop touring in 1982 due to Andy Partridge’s crippling stage fright, their subsequent pair of albums, the pastoral Mummer and the industrial The Big Express hadn’t achieved the sort of commercial acceptance that anyone had …