Not Forgotten
Reissue: Rush – All the World’s a Stage
For all Rush’s reputation as dazzling progressive rockers on their studio albums, they have an enviable parallell reputation as a thunderously hard rocking live act. While their 70s studio albums are heavy on meticulously played brainiac sci-fi / fantasy concepts, their first live offering, All the World’s a Stage, confirmed that when it came to …
Reissue: Rush – 2112
Over the last four decades Rush’s fusion of heavy metal and prog has seen them solidify their position as one of the most consistently popular rock bands on the planet. Their self-titled album had been a collection of straight ahead Led Zeppelin influenced rockers, however the departure of drummer John Rutsey and the recruitment of …
Not Forgotten: David Byrne – Feelings
In retrospect Feelings is probably the last time that David Byrne made a conscious effort to make an album that might sell to an audience beyond his most obsessed fans. Where his previous self titled album had been a mature mix of material with a very definite adult feel about it, Feelings was partly a …
Not Forgotten – The Cult – Electric
The Cult, bless their ridiculous hairstyles, couldn’t have found it easy to follow-up their unexpectedly successful album Love, particularly as it had included one of the key rock songs of the decade, “She Sells Sanctuary”. Although they apparently attempted to make a bigger and better version of their previous album, The Cult got bogged down …
Not Forgotten: Thea Gilmore – Avalanche
It can’t be easy being Thea Gilmore. Widely hailed as one of the best songwriters of her generation, yet receiving almost no radio play and little media coverage. She’s been releasing high quality music now for the last eight years or so, but registers negligible sales. She displays traditional singer-songwriter strengths, but she doesn’t fall …
Not Forgotten: Warren Zevon – Life’ll Kill Ya
It’s tempting to retrospectively view Warren Zevon’s final three albums as a loose trilogy based around the theme of mortality. While the post cancer-diagnosis musings of My Ride’s Here and the acceptance of The Wind can certainly be seen as being directly influenced by the fact that Zevon knew that he was reaching the end …
Not Forgotten – The Music Career of Leonard Nimoy
The sad passing of Leonard Simon Nimoy will inevitably result in many obituaries re-analysing his film career both in front and behind the career. Quite how many of those same obituaries will go into any depth about his five album music career which stretched from 1967 to 1970 remains to be seen. Much like his …
Not Forgotten: They Might Be Giants – Flood
As the 90s dawned, things were restless in the musical firmament. In the UK, we were coming to terms with the fact that we were still suffering from the hangover of terrible pop songs and even worse production methods that the 80s had blighted us with, and across the Atlantic folks were taking a long …
Not Forgotten: Guided by Voices – Motivational Jumpsuit
An overlooked rather than a forgotten classic, Motivational Jumpsuit was the first of two albums by Guided by Voices that were released in quick succession in the first half of 2014, before they once again called it a day last September. Less of a disorientating skip through Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout’s collective muse than …
Not Forgotten: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Hard Promises
For reasons that have never been explained to my satisfaction, the majority of rock fans this side of the pond never embraced Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in the same way they did Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for this, both are acts steeped in …