Not Forgotten
Not Forgotten: Tom Petty – Wildflowers
For his second ‘solo’ album Tom Petty did the smart thing and recruited Rick Rubin as the producer. Rubin’s organic and raw production methods were in sharp contrast to the synthetic and processed sounds that Petty’s albums (both solo, and with his celebrated backing band, The Heartbreakers) had suffered from since the lack-luster Southern Accents. …
Not Forgotten – Half Man Half Biscuit – Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral
It is the late 90s. The Britpop bubble has burst, its fans realising that the overwhelming majority of so called indie acts were now being dropped like stones through a wet paper bag by their major label paymasters, because their second or third albums haven’t sold in the same eye-watering numbers as their over-hyped debuts. …
Not Forgotten – Mull Historical Society – Loss
I’ve always found it difficult to put any kind of tag on Loss. Just what type of music is it? It has elements of self-produced indie, but it’s far too well produced for it to be classed as lo-fi. It has moments of pure pop genius, but I would hold back on pigeon-holing it as …
Not Forgotten – The Who – Tommy
After the witty, but flawed The Who Sell Out, The Who still hadn’t been really accepted as a serious album act. That was it, if they were going to conquer the world, they were going to have to use the big guns. It was time for the rock opera. While there had been concept albums …
Not Forgotten – David Bowie – Station to Station
Station to Station is an odd album for me, in that I feel I would probably have a higher opinion of it than I do were it not for the album that immediately preceded it. It’s not that I prefer Young Americans, far from it, but I feel that if Bowie had been able to …
Not Forgotten: Harry Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson
Harry Nilsson was something of an anomaly in the music industry. He was undeniably a top-draw songwriter, however the majority of his best known hit singles were covers. He never performed live, yet such was his reputation as a hell-raiser and general mischief maker, it has subsequently clouded the fact that he was a genuinely …
Not Forgotten: T.Rex – Electric Warrior
The gap between being a ‘serious’ album act and being a ‘disposable’ pop act was still relatively wide back in the early 70s. The more album-orientated acts had a couple of hit singles at most (if indeed they even released singles), whereas the acts that appeared on Top of the pops had hit albums, but …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Benefit
For some reason Jethro Tull are never spoken of in the same hushed tones of awe as Led Zeppelin or King Crimson. Or Deep Purple and Yes. Or Wishbone Ash… Quite why that is may be down to the fact that their style was very difficult to pigeon hole and emulate, therefore no one has …
Not Forgotten: The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
After years of struggling in the alt-rock wilderness, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots was the first release by The Flaming Lips that you could say had been ‘long awaited’ by just about anybody outside of North America. Sure they had their small bands of admirers scattered across the globe previously, but The Soft Bulletin had …
Not Forgotten – Mott the Hoople – Mott
Having established themselves in the late 60s as Dylan and Stones infused rockers, Mott the Hoople spent the next few years with a reputation of a storming live act whose studio material failed to capture the magic they routinely produced on stage. After four albums for Island Records in which they explored hard rock, country …