TIN MEN AND THE TELEPHONE at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, July 2017 Poem by Hazel Smith
so often a jazz performance /only swings with sub-Coltrane licks/but experimentalism is the whipping boy/ of evolution
MOONLIGHT ON VERMONT by CAPTAIN BEEFHEART and his Magic Band Story by Stephen Andrew
Unhinged, unwieldy, (apparently) uncoordinated and maybe even unlistenable. Despite or because of this, I pressed on. I'd read somewhere that this was supposed to be An Important Album.
STONEMILKER by BJORK Story by Jayke Luland
Some songs come to you in a tremendous moment of need. Some songs are needed like a dose of Ibuprofen during the emotional inflammation that is failure.
HEROES by DAVID BOWIE Fiction by Jeff Dowsing
As a Bowie aficionado Jack couldn’t hold a candle to Dennis, but this track burns deep at the best of times, and obliterates him in the worst. Such as now.
SUBTERRANEANS by DAVID BOWIE Story by Christopher Hawkes
As soon as the credits rose I would stalk back to the car and play Low on my way home, through the city and immigrant ghettoes, past still clattering factories and silent housing estates, then back onto the dark of the fen to park at a small humpback bridge just outside my village.
Prelude: Song Of The Gulls and Islands by King Crimson. Story by Vin Maskell
Vin Maskell Geelong, 1971, Melbourne 1974 My eldest brother didn’t own many records. If my memory serves me well, the albums he listened to were by The Beatles, a rebel country songwriter, some Dylan and Clapton, a little art rock, and some English pop by a red-headed protégé of Elton John.
Everything You Can Think Of Is True by Tom Waits
In April this year Rijn Collins won the New York-based Sarah Award For Audio Fiction, for her story Almost Flamboyant. The piece, inspired by Tom Waits and a stuffed flamingo, is not a Stereo Story but here she tells how she came to write and record Almost Flamboyant. Congratulations, Rijn on winning the inaugural Sarah Award. ...Jacek Koman owned that studio. He snarled, sang, and sneered. I had never before watched a character of mine brought to life, off the page and into the room. The experience was intoxicating....
Beach house records – part 3
Vin Maskell Moggs Creek, Australia; 1983 to 2013 The third and final part of our series about family, a beach house and its record collection.
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) by Talking Heads
Chris Johnston Christchurch , New Zealand, 1983 Last weekend, my older brother handed me a letter I had written to him in 1983 when I was 17. It was strange and lonely to read it; handwritten, large lettering, blue biro, a schoolboy.
Once In A Lifetime by Talking Heads
Nick Gadd Wakefield, Yorkshire. February 1981 You may ask yourself, Who is this skinny, nervous guy in a suit, twitching like a puppet, a crazed suburban salesman having a meltdown?