Improvements at the sharp end

We're an issue away from an anniversary here, recovering from this flu thingy and one thing that has run from the early days of this blog wrapped around all the things around being, presentation, age dypshoria/regression has been music and to be specific the evolution over the decades of how I hear it.

Records do play a fair part in that although the way things go is hat some recordings may not be on record but say compact disc and some often older albums may not of had (or had less than satisfactory) an issue in that format.

Thus the record deck itself has had upgrades from simple automatic models of my youth to more complex hifi models that play just one disc at a time.

Also the cartridge and stylus have had changes to with them of getting more out of what is in the groove and less of what isn't such as surface noise from the disc itself.

Recently I bought this which offers in a sme bayonet style form a clearer modern cartridge body to which a nude eliptical stylus is fitted to better fit the groove and extract more information.

Compared to others it is a better match for the arm with less lower mid resonances that however slight can make themselves heard.

This sounds just great through my phonostage that takes its output and raises it to play though the amplifier much better than its own built in one.

Now Yearbook Vault 1984

I did suggest it was going be a busy period on music releases last week and on Friday while sneezing my nosy off something a bit familar but also a bit different arrived.

Now Yearbooks, we covered them here looking from 1982 and before with 1977 due next month, rounding up on three very well filled lps the main hits of each year complement my original Now and Hits Lps from the 1983 and 4 respectively and then some older compilations.

In June Now launched a sub series VAULTS, which aims to cover minor hits of the sort that tended to pad out our Ronco and K Tel sets as much as we may of preferred some of them to the big hits back in the day and also American Hits which unless someone did a American Hit compilation you didn't get so I'd buy the 45's where available.

We didn't bother with 1983 as that was well covered on the vinyl front and I have many American and Canadian acts albums from that year I liked anyway so the initial title got a miss here.

Yesterday though they issued Vaults 1984 which although 1984 is well represented with a half of Now 2 and the whole of Now 3 and 4 plus the first Hits  did miss out a number of these min or hits and American hits that never were over here so I thought "What the heck!" and ordered it.

Like the regular Now Yearbooks on LP, these are coming out in three lp sets, three discs stuffed in a single sleeve which means we do miss some of the tracks from the 4 cd version in cheapskate wraparound card or fuller book forms but most of the essentials make it.

Record one  begins with some pop gems from established artists such as Heaven 17, ABC, and Scritti Politti ahead of Wild Life a U.S. single release from Bananarama followed by the solo debut from Helen Terry who had sung back-up vocals on the previous years’ massive seller ‘Colour By Numbers’ from Culture Club features along with Level 42, Soft Cell and Talk Talk who close the first side with ‘Such A Shame’. 

Flipping the record over we get to enjoy the sumptuous vocal pairings of Teddy Pendergrass and Whitney Houston, and Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett. The side also features the debut from the Colour Field, M+M’s ‘Black Stations/White Stations’, a commentary or racially defined radio in the States and established artists Tom Robinson and Marillion.

Record Two kicks off with a stunning collection of indie-pop, including Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Icicle Works and the Top 40 debut from Everything But The Girl… plus Malcolm McLaren, The Associates and Blancmange with their cover of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’, whilst the dance-floor beckons on the other side with electro-dance and Hi-NRG from Sheila E., Divine, Evelyn Thomas, Miquel Brown, and chart regulars Shalamar, Donna Summer and Sheena Easton – with Arrow closing the LP with carnival favourite ‘Hot Hot Hot’.

The final record focuses on singles that found chart success in the U.S. and opens with Culture Club’s ‘Miss Me Blind’, which didn’t get a single release in the U.K, alongside a selection of U.S. new-wave hits from The Fixx, a British group who found more success in the States, Go-Go’s and The Cars. Synth-led tracks from The Psychedelic Furs, Visage and Sparks close the side. 

The Pretenders open the final side with ‘Show Me’, which was a U.S. hit, but not issued as a single in the U.K. Daryl Hall & John Oates, and Rick Springfield continued their run of Stateside hits and Bon Jovi debuted with ‘Runaway’. Scorpions and Judas Priest are up next with rock classics ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’, and ‘Freewheel Burning’… and the concluding moment is given to ZZ Top with ‘TV Dinners’ one of four singles from their massive ‘Eliminator’ album.

It's a slightly off the beaten track musical overview of 1984 covering much that wasn't on those pioneering 1984 compilations regardless of quality and for those reasons gains a spot in my vinyl compilation collection

Now Millennium series part iv

It's all gonna be happening as the count down for the Christmas season record release schedule begins so batten your hatches, get the Winter Tires ready and let's resume from where we were in June this year with those Millennium compilations from Now That's What I Call Music.

We'd been going for a bit on this blog after everything in the adult world got so messed up I needed time out to recover which in part at least is where all else really fitted in so rather like in childhood the radio played a part with presenters playing hit tunes forming a part of those memories.

From the early nineteen-nineties though the chart moved more away from mainstream pop and rock to more club based sounds and various sub genres such as Grunge, "Shoegazing" etc so what I bought for myself typically on cd based albums was different which is really where a set like this fits in gathering enough of those other sounds you recall but didn't even bother with the four or more double cd Now numbered compilations back then as the misses to hits ratio with you would be rather high.

As mainstream chart as it got with me was a fully functioning reborn Take That and the North Wales retro fused female singer Duffy.

As is the standard in this series, each year has two distinct discs and my copy being the book form has short write ups about the songs and chart performance which all helps bring it all back.

Disc One kicks off with a run of pop gold, Take That’s triumphant #1 ‘Greatest Day’, the band’s 11th #1 single, starts the count for #1’s on this album followed by Girls Aloud’s BRIT Award winning homage to the sounds of the 60s, ‘The Promise’, another UK #1.  Britney leads a string of fabulous pop hits with the infectious ‘Womanizer’ before P!nk’s #1 ‘So What’ and Kylie Minogue’s ‘Wow’. 2008 Was a great year for new and breaking acts; Katy Perry announced herself to the world with the hit ‘I Kissed a Girl’, while The Saturday’s second single ‘Up’ shattered the high expectations set by their debut single. Duffy’s excellent  jazz-inflected smash ‘Mercy’ sits neatly alongside other jazz and swing-inspired hits on this disc with Alesha Dixon’s ‘The Boy Does Nothing’, Gabrielle Cilmi’s ‘Sweet About Me’, and Sam Sparro’s ‘Black and Gold’. Closing off Disc One are a pair of X-Factor superstars with Alexandra Burke’s debut UK #1, Xmas #1 and the best-selling single of 2008: ‘Hallelujah’, and Leona Lewis’ powerful cover of Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’.

Disc Two opens with the epic Coldplay’s  ‘Viva La Vida’ followed by The Killers’ indie dancefloor chart-topper ‘Human’. Back in 2008 we saw some huge trance-pop hits such as Basshunter kicking off a run of dance classics with their emphatic ‘Now You’re Gone’ before Scooter brings a similarly irresistible energy with ‘Jumping All Over The World’. Eric Prydz’s ‘Pjanoo’, Ultrabeat’s ‘Disco Lights’, and H Two O’s essential ‘Whats It Gonna Be?’ follow. Enduring playlist favourites from The Script (‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’), Kid Rock (‘All Summer Long’) and Nickelback (‘Rockstar’) lead into Oasis’ psychedelia-infused alt rock track ‘The Shock Of The Lightning’. To close this review of 2008, we have great bands including The Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol, and Radiohead with ‘Nude’.

Disc Three and our review of 2009 opens with the Black Eyed Peas’ global hit ‘I Gotta Feeling’.  This UK and US #1 is followed by a slew of similarly huge floor fillers including David Guetta and Kelly Rowland’s ‘When Love Takes Over’. Next up, synth pop smashes from La Roux’s ‘Bulletproof’ and The Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Love Etc.’.  Local lad Robbie Williams continued his stellar chart run with ‘Bodies’. Lily Allen’s #1 ‘The Fear’ is followed by Florence + The Machine’s debut top 20 hit ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’. This is followed by a run of RnB pop finishes the disc off with Ciara and Justin Timberlake’s ‘Love Sex Magic’ followed by Flo Rida featuring Kesha on ‘Right Round’, Taio Cruz’s ‘Break your Heart’, JLS’ ‘Beat Again’, and Jason Derulo’s breakout hit, ‘Whatcha Say’.

Massive pop superstars open the final disc; Britney Spears (‘Circus’), Miley Cyrus (‘Party In The USA’), and The Pussycat Dolls alongside A.R. Rahman (Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)’). #1 debuts are up next from Cheryl Cole with ‘Fight For This Love’ and Pixie Lott with ‘Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)’. Airplay favourites from Paolo Nutini (‘Pencil Full Of Lead’), James Morrison featuring Nelly Furtado (‘Broken Strings’) and Kelly Clarkson’s #1: ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ feature alongside top 10 smashes from Metro Station (‘Shake It’), Sugababes (‘Get Sexy’) and Little Boots (‘Remedy’). Hip-Hop and Grime are represented here with Tinchy Stryder and Ironik featuring Chipmunk on their huge tracks ‘Number 1’ and ‘Tiny Dancer (Hold Me Closer)’ (sampling Elton John’s classic that revived interest in that song). Our final disc closes with Westlife’s ‘What About Now’ – their 22nd Top 5 hit since their 1999 debut.

This is a great sampling of these two years before we started the twenty-tens.

Steely Dan gets near to finished off

At christmas 2022 in with the traditional Christmas entry was reference to a couple of Steely Dan albums (Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go) I hadn't got then that were being issued by the american specialist company Analogue Productions on both record and Super Audio cd (sacd).

That was part of a projected ten disc reissue series that way back then I had set up pre-orders for  with a major specialist record and cd store in Wales.

This weekend one of the last three titles has eventually been delivered, November 1980's Gaucho although it had been released in the United States last month as apparently they give two company owned retailers over there a two week window before shipping out to the Rest Of The World - aka us here in Great Britain and Ireland.

It featured Hey Nineteen", reaching # 10 on theU.S. pop chart in early 1981, and "Time Out of Mind" (featuring guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits) was a moderate hit in the spring.

The whole series has been dogged by major delays even on the vinyl side due to pressing plant shortages and with the Super Audio cd, only two plants in the world make them and they're fully committed with other titles to manufacture.

This 1974 album came out around November last year with "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" which reached as high as #4 on the U.S. charts.

 

 Countdown To Ecstasy issued in 1973 home to the singles  "Show Biz Kids" and "My Old School shown in its case came out in June 2023.

 

 

1972's Can't Buy A Thrill that was their first ever album featured the hit Do It Again was issued in January 2023.

 

1977's Aja came out in March of this year although the record version came out much earlier.

That's how it came to be what normally would of been be a single launch of a bunch of titles on one day has been in dribs and drabs in two years so much so I go by my record at the store of what was ordered and what's still in the orders to keep track of it.

And much has happened since then that in many ways I'd lost some of the buzz around these coming out and even doing a full set of entries in them despite their expense so this week we're catching up.

With any luck I'll fire up the player the Saturday before posting and give this a good spin.
 

Classical rest

 

It's been an odd week here not least for feeling rather under the weather really but one thing I had spent some of the evenings doing laying very much in the catbasket has been listening to the last week of this years Sir Henry Wood promenade concerts that this year have included an orchestrated Florence and The Machine concert, a evening of Henry Mancini, the film and stage show composer who gave us Peter Gunn, Moon River and the Pink Panther theme beloved as a child, even played on Saturday in the second half of the Last Night with Sir Steven Hough playing piano.

Talking of him the classical music label Hyperion last month did issue five brand new classical lps, something they hadn't done since the very late 1980's drawn from their modern catalogue and I did get his brilliant account of Chopin's Waltzes in that format.

Classical music on vinyl isn't where rock and pop is - in the centre of a revival - with lots of reissues and many new titles being issued at the same time on record, cd and digital mediums, being more of a nostalgia driven thing with "classic" accounts from the late 1950's to the end of the 1970's often highly regarded by hifi types being issued by specialist companies so it is rare we get modern recordings.

That one sounded great with silent surfaces and I'd like to see them issue around fifteen to twenty a year a mixture of back catalogue and the most desired brand new recordings so we can have a wider choice of in print new classical pressings.

Away and past memories

 

Well I'm just sat here with an achy back having been on my feet for most of the day and having spent ten hours on the move with the twisted section also quite warm.

Really it should of been corrected by a surgical custom made jacket when I was in my teens but for some reason that never happened and my folks never really pursued that matter which is why most people I know in similar circumstances don't have the same level of discomfort as I do.

The trip out generally went well with no traffic issues unlike last trip out but while the last time we've been leaving around four pm allowing for just under a two hour journey an initial offer of leaving at half four got extended to 5pm which meant we arrived back at 7 and had to get something to eat when you just feel shattered.

And his Grumpness had walked his shortish legs off while I stocked up on Coconut Ice and battled with the steep stairs to on set of conveniences, something patrons did notice strangely enough. 

 

On Tuesday September 3rd, we lost Brian Truman, aged 92, who wrote Dangermouse, Count Duckula its spin off series, Jamie and the Magic Torch, Cockleshell Bay plus Chorlton and the Wheelies all of which were amongst our favourite cartoons growing up.

He also presented Children's Hour, Clitheroe Kid, Scene at 6.30, Granada Reports, Brass Tacks and the much missed Screen Test that mixed quizes on current children's films with features on making your own short films.

He will be sadly missed by many of us.

Back to class with tape

 

Funny old week in a number of ways as the post F.A. business has resolved itself so things have gotten more to back to normal and I get ready to be away this weekend so i'll be sorting stuff out for that and obviously school returns which tugs at me never really have mentally at least left that.

Having fixed the power unit issue on my Sony portable stereo recorder I have been continuing with remaking a number of tapes that went around 1997-9 when MiniDisc moved in and pushed its predecessors and their tapes out, not least as I couldn't operate the Tandberg 62 stereo reel deck.

Back in the days you had a variety of tapes you could use and some could be difficult to use to their best because the coating wasn't what most Japanese tape manufacturers used and Japan set their machines based on what what they made. 

Many pre-recorded cassettes used Basf genuine chromedioxide tape as it not only sounded really good but it was really quiet and in the early to mid 80's I did use their domestic blank tape version as it least the machines I had then did a decent job of recording on them.

What did for that and lead me to switch to Maxell XLII  and TDK SA was changing machines to Japanese machines that sound bad on them and because of the impact of that, reduced availability in the high street.

In 1993 I did try one Basf Chrome type as an experiment and that didn't turn out well as the volume as a lot lower than what I recorded it at.

Recently though in a bundle of mainly Japanese tapes I found some late 90's early 2000's ones and I did experiment with them.

While these were mainly pure chrome they had added a small amount of  cobalt oxide japanese type II tapes used and actually they worked well straightaway on one of the Yamaha decks from the mid 1990's keeping much of the the low noise advantage I liked.

So with that I redid Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town albums given I like listening to his albums rather a lot.