Randy Holden- Guitar God For those of you with an appreciation for hard, heavy guitar-centric rock from the period, it doesn’t get any better than Randy Holden. His solo album, Population II, is now a highly collectible rarity for good reason: it’s a monster album. If you only have passing knowledge of the man, or look him up on the Internet, the accepted wisdom recites that Holden is “best known for” his work on Blue Cheer’s New, Improved! But that album doesn’t even scratch the surface. In fact, it is partly a Blue Cheer album and partly a Randy Holden album; the dividing... Read More
The Curious Case Of Record Cleaning In The Quest For Sonic Perfection
The Curious Case Of Record Cleaning In The Quest For Sonic Perfection Michael Bodell, September 1, 2018 “If there exists a more effective, easy, reliable, and utterly transformative way of cleaning LPs, I have yet to hear it.” Art Dudley, Stereophile March 2015 In 1952, Bendix Corporation of Davenport, Iowa took ultrasonic cleaning from the laboratory and into production for the first time. The company experimented with ultrasonic applications through the 1950s to find tank cleaning in a fluid an optimal use, especially in industrial applications. ... Read More
A History of Ultrasonic Record Cleaning
A History of Ultrasonic Record Cleaning Despite the attention paid to ultrasonic record cleaning in the last few years, including the various DIY efforts that have broadened its appeal due to lower cost (as well as providing a more flexible feature set than some of the commercial entries), little has been said about the history of ultrasonic cleaning for records. Mike Bodell changes that with a paper entitled “The Curious Case Of Record Cleaning In The Quest For Sonic Perfection” which is being published here for the first time. Mike, who has both a science and business... Read More
Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017).
Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017). To call this exhaustive study of Peter Green’s performances an ambitious undertaking would be damning by faint praise: over 1,900 pages, cataloging and commenting on the history and attributes of 1,000 recorded performances by the legendary guitarist Peter Green spread among three volumes. These volumes took author Richard Orlando more than 15 years to assemble. Green is a relatively modern artist who composed and performed within our lifetimes—and within a fairly... Read More
Atomic Rooster- Death Walks Behind You– Two Pressings
Atomic Rooster- Death Walks Behind You Two pressings: US and UK An interesting heavy rock record by an oft-overlooked band, this album—which was probably their best and most commercially successful– has gotten some play here lately. I decided to buy both early US and UK pressings—the price difference can be considerable for those of us in the States—to see how they compared. The UK clearly wins on artwork, with its disturbing William Blake image (above). The band grew out of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown—a strange piece of wackiness that resulted in a radio... Read More
Fixing Certain Features on the Site
Fixing Certain Features on the Site UPDATE: August, 2018 IF YOU ARE REGISTERING TO GET UPDATES AND/OR TO COMMENT AND DO NOT RECEIVE AN EMAIL FROM WORDPRESS TO VALIDATE YOUR REGISTRATION, PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM/JUNK MAIL. BREAKING NEWS: As of Friday, August 10, 2018, it looks like all functionality to the site, including Letter to the Editor and Comments, is fully operational. My thanks to Tom Ossa and his team. BH. As this site has grown, I have tried to improve it, and add certain features. Alas, some of them don’t perform as intended and need to be reprogrammed. Some of... Read More
The National Reserve- Motel La Grange
The National Reserve- Motel La Grange You can listen to Sean Walsh and The National Reserve’s Motel La Grange and be reminded of so many different strands of music from the past without being quite able to put your finger on what memories are being tickled. There are elements of the old Bob Seger in the vocal parts, of The Band in their roots Americana vibe, of Little Feat in sheer funk but it’s nowise derivative of any of these; it stands on its own, even if it does bring back memories of something else. If I were a musician, I’d hate to be compared to someone else, even if... Read More
Comus: First Utterance- Part II: Interview with Members of Comus About the Album
Comus: First Utterance– Part II: Interview with Members of Comus About the Album Following the publication here last week of Comus- First Utterance (consisting of an overview of the LP, its reissue and legacy), An Interview with Members of Comus has now been published. It is integrated into the first article as Part II and can be accessed directly (if you already read Part I and want to go directly to the interview(s)) by clicking on the hyperlinked text in the preceding sentence. The interview is really a series of viewpoints from different band members and, like the album... Read More
Comus: First Utterance + Interview with Members of Comus
Comus: First Utterance The folk music revival of the ‘60s not only revitalized interest in traditional music but also sparked the creation of more contemporary sounds that were influenced by the cultural tides and musical shifts of a turbulent decade. Although it was not released until 1971, First Utterance stands today as a “Ur” album of the psychedelic folk movement; it is a wild ride even by “modern” standards, inured to a post-punk, industrial, hip-hop, noise rock sensibility. It must have been shattering to listen to at the time of its release. Roger Wootton... Read More
More Tima- More In-Depth Knowledge on Ultrasonic Record Cleaning
More Tima- More In-Depth Knowledge on Ultrasonic Record Cleaning Readers are probably familiar with the contributions of Tim Aucremann a/k/a Tima on the subject of DIY ultrasonic record cleaning. Tima’s latest installment reflects considerable hands-on evaluation of methods and in-depth research on matters such as water purity and filtering. The latest installment, follow-up #2, is published here. It’s a worthy addition to the knowledge base. A lot of LP owners have jumped on board the DIY RCM approach, but questions abound. If you haven’t read Tima’s earlier installments, I... Read More
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- …
- 28
- Next Page »